The Three Musketeers

[HelloHi]

Hi,

Sorry for posting in the wrong section. I only do so because the Dumas section is more or less dead and I'm looking for a quick response.

For those who have read TTM, do you recommend it? And secondly, does Dumas take a particular religious stance in his novels?

Thanks!

[dfloyd]

I have read it and listened to it innumerable times. The Dumas' books in this category are called The D'Artagnan Romances and are comprised of three novels: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragellone. The last can be subdivided into three novels: The Vicomte de Bragellone, Louis de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask. The first two books should be read by everyone interested in Dumas. The third part of the last book is also very enjoyable. The first two books of the last are a bit tedious, but should be read if the entire history of the musketeers is to be examined. You must remember that the D'Atagnan Romances were first published in serial form so they can be quite lengthy.

Dumas' was perhaps the greatest writer of dialogue in the 19th century. He combined factual history with fictional characters. Sometimes he makes a mistake, but they are usually small mistakes which do not take anything away from his novels. His novels have a pace seldom experienced in historical literature. Unfortunately, some of his books have been abridged for the youthfull reader. Make certain you do not read one of these.

As for religion, France was nearly all catholic in the times Dumas wrote about. But some of the history he wrote about included the French Huguenots (protestants). In Marguerite de Valois, he covers the Huguenot massacre supposedly started by the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. I have never noticed any religous bigotry on Dumas' part.

The Dumas' Romances comprise 48 volumes of fiction interspersed with French history. Reading them all is quite a chore, but the ones I have enjoyed the most are the D'Artagnan Romances and the Marie Antoinette Romances.

[kiki1982]

Of course it's worthy of recommendation!

Religion. Dumas does not focus on any of that, although there is some evidence that he puts good and evil up against each other in several ways (classicly of course in adventure novels), but also in a general way, though that is mainly in the sequel which deals with the effects of The Three Musketeers's end (I won't spoil it for you).

It is one of the books I most enjoyed.

I agree with you that the Dumas-forum is almost dead, but I am one of the people who regularly checks, so for any nice discussion, you where to find it. ;)

[_Shannon_]

Heck yes read it!! Dumas is da' bomb diggity.

And no, not really. HE's writing from the bias of his time and place, but it's not preachy or anything.

[Mr.lucifer]

Will I still enjoy it even though I know the fate of a certain femlae character near the end?

[_Shannon_]

Oh...yessssss!!....at least I think so. I just find Dumas so, so much fun to read...

[kiki1982]

Will I still enjoy it even though I know the fate of a certain femlae character near the end?

Oh, so you already know that! Of course you will enjoy it. Only of course the mystery of her in the beginning is less, but hey, even then, the book is so much full of fun and so much full of intrigue, even behind the plot if one starts thinking, that you really, really, really will enjoy it even if you actually know what will happen.

Mainly the dialogues are so great and the characters so well-drawn with almost one stroke of his pen that really, the plot matters less actually come to think of it.

[HelloHi]

Thanks so much for all the responses so far.

I have another question: how highly would you rank Dumas? As high as, let's say for example, Dostoevsky?

edit: I just read the top 100 authors by this forum and I think I should rephrase lol...

Is Dumas in the 'league' of extremely good writers or is he "just" a very good writer? I'm not sure if that makes sense.

[dfloyd]

comparing them is unfair. An educated person should read the best of both authors. I would not want to skip the Count of Monte Cristo to read The Brothers Karamazov or vice versa.

[kiki1982]

To be frank - I's now going to sound nasty, but seeing as I am a Dumas fan, I don't care :D - Dumas is great on the good story front, that's it. He does not compare, to take a compatriot and one who dates from the same time, to Hugo. Hugo's prose is better technically, his message is better, there is a message as such. Dumas is simple on the prose front, less reearched onthe philosophy and literature front. Apart from the obvious ones like Fontaine and Molière and here and tehre some Shakespeare, he does not go for a lot of stuff behind his story.

Dumas produced stories, no more, no less. Though they are good stories, there is nothing much to find behind it that is not really obvious. Though Hugo, in his former days, as I have discovered by reading Le Notre Dame de Paris, actually turned it up quite a lot in Les Misérables, he still had more behind his earlier work than Dumas ever had.

