JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE SELF Dr Butcher has also written Mississippi Madness (in collaboration with Nicholas Francis) JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE SELF TIME AND SPACE IN VERNE'S 'VOYAGES EXTRAORDINAIRES' William Butcher M William Butcher To the memory of my Father and Grandfather CONTENTS Contents vii List of figures xi Foreword by Ray Bradbury xiv Acknowledgements xv Reference system xvii 1 THE WARRIOR OF THE UNKNOWN 1 2 IN SEARCH OF LOST STRUCTURE 12 Lost Between Two Shores 12 The Strogoff Syndrome 19 Le Verbe et la Terre 30 Go Anywhere, Do Anything 36 Splitting the Difference 40 The Pleasure and the Pain 45 3 THE SHAPE'S THE THING 52 Plots and Intrigues 52 In and Out 58 Diversions or 'Divertissements' 60 Putting it All Back Together Again 66 4 THE PAST IS A PLACE 70 Past Masters 70 Man and Less-than-Man 81 The New Country 92 Going Back 99 5 THE SHAPE OF THINGS GONE BY 102 Living in the Past 102 A Strange Dream 113 How to Travel in Time 118 6 STARTING AND STOPPING 128 Straight and Round 128 Return to Sender 131 Getting Things Going 138 Posthumous Cycles 149 Time Will Have a Stop? 156 7 ONE AND ALL 161 The Body Metaphoric 161 Violence and Sex 167 Friends and Relatives 179 The Terminal System 188 Knowledge and the Lone Individual 197 8 PAST REFLEXIONS 204 Past Present 204 Self-Conscious Narration 209 It Was Tomorrow 213 Will There Be A Reply? 219 Breaking Out 226 9 NOW OR NEVER 229 Things Going By 229 Supporting Role 245 Narration Impossible 250 Towards a New Novel 259 10 'SO UNLITERARY A WRITER AS VERNE'? 271 The Closing Down of History 271 Michel Meets Jules 279 Why Him? 284 APPENDIX A: The Time of the Novel 297 APPENDIX B: Michel Verne 295 NOTES 299 BIBLIOGRAPHY 345 I Primary Works 345 II Critical Studies 350 INDEX 362 LIST OF FIGURES Note: Because of the geometrical nature of some of the arguments of this study, a number of figures are introduced. Their functioning and meaning are fully explained in the accompanying text. Plots/Graphs of Narrative Time Vs Fictional Time 1 Global Forms 55 (a) 'Un Drame au Mexique' (b) Voyage au centre de la Terre (c) Le Chancellor (d) 'In the Year 2889' (e) Mistress Branican (f) 'L'Eternel Adam' 2 The Beginnings 58 (a) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (b) L'Ile myst{rieuse (c) Le Chteau des Carpathes (d) Mistress Branican 3 The Endings 59 (a) De la Terre @ la Lune (b) Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (c) Le Chteau des Carpathes (d) L'Ile @ h{lice 4 Synthesis The General Structure of a Verne Novel 68 5 Cyclical Structures 135 (a) Water Evaporation and Condensation (b) The Life of an Iceberg (c) Man-Eider-Bird Symbiosis (d) Vertical Movements in a Fluid (e) Security System for Ships (f) Self-Compensating Aircraft (g) The Cycle of History 6 Ricardou's Diagrams and an Alternative Presentation 291 (a), (b) Variations in Speed of Narration (c), (d) Jumps in Narrative and Fictional Time (e), (f) 'Normal' Segment, Anticipation, and Flashback (g), (h) L'Emploi du temps 7 The Two Presentations Compared 292 (a), (b) Standard Speed of Narration (c), (d) Fictional Time that Has 'Fallen Behind' Narrative Time (e), (f) Same Text in Two Segments or in One TABLE Variations in Tense with Nature of Transposition and Degree of Narratorial Intervention 241 FOREWORD BY RAY BRADBURY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My most heartfelt thanks are due to those without whom this book could not have existed in its present form: Malcolm Bowie who offered his eminently sensible and constructive support over a long period; Ross Chambers, who gave me tremendous help and encouragement; Franois Raymond, who had the generosity to commission four articles, and the patience to suggest improvements to them; and Nicole Saou, who helped me more than perhaps she knew by deciphering handwritten pages and by her assistance with the articles and the diagrams. My sincerest thanks must also go to Chris Thorpe for help with the illustrations, and Armelle Achour, Jean-Philippe Dubois and Ho Tjing Jung for help with the manuscript, together with those who were able to make sufficient sense of the earlier drafts to encourage me, Simone Vierne, Daniel Comp}re, Michel Blanc, and Michael Moriarty. My gratitude goes finally to those who commented on individual sections: Jacques Alexandropoulos, Serge Antoine, Ninette Bailey, William Barber, Colin Bartlett, David Bellos, Jean Bessi}re, Kay Bourne, Sally Butcher, Dominique G{rard, P. Hansen, Peter McNaughton, Andrew Martin, P. Petitmengin, G{rard Rap{gno, Jean Ricardou, Jean-Charles Rochet, Richard Smith, David Steel, Harold Wardman, and Dominique de Werra. REFERENCE SYSTEM References to Verne's works will generally be of the form 'VCT 10'. The first group represents the title - Voyage au centre de la Terre in this case - following sigla indicated in the Bibliography (p. 345). The last group is the page number. When the edition used is not Livre de poche (about 5% of cases), the reference is made in such a form as to be verifiable in any edition: as 'IH I ii 10' or 'PD ii 10', the upper-case Roman numeral (if any) being the part number and the lower-case one being the chapter number. When several references are made to a single idea in my text, they are separated by commas, whereas references to successive ideas are separated by semi-colons; the siglum is not repeated when there are multiple references to the same work. Verne's quotation marks are always maintained (although the responsability for utterances is not always identified). Quotations within quotations should not therefore be taken as representing the narrator's view. Even where quotation marks are not present, my text is often a direct paraphrase of Verne's (as indicated by the notes or references in brackets). My emphasis of words within quotations will be indicated by the use of capital letters, whereas italics indicate emphasis in the text quoted. Square brackets within quotations indicate my intercalation of material. For the sake of continuity, a few brief quotations have been translated (my translations), but only when the English corresponds clearly to the French. References will contain the place of publication only when it is not London (for books in English) or Paris (for books in French). LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BSJV: Bulletin de la soci{t{ Jules Verne tri.: trimestre (quarter) ] : New paragraph (within a quotation) n[ : num{ro (number)  CHAPTER 1 THE WARRIOR OF THE UNKNOWN Verne's characters are at a crossroads in history, since space is shrinking so rapidly in the nineteenth century. The demand for virgin territory can clearly not be satisfied for much longer in an era where 'to go around the world has become just a tourist trip' and even Himalayan peaks are covered with inscriptions like '"'Durand, dentiste, 14, rue Caumartin'"' (ER (1882) 43; MV (1880) 277).1 Would-be explorers will very soon find themselves in a post-Romantic cul-de-sac, and Paganel is anticipating only slightly when he declares: '"'Everything has been seen, everything reconnoitred, everything invented, there are no new continents or worlds remaining; and we latest arrivals (...) haven't got anything left to do!'"' (CG (1866-68) 81-82). The Voyageurs - and the author - feel therefore compelled to visit the few remaining scraps of unexplored territory before the real-life explorers get there. The general manifesto of the Voyages extraordinaires is to describe journeys of exploration throughout Les Mondes connus et inconnus. But once the unknown worlds have disappeared, some sort of compromise will clearly be necessary. Travellers will have to consider themselves more as 'perfecters' than as 'inventors' (CH 119), their aim more to 'join up and finish off' (5S 10) than to discover new worlds - more, in sum, to be exhaustive on a second level. The 'other' intention of the Voyages, announced in their fourth volume, and repeated regularly afterwards (e.g. TO 365 (1895)), is thus the Balzacian one of summarising the whole of human knowledge: '(leur but) est (...) de RESUMER TOUTES les connaissances g{ographiques, g{ologiques, physiques, astronomiques amass{es par la science moderne et de REfaire (...) l'histoire de l'UNIVERS'.2 This announcement by the publisher Hetzel has often been commented on, but the critics have never fully explained how such an operation happens within the space of fiction - how a universe may be covered by the lines on a page. And yet a first observation seems fairly obvious. The stark choice between on one hand limiting oneself, while it is still possible, to what is absolutely new, and on the other restricting attention to what has already been explored in the non-fictional world does have an advantage. Verne's characters normally feel a bit lost. By means of this choice, the multidimensional complexity of the world will be either of relatively limited dimensions or structured by previous explorers' endeavours. Each potential journey will be made substantially less arbitrary. Nevertheless, the two options still remain slightly paradoxical, for their union is of course the whole world. Responses to the general question of plots in literature have often employed terms like 'a slice of life', 'train of events', 'narrative thread' or 'point of view'. Their use of metaphorical objects that are already of dimension two, one or zero means, however, that the key question of dimensionality is often begged. The vital problem, in other words, still remains that of knowing how mappings can take place between the world and a one-dimensional succession of words, how space, even when divided into two, can begin to be 'temporalised'.3 In simpler terms: how is the choice of particular journeys in time and space made? Trying to analyse the two components separately undoubtedly makes for less understanding, not more. Thus when time in Verne's works is examined in terms of the explicit pronouncements, it rapidly becomes clear that it cannot be conceived of as a tangible and measurable phenomenon. 'Because of' a double reductionism carried out in the seminal short story 'Matre Zacharius' (1851), time seems to exist in the Voyages only by entering into a symbiosis with some other element of either the physical world or the fictional structure.4 This applies particularly to the naive view that Verne's works are in any real sense about the future. The works were virtually always set in the past; and the 'anticipations' were rarely both ahead of their time and original, and can now be seen to have been largely pretexts for interrogations of historical, social, personal and metaphysical themes.5 Here especially, time on its own is a useless path along which to approach the real Verne. If we therefore return to the idea of space and time in the works, we are however soon presented with an almost embarrassing richness of examples. Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1872) is a prime example. As Fogg and Passepartout travel eastwards trying to prove that the world can be girded in eighty days, their clock-time no longer coincides with the time of the sun, but they indignantly refuse to touch their timepieces (TM 48, 209). The result is the 'gain' of the twenty-four hours that provides the final coup de th{tre and wins the bet; but it is at the cost of 24,000 miles of space. Similarly, the dimensions of the Island in Le Phare du bout du monde (1905) are manipulated by the lighthouse- keeper so as to delay the departure of the villains, but with little apparent result (PBM 181). In fact the few hours do make all the difference, for reinforcements do arrive in time, and the villains are captured in the end. Another novel, Sans dessus dessous (1889), recounts the building by a megalomaniac government and an eccentric scientist of a giant cannon, designed to fire a very heavy projectile from Mount Kilimanjaro and thus, using the recoil, right the Earth's axis. If the idea was successful, time and space would be jointly affected, for the seasons would disappear, and the sun's course in the sky would be changed (SDD 194). Again, Hector Servadac (1877) describes the travels round the solar system of a populated fragment torn from the Earth by a passing comet. The distinction is made between context-sensitive timepieces like pendulum clocks and context-neutral ones like spring-based watches; but the major consequence of the travels is the lengthening of the seasons and the shortening of the days, and the problems this causes for eating habits and rates of pay (HS 54; 126-27). Or, as Verne says of Jupiter: '"les journ{es ne sont que de neuf heures et demie, ce qui est commode pour les paresseux; et (...) les ann{es (...) durent douze ans, ce qui est avantageux pour les gens qui n'ont plus que six mois @ vivre"' (5S 59). The Voyages extraordinaires, then, often highlight the interdependence of the two elements making up both the journey and the plot. Even so, Le Tour du monde, with its explicit interrogation, remains an exception. In general, there still remains a considerable gap between our observation of the importance of space and time in Verne's novels and a detailed knowledge of how they actually work together. A survey of the existing literature shows that although short - and brilliant - pieces concerning time have been written by Raymond, Vierne, Delabroy and Roudaut,6 no-one has yet looked coherently and sustainedly at Verne's spatio-temporal structures and themes. This applies almost by default in the English-speaking world, for studies on Verne have been almost non- existent - and Britain especially seems poorly endowed with studies of time in general.7 It is this triple lack which it will be the main aim of the present book to remedy - together with understanding the how and the why of the Voyageur himself. Given the exhaustive theme, it would be a shame to omit any of Verne's works. My corpus will consist therefore of all seventy-nine Voyages extraordinaires (1851-1919), together with the most important of the other prose, poetic and dramatic works (a list appears in the Bibliography). Special attention will nevertheless be paid to the seventeen short stories and about a dozen of the best-known or interesting novels. The novels can conveniently be classified into three categories. On the one hand, the first four in the series, Cinq semaines en ballon (1863), Voyage au centre de la Terre (1864, 1867), De la Terre @ la Lune (1865) and Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (1866), with their exploration of such clearly new territories as the heart of Africa, the underground depths, space and the North Pole, are the densest and richest texts in verbal terms, often showing a remarkable power of invention. The four books typical of the middle period, however, generally mix the known and unknown much more. In Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (1866-68), the heroes search round the globe looking for a man whose latitude but not longitude is known; Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1869-70) shows a voyage into the underwater and other areas of the globe, in the company of the mysterious Captain Nemo; Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873), a journey through mostly known areas from London to Singapore and back to London again; and L'Ile myst{rieuse (1874-75), the systematic exploration of life on an invented desert-island. Although this period is the most successful in Verne's life, the texts lengthen considerably, and often show signs of underlying tensions. The remaining texts are less well-known: Le Chancellor (1875) presents the successive catastrophes of a ship attempting to cross the Atlantic; Robur-le-conqu{rant (1886), a machine which is half helicopter, half aeroplane; L'Ile @ h{lice (1895), a miles-long pleasure-cruiser-cum- millionaire-community; Face au drapeau (1896), submarine warfare; Le Village a{rien (1901), the discovery of a missing-link tribe in the equatorial forest; and L'Etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac (1919), a technological and social dystopia in the heart of the African desert. A large number of commentators have in fact pointed out important differences during this later period. Verne himself, in a much-quoted remark, wrote 'Je n'ai plus de sujet dont l'int{rt soit dans l'extraordinaire: Ballons, Capitaine Nemo, etc. Il me faut donc chercher @ int{resser par la combinaison'.8 Other signs of change are that apparently sympathetic presentations of scientific themes are replaced by criticisms of science and by scenes of mere tourism, that ideas from the earlier works are re-employed in ironic fashion, and that the political views become less pro-Anglo-Saxon and at the same time less optimistic. The reaction of the public was demonstrated by drops in sales, particularly severe in the case of Le Chancellor (1875) and the 1890s.9 Some modern critics have shared this unfavourable impression: Jean Bellemin-Nol, for instance, goes as far as calling Sans dessus dessous (1889) a 'fiasco', noting apparently unintentional errors in the calculations that form an essential element of the plot.10 But other critics have defended the same works: Fran‡ois Raymond argues that the irony of Sans dessus dessous and its revelation of how it is constructed together help to constitute a self-consciousness that foreshadows more recent literature.11 Without at this stage attempting to evaluate these opposing views, it is clear that there is a major discontinuity somewhere in Verne's production. But the choice of studying all the works is in fact far from unproblematic. It has recently been proved by Piero Gondolo della Riva that not all the Voyages extraordinaires were written by Jules Verne.12 After his death - and even before - his son, Michel Verne, rewrote or wrote parts of or even the whole of many of the Voyages extraordinaires, although they continued to bear Jules Verne's name. To complicate matters further, Michel did so in the general manner of his father - on one level at least. The consequences of Gondolo della Riva's discovery, have not yet been fully worked out,13 although all the more important given the facinating nature of some of the posthumous works. Fortunately, access has been acquired recently to five of the original, i.e. Jules's, manuscripts, for they have been published by the Soci{t{ Jules Verne.14 A secondary aim here, then, is to begin the study of Michel Verne, especially the short story 'L'Eternel Adam', apparently totally from his pen. My initial policy will be to accept the son's contribution as an integral part of the Voyages extraordinaires. But at the same time, it is clear that the posthumous works often act as a well-informed commentary on the rest: as a discourse at a second level which extrapolates tendencies from the previous works, occasionally to the point of pastiche. The name 'Verne' will consequently be used for aspects common to the two writers; but 'Jules Verne' or 'Michel Verne' as a shorthand way of underlining aspects of one or the other. CHAPTER 2 IN SEARCH OF TEMPORAL STRUCTURE Lost Between Two Shores In the beginning is the void. The initial situation of each Vernian hero is the confrontation of his minute physical being with the unstructured space of the whole world. It is his search for some means of apprehending the globe, deciding on meaningful movements, coping with time. The division explored-unexplored, we have seen, is essential in this respect; but it does not explain how structure and significance are injected into space. Let us accordingly start again from first principles. The situation at the beginning of each Voyage is free movement over the globe; and this is viewed with immense pleasure by many of the heroes - who usually have enough money to enjoy it. They happily contemplate the uninterrupted visual field, where surface and sky are described as tending to infinity together. Their attention is especially drawn to the uncharted areas on the maps, 'ces grands vides (...), ces blancs @ teintes ples' (RC 152), offering as they do an unlimited range of possibilities for mind or body to wander. But they are just as much drawn by the regions of the globe which cannot be mapped out and appropriated. The open sea is typical, for 'comment nommer (...) un espace d'oc{an ind{termin{? Comment planter en pleins flots le pavillon de son pays?' (CH 552). Because the waves - despite Britannia's claim - have no intrinsic structure, the heroes can follow their whims and 'go where they please' (SG 23); in other words, 'la mer libre, (c'est) (...) la libert{' (CH 476). The polar regions are similarly protected by the difficulty of establishing any sort of permanent mark on them1 or on their maps - a protection reinforced by the association between blanc-blank and blanc-white (RC 152, CH 213, etc.). Three-dimensional domains, above all, not only offer an infinitely multiplied number of potential paths, but are again virtually unchartable - hence perhaps the predilection for the ocean depths in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, the underground domains in Voyage au centre de la Terre and Les Indes noires (1877), and the air and space in at least seven works (DA(1851), 5S, RC, MM, TL, AL, HS). The euphoria of unrestricted movement seldom lasts long however, and boredom is always threatening to set in. The monotony of occupying the 'mathematical centre' of an empty circular horizon is in fact a complaint frequently heard in the mouths of Verne's heroes (VF 66, cf. IM 132, VCT 263, 5S 222). Without fixed points to focus on, they judge their freedom excessive; tending to infinity means never actually getting there; a total choice is almost the same as no choice at all. Openness comes to compare unfavourably with the richness, plenitude and security of compact tropical islands with their 'mille ressources vari{es' (CH 418). In the later novels of tourism, especially, advanced methods of locomotion afford the characters great liberty, but one from which little benefit can be drawn in the absence of any motivation, of any sense of direction. Frequently, the fear of emptiness takes on the form of an agoraphobic reaction to a sensory void. This may seem surprising given the role of the journey in Verne's works. Nevertheless, mariners, polar explorers and airmen all express their dread of the empty perspective, '(l'){clat uniforme', '(le) mal de la blancheur' (HG 240; CH 292; 292). Even contemplation from a high place causes a corresponding 'mal de l'espace' (VCT 72): at least eight characters - plus Hatteras's dog - suffer a textually identical 'vertige' when faced with an identical 'abme'.2 In virtually each case, the hero further undergoes an 'attraction de l'abme', '(la) tent(ation) de s'y pr{cipiter' (VCT 146; C 116). In other words, a lack of tangible objects in the hero's field of vision seems to provoke an attempt to reduce the emptiness of space, however suicidal the consequences. Open space is far from an automatic route to salvation. Three-dimensional space may, nevertheless, be brought down to size by the cunningly simple expedient of eliminating the odd dimension, the vertical one. The aircraft in fact normally stay close to the ground, and their movements are often considered simply in terms of a conventional map. Similarly, life underground is often represented as an imitation of the planar world above, with the third dimension serving merely as a transition between the two: one hero even finds his way around down there by associating locations with features on the surface (IN 135). Exceptionally, in Voyage au centre de la Terre and 'Un Drame dans les airs', the vertical dimension is retained - but often at the price of both of the horizontal ones being normally ignored. In the more typical case of space that is already two-dimensional, there is no distinctive dimension that could be eliminated, for latitude and longitude occupy comparable positions in the scheme of things (in non-polar regions at least). So Verne's characters have to seek some other form which will provide at least a pretext for travel. The most obvious physical feature, whether on the terrain or on the map, is the division between land and water. The simplest solution is thus for the Voyageurs to hug coasts 'as closely as possible', to follow what is characterised, with some originality, as 'un fleuve qui n'aurait qu'une rive', '(une) route (...) @ la fois fluviale et maritime'.3 This compromise between sea and river constitutes a vital element in the Vernian imagination. It avoids two of the sources of anguish visible throughout the corpus, agoraphobia and claustrophobia, and helps to create a semblance of both security and free-will. But from the narrator's point of view more variety is needed to give life to the plot, and accordingly many novels embroider on the basic situation. In Le Phare du bout du monde, as an interesting example, the hero's efforts to delay the villains' departure involve not only obstructing their attempts to build a boat, but also preventing other vessels from entering the only bay, while at the same time using the open space on the island to avoid falling into their hands himself. The novel thus essentially pivots round the closed form of the bay and its opposition to the open structures of the land and the sea. An episode set in Africa in Un Capitaine de quinze ans (1878) ( C15 331-41) provides a more developed example. Having survived various vicissitudes, the heroes are in a closed native hut round which flood-water is getting higher and higher and into which it is also slowly flowing, stopped only by the internal air-pressure. Sooner or later, they will have to make a hole in the hut to attempt to replenish their air. But the problem is that the water inside will of course rise to the level it is at outside or to the level of the hole, whichever happens to be the lower. Making a low hole is clearly less dangerous, but a high hole has a greater chance of success. In the event however, the heroes forget all about their calculations, and choose the most risky course of action of all, a hole right at the top. They thus take a bold view on the land-sea problem. Where however the frontier between the two elements does not naturally exist, the situation is often transformed by means of a rhetorical device that is fundamental to the Voyages: the metaphorical interchange of sea and land. Sometimes it is the element itself which is affected. Thus land is described as having shoals, undulations, eddies, ripples, foam, white horses, a swell, and pitching and rolling, with the result that one can drown on dry land.4 But conversely, Verne's water takes on surprisingly terrestrial characteristics: the Amazon is a 'garden', and Nemo talks of 'game' in the '"sub- marine forests"' and 'herds' grazing on '"the immense prairies of the ocean"' (J 97; 20M 102; 102, cf. 427). The oceans are therefore conceived of as 'the sixth continent'; but, in a reapplication of the metaphor, '"les flots a{riens"', 'la mer c{leste', '"l'oc{an atmosph{rique"' are then in turn 'the seventh', with clouds acting as icebergs and whirlwinds as maelstroms.5 Consequently, in the organic world, elephants are whales, to be harpooned; but as if to compensate, the sea contains a whole menagerie, with 'chiens (...), chevaux (...), ours, (...) lions (...)', 'dragons', 'renards marins', 'papillons', 'loutre(s)', '"cochons"', 'dromadaires', 'crapaud(s) de mer'.6 Birds are sharks or hunting-dogs, and grasshoppers, '"les crevettes de l'air"' (5S 269; TCC 266; 5S 330). 'Poissons-mouches' or 'poissons volants', finally, form a fully living missing link in a chain of evolution re-enacted on land, and even constitute one of the stages of metempsychosis - without however always taking on the proportions of 'une baleine volante'.7 The means of transport are similarly transformed. Camels and caravans navigate, pedestrians are blown off-course, and helmsmen direct a land-yacht and a wind-powered wheelbarrow (TCC 307; CC I iii 38; B 356; TM 281; TCC 163). The Nautilus moves like a balloon pushed by the wind, or escapes from ocean-bed labyrinths like an aerostat, and air-ships are endowed with deck, hull, anchor, sails, masts, or log-book, drop a message-in-a-bottle, or undergo 'naufrages'.8 The comparison between the terrestrial and fluid elements is therefore a recurrent and dramatic one. Nature seems little more than an elemental metaphor. Verne is undoubtedly influenced here by pre-evolutionary biological theories. The seventeenth-century biologist De Maillet, for instance, observed that many land animals had equivalents in the sea; and other scientists deduced from this that they must originally have come from there (Jacob, ch. 3). But I would argue that at least as important in understanding what is going on are psychological factors in Verne's make-up - the need for evasion, for objects that can move with equal ease in different environments - but also his creative compulsions - his tendency to produce new objects from old and to invent unexpected metaphors, often by simply applying the metaphor to itself. It is possible to surmise that the real aim is to create imaginary coastlines within a single element and thus reach a similarly ideal mix of freedom and constraint as in the real coastlines, one that is even displaceable at will. This is undoubtedly why so many Vernian seas contain currents or even 'rivers': the effect being again to superimpose purposeful but comparatively free movement onto the wider space. But the main consequence of the land-sea metaphor is perhaps simply the blurring of the distinctions between the elements, or between planarity and linearity. In any case, the end-effect is to add variety to the narrative, to subdue the anguish of the completely free choice, to quell the vertigo caused by the empty horizon or map. Space and time are rendered slightly less frightening. The Strogoff Syndrome But the boundary itself sometimes lacks interest or significance. The problem is that one point on it looks very much like another. This is especially clear in comparison with other linear forms in the Voyages, ones involving some sort of progressive quality. In accordance with the traditional identification in literature between the downhill flow of water and the onward flow of time, the river without branches plays the role well. Such a topos crops up nevertheless in surprising places: in the coastal and mid-ocean rivers already mentioned, but also, for instance, applied to the United States, for 'le syst}me orographique de ce grand pays se r{duit @ deux chanes de moyenne hauteur, entre lesquelles coule ce magnifique Mississipi' (TL 319). Sometimes, the function of the river seems to be to allow the character to abandon himself to the current on a comfortable raft or boat - the basis of extensive waterborne episodes in at least seven novels (5S, J, 500, VA, PD, WS, MB). But the Vernian water-course also permits the presentation of ever-changing scenery; and, above all, allows a progression, whether from imprisonment to freedom, from archaic backwaters to civilisation, or from banal modernity to mysterious roots. The water- course is thus at the same time the means and the embodiment of the progression. It allows, more precisely and most importantly, an association between the temporality of the river and that of the character (and also that of the narrator). The force of this solution is however its weakness. Leaving control of events to the flow of the water means vulnerability to obstacles, and especially to the cataracts which feature in a surprising number of Verne's works.9 An episode in Mathias Sandorf (1885) is a virtuoso illustration of the progressive linear structure in general and the river form in particular. Sandorf and his two companions are in prison at the top of the Pisino Tower, due to be executed at dawn. They manage, however, to loosen the bars on the window and start to climb down a lightning conductor, despite a violent storm. As Sandorf argues, '"il n'est pas douteux que le cble (...) n'arrive jusqu'au sol, puisque cela est n{cessaire @ son fonctionnement"', '"(et donc) au bout (...) il y a la libert{"' (MS 116; 111). His idea proves correct, but in an unexpected way, for it is the conductor itself that becomes 'LIBRE, flottant, abandonn{ dans le vide' (MS 112), meaning the heroes are forced to let go. Fortunately, there is a pool at the bottom. The three avoid its 'tourbillons (...), ces su\oirs liquides' (MS 127), but are then swept away into an underground river, managing all the same to seize a passing tree-trunk. Their control of affairs is again strictly limited, for not only are there no junctions, but the trunk avoids the rocks by itself, 'rien qu'en suivant le fil du courant' (MS 136). Sandorf profits from a lull to reiterate his optimistic prediction: '"en quelque endroit que se d{verse ce torrent, (...) nous y arriverons"' (MS 131). This time he is right, for the river eventually leads out into a vast stretch of stagnant water, not far from the open sea (MS 138). Much of the impact of this episode derives, I would claim, from its alternation between linear and (approximately) circular structures. The round cell is followed by a structure which is not only physically one- dimensional, but also provides a linear route for both the electricity and the three heroes.10 After the open structures of the air and the round pool, the river presents another three-fold linearity - its intrinsic structure, the path of the normal occupant and the heroes' route. Its similarity with the first stage is further emphasised by Verne's description of electricity as a 'fluide' (MS 121), as involving, exactly like the river, both a 'fil' and 'courant(s)' (MS 124; 136; 120, 121; 136). Linear progressive structures are thus particularly reassuring: space-time leads somewhere and not just back in a circle to the starting point; but Natural forces are employed and so this somewhere will not be merely a cul-de-sac. At the same time as constructing plausible adventures, Verne is exploring real problems of space-time, seeking both tangible reassurance and transcendental solutions. The works also employ a large variety of linear forms intermediate between the physical and conceptual domains. At least two novels are literally generated by the lines on the map: Les Enfants du capitaine Grant follows the line of 37[ 11' latitude south round the world; and Aventures de trois Russes et trois Anglais pursues the 24th meridian east across Africa. The characters' constant concern to know their spatial coordinates, already visible in Lidenbrock and the mad balloon stowaway, becomes a veritable obsession in the case of the polar explorers. Hatteras, in particular, argues from the fact that '"every meridian leads to the pole"' to ignore the longitude altogether, and thus, logically but perversely, converts the whole region into a purely linear structure, a space where the lateral dimension is totally lacking (CH 216).11 This gives him the force to get to the Pole, but it blinds him to everything else - how, in particular, to get back. The consequence was that Hatteras died at his destination. Hetzel, however, perhaps over-concerned for the good reputation of his publishing-house, made Verne resuscitate him and bring him back again. In the circumstances, the author made the best of a bad job: Hatteras goes mad, while still retaining his polar and linear obsessions: 'Le capitaine, une fois arriv{ @ l'extr{mit{ de l'all{e, revenait @ reculons (...). John Hatteras marchait invariablement vers le Nord' (CH 624). For Verne, then, the linear obsession can be dangerous. Very frequently, the difficult task of choosing a path is accomplished by simply following a route established by someone else. Children follow their fathers, fathers their children, mothers their children, and wives their husbands with remarkable regularity, as Verne himself self-deprecatingly pointed out.12 Nemo further draws attention to the 'rule' by proving the unique exception to it, by never stepping on ground where anyone has ever been before (20M 490). But in general exploration in the Voyages is often merely the cognitive one of following predecessors, in many cases real-life ones who have written books describing their routes. In Cinq semaines en ballon, for example, the heroes are following in the footsteps of 129 authentic explorers, listed in alphabetical order, and including a 'Werne' (pronounced 'Verne') (5S 8-10)! The heroes' declared objective is of course to overtake the predecessors. But following 'les traces (des) devanciers' and making use of their experience (5S 90; CH 123) frequently seems to become an aim in itself - as if to compensate for the lack of new ground to be broken. In extreme cases indeed, what is called 'exploration' involves following slave-traders or telegraph lines (C15 443; B 299)! Even when apparently novel exploits are accomplished, they often prove to be not really new: Axel and Lidenbrock do not in fact diverge from Saknussemm's path towards the centre of the Earth; an entomologist's belief that he has discovered butterflies unknown to South America collapses when he realises that he is in Western Africa instead; and travels on a comet round the solar system or in a pneumatic tube under the Atlantic turn out to be just dreams (VCT 324; C15 257; HS 524; ExA 136). Ennuyeux dix-neuvi}me si}cle! In the polar regions, predecessors' routes are followed even in temporal terms, for a common alternation between wintering and frenetic activity is imposed on all travellers. When Hatteras tries to steal a march on previous explorers by starting earlier, he ends up in exactly the same spot at the same season (CH 184, cf. 40). This synchronism is a defining feature of the curious Le Sphinx des glaces (1897), which is a sort of interpretation, adaptation and follow-up of Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). Verne's hero starts by following the same route, which means that Poe's account is checked (and nearly always corrected).13 He experiences the same seasonal variation as Pym, plus the same dislocation on the 29th of February; and even when he discovers new regions, twelve years later, he does it within the existing time-scale. Sometimes, indeed, the twelve years disappear altogether, leaving only micro-variations: on one occasion, the difference between the two ships is reduced to exactly 'eighteen days' (SG 217; cf. 304, etc.). The aim of Verne's novel seems to be to completely superimpose itself on Poe's one, to cover it so completely as to virtually block it out. In a few cases, lastly, the temporal structure exists independently of a physical space. In L'Ile myst{rieuse, the settlers' constant model is not only Robinson Crusoe but the whole of the technological history of the world. The settlers 'invent', in strictly linear succession, the complete range of techniques known to man. The only exception is dynamite, which cannot be discovered in the novel in 1865, says Verne (IM(1874-75) 226-27), because it was only discovered in 1866! Many different varieties of linearity exist, then, but I would claim that there are two overall categories. The first one is constituted by a well-defined linear subset of the universe, inherited from the past; the characters who choose to limit themselves to it drastically reduce their personal world. Such a choice is defended by the argument that emulating - and verifying - past efforts is a precondition for a different future; but often this different future is never actually achieved. Indeed, the characters in a one-dimensional universe are destined merely to bump into each other even after thousand of miles of separation, like Fogg and Passepartout in Hong-Kong or Glenarvan and Paganel in the Pacific. In a purely linear world, Providence replaces chance, necessity ousts improvisation. Later science-fiction novels have made great play of adapting space and time and studying the consequences - for instance reducing the dimensions of the invented world. Verne is already doing this in the nineteenth century - but within the additional constraint of realism. But the linearity of existing structures may also be bypassed. The corollary of the infinite capability of the human mind, says Verne, is that no situation is ever lost. Despair is never justified, and prisoners with sufficient intelligence and will-power can always escape.14 Indeed, the conditions of the gamble are such that, as in a sort of converse of Pascal's wager, where the existence of God would be so infinitely rewarding that it must be assumed, risks must be taken in these circumstances. After the escape has duly succeeded, the operation is then often repeated over several episodes: mortal dangers arrive one after the other, the hero is constantly faced with 'une derni}re extr{mit{' (C15 167), but constantly manages to survive. This second sort of linear structure, in other words, is distinctive in being constructed segment by segment, without its continuance assured beforehand; it is defined essentially in present/future time. Between the two extremes of the pre-defined physical configuration and the created, zigzagging spatio-temporal form, there are nevertheless intermediate structures. Sandorf's escape draws in fact upon both Natural forms and his imagination; the lines of latitude and longitude are both pre-existing and artificial, non-physical and non-zigzagging; and following previous explorers' routes - whatever the nature of the paths they discovered - is also in theory pre-defined, but often in practice hard to do. Between 'l'inflexibilit{ de la ligne droite', '(de la) ligne loxodromique', the path that is '"un capricieux, un fantasque, un lunatique"', 'ne cherchant pas (...) le plus court chemin (...), et ne violentant pas la nature',15 many structures are thus based on a happy medium, a controlled sinuosity, an undulation that also moves forward. Having created the opposition between a geometrically unyielding and a topologically devious linearity, Verne's works then seek to recreate an ideal form synthesising the qualities of the two, a linearity which is ecologically and erotically integrated with the rest of the space. The popular impression that Verne's works merely describe positivistic journeys of discovery is thus particularly inaccurate. Rather, they centre on the division between the Mondes connus and the Mondes inconnus, trying to make the former more extraordinary and the latter more ordinary. But the known-unknown division would seem to be 'overdetermined' by two related tensions. First, Verne's obstinate desire to remain in known territory may be interpreted as a lack of confidence in his own powers of invention. But at the same time, it may be an attempt to expose the relative lack of merit of the explorers being imitated. If somebody else can do the same thing as 129 explorers, then either these predecessors must be considered fakes, or else modern explorers are superior, or both. In this way, the second tension is clearly indicated. Realism in the novel means for Verne reproducing reality as closely as possible. Taking this to its literal extreme means that nothing that is not known in the real world can be depicted - but then the very genre of fiction would fall down. By means of a reductio ad absurdum, Verne would seem to be demonstrating the cul-de-sac of extreme naturalism - and thus anticipating on the general crisis of confidence that the novel will later undergo. Verne 'anticipated' in surprising ways. Le Verbe et la Terre The search for a global linearity is often conjugated with the desire for locally one-dimensional forms. One interesting case is the written form,16 which often appears in the most unexpected places. Thus the commonplace notion of the firmament as a book occurs in the Voyages, with the stars and planets laid out 'like the letters of an immense alphabet', as if by the 'Author of all things' (CG 520, etc.; HS 71; IM 48). More specifically and more Vernianly, Scotland's history is written using islands and mountains as gigantic characters; a volcano forms an immense sundial; and labyrinths take on the form of an ampersand or of letters spelling out 'xxUxPHC,qui signifie "r{gion du sud"'.17 The natural world, in other words, is made Word. It is highly appropriate that running water should taste of ink, that fossils leave 'leur impression nette et comme "admirablement tir{e"', and that there even exists a tree which produces printed leaves (VCT 192, cf. 316, 325; IN 21-22; MV 276). The written form is in fact an essential part of discovery, since the act is consecrated for Vernian man by the act of inscription, on the map but even on the object itself. In the early works, the signatures are modest: 'A.D.' (Andrea Debono) on a rock near the source of the Nile or ' ' and ' ' (Arne Saknussemm) on the route to the centre of the Earth (5S 155; VCT 324; 141). In the later works, by contrast, the act of appropriation is applied to sets of natural objects, the name is mass-produced. Thus Benedict dreams of the glory of attaching his name to a new insect, the 'Hexapodes Benedictus'; and the eccentric scientist Xirdal enters posterity with the chemical element Xirdalium (C15 430, 433, 524; CM 131). Reducing the quality of the discovery implies increasing its quantities. Worse apparently means more. But nomination (and with it discovery itself) proves to be a less definitive act than it might seem. A remarkable number of geographical entities in Verne's works require multiple appellations, either because they are so extensive - three successive names are barely enough to cover the Amazon (J 52) - or else for national-ideological reasons, like the Falklands/Malouines (SG 132) or Tabor/Maria-Th{r{sa (CG 861). 