Georges
Page 34
L. 13. equerry: a steward in a noble household who is responsible for the stables and horses.
CHAPTER VI. TRANSFIGURATION
L. 3. Antæus: in classical mythology, the gigante son of Poseidon and Gæa, the gods of the sea and of earth. He forced travelers to wrestle with him but was crushed by Hercules.
L. 3. child Hannibal: (247–183 BC) a Punic military leader and politician. His military accomplishments as commander in chief of the Carthaginian forces over Rome distinguished him as a superb tactician and commander. It is said that Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca, demanded him to swear allegiance to the Carthaginian cause against Rome.
L. 9. louis: short for “Louis d’Or,” a gold coin issued by the kings of France to replace the franc in 1640. By the time this tale takes place, the louis was valued as a twenty-franc piece.
L. 13. Lais…Montyon Prize: The beautiful, high-priced hetæra Lais of Corinth lived during the Peloponnesian war and had many lovers, among them the philosopher Aristippus; Demosthenes considered her too expensive. She fell in love with Eubotas, who, after deceptively promising to take her to Cyrene with him, carried only her portrait along; she became addicted to drinking after that. Hans Holbein the Younger painted a Lais of Corinth (1526) who is separated from the viewer by a counter on which many gold coins have been deposited, though she holds out her hand for more. The book Les Amours de Laïs was published anonymously in 1765. (There was also a younger courtesan Lais of Hyccara in Sicily who loved Hippolochus and followed him to Thessaly, where she was stoned to death by jealous women in a temple for Aphrodite.) The Montyon Prize had been given out by the Académie française since 1783 for the virtuous act of a poor person.
L. 19. Astarte: ancient goddess of Tyre, Sidon, and Elat mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 11:5).
L. 17. Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Joseph de Boulogne (1745–99), the natural child of a French aristocratic settler and a young African slave in Guadeloupe, who was educated at an elite Paris academy, became a fencing champion, musician, and composer, and, during the French Revolution, commanded a mulatto unit in which Dumas’s father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, served.
L. 1. modern Cato: Cato the Elder (234–149 BC) was known for his striving for manly heroism and moral strictness.
L. 15. Muhammad Ali…Ibrahim Pasha: Born in Ottoman Macedonia, Muhammad Ali (1769–1849) became a viceroy of Egypt who fought against the Napoleonic invasion in 1798, then industrialized Egypt, modernized the army, and conquered parts of Sudan and of the Arabian peninsula, transforming Egypt from a part of the Ottoman Empire into a modern dynasty. One of his sons, Ibrahim Pasha (1789–1848), fought against the Wahhabite rebels in Arabia in 1816–1818, becoming governor of Mecca and Medina. Asked by the Ottoman sultan to subdue the Greek independence movement, Ibrahim Pasha conquered the Peloponnese in 1824, though the Egyptians were ultimately forced out again. Invading Palestine in 1831–32 was a new military campaign against the Ottoman sultan, which led to the annexation of Syria and Adana.
L. 33. duke d’Angoulême: Charles Philip (1757–1836) held the title between the years of 1773 and 1836 and reigned as Charles X, king of France and of Navarre; Ferdinand VII: (1784–1833), king of Spain from 1813 to 1833; that of Charles III: a Spanish decoration.
CHAPTER VII. THE BERLOQUE
L. 29. Francis I: (1494–1547) Francis I reigned as king of France from 1515 to 1547; Louis XIII: (1601–43), Louis XIII was the French king from 1610 to 1643.
L. 28–P. 67, L. 16. I live…Carouba pipe: a song written in a somewhat arbitrary mix of French and Creole. The original lyrics are as follows:
I
Moi resté dans un p’tit la caze,
Qu’il faust baissé moi pour entré;
Mon la tête touché son faitaze,
Quand mon li pié touché plancé.
Moi té n’a pas besoin lumière,
Le soir, quand moi voulé dormi;
Car, pour moi trouvé lune claire,
N’a pas manqué trous, Dié merci!
II
Mon lit est un p’tit natt’ malgace,
Mon l’oreillé morceau bois blanc,
Mon gargoulette un’ vié calbasse,
Où moi met l’arak, zour de l’an.
