20 000 Leagues To Miles

1870 novel by Jules Verne

Xx Thousand Leagues Nether the Seas
Frontispiece of 1871 edition
Author	Jules Verne
Original title	Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
Illustrator	Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou
Country	France
Language	French
Series	Voyages extraordinaires Captain Nemo #one
Genre	Hazard, Scientific discipline fiction^[i]
Publisher	Pierre-Jules Hetzel
Publication appointment	March 1869 to June 1870 (equally serial) 1870 (volume form)
Published in English language	1872
Preceded by	In Search of the Castaways
Followed by	Around the Moon

Xx Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction take chances novel past French author Jules Verne.

The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel's fortnightly periodical, the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation . A deluxe octavo edition, published past Hetzel in November 1871, included 111 illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou.^[two] The book was widely acclaimed on its release and remains so; it is regarded as one of the premier take chances novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with Around the World in Lxxx Days and Journeying to the Center of the Earth. Its depiction of Helm Nemo's underwater ship, the Nautilus, is regarded as ahead of its time, since information technology accurately describes many features of today's submarines, which in the 1860s were comparatively primitive vessels.

A model of the French submarine Plongeur (launched in 1863) figured at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where Jules Verne examined it^[3] and was inspired by it^[4] ^[5] when writing his novel.^[half-dozen]

Title [edit]

The title refers to the distance traveled under the various seas: 20,000 metric leagues (80,000 km, over 40,000 nautical miles), nearly twice the circumference of the Earth.^[7]

Principal characters [edit]

Professor Pierre Aronnax – the narrator of the story, a French natural scientist.
Conseil – Aronnax'southward Flemish servant, very devoted to him and knowledgeable in biological nomenclature.
Ned State – a Canadian harpooner, described every bit having "no equal in his dangerous trade."^[8]
Helm Nemo – the designer and captain of the Nautilus.

Plot [edit]

During the twelvemonth 1866, ships of various nationalities sight a mysterious sea monster, which, information technology is later suggested, might be a gigantic narwhal. The U.Southward. regime assembles an trek in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and the story's narrator, is in town at the time and receives a final-minute invitation to join the expedition; he accepts. Canadian whaler and primary harpooner Ned Land and Aronnax's true-blue manservant Conseil are also among the participants.

The expedition leaves Brooklyn aboard the United states of america Navy frigate Abraham Lincoln, then travels south around Cape Horn into the Pacific Sea. Afterwards a five-calendar month search catastrophe off Japan, the frigate locates and attacks the monster, which damages the ship's rudder. Aronnax and Land are hurled into the sea, and Conseil jumps into the water later on them. They survive past climbing onto the "monster", which, they are startled to detect, is a futuristic submarine. They wait on the deck of the vessel until morning, when they are captured, hauled inside, and introduced to the submarine'due south mysterious constructor and commander, Helm Nemo.

The rest of the novel describes the protagonists' adventures aboard the Nautilus, which was congenital in secrecy and now roams the seas beyond the reach of land-based governments. In self-imposed exile, Captain Nemo seems to have a dual motivation — a quest for scientific knowledge and a desire to escape terrestrial civilization. Nemo explains that his submarine is electrically powered and can comport advanced marine inquiry; he also tells his new passengers that his secret beingness ways he cannot let them leave — they must remain on lath permanently.

They visit many ocean regions, some factual and others fictitious. The travelers view coral formations, sunken vessels from the Battle of Vigo Bay, the Antarctic ice bulwark, the Transatlantic telegraph cable, and the legendary underwater realm of Atlantis. They even travel to the S Pole and are trapped in an upheaval of an iceberg on the style back, caught in a narrow gallery of ice from which they are forced to dig themselves out. The passengers also don diving suits, hunt sharks and other marine fauna with air guns in the underwater forests of Crespo Isle, and also attend an undersea funeral for a crew member who died during a mysterious collision experienced by the Nautilus. When the submarine returns to the Atlantic Body of water, a schoolhouse of giant squid ("devilfish") attacks the vessel and kills some other sailor.

