Journey Through the Impossible (3 page)

The Parisians wanted amazing spectacles with astonishing
machines; certainly Verne's novels could be transformed into wondrous dramas with exotic sets and costumes. The success was striking
and fabulous: Around the World in Eighty Days-a lavish production
with Indians, Hindus, elephants, serpents, trains, and shipwrecksran for 415 successive performances from November 7, 1874 to
December 20, 1875. Encouraged by this success, Verne reissued Children of Captain Grant in 1878 and Michael Strogoff in 1880.

All of these plays were in collaboration with d'Ennery, one of the
most prolific drama writers of the nineteenth century. From 1831 to
1887, he presented an enormous number of plays, fantasies, libretti
for opera, and other staged performances. At the time of his collaboration with Verne, d'Ennery was at the peak of his fame; he had
already written his famous work, The Two Orphans.27 He owned a
superb villa in Antibes (on the French Riviera), a dream of a place
where Verne went to work several times. (Without the help of the
"special effects" magician d'Ennery, Verne later wrote two other plays
inspired by his novels-Keraban the Inflexible28 and Mathias Sandoi f 29
-but they were performed only a few times.)

Verne had long pondered the dangers of science. After publication
of "Master Zacharius"30 (1854), he seemed to be influenced by Saint-
Simonianism,31 a philosophy the Second Empire tacitly adopted, that
glorified the engineers, science, and technology that would industrialize France. Furthermore, in no other work by Verne are science fiction and science fantasy so present as in Journey Through the Impossible
(1882). With regard to science fiction, even Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon cannot compete.

Most of Jules Verne's novels until the mid-1880s present science
and technology as beneficial to humankind. The scientist uses technology to help heroes out of a difficult situation. Typically, the engineer Cyrus Smith (Mysterious Island 32) drives his companion castaways
toward a better life, using his knowledge of chemistry, physics, and
natural sciences, restructuring nature with the overriding ingenuity of humans. In Verne's novels of the first part of his life the only villain is
Herr Doktor Schultze (The Five Hundred Million of the Begum33), but
the character is not Verne's invention. Hetzel bought the manuscript
from Paschal Grousset34 (better known by his pseudonym, Andre
Laurie) and asked Verne to rewrite it; the book was published as
authored by Jules Verne. After the mid-1880s, Verne, in his pessimism, created crazy scientists like Robur (Robin the Conqueror or
Master of the World35), Orfanik (The Castle in the Carpathians36), and
Thomas Roch (Facing the Flag37). These mad scientists use their
knowledge and inventions for destructive purposes. journey Through
the Impossible is the hinge between the two halves of Verne's life, being
an apotheosis of the first optimistic part, where the play asks the
reader and the spectator, continuously, to choose, like George Hatteras, between good and evil, heaven and hell.

From 1872, with "The Doctor Ox,"38 Verne emphasized the
danger of too much science, believing that science itself is not to
blame; rather, we must look to the use humans make of science. In this
short story-a vigorous and compact masterpiece of droll humor and
sarcastic farce-a scientist risks a terribly dangerous experiment, even
more disquieting because he pretends to provide free gas lighting for
the town of Quiquendone, without charging for his scientific knowledge. The tone remains that of the opera-bouffe of the Second
Empire; thus, it comes as no surprise that the subject attracted Offen-
bach39 in 1877. Peaceful, soft characters engulfed in their own bovine
passivity are the foil to the bizarre and mysterious figure of Dr. Ox.
No one knows where he comes from or who he is. He calls himself a
doctor; he is not a professor like Lidenbrock in Journey to the Center
of the Earth'40 Aronnax in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, or
Palmyrin Rosette in Hector Servadac.41 Professors are reassuringly
familiar by virtue of their daily contact with the students they help
mold; a doctor is a far more independent and unaccountable being.
Dr. Ox is unsettling, like a new incarnation of the evil who haunts The
Tales of Hoffmann, the drama by Jules Barbier42 and Michel Carre,43
presented at l'Odeon44 in 1851 (the opera by Offenbach had not yet
been written). In the same year, Verne collaborated with Carre to produce a play, Leonardo da Vnci, which later became Mona Lisa,45 with a similar underlying theme as in The Tales of Hoffmann-the necessity of
choosing between art and love. Jules Verne said of Dr. Ox that he
"escaped from a volume by Hoffmann." By Hoffmann? Or by Barbier
and Carre? Or by Offenbach-his demonic and deadly Dr. Miracle?
Offenbach's opera was created in Paris, February 10, 1881. The direct
line from The Tales of Hoffmann to journey Through the Impossible is
obvious; Offenbach's opera has five acts: prologue, first love, second
love, third love, and epilogue. In Verne's play, Act I includes the prologue and the first exploration; Act II is the second exploration, and
Act III is the third exploration and the epilogue. Thus we have Hoffmann's first love (Olympia, a mechanical doll) and George Hatteras's
first exploration (to the center of the earth); Hoffmann's second love
(Antonia, who dies while singing) and George's second exploration
(under the oceans); Hoffmann's third love (Giulietta, who steals his
shadow) and George's third exploration (to outer space). Both pieces
end by highlighting the battle between good and evil, with the same
choice for the hero-in Hoff Hann, between art and love; in journey
Through the Impossible, between science and love.

