by Jules Verne
41 (p. 281 ) “On the 11th and 12th Prairal of the second year”: Prairal is the period of time between May 20 and June 18 marked on the French revolutionary calendar. Acting against Catholic tradition, the National Convention adopted a new calendar, in which years were numbered not from the birth of Christ but from the day the French Republic was proclaimed, September 22, 1792. Months were given names that evoked their season. Prairal (prairie is French for “meadow”) was the ninth month of this new calendar, which was abandoned in 1806.
42 . (p. 290) that strange region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, ... “that veiled human figure, ... which defends the approach to the pole”: Verne greatly admired American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s style and craft. Many Verne scholars believe Verne got the idea for his first novel Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) from Poe’s 1850 story “The Balloon Hoax.” Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) ends with a description similar to the one Verne gives here. Poe’s 1841 short story “A Descent into the Maelstrom” has much in common with the final scene of Verne’s novel.
Inspired by
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Science Fiction
Oscar Wilde is said to have remarked, somewhat cryptically, that H. G. Wells was a “scientific Jules Verne.” It is hard to know who Wilde wished to slight more by his comment, but it has long been evident that Verne and Wells are the two progenitors of modern science fiction. Without these two seminal authors, scientific fiction—a genre that includes works by Kingsley Amis, Isaac Asimov, Anthony Burgess, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and J. R. R. Tolkien—would not exist as we know it today.
Herbert George Wells supported himself with teaching, textbook writing, and journalism until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-classic novel The Time Machine. He followed this before the end of the century with The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds—books that established him as the first original voice since Verne in the genre of scientific fiction. However, while Verne dealt with realistic scientific phenomena—for example, the submarine Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea predates the modern submarine—Wells was interested in, as Jorge Luis Borges put it, “mere possibilities, if not impossible things.” Time travel, interplanetary warfare, invisibility—these are the stuff of Wells’s conceptual fiction.
Wells disliked being compared to his literary ancestor. In a letter to J. L. Garvin, editor of Outlook, Wells refused to attack Verne publicly, though in a letter he openly denied having been influenced by him: “A good deal of injustice has been done the old man [Verne] in comparison with me. I don’t like the idea of muscling into the circle of attention about him with officious comments or opinions eulogy. I’ve let the time when I might have punished him decently go by.” Wells was a prolific and diverse writer, tackling social philosophy and criticism, history, utopian and comic novels, literary parodies, and even feminism; but he is best remembered for his auspicious beginnings as a science fiction writer.
Film
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was adapted into film as early as 1905, with an eighteen-minute silent. A feature-length silent adaptation, directed by Stuart Paton and released in 1916, includes plot elements from Verne’s later novel The Mysterious Island, which delves into Captain Nemo’s past as the Indian Prince Dakkar. Paton’s film features elaborate underwater photography that is impressive for its time.
A wave of Jules Verne film adaptations appeared in the 1950s, including Around the World in 80 Days (1956), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer, showcases many of the day’s biggest stars: Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason in the role of Captain Nemo, and Paul Lukas as Pierre Aronnax. Despite its camp flavor, this version stands as the definitive adaptation of the novel, the standard to which all others are compared. After more than half a century, the squid attack scene, accomplished solely though the use of puppets, remains intense and compelling. The film won Academy Awards for special effects and art direction. Though key plot elements differ, it remains true to the spirit of the book and faithfully conveys Verne’s ideals of science, brotherhood, and vengeance.
A Hanna-Barbera animated version of the novel appeared in 1973, and two live-action television versions were broadcast in 1997. Rod Hardy’s version runs four hours and stars Michael Caine as Captain Nemo, Patrick Dempsey as Pierre Aronnax, Bryan Brown as Ned Land, and Mia Sara as Nemo’s reclusive daughter Mara. Michael Anderson’s television version, which stars Richard Crenna as Pierre Aronnax, Ben Cross as Captain Nemo, and Paul Gross as Ned Land, adds new elements: Rather than utilizing the traditional male assistant, in this film Professor Aronnax smuggles on board his young daughter disguised as a man. Captain Nemo and the Nautilus enter later, allowing time for the film to develop before the show-stopping seacraft and its captain appear.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Artist and comics author Alan Moore, a fan of nineteenth-century adventure yarns, assembled an all-star cast of Victorian-era protagonists in his two-volume graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2000, 2003). Moore teamed Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea hero Captain Nemo with Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines; Hawley Griffin, a.k.a. H. G. Wells’s Invisible Man; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and his alternate persona Mr. Hyde; and Mina Murray (née Harker) from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (The 2003 film adaptation takes many liberties with the original comic, adding Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer to the cast.) Allan Quatermain leads this motley band of heroes as they try to stop a notorious villain from firebombing London’s East End. Captain Nemo provides the team with his unprecedented mode of transport, the Nautilus, which he pilots through the channels of Venice, among other exotic environs. In the end, the villain turns out to be none other than Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’s arch nemesis. In the second volume of Moore’s comic book, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars expert John Carter (from John Carter of Mars) helps the band of heroes as the interplanetary conflict of Wells’s The War of the Worlds unfolds.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
R. H. SHERARD
“The great regret of my life is that I have never taken any place in French literature.”
