Journey Through the Impossible

  2 1. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), French composer and creator of the Symphonic fantastique (1831).

  22. Charles-Francois Gounod (1818-1893), French composer and creator of Faust (1859).

  23. Georges Bizet (1838-1875), French composer and creator of Carmen (1875).

  24. Adolphe-Charles Adam (1803-1867), French composer and creator of Si j'etais roi (1852).

  2 5. Witty and cynical lyrical composition (created by Jacques Offenbach, director of the Parisian theater Les Bouffes-Parisiens) that evolved out of the opera-comique and later became the French operette during the last years of the Second Empire. That period of transition-characterized by a spirit of easygoing skepticism, a reaction to the Voltaireanism of the preceding century-seemed to permeate society. Everything was approached with a light heart, possibly to hide any feelings of disquietude caused by the instability of the regime. After the war of 1870, the taste of the public appeared to undergo a change, and the operette-which combined certain characteristics of the opera-bouffe and of the older opera-comique-came into vogue.

  26. An exclusively French style of opera. The opera-comique (comic opera) developed from earlier popular shows performed by troupes entertaining spectators at fairs. An opera-comique consists of spoken dialogue alternating with musical numbers (arias and orchester). The theater named Opera-Comique in Paris was founded in 1715. The repertoire of the operacomique contains works as well known as Mozart's All Women Do So (Cosi Fan Tutte, 1790), Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Regiment, 1840), Berlioz's The Trojans (Les Troyens, 1856-1859), Bizet's Carmen (1875), Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffrnann (Les Contes d'Hoffrnann, 1880), Verdi's Falstaff (1893), and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1902).

  27. Les Deux orphelines, 1874. The Two Orphans premiered on stage in New York in 1875. Kate Claxton, the star who played Louise, made this role famous, and owned the American rights to the play. The Two Orphans was very popular with American audiences. The popularity of the play inspired at least one French and three American film adaptations. The French film version, Les Deux orphelines (1910) was directed by Albert Capellani. The first two American versions were filmed by the Selig Polyscope Company. The first version (1908) was a one-reeler lasting twelve to fifteen minutes. Little is known about this lost film. Selig's second adaptation (1911) was three reels long, and directed by Otis Turner. It starred Kathlyn Williams as Henriette and Winnifred Greenwood as Louise. Both Selig versions were moderately successful. In 1915, Fox Film Corporation produced its version (still called The Two Orphans), directed by Herbert Brenon. It starred none other than Theda Bara as Henriette and Jean Sothern as Louise. This version received good reviews from critics, but failed at the box office. Unfortunately, this film does not exist today. Orphans of the Storm (United Artists, 1921), the last of D.W. Griffith's blockbuster epics, was produced with opulent sets, wonderful costumes, and attention to detail. This was also the last film collaboration of the great film director and his discoveries Lillian and Dorothy Gish. Both sisters left Griffith's company after ten years and joined Henry King's Inspiration Pictures. They would appear together again in Romola (Inspiration Pictures, for Metro-Goldwyn, 1925).

  28. Keraban-le-tetu (Paris: Hetzel, 1883).

  29. Mathias Sandorf (Paris: Hetzel, 1885).

  30. "Maitre Zacharius," Musee des Families (April and May 1854): 193200 and 225-31.

  31. The philosophy of Saint-Simonianism was created by Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Count of Saint-Simon (1760-182 5), a French socialist born in Paris. At the age of sixteen he went to the United States to fight in the American Revolution. When he returned to France, he supported the Revolution there, giving up his title. He is considered one of the founders of modern socialism.

  32. L'Ile mysterieuse (Paris: Hetzel, 1874-1875).

  33. Les Cinq cents millions de la Begum (Paris: Hetzel, 1879).

  34. Paschal Grousset (1845-1909), French science fiction novelist who wrote under the pseudonym of Andre Laurie and was published by Hetzel. His science fiction novels, known as Les Romans d'aventures (The Adventure Novels) and published between 1884 and 1905, truly comprise the first science fiction series ever published.

  35. Maitre du monde (Paris: Hetzel, 1904).

  36. Le Chateau des Carpathes (Paris: Hetzel, 1892).

  37. Face an drapeau (Paris: Hetzel, 1896).

  38. "Le docteur Ox" (Paris: Hetzel, 1874).