'De-nomination' also occurs surprisingly frequently: the carefuly built-up nomenclature of the Mysterious Island is destroyed with the island itself; the names of the 'promontory' in Le Pays des fourrures (1873) also melt with the object; and the Tsalal Islands discovered in Arthur Gordon Pym are carefully 'balay{es, lav{es et relav{es' in Le Sphinx des glaces (SG 298), presumably so that they can then be rediscovered and renamed by Verne's hero. In certain cases, a raison d'tre for the link between the word and the world is made more explicit. Clawbonny argues that after explorers have left their names on the icecaps, the spatial configurations will then generate their entire history for those coming afterwards (CH 60). The land will be endowed, in other words, with an intrinsic and coherent narrative structure. It will thus follow the example of the moon, where the successive 'Seas' are presented as charting out an entire human life, culminating in '"(la) mer de la Tranquillit{" (...) dont les flots se d{versent paisiblement dans "le lac de la Mort"' (AL 158). It would seem that the character's problematic choice of path is henceforth solved, and the author has a story that will write itself. All one has to do is follow. Nevertheless, such complete 'temporalisations' of space are illusory, for the difference between the one-dimensional logos and the multidimensional world is too great to be bridged by a mere pirouette. Clawbonny's eponymy does not in fact retrace the history of an area of the globe, but only that of a coastline; and lunar 'waves', even moving 'peacefully', are an absurdity in a world that is dead throughout, and not just in its terminal stages. The world is too big to be encapsulated in a mere story. The attempt to use the past to solve the problem of the present does not here work - and the mere attempt may, with hindsight, seem a little derisory. But it will prove productive elsewhere in a new guise. But the word appears in other, potentially more powerful, forms. Often the logos swallows up the person instead of adding to his glory. The character, for instance, is converted into a caract}re, a gigantic question mark; or else he becomes, in an image with sexual undertones, 'un livre toujours prt': '"libre @ vous de me feuilleter tant qu'il vous plaira"'; a tatooed Maori Chief is even on his fifth edition (CG 812; IM 292; CG 159, cf. TCC 4; CG 715). In some instances, the two tendencies we have seen, namely the personification of natural objects and the conversion of man into logos, are even placed in series. Thus Cap Matifou and Point Pescade are two promontories forming the Bay of Algiers, named after real-life people called Matifou and Pescade; but they are also, following the examples of Atlas and Everest, the names given in turn to fictional characters (MS 192; 192; A3 passim; MS 192). Again, the similarly authentic and eponymous 'cap Hatteras' mentioned with remarkable frequency in the Voyages (20M 567, C 15, FD 52, CM 215, etc.), is reproduced in the 'invented' name of the hero of Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras. Between 'cap' and 'cap.' is only a small point. Matifou, Pescade, Atlas, Everest and Hatteras are in other words the names of people, names which are given to places, which then serve in turn to name other people. A series is created connecting people to places then to people again, with the word providing the cement. It is as if people can only interact with people via objects. Verne's invention is closely tuned to the 'real world' but in devious and unforeseen ways. He is at the same time closely derivative and inventively original. The linearity of the written form, then, is sometimes present within the Voyages in curious ways. Most simply, the aim implied by its introduction is to name the territory and thus attach it to zero-dimensional man. The intention is to replace the passivity of most of the other linear forms by a positive act of appropriation - a personalisation or individualisation of part of space. In these terms, it may be considered to succeed, for the act of naming does impose some measure of significance on the featureless void of the unfamiliar world. But a more ambitious project is sometimes also visible. Clawbonny's vision was of the sprinkling of the fictional world with its own image in miniature, of the happy union of individual endeavours with substantive parts of physical space. The hope is present that some procedure may be found for connecting the images up, perhaps by means of some sort of pointilliste procedure, and thus finally structuring the whole of space. In support of this attempt, the Voyages adduce the case of double eponymy, where the word serves not only to map man onto space, but also to map space onto man. But the more ambitious project can never totally succeed. The formal finiteness of the logos means that it can never impose a continuous, connected structure onto the whole of the multidimensional world, can never calibrate it, can never totally recount it. THe two poles of Verne's imagination, 'conter' and 'compter' can never be totally fused. But, on another level, by some sort of alchemy, the act of naming and appropriation does seem to successfully infiltrate the whole of the fictional world, thus giving it some overall meaning. By displaying its own building blocks, Verne's verbal universe produces a certain amount of significant structure by means of its very self- consciousness. Person, word and world are not necessarily sundered for ever. Go Anywhere, Do Anything Another opportunity for getting away from the empty uniformity of space and time occurs when two constituents of the physical world come together in intricate fashion. This feature occurs in a surprising number of situations in Verne's works, and its recurrence seem to imply some special significance. Thus the rivers nearly always have multiple mouths, multiple sources and many features in between. The Amazon has for instance '"des canaux, des lagunes, des lagons, des lacs"', 'des iguarapes (...), des lacs temporaires', '(le tout formant) un inextricable lacis' (J 50; 179; 179; cf. 5S 323). The sea and the land also make complex inroads into each other, as in Tierra del Fuego or Greece, with their '(cte) toute effiloch{e' and their 'indentations, profondes et multipli{es'. Even the lunar 'Seas' have 'rivages tourment{s' and 'ctes anguleuses, capricieuses, profond{ment d{chiquet{es, (...) riches en golfe et en presqu'les' (NJ I ii 14; AF 91; AL 154). The same sort of interpenetration occurs in the 'mille d{tours' and the 'passes and impasses' of the Polar icefields, with their irregular hummocks and tortuous valleys, their 'vast plains, broken in a thousand places', their panoramas where '"tout (...) est d{chiquet{, d{chir{, mis en morceaux, sans aucun ordre, sans aucune logique"' (CH 268; HG 245; 259; CH 136). Similar structures occur in the organic world. Plants are often described in terms of networks of overlapping segments, 'frondaison(s) (...) entrelac{e(s)', 'tortis capricieux', 'inextricable(s) r{seau(x) de cordes et de noeuds', 'lianes {chevel{es' or '"{touffantes"'.18 Such 'lattices', whose particularity is to be so dense as to 'fill up' the whole of space, are also visible - in much more regular form - in man-made domains. American towns are repeatedly described as being built '"carr{ment"', as constituting vast chequer-boards.19 This is perhaps not surprising given what was happening in reality. But in Le Testament d'un excentrique (1899), the whole plot is based on the rectilinear divisions of the map of the United States. The will of the title decrees that the seven characters are to visit the States of the Union, following the rules of a jeu de l'oie where the States are represented as squares on a spiral-shaped board. As a much more concise variant of the same idea, in 'Martin Paz' the world is considered as consisting simply of four squares, two of which are named 'hasard' and two, 'sort' (MP vi 268). In other words, Verne is here radically experimenting both with the physical space in his novels and with the naturalistic conventions. His claim is that extreme codification and invention can on occasion work together, that the tendency of Romanticism to lack of structure is not always a necessary part of creation. Once again, radical ideas are concealed under an innocuous surface. In terms of the search for structure, the use of the lattice, whether called 'tortis', 'lacis' or 'r{seau', and whether made up of land and water, ice and non-ice, plant and air, or grid and squares, constitutes another stage away from the monotony of empty space. The potentially sterile symmetry of the elemental boundary or other line is replaced by a complex interpenetration, and the safe but potentially stultifying one-dimensional form by a richer two-dimensional configuration. Verne's imagination is here a poetry of Cartesianism. But all is not yet perfect. If the preponderance of one element makes travel within the space possible, it is still clearly not sufficient to determine a choice of route or to construct a coherent narrative. No matter how fine the mesh, the criss-crossed jumble or squared-off space remains obstinately without a centre and without distinctive paths. Space is still '"sans aucun ordre, sans aucune logique"' (CH 136); the journey still tends to consist of a random walk across a randomly constructed space by Pirandellian characters in search of an elusive goal. An additional transformation remains necessary before any real mapping could be conceivable between the two dimensions of space and the one dimension of time, before the world could begin to be satisfyingly 'temporalised' and 'narrativised'. It is some element of significance to guide the travellers that is missing of course. Ultimately, they are looking for some sort of model with which to order space - order it in the weak sense of mentally organising it, but also in the strong sense of putting its components into order.20 One brief idea of what is being sought is provided by the maps, or rather by the construction of the maps. The Voyageur finds a sustained and inestimable pleasure in starting from 'ctes inconnues', 'pointill{s, (...) d{signations vagues, qui font le d{sespoir des cartographes', to end up producing well-formed traces: '"D'abord, les lignes terminales sont (...) bris{es, interrompues (...). Puis, les d{couvertes se compl}tent, les lignes se rejoignent, le pointill{ (...) fait place au trait (...); enfin le nouveau continent (...) se d{ploie sur le globe dans toute sa splendeur magnifique!"' ( CH 367; RC 152; CH 367; CG 81). This euphoric vision gives an indication of the structured unity required, and pinpoints the physical features of the world as being propitious to the search for a principle of significance. But it does seem nevertheless to skirt the essential. It indicates the point of departure and the destination, but not the intermediate steps of the recurrent problem of structuring space and time. Above all, it hides the ambitiousness of a project of going from a featureless void to a satisfying spatio-temporal plenitude. The thorny question of dimensionality is still not answered. Splitting the Difference A first solution to the problem of the significant structuring of space is sometimes to be found in Natural shapes. The configuration of the Andes, for instance, presents a form which is both unified and two-dimensional: 'La chanee (...) se divise en deux branches qui accidentent parall}lement les deux ct{s du territoire (...). (Plus loin), apr}s s'^etre divis{e en trois branches, elle va se perdre (...)' (DM ii 433). Comparable branching structures with a similar potential propensity for guiding Vernian man are visible in the most varied of fluid domains: waterways have affluents and sub-affluents (the term is Verne's); the Gulf Stream 'se bifurque en deux (...) bras (...), dont l'un (...) va (...) former la mer libre du Ple'; a lava flow from a volcano at the North Pole forms an incandescent river with branches; so does a domesticated lava flow, diverted to improve a cave heating system; and the electric fluid produces '(des) {clairs, (qui) se bifurquent', 'des zigzags coralliformes, (...) des jeux {tonnants de lumi}re arborescente'.21 The main street of a village resembles 'un large fleuve, (...) ayant pour tributaires (...) des torrents sur l'une de ses rives'; and Paganel suggests, gratuitously but imaginatively, that a message-in-a-bottle discovered in a shark's stomach in mid-ocean could have come down any one of a myriad branching rivers (MS 249; CG 92-93). Many of these arborescences are methods of finding one's way through labyrinths, of which examples are legion in Verne's works: the possible routes across the Andes, through forests or jungles, amongst ice-fields, or through uterine undergound domains or underwater ice-labyrinths.22 What characterises all the routes is their contrast with the complexity of the surrounding forms. Only potential paths from A to B are considered; there are no loops, for the structures do not generally intersect with themselves. In the simplest cases, indeed, they amount to little more than a few paths branching off the main route, which is very frequently chosen by means of an Ariadne's thread of some sort.23 All these structures are situated securely in the physical world. Their arboreal imagery has concrete force, as indicated by the vocabulary of 'ramifiant', 'branches', 'embranchements', 'bras', 'bifurcations', 'arborescents'. But the arborescence is also frequently in evidence in the conceptual world. Marine biology, for example, is conceived of as an exhaustive classificatory system with spiders, squid, or coral divided into 'des embranchements, des groupes, des classes, des sous-classes, des ordres, des familles, des genres, des sous-genres, des esp}ces et des vari{t{s' (20M 179; 560; 174, 177; 277-79; 20). It has the same multiply branching structure, in other words, as the underwater organisms it studies! More generally, the many apparently unstructured lists in Verne's works often prove, on closer inspection to consist of a similarly detailed tiered system. Arborescences can also be seen in the hierarchies of command, in both dictatorial and democratic systems, with, in each case, the social order being backed up by precise tangible forms.24 Again, in two curious scenes in separate novels, a conceptual branching structure is constructed stage by stage by means of an interrogation of a dying man so weak that he cannot speak, only answer '"oui ou non du regard"' (B 229, cf. CH 334). Such an occurrence may be frequent in the nineteenth-century novel - and indeed in real life - but Verne gives it a remarkable development. In both scenes, the questions do start off as binary, but then give rise to questions with a numerical answer and thence, via reporting in an indirect style, to answers expressing the most abstract of concepts. Two extracts from much longer passages will show how little in the end the dying men are hampered by their limited means of expression: 'Le Porpoise (...) devait avoir r{sist{, et il serait possible de sauver sa cargaison. (...) Si lui, Altamont, survivait, c'{tait v{ritablement par un miracle de la Providence'; 'il s'{tait jet{ @ travers les r{gions du centre, se cachant pour {viter de retomber aux mains des indig}nes, {puis{ par les chaleurs, mourant de faim et de fatigue (etc.)' (CH 334-36; B 237). Information, in other words, is to be found at the end of the 'branches' of what is remarkably similar to a transformational-grammar 'tree', with each successive 'twig' representing a question and a two-way response. Human communication is represented as capable of being broken down into simple yes-no questions, but at the same time as infinitely reconstructible and synthesisable.25 The plots themselves of the Voyages, lastly, sometimes form arborescences of connected enigmas. In L'Ile myst{rieuse, for example, a series of five questions centres on the nature of the land discovered by the balloonists: whether or not it is an island, an uninhabited island, one that is nevertheless visited, one that is visited by Whites, and one that is visited by friendly Whites (see Figure 8). A total lack of information is transformed stage by stage, until the island is completely 'covered'. There are thus two distinguishing features from the mystery that will later become characteristic of the detective novel: the number of distinct enigmas, and the fact that the solution to one is the basis for the posing of the next. Here again, a relatively complex structure coexists with a simple two-value logic system. The arborescence is in sum a characteristic feature in Verne, from the natural objects in the works to the plots of the works. Of course, it could be objected that the idea occurs frequently in reality - and also in man's description of reality. It was particularly 'in the air' in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, both in the various theories of evolution (e.g. Buffon or Darwin) and more generally: Darwin argued that all true classification was genealogical (Jacob, p. 182). But just as in all these cases the arborescence was only one element in a distinctive theory, so Verne seems to adapt it to his own ends: placing it at the centre of his debate on the idea of travel, and thus emphasising its spatio-temporal characteristics. Its main function in the Voyages seems to be to serve as an antidote to the continuing problem of unfilled space. In marked contrast with the lattice, which is endowed with at least as much complexity, significance is encpasulated within the structure. The arborescence has a distinctive tension between unicity and multiplicity, which enables it to avoid the uniformity and monotony of the lattice. Being a connected structure, it represents a certain coherence; being also a linear-based one, it contains a certain directionality. In order to further understand the specificity of the arborescence, it is useful to examine the advantages and disadvantages of the various spatial forms. The Pleasure and the Pain Underlying all the forms is the attempt - by both the character and the narrator - to take 'les connaissances AMASSEES par la science' and transmute them into a new 'HISTOIRE de l'univers' - in other words to convert a pile of relatively incoherent information into a cogent and universal narrative. The nub of the problem is the disparity between the extension of space and man's point-being: his lack of dimensionality, his apparent insignificance. Vernian man has an excess of free-will, he tends towards random behaviour. What the character is looking for is some sense of mission that will involve overcoming physical obstacles. In Les Mots (1964, pp. 107-8), Sartre brilliantly points out that Michel Strogoff is the canonical example of the well-determined geographical quest. The character often fixes on complicated structures like the 'disposition @ la fois orographique et hydrographique' (MS 294), in the hope that they will help reduce the anxiety of having to choose a path. Maps similarly give the character aid in coping with space. But neither idea is sufficiently dense nor sufficiently coherent to solve the problem; for neither really comes to grips with the essential questions of time and significance. The two catalysts that help Vernian man to 'temporalise' space are to be found instead in the Natural world. Nature provides an antidote to the obsessional fears of emptiness by offering structures of as much irregularity and complexity as could be wished. But she simultaneously provides a certain unity, in the form for instance of 'fluid' entities endowed with a will of their own, and so capable of choosing their own paths. Even Zacharius's clock is endowed with spatio-temporal autonomy - in the obvious sense of not being totally subject to chronological time - but above all in the sense of actually moving round in time and space, as a clock-devil endowed with legs. But this innate tendency to motion is not limited to particular structures. It subtly permeates, I would claim, all the physical arborescences and conceptual hierarchies. More precisely, despite their varied nature, these forms all share precise morphological characteristics with the free-flowing water-courses. The fundamental feature is a main 'trunk' or linear core: the mountain chain, the main waterway, railway, or roadway, the Ariadne's thread, or the conceptual path finally chosen. But because of the repeated parting of the ways, the structure is also multipartite. Indeed, the extent to which the bifurcation continues is remarkable. The Andes divide and blend into the plain, the waterways split and broaden out to become the open sea, the rivers of lava unite with their beds, the coral forms solid masses, the mazes multiply indefinitely, the hierarchical classifications englobe the whole of Nature, the yes/no routines integrate normal discourse, and the enigmas exhaust the Mystery of the Island. The process, in short, carries on ad infinitum, it in the end fills up the available space, reconstructs the material and conceptual worlds, whether two-, three- or multi-dimensional. But it seems to do this only at the cost of abandoning its constituent form, the line, in favour of a form which is in most ways its opposite: the plane. Even in its spatial characteristics, the arborescence embodies a dimensional paradox. The third and most important feature of the arborescence is its temporality, borrowed from Nature's flowing entities. The time-element would in fact seem to be at both the raison d'tre of the structure and its most elusive feature. It is often constituted by the time of a journey through the branching structure, as in all the land and sea routes. But in other cases, the 'temporalisation' of the structure is more or less independent of any real traversing of it, and becomes therefore all the more diffuse. In the case of the Andes, for instance, the imposition of a directionality on the mountain-crests does not imply any sort of travel along them. It seems to act instead as a metaphor helping to generate both the overall subject of the tale (the division of the Spanish Navy into two) and the main element of the plot, the multiply-bifurcating path across the Andes. The dilution often goes much further. Indeed the case of the plane completely filled by the arborescence is little different from the completely unfilled plane. When the extra dimension is added, the temporal aspect is lost. A linear-based structure with a finite length can never be a 'space-filling curve' (as mathematicians call a structure which, by some recursive feature, completely 'fills in' an area of space). There is no one-to-one correspondence possible from the line to the plane.26 Space can never be covered. Two-dimensional time is an impossibility. The arborescence is therefore an optimistic attempt to bridge the dimensional gap by instituting a maximal activity in time and a minimal covering of space, a bold effort to reconcile purposeful movement and considered choice. Its binary construction does not a priori exclude any element of the world at all, it holds out the possibility of covering the whole of space; it entices man with the idea of a quantised but potentially infinite freedom. The arborescence may represent the attempt to impose fictional qualities on reality: one cannot really cover the whole of space, but in literature one can imagine doing so. Verne plays on time and space in what would amount to a sleight of hand in the everyday world. His 'realism' is submerged by his desire to overcome man's temporal finiteness. The espousal of unadulterated linearity, on the other hand, was the symmetric, pessimistic, tactic. Whether or not created for the purpose, the linear form represents the conclusion that a choice which cannot be held in abeyance cannot be better than no choice at all. It represents the belief that it is preferable to lose one's illusions immediately, to start as one means to go on, to act rather than to choose. The arborescent and linear forms represent contrasting attempts at solutions to the problems of man and infinite space, of the explorer and the empty world, of the writer and the blank page. They each represent a reassuring continuity, and thus respond to the recurrent problem of temporality. Each draws inspiration from the richness and temporal autonomy of Nature's structures. What distinguishes them from the other attempted solutions is that each steers clear of claustrophobic concentration and agoraphobic dissipation, of both man-without-space and space-without-man. If Nature - and the author - can be everywhere at once, Vernian man - and the narrator - are different. They share a capacity to visit any point on the globe, but an intrinsic incapacity to actually visit each point of the globe, or even of any substantive subset of it. Their freedom must in the end be put to the test. They cannot have their cake indefinitely without eating it. At this stage, then, there is no perfect solution to the problem of space and time. The physical or conceptual journey, however extraordinary, can never exhaust the known and unknown worlds, can never 'temporalise' the world in n easy stages; even the attempt has a certain derisory quality. The hero is forced to oscillate between structures, to enjoy freedom to differing degrees and to rely on both chance and Providence. Verne's totalising project can apparently never reach a successful conclusion. CHAPTER 3 THE SHAPE'S THE THING Plots and Intrigues The search for signs of significance in the contents of the Voyages comes up, we have seen, against the obstacle of the multidimensionality of the real world. But clearly the novels do manage to recount journeys more or less successfully. Starting instead from the finished form, might it not be possible to seek an understanding of the spatio-temporal issues? Such formal features as the footnotes and illustrations may prove illuminating; and there also exists a method for demonstrating the narrative and fictional times of novels like Voyage au centre de la Terre or Le Chancellor. In other words, by graphing the internal time of the text (the time of the events) against the 'time' or 'space' of the fiction (as measured by the amount of text occupied), one can get a very good idea of the overall plot. (See Appendix A for further details of this method.) As Genette has pointed out (pp. 225-7), it is a characteristic of 'modern' fiction to make great play of undermining the opposition between the narrator, whose role is by definition within the fiction, and the author, the real-life person who wrote the fiction. In this respect, Jules Verne may qualify as a modern, for he often identifies the two. Thus in summarising 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', he writes 'un fruitier heurta POE d'une faon brusque'; his narrator similarly remarks 'Arthur Pym - autrement dit Edgar Poe'; and the first-person narrator especially is sometimes represented in the illustrations as resembling the author himself.1 Moreover, footnotes or maps are often marked 'Note de l'auteur', 'J.V.' or 'Jules Verne', and events are even occasionally reported from his private life: 'l'auteur a eu le plaisir de (...) visiter (le Telemark). Il l'a parcouru en kariol'; '1. Au 12 avril 1867, l'auteur se trouvait @ Buffalo, alors que l'Eri{ {tait pris (de glace) sur toute son {tendue. J.V.'.2 Sometimes indeed, the author's own previous works are referred to: Capitaine Hatteras and Hector Servadac in Sans dessus dessous (SDD vii 98; xviii 189; cf. PF 302), Les Cinq cents millions in Robur-le-conqu{rant (RC 10), and Vingt mille lieues in L'Ile myst{rieuse (IM 801). In this last instance, we observe the remarkable instance of Smith quoting the novel about Nemo to an amazed Nemo himself! The tendency to refer to other works is completed by a striking 'blurb' within C{sar Cascabel (1890) which refers to the existence of the ongoing series of novels: 'Tel est le r{cit de ce voyage que l'on peut compter comme l'un des plus surprenants des Voyages extraordinaires' (CC II xv 410). Although such instances are relatively isolated, they do point to Verne's tendency to extreme naturalism and one of the paradoxes it provokes. Elements of the real world are depicted in the Voyages, but the Voyages are published in the real world. The container and contained alternate, creating a potentially infinite regress of reality/fictionality. Probably as a result, the narrator's temporal stance is normally close to the author's. He employs authorial omniscience, bringing in real-life events not accessible to the figures within the fiction. Thus he points out in L'Ile myst{rieuse that the American Civil War has ended, which the characters will only learn a decade and 800 pages later; he describes a real-life explorer as following in the footsteps of the (fictional) trans-African explorers; and he often slips in reports of historical, geographical and scientific events that have happened even after the end of the novel.3 In extreme cases, indeed, the dates within the novel and the real dates of publication get tangled up, in a variant on the fictionality/reality alternation. Even the most tangible aspects of the Voyages lead into complicated, self-referential systems. The diagrams may perhaps give us further information about the narratorial-authorial role and the spatio-temporal structures. It is interesting to examine six of the works (Figure 1): The main impression created by the first five graphs is undoubtedly their similarity. Despite the differences of scale, the two short stories and the three novels all advance through the plot more or less without extended anticipations, ellipses or flashbacks. The time of the narration is very closely modelled on that of the fiction. Serres's intuition about Le Chancellor, that it is 'un r{cit (...) tr}s unilin{aire' (p. 103), is thus proved to be true. Verne's works are probably here typical of the period. Although these diagrams have never been applied to them, writers such as Balzac, Dickens and France seem to have generally 'started at the beginning and carried on to the end', with only relatively brief deviations. What is possibly distinctive to Verne's works is the very regularity of the graphs. The two short stories are symmetrical almost by virtue of their simplicity, but the three novels are also constructed from two very similar parts. In each half, there is an initial passage where the narration is slower (the graph is less steep), a passage at an intermediate speed and a final acceleration. The conditions of publication of the Voyages may be relevant here: many of the works were published in two separate volumes. But in addition, the variations in speed correspond to important discontinuities in the plots. In Voyage au centre de la Terre, the mid-point corresponds to the transition from normal existence to the underground cavern; in Mistress Branican, it divides the heroine's life into passive and active phases, into waiting at home and going out and searching for her lost husband; and in Le Chancellor, it represents the transfer from the ship to the raft, with the fluctuations corresponding not only to a destruction of the ship's fabric by fire and by water, but also to a destruction of the social fabric, by murder and by cannibalism. Serres has already noted the symmetry represented by the equilibrium states of the beginning and end of Le Chancellor (pp. 105-06); and Jean-Pierre Picot has observed that the social conventions also go from an initial equilibrium via an anarchical state to a final equilibrium.4 What has been shown here, then, is that the equilibrium is not limited to the end-points of the novel, but governs the novel as a whole, and that it constitutes part of the structure and not just an aspect of the internal themes. The one exception is 'L'Eternel Adam'. As Figure 1(f) shows, this posthumous tale is set in two equally represented time-zones, one in the third millennium and the other roughly 20,000 years later. Not only is it remarkable then in being the only Voyage set outside the second millennium, but it is also the only one to give equal weight to the first and third persons and to the presentation of two independent protagonists. This duality represents moreover an essential part of the story, with the 'three-dimensional' perspective it affords being one of the vehicles by which the tale proposes a cyclical structure of history (see Chapter 4). This tale is thus radically and blatantly different from the other Voyages: in construction, in conceptions of time, and in the role of the individual. Even as far as the form is concerned, Michel Verne asserts his independence from his father. In and Out The reader of the Voyages extraordinaires certainly perceives the relentless advance of the plots, but he may also have an impression of a great deal of activity at the local level. There are two particular sections where diversity in temporal structures is especially evident: the beginnings and the endings. Let us accordingly take four of the novels and plot the narrative and fictional times of their opening pages (Figure 2). Perhaps because of the bigger scale, there is here considerably more complexity. But whereas L'Ile myst{rieuse starts with a passage covering a great deal of fictional time - a beginning in medias res - the other three works begin with the initially static time of a descriptive pause (in each case in the present tense). In all four, there follow flashbacks, used for the past of each of the main protagonists, the historical situation, and, in some cases, the relevant scientific subject. Only then does the action proper begin, coinciding with the definitive introduction of the pass{ simple; in every case this is a distinct point (marked . in the diagrams). Each novel examined therefore exhibits a careful and appropriate structure. Balzac's incipits have attracted a great deal of attention, in terms of tenses and their slow build up to a point de d{part. But on the evidence we have seen, they do not seem radically different from Verne's.5 If we examine the endings of four of the novels (Figure 3), symmetrical observations can be made. The action has a clear end-point as well - a dramatic 'Cut!'. After this point, a variety of forms are visible, with anticipations now more frequent than flashbacks. One possible reason for this complexity is that, in some works, the winding up is in effect done twice: in L'Ile @ h{lice and Le Chteau des Carpathes, numerous characters drown, are buried alive or go mad (IH II xiv 315-16; ChC 234-36; 239-40), but are then brought back to life or sanity, and, in many cases, married off. This is undoubtedly a sign of the tension betweeen the natural tendencies in Verne's imagination and the more optimistic and ideologically conformist tendencies required of him by his editor and his public. The endings are, then, sometimes less coherently constructed than the openings - an observation that is supported by a remark in the early play 'Monna Lisa (sic)': '"Vous tes toujours, vous, l'homme qui s'occupe Du vernis d'un tableau qui n'est pas commenc{!"' (p. 43). The later novels seem more fragmented than the earlier ones - thus confirming the overall tendency of the later works to lesser 'lisibilit{'. More generally, the endings perform a similar, but opposite, function to the beginnings. Instead of serving to unite different threads of the story, they 'wind up' each of them. They close down the fiction - thus laying the ground for the impatient author to start the next one. Diversions or 'Divertissements' Perhaps most typical of Verne's general style is his treatment of what Genette calls the paratexte, that is the novel not forming part of the main text. The titles, illustrations, and footnotes of the Voyages are vital for studying the conventions of fiction, for they are all intermediate between the invented and real worlds. No reader of Verne can help noticing the footnote, a persistent feature which few other novelists employ. Typical examples are: (explaining 'mark': '1. 2 francs 75 centimes environ Note de l'auteur.' or (explaining 'acide azotique fumant': '1. Ainsi nomm{, parce que, au contact de l'air humide, il r{pand d'{paisses fum{es blanchtres.' (VCT 68; TL 117). It constitutes a voice that exists in all parts of the cosmos and in all modes of narration. Associated with the narratorial point of view, it proceeds logically from the text, but is marked off typographically, and is also temporally distinct. Of course, part of the function of the footnote is to mimic scientific discourse. But in practice, the present and pass{ compos{ of Verne's footnotes contrast with the pass{ simple of the text, unlike the situation in scientific writing; and thus the main effect becomes instead the literary one of detachment. One of the notes in 'L'Eternel Adam' pushes this effect to the limit. The civilisation of the distant future, it is remarked, is familiar with planets not known to earlier stages. The footnote comments: '(...) Il faut conclure qu'au moment o| ce journal sera {crit, le syst}me solaire comprendra plus de huit plan}tes et que l'homme en aura par cons{quent d{couvert une ou plusieurs au-del@ de Neptune' (EA 233). These unusual tenses can apparently only represent the future of an authorial voice,6 and thus the isolation of the note from the temporality of the main narration is further emphasised. The posthumous example - which seems to contain elements of pastiche - pinpoints the essential features of all the Vernian notes: their non-integration with the temporal flow of the text, their self-consciousness and their apparent gratuitousness. The illustrations have a similarly ambiguous role. In most respects, they form part of the Voyages extraordinaires (for copyright purposes, for instance); and for many readers, they are an inseparable part of the text - possibly what is most likely to stay in the memory. But they are not, of course, by Verne. Perhaps because of this tension, there are a number of problems associated with them. Many of them may of course be true of illustrated fiction in general; but certain follow on from such distinctively Vernian features as the enigma, the hyper-realistic tendency, and the attempted depiction of 'future' machines. The first problem has to do with the position of the illustrations. Not only are they often placed several pages away from the corresponding text, but they are virtually never mentioned in the text.7 One reason, of course, is that, unlike the maps, the illustrations were apparently conceived after the texts.8 But where the illustration precedes the text, there is a danger of losing the effect of surprise. In general, the loss of suspense is minimal, for the illustrator plays the narrator's game loyally, as Franois Raymond has pointed out.9 But the enigma of the lamp-extinguishing Spirit of the Mine in Les Indes noires, which is apparently meant to be solved only at the end (IN 233-34), is in fact undermined by an earlier illustration showing a bird (IN 95). Similarly, the heroes' apparently supernaturally fast movements in Mathias Sandorf, Face au drapeau, Robur-le-conqu{rant or Matre du monde - movements carefully built up over several chapters - are no longer mysteries if the reader notices the submarines or aircraft in the title-page illustrations. It is as if suspense and mystery were for Verne not matters of concealment of information, but of ostensible concealment - Roland Barthes's 'jupe qui baille' outclassing total nudity. A second problem concerns the depiction of elliptic or possibly unreliable text. Sometimes the first-person narrator is unconscious or otherwise prevented from recounting his tale - in which case the very incompleteness of captions like 'Etendu sur un divan' (20M 530, cf. VCT 260) serves only to emphasise his incapacity and to create doubts in the reader's mind. In other cases, objective reality is completely replaced in the text by the imaginings of a character in an ecstatic state. Even so, they are usually fully translated into pictorial form, including, for instance, Ardan's ideas of free-flight in space, playing pygmy to the inhabitants of the sun, or observing the cattle capable of ploughing the giant furrows on the moon's surface, Hatteras's dog-captain or a Carpathian teacher's dragons and fairies (AL 106; 130; 179; CH 73; ChC 27). Even dream passages with several periods of time concertinaed together are faithfully transcribed in a medley of juxtaposed images, as in a mother's idea of a day in her son's life or Axel's vision of different stages of prehistoric animal life (500 86; VCT 260). The search for extreme realism thus often culminates in a complete reversal: the irruption of the fantastic. The last two examples typify the general problem of condensing an extended segment of text into a single illustration. As Lessing pointed out,10 one of the ways in which the pictorial form differs intrinsically from the written one is that it is normally apprehended either in its full two-dimensionality, without any predetermined sequence of perception, or else in its gestalt. This problem again seems to find particular solutions in the Voyages. Sometimes, the discrepancy between text and picture is avoided because one particular moment serves to represent a static or repetitive scene ('Il risqua vingt fois sa vie' (20M 437)). But when there is movement, this solution tends to produce the unfortunate result of immobility, suspending in mid-air such diverse objects as horses, men, waves, sand and rocks, stopping the propellers of the Albatros, or causing the moon projectile to burst out of an observatory instead of crashing into it!11 Accordingly, what many characters are described as observing in practice is often shown instead, namely 'traits continus, (...) un r{seau de lignes mouvantes ', 'raies {clatantes, (...) sillons de feu trac{s par la vitesse' (VCT 337; 20M 361; cf. VCT 254, 20M 578, DO 103, IM 856). Two theories of instantaneity are in competition here. On the one hand, a physics-based theory assumed that time was infinitely divisible, and that the best way to depict motion was not to depict it at all - despite the fact that, given the rudimentary state of photography, it was difficult to observe a 'stopped moving object', and that the mathematics of the continuum were not fully developed until 1875.12 On the other, the common-sense of actual observation treated 'the present' as having a certain psychological thickness, as containing blurred movement. But neither of Verne's solutions can totally hide the intrinsically synchronic nature of the pictorial form and its consequent dissonance from the text. As if to compensate, his illustrations often employ a mise-en-abyme, by emphasising, for instance, their own pictorial nature, showing written forms, or photographers and painters at work, or pictures-within-pictures (CG 461, VCT 142, etc.; IM 563, 592, etc.; RV 101). Thus, as Nemo dies, the naked female figure above him progressively lowers her head (IM 797, 809, 813, 820). Once again, Verne seems to solve the problem by subdividing it into other problems. A last dissonance of the illustrations is their greater explicitness, which means that they are more tied to their epoch than the text is. Even without anachronisms like a steamboat in pre-Reformation Geneva (frontispiece to Le Docteur Ox), the illustrations, particularly those showing 'futuristic' clothes or machines, tend to have a sort of period charm for the modern reader: they remain largely fixed in the era in which they were created, whereas the text evolves and accumulates new meanings. More generally, the illustrations are necessarily in a fixed time and space, whereas the text is not, constituting yet another dissonance. The notes and illustrations contrast then with the rest of the text. The main text consists, formally, of a single, advancing form; whereas the notes and illustrations can adopt a more ludic attitude to time and space. For Verne, opposing aspects of time and freedom are often meshed together. Putting it All Back Together Again As in most nineteenth-century 'impersonal' fiction, an authorial figure occasionally openly intervenes in the Voyages. But most of the time, the origin of the narration is shrouded in mystery - even the minimal intervention of a non-chronological order on events is absent. There are, however, three important exceptions. The first one is so blatant as to seem deliberate (and it seems surprising therefore that it has not provoked more critical commentary). 