Quand mon femm’ pour faire p’tit ménaze,
Sam’di comme ça vini soupé,
Moi fair’ cuir, dans mon p’tit la caze,
Banane sous la cend’ grillé.
III
A mon coffre n’a pas serrure,
Et jamais moi n’a fermé li.
Dans bambou comm’ ça sans ferrure,
Qui va cherché mon langouti?
Mais dimanch’ si gagné zournée,
Moi l’achète un morceau d’tabac,
Et tout la s’maine, mois fais fumée,
Dans grand pipe, à moi carouba.
L. 8. Anjouan: part of the Comoros Islands, on the opposite side of Madagascar from île de France.
CHAPTER VIII. THE TOILETTE OF THE RUNAWAY SLAVE
L. 9. tenrecs: members of a family of mammals, somewhat akin to a hedgehog; Centetes ecaudatus.
L. 12. Alcidamas: an Athenian rhetorician (fourth century BC).
L. 13. Milo of Croton: famous Greek wrestler (fifth century BC) who is believed to have carried an ox to the stadium at Olympia.
L. 20. Antæus: See note for ch. 6, p. 51, l. 3.
CHAPTER IX. THE ROSE OF THE RIVIÈRE NOIRE
L. 12. English put a stop to the slave trade: The British transatlantic slave trade of Africans was abolished in 1807, and France and Spain banned it in 1815, though there were many violations of these international agreements. Slavery was ended in France and England before it was in the United States; the French first abolished all slavery as of 1794, but reinstated it in 1802, terminating it only in 1848. In the British colonies slaves were generally emancipated in 1834. In Mauritius slavery was brought to an end in 1835.
CHAPTER X. THE BATH
L. 26. amaranth: a type of plant that features beautiful clusters of small, brightly colored flowers.
L. 12. Clarissa Harlowe: Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady was an epistolary novel published by Samuel Richardson in 1747 or 1748. The sad story of its heroine’s refusal to marry the rich Roger Solmes, her falling victim to the wicked Robert Lovelace, her entrapment, rape, and death made this very long novel a popular tale in its day and a foundational work in the rise of the sentimental tradition.
L. 27. Venus: goddess of love and beauty; Roman counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite. According to myth she was born from the foam of the Aegean waves.
CHAPTER XII. THE BALL
L. 33. Juvenal called…“woven air”: Dumas may have confused two Roman satiric poets, Juvenal (c. 55–c. 127) and Petronius (c. 27–66). It was Gaius Petronius who used the phrase in his Satyricon: “Aequum est induere nuptam ventum texilem, / palam prostare nudam in nebula linea?” (Is’t right the bride should wear the woven wind, / And stand exposed in garments thin as air? Transl. Alfred R. Allinson)
L. 8. Don Quixote: the protagonist of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s early seventeenth-century novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. Alonso Quixano, inspired by stories of chivalric bravery, believes he is a knight, renames himself Don Quixote de la Mancha, and embarks on a journey against injustice in the name of his beloved maiden. In a famous scene in the novel, Don Quixote tries to fight windmills, believing them to be giants.
CHAPTER XIII. THE SLAVE SHIP
L. 7. abolition of public slave trading: See note for ch. 9, p. 86, l. 12.
L. 24. Cesare Borgia: (1475–1507) a Spanish-Italian condottiere, lord, and cardinal. He was appointed commander of the papal armies and was sent by his father, Pope Alexander VI, to subdue the cities of Romagna in central Italy. The death of his father in 1503 ended his own career, for Borgia was captured by his political enemies and exiled to Spain. He later escaped to join his brother-in-law, King John III of Navarre, and died in his service.
CHAPTER XIV. THE SLAV
E TRADER’S PHILOSOPHY
L. 5. the fabled donkey: Dumas may be alluding to one of Aesop’s donkey fables; in “The Man, the Boy and the Donkey,” for example, the donkey drowns.
L. 7. East India Company: a joint-stock company founded in 1600 that operated under an English Royal Charter granting it trade privileges in India. It effectively enjoyed a trade monopoly in the East Indies. In time, the Company wielded ruling power in India by virtue of its governmental and military activities. It was dissolved in 1858.
LL. 10–11. Ran tan…allons rire!: lines from the military song “La Marche d’Austerlitz,” written to commemorate Napoleon’s decisive victory at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805. The first line cannot truly be translated, but the second may be rendered as “How we’re going to laugh!”
