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ОглавлениеINTRODUCTION
At a time when Jules Verne is making a comeback in the United States as a mainstream literary figure, one of his most brilliant and famous novels remains unavailable in English. Although half a dozen works carrying the title “The Mysterious Island” are in print, all follow W. H. G. Kingston’s 1875 translation, which omits sections of the novel and ideologically skews other passages.1
The real Mysterious Island is nearly 200,000 words long. For Sidney Kravitz, this first-ever complete translation has been a long labor of love, resulting in a highly accurate text which captures every nuance and will be the reference text in English.
L’Ile mystérieuse (MI—1874–75) needs little presentation. In 1865 during the American Civil War, a violent storm sweeps a balloon carrying a group of Unionists to an island in the Pacific. After satisfying basic necessities, Cyrus Smith the engineer, Spilett the reporter, Pencroff the sailor, Harbert the adolescent, and Neb the Black find a single match and grain of wheat, and proceed to rebuild most of modern civilization. They construct a boat and rescue Ayrton from the neighboring island of Tabor, abandoned there as a punishment in Verne’s Captain Grant’s Children (1865) and now in an animal state. However, a series of puzzling incidents leads the settlers to believe they are not alone on the Mysterious Island, including a lead bullet and a washed-up chest. At the end of the novel, they discover that Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (1869) has been helping them all along. Nemo reveals his true name to be Prince Dakkar, then dies, and is entombed in his Nautilus. Following a volcanic eruption, the Island disintegrates, leaving just a small rock, from which the settlers are rescued.
Astoundingly, no scholarly edition has ever been produced of this rich and influential work in either French or English. Yet studying the real-world references and the inceptions of Verne’s other works has thrown up some amazing results in recent years. For what Roland Barthes once called “an almost perfect novel,”2 two distinct manuscripts have survived, together with two earlier drafts, published in 1991 under the title L’Oncle Robinson (“Uncle Robinson”). This annotated edition, then, studies MI in terms of its literary themes but especially its origins, including the four manuscripts and the correspondence between Verne and his publisher, Hetzel, published only in 1999.3
Verne’s imagination is fired by unique events. The dark continent, the poles, the interior of the earth, the dark side of the moon, the bottom of the ocean were unexplored when he began writing. Their two- or three-dimensional spaces were not only virgin, but were defined by a height, depth, or distance out or in. In each case a central point then represented a maximum exoticism, an ultima Thule. The first dozen novels in Verne’s series of Extraordinary Journeys exultantly explore these limits; these are the ones which sold the best and remain the best-known today.
But eventually the series runs out of room. A second period in the novelist’s production deals with less prestigious territories, and increasingly with social, political, and historical issues, in novels like Mathias Sandorf (1885), set in the Mediterranean, or North against South (1887), about the American Civil War. Other novels cover ground anew: three novels visit interplanetary space, three the Poles, half a dozen the air, and at least four the heart of Africa. Verne’s “Robinsonades,” or desert-island stories, are particularly numerous, including of course “Uncle Robinson” (“UR”) and MI, but also The School for Robinsons (1882), Two Years Vacation (1888), and Second Homeland (1900), as well as major parts of The Boy Captain (1878), “Edom” (1910), and “In the Magallanes” (1987).
The transition between periods is evasive, however. Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) forms both a last fling and a sign of the constraints of the new order. But it is itself a repetition, as Captain Grant’s Children and Twenty Thousand Leagues had already gone round the globe. Even while writing MI, Verne was working on The Chancellor (1874), which he describes as the archetypal shipwreck story, and Hector Servadac (1876), an inter-planetary Robinsonade. MI perhaps constitutes the final cul-de-sac of the exploration phase, for it represents an escape to the south Pacific but is enclosed in a island. The novel thus not only provides a gripping conclusion to the eight-volume trilogy started with Captain Grant’s Children and Twenty Thousand Leagues, but echoes all the preceding works and resoundingly closes the cycle.
At the time of composition, 1871–74, Verne’s life was turbulent. The Franco-Prussian War and occupation of 1870–71 had caused tremendous damage to the physical structure and confidence of France. Verne even thought of giving up literature, according to a letter to his publisher of 22 July 1871. Also, MI was his first book to be entirely written in Amiens, away from the bohemian stimulation of Paris where he had spent most of the previous twenty-three years.
Even before his first novel for Hetzel, in about 1862, Verne is reported to have said that he was going “to continue the tradition of Robinson Crusoe. It’s modern, it’s new, it’s scientific magic. If it succeeds, I’ll give everything up.”4 MI is the work with the longest incubation, the one Verne worked hardest at, and the longest in his series of the Extraordinary Journeys.
Although it reproduces the history of mankind, from living in caves to the most recent technology, MI can in no way be considered a science-fiction novel, if only since no new science is involved. The best pigeon-hole for it is simply Literature (French) (Nineteenth Century). The main interest of the novel derives indeed from its specifically literary interpretation—and undermining—of the Robinsonade, with repeated echoes of The Swiss Family Robinson (1812). The writer himself said: “MI must have been begun because I wished to tell the young boys of the world something about the marvels of the Pacific.” (Textes oubliés (1979), 385)
Verne’s sources are a complex area. Nor is this simply an exercise for academics keen to rescue obscure works from oblivion, since MI is defined by its relationship with its predecessors. The novelist is invariably writing “against” his influences as much as he is writing any positive “message”: imitating and “modernizing” his predecessors only in order to ironically show them up, as he himself emphasized.5 Indeed the previous Robinsonades include his own earlier works, but even earlier parts of the same work. MI is only one in a series of Vernian desert-island works that parody and satirize previous writers, each other, but above all themselves.
This introduction will study the correspondence during the difficult gestation period from 1865 to 1871; the manuscript of “UR” in relation to MI; Hetzel’s critical comments on MI; and the understanding of the novel generated by the knowledge of its writing. The characters will be studied, then the Island itself: first in terms of its shape and naming, then its ideological and geographical aspects, and lastly its many implausibilities. Finally, an attempt will be made to pull the threads together and make sense of the novel as a whole.