'L'Eternel Adam''s double focalisation, its narrative-within-a-narrative, necessarily draws attention to both its own narration/authorship and its date of writing. It is as if, having made the decision to write 'in Jules Verne's manner', Michel is then tempted to demonstrate the difference in as many ways as possible. The second exception is the openings and endings, whose relative complexity is undoubtedly the sign of the multiple, and symmetrical, connections necessary for entering and leaving the fictional universe. The final one is the footnotes and illustrations. Both escape the one-dimensional structure of the main text to constitute a sort of antechamber between the fictional and the real worlds. Unlike the text, they are not directed towards some external goal, such as making a pedagogical point or setting up a clou - they are defined instead by their temporal qualities of divertissement or diversion. The paradoxical effect of Verne's tendency to hyper-naturalism is to escape from some of the constraints of traditional narration. The constituent parts of the Voyages extraordinaires thus have varied temporal natures. Their interrelations may nevertheless be explored by plotting them all in a single, idealised graph, where the individual features are slightly exaggerated. The beginning and ending may be shown as branching structures; the notes and illustrations, proceeding from the text but without further interaction with it, may be depicted as bifurcations leaving the structure; and the linearity of the main body and its points of symmetry may be indicated as such (Figure 4). What we have established, then, is an overall structure which summarises the formal temporality of virtually every work in the series of the Voyages extraordinaires. But the reductionism of this diagram is clearly only part of the story. Verne's imagination often exhibits concrete and anti-theoretical tendencies. His strength may be simultaneously in the temporal and spatial structures of his novels, and in the manner in which he 'fills in' the story, the way he accumulates temporal details until they finish up by creating a universe. We are as likely to remember the temporal foibles of a Zacharius, a Nemo or a Robur as the time-scales in which they move. Verne's time is as much a human and subjective one as it is a scientific or objective one. The structures exist in the context of much wider concerns. CHAPTER 4 THE PAST IS A PLACE Past Masters In a remarkable number of cases in Verne's works, time is considered in a topos which neatly counters the form-contents opposition: in the opposite order from that of its normal flow. Typical examples include: the time-scale of the past relived, where characters see their whole lives flashing by; the one implied by the 'running out' of time, as in traditional expressions like 'days being counted' or 'having only a few hours to live'; or the one constituted by the countdown (which Verne may have invented), as in the launching of the projectile in Sans Dessus Dessous.1 In certain cases, the time-scale is linked to a material object that is theoretically measurable: the finite space of the unexplored globe, or its more concise embodiment in the form of a virgin river; declining numbers of natural objects, such as whales, elephants, furs, or coal deposits; or reducing amounts of commodities vital for the hero's existence, such as air for balloons, oxygen for breathing, fuel, or above all food.2 In other cases, it is the time of the text itself which is affected, as in the cryptogrammes that are solved when it realised that they are simply written backwards: '(...) terptsetuot' or (in dog-Latin) '(...) tabiledmekmeretarcsilucoYsleffenSni' (MS 80; VCT 25). If the exact nature of many of these time-scales is difficult to identify, they do have important shared characteristics: they are all in some sense retrogressive and they are all defined with relation to their culminating point. They not only resemble therefore the first methods of measuring time, such as candles, sandglasses and waterclocks, but also contribute to the suspense of the story and to fuelling the anxiety syndrome manifest in many of the characters. The logical deductions in Verne's works are based on a similar psychological and temporal regression. Amongst the more curious instances one can observe, slightly at random: the inference of each stage of a ship's past from a pile of bones, fragments of paper, an empty bottle, or a piece of flotsam; the deduction of the inter-oceanic route of a piece of floating mahogany merely from its position in space; and the reading of five years in the life of a group of men from a rusty knife and a few other remnants.3 In each case, the paucity of the evidence is matched only by the copiousness of the conclusions. Verne's imagination often overtakes his naturalistic caution. Amongst the characters using the deductive method are many of the scientists, more or less imitating Cuvier's famous reconstructions of whole prehistoric animals from scraps of bone or cartilage (VCT 259); but also various professional detectives - a novelty in the nineteenth century, and probably due to the influence of Poe.4 At least eight different works in fact present positivistic detectives using material signs to re-create a whole series of events (TM, J, CF, FSN, FN, DL, PD, DJM). Un Drame en Livonie is representative of this exploration of the past, with its murder behind a locked door, the disappearance of the victim's numbered banknotes, and the discovery of clues including blood-stained ashes in the grate. After various false trails, the blame eventually falls on Prof. Dimitri Nicolef, for he had a plausible motive, was in the inn at the time of the murder and is caught with the banknotes in his possession. And representative of the confidence of all the investigators is the explanation of how it was inferred, Sherlock Holmes-like, that a carriage was used and that '" the lead horse is missing a nail in its front right shoe"': '"Rien n'est plus simple. (...) On avait (...) besoin d'un v{hicule (...). J'ai donc cherch{ ce v{hicule et je l'ai trouv{ (...). Il a plu la nuit derni}re et (...) la terre (...) a gard{ fid}lement les empreintes"' (PD ix 146-47). Both the miraculous geographical deductions and the detectives' step-by-step inferences thus take place in a drastically simplified, almost closed, system. Not only are uncertainty and ambiguity virtually absent from the investigations but each event is above all considered as caused by exactly one other event. The essential feature is the presentation of a linear chain of actions going back through time. But because the sequence is linear, the events can then neatly be summed up in the forward direction. The floating mahogany's route is typical of the perfection of the finished product: 'Il a {t{ charri{ vers l'oc{an Pacifique par quelque rivi}re de l'isthme de Panama ou de Guatemala; de l@, le courant l'a tran{ le long des ctes d'Am{rique jusqu'au d{troit de Behring, (...) (par) les mers polaires (...), (par) cette longue suite de d{troits qui aboutit @ la mer de Baffin (...); il est venu par le d{troit de Davis se faire prendre @ bord du Forward pour la plus grande joie du docteur Clawbonny' (CH 53). Because post hoc reasoning is used, with all causes sufficient, all effects necessary, and all mysteries explained, these instances avoid arborescences of causality. A world is created with no loss of information, no multiple causes and no chance variations. Justice is a machine with 'engrenages' (PD xiv 226), where events may be traversed indifferently from either end - it is a world free of the vagaries of time, but without its variety either. Verne's didactic intentions are undoubtedly visible here, reinforced by the general determinism of the era. An extension of post hoc linear reasoning consists of analysing situations only after the event. This important Vernian tendency consists of explaining them, in other words, as if they had to be so and, above all, as if they had always had to be so. Archetypal in this respect is the complacent philosophy of five of the characters: Michel Ardan - '"Rien d'inutile n'existe en ce monde"' - Ben-Zouf - '"C'est comme a, parce que c'est comme a! Si le P}re Eternel l'a voulu, mon capitaine, faudra s'en arranger tout de mme!"' - Palmyrin Rosette - '"Va bene! All right! Parfait!!!"' - Am{d{e Florence - 'Quoiqu'il arrivt, il s'en applaudissait' - and Z{phyrin Xirdal - '"Comme tout sert dans la vie!"'.5 This facile sort of 'just-so' reasoning is above all visible in the comments made on 'Providence'. The term is very often used as a shortcut way of accepting events on (present) face-value, and ignoring the possible events of the past that may have led up to them. A similar tendency exists for Nature's works: '"La nature est logique en tout ce qu'elle fait"', '"(elle) ne fait rien @ contresens"', '"ayant le temps, (elle) {conomise l'effort"' (CH 331; 20M 40; IM 160). Each Natural object, and each species and race, is presented as perfectly adapted to its environment: 'C'est (l')instinct (des moustiques), cousine Weldon', lui r{pondait-il en se grattant jusqu'au sang, 'c'est leur instinct, et il ne faut pas leur en vouloir!' (C15 463); 'les Arabes (...) ont reu de la nature un merveilleux instinct pour reconnatre leur route (dans le d{sert)' (5S 315); combien la nature s'est montr{e sage en (...) ayant donn{ (aux natifs du Kamtchatka) aussi peu que possible de nez dans un pays o| les d{bris de poissons, laiss{s en plein air, affectent si d{sagr{ablement le nerf olfactif! (JMC ix 97). All efforts to change the world are therefore useless: 'Nous sommes bien o| nous sommes, et (...) il est inutile de courir ailleurs' (CH 592); '(tout n'est-il pas pour le mieux,) puisque nous voil@ tous les trois en bonne sant{? Par cons{quent, dans tout cela, nous n'avons rien @ nous reprocher' (5S 306); 'il n'y a qu'@ suivre les {v{nements et on se tire d'affaire! Le plus sr, voyez-vous, c'est (...) d'accepter les choses comme elles se pr{sentent' (5S 309). (En un mot,) 'il faut (...) consid{rer ce qui doit arriver comme arriv{ d{j@' (5S 20). The main bodies of the works may well present didactic and deterministic conceptions of time but the d{nouements work in the opposite direction. Thus, at the end of Un Drame en Livonie it is revealed that the blood-stained ashes had been thrown down the chimney (!) and that the real culprit is the innkeeper. The logic of the hoofmarks is correct as far as it goes, but its subsequent identification of the culprit is erroneous, being based on an unfortunate homonymy (PD v 153)... . In virtually all the novels, the 'logical' conclusions, established by the seemingly most rigorous methods, prove in the end to be wrong or else irrelevant. L'Ile myst{rieuse, especially, consists of a series of fortunate incidents which are apparently due to mere chance or Providence, but which become of increasing improbability, and eventually culminate in the washing up of a trunk containing objects that cater for the settlers' every need. Just as in this case a hidden secular agency has been at work since the beginning (Nemo), so elsewhere things are not so simple as they might seem: balloons are subject to both divine will and the prevailing winds, but phrases also appear like 'le hasard, ce 'nom de guerre' ( ...) que prend quelquefois la Providence', '"un hasard providentiel"' or '"ultra -providentiel"', or 'Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera'.7 Thus, although the simplistic explanation in terms of Providence is not entirely done away with, it is at the same time treated with a certain irony, and very rarely accepted as a total explanation for events. In many of these cases indeed, Verne may be pastiching his contemporaries or predecessors, Defoe first and foremost. He is possibly objecting to the manipulation of situations in defiance of plausibility (and often scientific truths), and implying that a novel which relies too much on coincidence is a poor novel. In fact, both the general and the specific fatalistic arguments are usually placed in the characters' mouths, are followed by exclamation marks and are expressed in emphatic fashion. There would seem to be reasonable grounds, therefore, for detecting an expressly ironical intention. Sometimes, indeed, the characters themselves provide a bitingly explicit and sceptical commentary: 'Quant aux (...) mots (...) 'Va bene! - All right! - Parfait!!!' ils ne signifient rien ...' ] 'Si ce n'est (...) que l'auteur (...) trouve que tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes impossibles' (HS 160); '(tout) cela me rappelle l'histoire de ce grand admirateur de la Providence, qui la louait du soin qu'elle avait eu de faire passer les fleuves au milieu des grandes villes!' (5S 316). The four reductionist tendencies often converge therefore on a single issue - and the reader who remained at this stage of analysis would have totally missed the point. Verne is at least partly tongue-in-cheek. In their various ways, reasoning by post hoc or just-so methods or in terms of Providence or Nature all rely too much on the idea of necessity, and do not leave enough room for chance or other unpredictable factors. By declaring the present to be the best of all possible worlds - or even the only possible world - they assimilate the future to the past, they attribute too much importance to teleology and they above all ignore time as a medium in which major changes could be possible. One can surmise that this tension between determinism and free-will may be part of a self-reflecting debate in the Voyages on the nature of fiction - on the author's quasi-Providential manipulations limiting the freedom of his characters.8 The undeniable attractions of such total determinism do not, however, compensate for the absurdity it produces when confronted with the unforeseen. In all four areas, inflexible behaviour - like that of music-boxes which have to be broken before they will stop (MZ 117) - is ultimately judged inappropriate and ridiculous. Systematically compressing the loose time and space of the real world into a fictional straitjacket is contrary to Verne's imagination. Knowledge of past time proves in the end to be incomplete, the machinery of justice eminently fallible and all the retrogressive chains of deduction infinitely less uniform than had appeared. Verne is undoubtedly using ideas derived from Voltaire's Pangloss to make fun of the simplistic explanations of some of his contemporaries. More specifically, he seems to be questioning scientific theories that ignore the hypothetico-deductive method, that enounce an internally coherent explanation, but without taking into consideration under what conditions it could be refuted. Even more specifically, he may easily be arguing against Lamarckian theory, with its supposition of a link between correlation and causation (as in the case of the Eskimos' noses) and its consequent introduction of the idea of intentionality into the Natural world. Verne is proposing instead a relatively modern counter-theory, whose axioms are simpler, being without teleology or transcendence; but whose specific explanations are more complicated, as they must always take in consideration what could have been as well as what is - where, in a word, contingence is involved. Verne is thus close here to one of the central arguments used by Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859, translated into French in 1873), namely that animal species could easily have been different from what they actually are.9 The Voyages seem to have set a trap for the unwary. Appearances are rarely to be trusted; the legal model of the world can only hope to codify, not discover the truth. Time, above all, must not be neglected. The events of the past cannot be traversed and re-traversed without time taking its revenge. Linearity is far from the whole truth. Behind Verne's deadpan narration lurks an attack on the positivistic assumptions of many of his contemporaries - and of his readers in the twentieth century. Man and Less-than-Man One of the problems with the scientists' and detectives' deductions was that they were physically static. For Verne, this makes for bad science and for bad fiction: space simply cannot be ignored. A more appropriate structure might be one where aspects of the historical or scientific past could be presented in a suitable spatial form. More precisely, if the world contained some sort of representation of bygone events, many of the problems of interest and significance would be solved. Racial differences apparently satisfy this condition for Verne, since, throughout the Voyages, the different groups are presented as varying in their degrees of modernity. Because they seem to embody stages of the past, the way might be open for exploring a significant ailleurs. Thus within the European group, certain races are argued to possess cultural and spiritual values inherited from the past - especially the 'Celts', a term that is sometimes used to include the French or Qu{becois. The temporal aspect is emphasised by conventional remarks describing the customs of Quebec, for example, as identical to 'celles du XVIIe si}cle ( ...), '(d')une France du vieux temps'' (FSN I iv 81). In a similar way, the North American Indians are presented as sympathetic but archaic. In contrast, the Germans, English and Americans - collectively 'la race saxonne' (500 55) - are described as dominant in technological and geopolitical spheres and destined to triumph increasingly in the future.10 At a cursory glance, Verne's views would seem to be variously and indiscriminately gleaned here from Gobineau, Rousseau, Saint-Simon or others. But in the remaining cases, the logic works the other way round and behaviour considered typical of the past produces a forceful denigration. The Jews, for instance, are subject to vituperation, with one of them described as: 'Trafiquant de tout et partout, il descendait en ligne droite de ce Judas qui livra son matre pour trente deniers (...) (etc.)' (MP iii 242; cf. MP passim, HS passim, ChC passim). There is thus an incontrovertible streak of anti-Semitism in Verne's works, which cannot be explained away, as various commentators have attempted to do, by appealing to events of Verne's life. The Spanish are also attacked, especially in 'Un Drame au Mexique' (1851), 'Martin Paz' (1852), Un Capitaine de quinze ans and Hector Servadac, possibly on the basis of an underlying comparison with the Blacks, for Spaniards in these two novels are called 'Negoro' and 'Negrete' (C15 246; HS 198). The various Black races themselves, above all, are the object of a special attention. On a first level, a patronising benevolence is visible, as in comments like: '(...) Ses traits CORRECTS le rapprochaient plus du blanc que du n}gre' (MS 4). Especially revealing in this respect are the opening chapters of L'Ile myst{rieuse, which contain a number of generous remarks, but at the same time reveal a strange reversal of roles between Nab the Negro and Top the Dog. Thus Nab swims in dog-like fashion and, to dry himself, shakes himself vigorously (IM 33). Unable to find Smith, he refuses to eat: '(Il) ne voulait plus vivre', 'comme le chien qui ne peut quitter la place o| est tomb{ son matre' (IM 56; 64). Whereas Nab is often mute, Top manages to convey a message and reply to questions, and saves Smith, washed up on a beach, where Nab could not (IM 88; 85; 85; 90). The double comparison is finally made explicit in the phrase '(...) le d{vouement de Nab ( ...), l'intelligence (de) Top' (IM 95) - and is reinforced in a later novel with a comment describing a Black servant as 'fais(ant) office de chien' (ER 200). In the second part of L'Ile myst{rieuse as well, Nab is compared to another creature with a monosyllabic name, Jup the Orang-Utan - Jup is called, to give only one example, Nab's 'superior' (IM 415). In sum, even if many comments are meant to be spoken in jest, and even if many are accompanied by liberal or progressive sentiments, there is still an undeniable tendency to assimilate Blacks to the animal kingdom - and not even its highest echelons. This blatant racism is of course typical of the period, and of the genre from Defoe onwards. But at this first stage, it is not clear what the temporal implications are: the Blacks, in Verne's view, could represent a precise stage in the past evolution of European man; or they could correspond in a loose manner to some past stage; or else they could be unlinked with the past of European man. The search for an operative space-time relationship is clearly not yet over. On a second level, the biological aspect is made more explicit. One obsessional passage, for instance, lists various possibilities of 'miscegenation' between Spanish, Indians and Blacks, with names for each combination down to the fourth generation; and it then assimilates certain human beings to animals by evoking the offspring 'n{(s) d'un coyote et d'une multresse (ou) (...) d'un coyote et d'un Indienne' (DM iv 445). It is amazing that this passage escaped censorship, from the public censor but especially from Hetzel when it was published in the Voyages extraordinaires - even without a reference to White women in the same context of union between animals and humans, which appeared only in the first edition ('Les Premiers navires de la Marine mexicaine' (1851), p. 70). Similarly, in many works, the idea of men with tails or simian in other respects is evoked; and in general, the various groups of natives are often characterised as being as close to animals as to men.check8 Australian Aborigines and Hottentots, for instance, are described as having a facial angle and an intelligence very close to that of orang-utans (IM 382), and Mac Kackmale (sic) is caricatured in terms of 'ses bras d{mesur{s, (...) ses gestes d'anthropopith}que, le prognathisme extraordinaire de sa mchoire' (GB iii 308). What would seem to be in fact Verne's general position appears in a passage in Capitaine Grant, again on the Australian Aborigines: '(Ce n'est) pas sans raison que M. de Rienzi proposa de classer ces malheureux dans une race @ part qu'il nommait les 'pith{comorphes', c'est-@-dire hommes @ formes de singes'; 'on ne pouvait nier (...) que cette race toucht de pr}s @ l'animal' (CG 508; 510). A third level - which does not entirely confirm the tendency of the other two - consists of the exploration of the transitional area between human beings and animals, and occurs principally in Le Village a{rien. This novel, published in 1901, presents a missing-link tribe discovered in the heart of Africa, governed by a mad European anthropologist, and superior to the animals but less developed than homo sapiens. The extension of the racial hierarchy into the animal kingdom is reinforced by a hierarchy of age, as in comments on Blacks like: 'Puisque les deux (hommes blancs) avaient adopt{ le JEUNE indig}ne, il {tait bien permis @ celui-ci d'adopter un PETIT singe' (VA xi 118-19). In other words, the non-White races are being compared to children - another prevalent comparison in the nineteenth century, one which imposed a temporal order on the races, and thus a potential path for explorers. But the supposed childishness of non-Whites still poses a fundamental problem: are they juvenile because they are younger - of recent development - or because they are older - that is, they developed first? The question is not directly answered, but there are instead many remarks tending to diminish the distance between White and Black, as if to 'make room' for the third group below them both. Thus not only are the two heroes '"n{grifi{s"' and '"africanis{s"' by the sun, but their Black companion has 'le teint presque clair, la chevelure blonde et non la laine cr{pue (...), le nez aquilin et non {cras{, les l}vres fines et non lippues' (VA i 8; v 60; i 12). When the inhabitants of the Treetop Village are discovered - characteristically the first to be seen is a baby - it does prove very difficult to classify them. There are many indications tending to set the Wagddis apart from the animals, icluding their facial angle, shape of nose and forehead, body hair, clothing, family structure, smiles and tears, language, and religion.9 On the other hand, this language is described as being extremely primitive, as offering 'des parall{lismes frappants avec le babil enfantin' (VA xiv 161); and their objects of worship are similarly derisory, consisting as they do of the mad Dr Johausen and his flat barrel-organ with its missing notes. The narrator in fact explicitly concludes that the creatures do not demonstrate a clear moral or religious sense, a sine qua non of the human condition (VA xiv 157). The Wagddis, then, seem to be presented as being, like Java Man (VA xiii 146), neither totally in the animal nor totally in the human camp.10 There are thus three levels of association between human or humanoid beings and animals; plus in fact a certain number of cases of degeneration - Johausen himself or Ayrton castaway on his desert island (VA xvii 193; IM 503). But real evolutionary ideas are very seldom quoted with approval. The Village a{rien is not a 'village Aryan'. Conceptions of the origin of animal and human species tend instead to be Biblical (20M 15, VCT 261, etc.), and to involve the acquisition and inheritance of at most superficial characteristics (C15 398, B 319, etc.), in line with pre-evolutionary ideas. Darwin's theory of evolution is indeed explicitly rejected;11 as is Vogt's, according to which 'l'orang(-outang) (...) serait (...) l'anctre des N{gritos ; le chimpanz{, (...) (celui) des n}gres; (...) (le) gorille, (...) (celui de) l'homme blanc' (VA xiv 156) (although, of course, the mere fact of mentioning it gives its racist aspects some credence). Even when species are shown as mutable, as in the fantaisie 'La Famille Raton' (1891), where human beings become rats or oysters following the 'laws of metempsychosis' (FR 2), the movement up and down the animal scale is not continuous but follows discrete '{chelons' (FR 2). Only in Voyage au centre de la Terre is the possibility of human evolution alluded to, when it is stated that the Giant Shepherd may be 'un PROTEE de ces contr{es souterraines, un NOUVEAU FILS DE NEPTUNE' (VCT 318). But this remarkable idea of a parallel evolutionary branch - with all its consequences of anti-Creationism and all its science-fiction possibilities - was never to be followed up. However one looks at them, then, Jules Verne's works do not contain a coherent scientific theory, but a set of heteroclite ideas designed to fit the needs of the story rather than biological science. In terms of the continuing search for a spatio-temporal structure, the racial variations certainly provide material for an exploration of the past, but perhaps for religious reasons, cannot provide a totally coherent context. 'L'Eternel Adam' (1910), with its multi- millennial plot and its presentation of different stages of human, animal and vegetable life, provides a very different perspective on the same problem. It amplifies the evolutionary hints of the non- posthumous works, but to such an extent as to, so to speak, distort the signal. After a catastrophe destroying virtually all land-based life, plants and animals are described as re-emerging in a remarkable scene of Lamarckian instant evolution, '(une) transformation sur le vif': 'On voit d'anciens animaux (...) marins (...) en train de devenir terrestres. L'air est sillonn{ de poissons volants, beaucoup plus oiseaux que poissons, leurs ailes ayant d{mesur{ment grandi (...)' (EA 256; 256). Michel's description builds on his father's predilections for flying fish and dramatic oddities of all sorts, but to produce a most un- Julesian and implausible but poetic scene. As far as man himself is concerned, however, the tale seems to hesitate - as if Michel was not quite sure what his father's views were, or how far he could go without revealing his own role. Thus on one hand the anonymous narrator comments 'We are no longer men' (EA 259), and predicts: 'Il y aura d'autres adultes et d'autres enfants, (...) toujours plus proches de l'animal, toujours plus loin de leurs aeux pensants' (EA 259). Similarly, twenty thousand years afterwards, the deeper the archeological excavations go, the smaller the human craniums discovered become, indicating diminished mental capacity and human qualities (EA 223), in line with the contemporary view that the size of the brain was all-important. On the other hand, the craniums of the deepest strata are as big as craniums ever have been (EA 223); and man does always seem to retain certain characteristics, a vestige of language especially: the names Hedom and Hiva, for instance, go back to the anonymous narrator's civilisation and even, as the title of the work clearly implies, to the very origins of humanity (EA 226, 261-62). This is perhaps why, despite his pessimistic prediction, the anonymous narrator talks of future men (EA 259), and why the Zartog insists on the 'abme infranchissable' 'entre l'homme et les animaux' (EA 221; 221), concluding that the people are right to consider themselves as having had exclusively human ancestors (EA 262).12 Michel's representations of evolution would thus seem to have two facets. On the one hand, in line with a general posthumous exaggeration of the themes of all the Voyages extraordinaires, the 'densification' of animal evolutionary tendencies may similarly represent Michel's privileged, but not infallible, extrapolation of what he believed to be his father's views on this subject. But at the same time, 'L'Eternel Adam' attempts to remain close to the limits of plausibility defined by the previous works - hence undoubtedly the continuing evolutionary immunity of the White man. If a certain number of Noble Savages exist within the non-posthumous Voyages, most of the non-White races seem instead to be somewhere between representing a different group within humanity and constituting a different species. There are therefore more than sufficient grounds for accusing Verne's works of a position that is insulting towards the non-White races.16 But Verne's works do not seem to conform to any single biological theory, being rather a re-working of De Maillet, Mauperthuis and others. Darwinian natural selection is notably absent; and if the early works do exhibit an adherence to Cuvier's creationism, based on Genesis, the representation of a human missing link in Le Village a{rien goes against Cuvier's theory. To complicate matters further, the Lamarckian elements of 'L'Eternel Adam' seem to be unrepresentative of the Voyages as a whole. In the end, there remain apparently only two constant factors: the White race as an isolated and immovable phenomenon (even if individuals are not immune to deleterious influences); and 'the scale of animal life' (VCT 169) as defined by its intrinsic inferiority to this 'summit' of the scale of being (VCT 169). The views on evolution seem to form instead part of the Vernian search for an 'elsewhere', an exoticism which will show up the banality of nineteenth-century France, and which will contribute to the 'recherche de l'absolu'. One vital effect is that the variation of human species enables the space of the globe to be covered with a significance-bearing pattern. What is more, the pattern is to a certain extent based in time, and is thus an improvement on the detectives' and scientists' narrowly spatial tramping-ground. But the temporality remains ambiguous - its 'beginnings', especially, are still shrouded in mist. Discovering the Past The inanimate vestiges discovered throughout Les Mondes connus et inconnus are, on the other hand, most definitely situated in time. They thus help to give a strong sense of purpose - and mystery - to the explorations. Sometimes the vestiges are purely imaginary: Hatteras is presented with visions of icebergs which resemble '"la chapelle d'Henri VII ou le palais du Parlement"'; the trans-African balloonists imagine 'd'immenses animaux ant{diluviens p{trifi{s'; Axel and Lidenbrock observe underground formations reproducing 'les contre-nefs d'une cath{drale gothique', 'les cintres surbaiss{s du style roman', '(ou les) ouvrages des castors'; and Clawbonny, finally, perceives a vast Romantic 'cimeti}re sans arbres, triste, silencieux, infini, dans lequel vingt g{n{rations du monde entier se fussent couch{es @ l'aise pour le sommeil {ternel'.15(no note 14) But in other cases, it is a real and detailed past that is visible. Under the sea, for example, Aronnax observes '(des) squelettes d'animaux des temps fabuleux, (...) (des) arbres (...) min{ralis{s' (20M 423). The polar regions, especially, conserve multiple vestiges of the past, including such various organic items as food supplies, human bodies, a rhinoceros, or a Siberian elephant, but preserve even the landscape itself: the Antarctic landmass 'est rest{e ce qu'{tait notre sph{rode pendant la p{riode glaciaire'.16 Whether mineralised or frozen, real or imaginary, close or distant, the past is thus a vital store of vivid images for Verne. Remoteness from the present is in fact generally related to distance from Europe - time is linked with space. And since the space of the globe often in turn determines the journey, Verne's characters and narrators thereby have the potential basis for structuring existence, for linking past time to the time of the narration. The adventures have a possible raison d'tre. With any luck, history will be the story. But these links are at best episodic, and cannot in practice sustain the narration for more than one or two scenes. The project of using the past for the story can only work if space contains significant and sustained structures. It might therefore seem that the use of the dimensions of space as intermediary was redundant after all. Would it not be easier, in other words, for the two one-dimensional temporal scales to be directly associated, for past time to govern present time, for natural history simply to be recounted? This solution has a certain elegance, and is in fact frequently adopted for the mise en sc}ne of the geological past. In such cases, it is naturally enough the temporal aspects of the globe's history that are at the centre of the presentation, although in two markedly different ways: Peut-tre (...) l'astre du jour n'{tait-il pas PRET @ jouer son rle (...). Les 'climats' n'existaient pas ENCORE (VCT 173); les eaux (...) se pr{cipitaient en arrachant aux roches (...) de quoi composer les schistes, les gr}s, les calcaires (IN 21); 'pas de trace de v{g{tation. L'acide carbonique, vomi par le crat}re, n'AVAIT ENCORE EU LE TEMPS (...) pour former, sous l'action de la lumi}re, LES mati}res organis{es' (CH 599); c'{taient partout d'{normes massifs d'arbres, sans fleurs, sans fruits, d'un aspect monotone, qui n'auraient pu suffire @ la nourriture d'aucun tre vivant. La terre n'{tait pas PRETE ENCORE pour l'apparition du r}gne animal (IN 19); la terre INCOMPLETE ne pouvait suffire ENCORE (@ l'homme) (VCT 261). Un jour, quelque graine (...) tomba (...). La v{g{tation gagna peu @ peu (...). Les oiseaux nich}rent dans les jeunes arbres. (...) La vie animale se d{veloppa ; le premier singe apparu @ la surface du globe (...) gravit les cimes ardues; l'homme apparut (20M 202; VCT 261; 20M 202). The impression created by such quotations is of a strange, didactic tone that is rare in twentieth-century fiction. In the first five quotations, absence, negativity, or monotony are emphasised, reinforced by the continuous tenses. In the last three, by contrast, purposeful organic life is established, and the process is characterised by its internal momentum, as indicated by the progression of the pass{s simples (even though explanations of cause are still scrupulously avoided). In them, but also in certain longer continuous passages (e.g. VCT 128-30), the past of the globe is narrated in linear terms, as a coherent sequence, with each stage described as a function of the following ones. Teleology and anthropocentrism combine, in sum, to produce a 'highly-narrativised' past where content can finally govern form - a history of the globe that starts with a long and pregnant descriptive pause, but finishes up with a strong 'story-line' and a satisfying climax. Despite the coherency of these instances, the fictional recounting of mere scientific facts can cause two particular problems. The whole tradition of the novel - as Robbe-Grillet has convincingly demonstrated - encourages readers to expect a human presence, a specific point of view; and yet this is by definition absent from most of Verne's descriptions of remote and arid events. But also - and as a consequence - the known-unknown tension is lacking here. Because contingency is ignored, because 'alternative futures(in-the-past)' are neglected, the temporal thread is too well-marked - there is no room for conflict or suspense. Of course, the primary aim of the whole exercise was to employ the security of perfectly well-defined structures; but for narrative purposes, it would clearly be better if some freedom was also involved. It is possible that some of these problems might be solved by considering the future of natural 'history' instead. Although the 'internal' temporal structure is perhaps the same, the relation with the observer and the 'beginnings' and 'ends' are very different. Verne's narrator in fact takes great delight in extrapolating geological events forward far beyond the present era. The extrapolations are facilitated by the similarity between the pass{ simple and future tense forms,17 and also because many adverbs may be employed for both, even ones like 'bientt' and 'dans un temps rapproch{' - undoubtedly another example of Verne's deadpan pedagogical humour. Straits will thus 'shortly' close up again, islands join together, or new continents form; life on the globe 'will' come to an end, due to a complete cooling of the globe, a near-total flood, or else an explosion.18 Support for these predictions is drawn from a comparison with other heavenly bodies: if certain planets, such as Venus and Mercury, are still in the past - in the immature, vegetation stage - the comet Gallia, dying of cold, and the moon, already dead, are described as being signs in the present revealing the future of the Earth (IN 19; HS 414-15; 20M 386, IM 276). Ultimately then, it is the predictable and didactic aspect of future geological events that is emphasised - and so more or less the same problems as before are present. The tendency for past and future time to be accelerated and spatialised does present huge advantages in dramatic impact and clarity. But it still leads back to the conundrum: is the past younger or older than the present? And then what about the future? More generally, geological 'history' allows Verne to consider the world-without-man, and thus to relativise the importance of humanity - a vital stage in the development of nineteenth-century thought; but it still does not easily lead to the construction of a sustained narrative. It is lacking in human interest - it is merely expository or pedagogical. Rational- scientific time is too uniform, spread too evenly to produce a satisfying fictional effect. Such instances stand therefore in contrast to the frozen or petrified vestiges of the past, for these do constitute a dramatic time, in and of the moment, defined by its brevity and changeability. In short, the mise en sc}ne of time in the Voyages normally involves the sacrifice of either completeness or tangibility, of continuity or extraordinary effect - and thus fails one or other of the goals embodied in the title of Le Magasin d'{ducation et de r{cr{ation. As so often, Verne's attempt to encapsulate the totality of a given problem in a nutshell seems to culminate in the production of two antinomic conceptions. Where exhaustiveness is emphasised, time loses its significance and becomes a scientific and un- novelistic scale: where intensiveness is accentuated, time loses external referentiality and tends to the hermeticness and incoherence of the quasi-instantaneous. The topoi of this chapter may all be seen as attempts to answer the question 'What is the past, and how can one come to terms with it?' In every case, the answer begins with the observation of the link between form and content, time's intimate dependence on space, and the consequent necessity for the past to be discovered progressively. For Verne, the exploration of the past cannot exist independently of a physical medium. At a first stage, a single object or location enables scientists, detectives, or others to (re)construct a conceptual chain of events going back into the past, or forwards into the future. In either case, the movement, away from the present and towards the unknown, satisfies two requirements of the Voyages (and the genre in general). For the characters, it represents an escape from the world they are familiar with (although at the same time fuelling their anxiety); and for the reader, it produces a steadily increasing suspense. But principally because of its conceptuality, this sort of (re-)creation remains of limited scope. It does not totally involve the characters, and nor does it lead to the direct presentation of dramatic or exotic features of the globe. The second stage, presenting the Earth as a museum of anthropology and ethnology, does in contrast imply contact with extraordinary features. 'L'{chelle des tres' (B 454) defines a hierarchy of every living being in terms of both race and species, whose be-all and end-all is the White man, immune to the indignities of biological change. Quite a long way down are the other human groups, with the ones closest to the animals being on or below the 'dernier degr{ de l'{chelle humaine' (CG 508). In other words, the human part of the scale is both distributed over space and intrinsically ordered. But it is not clear if the gaps below the White man are bridgeable - whether by degeneration from above or regeneration from below. Nor is it clear to what extent the lower beings represent the past of the White man. And finally, there is a hesitation as to the directionality of the scale: primitives are also on the 'PREMIER degr{ de l'{chelle humaine' (VA xvii 188) - the first one up as well as the last one down. This ambiguity contributes further to the confusion; and so, for all these reasons, the space-time association cannot yet be fully operative. Man's doubt about his origin combines with a frustration about his destination. His total supremacy means that he has no worlds left to conquer, and is therefore in a racial cul-de-sac as well as the geographical one. The only way he can compensate for the unfair advantage his forefathers gained by being born into earlier eras is to attempt to conquer remote domains. The only antidote to the monotony of modern existence is to search, in the last unexplored regions of the universe, for novel creatures from the past, a counterbalancing primordial superiority, an original noble state. The past is the ultimate challenge for modern man. CHAPTER 5 THE SHAPE OF THINGS GONE BY Depuis la veille, la cr{ation avait fait un progr}s {vident (VCT 169). Living in the Past Le Pays des fourrures (1873) comes very close to reconciling the twin goals of Le Magasin. In this novel of travel through the Arctic, the heroes venture onto a promontory in the north of Canada, whose longitude and latitude then begin to change! The 'promontory' is really an ice-island, built up from 'gel{es successives' (PF 313), and as the island moves into warmer currents, the layers melt, starting of course with the lowest ones. In terms of Verne's search, this idea would seem to represent a major breakthrough. By means of the ice, past time has been materialised and conserved in frozen form, with the year 1868 superimposed on 1867, 1867 on 1866, and so on. But history can then also be re-activated in the present, brought back to life, and at a rate many times faster than the 'real' speed. An efficient 'accelerator' has been invented, fifty years before Wells. A reconciliation between tediously drawn-out scientific time and satisfyingly intense literary time seems possible after all. The vital differences here are that not only is (vertical) space the 'container' of time, but also the (horizontal) movements in space determine the temperature of the water, the speed of melting, and hence the rate of release of time. The perfect space-time link at last? But there is a huge problem. The lowest layers are also the oldest ones, and so the heroes never in practice discover any layer except the top one. The unfortunate result is that the device lacks all progression and hence narrative interest. The problem is perhaps to do with the very transparence of the ice - it hides no mystery, the story it recounts is empty, the heroes are stranded in the derisory thinness of the present. This device is ultimately a heroic failure. But all is not lost. As so often in Verne, the later novels, representing retreats from earlier-held positions, may lead us back towards more clear-cut successes. A structure already exists with the required characteristics of vertical space-time and total opaqueness. Axel and Lidenbrock's visions were in inverse chronological order: 'gothique', 'roman', 'castors' (VCT 161; 163; 163). More generally - and this, I would claim, is the key to the remarkable success of Voyage au centre de la Terre - the geological layers they pass through are past time. The heroes discover the layers stage by stage and in inverse order. Even the names emphasise the linear ordering: the quaternary era, the tertiary, the secondary, and then the primary. The problem of the journey in space and time is thus brilliantly solved. The tangible vestiges of past time may be discovered in progressive and therefore satisfyingly dramatic fashion.1 This work represents the culmination of the search of the seventy-nine Voyages extraordinaires - even though it was the second in the series to be published. What distinguishes this device from the discovery of the prehistoric remnants is that the space involved is no longer two-dimensional. Vertical space is the support, in accordance with the linear obsession of Lidenbrock, '"l'homme des verticales"' (VCT 196). And what makes it different from Le Pays des fourrures is that this one-dimensionality is put to active use, is at the same time the reason and the place for the journey. The discovery of the past is thus highly structured, is both exhaustive and non-repetitive. Because the characters are immersed in the very substance of history, the dullness of mere didactic recounting is avoided. Unlike 'L'Eternel Adam', finally, where the conceptual exploration of the past (the excavations) is separated from the presentation of them (the document), Voyage au centre de la Terre can successfully and coherently integrate such oppositions as telling and showing, knowledge and discovery, and science and adventure. But the device goes further. Because the association is complete, without residue, its middle term (vertical space) tends to disappear, and as the heroes descend, personal time and geological time are often directly identified in Verne's language. Days, in other words, are equated with entire eras. If this goes some way to explaining why the Creation took only six days, its main consequence is that the heroes actually live an accelerated version of past time. Sometimes the experience is relatively static, as shown by throw-away remarks like: 'Nous {tions en pleine p{riode de transition, en pleine p{riode silurienne (VCT 165); '"nous voici arriv{s @ cette p{riode (...) (des) premi}res plantes et (des) premiers animaux"' (VCT 166). But in other cases verbal play is made on the identification between the flows of geological and personal time, particularly when their directions happen to coincide: '"Nous sommes ENCORE @ l'{poque primitive ; mais nous montons ! (...) A BIENTOT (...) l'{poque de transition"' (VCT 347). Axel takes such a perfect opportunity to, above all, pose the conundrum of directionality and improvement in time: while moving upwards and forwards towards 'un ordre plus parfait' (VCT 169), he observes, whimsically and sacrilegiously: 'Depuis la veille, la cr{ation avait fait un progr}s {vident' (VCT 169). Verne's treatment of the apparently simple idea of the spatial descent thus contains a subtle and sustained representation of time and space. In particular, the dissonance is examined between the Christian opinion that the Creation took only six days and the scientific opinion that it took thousands of years. Verne adds a major dissonance of his own - that between scientific and personal time - juxtaposes the two - in the same way as he often opposes pairs of monsters - and hence, with a certain amount of verbal brio, makes them cancel each other out. Scientific time is evacuated, and Verne presents the heroes as directly experiencing the days of Biblical Creation - with all the tongue-in-cheek that this implies. Further irony is directed at the hackneyed expression of 'days seeming like centuries'. Elsewhere (CG 500), Verne says that metaphors are one of the most dangerous things on Earth. His attempt here is to render the overworked metaphor slightly less dangerous by reversing the direction of the comparison and by makking it absolutely literal. Another idea passed through the Vernian mill is that of progression. The individual days of the Creation culminated in the perfection of the White man; but on the other hand, this end was presumably inscribed in its beginning: an omnipotent divinity does not make 'progress', at worst It just switches attention from one task to another. In other words, Verne here seems to be pointing out the absurdity of anthropomorphising the process of the Creation - and at the same time posing the conundrum of the beginning of time, whether in a Creationist view or otherwise. But Verne's imaginative play on space and time is still far from finished - and indeed the preceding may be considered just the build-up. Once the heroes arrive at their underground destination, the downwards and backwards linear tendency is interrupted, for the world discovered is fully three-dimensional. It thus serves to summarise and synthesise the imaginary graveyards of the other novels: 'On et dit un cimeti}re immense, o| les g{n{rations de vingt si}cles confondaient leur {ternelle poussi}re. De hautes extumescences de d{bris s'ETAGEAIENT au loin. Elles ondulaient jusqu'aux limites de l'horizon et s'y perdaient dans une brume fondante. L@ (...) s'accumulait TOUTE L'HISTOIRE DE LA VIE ANIMALE' (VCT 303). In these few brilliant lines are expressed some of the most distinctive features of Verne's vision of the world. 