Journey Through the Impossible

  8. Michel Ardan is one of the three passengers of the bullet going From the Earth to the Moon. In Verne's novel, he comes from France just in time to ask the Gun Club to modify the projectile, saying in his telegram, "Modify it, I will travel inside." Ardan is also the anagram of Nadar, alias Felix Tournachon, photographer and balloonist friend of Jules Verne.

  9. Aalborg, a city in northern Denmark (www.aalborg.dk), contains the world's largest Viking burial ground, a cathedral, a monastery, large Renaissance buildings, and a castle. The Andernak Castle, is based on the castle in Aalborg. During the spring of 1881, Jules Verne traveled from Rotterdam to Copenhagen on his yacht, Saint-Michel III, with a crew of ten mariners. With him was his brother Paul, who wrote a report of this journey under the title De Rotterdam a Copenhague a bord du yacht Saint-Michel. Hetzel added the report to the end of the in-octavo edition of the novel The Jangada (La Jangada, also known as Eight Hundred Leagues over the Amazon). Was it this trip that inspired Jules Verne to set the beginning ofJourney Through the Impossible in Denmark? In a letter to Hetzel, written from Rotterdam on June 8, 1881, Jules Verne cites the town of Frederickshaven, north of Aalborg Bay, on the Kattegat, a gulf of the North Sea bounded by Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.

  10. In 1872, Verne published a short story titled "An Imagination of Dr. Ox," serialized in three issues of Le Musee des Familles. The small town of Quiquendone is wisely managed by the burgomaster Van Tricasse and his friend and adviser Niklausse. The Quiquendonians are phlegmatic and placid people, living in a perpetual slowdown. But everything changes with the arrival of the vibrant Dr. Ox, who offers to install gas lighting throughout the town, at no charge, with the agreement of the burgomaster. A plant is built, the gas pipes are run under the pavement, and the standard lamps grow like mushrooms in the streets. What is the true objective of Dr. Ox and his assistant, Ygene? The personality and the character of the Quiquendonians change drastically: they become speedy and aggressive. Van Tricasse and Niklausse start a violent fight, compromising the wedding of their children. The town declares war on the neighboring town over a minor litigation several centuries old. A drama seems imminent at the time the whole population attacks the supposed enemy, when an enormous explosion destroys the gas plant. The excitement disappears as the Quiquendonians, calm again, walk peacefully back home. The reader learns that all the upset was caused by Dr. Ox, an eminent physiologist who circulated pure oxygen in public places to observe the effects on the inhabitants. Quiquendone is left without lighting, but once again has peace and quiet after the headlong escape of the scientist and his assistant. Verne jokes with words: Ox plus Ygene makes oxygen. The story inspired an opera-bouffe in 1877 with a libretto by Philippe Gille and music by Jacques Offenbach.

  11. Verne's (or Nemo's?) submarine was named after the Nautilus of Robert Fulton, the American inventor of the steam engine. In 1800, Robert Fulton (1765-1815) presented to the French Directoire a submarine to sink British ships. During the demonstration in Rouen, on the river Seine, Fulton himself was aboard and his Nautilus dove to a depth of 7.6 meters (25 feet).

  12. In Greek mythology, the Titans ruled the universe for ages. They were massive and strong, and were the twelve children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (Earth). The best known are Chronos (Time), who ruled the universe until he was dethroned by his son Zeus; Oceanos was the river flowing around the earth. Oceanos's wife, Tethys, was the goddess of the Mediterranean Sea. Mnemosyne was the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses. Themis was the goddess of divine justice, and Atlas, of course, carried the world on his shoulders.

  13. A volcano close to Naples.

  14. Italian town at the foot of the volcano Vesuvius. Lidenbrock and his two companions came out of their journey to the Center of the Earth through Stromboli, not through Vesuvius. Parisian spectators were more familiar with Naples and Vesuvius than with Stromboli.

  15. A suburb northwest of Paris, on the river Seine.

  16. There is no such place as Asnieres de Bigorre. But in the Pyrenees (a mountain range between France and Spain), above Tarbes, on the Adour River, is a resort called Bagnieres de Bigorre.

  17. In journey to the Center of the Earth, Axel was professor Lidenbrock's nephew who traveled with him and the Icelandic guide Hans underground from the Snaeffels to the Stromboli.

