Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (50 page)

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.

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.

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 said 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)

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?

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.

Evans, Arthur B.
Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel.
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.

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.

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

Paul Walter. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993.