'S'{tager', in particular, would seem to be an original use of scientific vocabulary in a novel: not only is it a reaction to the diffuse Romantic s{pulchres of the preceding tradition; but, by its dimensional quality, it also contributes to the fundamental metaphor of the Voyage au centre de la Terre. Time is layered, made up of discrete objects, in an echo of the geological strata; but it is also then covered with what is simultaneously a traditional representation of time and that ultimate symbol of the continuity and breakdown of matter, namely dust. Time is 'twenty centuries' deep, but the generations come together in an 'eternal' synthesis. Time's vertical components go off to the horizon but also disappear there (the mist being the fluid equivalent of the dust). The attempt of the Realist hero to achieve a total vision is thereby firmly put into place, put into perspective: the physical relation between objects is perceived from the subjective point of view of - through the distorting prism of - the visionary individual. Scientific space-time and its opposite, personal time-space, are superimposed - with all the paradoxes this equation implies. A whole new vision of the sensible universe has been proposed. Axel perhaps does for the physical world what Fabrice did for war. But there is also room (or time) in this world for vegetable life, and the preparatory chapters begin to pay off even further, for verbal brilliance leads to yet more verbal brilliance: (...) de grands palmiers, d'esp}ces aujourd'hui disparues (...). Tout se confondait dans une teinte uniforme, bruna^tre et comme pass{e. Les feuilles {taient d{pourvues de leur verdeur, et les fleurs elle-me^mes, si nombreuses @ cette {poque (...) qui les vit nai^tre, alors sans couleurs et sans parfum, semblaient faites d'un paper d{color{ sous l'action de l'atmosph}re (VCT 316). 'Feuilles' 'bruntre(s)', 'papier d{color{': Verne's world is a textual world, but one where the logos has undergone the physical ravages of time. The trees are similarly 'rong{s par le temps' (VCT 317), and the general effect is 'as if faded' (VCT 316) - or, to make the pun explicit, 'as if past'. Indeed, the world is not of 'aujourd'hui', but dates from a distant and imprecise 'alors', is both diluvian and antediluvian (VCT 317; 320). It contains fossil fish; and the characters themselves are also described as antediluvian or fossilised (VCT 257; 284; 202). This world is dead and gone; but at the same time, since the heroes are actively witnessing its existence, it is vividly present: it undulates, and even contains flowers. It is, in Verne's word, 'reborn' (VCT 318). Great play is being made specifically on the interaction between present and past. Because all this is happening now, things are living; but because scientifically it is in the past, the things in it - like those in Lidenbrock's dusty 'museum' - are old and visibly worn out. If one dimension of space was enough to represent the time of the descent, here there are two dimensions, capable therefore of accumulating huge amounts of different sorts of time, juxtaposing great stretches of history and prehistory. Past time is there to see. But Verne's demonstration is still not finished. The Underworld is even more vividly present than it seemed, for animal life is represented in it. The fossil fish are in fact fully alive, and Axel and Lidenbrock also encounter living sea-monsters; and they even discover a (dead) human body, one that is '"incontestablement caucasique, (...) (de) race blanche, jap{tique"' (VCT 312). Were it that of an authentic inhabitant, reasons Lidenbrock, then humanity could no longer be considered a latecomer to the scene of the world, and evolutionary theory would have to be completely revised (as it is initially in 'Le Humbug' (1910), where a giant fossil man is discovered). But after playing with the possibility for a while, Lidenbrock reluctantly admits that the quaternary era man is out of his time - may even have arrived as a scientist or a tourist (VCT 313)! Built into the sense of wonder is already an ironic awareness of the massification of travel. The Professor's honesty is rewarded, for he and Axel do subsequently observe authentic terrestrial specimens of the era: first a herd of mastodons, and then a Giant Shepherd to go with them, one who is menacingly alive, with a mane like a lion's and a head like a buffalo's (VCT 320). The scope of Verne's invention shows him not to be just a realist. The Shepherd's world is past and present: it exploits the dead-living, space-time and old- new paradoxes to the maximum. Because the inhabitant, this time, is completely at home in his environment, scientific theory is resoundingly upset; but also and more importantly, the space- time quest is brought to a climax. The ultimate proof that Axel and Lideenbrock have finally got somewhere is that they have discovered something which is unexpected. The Shepherd's world is both the culmination and the denial of the association between past geological time, modern spatial order, the time of narration, and the time lived by the characters. As such it shares characteristics with other climactic locations in the Voyages extraordinaires which, even if they are not prepared in exactly the same way, similarly transgress the limits of realistic time and space. Virtually every novel before 1875 in fact presents scenes where some sort of transcendent element is present.2 But most notable are those of the underwater ruins of Atlantis in Vingt mille lieues and the Arcadia at the North Pole in Capitaine Hatteras, for both involve a time and space beyond the well-ordered traces left in the modern world by the march of history. The plurals of the recurrent phrases '(les) temps ant{historiques', '(les) temps fabuleux', '(les) premiers jours du monde'3 are one revealing sign of this undermining of traditional temporal succession. Another indication is that, modern creatures being only 'des r{ductions affaiblies de leurs p}res des premiers a^ges', primordial beings are invariably 'vastes', '"collossa(ux)"', 'construits sur des gabarits gigantesques' (VCT 267; 20M 15; VCT 268; 20M 15, cf. 5). Perhaps surprisingly, their general 'superiority' (20M 465) or 'perfection' (VCT 259) of the earliest beings also includes man. The Giant Shepherd is in fact over twelve feet tall; Lucerne Man is nineteen feet; the posthumous fossil man is over forty metres; and the Atlanteans were not only gigantic, but lived for well over a hundred years (VCT 319); 310; H 176; 20M 423). Even contacts between man and the animals were better at this 'time': despite his fearsome appearance, the Shepherd peacefully herds the mastodons; and 'the relations of the first man with the first animals', still preserved at the North Pole, are/were positively idyllic: 'Ces jolis animaux (...) couraient, bondissaient et voltigeaient sans d{fiance (...); ils s'offraient d'eux-me^me (aux) caresses (etc.)' (CH 498; 498). The oldest regions of the globe retain elements of a paradise where men and animals are, in Verne's recurrent paradox, still in their first youth. Once again, an explanation for these scenes could be found in the Biblical assertion that species were created once and for all, with only minor variations especially deteriorations thereafter. But other explanations would seem to be possible: the psychological one in terms of the huge prestige of the father figure,4 transmitted more and more to each successive ancestor; but above all, the deep streak of pessimism permeating even the earliest works.5 These attractive regions only exist in extremely remote - and in any case past - places, and thus serve to underline the humdrumness of nineteenth-century France. The world has gone downhill from the beginning. But because Verne's characters attain such stature from their modest starting point, their quest is thereby all the more heroic. Verne's most exciting novels would seem to be defined less by their precise historical resonances than by their escape from the contemporary social settings. A Strange Dream In spite of the contrast between scientific time and the youthful time of the beginning of the world, the two do reach on one occasion a synthesis, or rather an apotheosis, in the form of a time going back to the very origin of the universe. The mise en sc}ne is prepared by a short but seminal passage in Capitaine Hatteras: Hatteras se prit @ rver. Sa pens{e rapide erra sur toute son existence; il remonta le cours de sa vie avec cette vitesse particuli}re aux songes, qu'aucun savant n'a encore pu calculer; il fit un retour sur ses jours {coul{s; il revit son hivernage (...). Alors il retourna plus loin dans le pass{; il rva de son navire (...). Son imagination (..) plana plus haut encore (...); puis, sa pens{e reprit un nouveau cours (...); il se vit (...) d{ployant le pavillon du Royaume-Uni (au Ple Nord) (CH 562-63). Beneath the standard language of the late-Romantic dream is, I would claim, an opposition that is particularly instructive. The dream's basic structure depends on the space-time association ('remonta le cours', 'retourna plus loin dans le pass{'), but above all contains two opposed modes of considering time. The first, characterised as 'pens{e', is linked to the past, reproduces real events and is exhaustive ('TOUTE son existence'). The second, a time of 'rve', 'songes' and 'imagination', is incalculable, is linked with merely potential events in the future, and appears under the sign of selectivity and liberty ('erra', 'plana plus haut'). Both modes are nevertheless limited to the time and space that Hatteras can easily imagine. In contrast, the definitive visionary experience, that of Voyage au centre de la Terre, uses the same opposition to trace the entire prehistory of the globe. Axel is day-dreaming - significantly on a fathomless sea - and, after his vision of the collection of the 'grands mammif}res des premiers jours', starts to relive past time: he moves back through the '{poques bibliques de la cr{ation, bien avant la naissance de l'homme', sees first the mammals disappear and then the birds, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, articulates and zoophytes (VCT 259-61). Axel is now totally alone: 'Toute la vie de la terre se r{sume en moi' (VCT 261). He undergoes another acceleration: Les si}cles s'{coulent comme des jours! Je remonte la s{rie des transformations terrestres. Les plantes disparaissent; les roches granitiques perdent leur puret{; l'{tat liquide va remplacer l'{tat solide sous l'action d'une chaleur plus intense; les eaux courent @ la surface du globe; elles bouillonnent, elles se volatilisent; les vapeurs enveloppent la terre, qui peu @ peu ne forme plus qu'une masse gazeuse, port{e au rouge blanc, grosse comme le soleil et brillante comme lui! ] Au centre de cette n{buleuse, quatorze cent mille fois plus consid{rable que ce globe qu'elle va former un jour, je suis entran{ dans les espaces plan{taires! Mon corps se subtilise, se sublime @ son tour et se m{lange comme un atome impond{rable @ ces immenses vapeurs qui tracent dans l'infini leur orbite enflamm{e! (VCT 262) Verne's time-traveller probably goes faster and farther than any of his predecessors - and perhaps successors - in the history of literature.6 Part of his art is the verve of the narration, his involvement in the backwards movement through the very substance of time. The motion is inscribed in the language itself, with 'la s{rie des transformations terrestres' not only transplanted from a scientific context to a literary one, but also considered in the opposite order from the normal one. The same holds true of the phrases 'plus intense', 'L'{tat liquide VA remplacer l'{tat solide', 'la terre (...) NE forme PLUS qu'une masse gazeuse', 'courent' and above all 's'{coulent'. The progressively more vivid, linear and irreversible temporal imagery of 'courir', 'couler', '{coul{' and 's'{couler' were of course commonplace in nineteenth-century literature; but only Verne applies the most expressive terms to past time and the flow of a physical substance representing past time. This movement does not consist of a finite series of instantaneous images, as might have been expected from a pre-cinematographic era, but is continuous, resembling a film run backwards. Each of the stages of the Earth's history has apparently been analysed, reversed and then put together again. Verne succeeds the remarkable innovation - absent in Wells, and rare even in modern fiction - of showing time as flowing backwards. This vision starts from a pedagogical premise - hence the anomalous 'forward' temporality of '(...) ce globe qu'elle VA former UN JOUR'; it improves on Hatteras's space-time association ('Je REMONTE la SERIE'), perfecting the identification between scientific and personal time-scales; but it above all culminates as a mystical liberation from the constraints of conventional time, a blurring of the distinction between the self and the world, a floating in a time-before-all-time. Like the geological exploration it completes, this vision reconciles linear time and circular space. Axel not only retraces the entirety of history, but is also absorbed into the transcendent, amniotic origin. Principally in Voyage au centre de la Terre, then, but also elsewhere, Verne takes a number of contemporary lieux communs, totally transforms them in the light of his own personal vision, and produces what he himself accurately calls 'rveries scientifico-fantaisistes' (VA v 62). 'Faire du nouveau avec l'ancien' was one of the mottoes of Le Magasin; and a number of commentators have similarly commented on Verne's bricolage in other areas.7 Verne's peculiarly anxious, sceptical attitude makes him mistrustful of pure introspection, and insists that realism and the physical world must remain the basis for intersubjective communication. But at the same time, a particularly sensorial force, a great tension between the individual and the universe pushes him towards the hyper-romantic, the 'recherche de l'absolu'. The result is the physical explicitation of a simultaneously inferiority/superiority complex, the annihilation of the romantic-realist opposition, the magnification of the atom and the reduction of the cosmos, the poetry of space. The Vernian quest is a quest for all or nothing. The Space-Time Paradox, or How to Travel in Time The conclusions of the present chapter follow directly on from those of the last, for they take the observation of time's intimate dependence on the past further than the first two stages. The problem then was that science shows man to be a modern phenomenon, who cannot therefore be discovered in the distant past. Verne's constant desire for verisimilitude means that elaborate preparation is necessary before any potentially implausible scenes can be presented. First - and this is the third attempt at a total space-time association - modern man must construct a mise en sc}ne by means of continuous processes in space and time. He must indulge first in the pursuit of detached scientific analysis, the retracing of ordered history, the carrying out of conventional exploration. But mere finiteness and persistence cannot on their own afford access to an elsewhere and 'elsewhen': titanic men and animals can only be reached if modern man accepts the risks of participation and relinquishes the role of mere observer. The fourth and ultimate stage can only be achieved if the present impinges on the past. Only then can the authentic origin emerge, ageless monsters be called up from the deep, primeval innocence be encountered, and undiluted cosmic existence be experienced. The genuine living past is impossibly 'distant' from modern eras, is 'below', 'before' or 'beyond' any real time. It does not contain order, progression or cause and effect; it is probably even unchanged by man's participation - the participation which transforms man himself. It is both the ultimate bourne of past time and oneirically timeless. Verne's demonstration is so convincing that it all but hides the basic donn{es, namely that man can only participate in the past by means of time-travel, and that time-travel is generally considered to be a logical and physical impossibility.8 Let us therefore search the mise en sc}ne again to see how the trick is carried out. In the third stage, the equivalence between the dimensions of space and the traces left by past time was still strictly limited. The witnessing of frozen or petrified vestiges, normally isolated, but on occasion forming complete panoramas, does give an inkling of further possibilities. Some of the instances in fact contain improbable sequences of remnants from distinct eras, and the hero sometimes carelessly destroys or removes pieces of the past. But no physical law is broken, for an odour of death permeates each of these scenes. Time is only imperfectly spatialised, and its corridors are not yet fixed enough for an active participation by modern man. In Voyage au centre de la Terre, on the other hand, only one dimension of space is involved. The narration can therefore associate it with both the historical-scientific and personal time-scales, without residue in either case. Because two temporal scales are associated to the spatial one, they can be associated to each other. It is this short-circuited identification between the historical and personal time-scales that is the precise cause of realistic space-time being bypassed and hence initiates the paradox of time-travel. Three additional illustrations may provide an extra perspective on the problem. At one stage in Hector Servadac the eccentric scientist Palmyrin Rosette gives a striking gloss on space and time: '"Supposons un tre dou{ d'une puissance de vision infinie, et mettons-le (dans l'espace) (...) @ une distance que la lumi}re emploie dix-huit cents ans @ franchir, il assistera @ cette grande sc}ne de la mort du Christ (...), (aux) d{solations du d{luge universel. Plus loin enfin (...), il verrait, suivant la tradition biblique, Dieu cr{ant les mondes"' (HS 423).9 The monn-bound Ardan, in one of his zanier moments, goes even faster and farther than Rosette: he claims that people will soon be travelling to the planets as rapidly as they wish and concludes that, as a result: '"'La distance est un vain mot, la distance n'existe pas!'"' (TL 239). In the particular case of the lost White man, lastly, accepting appearances, as Lidenbrock was at first inclined to do, would mean considering the body as that of an authentic native. In other words, one would have to identify together the quaternary era its physiology implies and the primary era it is discovered in, to equate, in other words, its personal and historical characteristics. The ordering of time implicit in modern science would thus no longer be operative. The ideas of Rosette, Ardan and Lidenbrock are certainly laconic and eccentric, but they brilliantly summarise the argument behind the transcendent scenes, and especially the spatio-temporal underpinning of the route leading to the Underworld. In all these cases, the space-time association is taken to its most literal limit. Because historical time is identified with a spatial dimension, it loses its dynamic characteristics, is 'detemporalised', becomes a fixed scale. Because it is fixed - in the form of Rosette's 'light-year-rays' or the space-time geological strata - man can travel through or along it. The (spatio-temporal) 'distance' separating Rosette from Christ and from God, Ardan from the planets, or Lidenbrock and the White man from the Giant Shepherd can be mapped onto - conjugated with, substituted for - personal time. It is this asymmetric equating of distance and time that is necessary for unconstrained travel, both 'up' and 'down' the time-scale - and it is this that goes beyond what is normally thought possible. Once one has travelled to a given era, however, a 'retemporalisation' is needed to begin to live in it. Before normal-speed history and biography can resume a joint course, a 'despatialisation' is required, followed by a shaking of the temporal clock to set it going again. In the case of backwards travel, the same segment of time thus plays two contradictory and successive roles: a medium to travel back through; and thus a dur{e to be lived forwards in. This duality is the weakest link in the logical chain, and this is why Axel, Hatteras and Aronnax are all ecstatic or unconscious on first arrival at their destinations. It is this ultima thule of the backwards motion, the unique point at which a U- turn and a thousand-fold slowing down are executed, that constitutes the highest degree of initiation, the 'point suprme'. This is where Rosette can imagine the Creation, Ardan visualise life on the planets, and Lidenbrock take part in the living past. Only for Axel's cosmic dream does the handbrake-turn-cum-retemporalisation not take place, because he is already dreaming, because he never leaves the fixed space-time scale, because the beginnings of time-space are themselves timeless. In his ultimate voyage, he succeeds in escaping the constraints of time and space altogether. An incidental effect of the downward and backward exploration is to ironically show up the nineteenth-century view of progress on and up towards some undefined goal - that is, progress as associated with the vertical dimension of space. Verne stands this idea on its head. Such situations are, then, physically impossible: if the inconsistent status of the historical time-scale is the logical explanation why, Lidenbrock's temptation also implies a potential paradox that concretely shows up the contradiction. In Lidenbrock's mind, since quaternary man is a racial ancestor of modern Europeans, his existence at the appropriate time and place on the surface is necessary for them to have been born. (A similar argument may possibly apply to the Giant Shepherd.) But the discovery of man in the Underworld would destroy this possibility of his having had descendants on the surface at the appropriate moment - it would create a time-loop (to use a term much employed in modern science-fiction). And consequently, the scientist who claimed that quaternary man was an authentic inhabitant of the primordial world would create a contradiction, and thereby, if words really were acts, himself cease to exist through lack of recent ancestors... . Thus although Verne does not at this stage make explicit the problems of causal loops across time, he does set up the precise conditions of the paradox. At the same time, he takes every possible precaution to fit in, wherever he possibly can, with nineteenth-century science. Thus the problem of encountering man in the distant past, in particular, is acknowledged, and incorporated into the presentation, in at least four different ways. The space-time confusion just analysed is fundamental (the mise en sc}ne is still in the nineteenth century, and therefore humans can be discovered). The dead body is not in its own time-zone, and consequently no permanent damage is done to scientific theory. Doubt is in fact subsequently thrown onto the very existence of the Giant Shepherd. And the final union between man and the cosmos is rendered more acceptable because Axel travels alone - and it is a one-off, without precedent or successor. Despite all these precautions, Verne's works do transgress the scientific norms. In particular, they start by establishing what might logically be thought the basic requirement of time-travel, but which has virtually always been neglected in science-fiction, namely a time to travel in. Only after replacing the traditional conceptions of space-time, by inventing the successive stages of an operative and integrated - and therefore un-Wellsian - time-machine, do they push against the limit of verisimilitude. On occasion, they cross it, allowing the travellers to arrive, to go beyond mere voyeurism, to participate in the past, and to be changed by it. The past is thus treated as another ailleurs, time resembles space, and man travels in them conjointly. Verne's works demonstrate an awareness of the paradox of time-travel, the impossibility of changing the past, of ignoring the one-directional laws of causality. But they manage nevertheless to subvert these constraints in subterranean manner, replacing 'verism' by verisimilitude. They replace the division proposed by Newtonian physics between perfectly definable space and perfectly definable time with an awareness that time and space simply cannot be perceived or measured independently. The essential distinction is between the spatio-temporally near and the remote, the here-and-now and the there-and-then, the observer and the rest of the universe. Egocentrism is an essential part of understanding even the apparently most objective features of the world. In this way, Verne also proposes one of the surprising planks of the General and the Special Theories of Relativity: that observations of the physical universe are linked in profound ways with the position of the observer. In particular, time and space behave very similarly, with pay-offs possible between them, meaning that 'distance' must be defined in simultaneously spatial and temporal terms, that it is not a straight-line concept but only definable in terms of concentric spheres. Of course Verne did not produce a scientific theory; but his sensitivity to the essential problems, I would claim, allowed him to define the conditions for one. Faced with the apparently infinite and immutable horizon of space-time, the Vernian hero compensates for his own infinitesimal dimensions by participating in accelerated versions of other eras. The mapping between space and time leads to a subversion of the traditional categories, a 'subtilisation' of scientific terminology and a sublimation of the hero. It enables the virtually non-personifiable to be personalised, the tragically finite to be integrated with the superbly infinite, and the self to encompass the cosmos. Transcendence is occasionally possible after all.  CHAPTER 6 STARTING AND STOPPING Lorsque quelque ami voulait (...) arrter (Ardan) en lui pr{disant une catastrophe prochaine: 'La fort n'est brl{e que par ses propres arbres', r{pondait-il (TL 127). Straight and Round It was seen in Chapters 1 to 4 that time for Verne is often conceived of in a simplified and spatialised form. The physical forms involved are frequently independent of the characters following them, and leave little room for randomness, subjectivity or ineffability. Time is pared down and abstract, virtually devoid of entropy or significance: safe from surprises, but robbed of most of its essential defining qualities. It is a clean machine. Certainly Verne's works are not unique in this respect - but because they have a strong degree of structuring, they do avoid the pure picaresque of much of the 'adventure' genre with its tendency to aimlessness and lack of form. The unity of the Voyages, we have constantly seen, stems from their being novels of exploration and about exploration, with the opposition connu-inconnu constituting at least a minimal structure for the whole of space and time. Many of the topoi observed may in fact serve to spin out the reassuringly simplified form. The sinuous line, the path where success leads only to greater difficulties, or the calling into doubt of predecessors' achievements can all be considered strategies of suspense.1 They all allay the dread of a final cul-de-sac or fiasco on arriving in port. But what they cannot do is totally mask the extravagance of the linear form. Because it 'uses up' space so quickly, it will have to cede all the sooner to some fundamentally different structure. The clearest example is the straight line on the surface of the globe, for it necessarily ends up by coming back to the exact point it started from. This is a key element in the plot of Le Tour du monde, but also of Les Enfants du capitaine Grant: Voyage autour du monde, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, Robur-le-conqu{rant, and many others.2 As so often in Verne, the new leads back to the old, the global runs counter to the local, and the explicit effect conceals an implicit one. But the flashbacks, anticipations, notes, and illustrations also come to a stop, the retrospective deductions invariably cease, and the scientific-historical explorers, however far they go, always end up by coming back to modern existence. In sum, although the spatial structures examined up to this point are all more or less based on the linear form, an element of 'circularity' is seldom absent. Examination of the Voyages shows that in fact the purely physical structures form merely the tip of a much bigger iceberg of systems defined, in one way or another, by some degree of closure. Often the circular image is the vital one; often it is simply some element of concavity that serves to define the system; but in other cases, the closure operates on a dynamic principle. Verne explores systems that are closed, static, and timeless; that, in them, space and time do not continue indefinitely, cause and effect interact, 'output' affects 'input', and some sort of internal 'feedback' is involved. It might seem that this concern with systems and processes were unliterary and arid. But one of the makor advance caused by 'structuralism' is the realisation that 'structure' is a vital component of all human concerns, including the psychological and the social. Three seminal studies, in particular, have already shown this general connection, and will therefore form an excellent underpinning to the analysis of the next two chapters: Douglas R. Hofstadter's analysis of logical and living systems in terms of self-awareness and 'self-consciousness'; Franois Raymond's demonstration of the frequent occurrence of 'auto-regulating' systems in the Voyages; and Roland Barthes's description of Verne's ships as characterised by 'l'enfermement (...), la clture (...), le bonheur commun du fini (...), la pl{nitude (...) encyclop{dique (...), (dans) un espace connu et clos'.3 Return to Sender The appendages of Verne's living entities possess a remarkable tendency to 'introversion'. Mangrove trees grow branches which take root as soon as they touch the ground; characters cross their legs or arms or thrust their hands into their pockets with a surprising frequency; and one of them puts his hand so far into 'le pavillon de son cor' that it will not come out again.4 'Cor' or, three lines later, 'corps'? The word-association is not gratuitous, for a letter written by Verne to his father reads: (...) Un Anglais vint un jour (...) commander un embl}me de la taciturnit{ la plus absolue; le grand statuaire, apr}s avoir longtemps song{ aux moyens d'exprimer le silence le plus complet, imagina un homme qui aurait UN DOIGT DANS LA BOUCHE ET UN AUTRE DANS LE DERRIERE; (...) c'{tait (...) assez commode pour son mod}le, parce que, quand il aurait {t{ fatigu{ d'avoir un doigt dans la bouche, il aurait pu changer de main.5 Much of the humour derives of course from the deadpan disparity between the artistic aims and the down-to-earth, scatologically-tinged methods; but it also comes, I would claim, from the eccentric and introverted idea of the closing off of a part of space. Introjection is in fact an obsessionally recurrent feature throughout the Voyages extraordinaires. It is visible in such characteristic closed objects as the ships, the vehicles, the caves, and the islands. It can be observed in the constant dream of the characters to be ensconsed in sea-shells, with its accompanying vocabulary of security, independence, and - paradoxically - liberty.6 It is also evident in such varied 'introverted' forms as lighting-coils, propellers, staircases, the jeu de l'oie, watch-springs, or even cog-teeth '@ surface {picyclo~ique'.7 But it is especially visible in moving natural objects, since, in Jules Verne at least, the sun tends to spiral inwards, and whirlpools and whirlwinds always possess an intrinsic and alluring centripetality, with their 'trou circulaire', 'gouffre (...) engloutiss(ant)', 'su\oirs liquides', their 'puissance d'attraction', 'aspiration puissante', 'succion irr{sistible'.8 The recurrent ideas, in sum, are autonomy, introversion, and (en)closure. But these are not limited to particular objects, for in Verne's works they very frequently exist as an entity which functions as a closed unit but without a fixed form. What will here be called the cycle seems to have as principal function to isolate a given system from the rest of the world. Biology is often a pretext, but we may again suspect that Verne's aims are usually elsewhere. The conventional cycle of sea-water/water- vapour/rain/river-water/sea-water, as a first example, is remarkably self-contained, self-sufficient, and self-regulating (the double antecedents indicating a similar overloading): '"Il se nourrit lui-mme avec les vapeurs qu'il {met, dont il alimente les sources, qui lui reviennent par les fleuves, ou qu'il reprend directement par les pluies sorties de son sein"' (RV 129; cf. 20M 334, CH 341-42, IN 178-79). Again, icebergs are presented as starting their existence in a quasi-timeless perfect equilibrium near the North Pole, but the open sea slowly undermines them and they turn upside down; this stable equilibrium is once more gradually eroded and destroyed; and so on, until the icebergs disappear completely (HG 244; cf. CH 63). Similar cycles abound in Vernian man's manipulation of nature, with in each case a comparable twist of introjection. For instance, the feathers shed by the female eider-bird to prepare its nest are gathered by a 'hunter' each year; the male eider-bird then sheds its feathers but the hunter leaves them; 'le nid s'ach}ve donc; la femelle pond ses oeufs (...) et, l'ann{e suivante, la r{colte de l'{dredon recommence' (VCT 92). Again, for their vertical movements, many of Verne's vessels imitate animals, especially seals, which swallow stones to sink, and then regurgitate them to come back up: the Nautilus, for instance, uses taps and reservoirs; the Boynton wet-suit-cum-autonomous-vessel (a typical Vernian bricolage), its level of inflation; and the various balloons use hydrogen and ballast with great virtuosity.9 Indeed, the second half of Cinq semaines en ballon is determined by the complex system of cycles and sub-cycles comprised of 'real' ballast, structural parts jettisoned from the balloon, gold and other material picked up and abandoned again, or parts or wholes of the passengers themselves. Verne was clearly a structuralist before the letter. Not all the cycles last for ever; sometimes, indeed, there is built-in obsolescence. In one significantly eccentric case, the deliberate sinking of a ship provides the first stage of a harbour, which will then prevent other ships from sinking (MP ii 234); in another, fifty-three years later, the only way to stop boats being wrecked is to make smoke signals - using wood taken from boats that have already been wrecked (PBM 132). In yet other cases, the entity in question uses feedback to counteract environmental changes. Thus, '(un missile) vole pour ainsi dire de ses propres ailes @ travers l'espace' '(et) entretient lui-mme sa vitesse et l'acc{l}re jusqu'@ l'arriv{e au but' (FD 180; 179); and posthumous flying-machines possess an ingenious system of quasi-organic 'reflexes' which enables them to overcome all fluctuations and to remain stable in three dimensions (MB II vii 340-41). What is common to all such cycles is that they link cause and effect together much more than is normal in Nature. But also, because there is in each case an alternation cause-effect-cause- effect, each cycle is made up of four poles. Figure 5 is an attempt to present this idea in geometric form. The interest of the cycles undoubtedly comes from their tension between reductionism and vitalism. In each case, a carefully-selected physical reality is described in regular, rhythmic terms that perhaps mimic the process itself; in each case, a hyper-economical, 'ecological' solution is sought; and in each case therefore, the effect is that of a comically independent system, where a simple mechanical-biological perfection explains everything (or nothing) - but in any case ironically shows up more elaborate systems. But not all the cycles in Verne's works are defined in terms of the full double symmetry, for in some the four poles collapse to two. One of the duels, for example, consists of two men mutually hunting each other, becoming '@ la fois chasseurs et gibier' (TC 271). Again, wintering ships contain two closed cycles in parallel - the inhalation and exhalation of the air, and the evaporation/condensation of the water (CH 228-29). Similarly bipolar is the eternal and universal cycle that consists of the equivalence of matter and energy (CM (1908) 127). A still compacter system where the two poles act so much against each other as to virtually collapse into one may be observed in a hyper-stable Flemish town where the entire industrial production - barley-sugar and whipped cream - is consumed locally; where even fire and flood never accumulate enough momentum to become dangerous; and where the typical inhabitant is so inert, so '"d{cid({)" (...) "@ ne rien d{cider"', that his clothes, person, and even his marriage hardly ever wear out. Other remarkable uni-polar systems include: one where water is heated by the apparently naive method of burning water; a corresponding, posthumous, 'pile {lectrique capable de se r{g{n{rer d'elle-mme par des r{actions successives'; a system where insulation proportional to the cold is provided by Nature, in the form of extra ice and snow; one where damage done by sea-water to the Transatlantic Cable merely serves to strengthen the whole; and - on a larger scale - the cycle of life on Earth: '"la vie disparatra (...) du globe (...). Peut-tre, alors, notre sph{ro~ide se reposera-t-il, se refera-t-il dans la mort pour ressusciter un jour dans des conditions sup{rieures!"'.10 All the cycles seem to depend largely on reciprocal reaction, rather than on mere action; they are all more or less closed; and therefore the possibilities for real change are severely limited. An apparently huge benefit is obtained from the introversion of the system for, given that output is conditioned by input or even fully determined by it, no mismatch can ever result. At best, the cycles may result in perpetual motion. At worst, cause and effect get tangled up and, even if the lack of external influence means that the frameworks will last 'probably for ever' (20M 585), all internal activity tends to damp down. Verne may here be operating a reductio ad absurdum on certain nineteenth-century id{es re\ues like the searches for a human mid-term between the artificial and the natural and for a perpetual-motion machine. But in any case, the result is structures which surprise because of their extreme economy of means, and because the reader suspects there is a flaw somewhere, but is given too little information to find it. Verne's imagination is defined by its re-invention of the current scientific theories and by its humorous exaggeration. As for the real usefulness of such systems, the author is ambivalent. On one hand, they are presented as the most economical and efficient ones possible; but on the other, they produce conservatism and complacency and are in the end the enemy of passionate, human concerns. Verne is both attracted to and repulsed by the idea of ultimate order in the universe. How to Get Things Going The cycle with no input of energy is thus presented as being totally stable in the long run. But in many cases, there is a hidden leakage of energy which, after a deceptive 'calme plat' (TCC 248), will end up converting the cycle into an open system of positive feedback. The equilibrium lasts longest when equal and opposing forces are involved: those engaged by the duellists, for example, but also those of rivals like Fogg and Proctor, Hatteras and Altamont, the Three Russians and the Three Englishmen (A3) or bbordais and tribordais (IH). Verne delights in delivering a come-uppance to excessively obstinate or arrogant individuals, by the satisfying means of confronting them with other versions of themselves. Sustained rivalry between machines is also a dramatic feature in many novels: the Albatros and the Go a head (sic) (RC), Arraje's submarine and the Royal Navy one (FD); but also between machines and natural forces: Fogg's train and the bison, Nemo's submarine and the whales, Robur's flying-machine and the birds or Maucler's steam-elephant and the real elephants. The more endogamous the conflict, in fact, the more equally balanced; and accordingly it is when a single force is turned back on its own origin that the situation becomes the most stable in the short term - but the most unstable in the long run. This applies to communities, for the self-denying order of Verne's Utopian and dystopian cities - centralised, compartmentalised, and specialised - conceals a remarkable tendency to explosion.11 But it is above all true for the individual, since the self-censorship and mutism of the characters invariably leads to violent outbursts, self-control to 'disequilibrium' - a behaviour that is all the more 'impatient', 'absolute', 'impetuous', 'fiery', 'volcanic' or simply 'insane' for having been long-repressed.12 Verne's underlying debate would again seem to be the natural-artificial one. In nature, monsters are automatically eliminated, presumably by means of reproductive mechanisms or by meeting their mirror-images. But man-made monsters - and human ones - have no such mechanism. The only way that they will be destroyed, Verne seems to say, is by a reflection of their internal tension: by their own images in the mirror. The often impressive order of the artificial, the cold, the unspontaneous and the insensitive is the very means whereby reality is lost sight of: because these systems secrete their own perfection, they lose touch with natural input, which is however the only valid one, and in the long term, the only halfway efficient one. Order ultimately leads to chaos. In other situations, an untrammelled positive feedback comes to exist. Virtually every Voyage presents examples of what is often called a snowball effect or geometric progression: the multiplication of vegetable and animal life, fires and explosions, entry into strongholds; the increasing effect of gravity on ships being launched, on spacecraft, on pyramids of acrobats, on tottering buildings; or the accelerating progress of monomania, of the drunkard's thirst, of technological capacity or of fame and fortune.13 Once started, these processes fuel themselves and will require therefore no external assistance. What does remain mysterious is how they begin. How, starting from scratch, can one attack the strongholds, escape from the gravitational equilibrium point between the Earth and the moon or build up a financial empire?14 The Mysterious Islanders repeatedly meet this vicious circle: 'pas un instrument quelconque, pas un ustensile', 'le premier marteau manquait @ ces forgerons', 'ils ne poss{daient mme pas les outils n{cessaires @ faire les outils': 'de rien, il leur faudrait arriver @ tout' (IM 63; 201; 160; 63). Just one ear of wheat, it is said, would be worth 400 billion, one match an entire shipload; with sulphuric acid, saltpetre could be made, with saltpetre, sulphuric acid; with bricks, an oven could be produced, with an oven, bricks (IM 265; 59; 220-22; 161-62). By posing the problem of multiplication in such dramatic, insistent and economically humorous terms, Verne is not altogether falling into a naive scientism. He would in fact seem to be questioning such systems with their own arguments, applying the reflection process to the thrust of the argument itself: if multiplication is as simple as Linn{ and other biologists had claimed, then how does it stop, but above all, how did it manage to start? The problem is the transformation of inertia-bound systems into accelerating systems endowed with a life of their own: it is the insertion of the variable 'time' into the physical world. Verne's first four prose texts give us a broader perspective on this problem of starting processes off: they all explore the mystery of the creation of modern techniques, ideas or institutions, as Delabroy points out with great pertinence (pp. 2-106). Thus 'Un Drame dans les airs' describes the hazards of the first ascents in balloons, 'Un Drame au Mexique', those encountered in starting off the Mexican Navy, and 'Martin Paz', those of establishing the Peruvian Nation; and 'La Destin{e de Jean Mor{nas' (published in 1910, but probably written in the early 1850s and then revised by Michel) shows the problems of inaugurating an autonomous personal existence. Amongst the solutions proposed, the most frequent is the discovery that the means of starting the process off were present after all, that novelty had been somehow built into the system. Thus strongholds are usually betrayed from within; the settlers are fortunate enough to find a single ear of wheat and a single match, and make maximum use of other items that happen to be at hand, like watch-lenses to make a fire and a sharpened metal dog-collar as a knife; the Mexican Navy is just part of the Spanish Navy rebaptised; and the Peruvian Nation had 'always' existed (potentially). Again, hardly any of the balloonists in history can be said to have invented anything, for they all simply copied previous constructs (DA 189). The diametrically opposite solution is the arrival of the deus ex machina, the mysterious opening up of the system to an external influence. It is Dr Ox's presence in the Flemish town that gets things going and makes fires and passions burn brighter; and it is Nemo's hidden interventions that are in fact the main cause of the settlers' progress - to such an extent as to destroy the whole validity of their self-contained Utopian experiment.15 Both 'solutions' - from the inside and from the outside - seem to avoid the central problem of novelty, by concentrating on the ends to be achieved rather than the means towards it. But the two are reconciled in a third category, which adopts the interior-exterior dichotomy as its very operational principle, by incorporating the vicious circle wholesale into the process of take-off. Thus the settlers' first coarse attempt at a hammer serves to construct a 'real' hammer; their oven-brick dilemma is solved by an 'enormous brick oven which will cook itself'; and speculators make their first million by inventing fictional share-values, which then become totally real (IM 201; 168; H 170). As Ardan cryptically argues: '"La fort n'est brl{e que par ses propres arbres"' (TL 227). Attempting to restore the multiple logical steps his argument jumps over, we can identify a situation where radically different agent and action are, as it were, chain-stitched together - that is their input and output fused, producing an infinite and instantaneous va-et-vient, an infinitely quick computer alternating between complementary states. A static, endogamous situation may then come, by magic, to create its own validity and generate its own autonomous process of positive feedback. The fire burns itself; and without material to burn, fire would never start. The dichotomy is still there. Novelty simply becomes. One particular work seems to take this problem as its central theme. 