Jules Verne - Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth)
Jules Verne wrote "Voyage au centre de la terre" (Journey to the Center of the Earth) in 1864, when he was thirty-six years old. By then he had already published the first two novels in the series of Voyages extraordinaires, "Cinq semaines en ballon" (Five Weeks in a Balloon), in 1863, and "Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras" (Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras), in 1864.
Before that, under the influence of Poe, he had touched the fantastic with his novel "Maître Zacharias ou l'horloger qui a perdu son âme" (Master Zacharias or The Clock-maker Who Lost his Soul) in 1854.
Yet, Journey to the Center of the Earth is different from Verne's other scientific romances. At its heart, there lies not a technical invention that awed his contemporaries with bold notions and ours with his prowess at extrapolation, but an ad hoc time machine, which allows an amazing incursion into eras long gone.
The story starts in Hamburg. The year is 1863.
From the first lines we are introduced, rather stormily, to two of the main characters, Professor Lidenbrock and Axel, his nephew, who also lends his fresh and often humorous voice to the narrator. This voice, no doubt, increases the appeal the story has for young readers, who can more easily identify with the character of a young man, ironic, erudite, in love with a beautiful young maiden, and who - although dragged, more or less against his will, in this astonishing adventure - ends up by participating to it with heart and soul.
Except for some attributes of his physical appearance (he is blonde, tall, "of an iron constitution", and looks ten years younger than his age) Professor Lidenbrock resembles very much another impressive character, Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. He is described as irrascible, the "most impatient of men", ready to make a disturbance if hungry and not served immediately, impetuous, with "restless eyes", walking "by mathematical strides of a yard and a half" and keeping "his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament." Yet this description holds no contempt but only admiration for a man of exceptional scholarship, professor, geologist, bibliophile, recognized and praised by his peers, corresponding member of all academies, and, in fact, all defects are meant only to emphasize this pure scientific personality. That he is not unidimensional, it is demonstrated by his capability of showing pity, of displaying paternal concern for his nephew Axel, even of renouncing his goal when he has to weigh it against the young man's life and well-being.
The third main character, Hans, the Icelandic guide, appears later and serves as a counterweight to the Professor's impetuosness. He is calm, indifferent, offering his gestures sparingly - an image of his harsh, austere country itself. He is ingenious - a doer, not a talker - and saves more than once Professor Lidenbrock and his nephew from a dreadful fate. He, too, is proven to be human, however, in the end, when he gives in, although barely noticeable, to a gesture of emotion.
One more thought on characters. Such is Jules Verne's admiration for science, such his conviction that every thing has a scientific explanation - in a century when scientific discoveries flourished and inflamed people's minds - that science also in fact could be considered as a main character. Young people, of age or at heart, can still draw pleasure and enthusiasm from his accumulation of scientific facts and beliefs, despite the inevitable errors, and that even in this century where, unfortunately, science has become too common place to elicit wonder anymore.
Professor Lidenbrock brings home a priceless - to his eyes - book, and, while he examines it, something falls on the floor.
"This was the appearance of a dirty slip of parchment, which slipped out of the volume and fell upon the floor."
The incident is momentous, for it marks the beginning of their marvelous adventure. This 16th century parchment, covered in runes, written by the hand of the alchemist Arne Saknussem, tells of a descent to the center of the Earth. The entry is through one the craters of Sneffels Jokull, one of Iceland's glaciers and inactive volcanoes, which the shadow of the peak Scartaris will point at the calends of July.
"Descend into the crater of the Jokull of Sneffels,
Which the shadow of Scartaris falls upon before the calends of July,
Bold traveler, and you will reach the center of the Earth.
Which I have done, Arne Saknussem."
This is sufficient for Professor Lidenbrock, who decides, without hesitation, to follow in Saknussem's footsteps. Not so for Axel who thinks of it as madness, and tries, and hopes, till the very last moment, to change his uncle's mind. He even thinks of destroying the document whose terrible secret he was the first to discover, or at least hide the key from his uncle. Human compassion prevents him from doing so, and thus he too becomes a full participant.
This is what his thoughts on the rim of the crater are:
«Involuntarily I compared the whole crater to an enormous erected mortar, and the comparison put me in a terrible fright.
"What madness," I thought, "to go down into a mortar, perhaps a loaded mortar, to be shot up into the air at a moment's notice!"»
To the last moment Axel still hopes of a miracle to prevent them from continuing their journey, even if that would only be a clouded sky.
«The next day the sky was again overcast; but on Sunday, the 28th of June, the antepenultimate day of the month, with the change of the moon came a change of weather. The sun poured a flood of light down the crater. Every hillock, every rock and stone, every projecting surface, had its share of the beaming torrent, and threw its shadow on the ground.
Amongst them all, Scartaris laid down his sharp-pointed angular shadow which began to move slowly in the opposite direction to that of the radiant orb.
