Journey Through the Impossible (26 page)

25. One of the four basic forces of nature: fire, water, air, and earth.
Later, in Master of the World (Maitre du monde), Verne imagines an automobile capable of traveling on Earth, an aircraft to fly, and a submarine to navigate on and under water. The "Terror" (L'Epouvante) will be destroyed by
the fourth element, fire, in its most symbolic aspect-lightning.

26. There are three ballets in the play, according to the reviews, one at
the end of every act. The text doesn't mention the second ballet.

ACT II: THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

1. A district on the west coast of India, colonized by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510. Goa remained a Portuguese colony until 1962, when it
became part of India. Why did Jules Verne choose to begin the underwater
part of journey Through the Impossible in Goa? According to Charles-Noel
Martin, it's because of Oscar de Lagoanere, the composer and director of the
music in journey Through the Impossible. His name contains the letters
"goa"-another Vernean wordplay. Robert Pourvoyeur suggests two other
interpretations: one, Nemo, the captain of the Nautilus, was Indian, and Goa
is close to his homeland (in 1882, it was still a Portuguese colony). Second,
Goa is wordplay: in French, a jeweler is "un joailler" and a banterer is "un
gouailleur." Verne could have planned to use Goa as part of a combination of
these two words that are almost homonyms. He didn't use the joke in the
play, but it was used by Arnold Mortier in his review of the play, which can
be found at the end of this volume.

2. A common British and American family name, but also the name of
Sir James Anderson who commanded the Great Eastern from Liverpool to
New York and back in April 1862, with Jules Verne and his brother Paul on
board. His one and only trip to America gave Jules Verne the opportunity to
write his most autobiographic novel A Floating City (Une Ville flottante)-with
parts of fiction-in which he describes the ship, the captain, some passengers, and his visit to Niagara Falls. Anderson is also the name of the captain
of the Scotia, the ship rammed by the Nautilus in the first chapter of Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

3. A Venetian gold ducat (coin with the ruling doge's portrait on it)
created at the end of the thirteenth century. The sequin became the common
business coin around the Mediterranean and was imitated all over Europe.

4. "This proved that this extraordinary cetacean could transport itself
from one place to another with amazing speed" (Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea, chapter 1).

5. A major seaport and manufacturing center in central Chile, on a
wide bay of the Pacific Ocean. It's one of Chile's largest cities. Because of the
sonority of the word, Valparaiso is part of many French popular songs and
mariner's songs.

6. The battle against the giant squid is one of the most powerful scenes of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. It is no surprise that before Walt
Disney used it in 1954, Verne himself used it again in Journey Through the
Impossible.

7. A word often used by Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the
Sea, as a synonym for squid or octopus. Kraken, a word of Norwegian origin,
was already in use in the middle of the eighteenth century, and meant a fabulous sea monster.

8. Verne (or d'Ennery?) invented the name of a ship whose sonority
would get across on stage. There was such ship sunk in Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea. Tranquebar is also the contraction of "tranquil" and "bar."

9. According to many biographers, Jules Verne often said, "I love three
things more than everything else: music, the sea, and liberty."

10. Charles-Noel Martin credits Verne with this sentence, which comments about the atheist orientation taken in 1877 by the "Grand Orient de
France" (the highest Masonic lodge in France).

11. In Mysterious Island, the last words of Captain Nemo are "God and
Fatherland," which is surprising in the mouth of an anarchist, the independent captain of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Verne was asked
by Hetzel to modify Nemo's last words in deference to the French family, to
be "bourgoise" and "politically correct." Verne and d'Ennery show here the
very devout side of Nemo.

12. Reference to the end of journeys and Adventures of Captain
Hatteras-in the first Verne manuscript (never published)-in which Hatteras dies falling into the volcano at the North Pole. This shows Verne
reacting to his publisher, Hetzel, who obliged him to modify the end of Hatteras and save the captain, and, in whose opinion Journey Through the Impossible was an insane undertaking.

13. The oyster described here by Valdemar is the same as the one shown
by Nemo to professor Aronnax in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,
housing a gigantic pearl that grew from an impurity deposited by Nemo. Tridacna gigas is the world's largest bivalve. A true giant, this species of oyster
can reach lengths of over four feet, and can weigh over five hundred pounds.
The species is generally found on a substratum of coral reef, and lives in
depths from only a few feet to several fathoms. It can be found from the
Philippines to Micronesia. A photograph of it can be seen at: www.on
campus.richmond. edu/cultural/museums/lrginfo/2 5/2 4giant_clam.html.

