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Thursday, February 4, 2010

D'RIZAL, THE MUSKETEER

In his business dealing in Dapitan, Rizal had a dispute with a Frenchmen that almost came up to dangerous duel. Rizal's angered that he challenged Lardet to a duel. It was only prevented when the Spanish commandant told the Frenchman that he did not have any chance in a fight with Rizal on a field of honor. Cooler heads prevailed, Lardet apologized to Rizal after having told that he was against an ardent student of musketeering. Rizal even practiced fencing while in Paris.

Rizal wrote the two novels in the tradition of Alexandre Dumas' the Count of Monte Cristo" It was the first foreign novel that Rizal read. The characters of Noli were similar to the Monte Cristo's drama of being wronged and revenged. Some can argue that someone could be the Edmund Dantes in Dumas's book. It was the three Musketeers that we are all familiar, the names of d'Artagan and the three musketeers would remain in our childhood memory rather than the Edmund Dantes. Rizal followed Dumas historical setting in his writing. The later theme of hope, justice, mercy, forgiveness and death would probably come short in Rizal's novel. The influence of Alexandre Dumas continued while Rizal was in Europe, he would attend and met some of Dumas's theatre people as Dumas was also a well known play writer. His novel would be translated in several languages and made into motion pictures.

Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno is a Latin phrase that means "One for all, all for one" in English. It is the cry of the Three Musketeers.

We found Indios and Creole In Rizal novels. Elias saved Ibarra, a Creole victim. Who became revolutionary?

The words also could characterize Rizal and Dumas in real life. Dumas's maternal grandmother was Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean Creole of mixed French/African ancestry.

Despite Alexandre Dumas' success and aristocratic connections, his being of mixed race would affect him all his life. In 1843 he wrote some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. He once remarked to a man who insulted him about his mixed-race background:

"My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends."

His grandfather had married a slave while serving as a colonial official in what is now Haiti. It is the true story of this American D'Artagnan. Earth shaking but I should end by rumbling the Haitian tragedy. Touchee!



Nestor Palugod Enriquez
www.filipinohome.com
Coming to America

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