Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Sprawling Tale of Love, Hate, Crime, Culture, Money, and Revenge Things are looking up for nineteen-year-old merchant seaman Edmond Dantès: he’s just returned to Marseilles after a long voyage, he’s going to be made captain, and he’s earned enough money to marry his beautiful Catalan sweetheart Mercedes. So naïve, happy, and well-liked, Dantès has no idea what’s about to happen to him! He’s envied and hated by the ship’s sneaky accountant Danglars and by Mercedes’ murderous friend Fernand, so Danglars writes an anonymous letter falsely accusing him of being a Bonapartist (the exiled ex-emperor is planning a return from Elba), and Fernand delivers it to the authorities. The ambitious prosecutor Villefort has Dantès arrested during his engagement party, interrogates him, and to protect his own family secrets and career has him tossed—without trial—into the notorious island prison Chateau d’If. As the years of solitary confinement pass, Dantès morphs through hope, despair, faith, and unfaith. He’s starving himself to death when he meets a fellow prisoner, the learned, wise, humane, and resourceful Italian Abbé Faria. Faria starts working with Dantès’ on their escape while teaching him everything he knows, including science, philosophy, languages, and the location of a vast treasure hidden on the uninhabited rocky island of Monte-Cristo off the Tuscan coast. After his fourteen-year imprisonment, Dantès starts playing God, rewarding those who tried to help him and scheming to punish those who destroyed him. Is he angel or devil? He’s an Oriental Byronic vampire! He’s got unnaturally cold white skin, long black hair, a beautiful sad or sardonic smile, night vision, unlimited wealth and knowledge, exquisite taste, devoted servants and slaves, fine hashish, and endless energy—especially for weaving webs of long-term revenge. To that end he dons multiple personas: smuggler-sailor Simbad, humanitarian Italian Abbé Busoni, philanthropic British nobleman Wilmore, and mysterious Comte (Count) of Monte-Cristo. Are they all Dantès? Or has he died and been reborn as the protean, cosmopolitan, calculating Comte? It’s a stretch to imagine that no one (except Mercedes?) would recall Dantès when the Comte shows up in Paris disguised only by name, wealth, and twenty years of aging, though Dumas is demonstrating that Dantès was destroyed by the kind of men who’d forget him. It’s also a stretch to imagine Dantès so expert in so many fields (medicine, cuisine, finance, art, horses, telegraphs, guns, etc.), though Dumas is setting us up to be surprised by his uber-man’s mistakes. Dumas writes other interesting characters: Caderousse (a coward who turns convict), Noirtier (a paralyzed old Bonapartist who communicates by blinking or shutting his eyes), Benedetto (an amoral young monster who thinks somebody’s watching over him), Villefort (a strict law man who is finally akin to Hawthorne’s Dimmesdale), and Eugenie (a masculine young lady who’d rather be an independent artist than a wife). Maximilian and Valentine are sweet “Pyramus and Thisbe” lovers. Mercedes has moments of dignity and remorse, while her son Albert is a dilettante rich boy who gains gravitas. Dumas taps into human drives like love, hate, greed, ambition, REVENGE, and forgiveness and depicts moments of intense emotion: eyes bulge, faces sweat, hands tremble, and people collapse. Check out this description of paralyzed Noirtier: “In this moment all of the soul of the old man seemed to pass into his eyes, which were infused with blood; then the veins of his throat swelled, a bluish tint like that which invades the skin of an epileptic covered his neck, his cheeks, and his temples; he only lacked in this interior explosion of his entire being a cry. This cry exited so to speak from all of his pores, dreadful in its muteness, heartrending in its silence.” Because we care about the characters, the story is often suspenseful, as when Dantès gets in a body bag, when the Comte hosts a dinner party, when Noirtier changes his will, when Maximilian waits for Valentine at night, and when Mercedes visits the Comte. Many chapters are moving, like the one where Dantès returns to Chateau d’If and prays for a sign: “Monte-Cristo raised his eyes to the sky, but he couldn't see it: there was a veil of stone between him and the firmament.” Dumas is often funny, as when the Comte enjoys seeing what a spoiled brat Villefort’s eight-year-old son is, when Villefort questions “Busoni” and “Wilmore” for intel on the “Comte,” when Caderousse catches up with Benedetto, or when Roman bandits overcharge Danglars for chicken, bread, and wine. He writes proto-Wildean lines: “An academic would say that the parties of the world are collections of flowers that attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and buzzing hornets.” He writes witty dialogue: “What do you want to do with me?” “That’s what I'm asking you. I tried to make a happy man and I only made an assassin.” Dumas is a master of irony. He writes sarcastic asides, like, “Let’s return now to that dutiful son and that loving father” (a pair of conmen playing lucrative roles). He writes dramatic irony, as when Villefort doesn’t know who the poisoner in his house is but we do, when adulterous-ex-lovers don’t know that a criminal is their illegitimate son but we do, or when the generous gift of a jewel leads to murder and theft. His writes many prime insights into human nature, like these: “Moral wounds, especially those we hide, never close up; always painful, always ready to bleed when one touches them, they remain sharp and gaping in the heart.” “In the history of humanity, ghosts have done far less harm than living people do in a single day.” “Alas, said Monte-Cristo, it’s one of the prides of our poor humanity, that each man believes himself more unfortunate than another unfortunate who cries and moans right beside him.” Dumas assumes much cultural knowledge in his reader, referring to Greek/Roman myths and history and to 1001 Nights, and to the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Racine, Byron, and to many kinds of opera and art. He also must’ve been obsessed about money! The novel is longer than necessary. And I have problems with its ending. (view spoiler)[First, the month-long “death” of Valentine is too contrived and lasts too long. Maximilian is a self-made officer who already values life and his family and Val, so he needs no such tough love adversity training from the Comte. Second, I don’t buy Haydée (the Comte’s Albanian princess-slave) and the Comte sailing off together as lovers. Dumas doesn’t develop her character and relationship with the Comte enough to make her an equal partner, so I was hoping that he and Mercedes would end up together as weathered lovers. (hide spoiler)] But the virtues of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844) far outweigh its flaws. The novel is entertaining and moving and potently demonstrates the corruption of the wealthy and powerful. (If Dantès’ enemies had only sinned against him, he’d only be a petty revenger.) I’m glad I finally read it—in French—though it took me four months□. View all my reviews
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