  39. Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), French composer whose operettas are considered masterpieces of the opera-comique. He was born in Cologne, Germany, and studied at the Paris Conservatoire. By 1875 he had composed ninety operettas.

  40. Voyage au centre de la terre (Paris: Hetzel, 1864).

  41. Hector Servadac (Paris: Hetzel, 1877).

  42. Jules Barbier (1825-1901), French librettist who worked with Gounod and Offenbach.

  43. Michel Carre (1819-1872), French librettist who worked with Offenbach and Jules Verne.

  44. Parisian theater opened in 1782 and is still in use today.

  45. Jules Verne began to work on Mona Lisa in 1851 and was still working on it in 1855, when he wrote a letter to his mother indicating that he was changing the title from Leonardo da Vinci to Mona Lisa. This play is in verse and was never produced on stage. Jules Verne read it publicly in 1874 at the Academic d'Amiens. Its first publication was in 1974, in the twentyfifth issue of the magazine Cahiers de l'Herne. It's available in book form (Paris: L'Herne, 1995).

  46. Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (Paris: Hetzel, 1866).

  47. Autour de la lone (Paris: Hetzel, 1870).

  48. L'Ecole des robinsons (Paris: Hetzel, 1882).

  49. Le Rayon vert (Paris: Hetzel, 1882).

  50. Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingtsjours (Paris: Hetzel, 1873).

  51. L'Etoile du sud (Paris: Hetzel, 1884).

  52. Sans dessus dessous (Paris: Hetzel, 1889).

  53. Robur le Conquerant (Paris: Hetzel, 1886).

  54. L'lle a helice (Paris: Hetzel, 1895).

  55. Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery, Voyage a travers l'bnpossible (Paris: J.J. Pauvert, 1981). Introduction, notes, and comments by Francois Raymond and Robert Pour-voyeur.

  56. Joseph Laissus, "Le Voyage a travers l'Impossible," Bulletin de la Societe Jules Verne (Nouvelle serie) 3, no. 12 (October-December 1969): 79-81.

  57. Robert Pour-voyeur, "Du nouveau ... sur l'Impossible!" Bulletin de la Societe Jules Verne (Nouvelle serie) 12, no. 45 (January-March 1978): 137-51.

  58. Oscar-Louis-Antoine-Ferdinand de Lagoanere, French composer, born in Bordeaux on August 25, 1853. He was a prolific and successful composer and conductor. In the 1880s he became director of the Theatre des Menus-Plaisirs and later of the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens. His last known work was published in 1907. Nothing of him is known after that date.

  NOTES TO THE PLAY

  ACT 1: THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

  1. Andernak is sometimes used for Andernach, a German town on the Rhine River between Koblenz and Bonn. A similar name is used by Jules Verne in the short story "Master Zacharius" (published by Hetzel in 1874) in which the castle of Andernatt is located somewhere in the Swiss Alps, where the real town of Andermatt exists. A music lover, Jules Verne was inspired by Jacques Offenbach; Andernak rhymes with the repetitive phrases in "Va pour Kleinzach," from act I, scene 6, of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoinann, which was running in February 1881 at the Opera-Comique in Paris. journey Through the Impossible has the same structure as The Tales of Hoinann. Jules Verne loved to play with words and was used to intertextual anagrams between his works (e.g., Arneka in The School of Robinsons and Artenak in Mathias Sandorf ). There is a consanguinity between journey Through the Impossible and The School of Robinsons (e.g., the character of Tartelet, the similarity between Andernak and Arneka, and between Kolderup and Finderup).

  2. This musical instrument plays an important role in two Verne works: Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and "Mr. D Sharp and Miss E Flat" ("Monsieur Re-dieze et mademoiselle Mi-bemo
l," also known as "Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat").

