In the new world Jules envisaged, the exploitation of man by man
would be replaced by the exploitation of nature by man; machines were designed
to serve man and enhance the conditions in which he lived by offering new
possibilities in travel, communication and comfort, and the true responsibility
of science was not to engage in endless theoretical speculations or to serve
special interest groups, but to put their theories into practice for the
benefit of mankind.
At the time he met Jules, Hetzel
had been planning to start a monthly magazine for young people called the Magazin
d’Education et Recreation. Many of Jules’s books were serialized in the
magazine before they were published in book form, but it would be a mistake to
think of Jules as a children’s author for he was read as avidly by adults as by
the young, and the French writer Raymond Roussel reflects current literary
opinion when he argues that Jules’s writings have so many hidden depths of
meaning that
It
is just as monstrous to give them to children to read as it isto give them the
Fables of La Fontaine, which are so profoundthat few adults are capable of
appreciating them. [xiv]
In 1886, when Jules’s fame and
fortune were at their apex, he suffered a series of personal tragedies - the
deaths of his mother and his publisher Hetzel, who had been his closest
confidant since the death of Pierre Verne in 1871, and a physical attack by his
deranged nephew who shot him in the leg, inflicting injuries from which he
never completely recovered. Always something of a misanthrope, he now became
reclusive and melancholic, a change that coincided with a growing conviction
that his earlier faith in progress had been misplaced. He had once believed
that science and human character were sufficient to change the destiny of
mankind; he now began to believe that science would only progress as quickly as
society and, on the evidence of the last twenty-five years society had, if
anything, regressed. In describing his grandfather’s state of mind at this
time, Jean Jules-Verne recalled
He
lost his blind faith in unlimited progress. The conquest of nature was
dependent on the conquest of wisdom - and mankind had no wisdom. Men’s pride
made them forget the ephemerality of their existence and the worldly
possessions they were so eager to acquire. In order to gain a momentary
possession of a fragile fragment of a precarious world, pride made them
continue to indulge in the absurd and cruel strife from which they were the
first to suffer.[xv]
The French writer Jean Chesneaux
has traced Jules’s disillusionment with science to the socioeconomic and
political developments of the late nineteenth century - the development of
large-scale industry had increased human misery instead of alleviating it, and
the rise of industry had enabled the development of large-scale finance
capitalist enterprise in Europe. Colonial rivalries increased as the great
powers raced to expand their colonial empires, the armaments race reflected the
growth of war technology, the possibilities of science had become increasingly
subordinated to the power of money, much of Europe was in economic crisis and
governments had become more repressive in character. Faced with these hard
social realities, Jules’s orientation began to change, and he extended his
interest beyond scientific forecasts to include the problems of social
organization, social conditions and the responsibility of science towards
society. [xvi]
He now embarked on a series of satirical novels that pass judgement on an age
whose legacy is still very much with us.
For Jules, the greatest
disappointment of the previous quarter century had been America, which had held
a special place in his affections. America had once seemed to him to be a
near-perfect embodiment of the new world he envisaged, and he set twenty-three
of his books there. The demographic, economic and technological development of
America was unparalleled; industrial enterprise was carried out on a grand
scale, innovation and initiative were actively encouraged, new inventions were
seized upon with alacrity and the population of America enjoyed the highest
modern standard of living in the world. It was a country where it seemed that
all things were possible - as Jules put it in From the Earth to the
Moon, ‘Nothing can astonish an American ... In America everything is
simple, everything is easy, and as for mechanical difficulties, they are
resolved before they arise.’ The passage of time had shown Jules another face
of America, and he became alarmed as the expansionist trends of the “big stick”
policy took shape... as the power of the dollar grew stronger and as a
materialist technology increased its hold over mankind’. [xvii] For Jules, America had been a
symbol and a model for the future - now America seemed to constitute a threat
which he countered by writing The Floating Island - a satire on the
American way of life.
Set in an indefinite future, it
envisages a time when the flag of the United States has sixty-seven stars,
America having annexed Canada, Mexico and the countries of Central America down
to the Panama Canal. The floating island itself is the ultimate achievement of
materialist technology - every comfort has been provided, effort has been
eliminated, and the millionaire residents have nothing more demanding to do
than to enjoy an endless luxury cruise as the island voyages about the Pacific
in search of splendid climes and picturesque atolls. As always, Jules
constructed his innovative vehicle on sound mechanical grounds - to the extent
of working out the draught, displacement and horsepower of his propeller-driven
island. But the alleviation of all material cares and the technological
refinement of the island cannot make up for the flaws in human nature, and the
rivalries of the inhabitants ultimately tear the island apart in what Chesneaux
has called a parable of capitalist society destroying itself. Of all his works.
The Floating Island is considered to be the one that best expresses
Jules’s mature social credo. A great classic of science fiction and a sophisticated
social satire, it was never intended by its author to be taken as a fantasy. As
he wrote to his brother Paul when he was preparing the work, ‘It will be
related to existing customs and facts, but I am a novelist first and
foremost, and my books will always have the appearance of being fiction.’
[xviii]Stripped of its
obvious period references, the text of The Floating Island and the
implicit warning it contains are as timely now as when it was written.
Jules Verne died in Amiens,
France on 24 March, 1905. He had fulfilled his dream of becoming a world-famous
author, he had created a new literary genre and the Extraordinary Voyages
had amply achieved his objective of portraying the earth in all its aspects yet
he died a disappointed man, still disillusioned at the betrayal of science by
society. The uncanny predictive quality of his work is unquestioned, and scores
of the inventions scattered across his pages arc now a part of everyday life.
Inexorably, the doubts he raises in his later satirical works are now becoming
apparent. As Jean Chesneaux puts it
If
Jules Verne and his Voyages Extraordinaires are still alive for us it is
because they - and with them the whole of that fascinating nineteenth century -
were already posing the problems which the twentieth century has not been, and
will not be, able to avoid. [xix]
Kaori O’Connor
WHEN a journey begins badly it
rarely ends well. At least that ought to have been the opinion of the four
instrumentalists whose instruments lay on the ground, the carriage in which
they were riding having suddenly upset against a mound by the side of the road.
“Anybody hurt?” asked the first,
actively springing to his feet.
“I have got off with a scratch,”
replied the second, wiping his cheek, striped by a piece of glass.
“And I with a graze,” replied the
third, whose calf was bleeding.
There was nothing serious as yet.
“And my violoncello?” said the
fourth. “It is to be hoped nothing has happened to my violoncello.”
Fortunately the cases were
untouched.
Neither the violoncello, nor the
two violins, nor the alto had suffered from the shock, and it was hardly
necessary to put them in tune.
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