Using a Crib
5 April 2025 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI managed to find a copy of "Twenty Years After" on Project Gutenberg, as I had expected, and read through the first thirteen chapters, which takes us up to the departure from Porthos' house, where the first part of the film leaves off. It turns out that the opening scenes are in fact very much more book-accurate than I had had any idea (I clearly had no recollection of any of that material, including d'Artagnan's relations with his landlady!) -- minus the obligatory tavern brawl, that is, which may not be in the book but is used to set up various elements which are.
I actively recognised a lot of the events and lines of dialogue in the book, even in the middle of the scene with Aramis which was the most obscure (probably because both characters are not only talking politics but being deliberately cagey in what they say to one another...) Which suggests at the least that I was understanding a lot more than I had given myself credit for, even if I couldn't make out at the time what was going on. Rewatching the same material after having read the 'crib' might offer a better chance of making out the actual conversation -- and we know from past experience with these adaptations that repeatedly rewatching does help, especially when combined with the use of a dictionary; mercifully, Russian, having acquired its alphabet late, is reasonably phonetic and it is generally possible to guess at a word's spelling simply by hearing it.
The question is whether it would be better to 'read ahead' in the book in the hopes of understanding better what I am about to see, or to watch episodes and then hope to find them duplicated helpfully in the text. I find myself instinctively reluctant to read the book first for fear, I think, of 'spoiling' myself (which is ridiculous given that I have already read both the novel and its sequels) -- and perhaps out of a feeling that it is always a mistake to judge an adaptation directly against the original, in terms of enjoyment; better to reread the original afterwards. Also, there is no guarantee that the adaptation will follow the same timeline in any case, even if the opening happened to do so; we have already have had an 'inserted' scene featuring Mordaunt paying a visit to the former executioner of Lille, which may well be in chronological order but definitely does not occur at this point in the book, where nobody has any idea of Mordaunt's existence until the protagonists encounter him. (It may also be a convenient piece of exposition invented out of whole cloth for the purposes of the adaptation!)
Objectively, I think the very obvious answer is that it would be better to read the whole book, or at least to read ahead in the book, before watching the next episode, which would give me a far better chance of understanding the details of the dialogue. However in practice I find myself strongly inclined not to do so, even though that is probably a foolish choice :-(
(Also, apart from anything else, the book is a good ninety chapters long, and I have currently read only up to the start of Chapter 13; reading online tethered to a terminal is laborious compared to simply taking a book with you and pulling it out on impulse wherever you happen to be and whatever you happen to be in the middle of doing, e.g. waiting for your dinner to simmer down. If I had succeeded in finding my hardback copy of the novel I might have more motivation to skim ahead quickly and easily.)
I originally set out to look for a copy in French, but all the first twenty or so results for "Vingt Ans Après" turned out to point to English editions; searching for the lyrics to Aramis' quoted ballad about Madame de Chevreuse (Laboissiere, dis-moi) did throw up a page in French (on a Russian site!), which revealed apart from anything else that the English translation is a fairly loose one! It is entirely understandable that the translator chose to omit the French verses in question (which I get the impression are not a historically recorded satire, as I had assumed, but a ditty of Dumas' own composition), but he has also omitted various other words here and there which affect the general tone of the conversation: for instance, Mais revenons à cette pauvre duchesse becomes "But to return to our duchess" without the overtones of pity, and Oui, certes, et elle était fort belle encore (in response to the question "did you see her at that date?") becomes "Yes, she is still beautiful", not only losing the flavour but, oddly, the past tense of the original -- the whole ongoing subtext of the scene being that Madame de Chevreuse has lost both her looks and her influence and been replaced in Aramis's affections by a younger equivalent :-(
I could set out to read the novel in French for greater accuracy (as I did in fact succeed in doing with "Les Trois Mousquetaires", never having actually read it in the original before!) -- but for my purposes the English version is clearly close enough to enable me to recognise Russian phrases, which is all I actually need, and the difference in speed is significant. I *can* skim-read in French, or at least well enough to locate relevant material in the middle of a sizeable document, but cannot do so nearly as fast as I can in English, and even so it took me a few hours to read forty thousand words (chapters 1-12) in the English version. Given the length of the book and the fact that all I want is to know what happens, I see no point in embarking upon the exercise, since it isn't additional practice in my *French* comprehension that is required for this particular purpose :-p (And at any rate I have been getting that from the anime episodes, albeit on a more simplified level...)
