JULES VERNE Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas Translated with an Introduction and Notes by WILLIAM BUTCHER 1 ‘I am going to sink it.' ‘You will not!' ‘I will,’ he coldly replied. ‘Do not take it on yourself to judge me, monsieur.’ French naturalist Dr Aronnax embarks on an expedition to hunt down a sea monster, but discovers instead the Nautilus, a self-contained world built by its enigmatic captain. To- gether Nemo and Aronnax explore the underwater marvels of the globe, undergo a transcen- dent experience in the ruins of Atlantis, and plant a black flag at the South Pole. But Nemo’s mission is finally revealed to be one of revenge—and his methods coldly efficient. Verne’s classic novel has left a profound mark on the twentieth century. Its themes are universal, its style alternately humorous and grandiose, its construction masterly. This new and unabridged translation by the father of Verne studies brilliantly conveys the range of this seminal work. The volume also contains unpublished information about the novel’s genesis. ‘by far the best translations/critical editions available . known internationally as a topnotch scholar’ Science-Fiction Studies 2 OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAS Jules Verne was born in Nantes in 1828, the eldest of five children in a prosperous family of French, Breton, and Scottish extraction. His early years were happy apart from an unfulfilled passion for his cousin Caroline. Literature always attracted him and while taking a law degree in Paris he wrote a number of plays. His first two books, entitled Journey to Scot- land and Paris in the Twentieth Century, were not published in his lifetime. However, Five Weeks in a Balloon was accepted by the publisher Hetzel in 1862, and became an immediate success. It was followed by Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, Around the World in Eighty Days, and sixty other novels covering the whole world—and beyond. Verne himself travelled over three continents, before suddenly selling his yacht in 1886. Eight of the books appeared after his death in 1905Calthough in fact partly written by his son Michel. William Butcher was formerly Head of the Language Centre at the Hong Kong Tech- nical College. He has studied at Warwick, Lancaster, London, and the École Normale Supérieure, and has taught languages and pure mathematics in Malaysia, France, and Britain. As well as thirty articles on French literature, he has published Mississippi Madness (1990), Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Self (1990), and translations and critical editions of Verne’s Humbug (1991), Backwards to Britain (1992), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1992), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1995). Dr Butcher is at present working on a book on natural language processing. 3 THE WORLD'S CLASSICS ════ JULES VERNE The Extraordinary Journeys JULES VERNE Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas Translated with an Introduction and Notes by WILLIAM BUTCHER 4 CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi List of Abbreviations vii Introduction ix Note on the Text and Translation xxxii Select Bibliography xl A Chronology of Jules Verne xlv TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAS 1 Appendix. Sources of ideas on submarine navigation 382 Explanatory Notes 385 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Greg Scott, Angela Brown, and Elizabeth Stewart for their tre- mendous help with the preparation of the manuscript, together with Priscilla Lee, Iris Yuen, Coty Leung, Art Evans, Laurence Price, Betty Harless, Henry Sharton, Cécile Compère, Cé- cile Hautière, the staff of the Centre de documentation Jules Verne d’Amiens, and Susie Casement. A special word of thanks should go to John Joseph for the friendship and support he gave at a crucial stage. Angel Lui, finally, has given her help and affection unstintingly. 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BSJV Bulletin de la société Jules Verne MD Marcel Destombes, ‘Le Manuscrit de Vingt mille lieues sous les mers de la Société de Géographie’, BSJV 9: 3#6 (July–Dec. 1975) MÉR Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation: without other reference, MÉR refers to the serial publica- tion of 20TL (1869–70) MS1 (or MS1A or MS1B) the earlier of the two manuscripts in the French National Library MS2 (or MS2A or MS2B) the later of the two manuscripts in the French Na- tional Library PC Peter Costello 20TL Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas WJM and FPW Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter ‘1869’ refers to the first book publica- tion of 20TL (1869–70). ‘1871’ refers to the definitive (illus- trated) book publication of 20TL, used for nearly all modern editions. 