The “Alexandre Dumas” collection. “The Count of Monte Cristo II”
[ad_1]
” The count of Monte Cristo. Volume II”, by Alexandre Dumas, collection “Le Monde”, on sale at newsagents, €6.99.
Faced with his destiny, the Count of Monte-Cristo is a warlord. His fight, through
of an implacable vengeance, is that of a man who intends to take justice into his own hands,
delegating neither to men nor to the divine his terrible reprisals. His battlefields
make up an initiatory journey, from Marseille, the cradle of the betrayals that fueled his misfortune, to the Château d’If, where he snatches his freedom, then from the island of Monte Cristo, his fabulous treasure, to the Italy of the bandits and bankers, from where he set off to conquer Paris.
In a Europe upset by the fall of the old monarchies and the advent of liberalism, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) lists the archetypes of a society in search of landmarks. Embracing all genres – epic literature, marvelous tales, historical frescoes, soap operas, noir novels and picaresque narratives – he built his theater mundi. The second volume of Count of Monte Cristo is its setting, featuring thugs (Andrea Cavalcanti, Fernand Mondego), upstarts (Morcerf, Danglars), mentors (shipowner Morrel, Abbé Faria) and devoting Edmond Dantès as an exterminating angel to a thousand faces. From one metamorphosis to another, the avenging demon becomes a being of goodness in the guise of Sinbad the sailor, Abbot Busoni or Lord Wilmore. So he comes to the aid of others, frees a princess reduced to slavery, restores his honor to the unfortunate, deceived and ruined.
A metaphysical dimension
Polymorphic hero, capable of miracles, the Count of Monte Cristo alone embodies good and evil, certainty and doubt, cruelty and generosity, never forgetting his human condition: “What! this me that I believed in something, this me of which I was so proud, this me that I had seen so small in the dungeons of the Château d’If, and that I had known how to make so great, will tomorrow be a little dust ! » This is how Dumas, opening this second volume to a metaphysical dimension, takes his reader well beyond revenge, into everyone’s conscience and the universal challenge of a fleeting existence. So much so that his Machiavellian hero changes, becomes human and rediscovers his deep nature.
Edmond Dantès believed, the Count of Monte-Cristo waited. Both have never ceased to hope: one the fulfillment of his revenge, the other the appeasement it is supposed to bring him. Dumas thus traces the tenuous and uneven path from hope to hope. Inspired by the true story of François Picaud – which he will be accused of having plagiarized – the novelist transfigures reality, builds the myth of Monte-Cristo, through its metamorphoses. This human alchemy which borrows its shimmering power of seduction from Orientalism brings the novel into an elsewhere cultivated since the tales of the Thousand and one Night, like Chateaubriand, Hugo or Lamartine. From now on free and at peace, won over by the beauties of the world, the Count of Monte-Cristo will only aspire to the essential: to become himself again – Edmond Dantès – with love rediscovered as his only fortune.
Find the “Alexandre Dumas” collection published by “Le Monde” on the site dedicated to him.
[ad_2]
Source link
