One of the most telling—yet little known—characteristics about Jules Verne is that he was an inveterate reader. Of course, the same can be said of nearly every writer—and certainly positively every greater writer—but most writers do not pursue with such obsessive devotion one of the most unique genres of literature which was so instrumental in transforming Verne from hack to legend. What genre was it that so obsessed the peculiar reading interests of Mr. Verne?
Patent applications.
Verne’s reputation among the English-speaking world has suffered as a result of twin engines of destruction: bad translations and even worse adaptations. If one were simply to judge Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea based upon movies, TV shows, cartoons and comics, one would come away with a sense that the original novel is a goofy little bit of insane science fiction. That Verne was quite the student of patent applications testifies to his scientific acumen which seems at times to be almost otherworldly in his ability peer into the future. It wasn’t Verne who peered into the future; it was the men (and, one imagines or at least hopes, women) who designed futuristic inventions that would never get past the patent application process in their lifetime who saw the future.
Jules Verne, however, is the man who gave those inventions life. In many cases—almost certainly in most cases—he gave their wild leaps of scientific genius that their miracle machines will ever know. Any idiot can read a patent application, but only a sublime writer with a gift for imagining how the impossible might someday become the possible and used effectively can take that dry boring prose and those often impenetrable blueprints and create character as complex as Captain Nemo or as memorable as Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus.
Unfortunately, even when a writer comes along who is as talented as Verne transforms the ridiculous in the sublime, a process of reverse engineering often results. And that is exactly what happened for most of the lifespan of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. A cursory overview of the reviews of the novel by French critics compared with English reviewed by critics reading English translations is remarkable. One would almost think two entirely different books are reviewed. The first half-century of the novel’s existence in English translations is a dire one of truly miserable results. It has been suggested by some that to read Verne in the original first edition French and to read him in early English language translations is the difference between watching a Broadway performance of Hamlet and a high school production. The story is the same, but absolutely everything else is different.
Not everyone can read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in the original French (including the author of this essay). So the next best thing is to read a high quality English translation. That means foregoing anything published at least until the 1970’s. Of course, an interesting experiment is to read one of the first English translations and then compare it with one of the most recent ones. It is still not quite Broadway, but at least it’s not like reading a translation by a high school student. What, exactly, is the difference?
It is the fine line between recognizing that Jules Verne was not simply some science fiction hack, but—much like his near-contemporary H.G. Wells—a very talented writer who just so happened to be enjoy writing about the fantastica. And—again like Wells—Verne was a talented writer who peer into the future and saw things that nobody else even dreamed of. Well, perhaps not nobody else. But those other guys were inventors of things that never got made.
Verne was an inventor of worlds that are still being made. Both twenty thousand leagues under and above the sea.
