The Ironic, Modern World of A. Dumas

This holiday season, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have come up several times in casual conversations with people as young as 14 and as old as 50.  Some are not consistent recreational readers, some are, all implicitly or explicitly expressed the special place Rowling’s world holds for them.  They loved the books, lived in the books and the books provided a model, or maybe “schema” is a better word,  of how to approach the world, how to discover it and act in it.  It’s interesting to consider, say, how a physician working in an academic medical institution sees his world inflected by a fantasy “public school” for the magically gifted.  The physician is a serious and capable professional, by the way, and I’m not at all uncertain that a Harry Potter lens doesn’t provide some useful insight or inspiration.

Neither the books nor the subsequent films had much appeal for me but perhaps that was due to my personal experience of some of the sources for her world.

That’s neither here nor there.  Nevertheless, I found myself thinking about what books had affected me that way.  Books that weren’t just immersive, compelling reads but which also suggested how to approach the world.  One of the most curious is Alexander Dumas “The Three Musketeers.”   Years ago, I decided to read it for the best of reasons:   it was an adventure set in the muddy, bloody 17^th century with lots of sword fighting.  And it certainly is that, but something else made me react to it at a more interesting level and find virtues in it that even now are rarely discussed.

The book was originally serialized in “Le Siècle” in 1844 and necessarily had to “burn from the first line” to paraphrase Sting’s admirable advice.  Yet the book has a deft, larger structure, too.  One strategy to get to the heart of it is to ask, why is it compelling?  Is it vital, perspicacious description of 17^th century scenes?  Not so much.  Dumas’ physical description is prosaic, sometimes precise, sometimes generic.  Is it the wit?  Partly.  Even in the context of the larger drama I expect its possible for modern readers to miss the delicate, bittersweet irony in the cheerful and gentile conversations.  Consider, D’Artagnan’s father’s advice, “fight on all occasions.  Fight the more for duels being forbidden,” and bring it forward into a modern context and change the diction a little:  say an inner city father speaking to his son.  Suddenly, the words have a different, more ominous and dangerous meaning.

But another aspect is even more important.  D’Artagnan travels to Paris and engages with a new world, one which Dumas has the temerity to draw at every level, from the passions and care of the court to those of the poor and middle class Parisians.  And they’re all drawn with the same generous  compassion.  In that sense, his breadth of social portrayal exceeds Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens.  D’Artagnan is certainly the hero of his own life but he’s far from the hero of the history in which he lives.  Yet, he has an important role to play and it depends on his learning how to move in very different subcultures which continually interact outside of him.  That is a very modern condition.

Then there are the characters.   Athos is a deftly-drawn, Byronic presence whose character foreshadows the shape of the book as a whole.  The conclusion which  revolves around the murder of an innocent, is a kind of social tragedy, explicitly damning the gentile but aggressive culture.   It is a much bigger book than it seems.

There have been innumerable versions made for film and television.  As I’m writing this the BBC is about to broadcast a second season of an enjoyable production which takes slight advantage of Dumas’ original plot.  To my mind, the very best films were those made by the director Richard Lester in the early 1970s.  The script by George Macdonald Fraser is not only true to Dumas’ plot but also captures Dumas’ comedy and wit while portraying believable and graphic violence unlike so many recent films in which CGI supported action scenes are both implausible and without real dramatic consequence.

Michael York’s Dartagnan deserves special attention.  The role is surprisingly difficult, which is apparent when you consider the large number of forgettable performances, so much so that actors probably should be wary of it on principle.  Yet York finds a perfect balance of naivete, passion and cleverness that makes the character not only believable but someone with whom we trustingly identify.  That’s essential.   All our lives we’re neophytes learning a new, changing world, complex and only partly visible.