'Matre Zacharius ou L'Horloger qui avait perdu son me' (1854, 1874) pinpoints the difficult transition from a lethargic '"vague immense"' (MZ 146) to an energetic, chronometrised, and frenetic society. Set in pre-Reformation Geneva, this short story recounts Matre Zacharius's invention of clockwork, his explanation of the human body in terms of a mechanical comparison, the subsequent breaking down of all but one of his clocks, and an accompanying reduction in his own vitality. The sole surviving clock is to be found in the mountain lair of a clock-devil, and Zacharius follows it there, but arrives only to experience its destruction, and, with it, his own death. It is clear that Verne is once again a long way from his reputation of the pure adventure novel. He is undoubtedly influenced by Hoffmann and the Gothic tale and, more generally, by ideas drawn from the Enlightenment, such as the conception of the universe as deterministically defined from the creation onwards and the debate between vitalism and reductionism.16 But Verne in fact goes much further on the specific subject of time and the problem of starting processes off. He interprets even the most exalted spheres of existence in terms that are resolutely secular, and indeed explicitly temporal: religious practice is equivalent to filling the day with precisely-timed ritual, and love is defined, with a sexual undertone, as being merely two hearts that are '"isochrones"' (MZ 167, 168; 138). But time itself s to be in turn defined in terms of material phenomena. Thus the accuracy of each of Zacharius's clocks is guaranteed by a self-regulating pendulum, '"(qui retrouve) sa force perdue par ce mouvement mme de l'horloge, qu'il (est) charg{ de r{glementer"' (MZ 133). Force gives movement, and movement force; the clocks - and Zacharius himself - are 'logically' in perpetual motion (MZ 173). Furthermore, this clock-time is meant to control the sun (MZ 143), but the sun remains obstinately irregular, and therefore clock-time is instead adjusted to it (MZ 143). Clock-time and sun-time also form therefore a hermetic couple. Zacharius's inspired method, in other terms, consists of reproducing what already exists, namely the mechanism of the human body (MZ 131, 134), itself a reflection, in Biblical terms, of divine being - and the advice his apprentice receives is to imitate his master's method, that is to produce a third-degree copy (MZ 131-34)! The fault in the system, I would argue, the one that causes Zacharius's downfall, is consequently in its very conception. Just as the description of the clocks is dangerously overloaded, with '"qu'"' and '"il"', both again referring to multiple antecedents, so the defining ideas are themselves vicious circles, mixing cause and effect, measurement and control, and materialism and hypostatisation. Zacharius's overblown attempt to establish perpetual movement thus produces the fatal short-circuit. Nevertheless, the immaterial idea of the invention will in fact ultimately succeed, enthralling the whole of society to time and hence forming the very basis of modern civilisation (MZ 130). In this work, then, modernity stems from the idea of applying materialistic reductionism, first to the most exalted spheres of human existence, reducing them to their being-in-time, and then in turn to time itself, reducing it to mere mechanical movement. But the conundrum of time is still thereby far from solved. Ultimately, the attempt to account explicitly for the phenomenon just throws up a paradox: everything is time, but time is nothing in itself. And modernity, above all, came from both inside and outside. Both novelty and the medium in which novelty might come about are unanalysable. Verne's delight in all such systems is thus evident. But behind the materialism of these varied examples, and especially in 'Matre Zacharius' is a debate on the ongoing nature of time. Does time merely mark a constant revolution, in the old-fashioned sense of a simple re-arrangement of what went before? Or are revolutionary revolutions possible, with accompanying thresholds, breakthroughs, and take-offs? Biology and mechanics often serve as a frame of reference for the question, but its main thrust is the attempt to 'test' hypotheses concerning history in quasi-scientific fashion. The underlying problem is - variously - that of knowing how the physical universe came into being, as a moving, dynamic entity; how organic life, with purposeful movement, began; how human life emerged, with intelligence, responsibility, self-consciousness, hammers and stock-markets; and on a last level, perhaps, how the process of literary creation happens. The whole debate is an optimistic veneer on a pessimistic base: the depressed suspicion is that nothing can ever work, that all attempts to act are doomed; and therefore the last thing to do before giving up is simply to prove that suspicion. Verne attempts to reproduce the essential events in all the incipits, and thus to isolate the points of rupture - if they exist at all. If any part of the procedure can be identified, then at least some knowledge will have been gained. One might even have learned to change things. But in fact Verne seems uncertain what the answers should be, and soon introduces elements that vitiate or rather half-vitiate the experiment. The idea of authentic discovery is undermined but without being totally destroyed. As in the case of exploration, Jules Verne seems determined to defuse the whole question by inserting as many borderline cases as possible. The oppositions discovered-non-discovered or original-imitative are swamped by such other dichotomies as theoretical-pratical, physical-conceptual, natural-artificial, inside-outside, divine-temporal, until in the end they are completely submerged. The only positive conclusions seem to be that although the undeniably new is often merely the old tacked together, large amounts of novelty often simply cancel out - but that a mere fictive or fictional object can on occasion create an objective reality. Verne's response to whether real change in time is possible is to sit on the fence. Clearly, the real constructs in the world today represent changes in the past; but, almost equally clearly, present changes are almost impossible to implement. The very question disappears into an infinite regress. Posthumous Cycles: Whither History? This is where Michel steps in. He takes the already involved line of division between new and old, and, as it were, threads it through itself again, but then pulls it all out to produce a different conclusion. One of the first signs of the change is that in 'his' works, the spirals invariably spiral outwards (PD viii 124, CM 131, MB II x 387, etc.). In addition, whereas the idea of the cyclical death and rebirth of the Earth is apparently unique in Jules Verne's works, after 1905 repeating structures are often mentioned in a philosophical or social context. The language, above all, is new: thus the description of the equivalence of matter and energy in La Chasse au m{t{ore (1908) begins 'la substance, {ternellement d{truite, se recompose {ternellement', and man's analysis of matter into elements is similarly characterised as '{ternellement @ recommencer' (CM 127, 126). Le Pilote du Danube (1908) remarks on the 'perp{tuel recommencement de l'{ternelle bataille pour la vie' (PD iv 64). And Les Naufrag{s du 'Jonathan' (1909), lastly, contains the following comment: 'l'un apr}s l'autre, (ces hommes) {taient repris par la terre, creuset (...) qui, continuant LE CYCLE ETERNEL, referait de leur substance d'autres tres, h{las! sans doute, pareils @ eux' (NJ II xi 219). These differences are sufficient themselves to demonstrate that a new pen is at work, one perhaps influenced by Nietzschean, turn-of-the-century conceptions of constant transformation. But the change is here mainly on the level of language, making explicit ideas about cycles which, I would claim, were already to be found in the non-posthumous works, although embodied in the action rather than in philosophical form. Michel certainly has no monopoly on closed systems or pessimism. Another sign of change is that cyclical repetition is occasionally used in the plot itself: in 'La Destin{e de Jean Mor{nas' (1910), for instance, twice a man is murdered while writing, twice the murderer proves to be the hero's brother, and twice the hero goes to prison to save him, with the two series of events forming a sort of stereoscopic counterpoint. But only in 'L'Eternel Adam' does the idea of the cycle become a structural motif, in this way marking, I believe, a radical discontinuity in the Voyages extraordinaires. The short story starts off in the general style and ideology Verne has traditionally been associated with. The Zartog in the twenty-third millennium pronounces a dithyramb to the benefits of science; and the anonymous narrator in the third millennium similarly praises man's 'glorious destiny' (EA 234; 217). Both are here progressivists, observing a positive feedback in human affairs, an autonomous motor of history, with inventions leading to further inventions (EA 218), driving man on and up (EA 262). As for the question of knowing how it all started, the first, the vital, step out of the bloody morass of prehistory is analysed by both men as having involved, paradoxically, an intensification of the slaughter (EA 216). This belligerent pacifism (also a feature of the earlier Voyages) thus employs the vicious-circle method of starting off the historical process: plus \a reste la mme chose, plus \a change. But in fact, the idea of uninterrupted progress is subsequently undermined. The Zartog and the anonymous narrator will be forced to change their minds, and will end up adopting a more pessimistic view of human affairs. The author, it is true, does warn us, in a footnote signed 'M.J.V.' (Michel Jules Verne), of the unusually 'pessimistic' conclusions of this tale 'of Jules Verne's' (EA 213). Both heroes start by observing that the advance of civilisation creates its own difficulties, in particular an overdeveloped hubris, as embodied in the desire to give 'l'immortalit{ (@) des organismes anim{s' (EA 233). Because it overstretches its capacities and encroaches on divine domains (a frequent Jules- Vernian theme), civilisation produces the seeds of its own destruction. Both men come therefore to regard the ascending course of history as only part of a repeating structure: what goes up must come down. From the observed and repeated evidence of the events of the third millennium, Atlantis, and the Flood, they deduce that there have been peaks and troughs every 20,000 years. They even catch a glimpse, behind the decline and fall of these three civilisations, of '"une infinit{ d'autres humanit{s"' (EA 234; 255). This leads them to deduce that there is an irremediable cyclicity in history, that like his descendant the Wandering Jew, the Adam of the title is indeed destined to travel eternally, and that anonymous narrators and scientific panegyrists will alternate for evermore. Even the illustrations show the degeneration of the colony in Old-Testament style and the Zartog in Classical surroundings (EA 257; 213). The conclusion proposed then by both of them - again using the posthumous language - is that man must acknowledge the inescapable evidence of the 'vains efforts accumul{s dans l'infini du temps' and 'l'{ternel recommencement des choses' (EA 263; 263): that he can do nothing but stoically endure. In 'Jules Verne ou le mouvement perp{tuel' (p. 27), F. Raymond has argued that such a periodic structure 'abolishes' the problems of the directionality of history and the origin and end of man by substituting an infinite and universal 'oscillation', with a precise geometrical underlay. In terms of the presentation of this chapter, the 'course' of history, as presented by Michel, could be fitted into the cyclical schema so often used by Jules. Even the number of stages would fit (fig. 30). These desciptions have undeniable advantages in synthesising the views expressed in 'L'Eternel Adam'. But to remain exclusively at this level of analysis would, I believe, be dangerous, for it would be close to falling into the 'inductive trap', to assuming that because something has been true n times, it will necessarily be true the n+1th time. It is more or less reductionist:18 it has the disadvantage - a crippling one - of implying that, since history has been regular in the past, it will necessarily be so in the future; and it also falls, heavily, into the trap of accepting what the text says, and ignoring what it shows. Reexamining the content and the form suggests that the elegant symmetry of 'L'Eternel Adam' is in fact destroyed at - or rather by - its very construction: the Zartog can only know about the repetition of history because it has been communicated to him. Science redeems itself here, for not only did a motor-car carry the anonymous narrator to safety, but it was an aluminium container which protected the vital document - apart, ironically, from the scientific part of its message (EA 260). The nub of the story is thus, I would claim, the communication of a pessimistic message: a communication which itself provides grounds for a certain guarded optimism.19 Michel's footnote may contain therefore a double trap: its ascription of authorship to Jules, but above all its emphasis on the 'pessimism' of 'L'Eternel Adam'. The tale certainly seems to argue that the historical cycle - summum of all the previous cycles - exists, but at the same time that it can always be subverted. Indeed, self-knowledge for humanity may consist precisely of this vital short-circuit administered to the cycle; and, if so, written communication - with the help of technology - is the means by which it is effected. 'Michel's' short story is thus surprising in many ways. With its temporal structure divided between two protagonists separated by 20,000 years, it contains many-layered debates on such diverse temporal subjects as the origins of human civilisation, the nature of repetition, the importance of literature, the role of science, and the future of mankind. Of course, it could be argued that the works analysed are not entirely Michel's. But I would claim to have identified sufficient distinctive features to demonstrate at the very least a change of emphasis from 1905 onwards, even if remaining in the same wide framework. It could also be argued that the specificity of 'L'Eternel Adam' was linked with the period in which it was written. Such an argument contains an amount of good sense - and in any case would be very difficult to refute - but is less important, I believe, than the personal circumstances of the publication of the work - the debate between father and son, carried out in paternal style but from a filial point of view. 'L'Eternel Adam', I would argue, draws much of its force from simultaneously forming an integral part of, and standing in ironic contrast to, the Voyages extraordinaires. It is de but not par Jules Verne. Time Stabilised or Time Accelerated? What is common to the topoi studied in this chapter is that they all avoid the fuite en avant/arri}re of the linear structures. They substitute ones involving an element of 'mixing of levels', ones which it is not too fanciful to conceive of as corresponding to a certain self-consciousness. Much of their importance resides in particular in their attempt to simulate human behaviour in terms of a finite number of variables or stages. History, especially, is typical of this treatment, for it is initially presented as comprised of ultimately only two phases: an archaic one where objects and ideas merely 'circulate', without opening up any new perspectives; and a modern, dynamic one where there is some sort of progression, with events producing events indefinitely, and so on, up towards some unseen goal. This stereotyped nineteenth-century view of historical progress is ta ken by the Vernes as the starting-point of their attempt to escape from the theoretical, verbalistic ideas of most of their contemporaries. They argue that such a twofold representation necessarily depends on a satisfactory account of the transition between the phases, or, at the very least, a realistic reproduction of it. L'Ile myst{rieuse, in particular, addresses this problem. In the first half, the settlers do manage to recreate the dynamic from the static; the second half, however, demonstrates that the experiment was vitiated from the beginning, both by the germs of civilisation that they had brought with them and by Nemo's meddling. But what if this was the only way to get things going, if civilisation and contamination were inseparable, if the germs could only come simultaneously from oneself and from elsewhere? Such a hypothesis would seem to be central to 'Ma^itre Zacharius'. The Jewish clock-maker is a member of an 'archaic race', and imitates the First Clock-Maker, but he operates in the Mecca of innovative Protestantism. He copies his own workings, in an effort to make sure that his material self will survive; but merely hastens his own end guarantees instead the survival of an immaterial idea. And he tries to subject time to being merely an imitation of celestial events - or even of its own previous workings - but fails miserably, and succeeds by mistake in completely opening time up. Historical progression would seem to be merely the result of multiple misunderstandings - repeated interlocking and superimposed counterfeits, which together, and completely unintentionally, in fact comprise the most original step conceivable. The whole process of intentional change is to implement in the present, and impossible to define for the past, for the process itself rests on undefined elements. In other words, any attempt to analyse or even reproduce the massive vicious circle of the starting off of historical progression - or the difference between novelty and imitation - is bound to fail. It simply breaks it up, like a bubble in a test-tube, into the corresponding number of smaller vicious circles. Man's past has a mystery at its centre. Nor is it clear which of the two phases is preferable, either in the case of history or in the general case of novelty-imitation. The well-ordered, self-contained cycles resist wearing out - but the time they conserve is virtually dead. Although pre-Reformation history was safe from surprises, it was boring. The multiplying processes, on the other hand, consist of an invigorating density of events - but they are extravagant, and possibly out of control. Although creativity requires a vital spark, sparks can be dangerous. Oxygen intoxicates, says Verne, but it is also etymologically, a 'generator of bitterness'. Ideally, therefore, one should seek a middle situation between immobilism and freneticism, and between self-absorption and self-dissipation. But the cusps in Verne's works are invariably of infinitesimal thickness, including that between the cycle and the non-cycle. The moment of inauguration of all the vicious circles - but especially of historical innovation - is undetectable, and probably undecidable, and so moderation proves virtually impossible to achieve. Only in 'L'Eternel Adam' does the tension between recurrent and non-recurrent situations receive a certain resolution. In the process, partial reconciliations are also found for such typically Vernian oppositions as exploration and knowledge, the Natural and the artificial, science and literature, optimism and pessimism, and the reductionist and the transcendental. While undermining such varied dichotomies, the posthumous tale incorporates self-knowledge into its contribution to the joint problem of story and history. Its modernity, in other words, resides in its seeking for solutions to the problems of life in the literary form itself. Its conclusion - which has a certain validity for the whole of the Voyages - is that the cycle can also spiral outwards, that the future is irreductible, that time itself evolves, and that humanity may be both the working out of an initial design and self-generative. The validity of the questions posed in 1854 is resoundingly confirmed in 1910. CHAPTER 7 ONE AND ALL Et voil@ qu'il sentit au plus profond de son tre se creuser comme un gouffre (...). Puis tout @ coup, on le lchait, et il tombait ... dans son propre estomac, c'est-@-dire dans le vide (MS 197). O| le cannibalisme est trait{ th{oriquement (CG 666). The Body Metaphoric The closed systems in the material world examined up to this point are not the only ones in the Voyages. Interaction between the individual and the environment exhibits many of the same features; and the closed human systems point in fact to even more surprising conclusions concerning space and time. One of the most striking features of Verne's works is their degree of personalisation of the physical world. Plutonic domains, for instance, are described in a vocabulary normally reserved for the human body, with Axel and Lidenbrock's penetration into the Earth being typical of the multiplication of sexually-charged terms: 'fente (...) entrailles (...) masses mamelonn{es (...) fluides (...) sein (...) flancs (...) chevelure opulente' (VCT 129-30). Delabroy quotes this passage at great length, and analyses it with perspicacity (pp. 410-11);1 but he does not seem to have noticed other passages in both terrestrial and marine areas. Particularly interesting are the description of the volcano in Hector Servadac, the island at the North Pole in Capitaine Hatteras, Axel and Lidenbrock's exit from the Earth, and Aronnax's departure from the submarine: Boyaux (...) flanc (...) orifice (...) grondements (...) transsudait (...) pores (...) bouche (...) exutoire (HS 224-26). Vomissait (...) s'agiter (...) secousses r{it{r{es (...) respiration (...) flancs (...) embouchure bouillonnante (...) ondoyait (CH 575). Cette formidable {treinte (...) 'symptmes' (...) 'repouss{s, expuls{s, rejet{s, vomis, expector{s' (...) le sein de la terre (...) 'l'orifice' (...) 'respirer' (...) volupt{ (...) agitation (...) mouvement giratoire (...) ondula (...) ronflantes (...) bouche (...) je roulais sur les flancs (...) nous {tions (...) @ demi nus (...) splendide irradiation (VCT 351-59). Extases (...) soupir (...) sanglots (...) (je) p{n{trai (...) l'ouverture (...) l'orifice {vid{ (...) ce gouffre justement appel{ le 'Nombril de l'Oc{an' (...), (o|) sont aspir{s non seulement les navires et les baleines, mais aussi les ours blancs des r{gions bor{ales (...;) les roches aigus du fond, l@ o| les corps le plus durs se brisent, l@ o| les troncs d'arbres s'usent et se font 'une fourrure de poils' (20M 609-12). With the benefit of modern eyes, we may detect in these passages a blatant sexual undercurrent with virtually a whole catalogue of before-the-letter Freudian symbols and sensations. We may even suspect that Verne is deliberately laying it on a bit thick. But what is more interesting is perhaps the admixing of other metaphors: the idea of childbirth, in the last two passages ('"repouss{s, expuls{s, rejet{s"', 'l'orifice {vid{', '"Nombril"'); but above all the process of eating/drinking, as indicated notably by the vocabulary of mouths, breasts, spitting, vomiting, entrails, bowels and orifices. These instances of an alimentary concern are in fact by no means isolated - we have already seen ones like the 'gouffres engloutissants' and the ocean '"(qui) se NOURRIT lui-me^me (...), (et) ALIMENTE les sources (...) sorties de son SEIN"' (RV 129).2 It is already clear, then, that Verne's characters enjoy a relationship with their environment that goes well beyond the merely instrumental; and that his reputation as 'just' a children's and/or adventure-story writer is far from the whole truth. Further evidence is to be found in the anthropomorphic passion hidden in many of the material objects, but especially in the ships. At a preliminary stage, their diverse constituent parts - 'tte', 'flancs', 'hanche', 'membrure', 'oeuvres-mortes', 'oeuvres vives', '"ventre"', 'quille', 'talon', 'jointures' - variously 'tremble', 'vomit', 'suffer', 'are carried away', 'wounded' or 'assuaged'.3 The helmsman is the soul of the boat, is welded to it, forms part of it: its flesh is his flesh, and the destruction of a boat amounts to murder.4 Some of this is standard marine vocabulary, of course; but, apart from the density of reference, what is remarkable is the way in which the metaphor is adapted, to emphasise the identity between food and fuel. If the vessel is identical to the man, then the man must be identical to the vessel. Many Vernian characters boil with impatience, as if there were fires within them (TL 227). Indeed, their level of activity - their intensity in time - is governed by their 'stoves', which require constant replenishment with coal or wood (CH 230; 321; 319; cf. TM 176). And one comments: '"S'il faut recevoir des boulets dans notre carcasse, j'aime encore mieux les boulets du Nord. Ca se dig}re mieux"' (FB ix 80). The sexual allusions are again interesting. A woman is described as '"la charmante cargaison que j'ai rapport{e"': '"elle me retourne comme fait la mer d'un btiment en d{tresse. Je sens que je sombre"' (FB x 88; vi 50). Despite the existence of 'human safety valves', frustrated fianc{s fascinatedly follow a boat's 'longs pistons (...) qui se pr{cipitaient l'un vers l'autre, en s'humectant @ chaque mouvement d'une goutte d'huile lubrifiante' (CH 22; VF 72). One character even exclaims of a boat, voluptuously and longingly: '"Que n'en suis-je la machine! Comme je le pousserais contre vents et mar{es, quand je devrais {clater en arrivant au port!"' (BL v 48). As if the exploration of the separate metaphor was not enough, food and sex are united by a shared bodily need, one that is the key to a strange series of events disrupting the peace and quiet of the self-contained Flemish town. It all comes to a head in an operetta performed with exceptional force: 'Un feu inaccoutum{ d{vore (l'un des interpr}tes). (...) Il est embras{ (...), le public (...), enflamm{ (...)! Toutes les figures sont rouges comme si un incendie et embras{ ces corps @ l'int{rieur (...) (; il y a une) surexcitation infernale'; '(le chef ressemble @) quelque M{phistoph{l}s, battant la mesure avec un tison ardent' (DO 58-59; 68). The reason for the alimentary and sexual vigour, it is revealed at the end, is an excess of oxygen in the atmosphere, which makes the passions stronger and which controls all human functions - even the soul (DO 108; cf. AL 101-19, CH 556, 20M 517-31). For Verne, then, man and boat, food, fuel and sex are virtually interchangeable. This general idea of a man-machine had of course been common since the Enlightenment; and as Meyerhoff points out (pp. 2-3), it enjoyed a particular vogue throughout the nineteenth century, being undoubtedly one of the key inspirations of such figures as Darwin, Marx or Freud. Verne's aim is similarly to demonstrate the material underpinning of all aspects of human life: to show the naivety, in robustly Rabelaisian or Flaubertian manner, of the idealist view of abstract essences, of disembodied sentiments or thoughts; to demonstrate, in a word, the earthy pulsions of human beings. The apparently scientistic naivety of studying 'la machine humaine' (MV 97) will have further surprising consequences in the areas of morality and the identity of the self. Cannibalisation and Cannibalism Despite the mechanical metaphor, various commentators have pointed out that industrial production is almost totally absent from Verne's works; and this also applies to non-industrial areas. Boats are sailed rather than constructed, children adopted rather than conceived; and fortunes spent rather than earned. Even the material employed by the various 'machines' is apparently never created, and very rarely acquired at all. The systems exist almost without input. When we examine the fate of Verne's ships, another striking trait emerges. Just as camel excrement is not discarded, but used for fuel (55 314), so none of the ships' constituent material ever seems to be abandoned. In a few cases, the boats are simply burned, in a literal application of the Classical metaphor (e.g. VCT 328, TL 226). But in most cases, they have the singular destiny of providing materials for the needs of another vessel: they are cannibalised. Non-production and recycling are of course closely complementary. But what is remarkable is the degree to which these principles of economy are taken, in the form of internal recycling of material. The term 'autocannibalisation' would seem appropriate for this process. Sometimes, the idea is episodic, as when the vessel is chopped up, either to provide its own heating or, even neater, to produce motive power by 'devouring' its own 'oeuvres-mortes' (HG 304; CH 255, CH passim, TM 304). But in Le Chancellor the idea structures the whole novel. First, a fire starts spontaneously in the hold and begins to burn faster and faster (C 50-51; cf. C15 412, 414). The only way to halt this multiplying process - what Verne calls a '"combustion progressive"' (FD 179) and Serres, a 'positive feed-back loop' (p. 114) - is to flood the vessel. Here again the process threatens the whole ship, although the feedback is now a negative one, that is each successive stage counteracts the process, making it slow down. But then the singularly unfortunate vessel begins sinking, and has therefore to be taken apart, so that a raft can be produced from the remains. Still the passengers' problems are not over, for they have nothing to eat and in desperation try to devour the sails and wooden and leather parts of the raft. In other words, the structure of the whole work is determined by the catastrophic metamorphoses of the eponymous ship. Each of the four stages follows rigorously on from the preceding one; and in each stage the vessel is bodily reduced. A quasi-mathematical materialism governs the narration. The successive developments of the autocannibalisation constitute a precise convergent series. The material of the Chancellor is the material of Le Chancellor. So much attention to the fate of the vessel clearly points to some sort of deeper symbolism, but it is not immediately apparent what this could be. In fact, if we add on the man-machine and food-fuel metaphor, we obtain an automatic and striking result: instead of ships 'consuming' each other, humans: instead of cannibalisation, cannibalism! It is obvious that yet another Vernian extended metaphor is at work here. This theme occurs in at least thirty Voyages, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. In order to determine the extent of the equivalence, let us now examine the 'internal economy' of the cannibalism in the Voyages. In Verne's works, anthropophagy is considered relatively banal when carried out between primitive tribes as a means to exact revenge or to satisfy hunger (e.g. CG 669). It is when the idea occurs among Europeans and between acquaintances that it seems to take on interest and indeed a life of its own. The theme is introduced in extremely innocuous fashion. Sometimes, as in the traditional metaphor, curiosity, ambition, anger, impatience, jealousy or desire make the character 'devour' his fellows or else these feelings 'devour' the character himself.5 Often, the sentiments are deflected from an external object back towards source and internalised as humiliation, anxiety or nervousness, and cause the gnawing or biting of 'bridles', fists, thumbs, nails, beards, lips, or a general 'self-devouring'.6 In these examples the body eats itself from without. But the body may equally well be digested from within. Notable examples include the scenes of oxygenation ('un feu (...) @ l'int{rieur', etc. (DO 58-59)) but also the introjective dream where a character falls into the bottomless pit of his own stomach (MS 197-98). If we examine actions of eating in the literal sense, we notice a corresponding progression from external to internal object, whose complete range is again to be found in the decidedly complex Le Chancellor. The initial situation, anodyne once more, is that Kazallon and his companions on the empty raft are famished and wish to catch fish. Using the fish caught as bait, they know that a geometrically multiplying amount could be caught, if only the vicious circle could be overcome, if only the closed system could be opened up. The means to do so are eventually realised to have been at hand after all: first flesh taken from corpses, and then flesh cut from living people - 'oeuvres mortes' and 'oeuvres vives' again! These relatively 'exogamous' solutions do not work, however, and the starving passengers are constantly about to perpetrate acts of assault or murder on each other followed by full and unmitigated cannibalism. In the event, this sort of thing does not happen, in the published versions at least. It very probably did in the manuscript, particularly since it occurs in the two main sources of the novel.7 But to compensate, three remarkable variations on the theme occur instead. At one stage, the passengers draw lots to determine who should be killed and eaten; an invalid loses, and is about to serve as victim, when his father intervenes and offers himself instead, or rather his arms; and only a 'chance' incident prevents the sacrifice being carried out. Earlier, the Black cook had gone mad, presumably through lack of culinary material to work on, and offered his own substance to his companions as a substitute sustenance: '(...) sa rage se tourne contre lui-mme. Il se d{chire de ses dents, de ses ongles, nous jetant son sang @ la figure et criant: ] "Buvez! Buvez!"' (C 213). Kazallon, lastly, undergoes the torture of thirst and finishes by cutting his own vein and drinking from it: 'me voil@ me d{salt{rant @ cette source de ma vie! Ce sang repasse en moi, il apaise un instant mes tourments atroces; puis, il s'arrte, il n'a plus la force de couler!' (C 221). The system starts by flowing maximally before the short-circuit terminally short- circuits itself. This act - which gains considerable force because it is also a terrible temptation for three other characters, namely Kennedy, Axel and Shandon (5S 225; VCT 217; CH 35) - represents a shocking but satisfying terminus to the progressively more cannibalistic, violent and self- centred activities. A whole gamut of successively more endogamous solutions has in this way been tried: paracannibalism, then cryptocannibalism, then necrocannibalism, and finally, after a flirtation with the real thing,8 autocannibalism. The mere mention of any of these individual acts would have created scandalised havoc in any drawing-room of the period, but Verne accumulates them in successively more horrifying behaviour, integrating them at the same time into a single sequence. Each successive term is obtained from the preceding one by taking the process one further stage along the path of endogamy, bringing the process closer and closer to home. The actions again constitute a convergent series - and one which is 'taken to the limit'. The final stage represents the most radical act, but at the same time the most balanced one in physical terms. A certain sexual undertone may perhaps be detected in the progressively more morbid bodily acts. This is indeed confirmed in various ways, and ones which further illuminate the endogamy. Elsewhere in the Voyages one can detect a certain sexual/cannibalistic innuendo. Conseil says to his master Aronnax: '"Vous, anthropophage! Mais je ne serais plus en sret{ pr}s de vous, moi qui partage votre cabine! Devrais-je donc me r{veiller un jour @ demi-d{vor{?" ] "Ami Conseil, je vous aime beaucoup, mais pas assez pour vous manger sans n{cessit{"' (20M 227). But it is in fact also possible to detect parallels with precise sexual acts. First, that other crime of taking over the body of another person, rape, is evoked a surprising number of times in the Voyages extraordinaires. Thus in addition to the traditional obsession for White women to die rather than be separated from their menfolk, texts as distant in time as 'Un Hivernage dans les glaces' (1855) and La Mission Barsac (1919) involve protracted and explicit scenes of full- blooded attempted rape; Zacharius asks his daughter to give her body to the clock-devil for his sake; and the passage listing the various results of of 'miscegenation' also refers, obliquely but unmistakably, to '"les belles go{lettes blanches que plus d'un flibustier abordent par le travers!"'.9 It is no coincidence that none of these works was produced during the period of Hetzel p}re's supervision: the 'go{lettes blanches' sentence was indeed cut when the story was published in the Voyages (as 'Un Drame au Mexique' (DM iv 445)). When allowed to, sexual violence rears its head surprisingly often in Verne. Similarly, just as Mor{ (ch. 3) has detected a strong streak of homosexuality in the Voyages, so autoerotic hints are also amazingly transparent, given his audience and social context. If in the vegetable realm sago-palms innocently 'croissent sans culture, se reproduisant (...) par leurs (propres) rejetons et leurs (propres) graines', the branches of certain African trees have 'feuilles (...) de six @ sept pouces, doubl{es d'une {corce @ substance laiteuse, et dont la noix, lorsque le fruit est mr, fait explosion en projetant la semence de ses (...) compartiments'.10 In the same way, in the human realm, one can observe descriptions like: 'Kin-Fo rvait d{j@ (...), et (...) senti(t) une sorte de chatouillement @ sa main droite. ] Instinctivement, ses doigts se referm}rent et saisirent un corps cylindrique l{g}rement noueux, de raisonnable grosseur, qu'ils avaient certainement l'habitude de manier (...)'.11 A certain amount of similar evidence is available in Verne's letters, for Soriano has quoted '(des) aveux nafs d'auto-{rotisme', for instance: '(mon propri{taire, Jules Verne,) a perdu l'habitude de m'{largir en fourrant ses doigts dans mes profondeurs (...). Monsieur votre fils, Madame, (...) rel(}ve) sa moustache en croc, il la caresse un peu trop (...) mais (...) mes secr{tions ne sont pas trop abondantes (etc.)'.12 A first conclusion is that Verne here seems to go beyond the normal bounds of stories for young people - or even for adults. In the case of the raft-bound cannibalism, he is undoubtedly reflecting contemporary reality, for numerous cases were reported in the press throughout the period. But the number of times the anthropophagous and sexual themes are repeated points at the same time to psychological or social - even psychoanalytical - concerns. It is here that the man-ship metaphor may reinforce our understanding of both poles of the problem. Undoubtedly one of the most remarkable things about cannibalisation, cannibalism, and the 'perverse' forms of sexuality is their displacement of the object of desire. Ships normally burn fuel, and people normally eat food and often have sexual relations. It is only when the object is one usually considered more or less a subject that surprise is generated. In other words, each of the three processes seems to be perverse only in so far as it limits its choice to a severely limited subset of the universe for interaction, only if it defines the 'inside' and the 'outside' in a constricted way. When Nature's abundant external resources are so wilfully excluded, it is the material of the consumers themselves which is brought into play, turning the system literally inside-out. But once the 'consumption' has been made internal, the stage is set for a closed cycle of recursive activity. In theory at least, a fixed proportion of the system will go in to be consumed, but emerge as turncoat 'consumer'; but a fixed proportion will also be used up at each stage, thus closing it more - and increasing the horror each time. Like Kazallon's blood, the resources will start by reducing relatively quickly, but will never completely be exhausted. Like Zeno's arrow, they will never be able to quite reach their final destination, although they will be able, given enough time, to get infinitely close.13 A decreasing vestige of activity will always continue - an object cannot ever completely absorb itself. Verne's structures are certainly fascinating, but may seem rather abstract and gratuitous. I would claim however that a certain debate on social ethics is in fact present, and that the successive graduations in the system may equally well be construed as a highly significant moral thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Cannibalisation, cannibalism and sexuality are all so important for Verne because of their grounding in the most material reality, because the basic acts can destroy others in the most physical sense. But a variation is provided in each case by a directly opposed act: instead of the use of a foreign body for one's own purposes, one's own body is unrestrainedly offered for the use of others. Zacharius's suggestion that his daughter give her body for his sake is thus a commentary on the egoism of the basic act; and so, above all, is the behaviour of the invalid's father and the frustrated cook. Verne is of course reactivating the cannibalistic sub-text of the Eucharism here, with its curious mix of self- sacrifice and consumption of flesh and blood - as elsewhere in Le Chancellor, he uses other Biblical imagery, such as the twelve companions, the crucifixion image of outstretched arms, and the final baptism in fresh water. But more fundamentally, he would seem to be pointing to the hypocrisy of most of the social tabous, whether Christian or not: if one should really do to others as one would have them do to oneself, then why should all forms of cannibalism and sexuality produce such moral outrage? If in particular, the basic act is always wrong (at least in fiction), then why is the opposite act not sometimes right? Having posed the difference self-others in such stark and paradoxical terms, Verne then crowns his demonstration by moving the goalposts a second time and converting the opposition into a synthesis. If the basic act destroys the other, and if the opposite act is also immoral, then why not oppose the two monsters, why not abolish both problems by combining the two into a single pole, by identifying the subject and the object? The autocannibalisation, autocannibalism and autoeroticism that result should logically remove any remaining moral objections. The activity here is more or less self-cancelling - and thus represents the ultimate compact cycle - but above all constitutes the final ironic showing up of the social tabous. The effect on time and space is also undoubtedly surprising. Judged from the outside, less and less substance is involved at each stage, meaning a slowing down of time, as in the formal cycles. But judged from the inside, the process gets more and more self-contained, obsessional, and dense in time. It is because gratification can be virtually instantaneous that the time outside and the time inside are divorced. The acts represent both an absolute concentration and an absolute dissipation of desire. Verne's pursuit of the eternal leads him back towards the present and finally into an ultimate short-circuited spasm, a hyper-dense fragment of non-time. The infinite is contained within the infinitesimal. Kinship and Companionship We have thus seen that, far from being sentimental or simplistic accounts of human relationships, Verne's works contain complex and unmitigated descriptions of physical interactions. The reader of the Voyages can detect similar tensions in the purely social aspects of human relations; with, once again, the themes of introversion, time and space being important issues. As far as the family is concerned, the arborescence might have been thought to occur frequently as a means of emphasising the continuity of extended relationships over time, in accordance with the traditional image of the family tree. In fact, in the rare examples where the image is employed, it is the dissipatory aspect of vertical relationships that is emphasised: 'Depuis bien des si}cles, les ramifications, sorties du tronc commun, s'{taient {cart{es de la ligne du glorieux anctre'; 'la famille s'{tait divis{e et perdue en de nombreuses ramifications' (RV 19; MS 34). In accordance with this loosening, the common literary theme of 'transcendence of time by means of progeny' also receives short shrift in Jules Verne's works. It is treated either in extremely conventional terms - 'Dans les enfants il reste toujours quelque chose de la vie d'un p}re!' (MS 149) - or else in subtly ironic ones: 'Le bourgmestre se maria (...) dans des conditions excellentes ... pour l'heureux mortel qui devait lui succ{der' (DO 107). Verne is mocking, simultaneously and sardonically, the ideals of progression, altruism and parenthood. Many of the Vernian relatives are for this reason distant ones in distant parts - an Indian Begum or one of the proverbial 'Uncles in America' (500; Un Neveu d'Am{rique, p. 394). The idea of inheritance is similarly affected. Wealth will be transmitted to the most unlikely of relatives (MS 229, etc.) - in Testament d'un excentrique (1899), to the eccentric legator of the title himself. There is in sum a tremendous gulf between much of one's kin and oneself; inter-generation relationships are stretched to the point of disappearing. Relationships within a generation, on the other hand, are very close in the Voyages. There is a strong tendency for attraction to exist between siblings or quasi-siblings - confirming the importance of the availability of the object of desire. Zacharius's apprentice and daughter, brought up in the same household, marry each other; so do the virtually identical twins M. R{-di}ze and Mlle Mi-b{mol, Lidenbrock's adopted son and daughter, and Michel Strogoff and his mother's 'daughter'; Jean Mor{nas is in love with his sister-in-law (and cousin, and therefore 'cousin-in-law'); and Ferney is only very narrowly foiled in his posthumous attempt to rape his half-sister.14 There are also a large number of male couples in the Voyages, whose dominant mode similarly oscillates between the fraternal and the marital. Sometimes they are constituted of 'deux fr}res Siamois' - '"deux jumeaux ... mais pas du mme ge ... ni de la mme m}re"' - and sometimes they are in Servadac's situation: '"Alors, nous voil@ mari{s, Ben-Zouf." ] "Ah! mon capitaine, (...) il y a longtemps que nous le sommes!"' (MS 233; 205; HS 464). Moreover, members of both heterosexual and homosexual couples are normally not only without offspring, but are also themselves orphans or even, as in one indicative case, 'v{ritables produits d'une g{n{ration spontan{e' (MS 195). Both underlying tendencies, the incestuous and the self-contained and non-productive, are, lastly, combined in one brilliant example. In the static Flemish town, the 'same' married couple has existed since 1340, as Michel Serres points out.15 Whenever one Mme Van Tricasse dies, a second one is chosen, '(une) cousine' (DO 107), presumably the fruit of a previous stage of the couple. The same incestuous remarriage applies to the husband, with widowhood and widowerhood thus following each other in strict alternation, indefinitely and, as Verne says, 'sans solution de continuit{' (DO 11). The problems of choice and freedom have apparently been solved. The branches of the family tree have here been absorbed into the trunk - which they then split into further self-searching and -seeking branches. As well as amusing himself, then, Verne is expressing his views about marriage. Choice of partner is often arbitrary and in any case irrelevant. One plus one does not always make two. The Van Tricasse couple(s) combine(s) maximal endogamy with minimal production: they simultaneously exclude the temporal flux and triumphantly overcome it. More generally, a debate on the person is going on. As a phenomenon which occurs in nature, the twins and all the other close couples appeal to the Verne of the early self-confident period (whereas mirror imagery would seem more in evidence in the later, self-conscious period, with its emphasis on the allegorical and the artificial). The use of twins has of course been common in stock situations in comic writing from Shakespeare to Tintin, as a way of posing the questions of identity and difference. In Verne's case, however, there is in addition the general biological context. Jacob (p. 91) points out that Darwin, for instance, thought that the similarities and variations represented by close relatives were the basis of all classification. But in fact Verne seems to re-route the scientific or even social implications onto the specifically personal ones - emphasising, in particular, the fragility of the concept of the individual. Everyone is defined in terms of others, but the others do not themselves allow a precisae definition. Persoanlity also implies an infinite regression. In the social group in general, there is a similar tendency to closure, and, with it, again a problem of excessive introversion. Numbers are strictly limited, with a maximum of five or six full members, and an average of about three - as Vierne says, 'la vie prot{g{e dans (...) une communaut{ privil{gi{e'.16 The desert-island or other totally self-contained community is thus merely an extreme expression of this tendency; and it is no coincidence that the Mysterious Island has the form of a 'pt{ropode monstrueux' or that Nemo's submarine takes its name from the nautilus (IM 135; 20M 295-96), given the complete self-sufficiency of these two forms of animal life. Within the group, altruistic acts are again often attempted, with their generosity once more being emphasised by their corporeal nature: characters attempt to save their companions by such eccentric means as throwing themselves out of balloons, going to prison when innocent, or trying not to use up oxygen for breathing (5S 270-71, IM 10; DJM 114, 142-43; 20M 527). But this recurrent ninenteenth-century watchword, of 'being made happy only by the happiness of others' (J 37, CH 544, FB x 88, etc.), is shown up by an altruism which turns out to be merely superficial. Thus the balloon stowaway switches from offering to throw himself out to attempting to throw the hero out instead; Zacharius uses his previous 'generosity' to justify his present egoism ('"Puisque je t'ai donn{ la vie, rends la vie @ ton p}re!"'); and Ox's offer to provide free lighting for the peaceful Flemish town proves in the end to have been a mere cover for his callous and dangerous experiment on human beings (DA 201, 213; MZ 172; DO 16, 108-09). Those who depend on the public for their living are particularly conscious of the danger of egoism/narcissism, of the fragility of their links with the rest of the world. 