20
(p. 64)
“There is a powerful agent, ... the soul of my mechanical apparatus. This agent is electricity”:
First introduced to the public at the World’s Fair held in Paris in 1867, electricity was not available for domestic use until well into the 1880s. Verne was fascinated by the power of electricity; however, he did not thoroughly understand it, and much of his writing on the subject is conjecture. In fact, if a submarine like the
Nautilus
were to be powered by batteries, the batteries would have to be bigger than the ship itself.
21
. (p.67)
“I use Bunsen’s contrivances, not Ruhmkorff‘s”:
Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff (1803-1877) was a famed German mechanic who invented the Ruhmkorff coil, an induction coil (for producing high voltage from a low-voltage source) that could produce very large electrical sparks. German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) invented the Bunsen cell (a device that delivers an electric current), which was more powerful than other cells. Verne is implying that Nemo has discovered a new, more powerful cell or coil.
22
. (p. 68)
“steel plates, whose density is from .07 to .08 that of water”:
The standard English translation of
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
used for this edition, misprints many of Verne’s original—and correct—figures, as it does here. Steel has a density of 7.8, not .07 or .08, that of water. If the figures here were correct, steel would be light enough to float. (A steel ship floats because its overall density is less than that of water.)
23
. (p. 76)
Ned named the fish, and Conseil classed them:
At this point Verne’s original French text includes a long passage in which Conseil lectures Ned on the scientific classifications of fish. Ned responds that fish are classified into two categories: fish that can be eaten and fish that can’t! The exchange establishes important character traits of both Conseil and Ned—the one scientific and intellectual, the other practical and hedonistic.
24
. (p. 82)
“the Rouquayrol apparatus, invented by two of your own country-men”:
Frenchmen Benoit Rouquayrol, a mining engineer, and Auguste Denayrouse, a naval officer, developed the first modern diving cylinder, patented in 1865 as an “Aerophore.” It allowed a diver to breathe compressed air equal to the water pressure of his depth, thus making it possible to descend much deeper than before. The aerophore is the forerunner of modern scuba equipment.
25
. (p. 96)
“the learned Maury”:
American naval officer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) wrote what has been called the first textbook of modern oceanography,
The Physical Geography of the Sea.
Verne often returns to Maury as a source.
26
6. (p. 97)
the Sandwich Islands, where Cook died, February 14, 1779:
Both Nemo and Aronnax speak highly of English navigator and explorer Captain James Cook (1728-1779), who completed the first major scientific survey of the South Pacific Ocean. Cook was killed by natives of Hawaii (formerly called the Sandwich Islands) as he returned from his third expedition.
27
(p. 98)
if one can believe Athenæus, a Greek doctor, who lived before Galen:
Greek physician Athenaeus of Attaleia (first century A.D.) founded a school of medicine based in Stoic thought. Galen (A.D. 129-c.199) was also a Greek physician.
28
8. (p. 98)
D‘Orbigny:
French naturalist Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny (1802-1857) founded the science of stratigraphical paleontology, the study of fossils as they appear in the geographical strata.
29
. (p. 100)
we sighted the Pomotou Islands, the old “dangerous group” of Bougainville:
Count Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), a French navigator, wrote
Description d‘un voyage autour du monde (Description of a Voyage Around the World),
an account of his journey to Polynesia. He nicknamed the archipelago of Polynesia, which includes the Pomotou Islands, the “dangerous group,” partly because of the behavior of the island’s native inhabitants.
30
. (p. 101 )
Such is, at least, Darwin’s theory, who thus explains the formation of the atolls:
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English naturalist whose most famous work,
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
(1859), proposed the theory of natural selection and evolution. Darwin also wrote
Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,
referred to here. An atoll is a circular coral reef.