That said though, his stories are great, and I find unbeatable. He started as a playwright and then went onto novels. That is why his dialogues are so great. But it's all on the surface, there is nothing behind it. There is not a whole world that appears when you start thinking about one word or so, like with Hugo, and his prose is sometimes rather sloppy because he used to write periodicals and did not revise a lot. The length of his sentences was so famous, even in his days, that people argued that he could not have written it and got exhasperated with his long sentences, which led to demonstrations on his part. Still, the simplicity of his stories makes his stories great and the passion that is embedded in it. He takes history and plays with it in an admirable way, sometimes fiddles with it a little, but still, the general idea remains and mostly quite well too. But in terms of philosophy etc, he is not a great no..

[HelloHi]

comparing them is unfair. An educated person should read the best of both authors. I would not want to skip the Count of Monte Cristo to read The Brothers Karamazov or vice versa.

Alright, I see what you mean. Thanks.


To be frank - I's now going to sound nasty, but seeing as I am a Dumas fan, I don't care :D - Dumas is great on the good story front, that's it. He does not compare, to take a compatriot and one who dates from the same time, to Hugo. Hugo's prose is better technically, his message is better, there is a message as such. Dumas is simple on the prose front, less reearched onthe philosophy and literature front. Apart from the obvious ones like Fontaine and Molière and here and tehre some Shakespeare, he does not go for a lot of stuff behind his story.

Dumas produced stories, no more, no less. Though they are good stories, there is nothing much to find behind it that is not really obvious. Though Hugo, in his former days, as I have discovered by reading Le Notre Dame de Paris, actually turned it up quite a lot in Les Misérables, he still had more behind his earlier work than Dumas ever had.

That said though, his stories are great, and I find unbeatable. He started as a playwright and then went onto novels. That is why his dialogues are so great. But it's all on the surface, there is nothing behind it. There is not a whole world that appears when you start thinking about one word or so, like with Hugo, and his prose is sometimes rather sloppy because he used to write periodicals and did not revise a lot. The length of his sentences was so famous, even in his days, that people argued that he could not have written it and got exhasperated with his long sentences, which led to demonstrations on his part. Still, the simplicity of his stories makes his stories great and the passion that is embedded in it. He takes history and plays with it in an admirable way, sometimes fiddles with it a little, but still, the general idea remains and mostly quite well too. But in terms of philosophy etc, he is not a great no..

Thanks so much for the extremely dense answer, I appreciate it. I had a feeling that's what Dumas' books were like (not that it's a bad thing), and this was the kind of review of Dumas that I was looking for.

Thanks again for all the answers on this thread, they've been extremely helpful!

[AthosESK]

comparing them is unfair. An educated person should read the best of both authors. I would not want to skip the Count of Monte Cristo to read The Brothers Karamazov or vice versa.

Well put!

Dumas was a master of many wonderful things (i.e. dialogue, colorful characterizations, weaving history and fiction together, and magical usage of adjectives). I find that I enjoy his books as much now as I did 20 years ago when I first discovered them. And I can't say that about many authors, certainly many of his contemporaries.

In related news, I don't think anyone has ever REGRETTED reading "The Three Musketeers" ;)

[Jassy Melson]

First of all, when you mention Dumas you are not refering to one individual. Dumas had a stable of writers who wrote some of his work. There are parts of Dumas that are very tedious to read. There is a section of The Count of Monte Christo that is quite long and has nothing to do with the main story. It is "filler" and nothing else. As for Dumas having a religious bias, religion plays very little part in "his" work. When it comes to comparing Dumas with Dostoevsky, there is no comparison. Dumas does not make the list of the best one hundred authors of all time. He might make the list of the best two hundred.

[kiki1982]

Now, to be fair, he did work together with some writers, but not regarding The Three Musketeers. Admittedly, he had someone do his research for him, but that is about it. Maquet, if I'm right, did the historical research for that book. They worked on the plot together, but Dumas wrote it.

Indeed, religion plays a small part, but still, some things are based on religious beliefs, like the very end of the musketeer trilogy and the end of Monte Cristo.
The story of Luigi Vampa, which you are referring to as 'filler', might have been another indication of another person who became 'bad' (and this time really went into rebellion against the whole of society) because of something nasty that happened to him. It was really part of the same theme... Come to think of it, SPOILER was that why Monte Cristo, aka Dantès, in the end decided to save Luigi Vampa's gang member, because he thought that it was really a bit unfair to lynch someone in that horrible manner? And come to think of it as wel, it is quite poignant that Morver jr is also gladly watching on 'at this curious spectacle', just as his father was obviously amused at the disappearance of Dantès on his very engagement party...SPOILERS OVER.
Hmm.

Admittedly, it was quite long, but not really useless, though he could have told it in a shorter way.