VERNE's JOURNEY to the CENTRE of the SELF Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Self

VERNE'S JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE SELF Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Self

Space and Time in the Voyages extraordinaires

William Butcher, Ph.D. Lecturer in French, University of Buckingham Foreword by Ray Bradbury

Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-20826-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20824-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20824-1 ©William Butcher 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990

Phototypeset by Input Typesetting Ltd, London ISBN 978-0-312-05345-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Butcher, William, 1951- Verne's journey to the centre of the self: space and time in the 'voyages extraordinaires' I William Butcher : foreword by Ray Bradbury. P· em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-05345-1 1. Verne, Jules. 1828-1905-Criticism and interpretations. 2. Science fiction, French-History and criticism. 3. Space and time in literature. 4. Self in literature. 5. Voyages. Imaginary. I. Title. PQ2469.Z5B88 1991 843'. 8-dc20 90--8899 CIP To the memory of my Father and Grandfather Contents

List of Figures xi Foreword by Ray Bradbury xiii Acknowledgements xvii Reference System xix

1 The Warrior of the Unknown 1

2 In Search of Lost Structure 7 Lost Between Two Shores 7 The Strogoff Syndrome 11 Le Verbe et Ia Terre 17 Go Anywhere, Do Anything 20 Splitting the Difference 22 The Pleasure and the Pain 25

3 The Shape's the Thing 29 Plots and Intrigues 29 In and Out 34 Diversions or 'Divertissements' 36 Putting it All Back Together Again 40

4 The Past is a Place 42 Past Masters 42 Man and Less-than-Man 48 The New Country 54 Going Back 58 viii Contents

5 The Shape of Things Gone By 60 Living in the Past 60 A Strange Dream 67 How to Travel in Time 69

6 Starting and Stopping 75 Straight and Round 75 Return to Sender 77 Getting Things Going 82 Posthumous Cycles 88 Time Will Have a Stop? 91

7 One and All 94 The Body Metaphoric 94 Violence and Sex 97 Friends and Relatives 104 The Terminal System 109 Knowledge and the Lone Individual 114

8 Past Reflexions 118 Past Present 118 Self-Conscious Narration 121 It Was Tomorrow 123 Will There Be a Reply? 126 Breaking Out 130

9 Now or Never 132 Things Going By 132 Supporting Role 141 Narration Impossible 144 Towards a New Novel 149

10 'So Unliterary a Writer as Verne'? 156 The Closing Down of History 156 Michel Meets Jules 160 Why Him? 163 Appendix A: The Time of the Novel 168 Contents ix

Appendix B: Michel Verne 172 Notes 174 Bibliography 190 Primary Works 190 Critical Studies 194 Index 202 List of Figures

Note: Because of the geometrical nature of some of the argu• ments of this study, a number of figures are introduced. Their functioning and meaning are fully explained in the accompany• ing text.

Graphs of Narrative Time versus Fictional Time

3.1 Global Forms 31

(a) 'Un Drame au Mexique' (b) Voyage au centre de la Terre (c) Le Chancellor (d) 'In the Year 2889' (e) Mistress Branican (f) 'L'Etemel Adam'

3.2 The Beginnings 33

(a) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (b) L'Ile mysterieuse (c) Le Chateau des Carpathes (d) Mistress Branican

3.3 The Endings 35

(a) De la Terre a la Lune (b) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours

xi xii List of Figures

3.4 Synthesis 41

The General Structure of a Verne Novel

6.1 Cyclical Structures 80

(a) Water Evaporation and Condensation (b) The Life of an Iceberg (c) Man-Eider-Bird Symbiosis (d) Vertical Movements in a Fluid (e) Security System for Ships (f) Self-Compensating Aircraft (g) The Cycle of History

9.1 Variations in Tense with Nature of Transposition and Degree of Narratorial Intervention 139

A.1 Ricardou's Diagrams and an Alternative Presentation 169

(a), (b) Variations in Speed of Narration (c), (d) Jumps in Narrative and Fictional Time (e), (f) 'Normal' Segment, Anticipation, and Flashback (g), (h) L'Emploi du temps

A.2 The Two Presentations Compared 170

(a), (b) Standard Speed of Narration (c), (d) Fictional Time that has 'Fallen Behind' Narrative Time (e), (f) Text in One Segment (g), (h) Same Text in Two Segments Foreword Ray Bradbury