  18. Jules Verne loved to play with names and words. He invented Babichok to be hilarious and ridiculous. Valdemar's fiancee had to have a name that would add comical effects.

  19. Verne plays here with the French word "battement," which has a double meaning: tapping or stamping and palpitation. Tartelet uses it with the first meaning, while Valdemar uses it with the second, thus creating a misunderstanding that is always well received on stage.

  20. Untranslatable (double meaning) wordplay: In French, "Suisse" is both a noun and an adjective. In English, we have Switzerland and Swiss, two different words. In French, the adjective is placed after the noun, so Tartelet could understand Valdemar saying "... mouton. Suisse..." as "Swiss mutton" when Valdemar wanted to say: ". . . mutton. Switzerland ..."

  21. Another example of Verne's play with words. This name is as comical and ridiculous as Babichok. In the novel serialized by Hetzel in 1882, when journey Through the Impossible was on stage in Paris, The School of Robinsons (L'ecole des Robinsons) is a character named William W. Kolderup.

  22. Verne's expression "carrefour des ecrases" means literally the "intersection of the crushed." Of course, there is no such place in Paris, or anywhere, and the use of the term adds to the comical aspect of the dialogue. Valdemar means "the crossroads where many people were run over."

  23. After successfully publishing four novels by Jules Verne, Hetzel decided to give them a generic title: Extraordinary journeys. Verne's novels were extraordinary adventures, but this play makes them impossible. journey Through the Impossible is, with its summary, the crown of the collection of Extraordinary journeys.

  24. At the beginning of his literary career, Jules Verne wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth and touched on the topic of evolution. Later he deepened the subject in The Aerial Village, where the members of a safari in the Congo discover what appears to be a colony of natives living in the trees.

  25. One of the four basic forces of nature: fire, water, air, and earth. Later, in Master of the World (Maitre du monde), Verne imagines an automobile capable of traveling on Earth, an aircraft to fly, and a submarine to navigate on and under water. The "Terror" (L'Epouvante) will be destroyed by the fourth element, fire, in its most symbolic aspect-lightning.

  26. There are three ballets in the play, according to the reviews, one at the end of every act. The text doesn't mention the second ballet.

  ACT II: THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

  1. A district on the west coast of India, colonized by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510. Goa remained a Portuguese colony until 1962, when it became part of India. Why did Jules Verne choose to begin the underwater part of journey Through the Impossible in Goa? According to Charles-Noel Martin, it's because of Oscar de Lagoanere, the composer and director of the music in journey Through the Impossible. His name contains the letters "goa"-another Vernean wordplay. Robert Pourvoyeur suggests two other interpretations: one, Nemo, the captain of the Nautilus, was Indian, and Goa is close to his homeland (in 1882, it was still a Portuguese colony). Second, Goa is wordplay: in French, a jeweler is "un joailler" and a banterer is "un gouailleur." Verne could have planned to use Goa as part of a combination of these two words that are almost homonyms. He didn't use the joke in the play, but it was used by Arnold Mortier in his review of the play, which can be found at the end of this volume.

  2. A common British and American family name, but also the name of Sir James Anderson who commanded the Great Eastern from Liverpool to New York and back in April 1862, with Jules Verne and his brother Paul on board. His one and only trip to America gave Jules Verne the opportunity to write his most autobiographic novel A Floating City (Une Ville flottante)-with parts of fiction-
in which he describes the ship, the captain, some passengers, and his visit to Niagara Falls. Anderson is also the name of the captain of the Scotia, the ship rammed by the Nautilus in the first chapter of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

  3. A Venetian gold ducat (coin with the ruling doge's portrait on it) created at the end of the thirteenth century. The sequin became the common business coin around the Mediterranean and was imitated all over Europe.

  4. "This proved that this extraordinary cetacean could transport itself from one place to another with amazing speed" (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, chapter 1).

  5. A major seaport and manufacturing center in central Chile, on a wide bay of the Pacific Ocean. It's one of Chile's largest cities. Because of the sonority of the word, Valparaiso is part of many French popular songs and mariner's songs.

  6. The battle against the giant squid is one of the most powerful scenes of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. It is no surprise that before Walt Disney used it in 1954, Verne himself used it again in Journey Through the Impossible.

  7. A word often used by Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, as a synonym for squid or octopus. Kraken, a word of Norwegian origin, was already in use in the middle of the eighteenth century, and meant a fabulous sea monster.

