As children, we divided into two groups: supporters of Emilio Salgari and those who supported Jules Verne. I admit that I supported Salgari, and history makes it imperative for me to reassess the opinions I once held. It seems that Salgari, though an author who is still read, quoted from memory, and adored by all the Italians who read him when they were young, no longer attracts the younger generation. And in truth, even adults, when they reread him, either do so with a hint of nostalgia and wry amusement, or find him hard going and the excess of mangroves and babirusas tiresome.
Now, in 2005, we are celebrating the centenary of the death of Jules Verne, and newspapers, magazines, and conferences, not just in France, are reappraising him, demonstrating how often his imaginings anticipated reality. A glance at publishers’ catalogs in Italy suggests that Verne is republished more frequently than Salgari, which is also the case in France, where there is an antiquarian book trade devoted to him, due no doubt to the old Hetzel bindings of Verne that are of great beauty. In Paris, there are two shops on the Right Bank alone devoted to these splendid volumes bound in red and gold, which fetch prohibitive prices.
Whatever merit we must concede to Salgari, the creator of the pirate Sandokan didn’t have a great sense of humor, nor did his characters, with the exception of Yanez, whereas Verne’s stories are full of humor. Suffice it to recall the splendid pages of Michael Strogoff; or, The Courier of the Czar, where, after the battle of Kolyvan, the Daily Telegraph correspondent Harry Blount, to prevent his rival Alcide Jolivet from sending his dispatch to Paris, keeps the telegraph office busy by dictating verses of the Bible at a cost of several thousand rubles, until Jolivet manages to steal his position at the telegraph counter, transmitting songs by Pierre-Jean de Béranger. Verne’s story continues: “ ‘Hallo!’ said Harry Blount. ‘Just so,’ answered Alcide Jolivet.” Tell me this isn’t style.
Many stories that anticipate the future, when read after a space of time, perhaps when the future they had forecast has already arrived, are somewhat disappointing, since the events that have actually occurred, the real inventions, are infinitely more amazing than what the writer had once imagined. Not with Verne. No atomic submarine will ever be as technologically amazing as the Nautilus, and no airship or jumbo jet will ever have the fascination of Robur the Conqueror’s majestic propeller ship.
A third merit, for which author and publisher share equal credit, are the engravings that accompany the stories. We followers of Salgari fondly recall the marvelous illustrations by artists like Alberto Della Valle, Pipein Gamba, and Gennaro Amato, but they were paintings, and it was like seeing a Raphael in black and white. Verne’s engravings are far more mysterious and intriguing, and they make you want to examine them through a magnifying glass.
Captain Nemo, who sees the giant octopus from the large porthole of the Nautilus; Robur’s airship bristling with high-tech masts; the balloon that crashes down on the Mysterious Island (“Are we rising again?” “No. On the contrary.” “Are we descending?” “Worse than that, captain! We are falling!”); the enormous projectile that points toward the Moon; the caves at the center of the Earth—all are images that emerge from a dark background, outlines with thin black strokes alternating with whitish gashes, a universe without areas of uniform color, a vision scratched and scored, reflections that dazzle for lack of any strokes, a world seen by an animal with a retina all its own, as seen perhaps by oxen or dogs or lizards, a world glimpsed at night through the thin slats of a venetian blind, a territory always rather nocturnal and almost subaqueous, even in full daylight, made with the dots and abrasions that generate light only where the engraver’s tool has dug or left the surface in relief.
If you don’t have the money to buy Hetzel antiquarian editions, and you’re not convinced by the modern republished versions, go to http://jv.gilead.org.il/. Someone by the name of Zvi Har’El has collected all there is about Verne, with a complete bibliography, an anthology of essays, 488 incredible images of Jules Verne postage stamps from various countries, Hebrew translations (Mr. Har’El is Israeli, and fondly dedicates the site to his son, who died at the age of nineteen), but above all a “Virtual Library” where you’ll find Verne’s complete works in numerous languages, with all the engravings, at least from the original French editions, which you can save and enlarge as you wish, so that, though somewhat grainy, they become even more fascinating.
2005