As the old man said this his head drooped, and a ring of sadness sounded in the cheerful and hearty voice.
“Je ne compte pas dans la litterature Française,” he repeated. Who was it who spoke thus, with drooping head, and with a ring of sadness in his cheerful voice? Some writer of cheap but popular feuilletons for the halfpenny press, some man of letters who has never made a scruple of stating that he looks upon his pen as a money-getting implement, and who has always preferred to glory and honor a large account at the cash office of the Society of French Men of Letters? No; strange, monstrous, as it will appear, it was none other than Jules Verne. Yes, Jules Verne, the Jules Verne, your Jules Verne and mine, who has delighted us all the world over for so many years, and who will delight the world for generations and generations to come.
It was in the cool withdrawing-room of the Société Industrielle at Amiens that the master said these words, and I shall never forget the tone of sadness in which he s
aid them. It was like the confession of a wasted life, the sigh of an old man over what can never be recalled. It was to me a poignant sorrow to hear him speak thus, and all that I could do was to say, with no unfeigned enthusiasm, that he was to me and millions like me, a great master, the subject of our unqualified admiration and respect, the novelist who delights many of us more than all the novelists that have ever taken pen in hand. But he only shook his gray head and said: “I do not count in French literature.”
—from McClure’s Magazine (January 1894)
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
I can’t help fancying that, once he has got his story fairly planned and put together, Jules Verne careers on the paper with the most flagrant and detestable vivacity. Of human nature it is certain he knows nothing; and it is almost with a sense of relief that one finds, in these sophisticated days a good trotting-horse of an author who whistles by the way and affects to know nothing of the mysteries of the human heart. Once, indeed, he has gone out of his way, and with perfect ill-success: his Captain Nemo, of the undying hatred and the Scotch impromptus, is a memorable warning. But his extraordinary stock-in-trade consists of several somewhat time-worn dolls: scientific people with bald heads, and humorous seamen of indescribable fidelity. His marionettes are all athletic and all virtuous. I do not remember any bad character in his gallery, or one who was not afraid. “If I sought to despair, I could not,” says Professor Aronnax, referring to a very ticklish moment of his life. And his confidence was not misplaced. Jules Verne has the point of honour of a good ship-captain, and holds himself permanently responsible for the lives of all the crew. A few anonymous persons may perish by the way, lest we should think too lightly of the perils; but so soon as a man has been referred to by name, he bears a charmed existence and will turn up at the last page in good health and animal spirits.
—The Academy (June 3, 1876)
CURRENT OPINION
The most widely-known exploitation of the so-called “scientific” imagination is embodied in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” In our time, when the use of the imagination in science is made so much of by men like Sir Oliver Lodge and J. J. Thomson, it is important to consider every available test of the factor in question. It is often held that the use of the imagination in science is dangerous because of the tendency to “false” ideas. For example, the late Professor Becquerel complained that the “scientific” romances of Jules Verne filled the popular mind with the sheer delusions on the whole subject of applied science. He deemed the Frenchman, in fact, the natural father of pseudo-science, one of the intellectual perils of his age. The subject has been taken up from a severely practical standpoint by that high authority on the submarine, Doctor C. H. Bedell, who has had over twenty years’ experience with this type of vessel. He observes at the outset, in the Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, that as far as the handling of a submarine is concerned, the boats of the present day are as perfect as the Nautilus of Jules Verne’s story. They make his fancy fact.
We may even, if we so desire, make our boat so that when it is at rest submerged a man with a diving helmet may pass from it into the sea and, entirely disconnected from the submarine or the surface, explore the ocean floor for an hour or more, as Captain Nemo of the Nautilus did. That such construction is not used is due to the fact that there seems to be no material need for such operations. The Nautilus was driven by electricity. We also use electricity when running submerged, but we obtain our electricity from storage batteries, whereas Captain Nemo obtained his from the sea. The great difference between fiction and reality in this case is that the Nautilus was able to go around the world with one supply of energy, while we are obliged to come to the surface after one or two hundred miles for the purpose of recharging our storage batteries....