The correspondence between Verne and Hetzel is vital for understanding the novelist’s intentions and the often difficult relationship. Substantial extracts will accordingly be cited here, so that we can study the sequence of events:
[18 September 1865] I’m dreaming of a magnificent Robinson. It is absolutely necessary for me to do one, it’s stronger than me. Some wonderful ideas are coming to me, and if … it succeeds in bringing in just three times as much as The Swiss Family Robinson, you’ll be happy, and I will as well. If it isn’t for us, let it be for our children, and still we won’t complain … I’m thinking enormously of this new machine and I’m taking notes. (Corr., 35)
[14 July 1869] Next year, we’ll see, either I’ll begin the modern Robinson, or … (115–16)
[25 July 1869] As for the five Robinsons of M. Helouis, that doesn’t specially bother me. There have already been fifty Robinsons, and I believe [I] will stay outside of everything that has been done. (118)
[17? February 1870] I’m completely in the Robinson. I’m finding astonishing things …! I’ve plunged into it body and soul, and can’t think of anything else. (131)
[25? February 1870] If you want to announce some new Verne to the readers of the MER, can’t you do it without giving the title? … We’re snowed under, and my feet are frozen. The Robinson is going well, and it’s great fun to do. (132)
[14 May 1870] I’ve entirely written the 1st volume of “Uncle Robinson.” I’m in the middle of recopying it. (138)
On 20 June 1870, Hetzel announced publication in the MER for, we can deduce, the period 1871 to 1873:
“Uncle Robinson”—by Jules Verne / / We are happy to be able to announce to our subscribers that in addition to The Exploration of the World: Famous Travels and Travelers, M. Verne was preparing a surprise for us. / Under the title “Uncle Robinson,” the author of Captain Grant’s Children will give us in due course, so as to follow Twenty Thousand Leagues, a work destined to complement Captain Grant’s Children. For a truly original writer, exhausted information does not exist … It is evident that a modern Robinson, au fait with the progress of science, would solve the problems of life alone quite differently from Robinson Crusoe, the model for all those that followed him. / We do not wish to say any more about M. Verne’s book. Our readers will be able to read between the lines that on such a subject this inventive mind has been able to find and create new things of the most varied sort.
Hetzel’s evasive presentation in fact preceded his reading of the manuscript. Then came a twin thunderbolt. On 21 July 1870, the publisher wrote a 1,000-word letter, announcing the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and his opinion of Verne’s long-cherished project: “it’s a sketch, but the clay is too soft and too gray … [the characters] are not at present interesting … suppose Hugo doing this scene … your people get out of situations worse than the most innocent robinsons [sic] of the past” (Corr., 143–46).
Verne changed tack:
15 [February 1871] It’s not the Robinson that I’ve continued with. I need to discuss it with you again. You know that I stick to my ideas like a Breton. Yes, Paris did a Robinson on a grand scale. But that is the business of my second and third volumes and not the first. When you have three volumes to do … if you do not husband your effects and your climax you are lost. (154)
The correspondence, then, gives us important information about the desert-island project in its initial stages. We will now look at the resultant changes in the four drafts of the novel. These are of exceptional importance, since for Verne’s other novels the manuscripts seem to most accurately reflect his wishes, more than the serial and, a fortiori, the book versions. The publisher frequently had preconceptions as to the readership his novelist should be aiming for, the nature of what he should be writing, and its political, religious, and moral ideology. Many of the ideas even originated from Hetzel. We must, in other words, assume that the many changes, even those in Verne’s handwriting, were made under pressure. In any case, it is surprising that modern publishers have invariably followed Hetzel’s often short-sightedly commercial editing of Verne.
The only part of each manuscript of “UR” to have survived is the first out of three, perhaps because the others were never written. The plot of the second manuscript can be summarized as follows: on 25 March 1861, Americans Mr. and Mrs. Clifton, with their four children, Marc, Robert,6 Jack, and Belle, plus a dog called Fido, are heading home across the northern Pacific on board the Vankouver [sic]. However, some of the crew mutiny and take over the ship; and Mrs. Clifton and the children are put into a boat near an island. They are accompanied by Flip, a sailor from Picardy, who shows great affection, cheerfulness, ingenuity, and teaching skill, thus becoming “Uncle Robinson.” With Flip’s help the family discover a shelter and food, and start a fire with a single match. At a second stage, Harry Clifton, an engineer, escapes from the Vankouver and joins his family, although receiving less attention than Uncle Robinson. More ambitious ventures are carried out, like growing wheat and tobacco and exploring and measuring the island. An orang-utan is captured and a lake discovered containing a strange boiling, as well as a cock with a recently trimmed crest. Part I ends with the discovery of a lead bullet in a leveret. (Extracts from “UR” and further information appear on pp. xxxv–xxxviii.)
Even before its publication in 1991, “UR” aroused controversy as to its literary quality. As Christian Robin points out,7 its tone and style are unique in Verne’s works, undoubtedly because written for young people. It is also his only book to convincingly portray child psychology and a family without possessions succeeding on an island. The main reason Hetzel did not like it, Robin surmises (233), is that he disapproved of children in Verne’s works, perhaps because it was his own speciality as a writer. Philippe Burgaud finds the work pleasant and readable,8 for it is a highly polished, fluent work (it even has chapter heads for the initial chapters). Indeed Part I of MI, which is less gripping than Parts II and III, may be considered only slightly more interesting than “UR.” While Verne destroyed several manuscripts in 1886, his retention of both manuscripts of “UR” implies that he did not share his publisher’s negative view of it.
Nevertheless, Jean Guermonprez calls “UR” a “lemon” and Jean Jules-Verne, Olivier Dumas, and Jacques van Herp agree that it is unimaginative.9 “UR” certainly does not compare with the series of masterpieces Verne produced from 1863 to 1870, if only because “the Clifton family is too similar to the pedantic and edifying family” of Wyss.10
Verne proceeded to write the two surviving manuscripts of MI.11 While MI visibly derives from “UR,” it is also different in both style and content. Many phrases and even episodes are copied wholesale, but the characters are transformed, and instead of the four months of “UR,” Part I of MI covers seven months. In an interesting crossover, the margin of “UR” (“UR,” 54) contains a diagram showing the triangulation done in MI (I, 14),12 plus a first draft of the corresponding dialogue, including Cyrus Smith’s name (Robin, 237). In “UR” there is only one watch, but two are needed in MI for making the fire and for calculating the longitude. Episodes absent from “UR” include the mysterious saving of the engineer, the dog’s fight with the dugong, and the making of nitroglycerin. Contrariwise, the turning of the turtle and the acquisition of Jup are displaced from “UR” to Part II of MI. The huge amounts of science in MI are presumably a reaction to Hetzel’s acerbic remark on “UR”: “Where is the science in all that?” (Guermonprez, “Du Navet,” 6) Similarly the splendors of Granite House and its hydraulic lift may derive from his comment about the “banal grotto” (Robin, 243). Making bricks, iron, steel, and soap in record time may be due to his remarks on the Cliftons’ ineffectuality.
In about 1871, Verne had apparently received lots of letters from women across the globe, begging him to reveal the identity of Nemo, left a mystery at the end of Twenty Thousand Leagues; and he wrote: “They will have the key to the enigma, but not immediately like that! They will have to be patient for a while yet” (cited without reference by Guermonprez, “Du Navet,” 6). In other words, the somber captain was possibly not at this stage part of the Robinsonade. However, in Part I of MI and even in “UR” there is already a human presence. The question then arises whether it is Nemo responsible for the bullet in the leveret, the strange boiling, and the trimmed crest. After all, the boiling in MI will be his doing, and no one else can act under water. Although Verne’s letter of 2 February 1873 mentions Nemo for the first time, he often claimed never to have started a book without planning it out in detail. Since the main alternative, Ayrton, is still thousands of miles away in the southern hemisphere, the captain may have appeared in the missing Part III of “UR.”
