I finally dedicated myself to doing a thorough re-watch of the 55-minute chunk of "Twenty Years After" that I had viewed 'blind' and unsubtitled as it was originally intended -- which took about six or eight hours of study spread over two days. Next time I'm going to have to try to force myself to stop watching sooner... although in fact there are only about 30 minutes left of the story, including end-credits :-(

( subtitles )

One of the non-subtitled lines, when I listened to it more carefully, turned out to be Porthos randomly observing that d'Artagnan looked good in a beard, which amused me mightily given my original comments on the scene ("for someone whose moustache has more or less been a permanent trademark since the start of his career, Mikhail Boyarsky actually looks pretty good in a 'full set' :-D)

Boyarsky in a beard

In fact as usual I did get pretty much all of it plot-wise on the first viewing, while the 'crib' filled in most of the longer/more rapid dialogues where I could only catch a few words (but generally sufficient to identify those sections in the novel, e.g. Milo of Croton, who unsurprisingly defeated me entirely when encountered as an unexpected subject of prison conversation :-p) The big changes from the novel are, I think, actually active *improvements*: ( Read more... )

( Madame de Chevreuse )

The towel-tomatoes have now reached the mystic state of Setting the Second Truss, which means I switch from feeding them with ordinary liquid fertiliser (although I haven't been doing so of late, because they had brand new compost a couple of weeks ago) to specialised tomato feed. I also gave the same dose to the single Roma tomato, although that has only set a single truss level as yet.

(In fact, on a renewed reading of the instructions on the tomato food bottle, I observe that I have actually been doing it wrong for the last few years: the instructions about 'after the setting of the second truss' only state that you should feed at a more frequent interval after that point, not that you should delay feeding until then! You are actually supposed to start to apply the feed after the *first* fruit has set...)

An unexpected connection: while I was listening in a desultory way to a recent TV interview with Venjiamin Smekhov ('Soviet Athos') a name familiar in another context suddenly caught my attention. Smekhov was being asked about his involvement with a rock musical recorded by the group Korol' i Shut, whose (unrelated) "Three Musketeers" song I translated :-)
( Read more... )

Dates and ages (probably mutually inconsistent)

Athos tells Raoul on their arrival in Paris that he spent seven of the sweetest and yet most bitter years of his life in his old lodgings on the rue Férou (including the further years after d'Artagnan's promotion?)

He appeals to Porthos during the confrontation at the Place Royale on the grounds that "we slept ten years side by side", presumably referring to the length of time over which the two of them served together as musketeers.

( The age of Aramis )

( Oliver Reed's careless fencing )

On my second expedition I successfully managed to purchase a new slide buckle of the right size to fit my secondary clothes line, thanks to a very helpful Indian lady whose haberdashery stall turned out to be well-stocked with all sorts of components as well as the glittering sari fabrics and accessories. I tested it out this afternoon on a batch of washing, and it seems to function exactly as effectively as its predecessor (which is to say that it is no longer bar-taut after a few hours when you take the washing down again, but doesn't sag enough to cause a discernable problem while the weight is on it).

( New cycle computer )

( Documentaries in Russian )

What I *haven't* done, having been submerged in documentaries, or at least having had them playing in the background while engaged in other things, is actually finish watching "Twenty Years After", which I have already encountered 'spoilers' for in places ranging from TV Tropes (yes, the Soviet Musketeers have their own TV Tropes page...) to random Aramis fanvids and AU fan-fiction. Although I did, on my first (pedestrian) expedition to try to buy buckles, manage to start that third "Twenty Years After" Porthos-fic of my own...

Apart from anything else I got caught up in rereading the earlier parts of the book in the French version to see what else was missing in terms of detail, which turns out to include little scenes like the one in which d'Artagnan gives Raoul a fencing-lesson during his visit and praises Athos on the boy's swordsmanship (C’est déjà votre main, mon cher Athos, et si c’est votre sang-froid, je n’aurai que des compliments à lui faire) -- this entire conversation being omitted from the English edition, which cuts straight to Mazarin's recall message!

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos)...

