Hands down my favorite Dickens' I've read yet! It's got love, sacrifice, revenge, revolt and other exciting verbs! I'm a big fan of a solid marriage between character development and action. A Tale of Two Cities is well-wed. Some criticize Dickens for his trite stories and overblown caricature-esque characters. Yes, the man wrote some less-than-perfect books. He wrote them for a wide-ranging public and he wrote for money. High-minded prose eloquently crafted may garner praise, but it doesn't always pay the bills. But here you get the author at his finest, plotting a riveting tale and creating sympathetic characters with empathy up the wazoo. The great descriptions of the rebellion are interesting, but it's the dual nature of the revolutionaries that I really love. Dickens makes you feel for their plight and then twists it around, so that the tortured become the tyrants and your fondness turns to loathing as you witness their despicable deeds. "Feel" is the operative word there. Dickens put a lot of feeling into A Tale of Two Cities.

Maybe 4.5. I never know how to feel about A Tale of Two Cities, because the bulk of the novel doesn’t quite live up to other Dickens books for me, but my goodness, what an ending.

Despite caveats, I am awarding full recognition. There are such long stretches of gorgeous writing here. What an astonishing writer Dickens can be when he keeps away from cloying sentiment, his hobbyhorse.

I kept girding for the saccharine heroine (à la Little Dorrit). She never appeared but the novelist hews closest to his chief indulgence in Chapter 17: "One Night."

Here young Lucie, who has rescued her father from Louis XVI's Bastille, speaks with him — years after their safe return to England — about her upcoming marriage to Charles Darnay, a Frenchman also involved in the father's rescue.

Lucie in her immoderate selflessness is guilty about sidelining her father, who until now has received all her personal attentions after his great suffering. So here father and daughter expatiate at wearying length on their love for one another. This goes on for many pages until Lucy is convinced her father won't hold her marriage against her. In fact, he welcomes it.

Quite a slog when you consider how the preceding and succeeding chapters fly by. But it is a small inconvenience compared to what remains.

It was the best of a far, far, FAR better thing that I do, than I have ever done.

I know that’s lame, but I’m out of ideas for an opening paragraph.

This is my second reading of A Tale of Two Cities and I doubt it will be my last. A lot of people who habitually read for pleasure probably would not consider reading this book because it is required reading in many schools and it would seem like anathema to a good time to read it when you don’t have to. This is unfortunate because I think this — like all Dickens novels — works best if you just read it naturally without trying to analyze the hell out of it on every page. I doubt that was Dickens’ intent.

I was considering writing a little synopsis which is part of the standard review structure for me, but it feels like summarizing* something like  Frankenstein, superfluous. The characters are worth looking into though, because Dickens always populate his novels with colorful, memorable characters; as well as a few flat ones, who are usually the “good guys”. A Tale of Two Cities has, at least, two characters that are practically legends of fiction.

First and foremost is poor Sydney Carton who — in spite of a boxy name — is the true hero of the story. Throughout the novel he seems like a side character, he even views himself as a supernumerary individual among his “friends”, who are more like people he likes to visit, though they don’t really know why he often shows up or what to do with him.
“Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will.”
Sydney has no self-respect or any sense of self-worth but redeems himself in an epic manner by the end of the book. He is fascinating if a little unbelievable in how far he would go to serve the love of his life, Lucie Manette.

Lucie comes straight from Dickens’ stock of impossibly angelic pretty women who would rather die than say boo to a goose (which is a crazy pastime in any event). She has very little in the way of personality or agency and seems ill-suited to the much deeper Carton (I feel another pun coming on). Charles Darnay — the dull “romantic lead” of the novel — suits her much better, but at least he galvanizes the story when he chooses to go to Paris at the worst possible time for someone of his background, and without making any precaution. Lucie’s Dad, Doctor Manette, is marginally more interesting than her daughter because when he gets very upset he does not hit anybody, instead, he shuffles off to his room and start cobbling shoes! This makes sense to me, if everybody could be like this, instead of wars and terrorisms we would have mountains of shoes. Which do you prefer?

This (somehow) brings me to Madame Therese Defarge, Dickens’ most badass antagonist.

(Thank you Video Spark Notes for the art).
I hesitate to use the word “villain” here because she is not evil per se. She has her reasons for going on a murderous rampage and hacking people’s heads off with a knife, it is all done in the name of the French republic as far as she is concerned.