In judging Hetzel’s reactions, we note with amazement that he was nearly as critical of MI as “UR.” Given the uninformed nature of most English-language criticism of MI to date, it is again important to quote substantial extracts from the exchanges between Verne and his mentor13 (retaining Hetzel’s poor style and punctuation):
[May? 1873] The framework [of Part I] is good … but your characters … do not have enough variation, except the engineer and Harbert. Cracrof [sic] can pass, but the reporter is a nullity who can not survive, and … it’s not worth paying for a Negro if you’re not going to enjoy him a bit more … One does not send mere commercial travelers on missions like the ones [the reporter] did, for a newspaper as important as his. We need men of steel in mind and body … When I think that your 4 fellows spend the whole volume without saying a word of the America they left in those conditions, of their past, of anything, I say to myself that you must be the most astonishing and the most indifferent of creatures to find the thing plausible. (199–200)
[21? September 1873] While writing this work, I am above all concerned to invent episodes and especially the climax which must be produced from start to finish. There are incidents in the 3rd volume which are prepared from the beginning of the first. (204–05)
[22? September 1873] Overall, the [second] volume is better than the 1st … But what is missing from this book as a whole is that your people do not seem very close to each other. Nor are they sufficiently distinct in their language or character. Good humor is too rare, your lively philosophy too often absent … The scientific material and the execution of the works they accomplish have made you leave their humanity, their moods, their sentiments and thoughts too much in the shadows. One doesn’t sufficiently wish to be with them. (205–06)
[23 September 1873] Everything you say about Ayrton’s savagery is for me without importance. All the mental specialists in the world won’t change a thing. I need a savage. I tell the public, here is my savage. And you think people will worry about knowing whether after 12 years of solitude, he has become that savage! No! What is important is that having been a savage he becomes a man again … Do not forget: the Robinson subject has been done twice.
Defoe, who took man alone, Wyss who took the family. / These were the two best subjects. I myself have to make do with a third which is neither one nor the other. / Several times already you have created doubt in my mind about this work. / And yet I have the conviction—and I speak to you as though it were by someone else—that it will not be inferior to the preceding ones, that, properly launched like them, it will succeed. I have the profound conviction that the reader’s curiosity will be stimulated, that the sum of the imagined things in this work is greater than in the others, and that what I call the climax develops, as it were, mathematically. (208)
[22 January 1874] On the whole [Part III] is excellent well-constructed well-planned well-balanced in its details, the capital weakness is the endless description of Harbert’s illness, it’s as long and frustrating and irritating as if you were a nurse who has to listen to a medical lecture by a doctor who thinks only of ensuring his lesson sinks in … you put your foot in your soul when you hoped that your process of scientific popularization could apply to medicine, like better-known subjects … In this episode there are also attempts at sensibility which do not work. There are good sentiments, and you tried them thinking of me perhaps … but we should not be doing reverence … The end of Nemo with the removal of a few unhappy efforts in the same vein will remain very fine but it is important that Nemo not die before knowing what might happen to the Island … Your destruction of the Island is a masterpiece. / The whole preparation of Nemo’s death and the escape as well, and only details need to be amended. But you have to add a last chapter, a chapter conclusion [sic] of 3 pages. / In your fatigue and after all your effort you dump everybody in America like dirty washing, first of all it’s not appropriate and next it makes the interest fall flat on its face or its arse as you will … You will reduce the value of the pearl, you will say that it might be worth millions but you will put it in the middle of 8 or 10 millions of diamonds, jewels, etc. / You will send the pearl to Lady Glenarvan my good fellow and with the diamonds our settlers back in America will make themselves another Lincoln Island on dry land. / They will found a little State wherever you want, in 4 pages you will say that very well you will show them without embellishment, you will show them to us united like the fingers of a glove in a peacetime America and in a colony that is already prosperous with kids and all the trimmings: church schoolhouse a monument to Nemo Glenarvan and Robert Grant. / They must be darlings and your public must say that you are one too. (229–31)
[18 September 1874] It’s completely agreed for the ending of MI. I’ll stick their island back on dry land in America for them. (259)
[29 September 1874] … a confidence that Nemo should share with Cyrus on his own, about the possibility of upheaval of the island, perhaps soon … That explains why Nemo did not die alone. He had some advice of capital importance to give them. / The question of the chest would be insufficient to explain why he wished to interrupt his solitary existence, for he could very easily have put the chest in their hands or under their table … Incidentally for the conclusion. Jup and the dog must be saved. (261–62)
Despite Verne’s valiant resistance, both manuscripts of MI underwent a harrowing series of cuts, additions, and changes. Some of the alterations are presented on pp. xxxviii–xlii; here it can be noted that the meaning of the conclusion is totally changed. In the published version, but not in the manuscripts, we read of a deathbed remorse by Nemo and a pompous and presumptuous assessment by Smith of his life as an “error.” In the book, Nemo gives the settlers Hetzel’s jewelry, whereas in the manuscript they get the giant pearl he had so carefully nurtured in Twenty Thousand Leagues. In Verne’s original idea, the destruction of the Island is the end of the novel; in the “Hetzelized” version, the settlers have to start again in Iowa. The captain’s dying words, the absurd “God and my country!” were brutally, criminally, imposed by Hetzel. The manuscript read simply “Independence!”
Our exploration of the origins of “UR” and MI has, in sum, thrown up several major problems with accepting the work as published. Because the Nemo of the third part is not what Verne wanted him to be, this falsifies his destiny and hence that of the settlers, and in turn the whole meaning of the novel.
Understanding the links between MI and Twenty Thousand Leagues is in turn rendered difficult. One problem is simply consistency. In MI the “true” origin of Nemo and all his crew is revealed to be Indian—although at least one of them had been French in the earlier masterpiece. His victims were, it seems, British; and so on. The Nemo of MI in fact bears little resemblance to the earlier Nemo; even the most basic facts do not tally, such as his age and the dates, which are all wildly off. The captain of MI claims that he sank the warship “in a narrow, shallow bay … I had to pass, and I … passed” (III, 16). However, the claim is wrong, for in the 1870 novel the sinking takes place several hundred miles from land (III, 23). The only merit in the claim is its identity with an implausible suggestion that Hetzel made in the correspondence—and which the earlier Verne indignantly rejected. But the rot goes deeper, for even the Nemo of Twenty Thousand Leagues was adulterated, since Verne had already conducted a running battle over two or three manuscripts and a score of anguished letters, where he demonstrates, point by logical point, that Hetzel is insisting on radical changes while not understanding the most basic aspects of Nemo’s behavior.