31
. (p. 102)
“vanikoro.” ... It was the name of the islands on which La Perouse had been lost!:
French navigator Jean-François de Galaup (1741-c.1788), known as La Pérouse, disappeared during an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. His disappearance was one of the great, unsolved mysteries of Verne’s day. It is thought he was murdered by natives of the Santa Cruz Islands, part of the Solomon Islands group in the western Pacific Ocean, which includes the island of Vanikoro, or Vanikolo.
32
. (p.169)
“after the construction of the Suez Canal”:
Construction of the Suez Canal, a ship canal through the Isthmus of Suez that connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas, was begun in 1859. The canal opened in 1869, the year before this novel was published.
33
. (p. 182)
battle of Actium:
Roman general Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C) to become the first Roman emperor. In one of history’s strangest and most important battles, Cleopatra’s fleet of sixty ships mysteriously turned tail and fled and Antony followed her, deserting his men.
34
(p. 187)
Michelet:
French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) wrote
La Mer (The Sea),
a romantic history of the ocean reputed to be a source of many of Verne’s episodes and images. Michelet lost his position as professor of history at the Collège de France when he refused to swear allegiance to Louis-Napoleon (later Emperor Napoléon III).
35
. (p. 195)
Still the same monk-like severity of aspect:
At this point in the narrative, the translator of this edition leaves out two important paragraphs describing portraits hanging in Nemo’s room. The portraits, planted by Verne as a clue to Nemo’s character, include: Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817), a Polish general and patriot who fought for Polish independence from Russia and Prussia; Markos Botsaris (c.1788-1823), a Greek patriot and a prominent figure in the Greek War of Independence from the Turks; Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), an Irish nationalist leader known as the Liberator, who fought for Catholic Emancipation; George Washington (1732-1799), the American general who commanded the Continental armies during the Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States; Daniele Manin (1804-1857), an Italian patriot who fought against Austrian control; and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), president of the United States during the American Civil War. Also displayed in Nemo’s room is an etching of American abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) hanging on the gallows, whom Verne called a martyr to the emancipation of the black race. Given the fact that Verne and his editor cut the explanation of Nemo’s motivations from the original manuscript (see the Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv), this collection of portraits is a crucial key to understanding the captain’s character.
36
. (p. 206)
ATLANTIS:
A legendary civilization of mystery and fascination in Western culture, Atlantis may have been destroyed by flood or earthquake in ancient times. Scientists and archaeologists have been searching for Atlantis for hundreds of years. Verne goes on to list a few of the writers, historians, and philosophers who have described Atlantis, from Origen (c. A.D. 200), an early Greek Christian and defender of the Church, to the more modern Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707-1788), a renowned French naturalist and author of the 44-volume
Histoire Naturelle (Natural History).
37
. (p. 228)
which altered the whole landscape like a diorama:
Invented in the 1820s by French artists J. M. Daguerre and Charles-Marie Bouton, a diorama is a painting seen from a distance through a large opening that utilizes staggered canvases, transparent cloth, and a changing play of light to produce a three-dimensional scenic optical illusion.
38
8. (p. 235)
Doubtless the Canadian did not wish to admit the presence of the South Pole:
On the date of publication of this book, neither of the poles had been discovered. American explorer Robert Peary was the first to reach the North Pole in 1909; Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole two years later.
39
(P. 270)
To paint such pictures, one must have the pen of the most illustrious of our poets, the author of “The Toilers of the Deep”:
The best-known passage of French writer Victor Hugo’s 1866 novel
(Travailleurs de la mer)
is a battle between the hero and a giant octopus that lives in a cave in the English Channel. Verne greatly admired Hugo’s craft and art.
40
(p. 278)
at a depth of more than 1,400 fathoms, that I saw the electric cable lying on the bottom.... In 1863, the engineers constructed another one, measuring 2,000 miles in length, and weighing 4,500 tons, which was embarked on the Great Eastern:
In 1866 the
Great Eastern
completed laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, linking Europe to America; it was the only ship large enough to carry enough cable to span the entire Atlantic. Verne sailed to New York aboard the
Great Eastern
in 1867, in his one and only trip to North America. He was impressed by the ship, which could carry 4,000 passengers. He used notes compiled on his voyage while writing 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea
as well as his 1871 novel
Une ville flottante (A Floating City).