“Her husband's destiny,” said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, "will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know.”

The best thing about her is that — when she is not off exterminating aristocrats — she is always doing some scary knitting.** I have gone on too long about the characters I think, I’d just like to mention Miss Pross, Lucie’s governess who is almost as badass as Madame Defarge, and is a great foil for her.

These colorful characters make the novel for me, the plot is only exciting because we care about the characters. In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens created a microcosm of life during the French Revolution and shows as that even with the heart in the right place much evil is still perpetrated in the name of good. That still rings true today, unfortunately. Dickens' prose is — of course — awe-inspiring. He effortlessly switches from sardonic, to comical, to lyrical from paragraph to paragraph. There are numerous witty or pithy lines you can quote from, on practically every page. Having said that, the language is not particularly challenging to read, if you read contemporary fiction regularly I can't imagine why you would have any difficulty reading Dickens, the English language has not mutated that much since Victorian times.

A Tale of Two Cities is a book I can recommend to anybody, but especially people who dismiss reading it because they had to read it at school. That is no reason to deprive yourself of a book this enjoyable.



* I’m not allowed to use the verb synopsize (hi Cecily!)

** I have met a lot of women who are a bit like Madame Defarge actually, well, they like to knit, but they don’t go on murderous rampages as far as I know. I did say a bit.

Notes
Some people say A Tale of Two Cities lacks the humour of Dickens’ other novels. I beg to differ, Miss Pross is always good for a laugh and Madame Defarge’s knitting and the secret signals she sends through her hat are pretty mirthful. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

This reread was done mostly through Librivox's free audiobook, read by Paul Adams, a little overly dramatic at times but a good and fun rendition. Thank you!


(Thanks, Cecily!

The Most Dickensian Novel, and the Least Dickensian Novel, …

… his skinniest and yet his most fleshed-out fantasy, his most universal and his most personal book. That’s pretty much what can be said about Dickens’s second historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, which was published in 1859. Frankly, when I was re-reading this bi-metropolitan tale, I did not have the feeling that great expectations were lying ahead of me, for my first encounter with the novel lots of years ago left me mildly disappointed. This was simply not the Dickens I adored: Where was the abundance in sub-plots that would by and by be woven together by the untiring Inimitable loom? Where were the Mrs. Gamps, the Micawbers, the Captain Cuttles, Silas Weggses, where was Sam Weller? (Okay, we have Miss Pross, but few and far between are her appearances in the novel). Where was all that vastness that we associate with Dickens?

Maybe, I was just too much impressed with his longer novels to see, because now, 25 years later – what a terrible thing to realize that it has taken me a quarter of a century to rediscover this novel, and that I am already so old as to be able to look back on … ah, let’s leave it at that – 25 years later, I have finally come to appreciate the merits of a novel which I would rank among Dickens’s finest achievements. At an usually blistering pace, for Dickens, it tells its story of hatred and vengeance, hopes lost and re-gained, and human sacrifice. Admittedly, this kind of summary could do for almost any good Victorian novel (and maybe also for some of the Brontës’ books), and therefore here’s the story in a nutshell. Do we need a spoiler warning for a more than 150-year old classic novel?

In 1775, the French physician Dr. Manette, who was imprisoned on the grounds of a lettre de cachet, an arbitrary warrant obtained by a minion of the French monarch, is released from prison and taken to London by his old friend (and business partner) Mr. Lorry. Due to his mind-shattering experience of twenty years of incarceration, Dr. Manette is a physical and mental wreck but by and by, he is brought back to life again by the care and love of his daughter Lucie. Lucie falls in love with Charles Darnay, a descendant of the noble house of Evremonde, who has, however, severed his ties with his family because he was disgusted with the social injustices and abuses his family (and French nobility in general) brought about the French people. When Darnay is tried for espionage, it is Sydney Carton, his lawyer’s dogsbody, and also a doppelgänger of Darnay, who manages to obtain his acquittal. Carton may be Darnay’s spitting image as far as looks are concerned but his outlook on life is fundamentally different: Although he was a gifted youth, he somehow never succeeded in making good use of his potential because he never seemed to care, and now he is a jaded and cynical young old man, given to drink even more excessively than it was usual in those days. It is Lucie, who brings back to life his better nature, and yet he knows that it is too late to reform, and that Lucie is already betrothed to another man – the man he saved. Lucie and Darnay get married, and Carton is a rare but regular guest at their house, more a friend of Lucie’s than of her husband’s.