  8. Verne (or d'Ennery?) invented the name of a ship whose sonority would get across on stage. There was such ship sunk in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Tranquebar is also the contraction of "tranquil" and "bar."

  9. According to many biographers, Jules Verne often said, "I love three things more than everything else: music, the sea, and liberty."

  10. Charles-Noel Martin credits Verne with this sentence, which comments about the atheist orientation taken in 1877 by the "Grand Orient de France" (the highest Masonic lodge in France).

  11. In Mysterious Island, the last words of Captain Nemo are "God and Fatherland," which is surprising in the mouth of an anarchist, the independent captain of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Verne was asked by Hetzel to modify Nemo's last words in deference to the French family, to be "bourgoise" and "politically correct." Verne and d'Ennery show here the very devout side of Nemo.

  12. Reference to the end of journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras-in the first Verne manuscript (never published)-in which Hatteras dies falling into the volcano at the North Pole. This shows Verne reacting to his publisher, Hetzel, who obliged him to modify the end of Hatteras and save the captain, and, in whose opinion Journey Through the Impossible was an insane undertaking.

  13. The oyster described here by Valdemar is the same as the one shown by Nemo to professor Aronnax in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, housing a gigantic pearl that grew from an impurity deposited by Nemo. Tridacna gigas is the world's largest bivalve. A true giant, this species of oyster can reach lengths of over four feet, and can weigh over five hundred pounds. The species is generally found on a substratum of coral reef, and lives in depths from only a few feet to several fathoms. It can be found from the Philippines to Micronesia. A photograph of it can be seen at: www.on campus.richmond. edu/cultural/museums/lrginfo/2 5/2 4giant_clam.html.

  14. Here is another example of Verne playing with words. In French, the expression "plancher des vaches" (literally "floor of the cows") means "land" or "dry land" and is used by someone who spends little time on dry land. Valdemar uses the expression "veal's floor" ("plancher des veaux") meaning dry land or just land in Copenhagen. Tartelet corrects him immediately, explaining that in France, the expression is "the floor of their mothers."

  15. This noted Greek philosopher wrote about Atlantis in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias, around 370 B.C.E.

  16. One of the cities of Atlantis, according to Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Makhimos is not mentioned in Plato's Critias (the origin of all legends about Atlantis).

  17. Mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Sertorius. Around 80 B.C.E., a roman general, Sertorius, former governor of Spain, goes to Mauretania (today's Morocco) with his army and conquers Tingis (today's Tangier), whose king, Ascalis, might otherwise come back from exile to reclaim his throne. In 38 B.C.E. Octavius (who became Emperor Augustus) gave Tingis the status of Roman Colony.

  18. The ancient Egyptian deity whose name means "hidden." Amon or Ammon, the god of reproductive forces, was part of the divine triad of Thebes, with his wife, Mut, and his son Khon. Later Amon was identified with the sun god Ra, and was called Amon-Ra, the father of the gods and the creator all living beings. As such, he became identified with Zeus in ancient Greek, and with Jupiter in Rome. In the play, the use of Ammon connects Atlantis with ancient Egypt.

  19. In Greek mythology, demigod Atlas was punished by Zeus and condemned to bear the sky (with the earth) forever on his back. In classical architecture, atlantes (the plural form of atlas) are male figures used as columns to support a superstructure. Atlantes are the male counterpart of caryatids and could also be the inhabitants of Atlantis. Verne logically named their king Atlas.

  20. A name made up by Verne. In classical Greek, Selene means Moon.

  Z 1. In Greek mythology, Electra was the daughter of Agamemnon (the winner of the Trojan War and hero of Homer's Iliad) and Clytemnestra. During the Trojan War, Clytemnestra had an affair with Egisthe and they killed Agamemnon as he came home after the war. To avenge her father's death, Electra pushed her brother Orestes to kill Egisthe and Clytemnestra. What a family! Over the centuries, Electra's vengeance has inspired Eschylus (The Choephores, 458 B.C.E.), Sophocles (415 B.C.E.), Euripides (413 B.C.E.), Eugene O'Neill (Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931), and jean Giraudoux (Electre, 1937).

  22. In Greek and Roman mythology a sibyl is a female fortune-teller inspired with prophetic power by Apollo. Sibyls lived in caves and prophesied in a frenzied trance, sitting on tripods.

