Georges (Modern Library Classics) - Softcover

Dumas, Alexandre

 
9780812975895: Georges (Modern Library Classics)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812975898 ISBN 13: 9780812975895
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Long out of print in America, Alexandre Dumas’s most daring narrative is now available in this major new translation by Tina A. Kover. Filled with intrigue, romance, and deadly vengeance, Georges is the story of a wealthy mulatto boy who is driven from his island home by racist landowners. Returning to Mauritius as an accomplished young man, Georges pits his strength against a powerful plantation owner, leading a dramatic slave uprising and claiming the heart of a beautiful white woman. Georges stands apart as the only book by Dumas that explores the potent subject of race.

Praise for Georges:

“A rousing and vivid adventure . . . packed with action and atmosphere.”
–The Columbus Dispatch

“A remarkable discovery . . . We are indebted to Werner Sollors and Jamaica Kincaid for providing us with a critical lens for the journey Dumas has created out of his own generous and expansive imagination.”
–Rudolph P. Byrd, Emory University


“As compelling and relevant today as it was back in the 1840s, when it was first published.”
–Adrienne Kennedy, author of Funnyhouse of a Negro

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), one of the most popular writers of all time, is the author of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and The Knight of Maison-Rouge (all available from the Modern Library), along with dozens of other works of every genre. His remains were recently removed to the Pantheon, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a French writer.

Tina A. Kover has worked as a translator 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.

Werner Sollors teaches African American studies, English, and comparative literature at Harvard University. He is the author of Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture and Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature and editor of Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader; The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves and An Anthology of Interracial Literature: Black-White Contacts in the Old World and the New.

Jamaica Kincaid is the acclaimed author of many books, including Annie John, A Small Place, and Lucy. She lives in Vermont.

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i

L’iˆle de France

Have you ever, on a long, cold, melancholy winter night—alone with your thoughts and the wind whistling through the hallways, the rain pounding against the windows—have you ever leaned your forehead against the mantel, absently watching sparks dance on the hearth, and longed to flee our wet and muddy Paris for some enchanted oasis? Somewhere fresh and carpeted in green, where you could lie in the shade of a riverside palm tree and doze off without a care in the world?

Well, the paradise of your dreams exists! Eden awaits you; the water flows clear and bright there, falling and surging up in bright dust; the palm fronds wave gently in the soft sea breeze like feathers in a genie’s cap. The jambosa trees, laden with iridescent fruit, stand ready to offer you their sweetly scented shade. Come, follow me now.

Let us make for Brest, warlike sister of bustling Marseille, standing sentinel over the waves. Choose a vessel from the hundreds anchored in its port—perhaps a brigantine, long-masted, lean, and light-sailed, fit even for the hardy pirates dreamed up by Walter Scott, that romantic poet of the waves. It’s early September, the perfect time to begin a long voyage. Let us board our chosen ship and leave summer behind in our quest for spring! Adieu, Brest, Nantes, Bayonne—adieu, France!

See there, on our right, that granite peak towering ten thousand feet into the clouds? Look, in such transparent water even its mighty roots are visible. It is Tenerife, the ancient Nivaria, rendezvous point for the eagles that swoop and glide around its crest, looking as small as doves from this great distance. This, however, is not our destination; it’s simply a stray bit of Spain, and I’ve promised you the garden of the world.

Look, on the left—that barren rock, burning in the tropical sun? Our modern Prometheus spent six years chained there. England chose that wasted islet to erect a monument to its own shame, to the stake where Joan of Arc burned and the scaffold where Mary Stuart died. It is a political Golgotha, and for eighteen years it was the pious rendezvous point where all ships converged. But—enough of the regicide St. Helena, we will have nothing more to do with her, now that the martyr is gone.

We’ve reached the Cape of Storms now. See the towering peak in front of us, its summit lost in the mists? This is the giant Adamastor, who appeared to the author of The Lusiads. It marks the very end of the earth—the prow of that great green vessel on which we are all passengers. How the waves crash with furious impotence against its rocky face! It is impervious, invincible, forever anchored here in the port of eternity with God himself as captain. Let us keep on. Beyond these verdant mountains lies nothing but barren stone and sun-scorched desert. I promised you pure water, gentle shade, succulent fruit, and radiant blooms, did I not?