In France, after centuries of injustice and exploitation, matters come to a head and the Revolution breaks out. Darnay is summoned for help by an old family servant and feels obliged to go to Paris, testifying in court in order to help this servant. What he fails to realize, though, is the risk he is running by going back into his forefathers’ country, where violence has started to become endemic and where the wife of a wine merchant by the name of Defarge seems to have taken a special deadly dislike against any single scion of the house of Evremonde. Unluckily, Darnay’s noble but irresponsible decision to go to France without telling his wife before prompts her to follow her husband and to take her child with her. It is not long before Darnay finds himself imprisoned again and faced with the prospect of execution – and this is the moment, when Sydney Carton, once more, comes to the rescue.

As there are hardly any sub-plots and also comic relief is meted out most sparsely, this novel at first sight seems untypical of Dickens and rather “skinny” but if you look closer, you will see that appearances are deceiving. Dickens got his inspiration for this very melodramatic novel when he was performing as the protagonist in Wilkie Collins’s play The Frozen Deep, which has a similar love triangle at its centre: A spurned lover, instead of comforting himself with the idea of what the object of his affections will be like ten years later, swears that he will kill the man who has been preferred to him, and then he does what most men in his situation would do. He joins an arctic expedition. As Fate, or Writer’s Whim, will have it, he realizes that one of the members of the expedition is the very man he vowed to kill, but when the expedition goes haywire, he does all he can to save this man’s life, even at the cost of his own, since he knows that the woman he loves will never be happy without that man. This is basically the plot of A Tale of Two Cities, a story of noble self-sacrifice; only Dickens chooses a setting in which he exchanges the threat through the unfeeling elements for a threat posed by human passions unleashed. By doing this, Dickens gives more scope to the moral implications of his subject-matter in that he not only tells a story of human self-sacrifice but also of what blind hatred and desire for revenge, as in the case of Mme Defarge, can lead to. At the same time, though, Mme Defarge is not an out-and-out villain because her background story makes us able to understand her hatred, if not its excessiveness. One must say, though, that as a historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities ultimately comes up short since Dickens does not really care about analysing the intricate cause-and-effect-relationships and conflicts that would eventually lead to the events of 1789. Neither do we read about people such as Jacobins and Girondins, but for all we know after reading Dickens’s novel, it was the Defarges and their friends who started the Revolution. And it was apparently evil noblemen who ran over children and exercised the ius primae noctis who incurred the wrath of the masses until finally the camel’s back broke.

Probably this is the case because for Dickens political life was basically moral in nature, i.e. people were not so much called upon to change society as to change themselves, to show more consideration for each other in their everyday lives. In the light of all the various experience we had in the 20th century of ideologues who thought that they were able to create new societies, yea even a new kind of man, Dickens’s view may still seem naïve but at least it is simpatico.

Yet, for all its universally moral implications, A Tale of Two Cities may also be, along with David Copperfield, Dickens’s most personal novel, and so it is doubtless no coincidence that in both these tales one of the central characters bears Dickens’s initials. The Tale was written at a time when Dickens’s own private life saw far-reaching changes with his final separation from his wife Catherine and his romantic relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan. As some of his former friends criticised Dickens’s behaviour and as his domestic situation must also have put him at the risk of offending Victorian mores and estranging his reading public from him, he may well have had the feeling, rightly or not, that he, like Sydney Carton, was sacrificing himself for his true love.

We might not agree with Dickens’s perception of his own situation here – at least, I don’t – but we might still greatly enjoy A Tale of Two Cities as a novel. At least, I do.

I don't know Dickens. Is it you? Or is it me?

I keep reminding myself that this isn't typical fare of his. Much shorter, written weekly, full of plot, tight on character development, short on the waffle. Does this make it one of his best, or one of his worst?

I have to admit, that for the majority of my time listening to this on audiobook, I kept forgetting what novel it was. I've recently read The Count of Monte Cristo, so in my head Manette was morphing into the Count, but a lesser version. Then I kept being reminded of Les Mis, but again, with inferior characters.

The main problem with A Tale of Two Cities, is that I never cared about anyone in the book. I felt they were only superficially drawn characters and needed more development for me to get to know them, but this never really happened. So although I enjoyed aspects of the plot, especially the action in the last few chapters, this wasn't enough.