L. 34. bulwark: the woodwork above the deck that runs around the length of the ship.
L. 22. the disaster of Waterloo: On June 18, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte led his last battle at Waterloo. Having escaped from his exile in Elba, Napoleon reinstalled himself on the throne of France for a hundred days. In response, the English, Prussians, Germans, and Belgians joined forces against the French. After the costly defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was deposed and banned to St. Helena.
L. 20. Ulysses: the Latin name of Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s epic, the Odyssey, and a character in the Iliad. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, spends ten years trying to return home after fighting in the Trojan War. During the sea journey, Zeus destroys Odysseus’ ship, leaving Odysseus the only survivor. Odysseus is washed upon the shores of Ogygia, the nymph Calypso’s island. Calypso confines him to be her lover for seven years, promising him immortality in return for his stay.
L. 19. Hercules and Omphale: In Greek mythology, as penalty for his murder of Iphitus, the great hero Hercules was sold as a slave to Omphale. Hercules was forced to do women’s work and wear women’s clothing. Some accounts contend that Omphale later freed Hercules, married him, and gave birth to his children.
L. 19. Samson and Delilah: In the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Judges, Samson is a judge who performs superhuman feats and fights enemies. After Samson falls in love with Delilah, the Philistines beseech her to try to find the secret of Samson’s strength. When he eventually discloses that he would lose his power if he were to lose his hair, Delilah instructs a servant to shave Samson’s locks. For his lapse, Samson is abandoned by God and subsequently is captured by the Philistines. He is blinded, imprisoned and forced into labor. He later brings down the Philistine temple on the heads of his captors, sacrificing himself in the process.
CHAPTER XV. PANDORA’S BOX
L. 10. Aline, queen of Golconda: a novel by French statesman and writer Stanislas-Jean de Boufflers (1738–1815). It was adapted as an opera by Gaetano Donizetti and performed in Paris in 1828. Aline, a humble shepherd girl, is abducted by pirates and brought to the kingdom of Golconda. When Golconda’s king falls in love with her and marries her, she becomes queen. He subsequently dies and she is urged to choose a husband among her suitors.
L. 20. Mme de Pompadour: born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (1721–64), she was the renowned mistress of King Louis XV of France. Louis XV installed her at Versailles, bought her the Pompadour residence, and made her a marquise. Poisson was known for her interest in fashion and art.
L. 8. Byron…Cain: the poetic drama Cain: A Mystery (1821) by Lord Byron (1788–1824), a leading poet in the Romantic literary movement, and particularly known for his longer epic poems. Dumas is alluding to the scene in which Lucifer offers Cain to “fly with me o’er the gulf / Of space an equal flight, and I will show / What thou dar’st not deny,—the history / Of past—and present, and of future worlds.”
L. 8. Faust: an allusion to the “Walpurgisnacht” scene in the drama Faust: Part One (1808) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). In the night in which the witches congregate in the Harz mountains, the devil Mephistopheles takes Faust for an eerie ride over the assembled figures.
CHAPTER XVII. THE RACES
L. 12. louis: See note for ch. 6, p. 54, l. 9.
L. 20. burnoose: a long hooded cloak worn in desert climates to keep the rider cool and out of the sun.
L. 20. djerid: a game played on horseback in which riders attempt to throw blunt spears at members of an opposing team.
CHAPTER XVIII. LAÏZA
L. 7. coram populo: Latin for “before the eyes of the people”: (from cora, “pupil of the eye,” and populus, “people”).
L. 34. the Redoute Labourdonnaie: multisided, visible fortification for guns, named after Bertrand-François Mahé de la Bourdonnais (1699–1753), French naval officer and, from 1735, governor of île de France and île Bourbon (Réunion).
CHAPTER XIX. THE YAMSÉ
L. 11. Menenius: Menenius Agrippa, a Roman consul famous for conquering the Sabines in 503 BC. Dumas here refers to a famous speech that Menenius gave to members of the plebeian class who were involved in a labor stoppage, in which Roman society was likened to a human body that had to work in harmony in order to be effective.