Ah, the westerly wind has finally brought us to our destination—the Indian Ocean, theater of the Arabian Nights! There is grim Mont Bourbon, with its sulfurous, eternally flaming volcano. Spare a glance at its fiery maw and smell its fumes. Just a few knots more now; we pass between île Plate and Coin-de-Mire and round pointe aux Cannoniers, and we drop anchor at last. Our trusty brigantine has earned a rest. We have arrived! This is the blessed island itself, hidden away in this far-flung corner of the world like some virginal maiden whose mother jealously guards her beauty from covetous suitors’ eyes. This is the Promised Land—the pearl of the Indian Ocean. This is île de France.

Now, chaste daughter of the seas, twin sister of Bourbon, blessed rival of Ceylon, let me raise a corner of your veil so that I may introduce you to a foreign friend, my fellow traveler here. Let me just loosen your sash—there! Ah, beautiful captive! We are two poor pilgrims from France—France, who will, perhaps, arrive one day to reclaim you at last, rich daughter of India, for the bride-price of some poor European realm . . .

As for you, dear readers, who have followed our eyes and our thoughts this far, let me bid you a very hearty welcome to this land of fertile fields, bountiful harvests, and endless springs and summers bursting with flowers and fruit. Let me wax poetic for a moment and tell you of the wonders of this place. It is a veritable Aphrodite, born of sea foam to reign over a celestial empire, her toes in the sea and her head in the clouds, crowned with golden days and crystalline nights, eternal jewels gifted by God himself—which the English have never yet managed to take from her. Come, then—air travel doesn’t bother you any more than sea travel, does it? Good! Grab hold of my coattails, then, you new Cléofas, and fly with me to the peak of Pieterboot, almost the highest mountain on the island. We can see everything from there!

The sky is always clear, as you see, and thickly clustered with stars; it is a blue carpet where God left behind gold dust in each of his footsteps, and where each atom is a world in itself. The whole island is laid out at our feet like an enormous map, 145 leagues around. Its sixty rivers look like silver threads winding their way to the sea, and its thirty mountains are thickly forested with takamaka, palm, and basket trees. See, among all those rivers, the great waterfalls of le Réduit and la Fontaine, rushing wildly from deep in the woods to crash thunderously into the ocean below—the mighty ocean that, calm or stormy, will always defeat the fury of the cascades. There, too, is the mighty rivière Noire, flowing majestically, shaping everything in its path and showing how time and tranquility always conquer unbridled rage. Gloomy Brabant stands among the other peaks like a giant sentinel keeping watch for enemy attacks. There is the crest of Trois-Mamelles, around whose base curl the Tamarin and Rempart rivers, as if the Indian goddess Isis wished to leave her mark. Gaze, finally, at the towering summit of le Pouce, near Pieterboot, for it is the highest point on the island; it seems to touch the very heavens, reminding us of the celestial court that will eventually render judgment on us all.

Before us is Port Louis, formerly Port Napoleon, the island’s capital city, protected from invaders by île des Tonneliers. See its many wooden houses and the two rivers running among them, which turn into veritable torrents after every storm. Its population holds a sample of every race of Earth. There are Creoles being carried about in palanquins, so indolent that their slaves are trained to respond to gestures rather than words; then there are the blacks, for whom the sun rises and sets by the lash of a whip. Falling somewhere between these two extremes are the Lascars, faces tanned under their green and red turbans. There are the Yoloffs of Senegambia, tall and handsome, with skin dark as ebony, sparkling eyes, and teeth like pearls; there are the short Chinese, flat-chested and wide-shouldered, with their bare heads and drooping mustaches. No one understands their language, yet they are masters of trade; there is no profession they do not practice; no merchandise they do not sell; no service they will not provide. They are the Jews of the colony. Gaze at the Malays, small, cunning, copper-skinned, and vindictive, who will forget a kindness in the blink of an eye but bear a grudge forever; the gentle giants of Mozambique; the Malgaches, slim, ruddy, and clever; the tall, proud Namaquois, trained to hunt tigers and elephants from earliest childhood. And there, in the midst of this teeming mass of humanity, are the English officers stationed on the island or in the port, proud in their scarlet jackets, black helmets, and white trousers. They look...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812975898
ISBN 13 
9780812975895
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Herausgeber
Sollors Werner
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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