14. Here is another example of Verne playing with words. In French, the
expression "plancher des vaches" (literally "floor of the cows") means "land"
or "dry land" and is used by someone who spends little time on dry land. Valdemar uses the expression "veal's floor" ("plancher des veaux") meaning
dry land or just land in Copenhagen. Tartelet corrects him immediately,
explaining that in France, the expression is "the floor of their mothers."

15. This noted Greek philosopher wrote about Atlantis in two of his
dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias, around 370 B.C.E.

16. One of the cities of Atlantis, according to Jules Verne in Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Makhimos is not mentioned in Plato's Critias
(the origin of all legends about Atlantis).

17. Mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Sertorius. Around 80 B.C.E., a
roman general, Sertorius, former governor of Spain, goes to Mauretania
(today's Morocco) with his army and conquers Tingis (today's Tangier),
whose king, Ascalis, might otherwise come back from exile to reclaim his
throne. In 38 B.C.E. Octavius (who became Emperor Augustus) gave Tingis
the status of Roman Colony.

18. The ancient Egyptian deity whose name means "hidden." Amon or
Ammon, the god of reproductive forces, was part of the divine triad of
Thebes, with his wife, Mut, and his son Khon. Later Amon was identified
with the sun god Ra, and was called Amon-Ra, the father of the gods and the
creator all living beings. As such, he became identified with Zeus in ancient
Greek, and with Jupiter in Rome. In the play, the use of Ammon connects
Atlantis with ancient Egypt.

19. In Greek mythology, demigod Atlas was punished by Zeus and condemned to bear the sky (with the earth) forever on his back. In classical architecture, atlantes (the plural form of atlas) are male figures used as columns to
support a superstructure. Atlantes are the male counterpart of caryatids and
could also be the inhabitants of Atlantis. Verne logically named their king Atlas.

20. A name made up by Verne. In classical Greek, Selene means Moon.

Z 1. In Greek mythology, Electra was the daughter of Agamemnon (the
winner of the Trojan War and hero of Homer's Iliad) and Clytemnestra.
During the Trojan War, Clytemnestra had an affair with Egisthe and they
killed Agamemnon as he came home after the war. To avenge her father's
death, Electra pushed her brother Orestes to kill Egisthe and Clytemnestra.
What a family! Over the centuries, Electra's vengeance has inspired Eschylus
(The Choephores, 458 B.C.E.), Sophocles (415 B.C.E.), Euripides (413 B.C.E.),
Eugene O'Neill (Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931), and jean Giraudoux
(Electre, 1937).

22. In Greek and Roman mythology a sibyl is a female fortune-teller
inspired with prophetic power by Apollo. Sibyls lived in caves and prophesied in a frenzied trance, sitting on tripods.

ACT III: THE PLANET ALTOR

1. Verne described the president of the Gun Club as follows: "Impey
Barbicane was a man of forty, calm, cold, austere, eminently serious and selfcontained; punctual as a chronometer; in temperament, ready for any ordeal;
in character, unshakable; adventurous but not romantic; always bringing
practical ideas to bear on the boldest ventures; the ultimate New Englander,
the colonizing Northerner; the descendant of the Roundheads, who were so
deadly for the Stuarts; indeed the implacable foe of all Cavaliers, whether
royalists in the Old Country or Southern gentlemen in the new. In short, a
Yankee through and through" (From the Earth to the Moon, updated edition
by Walter James Miller, 1995).

2. As the secretary of the Gun Club, Maston was present in all novels
of the Gun Club Trilogy: From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre a la lone),
Around the Moon (Autour de la lone), and Topsy-Turvy (Sans dessus dessous, also
translated into English as The Purchase of the North Pole).

3. A type of heavy cast-iron cannon or howitzer used in the U.S. Army
in the middle of the nineteenth century and during the Civil War. The
Columbiad is a kind of Dahlgren that is, a piece of ordnance thick in the
breech, and tapering off gradually from the base to the muzzle. See photos at
www. fpc. dos. state.fl.us/learning/CivilWar/photos/Columbiad.html.

4. Stoney Hill, southeast of Tampa, is the location where the giant
Columbiad was built to send the three Verne astronauts From the Earth to the
Moon in 1864.