Ultimately, the jury is still out for me and Dickens, but I'll persevere and read a few more examples yet.

The year is 1775, and Dr. Manette, imprisoned unjustly 18 years ago, has been released from the Bastille prison in Paris. His daughter, Lucie, who had thought he was dead, and Jarvis Lorry, an agent for Tellson's Bank, which has offices in London and Paris, bring him to England.
Skip ahead five years to 1780. Frenchman Charles Darnay is on trial for treason, accused of passing English secrets to the French and Americans during the American Revolution. He is acquitted when eyewitnesses prove unreliable partly because of Darnay's resemblance to barrister Sydney Carton.
In the years leading to the fall of the Bastille in 1789, Darnay, Carton, and Stryver all fell in love with Lucie Manette. Carton, an irresponsible and unambitious character who drinks too much, tells Lucie that she has inspired him to think about how his life could have been better and that he would make any sacrifice for her. However, Stryver, Carton's barrister friend, is persuaded by Mr. Lorry, now a close friend to the Manettes, against asking for Lucie's hand. Nevertheless, Lucie marries Darnay, and they have a daughter.
Meanwhile, in France, Darnay's uncle, the Marquis St. Evremonde, is murdered in his bed for crimes committed against the people. Charles has told Dr. Manette of his relationship with the French aristocracy but no one else.
By 1792, the revolution had escalated in France. No one knows why Mr. Lorry receives a letter at Tellson's Bank addressed to the Marquis St. Evremonde. Darnay sees the letter and tells Lorry that he understands the Marquis and will deliver it. The letter is from a friend, Gabelle, who was wrongfully imprisoned in Paris and asked the Marquis (Darnay) for help. Knowing that the trip will be dangerous, Charles feels compelled to go and help his friend. He leaves for France without telling anyone the real reason.
The mob recognized Darnay (St Evremonde) and was imprisoned in Paris on the road to Paris. Mr. Lorry, who is in Paris on business, is joined by Dr. Manette, Lucie, Miss Pross, and later, Sydney Carton.
Dr. Manette influences the citizens due to his imprisonment in the Bastille and can have Darnay released, but he is retaken the next day on a charge by the Defarges and sentenced to death within 24 hours.
Sydney Carton influences one of the jailers and can enter the cell, drug Darnay, exchange clothes, and have the jailer remove Darnay, leaving Carton to die in his stead.
On the guillotine, Carton peacefully declares, "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Świetnie napisana. Ostatni rozdział pozostawia wielką pustkę w sercu.

The tale is one of the best-known stories from one of the world's best-loved novelists, and yet somehow it always maintains its freshness and its vigour, no matter how many times a reader takes it up anew. Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859), his epic recounting of the French Revolutionary period in Paris and London, shows the great novelist applying his talents to the genre of the historical novel – a genre he did not delve into very often – to singularly powerful effect.

By the time he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens had already spent 20 years atop the hierarchy of British novelists. Pre-eminent among the books that had enthralled the reading public in Great Britain, and worldwide, were Oliver Twist (1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), and Bleak House (1853). His works were marked by vivid characterization, an amazing eye for detail, and a heartfelt sense of sentiment (or, for some readers, sentimentality) – all of it combined with an impassioned denunciation of social injustice. People who ordinarily would not have cared a fig for the situation of the poor and the dispossessed suddenly found that they did care, after reading Dickens.

What made A Tale of Two Cities something different within Dickens’s oeuvre, though, was that the great novelist had generally applied his gifts for observation and social criticism to the time in which he lived. He had not written much within the genre of the historical novel – with the exception of Barnaby Rudge (1841), a novelistic account of the anti-Catholic “Gordon Riots” of 1780. Dickens may have found part of his inspiration for writing A Tale of Two Cities in his reading of Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History (1837), but he went beyond his sources in telling a story that could be a tale of any period of turbulence.

Returning to A Tale of Two Cities now, after many prior readings of the book, I find that it may be the most well-written of all Dickens’s books. Dickens was sometimes criticized for writing too quickly, and in too prolix a manner – tendencies that may have been exacerbated by the fact that he was often publishing his novels in serial format – but A Tale of Two Cities is marked by countless passages of careful, graceful composition that make it a real pleasure to read. A good example of mellifluous writing that makes a vitally important thematic point is the novel’s justly famous introduction:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way… (p. 1).