The novel's later pages advise that Captain Nemo went into undersea exile after his homeland was conquered and his family slaughtered by a powerful imperialist nation. Following the episode of the devilfish, Nemo largely avoids Aronnax, who begins to side with Ned Land. Ultimately, the Nautilus is attacked by a warship from the mysterious nation that has caused Nemo such suffering. Carrying out his quest for revenge, Nemo — whom Aronnax dubs an "archangel of hatred" — rams the ship below her waterline and sends her to the bottom, much to the professor's horror. Later, Nemo kneels before a portrait of his deceased wife and children, then sinks into a deep depression.

Circumstances aboard the submarine change drastically: watches are no longer kept, and the vessel wanders about aimlessly. Ned becomes so reclusive that Conseil fears for the harpooner's life. One morning, however, Ned announces that they are in sight of land and have a gamble to escape. Professor Aronnax is more than than set up to leave Captain Nemo, who now horrifies him, still he is still fatigued to the man. Fearing that Nemo'south very presence could weaken his resolve, he avoids contact with the captain. Before their departure, however, the professor eavesdrops on Nemo and overhears him calling out in anguish, "O almighty God! Enough! Enough!" Aronnax immediately joins his companions, and they conduct out their escape plans, merely equally they board the submarine's skiff, they realize that the Nautilus has seemingly blundered into the bounding main's deadliest whirlpool, the Moskenstraumen, more commonly known equally the "Maelstrom". Yet, they manage to escape and find refuge on an isle off the coast of Norway. The submarine's ultimate fate, notwithstanding, remains unknown.

Themes and subtext [edit]

The "Plongeur", inspiration for the "Nautilus"

Nautilus 'southward route through the Pacific

Nautilus 's route through the Atlantic

Helm Nemo's assumed proper noun recalls Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus encounters the monstrous Cyclops Polyphemus in the course of his wanderings. Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name, and Odysseus replies that information technology is Outis ( Οὖτις ) 'no one', translated into Latin as "Nemo". Similar Captain Nemo, Odysseus wanders the seas in exile (though only for 10 years) and similarly grieves the tragic deaths of his crewmen.

The novel repeatedly mentions the U.S. Naval Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer who investigated the winds, seas, and currents, collected samples from the depths, and charted the earth's oceans. Maury was internationally famous, and Verne may take known of his French ancestry.

The novel alludes to other Frenchmen, including Lapérouse, the celebrated explorer whose two sloops of war vanished during a voyage of global circumnavigation; Dumont d'Urville, a later explorer who found the remains of one of Lapérouse'south ships; and Ferdinand de Lesseps, architect of the Suez Culvert and nephew of the sole survivor of Lapérouse'due south sick-fated expedition. The Nautilus follows in the footsteps of these men: she visits the waters where Lapérouse'southward vessels disappeared; she enters Torres Strait and becomes stranded there, every bit did d'Urville'southward ship, the Astrolabe; and she passes beneath the Suez Canal via a fictitious underwater tunnel joining the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

In possibly the novel'south well-nigh famous episode, the above-cited battle with a schoolhouse of giant squid, i of the monsters captures a crew member. Reflecting on the battle in the next affiliate, Aronnax writes: "To convey such sights, information technology would take the pen of our most renowned poet, Victor Hugo, writer of The Toilers of the Sea." A bestselling novel in Verne's solar day, The Toilers of the Sea as well features a threatening cephalopod: a laborer battles with an octopus, believed by critics to be symbolic of the Industrial Revolution. Certainly Verne was influenced by Hugo'south novel, and, in penning this variation on its octopus encounter, he may take intended the symbol to as well take in the Revolutions of 1848.