The links between the two novels, as encapsulated in Nemo and the Nautilus, are therefore of little help in understanding the gloomy captain, and may indeed create misconceptions. MI is disappointing if judged purely as a sequel, for it contradicts and undermines the previous work, with its heroic defiance of human society and its magical exploration of the ocean depths. However, as an independent work, MI remains a resounding success. It is probably best to ignore the links between the two novels.
On top of the ambivalence and irony invading Verne’s work in the 1870s, then, we must add our own skepticism as to every sentiment and deed in MI, especially the pious or noble ones. Behind each episode and phrase lurk a line of darker copies, like Macbeth’s ghosts, running through the correspondence with Hetzel and the four manuscripts but even into Twenty Thousand Leagues and its manuscripts and correspondence.
A naive reading is no longer possible.
Verne’s degree of identification with his seven characters varies. Guermonprez lucidly analyzes the settlers: “Instead of the usual trio of men, representing intelligence, courage, and fidelity, he spreads these qualities over five men.” (“Notes,” 18) Four of them are in the force of age and all are energetic, in the Anglo-American mold. In contrast with the Scottish Ayrton and their European predecessors in the genre, the Americans are omnipotent and fearless.
The novel seems in some ways an English-language one from the beginning, as indicated by its English place-names and its emphasis on practical reality. In his approximately twenty-three novels partly or entirely situated in the US, Verne often gives a positive image. America is for him a nation of engineers, mechanics, balloons, telegraphs, and railways, one where science is discussed and nothing is feared. The novelist is systematically anti-slavery, from a humanitarian consideration since he royally ignores economic arguments. However, he also writes devastating criticisms of over-engineering and destruction of nature. One of Verne’s major criticisms of the US in his later years, for instance in Propeller Island (1895), is the power of money. The other is the lack of culture, as in “In the Year 2889” (1889), whose critical passages were apparently censored when published in New York, and in “Humbug: The American Way of Life,” which remained unpublished in English until 1991.14
Nevertheless, as Guermonprez indicates (“Notes,” 29), the settlers’ characters and daily habits are not always well-defined or plausible. They rarely talk of their origins from different parts of New England, or even the reasons for the Civil War. They have no petty jealousies or nicknames; they rarely smile or laugh; and they almost never go for a swim in their Pacific paradise. We know little of their washing or toilet arrangements, perhaps because twenty-five to thirty gallons per day (I, 19) does not allow such refinements. But their waste water must go down the well—up which Nemo comes to eavesdrop. Although the bedrooms are not heated, the settlers’ health is perfect: not a sniffle, despite the humid environment caused by the shaft.
Within the group, Smith is invariably seen in a good light, with his polyvalence and his Unionist officer’s cap, in the illustrations if not in the text. Michel Tournier says of him that “engineer” is a superb word, “combining both genius and ingenuity” (Le Vent paraclet, 214). He is forty-five, Verne’s own age in 1873, and represents values of sociability and practicality. While he indulges in the pleasure of enclosure in the womb-like cave, it must still have a window. He is above all an over-achiever. As Kravitz points out (private correspondence), the list of his scientific and engineering accomplishments is endless: a fire made with watch lenses; a knife made from Top’s collar; bricks, then a kiln, then clay pots, jars, and cups; determining the coordinates of the Island; calculating the height of the granite wall; making bellows from seal skins, then steel; sulphuric acid, nitric acid, and nitroglycerin; tallow candles; baskets and maple sugar; a bridge over the Mercy; pyroxyle; glass panes; a large boat; a mill to press wool; a windmill to grind wheat for bread; and a drawbridge, iron wire, and a battery.15
But while Verne’s rational mind sympathizes with Smith, his instinctive preference often goes to Nemo. The captain is in touch with the past, literary and artistic values, the invisible, the unconscious, and the fantastic—and he uses the telegraph for real communication rather than as a toy. The essential contrast is between the creativity of the tormented genius and the heartiness of the positivistic settlers. Nemo and Smith correspond to a Latin-Anglo-Saxon split, but also to a Romantic-Realist one: although Nemo has a technologically advanced vessel, he is a professional loner and meeting him is compared to meeting a dying God. His fate is appropriate: enclosed in bed, in his submarine, in the crypt, in the Island, at the bottom of the sea.
Ayrton, in contrast, is the typical gritty Scot. Despite Verne’s protests, his descent into animality does not seem entirely realistic, for many real-life cases exist where comparable isolation had little visible effect. As the only solitary Robinson in the Extraordinary Journeys, Verne seems to be making a moral point of him. But because of the sincerity of his repentance, Ayrton does not give up like his fellow settlers, and is rewarded by being the person who sees the Duncan and who saves the chest of jewelry.
What should not be glossed over is the systematic racism of the novel. Verne’s and the settlers’ prejudice is blind and unrelenting, in common with much of their century. While sympathetic, Neb the Black is described in terms of his distinctive physical appearance, but also behavior (close to animals, lack of intelligence and perseverance, etc.). Indeed unfavorable comparisons are made with Top the dog and Jup the orang-utan. A whole Chain of Beings is in fact in evidence, based on social, political, and racial factors. It ranges from blacks to whites, passing from Neb, Top, Jup, the pirates, Ayrton, Smith, Nemo, and God to the author! As François Raymond has pointed out,16 each stage “apes” the ones above it. Thus Jup, who, like Nemo, has a God’s name, imitates Pencroff’s use of a mirror. Ayrton is a pastiche of Crusoe and Nemo—but is himself parodied by the orangutan. However, the hierarchy, which must symbolize Verne’s trepidation vis-à-vis Hetzel and even his severe father, undergoes sudden underminings and reversals. Raymond wisely concludes that, rather than seek ideological coherence in MI, it is more fruitful to study the structures by which the complex meaning is conveyed.
Verne is not an acute observer of character differences, but he does create personal significance through powerful innovations in two other psychological areas.
The first is hypnotism and electrical phenomena in general. The scene where Ayrton receives Smith’s care, “like a person under the gaze of a hypnotist” (II, 16), is a defining moment of the novel, although an even more dramatic scene was cut from MS1 (see pp. xl–xli). The idea of restoring speech by taking the sufferer back to the traumatic events that provoked his illness is of course an anticipation of Freud’s seminal idea.
Throughout his life, Verne demonstrated interest in mental phenomena. There is a probable influence by Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1844), summarized in Verne’s essay “Edgar Allan Poe and his Works” (1864) as a “tale where death is suspended … by the use of magnetic sleep.” On 28 June 1850 he wrote to his parents about a “miraculous” magnétiseur (mesmerizer or hypnotist) called Alexis who gave public performances (Dumas, Jules Verne (1988), 280). Starting from his early twenties, Verne suffered from paralysis on one side of his face, but was treated in 1851 by means of electricity. From about 1873, the health of his son Michel gave him cause for concern, and in 1874 resulted in his hospitalization in the clinic of Dr. Antoine Blanche (1828–93), a renowned mental specialist who treated Nerval and Maupassant.17 It is clear, then, that Verne’s interest in the hidden workings of the mind in MI is original and is connected with his fascination at the power of electricity, most dramatically displayed through Nemo’s submarine.