The use of anaphora (repetition as a rhetorical device) in this passage is poetic, well-known, and effective – and yet the reader will be missing an important point if they do not attend to what follows: “[I]n short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only” (p. 1). Writing in 1859, at a time when Great Britain had been experiencing a good deal of political, religious, and social tension, both on the home island and throughout the Empire, Dickens wanted to remind his readers that the time of the French Revolution is an important time, but is not so much a time of superlatives that the reader cannot turn to a serious consideration of the problems of their own time. The late 18th century was “the best of times” and “the worst of times.” The year 1859, when this novel was written, was also “the best of times” and “the worst of times.” So is today.

Many readers and critics have remarked on the idea that A Tale of Two Cities seems to be among the darker and grimmer of Dickens’s novels – an inevitability, perhaps, considering the serious subject matter. Certainly, from the novel’s prologue that is set in the year 1775, Dickens successfully establishes an air of menace.

As the novel begins, bank manager Jarvis Lorry has just received a message from one of his employees, Jerry Cruncher. “He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read – first to himself and then aloud: ‘Wait at Dover for Ma’amselle.…Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE’” (p. 11). The person who has been “recalled to life” is Dr. Alexandre Manette, a great physician who has been imprisoned for 18 years by France’s royal government because he denounced two members of the aristocratic Evrémonde family for their cruelty.

Jarvis Lorry accompanies Dr. Manette’s grown daughter Lucie Manette to Paris to see her father. The newly released Dr. Manette shows signs of the trauma of his imprisonment – when under stress, he will turn to obsessively making shoes, as shoe-making was the occupation forced upon him during his imprisonment – and Jarvis Lorry brings Dr. Manette and Lucie back to London for their own safety.

The action of the novel then moves forward five years, to 1780, when Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who has moved to Great Britain because of his opposition to the cruel policies of the French regime, is falsely accused of treason against the British Crown. His defence attorney demolishes the perjured testimony of a prosecution witness, and thereby the prosecution’s entire case, by directing assistant barrister Sydney Carton to take off his wig, showing that Carton looks just like Darnay! Well! I’ll wager they don’t teach that legal tactic at Oxford or Cambridge!

Carton and Darnay make an interesting pair, a study in contrasts. Darnay is straightforward, gentlemanly, and correct; Carton seems neglectful and studiedly rude, although the alert reader will notice Carton’s constant concern for others. One sees these characteristics of both men after Darnay’s acquittal at the treason trial, when Carton notices that Darnay is feeling faint, and takes him to a nearby pub: “Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully insolent manner upon him” (p. 86).

The pub to which Carton takes Darnay is widely identified as the Cheshire Cheese Pub (145 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2B), a favourite hangout of Dickens; under glass is a copy of the novel, opened to this passage. If you’re a fellow fan of the novel, check it out; the fish-and-chips are first-rate, and would go well with a Bass Ale.

Darnay’s past is complex. He is the nephew of an Evrémonde marquis who embodies the arrogance and cruelty of the ancient regime; but Darnay has rejected his aristocratic heritage, choosing instead to make a modest living teaching French in England.

Darnay has also found love with Lucie Manette – and one of the many affecting features of the novel is Sydney Carton’s unrequited love for Lucie Manette. In a moving passage, Carton asks to be able to visit from time to time with the Darnay family, like a sort of poor relation. Telling Lucie that she is the source of what little good he sees in himself, Carton adds that “For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you, and for those dear to you” (p. 158). The foreshadowing in this passage is self-evident.

So far, so good. Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette raise their daughter in peace, and look after Lucie’s much-recovered father – albeit under humble circumstances – and Sydney Carton hangs about the house from time to time, enjoying vicariously the domestic peace that is not his to enjoy. But then the French Revolution intervenes.

There is plenty of foreshadowing of what is to come in the Revolution. In a rough part of Paris, the reader is taken into the wine-shop of a couple named Defarge. Monsieur Defarge, with his brag and bluster, makes much of planning to cut aristocratic throats when the Revolution comes; but it is his wife Madame Defarge, always at her knitting, who emerges as the true figure of menace. It quickly becomes apparent that Madame Defarge’s knitting is not simply the work of a dutiful French wife; rather, it is G-2, counterintelligence, a chronicling of every bit of titled, “noble” misbehaviour that Madame Defarge intends to see repaid in blood. Madame Defarge is much feared, even by her fellow revolutionaries, and for good reason.

