#Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas

[prokopetz]

Okay, so: in early drafts of Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo is a Polish guy bent on revenge against the Russian Empire for the murder of his family in the January Uprising. Verne's editor objected on the grounds that Russia was a French ally at the time of the book's writing, and in the actual, published version of the story, Nemo's national origin and precisely which empire he's pissed off at are left unspecified.

Later, in the 1875 quasi-sequel The Mysterious Island, Nemo is retconned as an Indian noble out for revenge against the British for the murder of his family in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 – basically the same as the original plan, simply substituting a different uprising and a different empire. Verne's editor raised no objections this time around, because fuck the British, right? Though Twenty Thousand Leagues and The Mysterious Island aren't 100% compatible in their respective timelines, this version of Nemo has customarily been back-ported into adaptations of Twenty Thousand Leagues ever since.

Now here's the funny part: perhaps as a jab at his editor, Verne made a specific plot point in Twenty Thousand Leagues of Professor Aronnax repeatedly trying and failing to figure out where the fuck Nemo is from. At one point his attempt to pin down Nemo's accent is frustrated by Nemo's vast multilingualism. At another point, he tries and fails to trick Nemo by quizzing him about latitude and longitude.

(To contextualise that last bit, at the time the book was written, there was no international agreement on which line of longitude should be zero degrees, and many nations had their own prime meridians; Aronnax hoped to identify Nemo's national origin by calculating which meridian he was giving his longitudes relative to. Nemo, however, immediately spots the ploy, and announces that he'll use the Paris meridian in deference to the fact that Aronnax is a Frenchman.)

The upshot is that at no point in the course of any of this Sherlock Holmes bullshit does Aronnax ever bring up the colour of Nemo's skin as a potential clue. In light of the book's publication history, this is almost certainly simply because Verne hadn't decided that Nemo was Indian yet. However, taking into account The Mysterious Island's retcon, it retroactively makes Aronnax the least racist Frenchman ever.

[thebibi]

No nuance option

[enchantedbook]

Frontispiece of Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas' illustrated by Alphonse de Neville and Edouard Rio, 1871

[rocky-57]

Pierre Aronnax in my style.

I know the clothes arent accurate (and doesnt really define his profession), but its how i imagine him in my head. And i think its quite decent, especially following the circumstances during the oceanic expedition in the Nautilus.

[nautilus-server]

WELCOME TO THE NAUTILUS CHARACTER QUIZ

Beware that several character results spoil their role and fate in the serie, if you haven’t seen it yet. (Go watch it)

There are 15 questions in total, and 19 characters. We did our best to align each character to each answer from our interpretation of them, but please don’t take the results too seriously. This aim to be a light-hearted personality quizz.

So, which Nautilus character are you? :3

[a-book-of-creatures]

So I think I might have read 20k Leagues Etc when I was younger, but it might have been an abridged version, might have been the Wishbone version for all I recall, and in any case it was over twenty years ago. And I remember you saying that the most common translation into English messes up some parts of it. I want to de-rust my French; a) how similar is the written French of when it was written, to modern written French, and b) where can one find that to read it?

That is correct, the most popular, public domain English translation (Mercier) is poorly translated (e.g. the French word for "lens" is translated as "lentil", "dappled" becomes "diapered", etc), significantly abridged, and censored for political correctness (e.g. Nemo's framed pictures of abolitionists are excised, as is a passage where Aronnax is horrified at the exploitation of pearl divers). For more on that, Walter James Miller's The Annotated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is an excellent resource.

But if you want to read the original, you're in luck because it's also public domain. The language is still readable; at least, I had no issues with it. It's definitely florid but that's more on Verne than his language.

You can read the original, glorious Hetzel version here, courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

If you'd rather have a more physical book in hand, the Livre de Poche edition is affordable (depending on where you live I guess), portable, has all the original illustrations, and a spiffy Hetzel-esque cover to boot.

[stone-cold-groove]

Illustration from the 1922 edition of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

@reine-du-sourire

I've seen your recent posts about 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. While not vital to the story, I think everyone who reads the book should know that when Aronnax talks about having the hotel care for his babirusa while he's gone, he's talking about a huge warthog-looking pig:

So while Aronnax is sailing the seas with his stockholm-syndrome boyfriend, there's some poor hotel worker worried about whether the professor's babirusa is going to gore him to death if he's a bit late with the food.