( Source of the clip revealed )

However, what the longer context *does* provide is an explanation for the more obscure references in the poem: Smekhov mentions that he wrote it because they were filming in Lvov (now renamed 'Lviv' to reflect the tight Ukrainian accent, which still strikes me as akin to relabelling Glasgow as "Glasgae" ;-p) in August at the time of his birthday. It's a 'kino-horoscope': Lvov, the City of Lions (as in Lev Tolstoy, sometimes Anglicised to Leo) under the European astrological sign of Leo in the Chinese astrological Year of the Horse 1978.

A filk/translation of the ballad that has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'Soviet Musketeers' film, but which has a very catchy chorus that went round and round in my head while I was cycling until it had practically translated itself ;-)
And after that, of course, I had to put sweat and tears into actually translating the verses to go with it...

( Read more... )

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos) that showed up in the background soundtrack to one of the many, many Russian-language documentaries I have been watching recently about the making of "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", the actors involved, and various other subjects ;-) I remember being impressed at the time because it only very gradually started to dawn on me that the voiceover at that point was in poetry: there are precious few people who can 'speak verse' and make it sound so entirely natural that you only realise they are doing it when things keep starting to rhyme! Smekhov in particular really does have a beautiful stage-trained voice, as all the fans (and in Russia there are still a lot of them) kept saying. It's what you would describe as 'Shakespearian' training when talking about English actors, but I don't know what the Russian equivalent would be; whether they actually have classical verse plays, as the French do (Pushkin maybe?)

Anyway, I heard this poem drifting past in the middle of a half-hour documentary and couldn't make out much of it apart from the fact that it probably wasn't entirely serious (and was likely to have been written by Smekhov himself, whom I had heard writes verses), and involved a lot of things 'flying' in all directions, musketeers included :-D And then a couple of weeks later YouTube suddenly decided to bestow on me unprompted a video of Smekhov actually reading it out to his fellow cast-members... *with* on-screen subtitles, so that I could actually interpret what it said.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XYlxuqXFaMY

I have been potting up two of the towel-tomatoes and the Roma tomato into what will be their final pots, and have pretty much used up all the compost I bought in the process; I shall have to get some more. Not a lot of progress from the catch-up tomatoes, but presumably they have been developing roots under their sturdy seed-leaves.

The sweetbriar, rose campion and flax are in flower, ( red and yellow poppies )

( Clothes line buckle snapped )

My bedroom clock stopped again this week after I wound it (which is annoying, because it was working up until then!), and turning it upside down didn't seem to help this time :-(

I have been seriously considering writing the third "Twenty Years After" fic that I was running in my head (basically as a sequel to "If I Should Die") and that I was more or less confident that I was *not* going to write, on the grounds that it had no plot ( and can't really be fitted into canon )

( The obvious sequel to 'If I Should Die' being an AU in which he does )

What worries me more is that I'm not sure Porthos' anecdote, originally conceived in the context of a puzzled conversation about Raoul's parentage (a secret which Athos at this juncture has of necessity taken to his grave so far as his friends are concerned) actually fits very well any more into the story as I am now revolving it in my mind; it's certainly not a good ending. It was simply the point at which I broke off my 'what would they say to one another if...' speculations on reaching my own front door :-p

And unfortunately that particular idea was pretty much the whole point of attempting to write this, being the sole original piece of inspiration there :-(

The one-shot that was inspired by a slight mis-remembering of the farewells beneath the scaffold, and by a line that is for some reason omitted from the translation I had from Project Gutenberg... I have worked grit-covered ropes in bitterly cold weather; my pen-calluses weren't of much help. Athos probably has sword-calluses, but it's canon that those didn't help much either ;-)

(Aramis does in fact embrace both Porthos and d'Artagnan immediately afterwards on his own account before going off on what he has every reason to believe may be a suicide mission, another line which was left out of the English translation, which simply reads "Aramis again presented himself at the bishop’s" in lieu of "Aramis les quitta comme il avait quitté Athos, c’est-à-dire en les embrassant; puis il se rendit chez l’évêque Juxon".)

If I Should Die

At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.

