The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [7]
In 1868, Dumas’s health began to fail. One day his son came to see him and found him absorbed in reading. When he asked what book it was, Dumas replied, “The Musketeers…I always promised myself that, when I was old, I’d decide if it was worth anything.”
“Well, where are you?”
“At the end.”
“And what do you think?”
“It’s good.”
Indeed it is—to the joy of countless generations of readers.
Richard Pevear
Paris, June 2005
A Note on the Translation
The present translation has been made from the text of Les Trois Mousquetaires edited by Charles Samaran and published in the series of Classiques Garnier (Paris, 1956). My notes are indebted to the notes in Samaran’s edition and to the notes in the Pléiade edition, edited by Gilbert Sigaux (Paris, 1962).
Les Trois Mousquetaires was translated into most European languages soon after it was published. Three English versions appeared in 1846. One of these versions, by William Barrow, is still available in the Oxford World’s Classics. It is a good and faithful translation, following the original almost word-forword. Its one major flaw is due, I assume, not to the translator, but to the greater delicacy of English manners at that time: all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality and to the human body, matters which Dumas dealt with rather frankly, have been removed. That makes the rendering of certain scenes between d’Artagnan and Milady, for instance, strangely vague.
Unfortunately, some of the more recent English versions, including those most widely available today, are textbook examples of bad translation practice, and give their readers an extremely distorted notion of Dumas’s writing. The translators seem to have made it a rule to look at the original and do otherwise, as though following Dumas carefully would infringe upon their own creativity. Their versions are verbose, periphrastic, and dull. One adds a sort of blustery Colonel Blimp humor that corresponds to nothing in the French; another has the habit of saying elaborately twice what Dumas says simply once. Dumas’s language is terse and modern. In making this new English version, I have tried to keep as much as possible of the pace, pungency, and wit of the original.
There is no period stylization in Dumas, except for the use of oaths like parbleu and sacrebleu. I have kept these in French, along with certain terms and forms of address, for the sake of their flavor and because they have no real equivalents in English.
Forms of address:
Monsieur (M.) = Mister
Mademoiselle (Mlle) = Miss
Madame (Mme) = Madam or Mrs.
Monseigneur = My Lord
Titles:
duc / duchesse = duke / duchess
comte / comtesse = count / countess
chevalier = knight
sieur = sir or mister
connétable = high constable (supreme military commander)
procureur / procureuse = attorney or prosecutor / his wife
chancelier = chancellor or chief justice
commissaire = commissary
abbé = abbot
Topographical terms:
rue = street
place = square
pont = bridge
porte = gate
quai = embankment
faubourg = quarter or suburb
hôtel = town house
Oaths:
In composing oaths, the French often use the rhyming bleu
(blue) in place of dieu (God), as in:
parbleu = by God
morbleu = God’s death
sacrebleu = holy God
corbleu = God’s body
ventrebleu = God’s belly
sangbleu = God’s blood
vertubleu = God’s virtue
Other variants keep the dieu:
pardieu = by God
tudieu = God’s virtue
sangdieu (or sandis) = God’s blood
mordieu = God’s death
Others are more fanciful:
balzampleu = a Swiss oath, or a French oath distorted by a Swiss accent?
ventre-saint-gris = belly-holy-gray (favorite oath of Henri IV, who liked the color gray)
French currency denominations:
12 deniers = 1 sou
20 sous = 1 livre
6 livres = 1 écu (silver)
10+ livres = 1 pistole
24 livres