'Entertainers' as varied as acrobats, a dancing teacher, a Mormon preacher, a journalist and a scientist end up 'performing' without an audience; and Aronnax's book is read most intently by Aronnax himself.17 Clearly, a similar endogamy is present to the one visible in the cannibalism and other perverse processes; but, as we shall see, the consequences are not always identical. One particularly revealing case of professional introversion is to be found in 'Frritt-Flacc' (1884). This gothic tale features an egoistical doctor who treats only those patients rich enough to pay for his services. One dark night, he is entreated to attend to someone in the next village, but refuses to go until promised a large sum of money. After travelling towards the village for a while, however, he has a shock: without changing direction, he has suddenly found himself going back and re-entering his own house. He ends up attempting to treat himself, or rather his own double lying in bed, but he is too late, and finally patient and doctor both die. This strange Hoffmannesque story is thus not only another example of linearity becoming circularity, but constitutes an original refutation of the idea of time-travel. It makes explicit what was hinted at in Voyage au centre de la Terre: the argument that the whole idea of time-travel requires a splitting of the person into two and is thus riddled with contradiction. More specifically, goes the argument, if time-travel is possible, then so is meeting one's ancestor before, say, his marriage. Then so is killing him; then so is preventing him from having (had) any descendants; then so is preventing his descendants travelling in time - which is a blatant contradiction. In 'Frritt-Flacc', this syllogism is taken to its concisest limit by observing the particular case where one's 'ancestor' is, egoistically, oneself. The doctor (accidentally) kills himself 'in another temporal state', and thus creates a simultaneously self-contradicting and self-confirming spatio-temporal loop. (Did the doctor travel and treat himself? How could he, if he was dying? But how could he avoid doing so, if he was dying?) The person that travels cannot kill the one that stays at home, for he depends logically on him; but, given that a contradiction exists in any case, what better person from an aesthetic point of view to kill the doctor than himself? The potential paradox set up by the time- travel of Voyage au centre de la Terre is thus explored after all. The science-fiction of the twentieth century here covers ground that had already been explored by the Voyages extraordinaires. But the tale is especially a study in solipsism. The doctor's division of the world, separating those who can pay for his services from those who cannot, is shown to fall down by virtue of a set-theoretical formalisation of the Cretan Liar Paradox. Since it would be absurd for the doctor to pay himself for his own services, then, by his own egoistical logic, given that he does not pay, he cannot treat himself either. But he must treat himself (since no-one else will) and he is therefore obliged to split himself into the two personae - payer and payee - with the fatal consequences. Taking self-absorption to the limit thus results in losing part of one's identity, in being literally alienated from oneself - and ultimately disappearing up one's own temporal vortex. In case it be objected that Verne's example, being comprehensible, cannot be of any profound philosophical value, it should be pointed out that Bertrand Russell's destruction of the logical coherency of set-theory as it was then conceived consisted merely of considering this sort of example. Russell examined 'The barber shaves all those who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?', the precise logical equivalent of 'The set of all sets that do not contain themselves (what about that set?)'. Following Russell's example, not only contemporary set-theory, but also the philosophical foundations of mathematics in general, were found to be 'inconsistent', that is that not all its propositions could ever be both true and provable.18 Verne's works, then, set up a variety of closed social systems, and employ them to continue the debate on the role of the individual and the nature of logic. The smaller the system, the greater the strain. When numbers go below three, dramatic changes in behaviour result. And when the social unit is reduced to one-and-a-fraction persons, the logical foundation of arithmetic, geometry and set-theory are undermined, egoism interferes with its own principles, and even time and space change. Closing all the exits produces unpredictable results. Knowledge and the Lone Individual The tendency to timeless and spaceless egoism is especially visible in the individual who cuts himself off from his fellows. He is variously described as '(tout) en dedans', 'impassible, imp{n{trable, insensible', 'taciturne, (...) concentr{, (...) rejet{ en lui-mme', 'repli{ sur lui-mme', 'aveugle pour tout ce qui l'entour(e)'.19 His solipsism is above all apparent in his speech acts. Thus he continues without transition conversations interrupted hours before; he perorates subjectively or '"@ blanc"'; he talks to himself, often taking both sides of the conversation; he cannot finish his sentences, which must be completed by his twin; he systematically contradicts previous assertions; or he speaks 'au pluriel, afin, sans doute, de se donner la flatteuse illusion d'un auditoire suspendu @ ses l}vres'.20 He ignores, in other words, such conventions of dialogue as the individuality of interlocutors, the beginning and end of utterances, and the progression of topic. What happens as a result is that the very mechanism of communication is perturbed. Sometimes, the individual's speech is blocked; and sometimes it runs away with him instead. But on occasion both somehow happen together in a remarkable pre-Freudian 'explosive stuttering', 'aposiopesis', 'paroles pr{cipit{es', stumbling over or swallowing of sentences, or ejaculations, 'non en longues phrases, mais par petites interjections'.21 Verne's perceptive observation of certain psychological traits thus leads him to the heart of the problem of social time. In the Vernian syndrome, there is an element of 'angelism' which takes the form of an attempt to fit too much activity into a finite time or space. This would seem to be both a reaction to and a direct cause of what is in many ways its opposite, a profound pessimism. The character is in a hurry because of his deep anxiety, the anxiety that his audience may be snatched away at any moment, as it has so often before. He is a perfectionist because of repeated previous setbacks, when his best was judged not good enough. As a result, whereas in the cannibalistic and other processes, less and less material was chasing itself round and round, here the system tends to be blocked by an excess of material. But, surprisingly, the effect is often very similar: abrupt movements, an alternation of fullness and emptiness, a space-time that is both flying apart and crumpled up. Occasionally the theme of solitude is evoked directly. A 'Chinaman's' natural preference is declared to be isolation (ER 257), and some characters are tempted by the idea of life alone on a desert island, as a 'king without subjects' (5S 5). But those who actually experience such conditions are in practice soon disenchanted. Smith concludes '"Malheur @ qui est seul"', and Nemo similarly declaims '"Je meurs d'avoir cru que l'on pouvait vivre seul"' - although he does not say if he would have done the same again (IM 513; 819; cf. CG 327). Only the posthumous characters do not concur. The pilot of the Danube and the Zartog are shown as actually preferring solitude; and the hero of Les Naufrag{s du 'Jonathan', especially, can find no permanent solution to the problems of society other than the cloister (NJ III xv 442), a cell consisting of a bare and rocky island: he decides to 'vivre, libre, seul, - @ jamais' (NJ III xv 444). Once again, Michel's conclusions extrapolate those of his father to the point of exaggeration. The problems of lack of integration in the time and space of society are particularly evident in the case of the scientist. Mechanics, in paricular, is very prominent in many of the Voyages, with whole chapters devoted to it in at least five different works (TL, AL, SDD, 500, HS). The scientists often claim that science is infallible (e.g. VCT 126), and mechanics in particular is described as having the almost magical power of predicting the future with perfect accuracy (e.g. PF 265, CM 178-79). But the practice is frequently shown to be very different. A predicted total eclipse is only partial, all the experts are wrong about the path of the moon projectile, and the most competent scientists cannot agree whether a certain meteor will fall on Japan in June or Patagonia in July. Science ultimately proves to be eminently perfectible (VCT 48), merely serving "'@ savoir, la plupart du temps, qu'on ne sait pas encore tout'" (HS 494). Darko Suvin's contention, that "science (...) was for Verne (...) the bright noonday certainty of Newtonian physics", is therefore far from the truth.22 An identical division may sometimes be detected in the personality traits of Verne's characters. There are a large number of rigid characters, obsessed with rules and duty, defined in a word by their "mechanicalness". Thus Zacharius's resemblance to a pendulum (MZ 113) is shared by Lidenbrock, "(qui fait des) enjamb{es math{matiques d'une demi-toise" (VCT 7), but also by the scatologically-presented Nicholl, "'un chronom}tre @ secondes, @ {chappement, avec huit trous'" (AL 16). But it is Fogg who is subject most often to mechanical and chronometric metaphors: "Une v{ritable m{canique" (TM 14), ce qu'il faisait {tait (...) math{matiquement toujours la mme chose (TM 4). Avec la pr{cision d'un automate (TM 311, cf. 321, 331), il ne voyageait pas, il d{crivait une circonf{rence. C'{tait un corps grave, parcourant une orbite autour du globe terrestre, suivant les lois de la m{canique rationnelle (TM 71-72). (C'{tait) un tre bien {quilibr{ dans toutes ses parties, justement pond{r{, aussi parfait qu'un chronom}tre (TM 10). Because they sacrifice human values, these men are often presented as being more efficient than their fellows. But in practice, ponderous perfection normally tends to defeat even its own object. Zacharius is led to his death, Hatteras to madness, and Nicholl and Fogg survive only by tempering their severity, by adopting some of the flexibility of their "luxuriant" companions.23 Whether as a scientific theory or as a mode of behaviour, then, the systematism of mechanics is its very weakness, rendering it unadapted to the real world. Once again Verne starts off with a relatively banal idea - mechanics was a frequent metaphor over much of the period 1850-80, the apogee of scientism. But in fact, having put the conventional wisdoms of the day into the mouths of his characters (and sometimes his narrator), Verne thens to proceed systematically to upset them. Ultimately, he argues, mechanics solves very few problems - and time cannot be treated as a mere physical constant. Thus, although Verne's conception of science is that of an open system, the individual savant is constantly threatened by the closure of his personal world. In the 'worst' cases, he lives virtually outside the space and time of normal human activity. He omits to sign his letters - '"Pouvait-on douter qu'elles ne fussent de moi?"' - does not know how to read a railway timetable, and forgets either days - '"Tiens! mon dner a pass{ vite"' - or whole decades (HS 329; VCT 65; 40; 49). He attempts to subvert those time-pieces and other instruments which do not read as he would have wished, to hurry up the time of the natural world, or to apply science to himself (e.g. RV 92; 20M 608, JMC i 13). In the early works, his concomitant ignorance of psychology, finance and politics leads him into relatively harmless incidents and accidents; but in the later ones, his parabolic, hyperbolic, or elliptic behaviour causes him to become the tool of unscrupulous villains and thus to become a force for evil. His essential problem has to do with his division between scientific knowledge and human knowledge. He cuts himself off from present reality,24 he denies his own subjectivity and his own position in time, and even his science is self-centred (e.g. HS 527, MZ 128, 158). The result is an enclosure in the straitjacket of the present which is itself adrift in a sort of spaceless void. But even the scientist who lives in time, 'in touch' with others and aware of such problems, is not thereby totally exonerated. The Vernian savant is constantly subject to the dangers of relying exclusively on the past or present and of falling into plagiarism or self-observation, especially when he is confronted with apparently virgin lands. Thus territories that might have been thought to be most clearly uninhabited - the North Pole, the depths of the ocean, the interior of the Earth or the dark side of the moon - often contain convincing evidence of human activity, in the form of ruins, footprints or voices (CH 536-38; 20M 420-24; VCT 209-11, 219; AL 244). Even less remote and prestigious areas pose scientific problems in determining what is really new. Where does the solitary savage discovered on the desert island come from (IM 503)? Is the giant human skeleton authentic? What is the origin of the missing-link creatures' culture? Are the logic, precision and subtlety of the Australian Aborigines' language, implying the possibility of a lost civilisation (B 457), further evidence of the superiority of the first men? Is the Gaelic spoken by a girl discovered in a disused mine a natural language, one spoken without ever having been learnt (IN 152)? Some of the questions are never answered, but in a majority of cases, apparently convincing evidence of unsullied savages merely proves to be due to a European presence: the ruins on the ocean-floor, for instance, are those of Atlantis, the mummy in the interior of the Earth is a White man, the solitary savage is a castaway, the culture of the missing-link creatures comes mainly from a resident German anthropologist, and the skeleton is nothing but a modern fake. And where there are no convenient natives to act as resonator for the Europeans' contact with their own culture, an extremely neat self-reflective device sometimes substitutes: voices heard underground are actually in the character's head; the lunar ruins exist only in Ardan's imagination; and two different sets of footprints in totally virgin territory are caused by the explorers' coming full circle and following tracks previously made by themselves (VCT 209-11; AL 244; CH 549, VCT 322)! Scoops are therefore much rarer than it would at first seem, for explorers are often simply investigating each other or, in the worst cases, themselves. Once again originality and a different future prove hard to find. Although scientific knowledge is often presented as a powerful model for understanding the world, the actual process of scientific/geographic discovery is thus shown as fraught with tremendous problems. Verne argues that the question of authenticity cannot employ the logical categories used in established laboratory science, but necessarily points back to the subjectivity and existence-in-time of the field scientist himself. Only by resisting the tendency to the eccentric and the inhuman can the scientist hope to retain both his sanity and his scientific effectiveness. There is no automatic test of originality, time cannot be circumvented, and the only conclusion is largely pessimistic and self-cancelling: the vicious circle of authentic discovery depends on the need to exercise systematic doubt, to transcend one's own thought-processes, in short, to 'bootstrap' oneself up onto a higher conceptual level. Verne ultimately argues against the positivistic views characteristic of his epoch. His scientists are individualists, who have apparently no need of sustained contact with external reality, but who remain in practice vitally dependent on such a contact. Verne's vision of ongoing scientific discovery is expressed in terms remarkably similar to those of literary creation. Individual and Society The situations examined in the present chapter take on varied forms, but they all revolve around a single concern - the relationship between the individual and the physical world. There is an initial identification between Earth-mother and sexual/alimentary object, furnace and ventre, piston and bas-ventre, the ship's mechanics and the mechanics of sex. This fruitful material imagery of course contributes to the vivacity of Verne's descriptions of animate and inanimate objects, and represents another example of his desire to break down the established boundaries. But it also has consequences for the role of the person. The individual's part is passive, involving mere stimulus-response reactions without the need for initiative or foresight. The security of these compact systems is paid for by the giving up of any attempt to control events or to come to terms with the future. Then, in a more active stage, the endogamy is increased - the bodies burn or eat each other, and interaction consists of egoistical but positive activities like cannibalisation, cannibalism or abnormal sex. There is next a counter-variant based on pure altruism and reversing the same activities. But in the last, self-reflexive stage, the poles of the sexual and alimentary cycles are superimposed onto each other: the appendage is absorbed into its support, survival is fused with self-destruction, discardable object with sacrosanct subject, and the microcosm with the whole universe. Thus, although time and space are not the explicit object of Verne's concerns, they do constitute much of the prevailing force behind all these closed systems: it is the finite amount of resources and the absolute curtailment of the future which are at the same time the reason for the eccentric behaviour and its inevitable result. Fear for the future and retreat into a narrow present are inextricably linked in Verne's world. Social interaction follows an identical sequence, an identical withering away of the state of companionship. There is again a 'normal' situation, consisting of the small group, which is isolated but otherwise unexceptional. In contrast, interaction in the second stage, that of the egosme @ deux of the man-and-his-servant, man-and-his-wife or man-and-his-double, is no longer between autonomous entities but does involve more than a single individual. The result is that time is all the more distorted and unpredictable. The final stage again consists of the singleton, engrossed in a total solipsism that apparently excludes all possibilty of change in the future, and who is again prone to take his self-centred view as representative of the whole world. Time will however exact a spectacular revenge. Personal concerns are thus vital in the Voyages. It is always possible of course to relate such concerns to the life of the writer. But what is more illuminating, and what previous commentators on Verne's works seem to have missed, is the vital importance of the self, the blending together of passivity and activity, the central role of autism. Much of the interest of the extreme situations resides in their exploration of the psyche, in their exposure of the hypocrisy and cruelty normally hidden in the give-and-take of the social system, their destruction of the pretence that morality consists exclusively of consideration for others. Why should necrocannibalism be frowned upon, why should the sacrifice of one man to save twelve be forbidden, and why should even the subject of autocannibalism be tabou? Although Verne uses Biblical imagery, he is careful to pose his interrogation in general terms: can the conventional morality of the nineteenth century be a practical basis for living? The Voyages show up the contradictions inherent in even loving one's neighbour as oneself. Another aspect of the individual is to be found in the intersection of science's two main functions - as a passive repository of knowledge, and as an active mode of changing the real world. Applied, i.e. geographical, science in Verne's works consists of an attempt to put the claim to universal and objective knowledge into pratice, and thus to go one better than well-oiled but piecemeal Natural systems. But the claim proves ill-founded, and the attempt misguided. Often, the Vernian scientist's assertions are merely subjective impressions dressed up in impressive language, and his belief in his own infallibility leads him into monumental errors. But even when the scientist is sane and conscientious, his restricted point of view can lead him into the trap of believing that he has made authentic, exogamous discoveries, when he is merely observing a reflection of his own civilisation or of himself. In every case, therefore, science and the scientist have an inescapable Achilles heel. As would be proved rigorously by Gdel in 1931, the most rigorous reasoning system proves powerless when applied to its own base. Closing a system produces an essential epistemological incompleteness. The only attitude is to accept that the scientific method is vulnerable and that mistakes are the price to be paid for knowledge in an open system. Verne insists that the only important hypotheses are the refutable ones, that, in contrast to Natural systems, human-based systems always contain an element of instability. More generally, the example of the scientists underlines the fundamental choice between closed systems and systems where behaviour cannot be circumscribed. Hyperfinite spaces in the Voyages present advantages of predictability in the short term and as such would seem to be a sign of a deep insecurity, a desire to create a watertight defensive shield against the rest of the world. But what happens, of course, is that the germs of anxiety are all the more effectively incubated. The temporality that results is an obsessional cycle which gets tighter and tighter, producing a semblance of faster and faster activity. But at the same time, there is less and less real substance to flow, the semblance gets thinner and thinner, the time-of-events more and more diluted - in external terms at least. The result that the system tends to is what Beckett calls the 'last moment' - the (undefined) multiplication of an infinite intensity by an infinitesimal amount of constructive activity: an eternal terminal moment unstably suspended between totalisation and annihilation. The closed cycle finishes by being absorbed into its own object. Verne's conclusion is that the temptation of the perfect closed system should be resisted, for there is always a blind spot situated between observer and observation, actor and action. The man within the scientist has to accept the extreme contingency attached to the discovery of knowledge; and the scientist in the man must accept personal and temporal relativity, and participate in the looser, partly self-regulating time of the social system. Time must be left for what Fogg calls the 'frottements' (TM 100) engendered by human intercourse, the repeated va-et-vient of real communication. Verne argues that if human beings distinguish themselves from the inorganic through their capacity to reflect, and from the merely organic through their capacity to self-reflect, they must nevertheless ensure that their introspection is not total. Only in this way can man transcend a passive reaction and maintain an active and long-term equilibrium with his material, social and intellectual environment. Time and space are one of man's essential concerns.  CHAPTER 8 Employait-il le crayon multicolore afin de mieux varier ses rimes rebelles ? (HS 21) Past Present Throughout the Voyages, there is a constant tension between the outward exploration and the inward search, between a relentless progressive movement and a determined regressive one. It would perhaps be normal if a similar tension could be found in the 'form' of the text, especially the tenses. The apparently unified fictional time-flow implied by the verbs may conceal more subjective modes of time. In this way the highly-recurrent linguistic signs of ther tense could perhaps in turn provide further insight into 'the internal economy' of the text. They may in particular prove one of the most revealing indicators of certain introverted or 'self-reflexive' qualities in the time and space of the collected works. Studies of tense in fiction have not concentrated a great deal on the functioning of particular novels.1 As a result it is difficult to know when - and how - certain features entered a given language. The research has shown, nevertheless, that the traditional novel belongs, at any given point in the text, to one or other of two general modes, and that these modes strongly condition the events recounted. The first, the more 'objective', past-tense mode, consists in French essentially of the pass{ simple and the past anterior, what Weinrich calls 'temps narratifs' and Emile Benveniste, 'temps de l'histoire'.2 The other, the more 'subjective', present-tense mode, is made up of the present, the pass{ compos{, the future, and their derived forms, Weinrich's 'temps commentatifs' and Benveniste's 'temps du discours'. The division thus separates the pass{ simple from the pass{ compos{, with the former implying a temporality removed from the 'present' (the origin of narration), and the latter implying some sort of 'collusion' with it. The imperfect, pluperfect and conditional, on the other hand, take on the value of whichever of the two modes they are in contact with (even if in practice this is much more often the past-tense mode). Until some time in the nineteenth century, the primary mode of every novel in continuous narrative seems to have been the past-tense one, in both French and Western European languages in general.3 The main reasons seem to be of a temporal nature. First, the juxtaposition of pass{s simples, even without an adverb of time, somehow 'produces' a temporal progression, in the sense that the verbs are normally read as referring to successive moments - and the pass{ simple is probably the only tense to have this property.4 But secondly, and as far as the absolute temporality is concerned, Kte Hamburger has argued that the pass{ simple in a fictional context does not necessarily refer to a specific time-zone at all. It is not a past tense, but a zero-tense, a neutral form, merely a highly convenient way of narrating.5 Her thesis has, understandably, provoked a great deal of controversy. To the extent that verisimilitude is operative, the fact that the pass{ simple in a non-fictional context refers to a definite time-sphere means that it will do so in a fictional context as well. But on the other hand, in so far as the 'suspension of disbelief' contributes to the creation of a fictional world, Hamburger's thesis may be considered to have considerable validity - there is no direct connection between fiction and fact. Without totally accepting either position, then, Verne's examples may give us concrete confirmation of one or other of the two positions. The tenses rarely operate in isolation, of course - there are normally adverbs present, and in fiction especially they often influence the mode. In particular, the opposition pass{ compos{-pass{ simple is sometimes reproduced in the adverbs. The best example is the series 'hier'-'aujourd'hui'-'demain' compared with 'la veille'-'ce jour-l@'-'le lendemain'. The difference between the two is perhaps at first hard to seize - as Bronzwaer points out (pp. 44-50), both series refer to an identical semantic division past-present-future. But in the first series the period in question is implied to contain the 'present' (the period from which the narration is taking place), and in the second, to be distinct from it. n other words, 'aujourd'hui' is as direct as one can get; but 'ce jour-l@' contains a distancing effect. Accordingly, the first series - to which may be added 'maintenant', 'actuellement', '@ pr{sent', 'en ce moment', 'ici', 'voici', 'ce (...)-ci' - is normally used with the present-tense mode; and the second, together with 'alors', '@ ce moment', 'voil@', 'ce (...)-l@', with the past-tense one. In practical terms, 'aujourd'hui, il travaille' and 'ce jour-l@, il travailla(it)' may respectively be considered normal combinations (the first one occurring most frequently in direct speech, and the second in conventional narration). The two series of adverbs will consequently be referred to as 'present-context' and 'past-context' ones. (It should however be pointed out that the vast majority of adverbs, whether 'point' ones like 'puis', 'en 1870' or 'une fois', or durative or iterative ones, like 'longtemps' 'or 'tous les jours', are neutral in this respect.) If the adverbs and tenses always agreed, the opposition would be of little interest. In fact, it is possible for, say, present-context adverbs to occur in the past-tense mode. The resulting combination - 'aujourd'hui, il travaillait'6 - is intuitively striking. It may perhaps at first sight seem modern, psychological, slovenly, or perverse. In fact, it has frequently been attested in the 'best' authors: it is encountered above all in the free indirect style.7 Such a juxtaposition undoubtedly becomes all the more surprising when the adverb is one of future meaning, as in 'DEMAIN, il travaillait'. This occurrence is sometimes pronounced as incorrect by native or other competent speakers of French. The general combination is indeed referred to by John Lyons as being a category of construction which is self-evidently non-grammmatical.8 His affirmation is understandable, for it seems in effect to be absent from novels written before the middle of the nineteenth century.9 Nevertheless it has been unmistakably identified in subsequent ones. It occurs only in narrative, and only in the free indirect style; and it thus indicates that the context in question is to be interpreted not only as not part of the main narrative, but also as being a subjective vision, and, above all, as being fictional.10 As such, its importance cannot be overestimated: this combination is apparently the only clear sign indicating that an utterance is 'not strictly true' - or at least has a limited truth-value. Of course, the opposition fictional-'true' has been the object of much playful undermining throughout the history of literature (and film). Nevertheless, this 'demain, il travaillait' combination - perhaps because it affirms intentions only accessible to an omniscient and therefore necessarily fictional narrator - has remained a relatively reliable marker of fictionality up to the present. Self-Conscious Narration In practice, the distinction between the past- and present-tense modes is not always watertight. As far as Verne is concerned, the pass{ compos{ is occasionally seen accompanied only by the pass{ simple. At the ends of the novels, for example, we read: 'Harry Grant DEVINT l'homme le plus populaire de la vieille Cal{donie. Son fils Robert S'EST FAIT marin comme lui' or '(...) cette derni}re travers{e FUT heureuse et rapide (...). Ainsi S'EST TERMINEE cette aventureuse et extraordinaire campagne qui COUTA trop de victimes, h{las!'.11 Such occurrences, indicating the transition stage of the closing scenes, are perhaps not exceptional in the French novel of the nineteenth century.12 But in one particular case, Verne may be carrying out an original experiment: when his pass{s compos{s 'displace' the pass{s simples over a complete passage. Previously, an escape had already been recounted in the pass{ simple: 'Les douaniers continu}rent (...). Ce fut peine perdue. ] D}s que le fugitif les crut suffisamment {loign{s (...)' (DL 7). But then it is narrated for a second time: Pendant la nuit (le h{ros) s'est jet{ @ travers les glaons (...). Une ronde de douaniers (...) s'est lanc{e sur ses traces, et (...) a fait feu sur lui. (Il) n'a pas {t{ atteint et a pu se r{fugier dans une hutte de pcheurs, o| il a pass{ la journ{e. Puis, le soir venu, il s'est remis en marche, a d fuir devant une bande de loups, n'a trouv{ d'abri que dans le moulin d'o| un brave meunier a favoris{ son {vasion. Enfin, poursuivi par l'escouade du brigadier Eck, (...) il a pu {chapper en se jetant sur les gla\ons en d{rive de la Pernova. C'est miracle (...) s'il n'a pas p{ri dans la d{bcle, et s'il lui a {t{ possible de s{journer @ Pernau sans y tre d{couvert (...) (DL (1904) 178, cf. FD 115). The use of the pass{ compos{ over more than twenty verbs is undoubtedly a surprising innovation; but once again the literature is lacking in historical analyses of the question. Despite the example of L'Etranger (1942), where the pass{ compos{ plays such an important role, one may suspect that sustained sequences of this tense have been - and remain - extremely rare, given the impression of strain that they generate. In spoken French, as Weinrich notes (pp. 302-06; cf. Fitch, p. 35), either large numbers of imperfects are also used or, most frequently, presents, which normally even outnumber the pass{ compos{. The tense used by Camus's first-person character is, according to Sartre, a major reason for the lack of continuity between the sentences, and contributes therefore to the reader's impression of incoherence and absurdity in the individual actions; but B.T. Fitch argues that the pass{ compos{ is virtually the only tense that could have been used to construct the complex but largely coherent overall relationship between the character and the narrator.13 The two views are not of course entirely incompatible. Verne's use of tense has perhaps similarly divergent consequences. The hero's actions seem to constitute less of an automatic linear progression than a new achievement with each phrase, a new defiance of what the reader already knows to be the conclusion - his capture. At the same time, the reader searches for the connection between the narrator and the character implied by the pass{ compos{ (Imbs, p. 103). But since there is neither an explicit narrative stance, nor an implied one (as there is at the ends of the novels), nor even a 'je' to create some sort of connection, there remains an irreducible tension between what is being recounted and the manner of recounting. These brief experiments in the history of literary forms, involving the introduction of the pass{ compos{, are in fact particularly characteristic of Verne's style elsewhere: in the narrow sense of the presence/absence of his narrator; but more generally, in the play on naivety/sophistication and obviousness/deviousness that permeates the whole of the Voyages. In the general case, then, the literary distancing produced by the pass{ simple, its relegation of events to a (semi-real) past, is subverted. The later Verne may thus here be compared with Flaubert who, as Jonathan Culler says, 'leads his readers to expect an intelligible history and then fails at crucial moments to provide it' (The Uses of Uncertainty (1974), p. 42). A subterranean link is created between the narrator and events, and the objective, well-ordered temporality customary in the novel of the period hesitates. The events come to seem slightly contingent, the narrative spotlight to partially illuminate its own support. It Was Tomorrow The other principal past tense, the imperfect, has a standard function in narration: that of mise en relief for the pass{ simple. Verne demonstrates his command of most of the normal varieties including the imparfait d'ouverture and the imperfect used for future events, for example 'un ph{nom}ne allait {videmment se produire dans lequel l'{lectricit{ JOUAIT son rle' (VCT 349, cf. TM 129).14 But in other cases in the Voyages a succession of imparfaits pittoresques produces a remarkable stylistic effect, contributing notably to the build-up of suspense. Particularly vivid examples include the scenes describing the pursuit of a creeper through a dangerous section of jungle in La Jangada, the slow crossing of a treacherous marsh in Michel Strogoff, the perilous descent of an underground river in Mathias Sandorf or the discovery of the lost ruins of Atlantis in Vingt mille lieues (J 80-86; MSt 217-21; MS 131-32; 20M 412-20). But the imperfect is especially striking when used in the presentation of Fogg's race against time on his land-yacht across the frozen prairie, and in the climax of Vingt mille lieues where the prisoners finally succed in escaping from the submarine: Le traneau volait sur l'immense tapis de neige (...); il passait quelques creeks (...). Les champs et les cours d'eau disparaissaient sous une blancheur uniforme. La plaine {tait absolument d{serte (...), une grande le inhabit{e (...). De temps en temps, on voyait passer comme un {clair quelque arbre grima\ant, dont le blanc squelette se tordait sous la brise. Parfois, des bandes d'oiseaux sauvages s'enlevaient du mme vol. Parfois aussi, quelques loups (...), maigres, affam{s (...), luttaient de vitesse avec le traneau. Alors Passepartout (...) se tenait prt @ faire feu (...). Mais le traneau tenait bon, il ne tardait pas @ prendre de l'avance, et bientt toute la bande hurlante restait en arri}re (...) (TM 285-86). Le Nautilus (...) d{crivait une spirale dont le rayon diminuait de plus en plus. Ainsi que lui, le canot, encore accroch{ @ son flanc, {tait emport{ avec une vitesse vertigineuse (...). Nous {tions ballott{s affreusement. Le Nautilus se d{fendait comme un tre humain. Ses muscles d'acier craquaient. Parfois il se dressait, et nous avec lui! (...) (Soudain,) un craquement se produisait. Les {crous manquaient, et le canot, arrach{ de son alv{ole, {tait lanc{ comme la pierre d'une fronde au milieu du tourbillon (20M 611-12). The first passage is a well-developed example of Romantic imagery, with its desolation and its play on the opposition dead-alive (the living skeleton, the dying wolves); and the second, one of 'realist' imagery, with its familiar man-machine comparison and phallic and childbirth symbolism. But much of the power of both comes also from their presentation of space and time. In each case the protagonists' movements are, or become, rectilinear, but in the first they contrast with an empty space ('d{serte', 'blancheur uniforme'), and in the second, with a circular, introjective, one ('spirale', 'alv{ole'). Above all, it is the imperfects that are vital in both, creating two opposed but interacting times-of-events. On one hand, succession and progression are emphasised (imperfect + 'parfois', 'de temps en temps', 'alors'), in accordance with what has undoubtedly become a general tendency in the 'realist' and adventure novel. But on the other, time seems to be hardly moving at all (the imperfect on its own), giving the impression, as in the best Romantic tradition, of being ethereal, non-spatial or drugged.15 The effect of both passages, one of great urgency in slow motion, comes therefore from their union between a certain density of internal events and an overall lack of progression. As in the underground cavern and the hyperclosed spaces, Verne manages to create a new mode of perceiving time. Some of the other imperfects benefit from a similar loosening of temporal progression, but linked now with an ambiguity in the narrator's position. Thus apparently straightforward statements of fact are made using this tense: 'le chaland {tait compl}tement vide'; 'il n'y avait plus de doute: le Dream venait de couler @ pic'; 'Duk aboyait aupr}s d'un cadavre envelopp{ dans le pavillon d'Angleterre'; '(Fogg) {tait bien et d^ument ruin{', 'il avait perdu'.16 Later events prove however that the 'corpse' was not really dead, that Fogg was not really ruined and so on. But such inconsistencies are not in fact limited to isolated phrases: sometimes they englobe whole scenes (although the narrator rarely produces total non-truths). They allow, for instance, Axel and Lidenbrock to cross the underground sea only to arrive at the point they started from, Passepartout to be in two places at once, and the Boy-Captain to see giraffes in South America when really he is watching ostriches in West Africa (VCT 292, 298; TM 103; C15 238)! Clearly, something strange is going on here. If total coherence is required, the reader is obliged to accept the principle of 'deliberate' self-contradiction by the narrator (perhaps in many cases under pressure from his publisher and his public to produce happy endings); or else to consider the utterances as being in some sort of free indirect style - even in instances where it is very difficult to link them with any of the characters at all. But in either case, they must be considered as belonging essentially to an instance of narration and therefore a time-zone that is not fully part of the main narrative. The adverbs also set certain utterances apart from the main flow of the narrative. One can sometimes observe the dissonances between the adverbs and the tenses noted above: 'Les m{contents ralli}rent bientt @ leur id{es le premier ing{nieur, qui JUSQU'ICI restait esclave du devoir'; 'le 24 mai DERNIER (...), le nabab avait {t{ pr{venu'.17 These combinations, which are perhaps due once more to free indirect style, are certainly unusual; but even more striking ones are occasionally visible: 'la famille Cascabel arriverait (...) en juillet de l'ann{e PROCHAINE'; 'cette op{ration devait tre termin{e (...) le 15 octobre PROCHAIN'; 'ce fid}le et complaisant satellite reviendrait APRES-DEMAIN'; 'D'ICI LA, tous les pr{paratifs pouvaient tre enti}rement termin{s'; 'c'{tait DEMAIN'.18 What is distinctive about both categories is that the verbs remain in the normal past-tense narrative system, whereas the adverbs imply a fictional immediacy, a time-zone that is meant to be 'really' present. When the present-context adverb is one of future reference, producing an even more marked contrast with the surrounding past-tense mode, as in 'c'{tait demain', the dissonance between verb and adverb becomes almost total. In such cases the explanation in terms of the free indirect style is certainly useful; but it is, I would argue, insufficient to account for the radical reduction of the temporal distance between narrator and narrataire. It is as if the text had jumped out of itself and into an open-ended future. For brief moments, the text is self-sufficient. As for the originality of the device, it is not impossible that this often disembodied flouting of the fictional time-sphere might owe part of its introduction to Verne. Large numbers of commentators have pointed out the use of the free indirect style in Flaubert, especially Madame Bovary (1857), but also in La Fontaine and La Chanson de Roland (e.g. Stephen Ullmann, Language and Style (1964), p. 134). But the peculiarly disembodied free indirect style that Verne favours has rarely been identified; and in particular this rupture of the traditional time-flow does not seem yet to have been identified in other writers of the nineteenth century. Verne contains complexities in the most surprising places. Will There Be a Reply? The tense where narrative and fictional time come closest together, and which most combines non-sequential and self-referential qualities, is undoubtedly the present. This tense is also the one that comes closest to our immediate experience. It is a largely unmarked form, in the sense that it often consists merely of the stem of the verb. Above all, it is one that can stand on its own, without other tenses or adverbial support. In fiction, there are a number of situations where the present tense is normal: where the narrator or author intervenes; in direct style, especially dialogue; in the historic present; and in the descriptive present. Verne's works make full use of these possibilities. But in certain cases, they go far beyond the conventional categories. A first area consists of 'visionary' presents: (...) Le cur{ (...) remettait ce navire entre les mains de Dieu. ] O| va ce navire? Il suit la route p{rilleuse sur laquelle se sont perdus tant de naufrag{s! Il n'a pas de destination certaine! Il doit s'attendre @ tous les p{rils et savoir les braver sans h{sitation! Dieu seul sait o| il lui sera donn{ d'aborder! Dieu le conduise! (HG 231; cf. IM 60, VCT 339, 20M 398). Ils moururent en hommes qui avaient fait le sacrifice de leur vie pour leurs pays. (...) Ainsi donc, trois mis{rables (...) n'avaient pas recul{ devant cette odieuse machination! ] Une telle infamie ne sera-t-elle donc pas punie sur cette terre (...)