The other innovation is the personification of Lincoln Island. The characters remain so strongly in our memory because of their collective relationship with their home. The only native, however, is Jup, also the only survivor from “UR,” and who will perish with the Island. Lincoln is perhaps even the novel’s main character, with its energies and changeability, its nooks and crannies, its birth and death. Accordingly, we will study its role and characteristics in detail.
The Island resembles a starfish, whereas what was originally called “Flip Island” in “UR” is a quadrilateral, of length “about 20 to 22 leagues, bigger than Elba and twice as big as St. Helena”: a clear reference to Napoleon, imprisoned on both islands. The shape of Lincoln Island, characterized as “a sort of monstrous pteropoda” (p. 95), has variously been suggested as based on Saint-Pierre, Rawaki, Cyprus, Jan Mayen, or Celebes (see Note on pp. 640–41).
The Island is in many ways a Utopia: not in the literal sense of “nowhere,” since Verne provides precise coordinates, but in terms of an ideal community. Lincoln represents a return to paradise, to roots, to agrarian calm, even if the dream is adulterated by the encroachments of modern existence and the luxuries derived from the Industrial Revolution. It attracts us because we can imagine the world remade, with new social relations. In MI the result is indeed a model, in marked contrast with later instances such as The School for Robinsons, Two Years Vacation, or William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. It is a model also in the sense of a microcosm, an escapist reduction of the complexities of the real world. As a result, its success would be difficult to generalize, for the community is limited in size, has an unusual leader, and depends crucially on finding a native-free area.
The naming of Lincoln’s features in terms of “back home” symbolizes its colonial appropriation and the settlers’ dream of attaching themselves to the Union. Amongst the many paradoxes, of course, is that America was at this time a recently emancipated colony itself, with a strongly anti-colonial ideology. Another is that the rebel Nemo supports the colonization of the Island; another, that the model, taken from Captain Grant’s Children, is colonies founded by Scotland, itself a colony in some ways. A final irony is that the colonists’ frenetic attempts culminate merely in the derisory recreation of the colony within the motherland. Given all these tensions, we should avoid imposing an ideology on to Lincoln Island.18 Nemo’s Indian nationalism is different from Smith’s American one—and Verne supports neither.
At the beginning of the Extraordinary Journeys, the British were viewed very favorably, for instance in Five Weeks in a Balloon or Adventures of Captain Hatteras. During the 1870s, however, their image became less attractive, and in MI, British colonialism in India is criticized. In The Steam House (1879) a chapter entitled “The Indian Mutiny” (I, 33) shows that Verne’s views were not always anti-colonialist, but also provides information about Tippo-Sahib, Prince Dakkar’s uncle and historical model: “Under Lord Cornwallis, in 1784 … battle [was made] with Tippo-Sahib, killed on 4 May 1799, in the last assault given by General Harris on Seringapatam … In 1806, perhaps even under the inspiration of Tippo-Sahib’s son, the garrison of the native army of Madras … cut the throats of the officers and their families, shot the ill soldiers even in the hospital … through the hatred of the invaders by the invaded.” Verne’s source for MI is perhaps M. de Valbezen, cited in The Steam House and who praises the British as having brought great benefits to the whole of India.19 In sum, Verne’s opinions on even Tippo-Sahib are contradictory; and it would therefore be unwise to attempt to summarize his overall views on the British in India.
An additional inconsistency in Verne’s political views is that even the concept of progress is fraught with problems. In MI, the destruction of the Island at the end, meaning that all has been in vain, is part of a cyclical vision of human affairs. Circular repetition of life had indeed been earlier emphasized by Cyrus Smith (I, 21); it will form the central theme of “Edom” (1910), where the annihilation of civilization happens several times and may perhaps continue indefinitely in the future, generated by man’s excessive pride in his scientific achievements. The novelist’s popular reputation as an apologist for science and progress is clearly mistaken.
The island moves from the north Pacific in “UR” to the south in MI. The reason is presumably so as to be close to Ayrton’s Tabor island. Kravitz (Ibid.) remarks that in the move many landmarks are rotated through 180°: the landing place and the granite wall, for example, shift from the western to the eastern shore. More generally, Guermonprez (“Notes,” 14) points out: “Verne … transports … a whole fauna unknown to this region, such as the mouflon, (European) porcupine … the onager of Mongolia, the orang-utan, the tragopan; and endows the Island with a variegated flora such as the deodar, dragon tree … nettle tree, mastic tree, horse-radish … ficoids … American maple.” Lincoln certainly contains an amazing variety of animals and plants, including a jaguar (I, 13), even if Verne shows each exotic animal once before hiding it again. Many studies have pointed out that the ecology of a small island would not support the number of predators necessary to avoid inbreeding. Many have also pointed out the number of northern flora and fauna, claiming that this is because they were imported from “UR.” But such comments lack logic. Verne is simply mixing up all sorts, whether from the eastern or western, northern or southern hemispheres: the orang-utan and onager were no more at home in the north Pacific than the south. In Journey to the Centre of the Earth, indeed, Verne explicitly comments on such juxtapositions (ch. 39),20 which extrapolate the general tendency of fiction to condense reality, but were especially prevalent in writers influenced by Romanticism.
For those seeking total authenticity, the position of the Island may also cause problems, quite apart from the surprising amount of snow and ice at 35° S. Even today, there are many Pacific islands and reefs whose existence is in doubt. Verne deliberately plays with the frontier between fact and fiction, but a further complication is in his calculation of longitude. In MI, the settlers use the Greenwich meridian (I, 14), but the narrator uses the Paris meridian, at least for Norfolk Island, which he places at longitude “165° 42′ E” (III, 2) whereas it is 168° 3′ from Greenwich. The difference between the Greenwich and Paris meridians is 2° 20′, or about 140 miles at this latitude.
Smith places the Mysterious Island at “34° 57′ S” and “150° 30′ W” (II, 9)—which is the site of persistent but unconfirmed reports of authentic land. Krauth reports that an “Ernest-Legouvé Reef” is situated at 35° 12′ S, 150° 40′ W, which is very close.21 Although absent from the 1859 Admiralty Chart, the reef was recorded in “Paris notice to mariners 164/1122/1902,” and the International Hydrographic Bureau stated on 9 February 1957: “Ernest-Legouvé Reef was reported in 1902 by the captain of the French ship the Ernest-Legouvé. The reef was about 100 meters long and another reef was sighted near it.”