Dickens, as mentioned above, seems to have depended much upon Thomas Carlyle’s three-volume The French Revolution: A History (1837) in his depiction of that tumultuous period of modern history. A number of scholars have pointed out how the passages of A Tale of Two Cities dealing with the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 show Carlyle’s influence – but Carlyle or no Carlyle, these passages show Dickens’s gift for conveying scene and action in exceptionally vivid language, as a “raging sea” of revolutionaries converges on the feared prison that once embodied the old regime’s power to inflict torment and misery:

Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke, but, still the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking wagon-loads of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers…. (p. 224)

It is widely known nowadays, of course, that only seven prisoners were liberated when the Bastille fell; but Dickens makes a point of noting that the “Seven prisoners released” are complemented by “seven gory heads on pikes” (p. 230) – a foretaste of the much greater bloodshed that is to come. And in the aftermath of the fortress’s fall, Monsieur Defarge makes a fateful discovery that will threaten the lives of many of the novel’s characters.

Darnay, although safe in England, feels obliged to return to Paris to seek relief for a minor member of the Evrémonde household who has been detained on Darnay’s behalf. The entire family proceeds to Paris, with Doctor Manette confident that, as a former prisoner of the regime, with unimpeachable Revolutionary credentials, he will be able to protect Charles and Lucie and their little daughter. His invocation of his past sufferings frees Charles from detention once, but then Charles is re-arrested, and Doctor Manette is told that his history is no longer relevant: “Citizen Doctor…ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme” (p. 303).

Madame Defarge expresses her intent to bring about not only Darnay’s death but that of his wife and child as well. For her, clearly, only a Carthaginian peace will do; the innocent must die to settle the blood-guilt of their elders. And Sydney Carton – hard-drinking, ill-mannered Sydney Carton, who has always despised himself as someone whose personal weaknesses blasted his considerable potential – sees that he may be the only one with the power to preserve the good.

The concluding line of the novel is one of the most famous, and one of the best, in all of literature: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known” (p. 389).

I returned to A Tale of Two Cities in the context of a recent visit to Paris. Whilst there, I seized the opportunity to take the Eurostar train under the English Channel and up to London. There have been many times in history when travelling between these two cities was a risky thing, for a variety of reasons. Today, by contrast, a journey from Gare du Nord railway station in Paris to St. Pancras International in London takes 2 hours and 18 minutes. So often these two great cities, London and Paris, have been linked in history and culture; and my rail journey through the “Chunnel” reminded me of the most famous, and to my mind the greatest, literary linkage of Paris and London – Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.

چند وقت پیش از این خواندم که مردم در سال‌های قرن 19 چه قدر منتظر بخش‌های جدید داستان‌های دیکنز بودند. دیکنز بعضی رمان‌ها را به صورت تکه‌تکه منتشر می‌کرد و باید برای فصل‌های جدید داستان منتظر می‌ماندی. داستان‌هایش علاوه بر انگلستان، در بقیه اروپا هم خوانده می‌شد. حتی گاهی دامنه خوانندگانش از قاره اروپا هم فراتر می‌رفت و در قاره‌ دیگری مثل آمریکا هم بی‌نهایت طرفدار داشت. داستان مشهوری است که صدها نفر از مردم آمریکا، در بندری جمع شده بودند که کشتی، آخرین بخش از رمانِ «عتیقه‌فروشی قدیمی» (همان رمانی که معمولا از آن با «دختری به نام نل» یاد می‌کنند) را به آمریکا می‌آورد و بی‌تابانه منتظر بودند که پایان این رمان را بخوانند و ببینند که چه بر سر نل می‌آید و آیا او زنده می‌ماند و یا می‌میرد...