5. Captain Nicholl is, with Impey Barbicane and Michel Ardan, one of
the three astronauts who travel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around
the Moon (1869). In Topsy-Turvy (1889), Nicholl invents the meli-melonite, a
powerful explosive used to straighten Earth's axis.

6. Almost the same wording as in the letter Barbicane sends to all Gun
Club members at the beginning of From the Earth to the Moon, inviting them
to the meeting where the Gun Club decides to launch a bullet to the Moon.

7. The Phoenician and Chaldean goddess of fertility and love, also
known as Isthar in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. She has been identified
with various Greek goddesses: Selene, the goddess of the Moon (to whom
Jules Verne dedicated an entire chapter in his Moon novels); Artemis, the
goddess of hunting, twin sister of Apollo, and, Aphrodite, the goddess of love
and beauty.

8. In ancient Greek mythology, he was the son of Zeus and Leto.
Apollo was the god of the Sun, thus the adjective "radiant," as used byJules Verne. Apollo was also the god of music, poetry, and the arts. He is one of
the most complex gods of the Greek pantheon. His twin sister, Artemis, was
the goddess of the Moon and of hunting.

9. Two suburbs west of Paris, north of Versailles, on the river Seine. In
the second half of the nineteenth century, Chatou and its neighbor Le Vesinet
were popular for Sunday excursions by Parisians. These towns offered cafes,
restaurants, and boats for rent. Chatou and Le Vesinet were favorite places of
the impressionist painters. Renoir stayed in Chatou in 1879.

10. Reference to the Harvard College Observatory, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1839, and reestablished from 1843 to 1847 by public
subscription. In From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, Verne writes
of the "Cambridge Observatory" and of J.-M. Belfast, its director, who was
supportive of the Gun Club project to send a bullet to the Moon.

11. The Columbiad of From the Earth to the Moon was completely
underground, with its opening at ground level, but imagining the giant
cannon on a stand is much more spectacular.

12. The legend of the Aymon Knights begins with the Emperor Charlemagne who knighted the four Aymon brothers. Yet Charlemagne lived to
regret this act of generosity when Raynaud (or Renaud), the eldest of the
Aymon Knights, killed Charlemagne's favorite nephew in an act of family
honor. While on a run to the hillside of Dinant (Belgium), the four Aymon
brothers-Raynaud, Alard, Guichard, and Richard-were suddenly surprised by Charlemagne's troops. They were completely surrounded with
nowhere to turn when something extraordinary happened: Bayard, their
mighty steed, leaped from the cliffs with all four knights on his back and
landed safely on the other side of the Meuse River and galloped through the
Ardennes. Thus they escaped the vengeance of the emperor. Outside of the
city of Dinant is a rock, le rocher Bayard (the Bayard rock), which stands separate from the rest of the main rock to which it was once connected. The
Bayard rock was detached with an explosion to provide passage for the
French troops of Louis XW after they took Dinant. However, popular belief
has it that the rock was split by the hoof of their giant horse, Bayard, when
it jumped over the Meuse River.

13. The French expression is "wagon projectile," which means literally
"carriage projectile" or "coach missile."

14. A bitter yellow compound obtained by nitrating phenol. It is used as
a dye and in the manufacture of explosives.

15. One of the bridges of Paris that span the river Seine, connecting the
Place de la Concorde with the Assemblee Nationale (French Congress).

16. Valdemar jokes about the French National Assembly, which is called
"Chambre des Deputes." The expression means the building and the
Assembly of elected representatives of France.

17. Verne's political ideas were mainly studied by the leftist university
professor Jean Chesneaux, whose book was translated into English in 1972
(The Political and Social Ideas ofJules Verne. Translated by Thomas Wikeley
[London: Thames and Hudson]). An important part of Chesneaux's view was
based on Verne's The Castaways of theJonathan (published by Hetzel in 1910),
which is an apology for anarchism. Vernian scholars have since discovered
that the novel was rewritten and transformed by Michel Verne, Jules's son,
before the 1910 publication. The original text, written only by Jules Verne
between October 17, 1897, and April 11, 1898, is available in English (Mag-
ellania [New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2002]) and shows much more
moderate political views than Michel's rewriting. Jean Chesneaux also modified his book (only in French, Jules Verne, un regard sur le monde [Paris:
Bayard, 2001]) to adapt his opinions to what Jules Verne wrote himself,
without any external text manipulation. It's interesting to note that Valdemar
promotes a society without government sixteen years before the novelist
wrote his novel.