Most of the characters of Journey Through the Impossible were
already known to the spectators. The hero, George Hatteras, is the
son of Captain Hatteras, who discovered the North Pole in Journey
and Adventures of Captain Hatteras.46 Like the Verne novels, this play
is a typical initiatory journey where George Hatteras discovers the
center of the Earth, the underwater world, and the planet Altor. The
journey is strenuous; George, faced with obstacles and difficulties, is
subjected to evil forces that push him to journey farther, and to good
forces that protect him from danger and keep him from the blasphemy of seeking to become godlike. The evil force is personified by
Doctor Ox ("Doctor Ox"), without his colleague Ygene. The beneficent spirit, Volsius, first takes the identity of Otto Lidenbrock
(Journey to the Center of the Earth), then of Captain Nemo (Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea), and, at the end, of Michel Ardan
(From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon47). Volsius tries to
restrain George Hatteras from his journey, but Ox coerces the hero to
conquer Earth in Act I, the seas in Act II, and space in Act III. George
is accompanied in his travels by Eva, his fiancee (the love interest so important to Hollywood). For comic relief, Verne and d'Ennery
added Tartelet, a teacher of dance and etiquette (based on Professor
T. Artelet of The School of Robinsons,48 also known as Godfrey Morgan).

Tartelet (French for small tart) did not need time travel to jump
from the novel into the play, since the former was published and the
latter performed in 1882. The School of Robinsons was serialized from
January to December 1882 in Hetzel's magazine for the French family,
Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, and was made available as an illustrated book November 9, 1882, two weeks before journey Through the
Impossible was first performed in Paris. With his friend Valdemar,
Tartelet teaches good manners to George and Eva throughout the play,
during travels to the center of the earth, to Atlantis, and to Altor-tal-
ents very useful in such circumstances! To help the heroes get to Altor,
Verne resurrected Impey Barbicane and J. T. Maston, president and
secretary, respectively, of the Gun Club in Baltimore, which launched
the bullet From the Earth to the Moon in 1865. However, the characters
never reached the Moon. Likewise, having set his foot on the North
Pole, Hatteras finds only emptiness, because the exact geographic pole
is in the center of a volcano. The journey to the Center of the Earth does
not fulfill its goal, and Nemo, Under the Sea, does not visit the deepest
abyss on the floor of the ocean. Verne's astronauts are confined to circle
the Moon on their voyage Around the Moon. The cannon paid for with
The Five Hundred Million of the Begum does not destroy France-Ville,
and the lovers don't see The Green Ray.49 At the end of his tour Around
the World in Eighty Days,50 Fogg does win his wager, but only by way of
another typically Vernian glitch. Michael Strogoff arrives too late at
Irkutsk, and The Star of the South51 is not a synthetic diamond. We see
Maston failing Topsy-Turvy,52 as does Robur the Conqueror,53 as do the
engineers of Propeller Island'54 and Orfanik's inventions for The Castle in
the Carpathians are all destroyed. In most of the novels, however
extraordinary the voyage, a reader might come to feel as if an angel with
a flaming sword had risen before the writer and called out to him, "No
farther! Ahead is the unknown, forbidden to humans-the realm of the
impossible." After "Master Zacharius," Verne almost stopped writing
fantasy and horror stories, a domain that would later occupy writers
such as H. G. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Sloane, and many others.