7 INTRODUCTION If you ask people for the name of the world’s most translated writer, the classic best- seller of all time, the only popular writer to have increased in popularity over more than a century,1 you will get some surprising answers. If you further enquire as to the identity of the only Frenchman to have achieved universal renown and which of his fictional heroes and vessels are often quoted without even naming the work, some odd looks may be forthcoming. Verne, Nemo, and the Nautilus have entered the world’s collective memory; but the three remain so far away from real recognition that they must be located in some deep, sub- conscious fold of it. The only signs of their existence, dragged up from the murky depths, are invariably confused or mistaken. These blinking apologies for a reputation need to be put out of their misery. Thus Verne is not a science-fiction writer: most of his books contain no inno- vative science. He did not write for children. The poor style often associated with his name is not his. And Nemo does not speak with a mid-Atlantic drawl. In order to try to understand how these ideas came to life, and how such an out- standing literary figure could have acquired so poor a reputation in Britain and America, we should start by briefly disposing of the author’s life and studying Verne’s publishing history. Jules Verne was born and brought up in Nantes, studied and worked in Paris, and then spent the rest of his life in Amiens. His first foreign visit was to Scotland in 1859, an experi- ence which deeply marked his works. From about 1870 Verne displayed an increasing pessi- mism about many of his early enthusiasms, with the previous admiration for technology re- placed by apprehensions on social and political issues, and with the British, the heroes of his first two novels, sometimes now the villains. The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870 seem to have been the most important external catalysts for the change. In terms of the individual works, The Chancellor (written in about 1870, but published in 1873) was the clear turning-point; but signs of uneasiness may already be visible in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (written in 1865–6 and 1868–70, and published in 1869–70). From the beginning, recognition for the series of the Extraordinary Journeys was slow in coming in the English-speaking countries. The first novels of Verne’s to be translated in book form came out after Verne had already written most of his best work. It must have been disappointing for the author of The British at the North Pole to see this book unavail- able to the British themselves.2 But when the works did begin to appear, it might have been better if they hadn’t. The books were generally chopped by about 20 per cent. The translators, frequently anonymous, often did not understand the French, and so mistranslated it. In the process, they produced some wonderful howlers. In the English Verne the hero visits the ‘disagreeable ter- ritories of Nebraska’ or ‘jumps over’ part of an island; reference is made to ‘prunes’ or ‘Gali- lee’; and Napoleon dies broken-hearted in ‘St Helen’s’. Verne himself wrote of ‘the Badlands of Nebraska’, ‘blowing up’, ‘plums’, ‘Galileo’, and ‘St Helena’! Nor is such abuse of the 1. Unesco’s Index Translationum lists the number of new editions of translations appearing worldwide each year. In Vol. 39, covering 1992, Verne had 215 publications, ahead of the Bible, and behind only Lenin (260) and Agatha Christie (290). However, in Vol. 8 for 1955, Verne had 94 for Christie’s 45, and 1970 is similar. It is clear, then, that if total figures are calculated, and the Bible is excluded, Verne becomes the overall leader, on an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 volumes. 2. History was to repeat itself, for Backwards to Britain was published in six countries (with two different editions in Italy!) before belatedly appearing in Britain. 8 rights of the author yet over. A great majority of the current English editions of Verne con- tinue to be of an unacceptable standard. And this, I would claim, is the main reason for his poor reputation. If we examine Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas in particular, there have been hundreds of editions of this work, perhaps making the English version the most fre- quently published novel of all time. Lewis Mercier’s 1872 translation was typical of the time: adequate on ‘style’ but extremely weak on details. Also, about 22 per cent of the novel is missing! Since then, over half of the editions have reproduced Mercier, many of them making further minor changes without, unfortunately, referring back to the French; and it is often the editions that protest the most about poor translation which are themselves the least faithful and the most Mercier-like! There has also been a low level of critical commentary on the Extraordinary Journeys in the English-speaking world, frequently the result of monolinguals studying these truncated and inaccurate translations.