•
Rating:
To Jules, the world felt tight. From a young age; he ran away from home multiple times, landed in Paris where he led the life of an improbable failed bohemian, writing insipid plays that were snubbed, working as a librettist and getting by with money sent from home. But Paris too was too small; his imagination ran, at the National Library, over geography books, ancient and modern scientific treatises. And the meeting with Nadar gave him a new impulse: Jules "invents" science fiction, and he does it so well that he earns heaps of money, three yachts, international honors, and an army of fans and followers, among whom was H.G. Wells. Maybe this is what brands him as an entertainment writer, rich in earnings but poor in ideas, a crude and rough entrepreneur of fantasy with much to write but little to say. Partly, it’s a judgment if not correct then at least sensible; most of Verne's vast output consists of works written by contract, the only inspiration being routine. But there is more in the fast and extraordinary world of Jules, which goes from the Moon to the heart of the abyss.
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is perhaps his most famous novel. Written in 1868, it tells a sorrowful and deep story like the Ocean, a tale of revenge and annihilation. Its undisputed protagonist is not the sea, but its king, Nemo, isolated in his unbeatable steel castle, surrounded by his books just as Jules was in his home study, an inaccessible capsule where the writer created his monsters and wonders. The book begins with a hunt, with a rebellion against a nature believed capable of challenging humanity and sinking its most powerful ships; but the belligerence and anger of land men collapse under the prow of the Nautilus, Nemo's technological marvel, his iron fist, and his prison. Nemo and his submarine are among the most epochal inventions of human imagination; Nemo is no one, he is the man of the waters. And this paradoxical nature pervades him: he himself is a paradox, torn and split between two worlds. On one side the scientist, the engineer, the genius, the one capable of discovering the most intimate secrets of the abyss, the Ulysses (the No one) thirsty for knowledge and unabashed curiosity. On the other, the avenger, the indomitable hunter , the Ahab tortured by regret and hatred, whose Moby Dick bears the colors of the Union Jack, of the empire that took from him love, homeland, and children. Nemo has struck the collective imagination so because, far from being "no one", he is man himself, caught in his most tragic and fabulous grandeur (Verne speaks of «monstrous or sublime hatred»), the man who loves the world, respects it, wants to discover it, but also wants to dominate it (think of the episode of the slaughter of the sperm whales), bend it to his will, purge it of its evils, all through the Nautilus. He is in perennial tension between scientific coldness and fiery resentment, avoiding the storms of the seas by diving beneath the battling elements, yet his torments never drown.
Jules was obsessed with deserted islands, with the distance from the civilization that so fascinated and cradled him. And Nemo is perhaps the most isolated and complete of his characters. The world felt tight to Jules, who poured himself into his hero, relentlessly traversed with him the oceans of imagination, in the luxurious solitude of his underwater parlor. Yet the captain is still, after all, a human being. He does not have the steel skin of the Nautilus, nor its dynamic heart driven by the liquid power of electricity. And he gives in. Hatred wins, and engulfs him. It cannot be otherwise because to hate and live to hate, whether it’s an idea, a name, a country, makes one like parasites, a by-product of our enemy in which and for which we live, and against which identity is annulled. Nemo will be crushed by this feeling, bringing himself, his faithful and mute crew, and his formidable vessel to burial in the whirlpools of Norway. He won't die, nor will his Nautilus his son, both protagonists of The Mysterious Island, which will see them both aged, tired of hating, finally ready to help men and rest in peace.
From a literary point of view, "20000 Leagues Under the Sea" is an extremely agile novel although weighed down by the myriad of naturalistic descriptions that can eventually distract the non-specialized reader. The evocative power of the descriptions, the freshness of the dialogues, which Jules inherits directly from his theatrical experience, and above all the oppressive, gray, and tense atmosphere of the final part are just examples of his dry and engaging style, precise but intense, which perhaps deserves a reevaluation. Jules Verne is an odd and curious figure, who lived off successes but who also always needed to escape. He meticulously committed to writing his books and was very up-to-date on the latest technological and naval constructions. For example, the design of the Nautilus recalls that of the Union ironclad Monitor, a protagonist in 1862 of a wild naval duel at Hampton Roads; likewise, if we look at the 1888 French submarine Gymnote, we would see nothing but a practical realization of Verne’s vessel.
Perhaps Jules didn't expand his world, nor did he change it, even though he tried all his life. But he was the precursor and narrator, optimistic and positive, of what our complex and twisted condition is. If his writings still fascinate us, if Captain Nemo still navigates on board his Nautilus, perhaps it's because we, like him, still have something to discover, and are nothing but small witnesses of our reality.
Loading comments slowly
