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Tales Of The Caucasus - The Ball of Snow and Sultanetta
"The Ball of Snow" is a travelogue written by Alexandre Dumas, first published in 1903. It is a chronicle of his 1858 trip across the Caucasus, and details his experiences hunting, attending Russian dances, skirting around battles, and braving the harsh elements. An enjoyable and interesting read, "The Ball of Snow" is highly recommended for fans of travel writing. "Sultanetta" is a novella inspired by a classic Russian novel. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a famous French writer. He is best remembered for his exciting romantic sagas, including "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo". Despite making a great deal of money from his writing, Dumas was almost perpetually penniless thanks to his extravagant lifestyle. His novels have been translated into nearly a hundred different languages, and have inspired over 200 motion pictures. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing this classic book in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
372 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1859
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145 people want to read
About the author
Alexandre Dumas
6,002 books12.6k followersThis note regards Alexandre Dumas, père, the father of Alexandre Dumas, fils (son). For the son, see Alexandre Dumas fils.
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
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October 16, 2020
Había podido comprobar la maestría de Dumas para narrar historias en la inmensa El conde de Montecristo, novela cuasi infinita que impone respeto por su tamaño y avidez por su contenido. En este caso leí estas Leyendas del cáucaso y la estepa con la confianza de conocer el terreno en el que me adentraba. Y debo decir que no defraudó. Cuando leo a este autor, que si bien gozó de fama en vida, no tuvo un lugar tan alto como otros novelistas del siglo XIX como Tolstoi, Balzac, Jane Austen, por poner un ejemplo. Casi estaría, a juicios de sus contemporáneos emparentado con Melville, con la salvedad de que el norteamericano pudo conseguir en el siglo XX el lugar central en la literatura estadounidense que nunca se le debió negar.
En cambio cuando se habla de Dumas siempre se cae en juicios que se emparentan más con la literatura pasatista, burguesa, ligera. Si es verdad que Dumas busca divertir a su público (y por qué no ganar dinero con la publicación de sus libros), y no desgranar el fondo del alma humana como sí lo hacen las novelas del subsuelo de Dostoievsky o el mismo Melville. Pero en esa búsqueda de diversión narra historias que tocan conciencias, esbozan vicios y logros de personajes que se vuelven personas y parte nuestra. No dejo de asombrarme lo hermoso que resulta leer historias bien narradas (ante todo, algo bastante difícil en la mayorías de los contemporáneos, demasiado influenciados con las crisis en la que dejó el Stream of conciousness a la novela contemporánea) y que además gozan de un contenido sólido (a diferencia, de nuevo, de las infinitas pajas mentales de los autores que no pueden salir de su propio ombligo). Deberemos reubicar a Dumas dentro de un cánon más justo de autores. O reencauzar lo que se considera "literatura juvenil", quitándole el peso peyorativo para emparentarlo con literatura de aprendizaje, crecimiento o enriquecimiento del alma.
¿Y qué hay en este libro que me maravilló tanto? Solamente el simple goce de narrar tres historias que se ubican en los márgenes occidentales del Imperio Ruso de los zares. La primera historia cuenta la historia fantástica de un juramento de los señores de un castillo para con sus vasallos que trasciende las generaciones, y que se emparenta en parte con las narraciones de fantasmas victorianas. La segunda historia se ubica en los márgenes del Mar Negro frente a una devastadora sequía que asola a una región. Solo un héroe casto y puro puede salvar a la región del desastre, pero impone condiciones de matrimonio a un santurrón musulmán que de ningún modo quiere entregar a su sobrina a candidato tan pobre. La tercera historia se interna en el Volga profundo en el que traza pinceladas muy fuertes de todo tipo de excesos entre los que vivió un príncipe boyardo, al borde de la extinción de su sangre, casta social y alma. Una triste historia que trama un destino fatídico pero no por eso menos atractivo de leer.
Recomiendo este libro para vacaciones o para olvidar la intensidad de los días en el año de la pandemia que no termina de cesar. Espero que quienes gusten leer este libro por mi recomendación dialoguen conmigo en algún momento porque el goce de Dumas de escribir / narrar historias era compartir vivencias con otros. Siento cada vez más fuerte el impulso de compartir cada vez que llega uno de estos libros a mis manos. Si bien la lectura impone una situación similar al ostracismo (soledad, silencio, concentración), hay hábitos que ella genera que tienen más que ver con lo colectivo, en engarzarse en una comunidad y aprender, mejorar, crecer.
Espero encontrarlos en estos libros y en diálogos posteriores.
En cambio cuando se habla de Dumas siempre se cae en juicios que se emparentan más con la literatura pasatista, burguesa, ligera. Si es verdad que Dumas busca divertir a su público (y por qué no ganar dinero con la publicación de sus libros), y no desgranar el fondo del alma humana como sí lo hacen las novelas del subsuelo de Dostoievsky o el mismo Melville. Pero en esa búsqueda de diversión narra historias que tocan conciencias, esbozan vicios y logros de personajes que se vuelven personas y parte nuestra. No dejo de asombrarme lo hermoso que resulta leer historias bien narradas (ante todo, algo bastante difícil en la mayorías de los contemporáneos, demasiado influenciados con las crisis en la que dejó el Stream of conciousness a la novela contemporánea) y que además gozan de un contenido sólido (a diferencia, de nuevo, de las infinitas pajas mentales de los autores que no pueden salir de su propio ombligo). Deberemos reubicar a Dumas dentro de un cánon más justo de autores. O reencauzar lo que se considera "literatura juvenil", quitándole el peso peyorativo para emparentarlo con literatura de aprendizaje, crecimiento o enriquecimiento del alma.
¿Y qué hay en este libro que me maravilló tanto? Solamente el simple goce de narrar tres historias que se ubican en los márgenes occidentales del Imperio Ruso de los zares. La primera historia cuenta la historia fantástica de un juramento de los señores de un castillo para con sus vasallos que trasciende las generaciones, y que se emparenta en parte con las narraciones de fantasmas victorianas. La segunda historia se ubica en los márgenes del Mar Negro frente a una devastadora sequía que asola a una región. Solo un héroe casto y puro puede salvar a la región del desastre, pero impone condiciones de matrimonio a un santurrón musulmán que de ningún modo quiere entregar a su sobrina a candidato tan pobre. La tercera historia se interna en el Volga profundo en el que traza pinceladas muy fuertes de todo tipo de excesos entre los que vivió un príncipe boyardo, al borde de la extinción de su sangre, casta social y alma. Una triste historia que trama un destino fatídico pero no por eso menos atractivo de leer.
Recomiendo este libro para vacaciones o para olvidar la intensidad de los días en el año de la pandemia que no termina de cesar. Espero que quienes gusten leer este libro por mi recomendación dialoguen conmigo en algún momento porque el goce de Dumas de escribir / narrar historias era compartir vivencias con otros. Siento cada vez más fuerte el impulso de compartir cada vez que llega uno de estos libros a mis manos. Si bien la lectura impone una situación similar al ostracismo (soledad, silencio, concentración), hay hábitos que ella genera que tienen más que ver con lo colectivo, en engarzarse en una comunidad y aprender, mejorar, crecer.
Espero encontrarlos en estos libros y en diálogos posteriores.
October 24, 2015
This is such a silly text. The second novella, Sultanetta, is basically copied from an existing Russian novel and Dumas simply took it. The first, Ball of Snow, is a clear reflection of Dumas' romp through the Caucasus and a collection of tropes. These tropes reflect the huge history of the travel narrative, and this makes this text even more fun to read. Highly enjoyable, 4 stars.
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