if there was a Most Classic-Seeming Classic Book award...this might win

Υπάρχουν οι συγγραφείς που γράφουν ευπώλητα βιβλία, υπάρχουν αυτοί που γράφουν ιστορικά μυθιστορήματα και άλλοι που γράφουν ιστορίες μυστηρίου. Βεβαίως, δεν μπορούμε να παραβλέψουμε τους δημιουργούς που εστιάζουν στις ιστορίες αγάπης ή δίνουν έμφαση στο δραματικό στοιχείο.
Υπάρχουν λοιπόν όλοι οι παραπάνω και υπήρχε και ο Ντίκενς. Ένας δημιουργός που είχε καταφέρει να συνδυάσει στα μεγάλα του μυθιστορήματα όλες τις παραπάνω "κατηγορίες" φτιάχνοντας διαχρονικά αριστουργήματα τα οποία εκτός από την αντοχή τους στο χρόνο τα χαρακτηρίζει και μια ανυπέρβλητη συγγραφική κομψότητα.
Στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο ο Ντίκενς μας μεταφέρει στην εποχή της Γαλλικής ��πανάστασης. Δύο πόλεις, δύο λαοί και πλήθος βασικών αλλά και δευτερευόντων χαρακτήρων βιώνουν με τον δικό τους τρόπο την επανάσταση που άλλαξε κατά πολύ την ιστορία της Γαλλίας και εν μέρει της Ευρώπης. Η ιστορία ξεκινάει με ένα τραγικό γεγονός. Την απελευθέρωση ενός γιατρού από τις φυλακές της Βαστίλης όπου κρατούνταν για περίπου 18 χρόνια. Ο γιατρός μεταφέρεται σε ένα ασφαλές μέρος αλλά η προσωπικότητα του έχει αλλοιωθεί από την πολυετή φυλάκιση αλλά και τις επιπτώσεις αυτής στην προσωπική του ζωή. Τα γεγονότα που ακολουθούν σχηματίζουν μια αλυσιδωτή αντίδραση μέχρι το εξαιρετικό φινάλε, που παρόλο που έχει μια δόση υπερβολής και ρέπει προς το χάπι εντ είναι εντέλει απόλυτα ταιριαστό με το ΄ντικενσιανό ύφος.
Ο λόγος του Ντίκενς είναι άλλοτε λυρικός άλλοτε περιγραφικός αλλά σε καμία περίπτωση το κείμενο δε βαραίνει δημιουργώντας προσκόμματα στον αναγνώστη. Το αντίθετο μάλιστα, οι παρομοιώσεις και οι περιγραφές του συγγραφέα μας βοηθούν να μεταφερθούμε στην καρδιά των γεγονότων και να κατανοήσουμε σε βάθος τα αισθήματα και τις αντιδράσεις των χαρακτήρων.
Κάπου εδώ αξίζει να αναφέρουμε και το σχόλιο του Ντίκενς σχετικά με τη Γαλλική επανάσταση, που μάλλον μπορούμε κάλλιστα να το γενικεύσουμε για κάθε είδους επανάσταση των λαϊκών στρωμάτων ανά τους αιώνες. Η καταπίεση και η εξουθένωση οδήγησε τον λαό της Γαλλίας στο να πάρει τα όπλα να ξεσηκωθεί, να δώσει τα πάντα για έναν αγώνα που είχε σαν βάσεις την Ισότητα, την Ελευθερία και την Αδελφότητα. Σταδιακά ο αγώνας αυτός έχασε σταδιακά τον αρχικό του χαρακτήρα και εξελίχθηκε σε ένα λουτρό αίματος με πρωταγωνίστρια την "Αγία Γκιλοτίνα". Λάθος άτομα, χωρίς κρίση χωρίς παιδεία πήραν αξιώματα και απέκτησαν εξουσία με αποτέλεσμα να εκτελούνται σωρηδόν αθώοι και ένοχοι μαζί. Στην τελική, δεν μπορεί ένας αγώνας που έχει ως σύνθημα την Ελευθερία να βάφεται από το αίμα αθώων και τα λαϊκά δικαστήρια να αποφασίζουν για τις τύχες πολιτών. Ας μην ξεχνάμε πως ένα πλήθος πωρωμένων επαναστατών χωρίς κρίση, έστειλε στην γκιλοτίνα ένα από τα πιο λαμπρά μυαλά που έχει αναδείξει η ανθρωπότητα, τον Αντουάν Λαβουαζιέ με τη δικαιολογία πως "η δημοκρατία δε χρειάζεται την επιστήμη"...
Εν κατακλείδι, το βιβλίο είναι ένα ταξίδι σε μια εποχή ταραγμένη και ανάμεσα σε δύο από τις πιο ιστορικές πόλεις της Ευρώπης που είμαι βέβαιος πως δε θα απογοητεύσει ακόμα και τους πιο απαιτητικούς αναγνώστες!

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