? Le comte Sandorf, le comte Zathmar, Etienne Bathory (...), ne seront-ils pas veng{s? (MS 182; cf. VCT 332-33). Nous sommes au lendemain (...). Un des canots est @ la trane ... Je pr{viens le m{tis ... Nous nous glissons sans tre aper\us (...), et le courant nous emporte ... ] Nous allons ainsi sur la mer toujours libre ... Enfin notre canot s'arrte ... Une terre est l@ ... Je crois apercevoir une sorte de sphinx (...), le sphinx des glaces ... Je vais @ lui ... Je l'interroge ... Il me livre les secrets de ces myst{rieuses r{gions ... (SG 347). Despite major differences, each passage seems to be situated somewhere between a prophetic present and a free direct style. Above all, each creates a distinctive temporality within the general context of past tenses, for each contains a present time-zone together with an autonomous future. The illusion is produced of non-determined events (sometimes thoughts) being recounted as they actually happen. Another area where narrative and fictional time come together is in messages-in-bottles and other documents within the Voyages. In such cases, the communication emanates from a position of terrible need, as indicated by both the laconicness of the language and the fact that the communication is often interrupted: '(...) continuellement en proie @ une cruelle indigence, (les naufrag{s) ont jet{ ce document par 153[ de longitude et 37[11' de latitude. Venez @ leur secours, ou ils sont perdus' (CG 861); '(...) ce 26 avril (...), nous sommes entran{s par les courants vers les glaces! Dieu ait piti{ de nous!' (HG 235); je vais prendre mes derni}res notes, et, lorsque les marins fran\ais d{barqueront sur la pointe, j'irai ... (FD 259); les derniers mots relev{s sur son carnet furent ceux-ci: 'Un sudiste me couche en joue et ...' (IM 16); '... nourriture va me manquer ...' (SG 101); 'le Viken va sombrer! ...' (BL xii 106); 'Vivres vont manquer, et ...' ] Le reste de la d{pche, d{chir{ par les coups de bec des go{lands, n'{tait plus lisible (HS 259; cf. MV 471); (...) Quelqu'un trouvera-t-il jamais le d{pt commis @ la terre? (...) C'est affaire @ la destin{e. A Dieu, vat! ... (EA 260). The unfinished message is thus a characteristic mark of Verne's narrative. It is an economical means to add to the suspense, while leaving the reader's imagination free to work. It also draws attention to the writing itself. But in a variant on this topos, which occurs in both Jules and Michel, the idea is held up to ridicule. Sometimes the ironic intention is indicated by an overworked situation and a too-regular punctuation: 'Dans la main crisp{e du cadavre, on trouva, en effet, un papier froiss{, sur lequel, avant d'expirer, Alexandre Tisserand avait {crit ces mots: "C'est mon neveu qui ... "' (DJM 113). But sometimes it is the message itself that is devoid of meaning, subverted by the use of too much technology. Thus one message, in an aluminium box, is aimed directly at the Rue de Rivoli from an airship; another employs a box made of copper; Rosette sends hundreds of virtually identical messages; and a bottle is rescued from a shark's stomach using firearms (RC 138-44; VA viii 83; HS 329; JMC iv 43). The result of these unsporting methods is that the airship message produces no effect, the notebook in the copper box turns out to be virtually blank, and the hundreds of messages are said to 'mean nothing'. And, whereas Grant's message had proceeded directly to his children 11,000 miles away, the bottle retrieved using firearms proves to be completely empty. Written pleas for help are thus numerous in the Voyages. Undoubtedly the adventure genre contains many similar instances, but in Verne's case, the careful punctuation, the urgency of the tone, and the fate of the final action - turned towards the future but destined to remain unfinished - should make us suspect that important concerns are at work. It is as if the sincerity of the message were linked to the risk of its not being received. The knowledge that even if it does arrive, it will be in a very different time and space, seems to free the writer from his inhibitions. The more advanced stages of technology, on the other hand, destroy the risk and the protection - and with them either the form or the substance of the message. But the importance of the messages also resides in their temporal characteristics. For once, the narrator is fully a character, instead of being merely a passive onlooker. Indeed, what he writes will probably determine his destiny. But the very intensity of the form means that it cannot be sustained for long - the consequence of bringing the narration right up to date is that it then has nowhere to go. The messages thus constitute temporal balancing acts, and ones with a tendency to self-destruct. In the early works, they just come to a halt; but in the later ones, the impulses are turned inwards, and it is the contents that tend to be destroyed instead. Only in the Michel-Vernian 'L'Eternel Adam' with its message across the millennia is a certain synthesis found, undoubtedly because the vital action here is the transmission of the message itself, and not any contents it might have - making the emptiness here almost a virtue. Ultimately, then, the messages illustrate all sorts of global themes. Their internal economy - and amazing economicalness - reflect back onto a wider message. They may represent a mise en abyme of the Voyages. A similarly precarious convergence of narrative and fictional time becomes visible at the ends of some of the novels. The use of the pass{ compos{ and the recourse to anticipations we saw earlier may be interpreted in this perspective as being signs of the tensions inherent in making the narration present its own demise. This is undoubtedly a problem of all fiction, but seems to become particularly explicit at the end of Vingt mille lieues. Aronnax is in Norway, waiting for the next ship back to France, and is reduced for a long period to total inactivity, interrupted only by the revision of his manuscript describing his previous adventures. The present tense here, in other words, constitutes the sign of a stagnation, a self-consciousness and a self-referentiality that are unusual in the adventure novel. But the ending of the very last Voyage, L'Etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac (1919), brings narrative and fictional time even closer together. Throughout most of the novel, the narration was in the third person, with only occasional extracts from the (first-person) newspaper articles sent back by one of the protagonists called Am{d{e Florence. The final page, however, reserves a surprise: Mais voici que (le narrateur) est parvenu @ la fin de sa tche. Bon ou mauvais, amusant ou ennuyeux, le livre est l@, maintenant. Sans inconv{nients ni dangers, l'incognito peut tre d{voil{, l'histoire peut tre proclam{e v{ritable, et celui qui la r{digea, votre tr}s humble et respectueux serviteur, peut la signer de son nom, Am{d{e Florence, (...) avant d'{crire le grand mot, le mot sublime, le roi des mots, le mot: FIN This passage would seem interesting in more than one respect. As in much of the posthumous production, the themes of authenticity and authorship are alluded to - by his play on person, Michel may also be implying that beneath the apparently impersonal style of the Voyages, a more involved voice is detectable - especially in the posthumous ones, his own. But also, the unique temporal situation of the closing of the sixty-eight-year cycle produces the present-context adverbs like 'voici', 'l@' and 'maintenant'. The overall effect is embodied especially in the build-up to the word 'FIN', whereby Michel finishes his father's task, and in some sense also finishes him off. It is thus both conventional and ironical, narratorial and authorial - it may constitute Michel Verne's having the last word in his debate with his father. Breaking Out Despite certain departures from the norms, the Voyages extraordinares do on the whole rely on the traditional system of tenses. The pass{ simple outnumbers all the other tenses put together. The exceptions that we have seen are therefore all the more interesting. First, the use of the pass{ compos{, without other verbs from the present-tense system, subtly distorts the traditional, largely linear construct, by implying a narratorial presence. Where there are successive verbs in this tense, the sequentiality of events is particularly reduced, distancing is much less, and the convention of objective knowledge characteristic of prose fiction, past and present, is seriously weakened. Verne here substitutes an element of self-reference and an allusion to a definite person, place and time. The pass{s compos{s imply, but cannot create, a more involved time of narration. Next, the extended imperfect affects instead the progression of events. It prolongs the duration of point-actions and reduces that of extended actions. It establishing a dur{e which is recursive, non-linear and disembodied. Thirdly, the constituent tense of Verne's free indirect style neutralises much of the progressive quality of the past tenses; but some of its constituent adverbs construct in addition a temporality which transgresses the norms of the nineteenth-century novel. They thus go a long way towards replacing the 'safe' narration of successive past events by an open-ended present with a remarkably undetermined future. The visions, the messages and the endings, finally, subvert the temporal situation. Each topos starts with an account of the past which leads up to the present. The abolition of the temporal barrier between the fiction and the narration adds urgency and cogency. But at this vital moment - which is also sometimes the moment of exhaustion of food or water - the topos is abruptly interrupted, and the reader is left to his own devices, as if in a sort of textual coitus interruptus. Because the self-referentiality is so developed, there is a danger of short-circuiting of activity, of a paralysed self-contemplation. The present-tense topoi should apparently be handled with caution. All four forms stand in opposition therefore to the well-established conventions of the objective narration of past events, carried out within a largely linear temporality. Verne's works contain an implicit critique of the continuity and verisimilitude of the 'realist' novel. They secrete a self-reflexiveness and a self-referentiality which underline 'faults' in the conventional system. They thus point the way to further experiments. CHAPTER 9 NOW OR NEVER 'Pour {conomiser les notes, il n'a fourr{ dans sa bote ni les ut ni les sol di}ses!' (...) 'C'est un crime' (...). Cette abomination, les Wagddis n'en ressentaient pas toute l'horreur!... Ils acceptaient cette criminelle substitution d'un mode @ l'autre!... (VA xvi 183). 'Si @ chaque instant nous pouvons p{rir, @ chaque instant aussi nous pouvons tre sauv{s' (VCT 341). 'Nous sommes condamn{s @ l'inaction, et il est des circonstances o| il faut avoir le courage de ne rien faire!' (C 50). Things Going By? As a result of the problems of using the self-referential present in narrative passages, it is difficult to imagine how extended passages in this tense could ever exist. It would seem that the text would soon necessarily fall over its own bootlaces, grind to a paralysed halt. And yet three of the Voyages extraordinaires are written virtually entirely in this tense. The novels in question are Le Chancellor (1875), L'Ile @ H{lice (1895) and Face au drapeau (1896). Le Chancellor is apparently the very first novel in continuous prose written in the present, in French and perhaps in any Western European language.1 What is more, L'Ile @ h{lice is apparently the first - perhaps only - one written in the third person and the present.2 Given the huge importance of tense in the modern novel, this moment, when the rigid form of the past tenses was first abandoned, would seem to be vital for understanding further developments. But what is almost as surprising as the phenomenon itself is the critical literature on it. Serres reports his impression that Le Chancellor is 'un r{cit simple et naf, tr}s unilin{aire'; Delabroy declares that this novel is the opposite of 'l'habituelle {criture pleine de la narration, qui est l'id{al-type de la bourgeoisie'; Musti}re perceives it as being a transcription of an instance of a largely non-temporal art, the painting Le Radeau de la M{duse; and Roudaut describes 'L'Eternel Adam' as 'un r{cit dont le temps (time rather than tense) se confond avec celui de la narration'.3 Despite these remarkable near-misses, not a single commentator appears even to mention the use of the present in any of the three novels. And yet this is clearly one of the most radical formal innovations in Verne's works, and one which may allow us a unique entry into his 'imaginary universe', with its highly revealing obsessions. The phenomenon occurs not only in the three novels (except for three chapters in Face au drapeau (FD 1-65)), but also in fairly lengthy sections of Voyage au centre de la Terre, Mistress Branican, La Mission Barsac, 'L'Eternel Adam', 'Frritt-Flacc', 'La Famille Raton' and 'M. R{-di}ze et Mlle Mi-b{mol'.4 In order to understand the temporal structures implied by the present tense, let us start by examining a typical selection of the opening passages, for this is where the author has to work hardest to establish the new usage: Vendredi 14 aot.- Brise {gale du N.-O. Le radeau marche avec rapidit{ et en ligne droite. La cte reste @ trente lieues sous le vent. Rien @ l'horizon. L'intensit{ de la lumi}re ne varie pas. (...) A midi Hans pr{pare un hame\on @ l'extr{mit{ d'une corde. Il l'amorce avec un petit morceau de viande et le jette @ la mer. Pendant deux heures il ne prend rien (...) (VCT 256-57). - CHARLESTON.- 27 septembre 1869.- Nous quittons le quai de la Batterie @ trois heures du soir, @ la pleine mer. Le jusant nous porte rapidement au large. Le capitaine Huntly a fait {tablir les hautes et basses voiles, et la brise du nord pousse le Chancellor @ travers la baie. Bientt le fort Sumter est doubl{ (...) (C 1). Frritt!... c'est le vent qui d{chane. ] Flacc!... c'est la pluie qui tombe @ torrents. ] Cette rafale mugissante courbe les arbres de la cte volsinienne et va se briser contre le flanc des montagnes de Crimma. Le long du littoral, de hautes roches sont incessamment rong{es par les lames de cette vaste mer de la M{galocride (...) (FF i 295). Lorsqu'un voyage commence mal, il est rare qu'il finisse bien. Tout au moins est-ce une opinion qu'auraient le droit de soutenir quatre instrumentistes, dont les instruments gisent sur le sol. En effet, le coach dans lequel ils avaient d prendre place @ la derni}re station du railroad vient de verser brusquement contre le talus de la route. ] 'Personne de bless{?', demande le premier, qui s'est lentement redress{ sur ses jambes (...) (IH I i 5). O| suis-je?... Que s'est-il pass{ depuis cette agression soudaine, dont j'ai {t{ victime @ quelques pas du pavillon? (...) Mais je raisonne dans la supposition que Thomas Roch a disparu avec moi... Cela est-il?... Oui... cela doit tre... cela est... Je ne puis h{siter @ cet {gard... Je ne suis pas entre les mains de malfaiteurs qui n'auraient eu que le projet de voler (...) (FD 66-67). Rosario, le 24 mai 2... Je date de cette fa\on le d{but de mon r{cit, bien qu'en r{alit{ il ait {t{ r{dig{ @ une autre date beaucoup plus r{cente et en des lieux bien diff{rents. Mais, en pareille mati}re, l'ordre est, @ mon sens, imp{rieusement n{cessaire, et c'est pourquoi j'adopte la forme d'un 'journal', {crit au jour le jour. ] C'est donc le 24 mai que commence le r{cit des effroyables {v{nements que j'entends ici rapporter pour l'enseignement de ceux qui viendront apr}s moi, si toutefois l'humanit{ est encore en droit de compter sur un avenir quelconque (...) (EA 230). At first sight, these passages appear to have little in common apart from the present tense itself. Even this usage may not seem surprising: like the visionary scenes examined in the last chapter, some of the passages resemble diaries or logbooks, some, lengthy historic presents, some, 'fantasy-presents', and some, narratorial presents. In other words, each occurrence appears explicable in terms of the previous tradition. But the reader who is confronted with this tense, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, chapter after chapter, normally feels a sense of strangeness - as shown by the bemused reactions of the four critics. The present tense is homeopathic in small doses, but proves highly unsettling in the long run. Indeed, reexamining each of the explanations in the light of the extreme persistence of the tense shows that they in fact present a problem. The first two extracts, for instance, resemble a diary merely in having dated headings, rather than in terms of their internal structures;5 and indeed the last one explicitly says that the diary form is a mere pretence, artificially superimposd on the narration. In the wider corpus, direct or indirect apostrophes also undermine the idea of a diary: 'que ceux qui me lisent comprennent'; '(...) ainsi que le lecteur ne va pas tarder @ l'apprendre'; 'vous comprenez bien que (...)'; '(...) que l'on connat' (C 173; IH I i 6; I xiv 153; FD 98, cf. 121, MB I iv 71, etc.). Again, the idea of a historic present is certainly a plausible one in the fourth passage, and Roudaut (p. 192) has argued that the final passage is also in the historic present. But I would claim that the latter is in fact much closer to a narratorial present; and that in any case the historic present is defined by its contrast with surrounding past tenses, with the result that a prose work entirely in the historic present cannot properly be said to exist.6 Ultimately, then, I would maintain that the traditional explanations, even taken together, are insufficient to explain the recurrence of the phenomenon. If we examine the background material to this corpus it also proves unhelpful: nowhere in the Voyages does the existence of the present tense seem to be hinted at - nor indeed in any extant part of Verne's correspondence nor in any other document.7 Let us therefore start again from first principles. Is it not possible that the present tense is used simply because the action is in present time? Reexamining the opening passages in this light shows that such an idea is by and large highly plausible: in general, they can easily be interpreted as 'instantaneous' narration - a sort of running commentary without the commentary. Nevertheless, there is one category of verbs that does not fit into this analysis, namely examples of the sort 'pendant deux heures il ne prend rien' (VCT 257). Elsewhere in the extended corpus, we can observe phrases like 'nous avons classe tous les jours', 'plusieurs fois, je rends visite @ l'ex-capitaine', 'une heure s'{coule' 'je consacre quelques heures @ r{diger mon journal' (RM 54; C 50; FD 110; C 74). All these verbs, in other words, are durative or iterative. The time of the narration is more extended than the time of the fiction, and so the two cannot be wholly synchronous. Indeed, in certain cases, the present tense is used for events clearly finished before being narrated: as historic presents within passages otherwise in the pass{ compos{ (e.g. FD 115) but especially in mixed sentences like '"Le cher enfant!', MURMURE M. Letourneur (...)."Monsieur Letourneur", AI-JE r{pondu, "(...)"' (C 11-12) or 'quoique je fusse un enfant pieux, je ne suis pas recueilli, moi!' (RM 92, cf. 55). Awareness that the present tense is sometimes past time may also contribute to the analysis of sentences like 'quel rve! (...) Ma main fi{vreuse en jette sur le papier les {tranges d{tails' (VCT 267) or '(...) je consigne le fait sur mon journal' (VCT 264). The writing, it is clear, cannot be going on at the same time as the speaking, or indeed as the writing described.8 Whatever the reason, greater scepticism would seem to be necessary: we have to ask whether any of the verbs imply simultaneity between events and narration. A further examination of the works shows that the great majority of the present tenses in fact contain very little indication as to their temporal status. Once again, however, there are exceptions. The rest of the opening passage from Face au drapeau, in particular, stands out because of its temporal immediacy, one where the form and content seem especially well-integrated: (...) Je ne me laisserai pas succomber (au sommeil)... Il faut me ressaisir @ quelque chose du dehors... A quoi?... Ni son ni lumi}re ne p{n}trent dans cette bote de tle... Attendons!... Peut-tre, si faible qu'il soit, un bruit arrivera-t-il @ mon oreille?... (...) Enfin... ce n'est point une illusion... Un l{ger roulis me berce... et me donne la certitude que je ne suis point @ terre... bien qu'il soit peu sensible, sans choc, sans @-coups... C'est plutt une sorte de glissement @ la surface des eaux... (...) Une nouvelle heure vient de s'{couler (...). A pr{sent, je me sens envahir par une sorte de torpeur... L'atmosph}re est vici{e... La respiration me manque... Ma poitrine est comme {cras{e d'un poids dont je ne puis me d{livrer... ] Je veux r{sister... C'est impossible... J'ai d m'{tendre dans un coin et me d{barasser d'une partie de mes vtements, tant la temp{rature est {lev{e... Mes paupi}res s'alourdissent, se ferment, et je tombe dans une prostration, qui va me plonger en un lourd et irr{sistible sommeil... ] Combien de temps ai-je dormi?... Je l'ignore. Fait-il nuit, fait-il jour?... Je ne saurais le dire (...) (FD 73-80). Similarly, in the rest of the corpus, a few passages do give the impression of recounting events as they happen. In the first of the three following passages, Kazallon describes, respectively, the sinking of the ship, the ending of a long and desperate water-less period, and his decision to eat human flesh; in the last one, the narrator describes his own death several decades after the founding of the last remaining human colony: Impossible de dire toutes les pens{es dont mon esprit est travers{ en ce moment, ni de peindre la rapide vision qui se fait en moi de ma vie toute enti}re! Il me semble que toute mon existence se concentre dans cette minute suprme qui va la terminer! Je sens les planches du pont fl{chir sous mes pieds. Je vois l'eau monter autour du navire, comme si l'Oc{an se creusait sous lui! (C 109-10). Nous sommes tous {tendus sur les voiles (...). Je souffre horriblement. Dans l'{tat o| sont mes l}vres, ma langue, mon gosier, pourrais-je manger? (...) Il est onze heures du matin. Les vapeurs (...) n'ont plus une apparence {lectrique (...). Ce n'est plus, maintenant, qu'un brouillard (...). Nous sommes couch{s @ la renverse, la bouche ouverte. L'eau arrose ma figure, mes l}vres, et je sens qu'elle glisse jusque dans ma gorge! Ah! jouissance inexprimable! (...) Les muqueuses de mon gosier se lubrifient @ ce contact. Je respire autant que je bois cette eau vivifiante, qui p{n}tre jusqu'au plus profond de mon tre! (C 198-99). Ah! le mis{rable! ] Mais non! Hobbart a sagement agi (...). Il ne faut pas que d'autres viennent m'arracher cette proie (de chair humaine)! (...) Il me la faut @ tout prix, je la veux, je l'aurai! (...) Personne ne m'a vu. J'ai mang{! (C 205-06). De tout (sic) ceux qui d{barqu}rent ici, moi, l'un des plus vieux, je reste presque seul. Mais la mort va me prendre, @ mon tour. Je la sens monter de mes pieds glac{s @ mon coeur qui s'arrte (...) (EA 260). What is striking about all these passages is their dramatic quality, their air of sincerity, their immediacy - their unusual presentness. More analytically, it is possible to see that for once, the focus of attention is not on external events: introspection now governs the speed of narration, as indicated by the density of first-person pronouns, punctuation marks like the series of three dots, and constructions like 'une nouvelle heure VIENT DE s'{couler'. Transcribing these passages in the pass{ simple would produce a strange result: 'A pr{sent, je me sentis envahir par une sorte de torpeur... L'atmosph}re fut vici{e... (etc.)'. But it would work for the imperfect: 'A pr{sent, je me sentais (...) L'atmosph}re {tait (...)'. A hypothesis then presents itself: given their running commentary concerning the inner self and their affinity with the continuous tenses, could these passages not be the thoughts of the character? In other words, could they not possibly be in some sort of free style (or interior monologue or even stream of consciousness)?9 Once the question has been posed, the obvious answer is yes - reading all the passages quoted as examples of free (direct or indirect) style is perfectly possible. But, because the tense does not provide any information, as it does in the context of past-tense narration, it would be less easy to go further - by for instance saying where in a given example the free style starts or stops. One way of attempting to formally verify the hypothesis is to take the classifications generally applied to the three voices of conventional narration, and see what result transposing them from the past into the present gives. Figure 35 represents this attempt: Variations in tense with nature of transposition and degree of narratorial intervention10 This table indicates, for both the past tense (top line) and the present tense (bottom line) the degree of transposition - that is the use of 'normal narration', indirect style or direct style - and the degree of narratorial intervention - that is the use of free style (2nd col.) or simply ordinary style (1st col.). It shows, notably, what would happen to the threefold opposition normal narration-indirect style-direct style if present-tense narration did follow the same categories as conventional narration. There would be no problem with the 'not free' case, but the distinction provided by the pass{ simple-imperfect-present would be lost in the case of free style, for 'Je suis libre' would be found in all three modes (as underlined in the table). The same utterance could be free indirect style, free direct style, or normal narration, without one having any way of telling the difference. Indeed, if it were observed in reality, this threefold equivalence could conceivably be used as a way of defining interior monologue in the present. But even on this assumption that the traditional categories worked for the present tense, the verbs would be powerless to help us identify the three voices. If we wish to demonstrate their existence, there remains only the possibility that formal discrimination between the voices might be produced by the past- and present-context adverbs, as it was in the case of the past tenses (cf. Chapter 8). In practice, one observes that many verbs have no accompanying adverbs ('la respiration me manque', 'je souffre horriblement', 'je reste presque seul', etc.), and may thus still be either normal narration, free indirect style or free direct style. But on the other hand certain of the adverbs do give a precise indication. In the four dramatic passages, all five - '@ pr{sent', 'en ce moment', 'aujourd'hui', 'maintenant' and 'ici' - are clear present-context ones. On the assumption that the same implications work as for the past tenses, our hypothesis is then verified, and the existence of direct or indirect style confirmed. The dramatic passages are to be interpreted as the thoughts of the characters. Some of the present tenses do mean present time, after all. It now remains to counter-check our hypothesis by verifying the temporal adverbs in the rest of the corpus. In certain cases, we may again observe clearly present-context ones: 'c'est demain (...) que nous serons arriv{s', 'en ce moment (...) on marche @ l'ouest', 'aujourd'hui', 'jusqu'ici', 'hier'.11 But there are also a large number of past-context adverbs: 'la brise est alors compl}tement tomb{e', 'le lendemain, 21 octobre, la situation est la mme', 'ce jour-l@ (...), j'aper\ois', 'cette ann{e-l@ (...) les Etats-Unis (...) sont dans l'entier {panouissement de leur puissance industrielle', 'dans ce temps-l@', '@ ce moment', 'la veille'.12 The present-context adverbs occur normally in the most vivid scenes, the ones where the main character has an important role, and the ones where the events are lived from within - the ones, in other words, where one might expect to have access to the thoughts of the character. The past-context adverbs, in contrast, are most in evidence in less dramatic passages where there are also durative or iterative ones - in those, in other words, most similar to conventional narration. It would seem reasonable to assume that these instances are closest to being past time. Beneath the apparent simplicity of the present tense, then, there is a considerable complexity, one which it is worth summarising. We have seen that the great mass of verbs contain little indication as to their external temporality. But a few of them, and many of the adverbs, do provide precise information, even if it points in two different directions. On one hand, a non-synchronous aspect, or even a clearly posterior narrative stance, combines with past-context adverbs and a generally objective or neutral tone and position. The cumulative effect is to destroy the idea of simultaneity of action and narration, and to produce a compressed temporality and a point of view like those of the pass{ simple. Most of L'Ile @ h{lice, with its non-deictic third person, approximates to this mode: the strange tone of this novel may be that of a future 'une fois' - a science-fiction effect on the level of the form. On the other hand, the immediacy of many of the verbs and adverbs in the corpus, together with an unusual introspection, produces a time which seems to be really present. In it there sometimes appears to be an indetermination between the three voices possible in fiction. Within this, however, one can detect a more personal voice. An effect is produced which moves between a sort of camera-eye technique and a stream of consciousness, a bit like Robbe-Grillet crossed with Virginia Woolf. The distribution of verb and adverb in the Voyages thus makes ultimate sense. In addition to establishing a new sub-genre - the novel written in the present tense - Verne invents a multiply-defined temporal system, a range of voices playing on the oppositions between narrator and character, posterior and simultaneous narration, and reporting and participation. Verne's three works are not only pre-Zola romans exp{rimentaux, but introduce new conceptions of subjectivity and time into the novel. Meredith's The Egoist (1879) and Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coup{s (1887)13 are not the only advances in technique during this period. Supporting Role The present occupies a surprising proportion of the verbs: over four-fifths of tense forms in the corpus. But an analysis of the other tenses may also contribute to our understanding of the experiments. As the passages quoted show, the next most frequent form is the pass{ compos{. In the same way as the pluperfect in conventional narration, it serves to describe events previous to the main line, even where free direct/indirect style seems to be at work: 'Hobbart A sagement AGI (...). J'ai mang{ (de la chair humaine)!' (C 205-06). But its time-sphere is not always distinct from that of the present tense. This applies in the cases of e^tre verbs like 'la mer EST ARRIVEE maintenant au tr{lingage' (C 128), but is also the essential feature of a unique scene where the narrator of Le Chancellor applies thought to his own moral behaviour. Having abruptly replied to a young girl that stronger people die quicker under starvation, and that this is a consolation, he then switches from the present to ask: 'Comment AI-JE pu r{pondre ainsi @ cette jeune fille?'; he resolves to reform: 'j'ai promis (de mieux agir)'; and he is later able to write: 'j'ai r{sist{, et que ceux qui me lisent comprennent' (C 170; 170; 173). The pass{ compos{, not here replaceable by any other tense, thus creates a rare link between past action and present reflection. Together with the 'reader's' present ('ceux qui me lisent'), serves to create an impression of sincerity: of the narrator's wish to gain a salvation going beyond mere survival. The imperfect has a similar role of mise en relief of past events, but for durative actions: 'Le second examine attentivement celui qui jusqu'ici commandait @ bord' (C 48). But the fact that its time-sphere does not overlap with that of the present means that non-motivated imperfects are occasionally visible: '(...) quand le Chancellor, que le vent poussAIT alors rapidement, s'arrte soudain'; 'j'aper\ois ce personnage alors qu'il remontAIT (...)' (C 40; FD 145; cf. 103, MB II ii 256, etc.).14 Undoubtedly more surprising in the context of the extended present tense would be the pass{ simple, for the imperfect and pass{ compos{ seem to cover most of the past between them. In fact, verbs like 'demandai-je', 'm'{criai-je' and 'pensai-je' (C 111; VCT 257; FD 102, 179) are probably not pass{s simples at all. They seem to be spelling variations of the presents 'demand{-je', 'm'{cri{-je' and 'pens{-je'.15 Again, a few of the authentic pass{s simples, like 'ces d{tails, je les appris' 'C'est avec le pic (...) que furent port{s les premiers coups' (FD 156; 191), are apparently due to inattention by author, typographer or editor.16 As such they demonstrate the habits of several centuries of reading prose in the past tenses, and the difficulties of conceiving novels that escape from them. On the other hand, virtually all the 'deliberate' pass{s simples are used for flashbacks going further back than the beginning of the novels, whether covering the past of the characters or historical events 'J'obtins (...), je partis et m'embarquai (...)' (FD 117; cf. 116, IH I i 8-9, I v 49, I xi 115-18). When maintained over several paragraphs without other tenses and with few adverbs a strange tone is created: 'Pomar{ protesta, les Anglais protest}rent. L'amiral Dupetit-Thouars proclama la d{ch{ance de la reine en1843 et expulsa le Pritchard, {v{nements qui provoqu}rent (...). Pritchard re/cut une indemnit{ de vingt-cinq mille francs, et l'amiral Bruat eut mission de mener ces affaires @ bonne fin' (IH I xiii 148-49; cf. 148). It may perhaps be best described as Voltairean in its remoteness and irony or Flaubertian in its flatness.17 It seems to gain part of its effect from the contrast with the general context of the present, but especially from the pass{ simple's great sequentiality and inherent 'non-reflexiveness', the fact that it contains no intrinsic coherence, no 'lateral' links to give breadth to the narrative thread. Verne's experiment produces a common purpose between tenses and temporal structures, to a degree that many novelists would envy. An isolated pass{ simple, on the other hand, is occasionally used for dramatic emphasis: 'le roi redevint un homme'; '(les) hommes que nous fmes - car nous ne sommes plus des hommes, en v{rit{' (IH II iii 190-91; EA 259). Here, in contrast, the effect comes from the sudden introduction of a temporal 'thickness', the addition of a longer-term perspective to the 'flatness' or the 'thinness' of the present. In Le Chancellor, especially, all the pass{s simples without exception are highly significant, serving to help define the overall structure of the novel. The events before the fateful voyage are recounted in this tense: 'en parcourant les quais de Charleston, je VIS le Chancellor. Le Chancellor me PLUT, et je ne sais quel instinct me POUSSA @ bord de ce navire (...). Je me DECIDAI donc @ prendre passage sur le Chancellor' (C 2). The transfer to the raft is also emphasised by means of a resounding preterite: 'rien ne reste plus de ce qui FUT le Chancellor' (C 130). Once dry land is reached again, finally, it is remarked that 'Robert Kurtis est et restera toujours l'ami de ceux qui FURENT' 'les passagers du Chancellor' (C 236; 236). All the pass{s simples in this novel appear therefore structurally important. They are symmetrically arranged, and act in conjunction with the loud ostinato of the name of the ship (and its virtual anagram, Charleston) to emphasise the three pivotal points of the novel, the beginning, the middle and the end. They create a tight framework, defined in terms of normal existence on dry land, within which the nightmarish events on the ocean may unfold. The pass{s simples may be the sign of an ordered terrestrial existence in a definite time and place - and the present, its abandonment. It is clear that, in our corpus, the three past tenses operate by instituting a contrast with the present, by simultaneously providing relief and relief. Both the 'accidents' and the 'deliberate' occurrences thus create a trompe l'oeil background with which to foreground the main story. At the same time, many of them may represent a temporary regression to one of the largely unconscious assumptions brought about by the long tradition of narrative literature: that past events have to be recounted in the past tenses. Verne, in his obvious-discreet way, simply ignores the convention. He thus confirms a version of Hamburger's thesis, namely that tense and time are not necessarily identical, that narration can produce its own autonomous temporality. But the boldness of this experiment should not be allowed to pass unnoticed. Science fiction has sometimes made play of the reduction of the dimensions of the world from three to two. We saw earlier that Verne is again a precursor on this 'content' level. But his reduction of tense applies the same principle to the form and the content - placing the characters on occasion in a time-capsule of both present tense and time from which escape is not obvious. The extraordinariness of Verne's journeys is not always where it might seem. Narration Impossible Further evidence of the difficulties encountered in writing novels in the present may be found in the role of the future. Here again, the traditional novel seems to act as a kind of anti-model for Verne. A naive view of his experiments might represent the present-tense novels as being merely past-tense ones without the past tenses (and with a pinch of narrative subjectivity added). L'Enfant, with its problems of coherency, is apparently written in this spirit. Evidence against such a view in Verne's case has already been accumulated; but the future tenses - principally the forms va porter and portera - will also prove illuminating in this respect. On the theoretical and formal level, the equivalence between the two sorts of novel apparently does not cause a problem, as there is a correspondence between their respective tenses. The present apparently takes on the functions of the past; the past, the pluperfect; the future, the conditional; and 'allait', those of 'va'. But the practice is sometimes different. A minute, almost Borgesian, change in a past-tense passage of Voyage au centre de la Terre points to one problem: in the 1867 edition, 'J'allai donc prendre (...)' (VCT 300) is substituted for 'J'allais donc prendre (...)'. The difference of a single letter, unnoticeable in the phonology of many parts of France, may seem unimportant. But 'J'allai' describes a completed movement, whereas 'J'allais' shows a gesture which is possibly going to be interrupted. The first, in other words, is spatial, and the second, spatio-temporal. In the present-tense narration the distinction is not always maintained, as shown by examples like: 'Ma main VA le saisir' (FD 245), 'je VAIS m'{lancer' (FD 257).18 In such instances, the spatial and temporal aspects are fused. One or other aspect may of course be lost. The temporal one disappears in 'Les matelots VONT chercher les pics' when the illustration shows the sailors already working with the pick-axes (C 94)! Sometimes, the ambiguity is undermined by an adverb, or simply by the following events: 'A pr{sent, que VA faire Robert Kurtis?' (C 72), 'Je VAIS faire feu. Hans m'arrte d'un signe' (VCT 270), 'Je VAIS les suivre ... ] Une main m'arrte' (C 110). In other cases, the spatial aspect is excluded from the beginning because the semantic level makes it clear that the assertions are 'merely' predictions: '(...) cette minute suprme qui va terminer (ma vie)' (C 110) or 'Nous allons sauter!' (VCT 290, repeated word for word on C 56). These last two examples are in fcat very important. Such instances may perhaps of course be interpreted as being in free indirect style; but such an explanation does not totally remove the problem. The future seems here contingently ill-defined (as it is in conventional narration, subject to the whims of the narrator) but also essentially and irrevocably ill-defined, undecidable. Taking these two utterances as literally true would be equivalent to contemplating a narrative on the point of disappearing. Because of their very 'monosemy', these two pinpoint the problem which the va form in general merely alludes to, but which is at the heart of present-tense narration: how can a future exist in a work of fiction? On whose authority can pronouncements be made about events yet to happen? 