[minneral]

sometimes, for one reason or another, the Suez Canal is not an option

[oceanusborealis]

Nautilus Season 1 – TV Review

TL;DR – When this series comes together, it is a delight to watch. Unfortunately, a lot of the episodes are a bit hit or miss.   ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series. Nautilus  Review – In today’s re-make/re-boot culture, there are stories that you hear over and over again because they are in the public domain. Sure, it is great to see…

[prokopetz]

I love seeing how the Wikipedia coverage of various fictional characters differs from language to language.

Like, in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo obviously has his own article in numerous languages, because it's fucking Captain Nemo, but he's also the only character from the novel who has his own individual article in the English-language Wikipedia. Professor Arronax and his servant Conseil, meanwhile, have their own articles in both French (which I'd expected) and Turkish (which I hadn't). Then there's Ned Land, who has the same, but inexplicably also has his own individual article in Italian – being the only character from Twenty Thousand Leagues other than Nemo to have an individual article in Italian, in fact.

I just think it's neat.

(Note: all statements made in this post were verified to be accurate at the time of its posting, so don't come at me if articles with later creation timestamps render it incorrect!)

[majestativa]

She hides in a corner of the library, where she sits on the floor to examine, for the umpteenth time, the pictures in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas. She falls in love with the dark, melancholic expression of Captain Nemo […] He is closer and more comprehensible to her than the people who surround her.

Unica Zürn, Dark Spring

[voyageofthenautilus]

Translation Notes, Part 2

Mod Blue: After I saw @mysticalspiders contemplate whether the original translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues is less homoerotic, I decided to check for myself, and then I spiraled out of control and decided to use this post as a means of doing what I love to do: screaming about the differences between Mercier's original translation, and the Walter translation we're reading now.

I don't have the greatest eye for what is and what isn't considered romantic/erotic, but I figured Aronnax's physical description of Nemo was a good place to start. Here's an excerpt from Walter's translation:

"Without hesitation, I identified his dominant qualities-- self-confidence, since his head reared like a nobleman's above the arc formed by the lines of his shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness, since his skin, pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of blood; energy, shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and finally courage, since his deep breathing denotes tremendous reserves of vitality."

Here's how Mercier translates the same passage:

"I made out his prevailing qualities directly: self-confidence-- because his head was well-set on his shoulders, and his black eyes looked around with cold assurance; calmness-- for his skin, rather pale, showed his coolness of blood; energy-- evinced by the rapid contraction of his lofty brows; and courage-- because his deep breathing denoted great power of lungs."

Leaving aside all the pseuoscience... I think it's still clear in Mercier's translation that Aronnax is captivated by Nemo, but the language isn't quite as rich (in my opinion) and is a bit more impersonal- Nemo's head "rearing like a nobleman" paints a much more compelling picture than merely being "well-set on his shoulders," and the "swiftly knitting muscles of his brow" is (to me) more physical and visceral than the "rapid contraction of his lofty brows." Still, this isn't all that different.

The differences led me to wonder which translation is truer to Verne's text, so I'll refer to it here:

"Je reconnus sans hésiter ses qualités dominantes - la confiance en lui, car sa tête se dégageait noblement sur l'arc form�� par la ligne de ses épaules, et ses yeux noirs regardaient avec une froide assurance : - le calme, car sa peau, pâle plutôt que colorée, annonçait la tranquillité du sang ; - l'énergie, que démontrait la rapide contraction de ses muscles sourciliers ; le courage enfin, car sa vaste respiration dénotait une grande expansion vitale."

Google's word-for-word translation is as follows:

"I recognized without hesitation his dominant qualities - self-confidence, for his head stood out nobly on the arc formed by the line of his shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with cold assurance: - calmness, for his skin, pale rather than colored, announced the tranquility of blood; - energy, demonstrated by the rapid contraction of his eyebrow muscles; finally courage, for his vast breathing denoted a great vital expansion."

It seems Mercier was truer to the text with the "rapid contraction" line, but Walter hit the mark in the description of how Nemo's head rises above his shoulders (expanding on "nobly" to mean "like a nobleman"). And he also chose some more fanciful, descriptive synonyms that aren't present in the French language- "ruddy" for "colored/colorée," "swiftly knitting" for "rapid contraction/rapide contraction," "tremendous" for "great/grand."