  3. In 1885, in Mathias Sando , Verne has a character named Toronthal.

  4. A novel published in 1866 by Hetzel with the title Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras, also known as The English at the North Pole and The Field ofIce). Captain John Hatteras remains obsessed by a strong idea: to plant the British flag at the North Pole. This hard, proud man has already organized two expeditions that ended tragically. So when he orders a new ship and hires a new crew, he takes care to remain anonymous. Richard Shandon and Dr. Clawbonny both receive letters signed with a single initial, inviting them to accompany an expedition on the high seas, destination unknown. As the chief officer, Shandon is empowered to assemble the crew and pay for construction of the ship for this adventure, the brig Forward, designed for navigation in the polar seas. The ship is quickly built, launched, receives its orders, and departs Liverpool, sailing north toward Melville Bay. Dr. Clawbonny, the ship's physician, is erudite with an alert curiosity, gaiety, and optimism. Even as the ship heads north, the captain has not made an appearance. Eventually a member of the crew reveals himself to be Captain John Hatteras. Recruited as a simple sailor, Hatteras abruptly reveals his true identity and immediately gains Clawbonny's confidence. However, the other members of the crew have difficulty accepting the iron discipline imposed by the commander, as they realize the purpose of the voyage: for their British crew to be the first to reach the North Pole. In the polar winter, the brig is immobilized by ice and a necessary frigid dormancy is made even worse by the lack of fuel. A desperate expedition that is organized to discover a hypothetical deposit of coal unfortunately fails. While the expedition is away, Shandon leads the crew in a mutiny that destroys the ship. When returning, Hatteras and Clawbonny find the Forward burned; the crew has left, trying to find their way back to England. With two faithful sailors, Hatteras and Clawbonny find Captain Altamont, an American who also had to abandon his ship and who is desperately ill from starvation and exposure. After seventeen days of exhaustive walking, the five men succeed in finding the wreck of Altamont's ship, which provides them food, coal, and enough wood to build a launch. Soon Hatteras and Altamont fight violently, because the Englishman suspects the American of wanting to reach the pole and claim it for his country. However, they reconcile after a dramatic hunting party during which Altamont saves Hatteras's life. In the spring, the launch is lodged onto a large sled, driven to the edge of free water, and put to sea. After a few days of navigation, the explorers land on a steep island: the North Pole is there, atop an active volcano. Under the influence of "polar madness," Hatteras climbs the sides of the volcano, unfurls the flag, and slips into the crater. Caught up at the last second by Altamont, he remains dazed and his companions understand that he has lost his reason. Ice blocks their route south, so the travelers abandon the boat and continue by foot to the Baffin Sea. Exhausted and without resources, they are finally saved by a whaling ship and returned to England. Hatteras lives out his life in a mental institution, enclosed in his insanity, not recognizing his friends, having forgotten everything, except the direction north, the invariable direction he takes when he walks.

  In Verne's first version of the book, which was never published, Hatteras fell in the volcano and died at the North Pole. However, because Verne's marketplace was the educated French family (able to read and write), Hetzel believed such a conclusion might shock young readers, so he asked Verne to revise the end of the novel. Verne did so, but with an artistic and solemn pirouette, leaving Hatteras afflicted by polar madness, walking always north. A hundred years after the discovery of the North Pole by Captain Hatteras, the College de Pataphysique in Paris celebrated this anniversary with a huge banquet and many speeches. Members of the College de Pataphysique included Boris Vian, Eugen Ionesco, Paul-Emile Victor, and Raymond Queneau (see Viridis Candela, Cahiers acenonetes du College de Pataphysique, no. 16 (July 11, 1961).

  5. One of the two comical characters of the play. In The School ofRobin- sons, published in 1882 by Hetzel, the dance master is named T. Artelett. The connection is obvious.

  6. Written "Lidenbrock" inJourney to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au center de la terre), published in 1864 by Hetzel in Paris. This geology novel of Jules Verne begins in Hamburg, in 1863, where an eminent mineralogist, Professor Otto Lidenbrock, discovers a cryptographic manuscript hidden in an old Icelandic book. Not without sorrow, and with the help of his nephew Axel, he manages to decipher it. The short note-written by Saknussemm, an alchemist of the sixteenth century-shows the way to the center of the earth. In spite of the reservations of the peaceful Axel, snatched from his comfort and from his fiancee, the professor decides at once to follow the traces of the traveler who tried the adventure three hundred years before. The "entry door" indicated by the parchment is Snaeffels (in Icelandic, Snae- fellsjokull), an extinct volcano in Iceland. Accompanied by Hans, their Icelandic guide, the two men go down in one of the eruptive chimneys and begin their underground progression by the glow from the Ruhmkorff lamps. The entrails of the globe reveal fairy-like visions, and the advance of the explorers is slowed down by dramatic incidents. First a lack of water makes them suffer cruelly, until Hans discovers a providential creek; then Axel is lost in the total darkness of a granite labyrinth and loses consciousness, after having fallen down the slope of a "vertical gallery, a veritable well" (William Butcher's translation). Found by his companions, he awakes in a cave of gigantic dimensions; the ceiling rises as far as the eye can see, and the cave contains an entire sea. In this sea and on its shores, the flora and fauna of an ancient geological time still remain, to the great amazement of the professor. The crossing of the sea on a raft is disturbed by a fight between an ichthyosaurus and a plesiosaurus, and by an appalling storm. On the other side, the travelers find a sign left by Saknussemm. The way is blocked, and they use explosives to open a passage, which turns out to be a catastrophic initiative. The raft is lifted by a tidal wave into a volcanic chimney and pushed to the surface of the earth by the molten magma. At the end of a distressing rise, the three men, bruised but safe, find themselves on the slopes of Stromboli, a volcano in full eruption. From Iceland to the Eolian Islands, they traverse twenty-four hundred miles and live a fabulous Plutonian adventure. Professor Lidenbrock becomes world-famous, but regrets not having been able to reach the center of the earth. Axel is finally able to marry his betrothed.