Tabor is similarly elusive. Although MI surprisingly omits the idea, Captain Grant’s Children claims that Ayrton’s home has more than one name: “Maria Theresa on British and German maps, but Tabor on French ones” (III, 21).22 In reality, its existence and even French name are doubtful. Verne admits that it is “low … scarcely emerging from the waves … If an eruption produced it, can one not fear that an eruption might carry it away?” (III, 20). In Captain Grant’s Children Verne gives its coordinates as “37° 11′ S, 153° W” (III, 21); the Paris meridian is normally used by the narrator in this novel, for instance for Tristan da Cunha (II, 2) or in the maps (I, 20 and III, 2). Smith also states that Tabor is at “37° 11′ S, 153° W” (II, 9), but using the Greenwich meridian this time. Clearly Verne and Smith can not both be right.
Tabor/Maria Theresa’s existence was reported in three contemporary newspapers as a dangerous reef seen at 37° S, 151° 13′ W on 16 November 1843 by a Captain Asaph P. Tabor, of the Maria Theresa, a whaler from New Bedford, Massachusetts.23 According to Krauth (32), who makes, however, several mistakes, the logbook of the Maria Theresa may read “Saw breakers.” Krauth further claims that Tabor (and therefore presumably the Mysterious Island) would be in French waters if they existed. Perhaps borrowing from Captain Tabor’s account, a Don Miller achieved great fame in the US in the 1960s by claiming to be broadcasting from a radio station on “Maria Theresa Reef,” south of Tahiti, and even published a photograph of himself “On the Rock’s [sic].” However, Miller subsequently spent a decade in prison for fraud-related cases. Hugh Cassidy, discussing his escapades (WWW), claims that “A nautical chart … issued by the W. Faden Company, Oceanographers to the King [George III], in 1817 lists Maria Theresa”; the shoal also apparently appears in US Hydrographic Office chart no. 2683 (1978), together with others in the vicinity; and a minority of charts continue to indicate its existence. But unfortunately, Cassidy and Krauth’s information as to the date of the first naming can not both be true, and in any case little direct proof has ever been produced. A government scientist, Henry Stommel, sardonically points out in his book, Lost Islands (1984), that if Tabor did exist, it would be an independent country, and so would have immense financial worth. He seems to be correct in both his view of national limits and his skepticism about the island’s existence.
To sum up a complex situation, Verne positions Tabor 153° W of both Paris and Greenwich, whereas in real life it would be about 151° or 153° W of Greenwich. Smith seems to be wrong in his calculation of Tabor’s position, possibly by as much as four degrees. Since the Mysterious Island is positioned with reference to Tabor, this in turn means that the position of the Island can not reliably be determined.
Given that the real-life Ernest Legouvé (1807–1903) was a friend of Verne’s who promised to help satisfy his cherished ambition of joining the Académie française,24 there may be a hidden connection somewhere. If Legouvé and Theresa reefs had a common origin, based on the misreading of a meridian, then Tabor and Lincoln would also be one and the same island. Certainly, amongst all the reports and inventions, Verne seems to lose or gain two degrees so often as to appear beyond mere carelessness. Just as the missing day of Around the World emerges in the most surprising places, so the Mystery of the Island is a wide-ranging one.
While all of Verne’s novels, with their huge density of real-world information, have naturally generated considerable discussion of their mistakes and inconsistencies, MI seems more vulnerable than most. In the surprising absence of authoritative texts of the works, the following paragraphs will continue the attempt to indicate the implausibilities in MI.
Sometimes the narrator actively misleads the reader. One example is when Smith explores the shaft and erroneously concludes that it had not been “used as a staircase either recently or in the past” (II, 11).25 Other problems must be due to poor copy-editing. “Ten thousand francs” (I, 1) should logically be Unionist or Confederate currency. Prisoners of war were not usually “left at liberty” (I, 2—as shown also in the illustration). Smith is recorded as being “in all the battles of the Civil War” but simultaneously and implausibly “entrusted … with the management of the railroads” (I, 2). Given that the distance from Richmond to the Mysterious Island is about 6,850 miles and that the balloonists travel for 91 hours, their average speed is a remarkable 75 mph. It is strange that Harbert does not accompany Spilett and Neb in their search for Smith when he is feared dead, and does not even look very actively himself (I, 4). It is surprising that the settlers do not celebrate Christmas (the reason presumably being that France did not either). Verne refers to “the winter of 1866–67” (II, 11), but in the southern hemisphere it should simply be “the winter of 1866.” The narrator mentions “Flotsam Point” in Part I (I, 21), although the colonists only give it this name later (II, 2). When Smith first explores the shaft he takes “a revolver” (II, 11), but its origin is mysterious since no such weapon is listed in the contents of the chest (II, 2). The narrator refers in 1866 to “the thirty-seven stars representing the thirty-seven states of the Union” (II, 11), whereas the thirty-seventh star was added only in 1867. Throughout the book, the settlers work incredibly quickly: only five days to unload the Speedy, transport four huge cannons a considerable distance, recover the chains and anchors, and remove the copper plating from the hull; a few months to construct the first vessel, 110 feet long; and a matter of days to build a hydraulic lift. It also seems implausible that the six settlers and the dog are unharmed by the explosion of the Island; that they manage to save the chest and provisions when the Island is crumbling beneath their feet; and even that the Duncan arrives just as they are dying.
More seriously, the central theme of the novel, Nemo’s actions, seems highly suspect, for many of the final explanations (III, 16) of “The Secret of the Island” do not make sense. Although only Smith’s footprints are found outside the excavation (I, 10), Nemo is meant to have rescued him from the water and taken him there. When “Top [is] thrown … by some unknown force … ten feet above the surface of the lake” (I, 16), huge power must have been used to catapult him without being seen.
Verne’s shipwreckees and castaways have an easy time of it compared with real-life stories. As Pencroff points out, the whole Mysterious Island is in fact self-consciously artificial, “created especially for people to be shipwrecked on, where … poor devils can always manage” (II, 9). The reason, of course, is again Captain Nemo, who is heavy-handedly falsifying everything from the backdrop. Nemo’s backstage meddling is indeed a direct citation from Robinson Crusoe, with the single line of footprints, the message in a bottle that floats by at just the right moment, and above all the chest containing every object conceivably useful to a Robinson—even a Polynesian dictionary. The captain may in fact be deliberately showing up the artifices used in the previous works. As an ironic re-reading of Robinson Crusoe, or rather of The Swiss Family Robinson’s reading of Robinson Crusoe, the novel simultaneously reinforces its own narration and undermines it. By referring so insistently to its fourth-level nature, as a text reading another text which is itself reading Defoe, himself perhaps based on real events, Verne’s novel is emphasizing its own fictional status. The logical consequence is that Nemo, the Nautilus, and the Island will have to disappear at the end.
Of course Verne anticipates some of the reader’s objections by putting the same objections in the characters’ mouths. The novel contains its own critical commentary, making it very modern; but such an idea will not stop readers from continuing to dig out the mysteries. Some slips must be blamed on the editor’s repeated changes, making complete coherence more difficult. But many of the implausibilities may even have been deliberate. Many seem to constitute a weary defiance to Hetzel’s interference, as if Verne’s heart was no longer in producing plausible solutions.