Other symbols and themes pique modern critics. Margaret Drabble, for instance, argues that Verne'southward masterwork also anticipated the ecology movement and influenced French avant-garde imagery.^[9] As for additional motifs in the novel, Captain Nemo repeatedly champions the earth's persecuted and downtrodden. While in Mediterranean waters, the captain provides financial support to rebels resisting Ottoman dominion during the Cretan Defection of 1866–1869, proving to Professor Aronnax that he hadn't severed all relations with terrestrial mankind. In another episode, Nemo rescues an Indian pearl diver from a shark attack, and so gives the fellow a pouch full of pearls, more than the man could accept gathered after years of his hazardous work. Nemo remarks later that the diver, equally a native of British India, "lives in the country of the oppressed".

Indeed, the novel has an under-the-counter political vision, hinted at in the character and groundwork of Captain Nemo himself. In the book's final form, Nemo says to professor Aronnax, "That Indian, sir, is an inhabitant of an oppressed country; and I am all the same, and shall be, to my terminal breath, i of them!"^[x] In the novel's initial drafts, the mysterious helm was a Polish nobleman, whose family unit and homeland were slaughtered by Russian forces during the Polish January Uprising of 1863. All the same, these specifics were suppressed during the editing stages at the insistence of Verne's publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, believed responsible by today'due south scholars for many modifications of Verne's original manuscripts. At the time France was a putative ally of the Russian Empire, hence Hetzel demanded that Verne suppress the identity of Nemo's enemy, non only to avert political complications but also to avert lower sales should the novel announced in Russian translation. Hence Professor Aronnax never discovers Nemo'due south origins.

Still, a trace remains of the novel'due south initial concept, a particular that may have eluded Hetzel: its allusion to an unsuccessful rebellion nether a Polish hero, Tadeusz Kościuszko, leader of the insurgence against Russian and Prussian command in 1794;^[11] Kościuszko mourned his land's prior defeat with the Latin exclamation "Finis Poloniae!" ("Poland is no more than!").

Five years afterward, and again at Hetzel's insistence, Captain Nemo was revived and revamped for another Verne novel The Mysterious Island. It alters the captain'southward nationality from Polish to Indian, changing him into a fictional descendant of Tipu Sultan, a prominent ruler of Mysore who fought confronting the British Due east Bharat Company in the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Thus, Nemo's unnamed enemy is converted into French republic'south traditional antagonist, the British Empire. Born as an Indian aristocrat, one Prince Dakkar, Nemo participated in a major 19th-century uprising, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which was ultimately quashed by the British. After his family was killed by the British, Nemo fled beneath the seas, then made a final reappearance in the later novel's terminal pages.

Verne took the name "Nautilus" from 1 of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who also invented the outset commercially successful steamboat. Fulton named his submarine afterwards a marine mollusk, the chambered nautilus. As noted above, Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine Plongeur at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which guided him in his development of the novel'south Nautilus.^[six]

The diving gear used by passengers on the Nautilus is presented equally a combination of two existing systems: 1) the surface-supplied^[12] hardhat adjust, which was fed oxygen from the shore through tubes; 2) a later on, self-independent apparatus designed by Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1865. Their invention featured tanks fastened to the back, which supplied air to a facial mask via the outset-known demand regulator.^[12] ^[thirteen] ^[14] The diver didn't swim just walked upright beyond the seafloor. This device was called an aérophore (Greek for "air-carrier"). Its air tanks could hold simply 30 atmospheres, nonetheless Nemo claims that his futuristic adaptation could do far amend: "The Nautilus's pumps let me to store air under considerable force per unit area ... my diving equipment tin supply breathable air for 9 or ten hours."