My uncle turned with it.
At noon, being at its least extent, it came and softly fell upon the edge of the middle chimney.
"There it is! There it is!" shouted the Professor. "Now for the centre of the globe!" he added in Danish.
I looked at Hans.
"Forüt!" was his tranquil answer.
"Forward!" replied my uncle.
It was thirteen minutes past one.»
Yet the geologist in him, the scientist he is at his core, soon gain terrain over his fears. He recognizes, with in the beginning barely admitted, but growing enthusiasm, all the various minerals, fossils, and geological strata that come unthreaded beneath his eager eyes.
The descent into the darkness is hallucinatory, perilous, eventful. But once past the initial doubts and fears, the direction is always forward. Not even the sea, the new Mare Internum, can stop them. In fact, the sea is probably the ultimate symbol of the Unknown, and the supreme trial of a true explorer. Those who can gather the courage to launch in a frail vessel and navigate - always forward - without knowing what awaits ahead or what lurks beneath, represent the archetype of the discoverers of worlds.
The rewards are well-deserved, and fascinating.
«We moved with difficulty across these granite fissures and chasms mingled with silex, crystals of quartz, and alluvial deposits, when a field, nay, more than a field, a vast plain, of bleached bones lay spread before us. It seemed like an immense cemetery, where the remains of twenty ages mingled their dust together. Huge mounds of bony fragments rose stage after stage in the distance. They undulated away to the limits of the horizon, and melted in the distance in a faint haze. There within three square miles were accumulated the materials for a complete history of the animal life of ages, a history scarcely outlined in the too recent strata of the inhabited world.
But an impatient curiosity impelled our steps; crackling and rattling, our feet were trampling on the remains of prehistoric animals and interesting fossils, the possession of which is a matter of rivalry and contention between the museums of great cities. A thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed the organic remains deposited in this magnificent and unparalleled collection.
I stood amazed. My uncle had uplifted his long arms to the vault which was our sky; his mouth gaping wide, his eyes flashing behind his shining spectacles, his head balancing with an up-and-down motion, his whole attitude denoted unlimited astonishment. Here he stood facing an immense collection of scattered leptotheria, mericotheria, lophiodia, anoplotheria, megatheria, mastodons, protopithecæ, pterodactyles, and all sorts of extinct monsters here assembled together for his special satisfaction. Fancy an enthusiastic bibliomaniac suddenly brought into the midst of the famous Alexandrian library burnt by Omar and restored by a miracle from its ashes! Just such a crazed enthusiast was my uncle, Pro?essor Lidenbrock.
But more was to come, when, with a rush through clouds of bone dust, he laid his hand upon a bare skull, and cried with a voice trembling with excitement:
"Axel! Axel! A human head!"
"A human skull?" I cried, no less astonished.
"Yes, nephew. Aha! M. Milne-Edwards! Ah! M. de Quatrefages, how I wish you were standing here at the side of Otto Lidenbrock!"»
Such moments represent the coronation of their efforts, partial prizes that make every obstacle worth its while. Their courage is so immense that it uplifts our spirit too.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is Jules Verne at his best, adventurous, humorous, scientific, with the flight of the imagination not hindered but sustained by his permanent care of defining the facts in time and space. This multitude of details - never boring - is characteristic to Verne's writings and confers high credibility to the whole adventure, regardless of how incredible it is.
Little does it matter that a careful search will find inconsistencies, errors, or that modern science has proven some of these theories wrong. What matters is the seeds of love for science that his writings can plant in the reader, and the desire to learn more. What matters is the feeling of wonder and pure adventure that will never abandon a youthful heart.
A few words on the translations:
If possible, read the original French version, available from the Gutenberg project. But beware of the English translations. A translation should be just that, careful to find a style that would reflect as close as possible that of the author's. Unfortunately, the English ones that I have seen all felt necessary to bring improvements to the original, varying from making corrections, removing text, adding chapter titles, to even changing the names of the main characters. Even the one considered as the most faithful, by Frederick Amadeus Malleson, a clergyman, published by Ward, Lock, &Co., Ltd., London, in 1877 - and used in the fragments quoted above - suffers from some shortcomings. It is somehow amusing to see how, as an example, a text such as:
«Aussitôt la bonne Marthe ouvrit la porte du cabinet en disant:
"La soupe est servie."
"Au diable la soupe," s'écria mon oncle, "et celle qui l'a faite, et ceux qui la mangeront!"
Marthe s'enfuit.»
which means "To hell with the soup, and the one who made it, and those who will eat it.", has been replaced by:
«At that moment our good housekeeper Martha opened the study door, saying:
"Dinner is ready!"
I am afraid he sent that soup to where it would boil away to nothing, and Martha took to her heels for safety.»
Finally, a very good study regarding the problem of the English translations of Jules Verne's work belongs to Arthur Evans, "Jules Verne's English Translations".