So what is probably going to happen is that I shall go ahead and watch the next episode 'unspoiled' and struggle to follow the dialogue, then go back and skim-read the online text to establish what I failed to pick up on initially... and then probably go back and watch the Russian version again to try to identify the relevant material. At least for this one there *is* a reasonably close 'crib', unlike the totally off-the-wall and non-canonical antics of "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure", in which absolutely anything could (and did) transpire :-D
I actively recognised a lot of the events and lines of dialogue in the book, even in the middle of the scene with Aramis which was the most obscure (probably because both characters are not only talking politics but being deliberately cagey in what they say to one another...) Which suggests at the least that I was understanding a lot more than I had given myself credit for, even if I couldn't make out at the time what was going on. Rewatching the same material after having read the 'crib' might offer a better chance of making out the actual conversation -- and we know from past experience with these adaptations that repeatedly rewatching does help, especially when combined with the use of a dictionary; mercifully, Russian, having acquired its alphabet late, is reasonably phonetic and it is generally possible to guess at a word's spelling simply by hearing it.
The question is whether it would be better to 'read ahead' in the book in the hopes of understanding better what I am about to see, or to watch episodes and then hope to find them duplicated helpfully in the text. I find myself instinctively reluctant to read the book first for fear, I think, of 'spoiling' myself (which is ridiculous given that I have already read both the novel and its sequels) -- and perhaps out of a feeling that it is always a mistake to judge an adaptation directly against the original, in terms of enjoyment; better to reread the original afterwards. Also, there is no guarantee that the adaptation will follow the same timeline in any case, even if the opening happened to do so; we have already have had an 'inserted' scene featuring Mordaunt paying a visit to the former executioner of Lille, which may well be in chronological order but definitely does not occur at this point in the book, where nobody has any idea of Mordaunt's existence until the protagonists encounter him. (It may also be a convenient piece of exposition invented out of whole cloth for the purposes of the adaptation!)
Objectively, I think the very obvious answer is that it would be better to read the whole book, or at least to read ahead in the book, before watching the next episode, which would give me a far better chance of understanding the details of the dialogue. However in practice I find myself strongly inclined not to do so, even though that is probably a foolish choice :-(
(Also, apart from anything else, the book is a good ninety chapters long, and I have currently read only up to the start of Chapter 13; reading online tethered to a terminal is laborious compared to simply taking a book with you and pulling it out on impulse wherever you happen to be and whatever you happen to be in the middle of doing, e.g. waiting for your dinner to simmer down. If I had succeeded in finding my hardback copy of the novel I might have more motivation to skim ahead quickly and easily.)
I originally set out to look for a copy in French, but all the first twenty or so results for "Vingt Ans Après" turned out to point to English editions; searching for the lyrics to Aramis' quoted ballad about Madame de Chevreuse (Laboissiere, dis-moi) did throw up a page in French (on a Russian site!), which revealed apart from anything else that the English translation is a fairly loose one! It is entirely understandable that the translator chose to omit the French verses in question (which I get the impression are not a historically recorded satire, as I had assumed, but a ditty of Dumas' own composition), but he has also omitted various other words here and there which affect the general tone of the conversation: for instance, Mais revenons à cette pauvre duchesse becomes "But to return to our duchess" without the overtones of pity, and Oui, certes, et elle était fort belle encore (in response to the question "did you see her at that date?") becomes "Yes, she is still beautiful", not only losing the flavour but, oddly, the past tense of the original -- the whole ongoing subtext of the scene being that Madame de Chevreuse has lost both her looks and her influence and been replaced in Aramis's affections by a younger equivalent :-(
I could set out to read the novel in French for greater accuracy (as I did in fact succeed in doing with "Les Trois Mousquetaires", never having actually read it in the original before!) -- but for my purposes the English version is clearly close enough to enable me to recognise Russian phrases, which is all I actually need, and the difference in speed is significant. I *can* skim-read in French, or at least well enough to locate relevant material in the middle of a sizeable document, but cannot do so nearly as fast as I can in English, and even so it took me a few hours to read forty thousand words (chapters 1-12) in the English version. Given the length of the book and the fact that all I want is to know what happens, I see no point in embarking upon the exercise, since it isn't additional practice in my *French* comprehension that is required for this particular purpose :-p (And at any rate I have been getting that from the anime episodes, albeit on a more simplified level...)
So what is probably going to happen is that I shall go ahead and watch the next episode 'unspoiled' and struggle to follow the dialogue, then go back and skim-read the online text to establish what I failed to pick up on initially... and then probably go back and watch the Russian version again to try to identify the relevant material. At least for this one there *is* a reasonably close 'crib', unlike the totally off-the-wall and non-canonical antics of "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure", in which absolutely anything could (and did) transpire :-D
no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 12:48 am (UTC)... Yes, it does - but it was a struggle to get the search function to cough it up, and I might well have given up before finding it if I hadn't been so sure it must exist.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 12:55 am (UTC)The search function is evidently being a little too zealous in terms of linking to the version it guesses that you might want, given multiple options...