Walter also restores two paragraphs following this passage which Mercier excised from his translation. These talk about the "harmony of [Nemo's] facial expressions" ("de l'homogénéité des expressions dans les gestes du corps et du visage") and how Aronnax felt "'involuntarily reassured'" in his presence ("Je me sentis « involontairement » rassuré en sa présence"). To that last line, I say- ooh la la. Shame Mercier cut it... (I would also like to know why "involuntarily reassured" is in quotes- is it referring to something that audiences at the time would have been familiar with?)

Also in Walter's translation, Aronnax describes Nemo as "the most wonderful physical specimen I had ever encountered." Now that's homoerotic if anything ever was. In Mercier's translation, Aronnax still seem attracted, but perhaps slightly less dazzled: "This man was certainly the most admirable specimen I had ever met." Verne's original is a bit closer to Mercier's, as far as I can tell: "Cet homme formait certainement le plus admirable type que j'eusse jamais rencontré" (as translated by Google: "This man was certainly the most admirable type I had ever met"). (I now ask if any native French speakers/anyone who didn't just take two years of Duolingo lessons before getting frustrated and giving up, like I did, can chime in on whether these translations I'm getting from Google are accurate or not.)

Finally, here's an excerpt from Walter's translation where Aronnax gushes over Nemo's eyes:

"When this stranger focused his gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he looked! What a look- as if he could magnify objects shrinking into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the deepest seas...!"

To me, this reads very much as "ooh, Aronnax's got a crush." Meanwhile, Aronnax's thoughts are more subdued in Mercier's translation:

"When this stranger fixed upon an object, his eyebrows met, his large eyelids closed around so as to contract the range of his vision, and he looked as if he magnified the objects lessened by the distance, as if he pierced those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes, and as if he read the very depths of the seas."

One line seemed notably omitted here: what about Nemo "prob[ing] your very soul?!" Naturally I had to run to the original text to confirm, and yes, it is there: "comme il vous pénétrait jusqu'à l'âme !" Aronnax also uses exclamation points in this scene, which he doesn't in Mercier's translation, which I've noticed is common throughout- Nemo's "You are my prisoners of war! You attacked me!" speech ends each sentence with a period, as if he's saying everything in a calm, cool, and collected manner. The original text and Walter's translation are considerably more fiery with the usage of exclamation points.

Moving on from Aronnax's physical description of Nemo, I've seen others point out that the offer Nemo makes Aronnax and the ensuing tour of the Nautilus is very Beauty and the Beast/"I can show you the wooooorrrrld" (I know that's from Aladdin, don't worry, I've got my Disney movies straight). Here's Walter's translation of Nemo's initial offer:

"Let me tell you, professor, you won't regret the time you spend aboard my vessel. You're going to voyage through a land of wonders. Stunned amazement will probably be your habitual state of mind. It will be a long while before you tire of the sights constantly before your eyes. I'm going to make another underwater tour of the world-- perhaps my last, who knows?-- and I'll review everything I've studied in the depths of these seas that I've crossed so often, and you can be my fellow student. Starting this very day, you'll enter a new element, you'll see what no human being has ever seen before-- since my men and I no longer count-- and thanks to me, you're going to learn the ultimate secrets of our planet."

This definitely could be read as a romantic overture. How does it compare to Mercier's version of the scene? Well... Mercier actually cut everything following the "land of wonders" line. He also cut what I joked was an "intricate ritual" of Aronnax wanting to touch Nemo in an appropriate way:

"I thought the commander would offer me his hand to seal our agreement. He did nothing of the sort. I regretted that."

The only other moments that immediately came to mind for me to compare the texts were when Nemo told Aronnax that their cabins are right beside each other, and when he singled him out among Conseil and Ned to take him on the tour of the Nautilus. Both of these incidents are very much present in Mercier's translation.

[rocky-57]

More Aronnax + Nemo because i have nothing else to do (My add math hw sitting on the corner begging for me to do it)

Aronnax looks uptight in my style, yes, but i intentionally draw him like that because hes often seen as zealous, enthusiastic, nerdy and easy-to-comply kind of guy. Maybe gullible too. So i kinda got tired of that and decided to just, do the opposite.

[veryslowreader]

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne

Rushmore

[hellcatsandcars]

guess who's re-reading twenty thousand leagues under the seas, again