#what i'm enjoying about comparing the original to the lowell bair abridgment is not just seeing what he cut but also what he kept

[coquelicoq]

very delightful to follow you postings on the count of monte christo. but what is this about parts of the novel being cut in the translation?

je suis contente que tu les apprecies, comme ce n'est que grâce à toi que je possède cet exemplaire! mille mercis de me l'avoir envoyé <3

the version that i originally read as a kid (and then reread last year) is not just an english translation but also an abridgment: the lowell bair 1956 translation, which is about 950 pages shorter than the french original. even though english versions of french works are generally shorter because of syntax, word length, and general literary conventions, that only accounts for a little bit of the page discrepancy here lol.

dumas tends to rephrase the same thing several times, so a lot of the abridging is just condensing that stuff down to a single sentence. but on top of that, several sideplots also had to go, malheuresement. well, heureusement in some cases (i was bored to near tears by the lengthy description of hashish), but it also means that he cut out an entire chapter between villefort and his dad 😢 and removed pretty much everything that makes franz an interesting character. but c'est la vie when you're abridging! something's gotta go. getting rid of franz's adventures did allow him to cut like 100 pages in one fell swoop, which i can see the appeal of when you're trying to shorten 1400 pages to a third of that length.

there's no excuse for cutting the villefort-noirtier chapter though. i'm never getting over that.