  7. Latin word meaning "nobody" or "no man" (in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus declares his name to be "Noman," when he encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus). Nemo is used by Jules Verne as the name of the captain of the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Mysterious Island. The first novel begins in 1867, in New York. The French professor Aronnax embarks on board a frigate of the American navy, with the objective to hunt and destroy the giant narwhal whose aggressiveness toward ships concerns ship owners. After a long journey, the frigate approaches the monster, but the encounter turns bad and, during the short confrontation that follows, the scientist is thrown into the sea with his servant Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land. The three climb on the back of the narwhal and quickly note that it is not an animal, but an enormous steel machine. Taken aboard, they are greeted by the enigmatic Captain Nemo who designed and built this extraordinary submarine, the Nautilus. This man, whose nationality and identity remain unknown, seems to harbor violent hatred for a country that is never identified in the novel. The involuntary guests of the captain cannot be released because they now know the secret of the Nautilus. Aronnax deals well with the detention, because it allows him to satisfy his passion for ichthiology under exceptional conditions. The port-holes of the Nautilus reveal to him the wonders of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. During a tour of the underwater world, he feels the emotions of underwater explorers, visits the fisheries of Ceylon, and contemplates the ruins of Atlantis. He also lives dramatic moments during the crossing of the ice-barrier of the South Pole, where the ship esc
apes being crushed by ice. With Ned Land, he fights against the giant octopuses that attack the crew and the ship, and admires the bravery of Nemo on this occasion. In spite of the sympathy he feels for this exceptional man, the scientist is indignant when the Nautilus rams and pitilessly sinks a warship. Pushed by Conseil and Ned Land, Aronnax agrees to try to escape. When the Nautilus is sucked down in the Maelstrom, the three escape in a dinghy and avoid the deadly pressure of the flow. They are rescued by Norwegian fishermen, but the Nautilus is not seen again. Did Nemo succumb? Will his true name and his nationality remain unknown? These questions remain unanswered for Aronnax.

  According to Adolphe Brisson, who visited Jules Verne in 1898, and on Verne's own confession, the idea of an underwater voyage was suggested to him by the novelist George Sand, an assiduous reader of his novels. Brisson published Sand's letter in extenso in his interview. Paul Verne, brother of the novelist and captain in the merchant marine, was consulted for the technical questions about the Nautilus. In 1874, Jules Verne reintroduced the character of Nemo in Mysterious Island and provided his true identity and his biography. Verne had initially created Nemo as a Polish prince fighting against Russia. Hetzel asked him to modify Nemo's nationality for commercial and political reasons: France was an ally of Russia and Verne's translations in Russian were a good market. Verne accommodated his publisher by making Nemo an Indian prince fighting against the British.

  In Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Nemo is in his forties; in Mysterious Island, he is seventy, even though the first novel happens in 1866 and the second in 1869. In writing Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Verne knew he would have to bring Nemo back in a later novel, to unveil his nationality and identity. He planned to do it when Nemo would be seventy, but Hetzel asked him to put Nemo in another novel much earlier than he had planned. Hence Nemo's appearance in Mysterious Island. Verne and Hetzel both knew the problem this would cause but they didn't correct it. They merely placed two footnotes in Mysterious Island making the reader aware of their decision to leave the dates as they were.