Recurring themes in afterward books [edit]

As noted above, Hetzel and Verne generated a sequel of sorts to this novel: 50'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874), which attempts to round off narratives begun in 20 Thousand Leagues Nether the Seas and Captain Grant'southward Children, a.k.a. In Search of the Castaways. While The Mysterious Island attempts to provide boosted background on Nemo (or Prince Dakkar), it is muddled by irreconcilable chronological discrepancies between the two books and even inside The Mysterious Island itself.^{[ description needed ]} ^{[ commendation needed ]}

Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much subsequently Facing the Flag (1896). This novel's chief villain, Ker Karraje, is but an unscrupulous pirate acting purely for personal gain, completely devoid of the saving graces that gave Captain Nemo some nobility of grapheme. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests — only unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers — Karraje's criminal career is decisively thwarted past the combination of an international task force and the resistance of his French captives. Though besides widely published and translated, Facing the Flag never achieved the lasting popularity of Twenty One thousand Leagues.

Closer in approach to the original Nemo — though offering less particular and complication of characterization — is the rebel aeronaut Robur in Robur the Conqueror and its sequel Main of the World. Instead of the sea, Robur's medium is the sky: In these two novels he develops a pioneering helicopter and after a seaplane on wheels.

English translations [edit]

The novel was offset translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Folio Mercier. Mercier cut well-nigh a quarter of Verne's French text and committed hundreds of translating errors, sometimes drastically distorting Verne's original (including uniformly mistranslating the French scaphandre — properly "diving suit" — as "cork-jacket", following a long-obsolete usage as "a type of lifejacket"). Some of these distortions may have been perpetrated for political reasons, such as Mercier's omitting the portraits of freedom fighters on the wall of Nemo's stateroom, a collection originally including Daniel O'Connell^[15] among other international figures. Notwithstanding, Mercier'south text became the standard English translation, and some later "re-translations" connected to recycle its mistakes, including mistranslating the title as "...under the Ocean", rather than "...nether the Seas".

In 1962, Anthony Bonner published a fresh, essentially consummate translation of the novel with Bantam Classics. This edition also included a special introduction written past the sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, comparison Captain Nemo to Helm Ahab of Moby-Dick.

A meaning mod revision of Mercier'southward translation appeared in 1966, prepared past Walter James Miller and published by Washington Square Printing.^[xvi] Miller addressed many of Mercier'south errors in the book'due south preface and restored a number of his deletions in the text. In 1993, Miller collaborated with his fellow Vernian Frederick Paul Walter to produce "The Completely Restored and Annotated Edition", published in 1993 by the Naval Institute Printing.^[17] Its text took reward of Walter's unpublished translation, which Projection Gutenberg later made available online.

In 1998, William Butcher issued a new, annotated translation with the title Xx Thousand Leagues under the Seas, published by Oxford University Press (ISBN 978-0-xix-953927-7). Butcher includes detailed notes, a comprehensive bibliography, appendices and a wide-ranging introduction studying the novel from a literary perspective. In particular, his original research on the two manuscripts studies the radical changes to the plot and to the character of Nemo urged on Verne by Hetzel, his publisher.

In 2010 Frederick Paul Walter issued a fully revised, newly researched translation, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater. Complete with an extensive introduction, textual notes, and bibliography, it appeared in an omnibus of five of Walter's Verne translations titled Amazing Journeys: 5 Visionary Classics and published by State University of New York Printing (ISBN 978-1-4384-3238-0).

Reception [edit]

The science fiction writer Theodore L. Thomas criticized the novel in 1961, claiming that "there is not a single flake of valid speculation" in the book and that "none of its predictions has come true". He described its depictions of Nemo'southward diving gear, underwater activities, and the Nautilus equally "pretty bad, behind the times fifty-fifty for 1869 ... In none of these technical situations did Verne take advantage of knowledge readily available to him at the fourth dimension." However, the notes to the 1993 translation point out that the errors noted by Thomas were in fact in Mercier'southward translation, not in the original.