William Butcher proves in this book that we are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne. His name never stops. At Aerospace or NASA gatherings, Verne is the verb that moves us to Space. He was born in the future we inhabit as our present. Once born he ricochetted back to the 19th century to dream our dreams and cause us to realise his possible improbabilities. In one way or another Butcher shows us how Verne has structured our ideas and reared up the architectures of our lives even as Walt Disney, an equally improbable god, has blue• printed new cities from old ruins, and taught us how to run them, amidst doubts and derision. Back in the early sixties when Veme was the unacknowledged ghost writer for President Kennedy, I described Verne along with his influence, Herman Melville, as the Ardent Blasphemers. Melville struck God's sun because it insulted him. Verne very quietly suggested that the sun should not be struck, but plugged into, utilized, its energies borrowed to move and light the world. Melville's maniac Captain ran forth to kill a whale. Nemo, with a more serene madness, said no, do not kill but build a whale. Run up a steel skeleton, skin it with iron, illumi• nate its interior and swim forth as Nautilus to be mistaken for and dubbed Moby Dick, in tribute to the American master. Melville had a most sad ending. In a poem based on a terrible regret, a few years ago, I advised Herman, much too late, to 'stay away from land, it's not your stuff'. Instead like an old god, its energies reversed, he made perma• nent landfall where gravity seized him. Instead of rejuvenation from contact with the earth, Melville was stake-driven down

xiii xiv Foreword

and walked with tons instead of pounds of invisible flesh. He died not knowing his fame beyond century's end, stamping and stamping and stamping the United States customs in. Verne, contrarily, as Butcher proves in chapter after chapter, died in the midst of families. His own, with its lights and darks, but more important the world's and all those young locomotive, diving-bell, cloud-staring men who would almost rather stoke engines in lieu of exasperated fiancees and wives. Resultantly, he has never died. His family on his last day, was immense, and remains so. We young romantics who once read Tarzan have found that Burroughs was for our boyhood jungle years and can not be revisited. Verne, when we sit at his feet, remains our technological St. Nicholas, dispensing old gifts made freshly new on turning a page. When I made a brief appearance on APOSTROPHES the lead• ing intellectual French television hour, 11 years ago, I found myself in a squabbling hen-yard of pontiffs mewing and mutter• ing about Verne's this, that, and t'other, with some homosexual innuendos tossed in to spoil the hour. In the midst of the exchange I advised everyone to be quiet. 'Gentlemen', I said, 'you want to talk about the ants. I wish to talk about the Elephant'. I went on to say what I have said early on in this preface. Without Verne there is a strong possibility we would never have romanced ourselves to the Moon. His immortal dust should be divided in separate and equal parts to be lodged in that first footprint on the Moon, and tossed to the winds that blow across that great Martian ravine that can hide our continental United States and swallow our imaginations. It is only appropriate then that William Butcher comes at Jules Verne from just about every angle one can image. There are ants aplenty at his picnic. But in the main he skins and mounts the pachyderm without making it resemble the nine different kinds of animal described by those blind men of India. It is just about the most complete work on Verne I have seen, and I saw a plenteous lot when the New York Times, more than 30 years ago, asked me to celebrate his life. Since then, Verne has been rediscovered by Hollywood, and on several occasions by TV, not always to his advantage. Butcher is here to set the Foreword XV

record straight and do some housekeeping in the rummage left behind by one-eyed screenwriters. Butcher's journey to, around, back and away from the pachy• derm approaches the literary beast from as many directions as a well-meaning analyst can conjure. And if we do not in the end completely find the animal, that is good. For Verne turns out to be less creature and more unexplored territory. The meta• phor of the elephant is insufficient. The fun and the mystery of Verne is the fact that after you have traversed great distances across his time, he always runs ahead. Like other novelist• explore!s before and after him he could not resist going in a• journey. And the journey itself is all. He acted out what I describe to my friends as the Aesthetic of Lostness. He does not want ~o arrive any one place and truly know where he is. The effervescent boy-man in him longs always to be at odds, not to know where he came from, where arrived or where going. We share that leaning into adventure. If women want to stake their tents and stay, it is the man who is always grousing around the campfire because he knows only too well he is putting down roots and is discomfited by a knowledge of self as well as place. He must be up and going, off and gone, long before dawn. The wise woman drags after the absolute fool. It is man, not woman, who claims he climbs Everest 'because it is there'. An insufficient reason, if I ever heard one. A better one, that Verne implies is, we go there because we are nearer the stars, and if we reach the stars, one day, we will be immortal. I think this is all submerged in Verne. I risk criticism for bringing it out. What is the use of life if it isn't immortal? The rage to live underlies everything Verne says and does. And to live at the top of one's blood, heart, soul, and breath. Verne's gift to us is the best: he makes us want to live forever. And we shall do so, one year, because he lifted our spirits in Le Geant in which he flew over France in a basket filled with liquid spirits, spiced chicken and, one hopes, an occasional female. Which is why, of course, Verne is suspect among not all but many intellectuals. Life is too serious to be taken frivolously, they say. No, says Verne, life is too serious to be taken seri• ously. Life can be won with a good heart, high fevers and xvi Foreword humour. Otherwise the Will sinks, the ship is not built, the city lifted, or the rocket promised for some future noon. All this, one way or another, is in Butcher's book, fastened in place by his bright wits, or tangentially implied. Since the 50th anniversary of Verne's death, a score of books have exam• ined his life. Butcher does the work of all those books, and more. For, as I have said, he describes more than the inkstained beast and tries for Verne's territorial imperatives. During this century we have fired at and ricochetted radio sounds off the Moon. But Verne arrived there long before us. Why then should we be puzzled when all those sounds return with a French accent? Butcher has captured those grand sounds and told us what they mean. Ray Bradbury 2 January 1990 Acknowledgements

