The Maritime Adventures of The Count of Monte Cristo as a Modern Arab Epic

The Translation of Bishāra Shadīd (1871) and Its Reception

Abstract

This article analyses the 1871 translation of The Count of Monte Cristo printed by the Egyptian private press Wādī al-Nīl and undertaken by the translator Bishāra Shadīd. Unlike the previous Arabic translation of the novel (Beirut 1866), which aimed to recreate the original novel in its full length, structure and even word order, Bishāra Shadīd radically reshaped Dumas’ novel into an abridged version that wears the clothes of an Arabic maqāma, which is a text in rhyming prose. This article argues that the success of the 1871 Arabic translation by Bishāra Shadīd was due to several factors: the specific rhymed prose form that echoed the oral narratives of Arabic epics; the adventurous character of the story; and the values of revenge and long-awaited justice that underlay it. These values appealed to readers across the Eastern Mediterranean and were embodied in the phantasmagoric protagonist of Dumas’ novel, Edmond Dantès, and in Napoleon, the overarching political hero in Dumas’ works. Through an analysis of the translation strategies adopted by Bishāra Shadīd, the article also suggests that the work can be regarded as an example of ‘popular literature’ (letteratura popolare) as defined by Antonio Gramsci. It is, above all, a translation that conveys the political and social aspirations of a social class through a process of “domestication”, through which a nineteenth-century European novel finalized for individual reading became a rhymed prose text, possibly used for collective reading and listening.

Key words: literary translations – Alexandre Dumas père – modern maqāma – sajʿ – Mediterranean translations – Nahḍa translations