41
(p. 281 )
“On the 11th and 12th Prairal of the second year”:
Prairal is the period of time between May 20 and June 18 marked on the French revolutionary calendar. Acting against Catholic tradition, the National Convention adopted a new calendar, in which years were numbered not from the birth of Christ but from the day the French Republic was proclaimed, September 22, 1792. Months were given names that evoked their season. Prairal (prairie is French for “meadow”) was the ninth month of this new calendar, which was abandoned in 1806.
42
. (p. 290)
that strange region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, ... “that veiled human figure, ... which defends the approach to the pole”:
Verne greatly admired American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s style and craft. Many Verne scholars believe Verne got the idea for his first novel
Five Weeks in a Balloon
(1863) from Poe’s 1850 story “The Balloon Hoax.” Poe’s novel
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
(1838) ends with a description similar to the one Verne gives here. Poe’s 1841 short story “A Descent into the Maelstrom” has much in common with the final scene of Verne’s novel.
Inspired by
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Science Fiction
Oscar Wilde is said to have remarked, somewhat cryptically, that H. G. Wells was a “scientific Jules Verne.” It is hard to know who Wilde wished to slight more by his comment, but it has long been evident that Verne and Wells are
the
two progenitors of modern science fiction. Without these two seminal authors, scientific fiction—a genre that includes works by Kingsley Amis, Isaac Asimov, Anthony Burgess, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and J. R. R. Tolkien—would not exist as we know it today.
Herbert George Wells supported himself with teaching, textbook writing, and journalism until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-classic novel
The Time Machine.
He followed this before the end of the century with
The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man,
and
The War of the Worlds
—books that established him as the first original voice since Verne in the genre of scientific fiction. However, while Verne dealt with realistic scientific phenomena—for example, the submarine
Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
predates the modern submarine—Wells was interested in, as Jorge Luis Borges put it, “mere possibilities, if not impossible things.” Time travel, interplanetary warfare, invisibility—these are the stuff of Wells’s conceptual fiction.
Wells disliked being compared to his literary ancestor. In a letter to J. L. Garvin, editor of
Outlook,
Wells refused to attack Verne publicly, though in a letter he openly denied having been influenced by him: “A good deal of injustice has been done the old man [Verne] in comparison with me. I don’t like the idea of muscling into the circle of attention about him with officious comments or opinions eulogy. I’ve let the time when I might have punished him decently go by.” Wells was a prolific and diverse writer, tackling social philosophy and criticism, history, utopian and comic novels, literary parodies, and even feminism; but he is best remembered for his auspicious beginnings as a science fiction writer.
Film
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
was adapted into film as early as 1905, with an eighteen-minute silent. A feature-length silent adaptation, directed by Stuart Paton and released in 1916, includes plot elements from Verne’s later novel
The Mysterious Island,
which delves into Captain Nemo’s past as the Indian Prince Dakkar. Paton’s film features elaborate underwater photography that is impressive for its time.
A wave of Jules Verne film adaptations appeared in the 1950s, including
Around the World in 80 Days
(1956), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and
Journey to the Center of the Earth
(1959). Disney’s
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(1954), directed by Richard Fleischer, showcases many of the day’s biggest stars: Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason in the role of Captain Nemo, and Paul Lukas as Pierre Aronnax. Despite its camp flavor, this version stands as the definitive adaptation of the novel, the standard to which all others are compared. After more than half a century, the squid attack scene, accomplished solely though the use of puppets, remains intense and compelling. The film won Academy Awards for special effects and art direction. Though key plot elements differ, it remains true to the spirit of the book and faithfully conveys Verne’s ideals of science, brotherhood, and vengeance.