Despite his criticisms, Thomas conceded: "Put them all together with the magic of Verne's story-telling ability, and something flames up. A story emerges that sweeps incredulity before it".^[xiii]

Adaptations and variations [edit]

Helm Nemo's nationality is presented in many feature movie and video realizations as European. However, he'southward depicted equally Indian by Omar Sharif in the 1973 European miniseries The Mysterious Isle. Nemo too appears every bit an Indian in the 1916 silent picture show version of the novel (which adds elements from The Mysterious Isle). Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah plays Captain Nemo in the film The League of Boggling Gentlemen. The character is portrayed as Indian in the graphic novel. In Walt Disney'southward 20,000 Leagues Nether the Sea (1954), a live-action Technicolor motion picture of the novel, Captain Nemo seems European, albeit dark-complected. In the Disney adaptation, he'southward played by British thespian James Mason, with — equally in the novel itself — no mention of his existence Indian. Disney's motion-picture show script elaborates on background hints in Verne's original: in an effort to acquire Nemo's scientific secrets, his married woman and son were tortured to death by an unnamed government overseeing the fictional prison camp of Rorapandi. This is the captain'due south motivation for sinking warships in the motion-picture show. Also, Nemo's submarine confines her activities to a defined, circular section of the Pacific Ocean, different the movements of the original Nautilus.

Finally, Nemo is again depicted as Indian in the Soviet 3-episode Tv film Captain Nemo (1975), which likewise includes some plot details from The Mysterious Isle.

References [edit]

^ Canavan, Gerry (2018). The Cambridge History of Science Fiction. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 978-1-31-669437-four)
^ Dehs, Volker; Jean-Michel Margot; Zvi Har'El, "The Consummate Jules Verne Bibliography: I. Voyages Extraordinaires", Jules Verne Collection, Zvi Har'El, retrieved 2012-09-06
^ Payen, J. (1989). De 50'anticipation à l'innovation. Jules Verne et le problème de la locomotion mécanique.
^ Compère, D. (2006). Jules Verne: bilan d'united nations anniversaire. Romantisme, (i), 87-97.
^ Seelhorst, Mary (2003) 'Jules Verne. (PM People)'. In Popular Mechanics. 180.7 (July 2003): p36. Hearst Communications.
^ ^a ^b Observe at the Musée de la Marine, Rochefort
^ F. P. Walter'south Project Gutenberg translation of Part 2, Chapter 7, reads: "Accordingly, our speed was 25 miles (that is, twelve four–kilometer leagues) per hour. Needless to say, Ned Land had to surrender his escape plans, much to his distress. Swept along at the rate of twelve to thirteen meters per 2d, he could hardly brand use of the skiff."
^ Verne, Jules (2010) [1870]. xx,000 Leagues Nether the Seas. Translated by Frederick Paul Walter. ISBN978-i-4384-3238-0 – via Wikisource.
^ Margaret Drabble (eight May 2014). "Submarine dreams: Jules Verne's 20 Thousand Leagues Nether the Seas". New Statesman . Retrieved 2014-05-09 .
^ Verne, Jules. 20 Chiliad Leagues Under The Sea. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. 1937, p. 221
^ Who was also served as a military officer for the cause of American independence from the British during the American Revolutionary State of war.
^ ^a ^b Davis, RH (1955). Deep Diving and Submarine Operations (6th ed.). Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey: Siebe Gorman & Company Ltd. p. 693.
^ ^a ^b Thomas, Theodore L. (December 1961). "The Watery Wonders of Captain Nemo". Galaxy Scientific discipline Fiction. pp. 168–177.
^ Acott, C. (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness". Southward Pacific Underwater Medicine Lodge Journal. 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. Archived from the original on June 27, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-17 . {{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
^ "How Lewis Mercier and Eleanor King brought you Jules Verne". Ibiblio.org. Retrieved 2013-xi-15 .
^ Jules Verne (author), Walter James Miller (trans.). Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Ocean, Washington Square Press, 1966. Standard Volume Number 671-46557-0; Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-25245.
^ Jules Verne (author), Walter James Miller (trans.), Frederick Paul Walter (trans.). Jules Verne'south xx,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Completely Restored and Annotated Edition, Naval Institute Press, 1993. ISBN 978-1-55750-877-5.

External links [edit]

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