海底两万里 英文版 Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
儒勒.凡尔纳 Jules Verne
Introduction
"The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us,"admits Professor Aronnax early in this novel. "What goes on inthose distant depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit,those regions twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water?It's almost beyond conjecture."
Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of these wordsin 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Timecover story on deep-sea exploration made much the same admission:"We know more about Mars than we know about the oceans."This reality begins to explain the dark power and otherworldlyfascination of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelongpassion for the sea. First as a Paris stockbroker, later as acelebrated author and yachtsman, he went on frequent voyages--to Britain, America, the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulusfor this novel was an 1865 fan letter from a fellow writer,Madame George Sand. She praised Verne's two early novels Five Weeksin a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth(1864), then added: "Soon I hope you'll take us into the ocean depths,your characters traveling in diving equipment perfected by yourscience and your imagination." Thus inspired, Verne created oneof literature's great rebels, a freedom fighter who plunged beneaththe waves to wage a unique form of guerilla warfare.
Initially, Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising ofPoland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violencethat appalled not only Verne but all Europe. As originally conceived,Verne's Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire familyhad been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulousfuturistic submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwatercampaign of vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.
But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally,and Verne's publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable.Verne reworked its political content, devising new nationalities forNemo and his great enemy--information revealed only in a later novel,The Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo's backgroundremains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult gestation.Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book wentthrough multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its severalworking titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variouslycalled Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Underthe Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters,and A Thousand Leagues Under the Oceans.
Verne is often dubbed, in Isaac Asimov's phrase, "the world'sfirst science-fiction writer." And it's true, many of hissixty-odd books do anticipate future events and technologies:From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Hector Servadac (1877) dealin space travel, while Journey to the Center
of the Earth features travel to the earth's core. But with Vernethe operative word is "travel," and some of his best-known titlesdon't really qualify as sci-fi: Around the World in Eighty Days(1872) and Michael Strogoff (1876) are closer to "travelogs"--adventure yarns in far-away places.
These observations partly apply here. The subtitle of the presentbook is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelog style,the Nautilus's exploits supply an episodic story line.Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts,and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loosestructure gives the novel an air of documentary realism. What's more,Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three recurring motifs:the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions,the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land,and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifyingthreads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.
Other subtleties occur inside each episode, the textures sparklingwith wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea frommany angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnailsketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogsthat swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology,he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce,he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cableor dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering provesespecially authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarineand a self-contained diving suit were decades before their time,yet modern technology bears them out triumphantly.
True, today's scientists know a few things he didn't: the South Poleisn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flipover before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight;sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding,Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depthsbefore the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and technicolor film.
Lastly the book has stature as a novel of character. Even thesupporting cast is shrewdly drawn: Professor Aronnax, the careerscientist caught in an ethical conflict; Conseil, the compulsiveclassifier who supplies humorous tag lines for Verne's fast facts;the harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites,man as heroic animal.
But much of the novel's brooding power comes from Captain Nemo.Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he's a trail-blazing creation,the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists inpopular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmesor Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero's brillianceand benevolence a dark underside--the man's obsessive hate for hisold enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions:he's a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisonedthere for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal,yet he himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism,yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last actionhe falls into the classic sin of Pride. He's swiftly punished.The Nautilus nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks intoa growing depression.
Like Shakespeare's King Lear he courts death and madness in a great storm,then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis,and suicidally runs his ship into the ocean's most dangerous whirlpool.Hate swallows him whole.
For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination,surely one of the most influential novels ever written, an inspirationfor such scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon Lake,oceanographer William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton.Likewise Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the sunken Titanic,confesses that this was his favorite book as a teenager,and Cousteau himself, most renowned of marine explorers, called ithis shipboard bible.
The present translation is a faithful yet communicative renderingof the original French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.--the hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871,collated with the softcover editions of the First and Second Partsissued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870.Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged,this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail.
Because, as that Time cover story suggests, we still haven't caughtup with Verne. Even in our era of satellite dishes and video games,the seas keep their secrets. We've seen progress in sonar, torpedoes,and other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists--to say nothing of tourists--have yet to voyage in a submarinewith the luxury and efficiency of the Nautilus.
F. P. WALTER
University of Houston
Units of Measure
CABLE LENGTH In Verne's context, 600 feet
CENTIGRADE 0 degrees centigrade = freezing water
37 degrees centigrade = human body temperature
100 degrees centigrade = boiling water
FATHOM 6 feet
GRAM Roughly 1/28 of an ounce
- MILLIGRAM Roughly 1/28,000 of an ounce
- KILOGRAM (KILO) Roughly 2.2 pounds
HECTARE Roughly 2.5 acres
KNOT 1.15 miles per hour
LEAGUE In Verne's context, 2.16 miles
LITER Roughly 1 quart
METER Roughly 1 yard, 3 inches
- MILLIMETER Roughly 1/25 of an inch
- CENTIMETER Roughly 2/5 of an inch
- DECIMETER Roughly 4 inches
- KILOMETER Roughly 6/10 of a mile
- MYRIAMETER Roughly 6.2 miles
TON, METRIC Roughly 2,200 pounds viii