'Nous allons sauter!' is particularly illuminating in this respect, for it is not in quotation marks, and its concise and categorical affirmation implies its own contradiction. (If it is true, a) the story necessarily stops at that point, and b) the communication of the affirmation to any sort of narrataire becomes impossible.) More precisely, we can say that this self-contradiction is a sophisticated variant on the Cretan Liar Paradox, on a specifically temporal plane. Instead of simply saying 'I am lying', the character affirms 'I will have been lying': 'If I am telling the truth at the moment, then it will have been the case that I cannot have been telling the truth'. By means of this convoluted self-denegation, doubt is ultimately cast onto everything the first-person present-tense narrator affirms. Verne exhibits a very modern and complex self-questioning. In practice, of course, solutions are often found to the potential paradoxes of the open-ended future within the present-tense system. First, occurrences of 'vais' and 'va' other than those already quoted are rarely in the affirmative, except for events that are predictable in the short term, like the weather (VCT 282, etc.). Sometimes, they are negative, interrogative or combined with 'si' (e.g. VCT 287) - the slight redundancy of this last formulation indicating the tension provoked even by hypotheses concerning the future. But most often, other auxiliaries are used instead, like vouloir, devoir or pouvoir: the subjectivity of these verbs, and their emphasis on present potentiality, means that they are interpreted more as intentions than as affirmations, and therefore the paradox is largely avoided. Secondly, the context is often vital. Thus if the isolated prediction '(...) nous sommes sur le point de chavirer' (VCT 272) may undoubtedly be taken at face-value, an iterative fatal prediction is such a contradictory concept as to make the reader automatically assume it is in the past, as the full quotation shows: 'Vingt fois nous sommes sur le point de chavirer'. Similarly, the phrases 'l'{tat liquide va remplacer (...)' and 'ce globe que (la n{buleuse) va former' (VCT 262) may, if taken in isolation, again seem to be authentic pronouncements about the future. But in fact, as we have seen, they form part of Axel's vision of past time and thus, in addition to operating in diametrically opposite directions, are both ultimately bounded by posterior events. In this way all the occurrences of 'va' extrapolate the tendency of the unfinished messages and other terminal situations: they remove the protection that consisted of the inverted commas or the impending end-cover. They imply, even if only some of them create, a revealing paradox: that of the absorption of the narrator by his character, a present-future that is open-ended, a fictional time-span of an unpredictable nature. The paradox is in fact taken a degree further with the future tense itself. This form is employed to make a number of even more categorical predictions about events on the millionaire cruiser with its resident orchestra or about the rescue of Ratine from her life as an oyster: Les plus riches gentlemen, Walter Tankerdon en tete, font merveille dans le sparties de golf et de tennis. Lorsque le soleil SERA tomb{ perpendiculairement sous l'horizon, ne laissant apr}s lui qu'un cr{puscule de quarante-cinq minutes, les fus{es du feu d'artifice PRENDRONT leur vol @ travers l'espace, et une nuit sans lune PRETERA au d{ploiement de ces magnificences. ] Dans la grande salle du casino, le quatuor est baptis{ (...) (IH I x 112). Somme toute, comme ils n'ont pas r{clam{ contre cet enl}vement, il n'y a point eu {change de notes (...). Quand il PLAIRA au quatuor de reparatre sur le th{tre de ses succ}s, il SERA le bienvenu. ] On comprend que les deux violons et l'alto ont impos{ silence (...) (IH I xii 131). Grce aux sentiments d'humanit{ que les Malais AURONT su exploiter, sans {veiller aucun soup\on, Standard Island RALLIERA les parages d'Erromango... Elle MOUILLERA @ quelques encablures... Ils la JETTERONT sur les roches... Elle s'y BRISERA... (IH II ii 179, cf. II ii 178, I vi 222). Le porte-monnaie du quatuor est bien garni, et, s'il se vide @ Standard Island, quelques recettes @ San Diego ne TARDERONT pas @ le remplir (IH I vi 64). Lorsque le banc SERA @ sec, ils IRONT chercher la pr{cieuse hutre, qui renferme Ratine, et l'EMPORTERONT (FR 13). One's first reaction to these passages - above all if read in their context of present tenses - is surely surprise and incomprehension. Even with the benefit of decades of narrative experimentation behind us, it is difficult to see where the verbs in the third person and future tense 'have come from', especially given that there are no adverbs and that the rest of the works is also in the third person. One's surprise is undoubtedly further increased by what they say, for it is destined to be essentially untrue: the fireworks are not mentioned again, the players do not go back, the Malays' attack fails, the players do not make money at San Diego, and the rescue of Ratine does not happen as described. The utterances conceal, once again, a flagrant tendency to self-contradiction. The problem of the open-ended future is therefore posed here with particular acuity. What is the point of these utterances? And who is responsible for them? In the total absence of the usual markers, it would be hazardous to interpret them as an 'authorial' intervention. Nor can one easily posit the transcription in free indirect style of the thoughts of an individual or a group, since, in the third case for instance, nobody has any warning of the Malays' intention to attack, and nowhere else in the novel is their point of view adopted. A first conclusion, then, is that this use of the future tense is a surprising departure from the literary norms - even of the twentieth century. And secondly, given that no other explanation works, the only response seems to be to posit a sort of free style, one that can only be the responsibility of the narrator. The free style is again indeterminate between direct and indirect - indeed the distinction becomes meaningless here. But, because of the tense used and the systematic unreliability of the information given, this style is necessarily distinct from the principal voice; and must therefore be considered as forming a 'second narrative voice'. These future tenses, in brief, constitute another radical innovation, and one that coincides with the striking mode of narration of L'Ile @ h{lice: its unique combination of deictic tense and non-deictic person. Both the va form and the future thus extrapolate the narrative problems caused by a present tense which is sometimes a present time. Often, it is true, the problems are eluded, for an apparently true present/future is really guaranteed by a narrator-in-the-shadows, and is consequently firmly anchored in the past. But in other cases, the problems of freedom in narration are squarely faced up to; and the narration then tends to blend into the fiction itself. Of course, explanations in terms of authors' 'mistakes' cannot be totally excluded. But in the particular case of Verne's futures, the occurrences are sufficiently distinctive and numerous to make us suspect that some sort of aesthetic 'plan' is at work. Above all, they fit into the wider context of the use of the present tense, which can clearly not be a mere 'accident'. Verne's works are not only remarkable experiments in the novel, but point the way to later developments. Their systematic doubt, loosening of structures, narrow social panorama, introversion and self-consciousness are all aspects of anguished modernity. Towards a New Novel Le Chancellor, L'Ile @ h{lice and Face au drapeau must be considered as startling innovations in the form of the novel. But in addition they pose the questions of time in literature and the nature of narration; and they also go some distance, I would claim, towards answering them, towards creating a new system in place of the old. The simple appearance of the present tense in fact conceals the existence of two modes, each with its own adverbial system: an external one designed for the narration of adventures and a personal one suitable for introspection. What is more, transitions between the two may be either gradual or sudden. If further evidence were required of the care with which the tense system is constructed, it is provided by the pass{ simple framework. These work in very close harmony with the symmetries we observed in the speed of the narration and with the various stages of cannibalism and cannibalisation. Form and content here mutually reinforce each other. But the specific raison d'tre of the experiments still remains largely mysterious. Even in the most radical modern experiments, tenses are essentially defined by their variety, by their contrast with surrounding forms (Weinrich, ch. 4). Why then are over four-fifths of Verne's verbs in a single tense? The much-analysed pass{ compos{ of L'Etranger, by way of comparison, makes up much less than two-thirds of the verbs.19 Why is the present used rather than some other tense? Why do the experiments continue over some 800 pages or 25,000 verbs? Why do these novels employ this particular device? The explanation in terms of the diary is clearly incompatible with the parts of the corpus that are not in dated sections - and even for the dated sections, it does not begin to account for the persistence of the present, nor for the dual internal temporal structure. Again, it might be thought that the tenses were linked to an unusual distribution of past, present and future time- spheres. Whereas conventional narration can draw on two main tenses, two for future events, and one or two for past events, the three works can draw on only one main tense, two for future events and as many as four or five for anterior events. This sort of link could only be plausible, then, if the works spent a great deal of time exploring the past in great detail. But in reality, they hardly exploit the opportunities for flashbacks at all, whether personal or historical, or internal or external to the time of the novels. Instead, the use of the present tense causes the narration to virtually "implode", posing the problem of the continuity of the narrative act in fiction. On this level, the tenses are positively counter-functional. Is there anything then in the themes which might explain the present tense? Comparison with the rest of Verne's works - and with the 'adventure' novel in general - does lead in fact to the observation of a number of unusual characteristics. The figure of Kazallon, anodyne first-person narrator of Le Chancellor, is typical of the huge, almost Meursault-like, distance between the main character and the author. In none of the three novels in fact is there a hero, in the sense of an admirable character who remains at the centre of the stage; in none is any particular aim being pursued apart from the passive one of mere survival; and in none do all the sympathetic characters finally survive. In addition, all three works are set at sea, out of sight of land; in all three, the main protagonists are there against their will, as unwilling passengers; and in all three, the future is unknown, and will be determined by factors beyond their control. Intuitively, one can see that the present tense is at least compatible with such characteristics; that spatio-temporal emptiness, lack of structure, negativity, pessimism, indeterminism and reductionism might easily be all linked together. But this would still not seem enough on its own to justify the extent of the experiments. We have seen that the three works themselves contain no hint of acknowledgement of their own formal eccentricity. But in the other Voyages, a careful reading does occasionally throw up a potentially relevant comment. In each case, formal reductionism and the very stuff of artistic activity are closely associated. Thus when faced with the problem of pursuing rhymes 'like deserters in a battle', Hector Servadac attempts to subject poetry to rigorous methods, using a colour- code system 'afin de mieux varier les rimes rebelles' (HS 21). Again, Scottish bagpipe music is described as exclusively using 'les intervalles d'une gamme majeure, @ laquelle manque la sensible' (RV 48). The mad king-anthropologist, lastly, is presented as having performed a similar subversion on the musical scale of his barrel-organ: '"Pour {conomiser les notes, il n'a fourr{ dans sa bote ni les ut ni les sol di}ses!"' (VA xvi 183). The three- way convergence is striking. Colours, rhyming vowels, notes: in each case at least seven primary values are possible, but in each case the range is reduced to a more limited form of expression. And nowhere is any further explanation provided. It is here that the tenses come into play, for there are again approximately seven basic values and the range is again dramatically underemployed, nay decimated, once more without justification given. Even the dates involved would seem to confirm a connection.20 My claim, then, is that after carrying out his experiments, Verne cannot resist alluding to them - but in characteristically indirect fashion, by writing about colours, notes and vowels rather than about tenses. For the pass{ simple, read G-sharp, and for the conditional, read green o. In this light, we can also understand the (fictional) audience's reaction to 'cette abomination, (...) cette criminelle substitution d'un mode @ l'autre' (VA xvi 183). They did not even notice. For untutored savages, read the French reading public. This phrase is a scathing comment on the real public's total blindness to the experiments replacing most of the tenses - a comment itself destined of course to remain totally misunderstood. The nouveaux romanciers have been much less discreet about their own formal innovations. The public's reaction did contain some information, nevertheless: the low sales-figures of the three novels21 may be taken as implying some sort of link between the formal experiment and the discontinuity in Verne's production that Bellemin-Nol and Raymond noted (cf. my Chapter 1). Such an idea is supported by observing that what seems to 'break' in the Voyages is the temporal coherence - the overall sense of significance - and that the experiments explicitly provide the means of expressing this in sustained and tangible form. Consequently, I would argue that the break is more pronounced and happens earlier than most critics have recognised - that it is Le Chancellor which inaugurates the later period, and in no uncertain fashion. Cannibalism and unprecedented tenses are both signs of a deep despair. Moreover, the spatio-temporal emptiness of the three novels and their apparently perverse omission of the past tenses may tie in with other general features of the Voyages observed earlier. Their negativity and reductionism, in particular, stand in many respects in opposition to the dynamic structures implied both by the line and arborescence and by the pass{ simple. But they also share characteristics with the various closed systems analysed throughout this work: the refusal to use external resources, most notably, and the bored passivity that results. The ultimate effect of being an unwilling passenger (or perhaps a narrator without a subject) is very similar to that of the solitary or starving individual: that of being trapped in the present, in the situation of waiting, of waiting for events that are not only unpredictible but also beyond all control. Here at last, then, is a precise link between the forms of the three novels and their contents. Waiting is the sign that there are no adventures left; that, the past having been foreclosed, the future is thereby also poisoned; and that, as a result, the problems to come can no longer displace those of the present, nor the practical questions the existential ones. The present tense throws the characters back on their own devices. It is this same fundamental situation, I would argue, that Beckett explores, from En Attendant Godot (1952) onwards. Beckett exhibits the same emphasis on waiting, the same obsession with the closed physical space, the same curtailment of the future, the same further reduction of the already reduced space and the same refusal to consider abstract metaphysics directly.22 Instead of relying on delayed gratification - the perversely roundabout route, the constantly retreating temporal horizon - the characters of both writers are reduced to a complete passivity - to hoping that their sensory and metaphysical deprivations will go away, and to writing, like Flaubert, about almost nothing. Action and narration together give them enough substance to exist, but only just. Throughout the Voyages, indeed, there is a similar tendency to exist in the anxious expectation of catastrophe - 'la mort probable @ chaque minute, @ chaque seconde' (MS 127). Most of the time, the characters under this sword of Damocles attempt to adopt a pragmatic and phlegmatic attitude. They argue that, '"si @ chaque instant nous pouvons p{rir, @ chaque instant aussi nous pouvons e^tre sauv{s"' (VCT 341); or else that their very powerlessness frees their minds for other matters: '"'Apr}s', c'est l'avenir, c'est ce que Dieu voudra! Ne songeons qu'au pr{sent!"' (C 61; cf 46). But the situation cannot really be considered symmetrical, for 'being saved', whether one takes it in its moral or adventure-story meaning, amounts to continuing to wait for the unpredictable future - to being 'condemned to inaction' (C 50). And thinking 'only about the present' is even further from a solution, being merely a conciser formulation of the problem. '"Que sommes-nous venus faire ici?"' Verne's characters ask in quiet desperation, '"mais que faire?"' (RV 188; VCT 341). But the question is answered at best by an unhelpful and passive '"ce que nous faisons"'; and at worst either by a nihilistic '"il faut (...) ne rien faire"' or by a suicidal '"plus rien @ faire"'.23 Both 'nothing to do' and 'nothing to be done': a situation both empty and desperate. The only response proposed to the problem of anguished solipsism is to indulge in yet more anguished solipsism. And this is in the early, supposedly more optimistic, works! Negativity and materialism have robbed the characters of all normal occupations, and it is in this metaphysical dead-end that the regressive activities find one of their principal raisons d'tre. The only occupation at the disposal of the characters is to squeeze the maximum out of the resources remaining in the system. After the successive stages have been passed through, however - after internal resources have also been exhausted - the '"que faire?"' question only comes back with greater force than ever. The despair of Verne's characters is then all the more complete for being concentrated into the pathetically restrained limits of the present. The tenses used in Le Chancellor, L'Ile @ h{lice and Face au drapeau would thus seem to be merely one manifestation - but one that is 'overdetermined' - of the reductionist and self- annihilating tendencies visible throughout Verne's works. The avoidance of the normal mode of narration and the resultant temporal stagnation barely visible in Vingt mille lieues and La Mission Barsac in fact underlie all the Voyages extraordinaires. Beneath the enthusiastic pursuit of the adventure genre, there is often the opposite genre trying to get out - and it succeeds over at least three novels. The present tense stands for the renunciation of three connected facilit{s: the optimistic fuite en avant, the extravagant use of external material and narrative resources and the retreat into the past or future. It substitutes instead a hopeless waiting, an existential void: closed tenses and closed social systems are ultimately in tight correlation. The rupture in Verne's production points to one of the important problematics of the collected works. The break of the structure is the result of going to the end of the cul-de-sac implied by certain versions of the naturalistic mode of time: '(the) slow, imperceptible pining away, the silent wearing out of life.'25 At the same time, Verne seems to be taking part in - even anticipating on - the general tendency of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to turn the novel inwards and to question the very genre itself.26 In so doing, he points up the arbitrariness of Weinrich's and Benveniste's names for the groups of tenses. Although temps narratifs, temps de l'histoire, temps commentatifs, temps du discours are in general accurately named, the effect of Verne's radical subversion is to make the 'commentative tenses' into un-commentative 'narrative' ones, to produce a 'discourse' which does not discourse at all but instead tells a story. Fran\ois Rivi}re's disappointed conclusion, that Verne's writing is here equivalent to an 'absence d'intrigue',27 must therefore be replaced by a recognition of novelty on a deeper level. The temporal and spatial minimalism of the marine setting represents an escape from the structural looseness of much of the picaresque and adventure genres. But it and the materialistic reductionism are merely the donn{es of Verne's fiction. From them, the novels create a multi-level interrogation of the process of narration, a universe where the form refers insistently to its own origin, a spiral of significance that points ineluctably to its own inner void. Verne's use of the present tense, with its concomitant distortion of the past and future, is not merely a formal device, but represents an attempt to refashion the genre of the novel. His search for a way of expressing the mood of three voyages leads him to a rejection of the ordered temporality of the nineteenth-century novel, and to the creation of an 'external interior monologue', a personal but disciplined vision, an ongoing dur{e, closer to man's real experience of the tangible world. This emphasis on present time anticipates a major concern of many modern works. Verne's strength is not to have predicted the science of the twentieth century, but to have laid the ground for some of its most remarkable literary developments.  CHAPTER 10 'SO UNLITERARY A WRITER AS VERNE'? The Closing Down of History Our journey through the Vernian universe has above all led us to discover a bewildering richness of material, and one where the difficulties of searching for order are compounded by two distinctive traits. First, Verne's works seem to consist almost exclusively of 'one-offs', of presentations of the non-reproducible peculiarities of the natural or human worlds, of unique cases straddling the traditional classifications. Each Voyage is apparently so constructed as to blur numerous distinctions: those separating God and man, man and beast, beast and machine; space and time, inside and outside, open and closed; novelty and repetition, self and others, or activity and passivity. The texts are at first sight nothing but stresses and strains. Comprehension is seemingly further hindered by the other distinctive trait, the differences between the earlier and later works. If most of the Voyages up to L'Ile myst{rieuse (1875) offer relatively structured forms and themes, those published after this date are characterised by a regression from earlier positions and an increase in explicit irony and pessimism. Must one therefore consider them, like Bellemin-Nol, as 'fiascos'? To answer this question, the criteria involved must be made clearer. If an explicit philosophical or ideological 'message' is being sought, then the later works do imply a certain failure. Verne undermines more and more of the conventional wisdoms of the sixty-eight years when 'he' was writing. As Raymond points out, the self-conscious works of the later period air obsessions that had previously only been visible in outline, lay bare their own textual machinery, and so afford certainly fewer positive conclusions but perhaps as much understanding of the Voyages as a whole . Using the complementarity of the two periods to search for order is therefore the most suitable way of approaching the Vernian cosmos. The heroes started with the challenge of coming to terms with an open horizon. To be able to travel, their aim was to make some sort of connection between their own isolated 'point-being' and the whole of two- or three-dimensional space. They wished to find a structure that was continuous but would also be able, by its planarity, to accommodate a geometrically increasing area of space. To a certain extent, these conditions are satisfied in the arborescence, for it can be considered to 'start from' a single point, but to finish by filling the length and breadth of the available space. But the projects are still far from being completed, because the destination remains evacuated: without a fixed end, the fuite en avant of the branching structure is equivalent to an avoidance of the issue. The mere covering of space, the later works belatedly seem to conclude, cannot hope to produce significance, cannot, a fortiori, lead to the sacred. It merely dissipates energy. The structure standing in opposition, the linear path that ignores the vagaries of space and heads directly towards a predetermined goal, is also a frequent figure in the Vernian cartography. But it often involves the opposite problem, tending as it does to lead too quickly to the destination. If he wishes to use this form, therefore, Vernian man must temper his desire to arrive in an unexplored region by employing artificial means, by thinking about the joys of travelling. Self-restraint is part of gratification. Novel destinations cannot however be invented indefinitely in an age where the speed of travel is rapidly shrinking space. The age of exploration will soon have to be considered closed - and going too often to the ends of the Earth means coming all the more abruptly to the end of the world. The days of the Voyages are numbered from the beginning. (Verne is not of course the only writer to contemplate this ending of history - but he seems to have been the first (and the last?) to make it the aim of his collected works.) Once the universe has been totally discovered and described - if only in fiction - the series of Les Mondes connus et inconnus will be bereft of its constituent tension. The heroes and the author are obliged from the beginning to eke out what is left of their peau de chagrin, but at the same time to indulge in bursts of hyperactivity when ot hers look like getting there first; and this double activity is overshadowed by the total passivity that will result when there is nothing left at all. The dog in the manger is guarding a stable-door that is ineluctably closing. Verne reacts to the acceleration of history by trying, alternatively, to slow it down and to speed it up even more. The tensions between closure and openness and activity and passivity - and between the earlier and later works - are thus not only psychological but historical. For Verne, the unique c{sure is between a world where field exploration is still possible, where anything may yet be found, and a globe without even the theoretical possibility of change, one limited to the dreary rehearsal of Les Mondes connus. If we accept this hypothesis of the future as being ultimately a dead-end for all the Vernian travellers, it helps us understand why the real and cognitive ventures nearly always finish by trying other time-zones. But even the explorations carried out in the recent past, by means of logical deductions or scientific or historical mises en sc}ne, contain little mystery, and hence few chances of approaching the sacred. By default, the remote past appears to be the only issue open to the nineteenth century, the only area where Nature can resist man's mechanical progress, the only 'place', paradoxically, where the journey is not spoilt by knowledge of journey's end. It is the only domain, in other words, where real and significant change is still possible. The consequence - which undoubtedly chimes in again with Verne's psychology - is that the search for the mysteries of past time receives exceptional attention in the Voyages extraordinaires. But only in one book, Voyage au centre de la Terre, do all three components slot perfectly into place: the spatio-temporal relationship - one-to-one and exhaustive; the direction - backwards; and the range - all the time that has ever been. The time-travel of this novel represents an impulse of the whole sixty-eight-year cycle. From the scientific point of view, nevertheless, the long backwards and downwards path through the animal, vegetable, and mineral vestiges is overshadowed by its 'starting'-point - the White man. But the journey also culminates in the resurgence - 'l@-bas' - of something resembling modern man. The end is thus in the beginning. Time-travel seems to be both the only novel experience possible and the ultimate symbol of the finiteness of existence and the closing-down of history. It opens up new worlds - to visit rather than to conquer - but it also involves an unhealthy entanglement of past and present - one containing an inherent tendency to implode. Because even the spatio-temporal world proves in the end to be bounded, each attempt to go beyond it merely serves to emphasise the circularity: all roads lead back home. Verne's heroes are sooner or later forced back into the present, and into the smaller, self-contained spaces that constitute both the ultima Thule and the denial of the travel drive. The illustrations, with their tendency to the instantaneous, may possibly reflect this spatio-temporal frustration; but the major sign is undoubtedly the self- reflection, self-absorption, and self-destruction which feature so prominently throughout the Voyages. The tendencies occur in the most varied of 'systems', but exhibit vital shared morphological characteristics. The fundamental claim of this study, then, is that the processes of Verne's ships, social groups, and tenses exhibit deep structural parallels, and ones that imply a common disruption of time and space. In each, a preliminary step consists of the refusal to use the external resources normally considered essential to the activity in question. The refusal is never justified or explained, but we can note that the act of choosing is generally very difficult for the characters, and that this refusal obviates much of the need for choice. Then, after the vital first step, the rest of the process follows on. Two degrees of closure may be distinguished. The first one involves the self-contained group or alimentary system; it undermines the linear time of events and reduces the distance between action and reaction. The high degree of selectivity in the construction of the system permits exhaustive treatment within it. This exhaustiveness will nevertheless lead to the exhaustion of resources, and necessarily culminates, therefore, in a bored passivity. The final stage of endogamy occurs when the selectivity becomes exclusivity, when the self-other division is transferred from the social or ship's body to the self- contained individual and when the past tenses are ousted by the self-conscious present. The narrator now tends to lose all autonomy, and external perspectiveness and resources to be completely absent. The fuite en avant is turned in on itself, it is a fuite en dedans. Narrator and character end up hopelessly tangled together. Caught up on the horns of a temporal version of the Cretan Liar Paradox, they can consider the future only in the light of assertions which are either true or communicable but can never be both together. The resonance now combines only too perfectly with the chamber; the systems of autocannibalism, autoeroticism, and 'autoreference' are both the most naturally accessible ones and the most dangerously and artificially isolated ones. Their constituent acts are atemporal ones on a high-wire apparently held up only by the flow of time and surface tension. They are the last positive, self-assertive acts, and the final negative, self- annihilating ones. They make up systems that are both open and closed, free and constrained, and timeless and centred on time. They are in perpetual motion but also permanently self-destructing. Michel Meets Jules Verne's works contain original and sophisticated systems; and they do this starting from a realistic, even pedagogical, perspective. One of the consequences is that conventions of realism, at least as Verne interprets them, sometimes lead to conclusions that fall outside the canon. But another consequence is on our perceptions of the Voyages: Verne's reputation as an 'impersonal' writer would seem to be very much weakened. Even if conventional psychology plays little part in the works, much of their unity comes from this subtle and systematic working-out of the situation of the person in the functioning of the universe. What begins as a journey of exploration becomes a journey into the past and ends as a journey to the centre of the self. Additional evidence for such a claim can be seen in two central figures of the Voyages. The writer in Jules Verne's works is one of the rare figures to be able to go everywhere and evaluate all modes of life and thought. But in practice, at least as first-person narrator, he invariably deals with contingent matters: his subject is always very much of this world and his rewards, if any, basely material. Put otherwise, the essential problem of writing for Vernian man is in the need for scrupulousness. Writing leaves little time for action; and if it is not to be pure confabulation, it must adhere closely to reality, bu t must avoid interfering with it, must avoid crossing the frontier between the cognitive and the real worlds. The writer can thus never be a full actor, but must always remain involved. The tension between doing and observing can be seen throughout the Voyages. The Vernian scientist possesses the same conscientiousness, but taken to a higher pitch - Aronnax and Clawbonny are also writers, but ones trapped in a narrow specialisation. As a result, their attempted total objectivity - their separation of narrative knowing and active being - merely leads them back all the more quickly and brutally to the ineradicable position of the individual. The hidden role of the person - and his desire - is central to an understanding of science in the Voyages. The writer and the scientist are both defined by their ontological incompleteness and their more or less repressed subjectivity. Above all, they both have an ambiguous relationship with time and space, which permeate all the concerns of the Voyages, but remain almost impossible to isolate. Even at the end of our analysis, time and space in the Voyages, considered separately, remain largely mysterious entities. Neither is material nor immaterial, neither, divinely-appointed nor created by man, and neither is detectable as a scientific object nor constructable as a literary subject. For Verne the positivist, the frustrating lack of physical data tends to lead time and space to be ignored; but for Verne the novelist-craftsman, they simply cannot be circumvented. Instead, the problem is transferred, subsumed into such typically nineteenth-century concerns as the relationship with other times and places, the nature of identity and difference, or the functioning of feedback systems. Time and space in the Voyages remain a loose bundle of conceptions and perceptions, defined above all in terms of each other. Although rarely imperceptible, they stay consistently and implacably unanalysable. As a result, the long and tortuous search in Jules Verne's works for meaning in and over space and time never reaches a final destination, frustrated as it is by a blockage at the very beginning. The only reliable definition of even such everyday conceptions as inside or outside or physical and mental is a circular one where each is defined as the opposite of the other - as Verne puts it, 'stomach and brain' constitute the man (AL 119). In the Voyages, hierarchical or top-down theories ca nnot hope to be sustained, because of the unpredictable effect of natural oddities. Global views tie their authors completely in knots, but partial ones throw up more problems then they solve. Reflection alone is useless, and action heedless. In this way, the Voyages extraordinaires seem to present themselves as a heroic and exemplary failure: they prove that even the most visionary survey of Nature's outstanding features cannot put the world back together again. This general scepticism is undoubtedly a reaction to - and comment on - the overweening philosophical and social ideas of the time. Verne puts another nail into the remaining encyclopaedic aims of the Age of Reason; and contributes massively to what was to become the new uncertainty. Ultimately, then, Jules Verne argues that all watertight, mechanical, or self-absorbed systems must be avoided, that the only total system is the whole universe, and that man's sole choice is in relativity. The Voyages seem to conclude that man defines himself by contact with his environment and by informed introspection. He must be neither too involved nor too detached. Or at least, he must in the unrevised version. Michel Verne's resuscitation of the Voyages in extremis subtly alters the balance of the whole. The posthumous works are perhaps less Vernian than hyper-Vernian, in constant danger of being so imitative as to seem tongue-in-cheek, of becoming 'post-Vernian'. The fifty pages of 'L'Eternal Adam', in particular, put the ideas of fifty years through a prism. They use the form to argue against the 'message', to apply scepticism to the very principle of scepticism; and to conclude that the scientist and the writer may together yet circumvent the evasiveness of time and the meaningless of existence. In the posthumous creed, appearances are particularly deceptive. Cycles are not necessarily eternal, for individual intelligence and collective wisdom, and faith in a future progress and knowledge of a better past are not now antagonistic opposites. Michel Verne's work faces up to the disasters man provokes by excessive pride in advanced technology; but does not allow itself to become hypnotised by them. Such is the synthetic force of the tale, indeed, that it acts in many ways as a conclusion for the whole contradictory series of the Voyages extraordinaires. (For this reason, but also for Michel's limpid and lucid contribution to the collected works, it is my view that they should have both names on the cover. The corollary is that Michel Verne ought also to have full status as a writer in encyclopaedias, histories of literature and so on.) Bringing to a close one of the final volumes, 'L'Eternel Adam' shifts the 'neither-nor' towards a potential 'both-and'. It proclaims that man's essential task is to attempt to come to terms with time and space by both reflection and action. The central debate of the Voyages - that between objectivity and subjectivity - is here partly resolved. Man's proper role is in a courageous and lucid search for theoretical and practical knowledge of himself and the cosmos (EA 236): La v{ritable sup{riorit{ de l'homme, ce n'est pas de dominer, de vaincre la nature; c'est, pour le penseur, de la comprendre, de faire tenir l'univers immense dans le microcosme de son cerveau; c'est, pour l'hommme d'action, de garder une me sereine devant la r{volte de la mati}re, c'est de lui dire: 'Me d{truire, soit! m'{mouvoir, jamais!...'. Why Him Why, in the light of their subtlety and richness, have the Voyages extraordinaires suffered from such a reputation for naivety and poverty, and from at best an admittance into a sub-literary genre? Why, even now, do postgraduate students so often encounter such blind incomprehension? Mere popularity often of course has little to do with literary merit. Nevertheless, any creative writer who has been the most widely translated writer in the world, who has sold as many copies as Marx or Mao and who, unlike all other 'popular' writers has been read so extensively over more than a century would seem to deserve a minimum of serious consideration.1 It is true that Jules Verne's works vary in interest, epecially towards the end of his life. Even in the richest works, Verne occasionally indulges in longueurs - and often makes factual mistakes of the most elementary sort. More generally, such features as a patronising tone, a tendency to conservatism and certain limits of the genre sometimes reduce 'the pleasure of the text'. But much of the responsibility, I would argue, must in fact be laid at the door of some of the commentators themselves. Neglect of the creative aspects of the Voyages has led, for example, to trivialisations like Erich von Dniken's 'Spirit-Telephone Conversation with Jules Verne' or C.-N. Martin's 'Jules Verne = 1/2 de Fenimore Cooper, 1/4 d'Edgar Poe + 1/4 d'Hoffmann' or even to characterisations like George Orwell's 'so unliterary a writer as Verne'!2 But it is also certain critics' misunderstanding of the nature of science-fiction and indeed of science and of literature that seems to have led them astray. Thus Verne himself, comparing his own works with those of H. G. Wells, claimed '"I make use of physics. He invents"'; Wells throws the comparison back, arguing that Verne avoids the fantastic and that 'his works dealt almost always with actual possibilities of invention and discovery'; Suvin presents Verne as a strict Newtonian, dismissing him with an unsupported remark about his 'liberal interest in the mechanics of locomotion within a SAFELY HOMOGENEOUS SPACE'.3 Francis Lacassin, lastly, extrapolates the ideas of these three, making a long list of science-fiction concepts supposedly absent from the Voyages: 'Equation espace-temps; univers parall}les; voyage dans le temps et sa cons{quence extrme, le paradoxe temporel; promotion du r}gne animal ou v{g{tal (..., d')esp}ces animales (...); d{finition d'une nouvelle cosmogonie; mutants; robots; monstres; humanodes'.4 In assessing these ideas, one can begin by agreeing that Verne's works are characterised by many positivistic-inspired positions that exclude certain aspects of the extraordinary. Verne's horror of the 'danger' of the unsubstantiated metaphor generates many of the works. Plausibility and realism often haunt the Voyages. But I would argue that the critics fatally weaken their case by an extremely unfortunate choice of terms. Indeed, it is my claim that, on each point, the opposite assertion is nearer the truth. Verne's works, I believe, on occasion use physics in order to invent - more effectively than in the magic potions, black boxes and mechanical justifications of many of his predecessors and successors; the side-effects include lucid analyses of science and its effects on humanity, and intelligent guesses as to which of the 'possibilities' (everything is possible) were actually probabilities; and Verne's space, with its temporal force and its inside-outside duality, is anything on earth but 'safely homogeneous'. His scientific invention in fact meets most of Lacassin's requirements - whose list comes therefore close to providing a brilliant summary of the Voyages! The incomprehension of the four critics may have a common cause. It may easily have been provoked by mistaking the verisimilitude of the Voyages for 'verism', and science-in-fiction for science, almost as if Verne were meant to be a scientist, and his works, papers in Nature. The invention of the Voyages occurs in reality on both the literal and the literary levels. The new machine-gadgets are subject to metaphors, puns, ambiguities and shifts in language before being allowed to vehicle new conceptions of space-time, alternative worlds, monsters or subhumans. Science is judged for its coherence, originality and truth - as values in and of fiction. 'At worst' Verne employs science towards his own ends, sidesteps it, or ignores it completely. 'At best' the Voyages are science-fiction - 'rveries scientifico-fantaisistes' - for in them, narration governs Nature, experiments are non-reproducible, and the mathematical creates the mythical. In Verne's universe, the comic, the cosmic and the cosmetic are literally contained the one in the other. A few of the commentators on Verne must therefore be held partly responsible for contributing to his grossly inappropriate reputation - despite the excellent work in recent years of Vierne, Delabroy, Raymond, Comp}re, A. Martin and others. One of the reasons why so few English-language critics have taken part in this trend until now may have something to do with the dismal quality of most of the original translations - often still the ones used today. Not only are whole chapters missing from the English versions, but they contain such nonsensical phrases as 'with a lentil, he lighted a fire', 'the disagreeable territory of Nebraska' (the Badlands), 'the Passage of the North Sea' (North-West Passage), or using explosives to 'jump over' obstacles.5 I am suggesting, in other words, that even university reading - or lack of it - in the Anglo-Saxon countries has all too often been affected by the popular reputation of Verne, itself the product of the truncated and often nonsensical English texts. My own personal experience has often revealed the depths of misunderstanding this writer suffers from - even from those that, by their profession, should know better. But even in his country of origin, the myth dies hard. A further explanatory, if again extraneous, factor may be found in the half-truth of Verne as a writer for children - although La Fontaine, Defoe, Swift, Alain-Fournier and Saint-Exup{ry have survived a similar accusation. Stage adaptations and film versions, often bearing little resemblance to the novels, have also drawn attention away from the specifically literary qualities. Another reason may possibly be Verne's very position as a unique best-seller for well over a century: as Serres ironically quips, Verne is read but not studied - which makes him the opposite of a great man.6 Certain other features of the works themselves may also have further contributed to misapprehensions. Their length - approximately 8 million words - is certainly an obstacle to complete knowledge and appreciation; but does not seem to have detracted from respect for what is possibly the only comparably encyclopaedic attempt, La Com{die humaine. Verne's image may have something to do instead with the distance between his surface and 'deep' levels, the all-encompassing nature of his irony, which has often taken in the superficial reader. Reinforced by his genre, his audience and his publisher's censorship, Verne's discretion tends towards literal self-effacement. His networks of obsessions present symptoms but avoid the sore points themselves. Personal and social concerns are camouflaged, desire functions in terms of an elsewhere, and truths are skirted round rather than baldly enounced. As a result, Verne's major contribution to the form of the novel has never even been noticed; and possibly just as surprising, his claim to be adhering to the principles of physics when writing an untrammelled tale of time-travel has also passed totally unchallenged. The texts themselves therefore require a great deal of further unprejudiced analysis. Verne can only be evaluated at his just worth if the examples of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Tournier7 are followed: if detailed attention is paid to the literary aspects of the Voyages themselves, rather than to incidental matters in or around them. The first task of future research is thus to continue to dispel the mythical Verne. But a great deal of work also remains to be done before we can possess the depth of accurate knowledge that exists for contemporaries like Baudelaire, Flaubert or Proust/Gide?. Fuller investigations are still needed of themes like cannibalism and sexuality, reading and writing, and of such formal elements as the use of person, the 'diary' structures, the dialogue and the use of rhythm. Examining possible influences by Verne on twentieth-century writers like Camus, Sartre and above all Tournier could throw up some surprising conclusions. Annotated editions of the richest works would seem basic necessities. So would systematic literary evaluation of Michel Verne's contribution, especially novels like L'Agence Thompson and La Mission Barsac; including, for instance, the internal theme of authorship and the father-son relationship. Only if such studies are added to the growing number of serious ones in recent years can Verne's peculiarly down-to-earth and sensorial universe be properly understood. Only then can we gain a full comprehension of the poetry of his gleaming machines and Romantic desolations and dissolutions; of his acute sensitivity and sensibility, his kinaesthetic, almost neurasthenic, awareness. Verne shows man as caught between salvation and desire, the beaten track and the unexplored horizon, the contentment of closure and the voluptuousness of open space. In his best works, phlegm is inseparable from passion and the word from the spirit. Verne's prophetic literal-mindedness topples over into poetic ecstasy, and effects a subtle but far-reaching shift in our ways of seeing and feeling the world.