“Donc Athos déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines à lever les pierres arrachées de leur base par Porthos...” Vingt ans après, Chapitre LXX, “Les ouvriers”

The January wind stole across the stones of Whitehall, and fluttered the sombre drapes beneath the gaunt new structure that stood there. It had been a bitterly cold night, and Athos had worked without respite, under cover of the labour going on all around them to complete the King’s scaffold— a thing horrible and unheard of, not that a King should be murdered but that the deed should be carried out with this travesty of the forms of justice. But they had given their word, he and Aramis, to Madame Henriette of England. Given their word to guard her husband the King and to bring him safely back to her, even if it should cost both their lives.

( Read more... )

After getting distracted by "Aramis no Bouken" I plunged into the final part of the Soviet "Twenty Years After" with a certain trepidation (oh no, it's going to come to an end) and no idea what to expect, having no memory of this part of the novel at all.
(It does strike me as being slightly worrying that I have now managed to write two fanfics for it without actually having finished the story myself, but unless further big chunks of backstory appear in the remaining section it shouldn't invalidate anything in what I have already written, all of which takes place at an earlier point in the plot than this!)

It looks as if the last part of the serial is going to be all about how the protagonists back in France get themselves out of the political consequences of their actions in England. We saw d'Artagnan and Porthos get arrested at the end of the last episode, and now Aramis and Athos are wondering what became of them. ( Read more... )

Edit: well, that turns out to be almost *all* the remaining chapters of the book (the duel of Aramis and Athos being mixed up with a vast chunk of armies and political manoeuvring in canon). But the book does at least explain why Mazarin is apparently walking around in a greenhouse; d'Artagnan and Porthos are shut up not in a mediaeval tower as shown on screen, but in a pavilion wing in an orangery, and not for months but for a grand total, according to d'Artagnan, of eighty-three hours of frustration ;-)
(And I am also touched to find out that in the book it is Aramis who is outside the walls with horses, whereas I was beginning to fear in the film that he had simply gone to ground to save his own neck as the final survivor...)

Courtesy of Porthos, who reminded me of the Bastion Saint-Gervais, I have found, I think, a better ending for my new Athos-fic -- which, by the by, will have to find a filename, the first one having already been saved under the name of its protagonist as tends to be my habit (my first LND fic is still saved simply as "Raoul" ;-)

Due to having been started on a long coach journey it is written in what is probably my tiniest notebook yet: a little ring-bound pocket pad that is smaller even, I think, than the pocket diary that I took away with me on a Norfolk Broads holiday in July 2016 and in which I wrote "There is no Phantom of the Opera" and "If I were Vicomte" while variously propped up in the polished mahogany of my pre-war berth and writing by the light of the cabin oil-lamps, and wandering up and down the staithe! (With hindsight, that was probably one of my last ever summer holidays...)

I definitely did find that the very small page size made it harder to avoid inadvertent repetition of words and phrases that I'd only just used -- being only able to see one or two sentences back is more of a pain that I had realised, even with constant leafing backwards and forwards through the text, and I can't imagine how people manage on mobile phones. The limited page size may turn out to have had unexpected effects on my paragraph construction, as well, but we shall see once I get a better view of the whole thing. My very rough estimate is that this notepad runs about 100 words/page, which means that the whole story is around 2000-2500 words; neither too short nor too long for a one-shot, which means, I hope, that it's not quite so waffly as I was starting to fear at one point.

( Extremely self-indulgent and not quite canonical )

( Differing characterisation between the two fics set at different dates )

It very belatedly dawned upon me also what Athos means when in the Soviet musical he says to Milady ( d'Artagnan is an honourable gentleman and will yield precedence to a lady )

Oh horror, Mordaunt is still alive... (not -- surely not -- canonical?)

And there is a Part Four to this series, which I had not anticipated, assuming it was only three episodes like the others. Makes sense, as we are very far from being anywhere near the end of the book, although I have absolutely no idea what happens next. The Fronde, presumably.

The book appears to follow Athos and Aramis, while the screen version instead follows the fate of Porthos and d'Artagnan (captured by Jussac, which again is probably not strictly as in the original!), so I can't read up to clarify those events without spoiling myself for future scenes. The comedy stuff with Mazarin and the pigeon post is probably not in there anyway :-p

( Discovered details of the duel with Mordaunt )

( Confusion over Athos' role beneath the scaffold )

Otherwise I got a few more scraps of dialogue, including bits that weren't in the subtitles, or even the novel -- Porthos' reference to being attacked by 400 men at the bastion at La Rochelle -- but I had basically picked up all the plot-important bits on the first time through, and couldn't make out the obscure sections even on repeat.

