Journey Through the Impossible

by

idles Berne

TRANSLATED BY Edward Baxter

INTRODUCTION BY Jean-Michel Margot

President, North American Jules Verne Society

ORIGINAL ARTWORK BY Roger Leyonmark

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction by Jean-Michel Margot President, North American Jules Verne Society 11

Synopsis of the Play 21

Cast of Characters 25

ACT I: THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

Scene 1: Andernak Castle 33

Scene 2: The Fallen Angel 47

Scene 3: The inn 49

Scene 4: Five Hundred Leagues Underground 60

Scene 5: The Central Fire 70

ACT II: THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

Scene 1: The Harbor at Goa 75

Scene 2: The Platform of the Nautilus 84

Scene 3: The Nautilus 86

Scene 4: Underwater Navigation 90

Scene 5: On the Ocean Floor 90

Scene 6: An Underwater Forest 91

Scene 7: The Coral Reef 94

Scene 8: Atlantis 96

ACT III: THE PLANET ALTOR

Scene 1: The Gun Club 109

Scene 2: The Cannon Shot 119

Scene 3: The Planet Altor 125

Scene 4: The End of a World 138

Scene 5: The Explosion 140

Scene 6: Andernak Castle 140

Scene 7: Apotheosis 143

Appendices: 1882: Two Reviews of Journey Through the Impossible 145

Arnold Mortier: Evenings in Paris in 1882 (November 25) 147

The New York Times "A Jules Verne Piece" (December 19) 155

Notes 161

ith the publication of Journey Through the Impossible a dream comes true. The North American Jules Verne Society (NAJVS) presents to the English-speaking world this heretofore unpublished play. This edition is the result of a collaboration between several members of the NAJVS and their friends. Edward Baxter translated the text from the original French and it is his translation we publish here. Two other translators independently rendered the play into English: Cecile Molla Leyonmark and Frank Morlock. Cecile's translation was published in Extraordinary Voyages, the NAJVS newsletter. Frank is a professional translator of Dumas' plays and he enjoys translating Verne's plays. His Dumas translations are available at www. roguepublishing.com/.

Edward Baxter has already translated several of Verne's works,' and we hope he will for many years continue to help "rescue" these works, so that Verne will be recognized in America, finally, as a writer and stylist. Our thanks go also to the board of directors of the NAJVS, chaired by Dennis Kytasaari until June 2002, and to the members of the Translations Committee: Walter James Miller, Brian Taves, and Roger Leyonmark. The elegant illustrations created by Roger Leyonmark and which adorn the cover, the frontispiece, and serve to open each act of the present play, help the reader travel to the center of the earth, through oceans, and to the planet Altor.

We are also grateful to Anna Jean Mayhew, a professional editor and one of the newest members of NAJVS, for her careful attention to this introduction and to the notes throughout the play.

Three prominent members of the French Societe Jules Verne helped us tremendously with first-hand information: Robert Pourvoyeur, the world specialist of Offenbach and of Verne's plays; the late Francois Raymond (d. 1993), who edited the French edition of the play; and Volker Dehs, whose curiosity and tenacity make him the "Vernian detective." Steven L. Mitchell, our editor at Prometheus Books, brings this unknown and unexpected Verne play to life in America.

ourney Through the Impossible (Voyage a travers l'impossible) is for many readers an unexpected and surprising work by the French novelist Jules Verne (1828-1905). First, the piece is a play and not a novel. Second, when staged in Paris in 1882, the play included "special effects," as they are called today. Third, Verne took characters from his former novels and short stories (like Captain Nemo of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' and Michel Ardan of From the Earth to the Moon), resurrecting them for great adventures in Journey Through the Impossible. Fourth, the play was written in the middle of Verne's life, between his optimistic and pessimistic periods. Fifth, of all Verne's work, this is the one most oriented toward science fiction; the play includes travel to the interior of the earth, under the oceans, and into outer space. Sixth, for almost a century the piece was lost to Vernian scholars. Seventh, the play was never translated and the pub lisher of the original French edition overlooked a scene. The omitted scene is included in this first complete edition of Journey Through the Impossible.

Verne, known in the United States as "the father of science fiction," wrote mainly geographic and scientific adventure novels between 1862 and 1905.3 These works were published in Paris by Pierre-Jules Hetzel,4 his lifelong publisher. In his novels, only on exceptional occasions does Verne step out of what is possible, what can be scientifically explained; for the most part he stays in the real world. For example, Verne's The Sphinx of the Ice 5 and H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness,6 are both sequels to the unfinished Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym7 by Edgar Allen Poe. However, Verne explains rationally the supernatural apparition that comes out of the fog in the last pages of Poe's book. Lovecraft does not unveil the mystery, and even enhances it.

Silence surrounded a work whose title suggested a fundamental departure from all his other work, and whose goal was to go beyond the limits of the Extraordinary Voyages.' In 1904, when interviewed by the British journalist Gordonjones,9 Verne said, "But these results are merely the natural outcome of the scientific trend of modern thought, and as such have doubtless been predicted by scores of others besides myself. Their coming was inevitable, whether anticipated or not, and the most that I can claim is to have looked perhaps a little farther into the future than the majority of my critics." And yet here is Voyage Through the Impossible, a play in three acts, written with d'Ennery10 and performed over two decades earlier; the play is in complete contradiction to the above affirmation!

Before becoming well known in 1863 upon publication of Five Weeks in a Balloon,11 Verne wrote numerous plays (most are not yet translated into English), and many of his novels are structured like plays, using the "coup de theatre" to refresh the reader's attention. Three novels Around the World in Eighty Days,12 Michael Strogoff,13 and The Children of Captain Grant14 (also known as In Search of the Cast- aways)-were rewritten as plays and published as a book in 1881 by Hetzel under the title The Journeys on Stage.15 They were performed for several years in Paris and their huge success made Verne wealthy. The plays became grand spectacles, due to the genius of d'Ennery, who brought to the stage an elephant, water fountains, and Indians chasing a train.