All For One, And One For Al…exandre Dumas!
Posted on 01. Jul, 2011 by Hichem in Culture, History, Literature, Vocabulary
If you take the Paris metro these days, you’ll notice a mini-story of Alexandre Dumas, who lent his name to a station de métro !
Born in 1802, a year before the outburst of the Napoleonic Wars, the same year as Victor Hugo was born, he was the son, just like Hugo, of a Général d’Empire.
His father, also general of the French Revolution, of Haitian origin, was particularly feared by the Austrians, who nicknamed him “le Diable Noir” (“the Black Devil.”)
By his full name, Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, he is by far the most prolific French author of his time: More than 300 volumes that outline his dramatic work: Les Trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), Jospeh Balsamo, La Reine Margot (The Queen Margot.)
He mastered the art of taking the reader’s breath, and was known to have made this confession:”Amuser, intéresser, voilà mes seules règles” (“To entertain, to stir interest, those are my only rules.”
One day, his son found him all in tears: “Porthos est mort, j’ai été obligé de le sacrifier…” (“Porthos is dead, I was forced to sacrifice him…”)
In 1844-1846, he built the château of his dreams west of Paris: The Château de Monte-Cristo, which boasted a remarkable Moorish room designed by two Tunisian architects he met in French-occupied Maghreb.
A few years later, however, he was completely bankrupt. Like Victor Hugo, who fled France after the coup d’état of Napoleon III, he was on the run, but for entirely different motivations: More than a hundred créanciers (creditors) were chasing him!
Later on, he came back to France, published numerous pièces de théâtre (theater plays) and romans (novels), and ran, à lui tout seul (single-handedly), several revues (magazines), thus earning him the highest admiration of his fans, and the embittered jealousy of his foes.
His fécondité littéraire was such that his son, Alexandre Dumas “Junior”, author of La Dame aux Camélias and academician, inherited it as well.
Finally, in 1970, the metro station Bagnolet was renamed Alexandre Dumas. However, it was only in 2002, during the 200th commemoration of his birthday, that his remains were moved to the Pantheon—next to Victor Hugo.
