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.