My most heartfelt thanks are due to those without whom this book could not have existed in its present form: Malcolm Bowie who offered his eminently sensible and constructive support over a long period; Ross Chambers, who gave me tremendous help and encouragement; Franc;ois Raymond, who had the gen• erosity to commission four articles, and the patience to suggest improvements to them; and Nicole Saou, who helped me more than perhaps she knew by deciphering handwritten pages and by her assistance with the articles and the diagrams. John Parmi• giani, of the Tandy User Group, gave extremely generous help to a total stranger. My sincerest thanks must also go to Chris Thorpe for help with the illustrations, and Armelle Achour, Jean-Philippe Dubois, Ho Tjing Jung and Peter Jowitt, for help with the manuscript, together with those who were able to make sufficient sense of the earlier drafts to encourage me, Simone Vierne, Daniel Compere, Colin Bartlett, Michel Blanc, Andrew Martin and Michael Moriarty. My gratitude goes finally to those who commented on individual sections: Jacques Alexan• dropoulos, Serge Antoine, Ninette Bailey, William Barber, David Bellos, Jean Bessiere, Kay Bourne, Sally Butcher, Art Evans, Dominique Gerard, P. Hansen, Peter McNaughton, P Petitmen• gin, Gerard Rapegno, Jean Ricardou, Jean-Charles Rochet, Rich• ard Smith, David Steel, Harold Wardman and Dominique de Werra. Thanks are also due to the following for kind permission to re-use material published in article form: Bulletin de la societe Jules Verne ('Le Sens de L'Eternel Adams', no. 58, 2e tri. 1981, pp. 73--81), Presses polytechniques romandes ('Graphes et gra• phie: Circuits et voyages extraordinaires dans l' oeuvre de Jules Verne', in Regards sur la theorie des graphes, Lausanne, 1980, ed. P. Hansen and D. de Werra, pp. 477-82), Minard ('Le Verbe et la chair, ou l'emploi du temps', in Jules Verne 4, ed. Franc;ois Raymond, pp. 125-48) and Presses universitaires de France ('Etranges voyages de la ligne: Fleuves, logos et logiques dans l'oeuvre de Jules Verne', in Modernites de Jules Verne, 1988, ed. Jean Bessiere, pp. 123-38).

xvii Reference System

References to Verne's works will generally be of the form 'VCT 10'. The first group represents the title - Voyage au centre de la Terre in this case - following sigla indicated in the bibliography (p. 190). The last group is the page number. When the edition used is not Livre de poche (about 5 per cent of cases), the refer• ence is made in such a form as to be verifiable in any edition: as 'IH 1 ii 10' or 'PO ii 10', the upper-case Roman numeral (if any) being the part number and the lower-case one being the chapter number. When several references are made to a single idea in my text, they are separated by commas, whereas refer• ences to successive ideas are separated by semi-colons; the siglum is not repeated when there are multiple references to the same work. Where quotation marks are not present, my text is often a direct paraphrase of Verne's (as indicated by the notes or references in brackets). My emphasis of words within quo• tations will be indicated by the use of capital letters, whereas italics indicate emphasis in the text quoted. Square brackets within quotations indicate my intercalation of material. For the sake of continuity, a few brief quotations have been translated (my translations), but only when the English corresponds clearly to the French. References will contain the place of publication only when it is not London (for books in English) or Paris (for books in French).

List of Abbreviations BSJV Bulletin de Ia societe Jules Verne tri. trimestre (quarter) § new paragraph (within a quotation)