( The small boat sequence )

I'm afraid I really am going to have to go back and read "Vingt Ans Après" in French, because it turns out there are so many little character moments left out of the translation; in the scene where they all cut their hair in an attempt to pass as Puritans, for example, where the English version says simply that "After some discussion this was agreed to", but the French version reveals that Aramis objected strongly to the suggestion, being very vain about his carefully-tended shoulder-length locks, and it was not until Athos -- to whom such concerns were a matter of complete indifference -- set him the example by going first that he would consent to be duly shorn :-p Meanwhile d'Artagnan opted to cut his own hair, and contrived to end up with a style reminiscent of coins from a hundred years earlier...
( Read more... )
Basically the bottom line is that you need to read it in French to write fic (and yes, I have started another one... complete self-indulgence, as it's based on a mis-recollection), but can probably get by on the abridged version for film crib purposes, given that none of these details are likely to make it into the far more abridged film in the first place.

( Long floating hair in the water )

I am rather disturbed to discover that, as in the case of "The Phantom of the Opera", a direct comparison between the public domain French and English texts appears to show that the latter is not only different in minor detail as already observed, but appears to have been quite significantly abridged, at least at this point. (Unexpected, as one would have thought they might have cut out the 'boring' bits about the Fronde and its politics earlier on, but scarcely the details of the rescue plan for the King's escape, or the duel with Mordaunt!)

*Sigh* Clearly I simply picked the wrong English text from Project Gutenberg... a quick glance at another one shows that it appears to include the missing sections, but is simply an uncorrected OCR scan which is therefore hard to read.

( parallel text comparison )

[Edit: it looks as if it *is* only specific sections affected, or at least affected to this degree. But the main effect, as with "The Phantom of the Opera", is to eliminate characterisation in what is presumably the name of advancing the plot in broader strokes more quickly...]

Oof -- now compared to that first half, that was intense... ( Read more... )
I do remember the final line from the book: "I have a son, and therefore I wished to live"...

(And the episode is still not over, apparently -- but that's about as much as I can take in one chunk!)

Proofreading and main editing completed on this one -- and YouTube happened to bestow upon me a rather nice still of Soviet Athos (Venjiamin Smekhov) at the end of an unrelated folksong video, which I might even try to make into an FFnet 'cover image', in honour of the actual nature of my fandom!)

( Read more... )

A Sword Outwears Its Sheath

Athos has an encounter that will change his life... if not quite in the way intended.

Athos resta mousquetaire sous les ordres de d’Artagnan jusqu’en 1633, époque à laquelle, en revenant d’un voyage qu’il fit en Roussillon, il quitta aussi le service...

The street door opened with a creak and a gust of chilly October wind. The small child hovering on the threshold, half-visible in the dusk beyond, was of indeterminate sex and dirty beyond belief. Athos, sprawled wearily in front of the fire with the mud beginning to dry on his cloak and boots, could not help but be aware that in addition the new arrival smelt strongly of goat. ( Read more... )

~o~

( A rather nice still of Soviet Athos )

I have typed up the current edit of the new fic (now entitled "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath" after I'd subconsciously echoed bits of Byron in the text) at about 3,500 words. But having fixed the geopolitics I now really ought to fix the weather -- being reminded by d'Artagnan's complaints about the English weather in "Twenty Years After" that "je suis d’un pays où il n’y a pas un nuage au ciel", while Rousillon lies even further south than Gascony ;-p
( Occitan October )

( Basil and California poppies )

I also transplanted a random rocket seedling out of the chilli pot, where it was rapidly overtopping the still entirely puny chillies, and likewise moved some mesembryanthemums.

No sign of anything but a vigorous crop of chickweed (and a mesembryanthemum) in the pot where I sowed the two pink Swan River daisy seeds, so those weren't viable or didn't survive. There is a healthy batch of the blue ones, however (which really need potting on). Oddly enough I think there may be some self-sown Swan River daisy seedlings at the base of the smaller pot of pink Linaria, though goodness knows how they got there...

I think the coreopsis has just failed entirely, I'm afraid. A pity, because it was colourful, if not native.

