The Black Tulip

The Black Tulip is a historical novel and Romantic poetry, written by Alexandre Dumas, père.

For other uses, see The Black Tulip (disambiguation).
The Black Tulip
AuthorAlexandre Dumas
Original titleLa Tulipe Noire
CountryFrance
LanguageTranslated from French
GenreHistorical, Romantic
PublisherBaudry, Paris 1850
Publication date
French 1850
Pages234 p. (Penguin Classics Edition)
ISBN978-0-14-044892-4 (Penguin Classics Edition)
OCLC51528417
843/.7 22
LC ClassPQ2229.T8 E5 2003

Story

It begins with a historical event – at 1672 lynching of the Dutch Grand Pensionary, John de Witt and his brother Cornelius, by the countrymen, because they were considered rebels against the stadtholder William of Orange.

During these events there was the tulip's fever across the Netherlands. In this scenarios, the main fictional character – Cornelius Van Baerle, belonged to the natural school, whose motto was: "To despise flowers is to offend God", and thus followed the syllogism:

"To despise flowers is to offend God,

The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offend God in despising it,

The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers,

Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond measure". (p. 46, The Black Tulip)

The city of Haarlem had set the prize of 100,000 francs to whom could grow a black tulip. It was at stake not only the money, but fame and honour. Also, the gardener would perpetuate his name in History by the tulip's recorded name.

The prosperous Cornelius Van Baerle, godson of Cornelius de Witt, starts the liking of growing tulips in his state. Then he takes the challenge of growing the black tulip. But as an act of misfortune, his neighbour, Isaac Boxtel – also a gardener – watches his every moves, and fearing his success, starts plotting. Followed by unsuccessful schemings, Boxtel moved by envy, denounces Van Baerle to Justice, because of his relation to the brothers De Witt, traitors of the nation then.

Van Baerle is suddenly arrested, and condemned to perpetual prision. The author of the book highly uses religious beliefs at the drama, words as "Fate", "Providence" and "Misfortune". The latter plays a major influence throughout Van Baerle's life events, but all at the end succumbs to be a major act of Providence. Shows that God is always in control, both in sadness as happiness.

Was in such an act, that Van Baerle meets the beautiful daughter of the jailer, Rosa Gryphus. Cornelius loses everything but had kept the bulbs of the tulips, that were expected to be black. In midst of loss and sorrows, Rosa helps him to grow the flower in the jail. The two develop a great love story, even though it was not the main subject, but love gives Cornelius courage to not give up his fancies and expectations. Rosa is seen by him as a brave and virtuous girl, not held by her father vices, but strong in her own pursuits.

The drama will elucidate how far an envious person can go; how the righteous ones are not forgotten by God; how in midst of misfortune a greater happiness is right ahead, and so love and flowers can grow within stone walls.

As Lovelace puts at "To Althea: From Prison": "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage". Van Baerle was free, even inside a prison he was faithful to his conscience. The guards could keep his hands, but not love from him moving forward. And the latter played a major role to prove his innocence.

The philosophy of the book is thus summed up: "Sometimes one has suffered so much that he has the right never to be able to say, ‘I am too happy.’” (p. 204 - The Black Tulip).

The novel was originally published in three volumes in 1850 as La Tulipe Noire by Baudry (Paris). A similarity of story may be seen in "The Count of Monte Cristo", by same author.

This book was official in france by Alexandre dumas in about 1850 and originally had 236 pages but soon it was converted into different sizes thus changing the pages.


Characters
  • William, Prince of Orange, afterward William III. King of England.
  • Louis XIV, King of France.
  • Cornelis de Witt, inspector of dikes at the Hague.
  • Johan de Witt, his brother, Grand Pensionary of Holland.
  • Colonel van Deeken, aide-de-camp to William of Orange.
  • Dr. Cornelius van Baerle, a tulip-fancier, godson of Cornelius de Witt.
  • Mynheer Isaac Boxtel, his rival.
  • Marquis de Louvois.
  • Count Tilly, Captain of the Cavalry of the Hague.
  • Mynheer Bowelt, deputy.
  • Mynheer d'Asperen, deputy.
  • The Recorder of the States.
  • Master van Spenser, a magistrate at Dort.
  • Tyckalaer, a surgeon at the Hague.
  • Gerard Dow.
  • Mynheer van Systens, Burgomaster of Haarlem and President of its Horticultural Society.
  • Craeke, a confidential servant of John de Witt.
  • Gryphus, a jailer, Rosa's father.
  • Rosa, his daughter, in love with Cornelius van Baerle.

Reception

George Saintsbury described the novel as "charming in parts", but felt that Dumas had spun the story out to "an unconscionable length".[1]

Adaptations

The first screen adaptation appears to have been a silent 1921 Dutch-UK co-production directed by Maurits Binger and Frank Richardson. Alex Bryce directed a well-regarded UK adaptation of the novel in 1937, with Patrick Waddington as Cornelus Van Baerle. A five-part BBC miniseries debuted in August 1956 with Douglas Wilmer in the lead role. A second British miniseries appeared in September 1970. In 1988, Australia's Burbank production company created a 50-minute children's animated film from a bowdlerised version of the story.

In 1963, a movie called La Tulipe noire with actor Alain Delon was produced in France, but was not based on the novel. There was also a short Finnish documentary made by Pacho Lane in 1988 called The Black Tulip, but it told the story of Soviet soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

A musical adaptation was written in 2004 by Kit Goldstein, and premiered at Union College in February 2005.

gollark: Actually, it downloads more RAM from GTech™.
gollark: It's a stack, of course.
gollark: `set! bees (lambda a {print 'macron!' a})`
gollark: Also that.
gollark: Macron uses all of proc, fn, fun, func, def, define and procedure.

See also

References
  1. The Fortnightly Review. Chapman and Hall. 1878. pp. 533.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.