The Mysterious Island. Jules Verne

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