I embarked upon the final episode of "Twenty Years After" (it has just dawned on me that the elegaic title/theme music is in fact a slowed-down version of Nasha chest', which is effectively appropriate!) Again, this section proved unexpectedly easy to understand, even at three a.m. without subtitles or dictionary -- but I'm not sure I would have been able to follow where we'd got to without prior knowledge of the plot, because it did feel very compressed and chunky. ( Oddly lacking dynamic of friendship )

I think what has happened here is that the director has made the decision to focus on Mordaunt's activities -- and that part is effective. The scene where he casually shoots his uncle in the back of the head has a shock value that nothing else does (slightly undermined by the fact that we never see Lord Winter's face and so have no idea of the prisoner's identity until the dialogue reveals it; again, probably a conscious choice to make the act more bewilderingly random). This section is very much about Mordaunt finally discovering the identities of the men he has been hunting, and the resulting threat to their lives....

I think I have finished† my "Three Musketeers"/"Twenty years After" one-shot, after a vast amount of struggle with the end; the final paragraph or two are constituted of about 70% crossing-out, after every sentence I carefully and laboriously formulated in my head turned out to be all wrong when I set it down on the page :-( I think I may still have a rhythm problem with this section, where I seem to have kept repeatedly coming out with similar sentence structures; too many aphorisms, I suspect.

I also appear to have managed to write my first-ever M-rated fan-fiction, in that it goes that little bit further than I think I'd be comfortable giving to a thirteen-year-old, which is the definition of the "Teen" rating. ( The episode of Athos and Madame de Chevreuse )

Possibly the silliest Russian Musketeers ever... (actually made by a Ukrainian studio using Russian actors, in the days before that was considered a significant difference)

Watch on YouTube

Young d'Artagnan comes to Paris to join the Musketeers, only to discover that there is a problem: in this universe, it is well known that the Musketeer regiment only recruits women! But of course he soon runs into three of the best blades in the regiment, and ends up acquiring three cheerfully patronising big sisters (they actually pat him on the head at one point).
Meanwhile there is a problem in the shape of the formidable Madam Richelieu, who intercepts his letters home, criticises their grammar and spelling, and manages to win the diamonds from Buckingham via a game of strip poker :-p Buckingham, meanwhile, appears to spend all his time in the basement experimenting with alchemy...

( Basically a panto version ) Being able to make fun of something without disrespecting it (the three Musketeers are extremely feminine —hence humour when d'Artagnan instinctively attempts to adopt their hip-swinging walk!— but also know exactly how to handle themselves) is a surprisingly rare quality.

I think some actual dill has finally germinated while I wasn't looking; the seedlings are very hard to tell apart from poppies during the early stage! Two of the over-wintered California poppies are now in golden bloom, and there is a bud just coming out on the miniature rose, which has died back entirely to a vigorous new shoot -- apparently a rose's way of reinvigorating itself, as it has done this more than once before.

I pulled out the dying towel-tomato, which actually seemed to have quite a robust stem after all -- however, it is too late now! One of the second batch is not looking too healthy either, and the chillies are almost all still sitting there with just their single pair of seed-leaves, with only a couple showing signs of putting out a tiny pair of true leaves. But this does tend to happen...

Made some hot-cross buns for Easter, but unfortunately, due to the extreme rush of getting them through the oven after 36 hours' "slow sourdough fermentation", I forgot to put the crosses on this year! At least that means it is reasonable to freeze them and continue eating them after Easter :-P

And I have begun (and in fact now almost finished; I was hoping I might get through it in a single day, but that was several days ago and clearly over-optimistic!) a 'Three Musketeers' fan-fiction. ( A possibly inevitable admission )

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Igenlode Wordsmith

Entries tagged with musketeers

One hour becomes six or eight

The second truss / Sweeney Todd

Dumas dates

New acquisitions

Kino-horoscope

Song of the Musketeers (Korol' i Shut)

Soviet Athos verses

Plant progress -- and a new fic idea

If I Should Die

If I Should Die

Twenty Years After: it really is the beginning of the final episode this time

Very small pages

Twenty Years After, Episode Three, conclusion

More missing bits

Strange missing text

Twenty Years After, Episode Three, still not finished