Nevertheless, to such a forbidden realm we are taken by the hero
of Journey Through the Impossible, by way of the madness inherited
from his father. The other characters created by Verne move through
the extraordinary world of scientific realities. George Hatteras wishes
to go beyond. "This is simply the extraordinary, not the impossible,"
he exclaims to himself. Verne does not reject characters previously
created in his novels; they are, moreover, incarnations of the goodeven Nemo, the rebellious anarchist, the pirate who destroys innocent
vessels. This play doesn't contradict previous works; rather, it is an
extension of them, setting forth the limits beyond which lie the
unknowable and the inaccessible. This flamboyant subject, paradoxically, is quite modern in its "fantasy" concepts, rather than futuristic
science fiction, even though the reader is distracted repeatedly by
breaks in the tone or tension of the action by the goings-on of two
comic characters-a Shakespearean effect that also influenced the
comic interludes of Neapolitan opera-bouffe. Constructed like a signpost at the border between the possible and the impossible, this play
is, more than any other of the novelist's manuscripts, required reading
for all of those, in ever-growing numbers, who study him. Verne's
works are now classics in world literature, and he is a subject so complex as to be understood only from a multi-disciplinary approach.

Verne wrote two trilogies; the first includes The Children of Captain Grant, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and Mysterious
Island; the second comprises From the Earth to the Moon, Around the
Moon, and Topsy-Turvy (also known as The Purchase of the North Pole).
Journey Through the Impossible is the only piece where so many characters from other works-including both trilogies-appear together.
The first half of Jules Verne's life and work culminates with journey
Through the Impossible, a mantle atop the two trilogies.

In 1882 all plays were checked by a governmental office before a work
was produced; the manuscripts were manually copied by anonymous
civil servants and archived. In 1978 Francis Lacassin searched the
archives of the Censorship Office of the French Third Republic and
discovered a copy of Journey Through the Impossible, ending nearly a
century of speculation. The text was published in 1981 by the great Vernian specialists Francois Raymond and Robert Pourvoyeur.55
Until the archived copy came to light, Vernian scholars had only the
reviews of the play to know what it was about and to imagine the text.
To give an idea of what the play was like when staged in 1882, we have
added two contemporary reviews. One, anonymous, was printed in
the New York Times a few days after the play opened in Paris. The
other is by French reviewer and playwright Arnold Mortier. Year after
year, Mortier published a book where he reviewed the plays of the
previous season. The two reviews we have included give a good idea
of the set, the music, the ballets, and the public reception of the work.

Even in 1969, a former president of the Societe Jules Verne published an article about the Journey Through the Impossible, based only
on the reviews.56 And in 1978, Robert Pourvoyeur, just before
Lacassin's discovery, published a long article also based on the
reviews,57 where he pointed out the importance of the music in
Journey Through the Impossible. Ballets characterize these pieces a grand
spectacle, making them predecessors of modern music theater. Oscar
de Lagoanere51 wrote the music for The Impossible; the first ballet concludes Act I (the center of the Earth) and features a profusion of red
costumes and fireworks. The second ballet takes place in Atlantis,
where the indefinable sets mix many styles: Egyptian, Indian, Syrian,
Roman, Greek, and Arab. The last ballet shows Altorians dancing and
singing in brief costumes. According to the reviews, the third ballet
was the best of the three.

The play can be read in two ways. The first and easiest-wellreceived by Parisian spectators-focuses on the music, the colors, the
journey through diamond caves, the Nautilus, and the colossal
cannon (for travel from Earth to Altor). The more difficult reading
gets at the philosophy and the message of the work: glorifying the triumphant inventions of science, but showing that science, badly used,
can bring death and devastation.

This publication is the first translation (in any language as far as
we know) of Journey Through the Impossible, and is certainly the first to
restore Act II, Scene 7 ("The Platform of the Nautilus"). Thus the
complete script is now available to readers ... and later perhaps to
spectators.