The inconsistencies are inseparable from our interpretation of the novel as a whole. As regards the closing chapters in particular, we need to reject as misconceived the Iowa episode and the implausible religious sentiments and hold on firm to Nemo’s dying “Independence!” However, such a position still leaves many important questions unanswered.
Is Smith (or Hetzel) correct to accuse Nemo of “fighting against necessary progress”? Is Nemo’s life really an “error” because it is solitary? Or does the amazing luck of sharing his remote desert island with the five settlers cancel the error? Was British colonialism in India negative? What should we do when confronted with forces we know to be wrong but irresistible? Should Christian values of forgiveness be replaced by more straightforward Old-Testament ideas? Is revenge sometimes a legitimate action, as it appears to be in both Twenty Thousand Leagues and MI?
The answers are complex, and my conclusion will skirt round many of them. As we have seen, the responses reside in the multiple intersections of the characters and the Island, the historical and geographical circumstances, the French literary canon and the long series of previous Robinsons, exploration and comfort, the new and the old, and the writer and the publisher.
The correspondence reveals that Verne put his heart and soul into his Robinsonades and that they represent for him the conceptual core of the Extraordinary Journeys. Yet the catastrophic fate of “UR” showed that for the publisher something was lacking, that the center could not hold. The key to the enigma may lie in what Verne calls “the search for the absolute.” The entire second half of his production suggests that Hetzel’s premonition was partly justified, for after MI any element of transcendence, any approach of the sacred has disappeared: “the thrill has gone.” While explanations of the discrepancy in terms of Verne’s life and historical circumstances must be relevant, the works themselves are where we must continue to look for answers.
Verne’s characters inhabit their space passionately. They seek the most economical and powerful modus operandi, as if carrying out a minimax factorial analysis to produce the unique best solution. But to what problem? The works previous to MI center on exploration towards a unique goal. The heroes are able to sustain a moving equilibrium en route by balancing precariously between the inside and the outside, the present and the past. They calmly eat sea-food before venturing into the midst of the raging depths or study man’s greatest works as preparation for confronting the secret of destiny in the ruins of Atlantis or the center of the earth. Once the goal is reached, however, what Verne invariably calls the climax subsides and the heroes limp bedraggedly back home. It is in the movement towards the unknown, in other words, that the Vernian novel finds its reason for existing.
MI lacks the geographical goal, but compensates by incorporating the unknown into its very heart. Left to their own devices the colonists would be unable to say why they are there, where the transcendence lies. But part of the absolute quest of MI is in the exploration of the Robinsonade and the nature of the Island, and it is these ongoing experiences that define the happiness of the settlers. The Island is a world away from the battles of the Civil War, and from the natives of the south Pacific; hanging over it, nevertheless, is the awareness that soon there will be no mysterious bolt-holes left. Lincoln represents then the limit of the series of transcendent points on the globe and of the marvelous vehicles to get to them: an unstable island not much bigger than the monstrous vessel that forms Propeller Island but still not completely explorable since concealing in its subconscious, uterine bowels a semi-mechanical, semi-divine monster. The revolutionary Secret of the Island complements the bourgeois habits of the settlers.
Verne knows his classics, and the influence of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, and even Zola is visible on every page of MI. The paradox is that he has set himself an apparently sub-literary goal: to go one better than the series of preceding Robinsons, to sum them all up but especially show them up, to synthesize their experience into one mega-Robinsonade that will start from the bottom but go higher if not faster than anything that has gone before. In his naiveté Verne forgets that the Robinsonade is not a recognized French literary genre, and so destroys his lingering chance of joining the Académie française.
The other problem in his pursuit of transcendence is the publishing contract tying him to a single partner tighter than any marriage. Verne has, however, perfected a method over the previous novels: he will incorporate the problem into the solution, he will absorb the grit of the ideological, moralistic, or religious principles Hetzel dumps in, like a mollusk producing a pearl. Nemo has the settlers’ interests at heart but can not resist repeatedly writing himself into the story. He will not only absorb into himself the angst Verne feels at Hetzel’s constant suggestions, but also serve to undermine the too-perfect machine for living of the settlers.
Machine-based perfection carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, for if all goes too smoothly, there is no plot. Verne is not writing a mathematical monograph of brevity and elegance, but a serialized novel at about ten centimes a word, with nothing for the reprints, and so his characters must encounter repeated difficulties. If the ideal situation or machine emerges, someone must quickly insert a grain of sand; and Nemo and Hetzel provide enough to build a small island. Verne needs the editor’s ideas, if only as a punching-board to discover, by reaction, what he himself really feels. The solitude of the writer was never really practicable. Ultimately, then we can not separate the sum of Verne’s success from the parts of Hetzel’s suggestions.
Verne’s enduring popularity in America is built on the impressive quantities of real-world information he provides and on a naive reading of his works as adventure stories in the Anglo-Saxon mold. But this is a dangerous half-truth. Much of the information in MI is tedious or erroneous. It may be more useful to view the adventures as founded on an encyclopedic knowledge of the predecessors and on a systematic—European?—irony and distrust of any fixed system of meaning. Verne’s many implausibilities must be decoded as signs of the imperfectly absorbed foreign bodies, themselves incorporating the problems from the previous desert-island literature. The writer ignores his contractual obligation of producing a message encapsulated in both specific national-linguistic boundaries and the publishing conventions of the time. He follows his own literary muse in requiring a satisfying story to have its own internal logic. History has proved him right to have concentrated on the deeper meaning of his novels. The large numbers of subsequent works citing or even bodily recreating the Island26 show that the questions he asks in MI are still vitally alive in the third millennium.
The real solution to the enigma in the crowning work of the Extraordinary Journeys is to be found in the energetic and intelligent endeavors of Smith, Neb, Ayrton, Nemo, and Top. Verne’s belief that he has found the perfect novel is triumphantly vindicated, for the joy of generations to come.
[I would like to thank the Centre de documentation Jules Verne and Jean-Michel Margot for their help with the Bibliography, Stuart Williams for setting up the Jules Verne Society of Great Britain (26 Matlock Road, Bloxwich, Walsall, GB WS3 3QD), Arthur B. Evans for his scholarly and judicious series editorship, Sidney Kravitz for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Mysterious Island, Jean-Paul Tomasi for his devotion to things Vernian, and Angel Lui for all her love and help.]
NOTES
1. Amazon lists twenty-four editions of The Mysterious Island. Those currently selling best are the Signet Classic reprint of Kingston’s defective translation and Bair’s version which, however, omits more than half the text (Bair normally translates erotic novels). Further details are provided on pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.
