Last, but only in chronological order, Einaudi is part of a rather murky literary story. After the critical edition edited by Claude Schopp in 1993, for The Count of Monte Cristo a new story begins; in Italy, on the other hand, two stories begin. In our country, there were not only the gaps and inaccuracies present in the French text to be amended: here no one had ever even bothered with the translations and, for over a century, the same version came out, with very few variations. It was necessary to wait another twenty years to see the waters move: 2010, to be exact, with the translation edited by Gaia Panfili for Donzelli and based, for the first time, on the Schopp edition.
It is on this occasion that we discover the flaw and talk about the “ghost” Emilio Franceschini to whom, in the infinite Oscar Mondadori editions, the translation that made the Italian history of Dumas's novel is attributed. Yes, the story: it is not an exaggeration because - apparently - it is a very similar version indeed «entirely modeled - writes Donzelli in a note to the text - on the anonymous nineteenth-century translation published by Salani». In short, all editions of the novel by Alexandre Dumas published in Italy until recent years refer to a single first translation of 1869. The mysterious translator was, in all likelihood, literally invented: just to "sign" an old version that Mondadori proposed to her readers.
Curated by Margherita Botto, this just-released edition, on the other hand, helps to restore light (perhaps belatedly) to a text that is as popular as it is mistreated, especially by us. And Einaudi redeems the publishing group to which it belongs from a story that is anything but exemplary. In fact, it is not just the pedantic legacies of dusty philologists: The Count of Monte Cristo known in our country in its nineteenth-century guise, it is profoundly altered and censored. An "inattention" above all due to a "low reception" of the work on which the negative judgments of Croce and Gramsci are always weighed. The change of course takes place in the most recent decades. Thanks to Umberto Eco, of course, who had already felt the need for a new translation. But, even before him, thanks to Calvino who rewrote it for his collection of short stories You with Zero of 1967.
"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas (Einaudi, pp. 1264, 32 euros, ebook 4.99)
Published on CultWeek.
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