The Thammasat University Libraries have newly acquired a translation of a work by one of the most popular authors of fantasy and adventure, the Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905).
Among Verne’s best-loved novels are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; The Mysterious Island; Around the World in Eighty Days; Journey to the Center of the Earth; and From the Earth to the Moon. He also wrote lesser-known books, such as Magellania. Written in 1897, Magellania tells of a mysterious leader who lives around the Strait of Magellan, the sea route separating mainland South America to the north and Tierra del Fuego to the south. This leader helps some shipwrecked people on an island nearby, but refuses to accept any government position, instead becoming a lighthouse keeper. The moral of the story is that it is better to remain independent and individualistic rather than assume power over other people. This leader, named Kaw-djer, is described in this way by Verne:
A man was standing atop a cliff gazing south, below him the ocean…He was tall and fit, with indestructible good health. Everything about him bespoke energy, which sometimes took the explosive form of anger… His face was marked with gravity, a little like the gravity of the American Indian, and his entire being exuded pride, quite different from the pride of egoists who are in love with themselves. This gave him a true nobility of gesture and stance.
While Magellania discusses questions of society and justice, most of Verne’s most celebrated books involve science fantasy. Whether exploring space or the depths of the sea, Verne’s heroes have become identified with an adventurous spirit that makes new discoveries. Celebrating this popularity, in 1961 an impact crater on the far side of the Moon was named Jules Verne. In 2008, the European Space Agency launched the Jules Verne ATV, a spacecraft intended to supply the International Space Station. Also on board the Jules Verne ATV was an edition of From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel, Around the Moon. An Artificial Intelligence conversational character robot has been named Jules in honor of Jules Verne. Although he is sometimes also called the Father of Science Fiction, this title has been disputed with other writers, especially H. G. Wells. For many years Verne was dismissed as a mere writer of adventure stories, but in the past half-century many French intellectuals have expressed fascination with the ideas in his work. Among these influential admirers of Verne include such authors as Roland Barthes, Michel Butor, Michel Foucault, and Michel Serres. New translations into English have also helped foreign readers enjoy Verne, since the original 19th century translations were clumsy and inaccurate. As the bestselling novelist Michael Crichton noted:
Verne’s prose is lean and fast-moving in a peculiarly modern way … [but] Verne has been particularly ill-served by his English translators. At best they have provided us with clunky, choppy, tone-deaf prose. At worst—as in the notorious 1872 ‘translation’ [of Journey to the Center of the Earth] published by Griffith & Farran—they have blithely altered the text, giving Verne’s characters new names, and adding whole pages of their own invention, thus effectively obliterating the meaning and tone of Verne’s original.
Verne and scientists.
Just as many space engineers today credit the TV show Star-Trek for making them aware of space travel, many scientists who read Verne as youngsters pay tribute to his inspiration. Technical inventors and explorers such as Simon Lake,William Beebe, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Fridtjof Nansen, Wernher von Braun, Guglielmo Marconi, Yuri Gagarin, Igor Sikorsky, Robert Goddard, Edwin Hubble, Édouard-Alfred Martel, Norbert Casteret, and Richard E. Byrd all admired Verne. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, the American astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, agreed, and Borman even stated:
In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age.
Verne and other writers.
Verne is considered the second most-translated writer in the world, after Agatha Christie, the author of mysteries. This may explain his wide influence. Among important writers who have been inspired by his books are Arthur Rimbaud, Eugène Ionesco, Raymond Roussel, Jean Cocteau, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Georges Perec, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Paul Claudel, François Mauriac, Blaise Cendrars, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Aymé, and Arthur C. Clarke. The author of 2001: a Space Odyssey, Clarke commented:
Jules Verne had already been dead for a dozen years when I was born. Yet I feel strongly connected to him, and his works of science fiction had a major influence on my own career. He is among the top five people I wish I could have met in person.
Thailand and Jules Verne.
For the 1956 film adaptation of Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, the director Michael Todd borrowed one of the royal barges of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej when on location in Bangkok. As a boat carrying Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg travels past Bangkok, the royal barge appears onscreen, 155-feet long with a solid gold throne, rowed by 70 oarsmen. The rowing crew rehearsed for months for this brief film appearance. In 1949, the King provided some songs which he had composed for a Broadway show produced by Todd, and they remained on friendly terms thereafter. Later, Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island, a 2005 television movie, was filmed in Thailand. It tells of six soldiers who escape from a Civil War prison camp in Richmond, Virginia. Traveling by hot air balloon, they arrive at an unknown Pacific island. On the island they find monsters, pirates, and Captain Nemo – played by Patrick Stewart. The whole film was shot in Krabi, even scenes that were meant to illustrate battles from the American Civil War. It was felt that the landscape of the Andaman coast with its caves and beaches was ideal for representing Verne’s mysterious island. Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island employed many Thai filmmakers and technicians, in part to save the expense of flying over American experts from Hollywood. The film was a success and showed the wider world that Thai film crews were able to achieve a high standard in varied subject matter.
If you know any people from Phuket who raise their children to speak French, then you will have heard of the Jules Verne International French School of Phuket (Phuket International Ecole Française Jules Verne), a private establishment associated with the Phuket International Kindergarden and School. Apart from the fact that schoolchildren generally enjoy Verne’s writings, the school’s name is appropriate because like Verne himself, the school has a multinational outlook. Students study in Thai, French, and English. If they wish, they can also learn such languages as Chinese, Russian, or Spanish. Just as Verne’s explorers investigate the world and make new discoveries, so the students at the Jules Verne International French School of Phuket, as the school’s website puts it:
develop their analytical and critical spirit, understanding what is done, what is being learned and why.
These students may grow up to follow the example of Thai writers, especially those of science fiction, inspired by Verne. One such is Shaiwatna Kupratakul, a theoretical physicist who has taught at Khon Kaen and Srinakharinwirot Universities. A well-known popularizer of science on TV and radio, Dr. Shaiwatna once listed his major influences in science writing as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Juntri Siriboonrod, known as the Father of Thai Science Fiction.
(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)