2. Roland Barthes, “Nautilus et Bateau ivre,” in Mythologies (1957), 80–82 (80).
3. Olivier Dumas, Piero Gondolo della Riva, and Volker Dehs, Correspondance inédite de Jules Verne et de Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1863–1886): Tome I (1863–1874) (1999), 139–218. This volume is reviewed in Arthur B. Evans, “Hetzel and Verne: Collaboration and Conflict,” Science Fiction Studies, 28.1 (March 2001), 97–106.
4. Félix Duquesnel, “A Propos de la statue de Jules Verne,” Journal d’Amiens, 23 April 1909.
5. “I took the common facts in Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, Le Robinson de douze ans (a memory from my childhood), Cooper’s Robinson, and still others that I know, and I wanted everything that was given as true in those books to be false in mine” (letter of 1883 about The School for Robinsons, but perfectly applicable to MI). “Cooper’s Robinson” is presumably Fenimore Cooper, The Crater, or Vulcan’s Peak (1847), translated as Le Cratère, ou le Robinson américain (1850—Gallica).
6. The name Marc probably comes from The Crater, or Vulcan’s Peak (1847); Robert from Louis Desnoyers, Aventures de Robert Robert et de son fidèle compagnon Toussaint Lavenette (1839).
7. Christian Robin, “Postface,” in L’Oncle Robinson (1991), 223–34.
8. Philippe Burgaud, “A Propos de L’Oncle Robinson,” BSJV 104 (1992): 3.
9. Jean Guermonprez, “Du Navet au chef-d’œuvre,” BSJV 113 (1995): 4–7 (4); Jean Jules-Verne, Jules Verne (1973); Olivier Dumas and Jacques van Herp, “Un Oncle Robinson, une Ile mystérieuse, et autres, sous influence,” BSJV 111 (1994): 31–41.
10. Jean Guermonprez, unpublished “Notes,” kept in the Centre de documentation Jules Verne, Amiens.
11. Verne’s letter of 25? February 1873 says: “it will be easy for me to write the three volumes of MI within the year.” On 26 September Hetzel praises “the first fifteen galleys of Part I,” but on 11 and 13 October complains that Verne has sent his corrected galleys to the printer rather than through him. On about 15 December Verne requests “a complete set of page proofs” for Part I. As late as 29 September 1874, Hetzel is still suggesting substantive changes to Part III.
12. References to MI will generally be of the form (I, 14), i.e. Part 1, ch. 14. For “UR,” however, given that only one edition has appeared to date, page numbers rather than chapter numbers are given.
13. Other relevant letters were written on 27 February, 10 April, 28 July, 3, 4, and mid-September, 22, 26, 29, and 31 October, and 3 November 1873 and 16 and 23 January, 5, 14, and 16 March, 5 April, 5 August, and mid- and 19 September 1874.
14. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by William Butcher.
15. Respectively: I, 10; 13; 13; 13, 14; 14; 15; 17; 20; 22; II, 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 16; 18. It is surprising he does not build a railway or at least a tram, given his previous occupation as railway manager.
16. François Raymond, “Utopie et aventure dans l’œuvre de Jules Verne (Second volet),” BSJV 108 (1993): 4–10.
17. Another hypnotism scene in Mathias Sandorf (1885) lists doctors specializing in mental illness, including the co-founder of modern neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93). Charcot was renowned for his attempt to use magnets and hypnotism to find an organic cause for hysteria, for his disciple Pierre Janet’s development of the idea of the unconscious—and for interesting his student, Sigmund Freud, in the origins of neurosis.
18. Michel Serres, Jouvences sur Jules Verne (1974—275) concurs with Raymond in strongly criticizing Jean Chesneaux, Une Lecture politique de Jules Verne (1971) and Marie-Hélène Huet, L’Histoire des Voyages extraordinaires (1973), with good reason, for being selective in their readings of MI. Verne is often pro-colonialist in his attitudes, which in any case change from book to book, sometimes from chapter to chapter.
19. In referring to the events of 1857, the same chapter (I, 33) refers to the “extreme precision [of M. de Valbezen] in his Nouvelles études sur les Anglais en Inde.” Les Anglais et L’Inde by E. de Valbezen (1857) and its enlarged edition Les Anglais et L’Inde (Nouvelles études) (1875) praise especially the introduction of telegraph, canals, railways, and roads: “Britain shows herself truly worthy of the civilizing task that Providence has entrusted to her.”
20. References to books of Verne’s without separate parts are given as (ch. 3), so that any edition can be referred to.
21. Bernhard Krauth, “Le Récif Maria-Thérésa,” BSJV 84 (1987): 32.
22. The German name is in fact “Maria-Theresia.”
23. Krauth, 32. Jean-Paul Faivre reports that map no. 5356 of the (French) Naval Hydrographic Office and the folding map in “Malte-Brun revised by E. Cortambert, vol. 4” (without further reference) both mark “Maria-Thérésa,” apparently 153° W of Greenwich, and that no. 5356 also marks Ernest-Legouvé Reef (“Jules Verne (1828–1905) et le Pacifique,” Journal de la société des océanistes 11 (1965): 135–47 (141)).
24. Gilles de Robien, Jules Verne, le rêveur incompris (2000), 185.
25. Grateful acknowledgments are recorded to Sidney Kravitz for providing many of the ideas in this paragraph. Further implausibilities and mistakes are indicated in the endnotes.
26. The French novelist, Georges Perec, often cites MI, for instance in La Vie mode d’emploi (1978—ch. 8). So do Raymond Roussel, in Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres (1935—ch. 2), and Umberto Eco, in Il Pendolo di Foucault (1988—Foucault’s Pendulum—ch. 84) and to a lesser degree in his L’Isola del giorno prima (1994—The Island of the Day Before). Hergé’s L’Etoile mystérieuse (1946) bears many resemblances, not least the final illustration of survivors being rescued from a bare rock and the title which is L’Ile mystérieuse plus “eto” or, written backwards, “ôté” (taken away)! Michel Tournier’s Vendredi, ou les limbes du pacifique (1969) ironically re-interprets the whole genre, including MI. The famous science-fiction author Michel Jeury has written Les Colmateurs (1981) based on a parallel universe consisting of Verne’s MI.
In a different domain, the first edition alone of the game Myst, situated on Verne’s Mysterious Island, sold about two million copies (email dated 17 April 1996 from the publisher, Cyan, to Steven Jones, reported in his “The Book of Myst in the Late Age of Print” (WWW)).
In the July/August 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly a short story written by Mark Twain in 1876 was published for the first time. Ch. 8 (pp. 62–64) contains the ironic confessions of a criminal: “At last, in an evil hour, I fell into the hands of a M. Jules Verne, an author … He turned my simple experiences into extravagant and distorted tales … Just as we sailed [into the air] he put into my hands his distortion of my last trip—a book entitled The Mysterious Island! I glanced into it—that was enough. Human nature could stand no more. I hove him out of the balloon!”