  ACT III: THE PLANET ALTOR

  1. Verne described the president of the Gun Club as follows: "Impey Barbicane was a man of forty, calm, cold, austere, eminently serious and selfcontained; punctual as a chronometer; in temperament, ready for any ordeal; in character, unshakable; adventurous but not romantic; always bringing practical ideas to bear on the boldest ventures; the ultimate New Englander, the colonizing Northerner; the descendant of the Roundheads, who were so deadly for the Stuarts; indeed the implacable foe of all Cavaliers, whether royalists in the Old Country or Southern gentlemen in the new. In short, a Yankee through and through" (From the Earth to the Moon, updated edition by Walter James Miller, 1995).

  2. As the secretary of the Gun Club, Maston was present in all novels of the Gun Club Trilogy: From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre a la lone), Around the Moon (Autour de la lone), and Topsy-Turvy (Sans dessus dessous, also translated into English as The Purchase of the North Pole).

  3. A type of heavy cast-iron cannon or howitzer used in the U.S. Army in the middle of the nineteenth century and during the Civil War. The Columbiad is a kind of Dahlgren that is, a piece of ordnance thick in the breech, and tapering off gradually from the base to the muzzle. See photos at www. fpc. dos. state.fl.us/learning/CivilWar/photos/Columbiad.html.

  4. Stoney Hill, southeast of Tampa, is the location where the giant Columbiad was built to send the three Verne astronauts From the Earth to the Moon in 1864.

  5. Captain Nicholl is, with Impey Barbicane and Michel Ardan, one of the three astronauts who travel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1869). In Topsy-Turvy (1889), Nicholl invents the meli-melonite, a powerful explosive used to straighten Earth's axis.

  6. Almost the same wording as in the letter Barbicane sends to all Gun Club members at the beginning of From the Earth to the Moon, inviting them to the meeting where the Gun Club decides to launch a bullet to the Moon.

  7. The Phoenician and Chaldean goddess of fertility and love, also known as Isthar in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. She has been identified with various Greek goddesses: Selene, the goddess of the Moon (to whom Jules Verne dedicated an entire chapter in his
Moon novels); Artemis, the goddess of hunting, twin sister of Apollo, and, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

  8. In ancient Greek mythology, he was the son of Zeus and Leto. Apollo was the god of the Sun, thus the adjective "radiant," as used byJules Verne. Apollo was also the god of music, poetry, and the arts. He is one of the most complex gods of the Greek pantheon. His twin sister, Artemis, was the goddess of the Moon and of hunting.

  9. Two suburbs west of Paris, north of Versailles, on the river Seine. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Chatou and its neighbor Le Vesinet were popular for Sunday excursions by Parisians. These towns offered cafes, restaurants, and boats for rent. Chatou and Le Vesinet were favorite places of the impressionist painters. Renoir stayed in Chatou in 1879.

  10. Reference to the Harvard College Observatory, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1839, and reestablished from 1843 to 1847 by public subscription. In From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, Verne writes of the "Cambridge Observatory" and of J.-M. Belfast, its director, who was supportive of the Gun Club project to send a bullet to the Moon.

  11. The Columbiad of From the Earth to the Moon was completely underground, with its opening at ground level, but imagining the giant cannon on a stand is much more spectacular.

  12. The legend of the Aymon Knights begins with the Emperor Charlemagne who knighted the four Aymon brothers. Yet Charlemagne lived to regret this act of generosity when Raynaud (or Renaud), the eldest of the Aymon Knights, killed Charlemagne's favorite nephew in an act of family honor. While on a run to the hillside of Dinant (Belgium), the four Aymon brothers-Raynaud, Alard, Guichard, and Richard-were suddenly surprised by Charlemagne's troops. They were completely surrounded with nowhere to turn when something extraordinary happened: Bayard, their mighty steed, leaped from the cliffs with all four knights on his back and landed safely on the other side of the Meuse River and galloped through the Ardennes. Thus they escaped the vengeance of the emperor. Outside of the city of Dinant is a rock, le rocher Bayard (the Bayard rock), which stands separate from the rest of the main rock to which it was once connected. The Bayard rock was detached with an explosion to provide passage for the French troops of Louis XW after they took Dinant. However, popular belief has it that the rock was split by the hoof of their giant horse, Bayard, when it jumped over the Meuse River.