Les Trois Mousquetaires...

[alexpgp]

It so happens I have a French copy of The Three Musketeers lying around that I have never bothered to crack, for reasons that range from being busy with other things to don't-give-a-damn laziness.

Over the years—and it seems to me that, in particular, recently—there have been a number of stories filmed "based on" the characters of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan (and The Cardinal, etc.).

(This leads me to wonder whether there exists, in France, the same kind of mania regarding Dumas and the world of the Musketeers as exists in England (and elsewhere) for Arthur Conan Doyle and the world of Sherlock Holmes, but I digress...)

Anyway, last night, as I was taking books out of a box, I ran across a two-volume paperback set of The Three Musketeers, published on cheap paper by Les Éditions Variétés in Montreal, with no date given but "all rights reserved" (go figure). I idly turned to the first page and started to read.

And was stymied by the first sentence.

Le premier lundi du mois d'avril 1625, le bourg de Meung, oú naquit l'auteur du Roman de la Rose, semblait être dans une révolution aussi entière que si les huguenots en fussent venus fairs une second Rochelle.

On the first Monday of April 1625, the town of Meung (the birthplace of the author of Romance of the Rose) appeared to be in a state of revolution so complete as to make you think Huguenots had turned it into a second La Rochelle. (my translation)

As a child of the 20th century—and a not particularly attentive high school student of French "civilisation"—I initially rendered Roman de la Rose as Novel of the Rose, which didn't make much sense, so I looked it up online. I learned that the proper, accepted rendering of the title is Romance of the Rose, and that the reference is to an allegorical 13th century poem.

Unfortunately, neither the poem, nor its author give me any useful additional information about his Bourg place, so its presence in the sentence is, for me, a distraction.

As far as Huguenots are concerned, I recalled that they were French Protestants in an era when it was dangerous not to be Catholic in that country, and that, indeed, an orchestrated "massacre" of Huguenots had occurred on a certain St. Bartholomew's Day. How the city of La Rochelle figured into this sent me to Google once more, and if you're really curious, you can go look for yourself, but in effect the last part of the sentence could easily read

...as to make you think the city had come under siege.

That said, I wonder if it is possible to read T3M without possessing sufficient background knowledge to make sense of such contextual information?

Any attempt to answer this question will come after I get some additional translations on frost crack propagation under control.

Cheers...

Comments

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

That said, I wonder if it is possible to read T3M without possessing sufficient background knowledge to make sense of such contextual information?

Of course it is. But is not finding such information a huge part of enjoying a book about a culture you don't know enough about part of the enjoyment for you? It certainly is for me.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

It is totally possible to read The Three Musketeers without contextual background.

And many contemporary authors do that too, by the way -- load the narrative with background information about current events. Tom Wolfe refers to this as "status detail."

By the way, if you like The Three Musketeers, you may also like Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas (one of my very favorite novels.)

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

There are times when this is so, and other times where I really want to get to the meat of the story.

I understand there are cultural standards at work here. Back during a course on film that I took ages ago, for example, I recall it being noted that flights from North America to Europe must have the aircraft pointed to the right on the screen, and vice versa. Chinese audiences, we were told, needed a lot more "hand-holding" during the exposition of the plot, which is why some such films seem to take forever to make a point, etc.

Generally speaking, I like to read for story and not make an academic exercise of it. :)

Cheers...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I shall give it a shot.

Cheers...