The Begum's Millions. Jules Verne

17 Explanations at Gunpoint, 174

       18 The Kernel of the Mystery, 183

       19 A Family Affair, 190

       20 Conclusion, 195

       Notes, 197

       Bibliography, 221

       Jules Gabriel Verne: A Biography, 253

       About the Contributors, 262

      A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

      This new translation of The Begum’s Millions by Stanford Luce is the first modern English translation of an important but often neglected Jules Verne novel, Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (1879). The two previous English translations both date from 1879. The first, an anonymous translation titled The 500 Millions of the Begum, was published by George Munro in New York; the second, The Begum’s Fortune, was published in London by Sampson Low from a translation by W. H. G. Kingston, who already had several Verne translations to his credit: The Mysterious Island (1875), Michael Strogoff (1876), and The Child of the Cavern (1877).

      Although not surprising given the overall poor quality of nineteenth-century English translations of Verne’s works, neither of these two early translations of Begum was very faithful to Verne’s original text. For example, the names of many of the principal characters were altered: in one, the name of the Alsatian hero Marcel was changed to Max and, in the other (even more perplexingly), he was called Mureel; his young friend Octave was renamed Otto; the love interest Jeanne became Jeanette; and even Herr Schultze himself lost the final “e” of his name — necessitating a translator rewrite of a crucial passage in the denouement of the story in chapter 18.

      One also finds in these English translations a large number of errors and abridgments, many of which severely compromise the integrity of Verne’s narrative. For instance, in the following passage, note how the translator has altered both the style and the meaning of Verne’s characterization of Dr. Sarrasin when the good doctor is first given the news of his huge inheritance:

      Dr. Sarrasin was thunderstruck. For a moment, he remained entirely speechless. Then, feeling a bit guilty about his temporary lapse of critical reasoning and being unable to accept as proven fact this dream straight out of the Thousand and One Nights, he replied: “But after all, sir, what proofs can you give me about this story, and what led you to find me here?” (Luce trans. of Verne original)

      Dr. Sarrasin sat petrified — for some minutes he could not utter a word; then, impressed by a conviction that this fine story was without any foundation in fact, he quietly said: “After all, sir, where are the proofs of this, and in what way have you been led to find me out?” (Kingston trans., Sampson Low, p. 8)

      Even worse, consider the following mistranslation where the literal-minded translator bungled Verne’s metaphor of Paris as a competitive social arena (la grande lutte parisienne) by sending the hero to a wrestling match instead:

      Marcel Bruckmann was one of those outstanding young champions, both spirited and discerning, that Alsace sends forth every year to fight in the great battlefield of Paris. (Luce trans. of Verne original)

      Mureel Bruckmann was one of those valiant champions which Alsace is in the habit of sending every year to Paris, to contend in wrestling. (trans. anon., Munro ed., p. 3)

      Defying the simplest logic, these translations often twist the story’s meaning to say the opposite of what Verne wrote. The following description of Herr Schultze scornfully dismissing the utopian project of his French rival is quite typical:

      This enterprise seemed absurd to him and, to his way of thinking, was destined to fail since it stood in opposition to the law of progress which decreed the collapse of the Latin race, its subservience to the Saxon race, and, as a consequence, its total disappearance from the surface of the globe. (Luce trans. of Verne’s original)

      This enterprise appeared to him to be absurd and in his opinion should not be allowed to go into effect, as it was opposed to the laws of progress: it decreed the overthrow of the Saxon race and, in the end, the total disappearance of it from the face of the globe. (anon. trans., Munro ed., p. 7)

      For well over 100 years, English-language readers of Jules Verne have had to struggle with inaccurate, incompetent, or ideologically skewed translations of his Voyages extraordinaires, most dating from the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that Verne’s literary reputation suffered as a consequence. The year 2005 marks the centenary of Jules Verne’s death, and it seems an especially appropriate time to celebrate Verne’s legacy by publishing a faithful version of his first cautionary novel, The Begum’s Millions.

      INTRODUCTION

      “Without him, our century would be stupid,” the novelist René Barjavel once wrote.¹ From the magical aerial adventures of the balloonists in Cinq semaines en ballon (1863, Five Weeks in a Balloon) to the underwater discoveries of Captain Nemo, Verne has never ceased to stimulate the imagination of readers from every point of the globe. It is no small wonder that Verne, according to UNESCO, ranks fourth among the “most translated authors in the world” (behind Walt Disney Productions, Agatha Christie, and the Bible).² Verne’s famous — if not apocryphal — statement “Whatever one man can imagine, another will someday be able to achieve” has been an inspiration to many who have looked to his works as a beacon for progress and wonder. Alas, one can read that quote with another message in mind as Verne’s visions in The Begum’s Millions (1879) — such as Stahlstadt, the horrifying protofascist state, or Schultze, its megalomaniacal leader — have come true all too often in our own cataclysmic twentieth century. As I. O. Evans remarks, the novel “contains some of Verne’s most striking forecasts. He was probably the first to envisage … the dangers of long-range bombardment with gas shells and showers of incendiary bombs.… He regarded other developments as even more disquieting than such weapons: the attempt of German militarism to dominate the world and the rise of a totalitarian state, rigidly directing its people’s lives and infested by political police.”³

      Indeed, when a string of relatively happy tales — such as Voyage au centre de la terre (1864, Voyage to the Center of the Earth), De la Terre à la lune (1865, From the Earth to the Moon), and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873, Around the World in Eighty Days) — is interrupted by as frightening and enigmatic a text as The Begum’s Millions, Verne’s traditionally upbeat image as a lover of progress and technology must be questioned. Despite Dr. Sarrasin’s declaration that the millions he is inheriting will go exclusively toward Science and the building of a utopian community — “the half billion that chance has placed at my disposal does not belong to me, but to Science!” — The Begum’s Millions is an extremely cautionary tale, which features Verne’s first truly evil scientist, Herr Schultze, and stands as the only one of his works to present both utopian and dystopian visions of society. Whereas Verne’s friend and publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel had steered him away from writing grim dystopian novels in favor of more cheerful adventures after he rejected Verne’s first — and recently rediscovered — novel Paris au XXème siècle (1994, Paris in the Twentieth Century), The Begum’s Millions ushers in a more pessimistic period in Verne’s writing that will reach its peak in his last novels, such as Maître du monde (1904, Master of