L. 16. Saint-Domingue: In 1791 the black population on the island colony of Saint-Domingue rose up against the ruling French plantation owners. At the end of a thirteen-year political revolution that destroyed slavery and the plantation system, the new black government changed the name of the island back to the precolonial Haiti (“land of mountains” in Arawak), and the Republic of Haiti declared its independence from France on January 1, 1804.
L. 26. only one man…: Antonio could either be referring to Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–1803), the leader of the rebel forces in Saint-Domingue, or the first official ruler of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806). Dessalines was murdered by co-conspirators only two years after the Haitian government was put in place, and the country was divided between Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion.
L. 31. burnoose: See note for ch. 17, p. 170, l. 20. P. 190, L. 31. caftan: a full-length tunic or robe, usually made of rich fabric, worn chiefly in eastern Mediterranean countries by men.
CHAPTER XX. THE RENDEZVOUS
L. 5. Pétion: Alexandre Pétion (1770–1818) was a mulatto leader during the Haitian Revolution and, after the murder of Henri Dessalines, became president of the Republic of Haiti, controlling the south while the black ex-slave Henri Christophe ruled the north.
L. 29. Enceladus: in Greek mythology, a gigante, a child of Gæa (Earth) who rebelled against the gods. He was wounded and thrown underneath Mount Etna in Sicily; thereafter, fire coming from the volcano was said to be his breath.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE GREAT WOODS
L. 4. tenrecs: see note for ch. 8, p. 75, 1. 9.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE REHEARSAL
L. 13. Charles I…de Thou: Charles I (1600–49) was king of England, famously beheaded for his religious and political differences with the British Parliament during the English Civil War (1642–51). Mary Stuart, queen of Scots (1542–87), was Charles’s grandmother and was executed on suspicion of taking part in a plot against Elizabeth I, queen of England. The marquis de Cinq-Mars (1620–42) was a confidant of Louis XIII of France who tried to turn the king against his minister Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu in turn had the marquis imprisoned and beheaded. François-Auguste de Thou (1607–42) was Cinq-Mars’s friend and was likewise executed for not revealing the conspiracy.
L. 19. Paul et Virginie: See note for ch. 1, p. 7, l. 31.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CHURCH OF SAINT-SAUVEUR
L. 12. Epaminondas: a general (c. 418–362 BC) of the Greek city-state of Thebes who liberated Thebes from Spartan rule and changed the makeup and politics of Greece through his cunning political and military strategy.
L. 13. sacristy: the section of a church that contains the vestments, chalices, and other church valuables.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE LEICESTER
L. 17. howitzer: a type of field artillery that is relatively small—less than thirty caliber—and shoots at high angles to deliver artillery shells so that they plunge from above.
CHAPTER XXX. THE BATTLE
L. 24. Saint Jean Bouche d’Or: a French translation—literally “golden mouth”—of the Greek surname of St. John Chrysostom (347–407), a church father known for his eloquent and commonsense preaching as well as his denunciation of decadent lifestyles.
FOR FURTHER READING
Michel Fabre. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840–1890. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Léon-François Hoffmann. Le Nègre romantique: Personnage littéraire et obsession collective. Paris: Payot, 1973.
Léon-François Hoffmann, ed. Alexandre Dumas, Georges. Paris: Gallimard, 1974 (folio 567). With introduction on “Dumas et les Noirs” and a dossier including chronology, textual comment, documents, and annotations.
Douglas Munro. Alexandre Dumas, Père: A Bibliography of Works Translated into English to 1910. New York: Garland, 1978.
Scott Robert Russell. “Héroïsme et Bâtardise: Alexandre Dumas, Georges.” PhD dissertation, Brown University, 1992.
Daniel Zimmermann. Alexandre Dumas le Grand: Biographie. Paris: Juillard, 1993.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to my research assistant Cambridge Sena Ridley, who helped in many ways in the preparation of this edition. She assisted in background research, proofread an earlier version of the translation, commented on my introduction, and drafted many notes. Anastasia Artmyev Berg helped write additional notes, and Lawrence Rosenwald reviewed the translation of the song “Moi resté dans un p’tit la caze,” written in a mix of French and Creole.
—W.S.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
TINA A. KOVER was born and raised in Colorado and studied French at the University of Denver and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. She has translated commercial and government documents in the United States and Europe for more than ten years. Her first literary translation, George Sand’s The Black City, was published in 2004.
ABOUT THE EDITOR