Dumas’ philosophy of hope

A 2024 French production of The Count of Monte Cristo is available as a serial on BBC iPlayer, a film I watched for the first time on the first leg of a long-haul flight, only to rewatch it on the second. It distils the essential elements of the novel’s appeal and power: its rootedness in modern French history; its vivid portrayal of a young man, the sailor Edmond Dantès, condemned for a ‘political crime’ he did not commit and could have had no knowledge of; its recounting of his revenge, as the representative of a disturbing new cosmopolitanism come to sweep aside the old order; and the hope that the next generation might right the sins of their fathers and mothers. This version goes further than Dumas in creating a convincing and beautiful end to a novel that feels, especially in the latter half, like a big old shaggy-dog story. By the end we are utterly convinced, like Dantès, that all human wisdom is contained in the phrase ‘to wait and to hope’.

Writing Rome

Tim Whitmarsh’s Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity  is, in the best tradition of Anglophone history-writing, wry, sceptical and elegantly written — as well as a hugely learned monograph on the passing of Roman imperium to Christ’s kingdom. I look forward to discussing the work with Tim on The EI Podcast  next week.

Musical spies

Troubled Times: Music and Espionage in Renaissance England  follows some fine programming in recent years on the fraught context of 16th-century sacred music, including The Marian Consort’s Singing in Secret: Clandestine Catholic Music  by William Byrd. Here the conceit is that the music comes from composers directly caught up in the court intrigues of the period, several them suspected of spying. It is a gorgeous recording from the Queen’s Six and the Rose Consort of Viols.