Viewing the prophetic submarine of Jules Verne as a whole, in the light of practical experience with the reality, it is clear that the author of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” has vindicated all that is said to-day regarding the use of the imagination in science. The denunciations of Verne by contemporary scientists are seen to have been unwarranted. He did not deal in pseudo-science. He conveyed no false idea. He erred on points of detail in the application of principle. His romance is something more than “mere literature.” It is a substantial value of the poetical in science, a proof of the contention that the imagination of the French is essentially scientific as distinguished from the imagination of the English which is in the main poetical.
Finally, the romance goes far to justify the contention that the imagination is on the whole a more reliable faculty than the intelligence, seeing that when Verne applied his intelligence alone to the solution of a practical problem in his work he went astray but he made no essential error when he depended upon his imaginative faculty.
—February 1918
H. G. WELLS
The interest Verne invoked was a practical one; he wrote and believed and told that this or that thing could be done, which was not at that time done. He helped his reader to imagine it done and to realise what fun, excitement or mischief would ensue. Many of his inventions have ‘come true.’
—from his preface to Seven Famous Novels (1934)
PAUL VALÉRY
What would or could such a maker of imaginary worlds as Jules Verne or H. G. Wells do today? Note that although they invented imaginary worlds, neither of them attempted anything on the intellectual side. For example, they made no effort to imagine the arts of the future. The celebrated Captain Nemo, as everyone knows, plays the organ in his Nautilus at the bottom of the ocean, and what he plays is the music of Bach or Handel. Jules Verne did not foresee our electronic music, nor did he think up new combinations or compositions, nor some yet unknown kind of aesthetics.
—from History and Politics (1962; translated by Denise Folliot and Jackson Mathews)
ROLAND BARTHES
All the ships in Jules Verne are perfect cubby-holes, and the vastness of their circumnavigation further increases the bliss of their closure, the perfection of their inner humanity. The Nautilus, in this regard, is the most desirable of all caves.
—from Mythologies (1972; translated by Annette Lavers)
Questions
1. Does it matter that Jules Verne predicted more or less accurately some discoveries and scientific events? After all, the audience of his own time did not know that his predictions would come true, yet he was immensely popular.
2. Commenting about Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Of human nature it is certain he knows nothing.” Is that fair criticism? What’s the evidence either way?
3. Just what is the appeal of these scientific romances? Are they fantasies of escape from the quotidian? A de-familiarization of the world that makes it seem fresh? Are they of the same interest to all ages and both sexes?
4. Is Captain Nemo intelligible on the basis of the information given about him in the novel? Do we really understand his motivations? As Victoria Blake discusses in her introduction, Verne and his editor removed background information on Nemo from the original manuscript. Would the novel have been better if this material had remained? Or does the mystery of Nemo add to the appeal of the novel?
For Further Reading
Biographies
Allott, Kenneth. Jules Verne. New York: Macmillan, 1941.
Allotte de la Fuÿe, Marguerite. Jules Verne. Translated by Erik de Mauny. London: Staples Press, 1954. Written by Verne’s great-niece, this was the first biography about Verne and the primary source for many early students of the author. The book, though very entertaining, has been proven to be riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and hyperbole that work to uphold Verne’s reputation more than the facts of his life.
Verne, Jean-Jules. Jules Verne. Translated by Roger Greaves. New York: Taplinger, 1976. Written by the author’s grandson.
Scholarship and Criticism
Evans, Arthur B. Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Nov
el. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Heavy on theory and textual deconstruction, this book is a good academic primer on Verne, and worth the read.
Lynch, Lawrence W. Jules Verne. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Occupies an intelligent and informed ground between academic investigation and biography.
Martin, Andrew. The Mask of the Prophet: The Extraordinary Fictions of Jules Verne. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1990.
For Young Readers
Schoell, William. Remarkable Journeys: The Story of Jules Verne. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 2002.
Teeters, Peggy. Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow. New York: Walker, 1992.
Other Works Used in the Preparation of the Introduction and the Notes
Grann, David. “A Reporter at Large: The Squid Hunter.” New Yorker, May 24, 2004.
Lottman, Herbert R. Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Verne, Jules. The Complete Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A New Translation of Jules Verne’s Science Fiction Classic. Introduction, translation, and annotations by Emanuel J. Mickel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
—. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: The Definitive Unabridged Edition Based on the Original French Texts.
Translated and annotated by Walter James Miller and Frederick