Tim Unwin
160
(there will also ultimately be significant points of similarity, to which
I shall return). Verne’s writing is not underpinned by anything like the
same systematic discourse of aesthetic unity or harmony as Balzac’s
or Flaubert’s. Writing is not presented as an undertaking which aims
to create formal structural coherence or indeed patterning out of chaos.
The writing of nature is, in the first instance, a process of extensive
and detailed transcription. There is, indeed, rarely any explicit or formal aesthetic discussion in Verne, who does not align himself with the
poet or the mystic, and who bypasses those philosophical discourses
that are so evident in writers like Balzac and Flaubert. And while there
is very clearly a process of mesmerizing accumulation in the Voyages
extraordinaires, just as there seems to be in those passages from Balzac and Flaubert, this is most frequently geared towards fragmentation, diffusion, dispersion and multiplication, rather than towards
unification or harmonization. For Verne, there are apparently no reductive procedures that can account for and structure the infinite variety and complexity of the world. Rather than synthesis, his
fundamental impulse is towards mathesis:
4 Verne always prefers the
inventory conducted in extenso – hence the massive lists of flora and
fauna in works such as Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. These literally
give the impression that the natural world is infinite, and – similarly –
that the language used to describe it is unbounded and ever equal to
the task, since there is always another term available to the writer to
detail another phenomenon. The dictionary matches nature with its
endless variety and largesse, yet this near-perfect fit between the natural world and the textual one, far from producing a sense of wholeness
or plenitude, leads on many occasions to an effect of arbitrariness. The
unknown world is turned into words that are, equally, unknown to all
but the absolute specialist, and since so many different specialisms
come into play in Verne’s work, the ideal reader would have to be a
polymath to make full sense of the text. But making sense is not really
the point. Often, meaning beyond the sounds and the strangeness of
___________________________
4 “The Voyages, anticipating the closure of the circle of knowledge, the attainment of
omniscience, aim to supplant mimesis by mathesis, deploying science to abolish fiction. But the Vernian savant is always threatened, in the course of his journeys of intellectual discovery, by the catastrophic reduction of science to nescience” (Andrew
Martin, The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne, (Cambridge:
CUP, 1985), pp. 6-7).
160
(there will also ultimately be significant points of similarity, to which
I shall return). Verne’s writing is not underpinned by anything like the
same systematic discourse of aesthetic unity or harmony as Balzac’s
or Flaubert’s. Writing is not presented as an undertaking which aims
to create formal structural coherence or indeed patterning out of chaos.
The writing of nature is, in the first instance, a process of extensive
and detailed transcription. There is, indeed, rarely any explicit or formal aesthetic discussion in Verne, who does not align himself with the
poet or the mystic, and who bypasses those philosophical discourses
that are so evident in writers like Balzac and Flaubert. And while there
is very clearly a process of mesmerizing accumulation in the Voyages
extraordinaires, just as there seems to be in those passages from Balzac and Flaubert, this is most frequently geared towards fragmentation, diffusion, dispersion and multiplication, rather than towards
unification or harmonization. For Verne, there are apparently no reductive procedures that can account for and structure the infinite variety and complexity of the world. Rather than synthesis, his
fundamental impulse is towards mathesis:
4 Verne always prefers the
inventory conducted in extenso – hence the massive lists of flora and
fauna in works such as Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. These literally
give the impression that the natural world is infinite, and – similarly –
that the language used to describe it is unbounded and ever equal to
the task, since there is always another term available to the writer to
detail another phenomenon. The dictionary matches nature with its
endless variety and largesse, yet this near-perfect fit between the natural world and the textual one, far from producing a sense of wholeness
or plenitude, leads on many occasions to an effect of arbitrariness. The
unknown world is turned into words that are, equally, unknown to all
but the absolute specialist, and since so many different specialisms
come into play in Verne’s work, the ideal reader would have to be a
polymath to make full sense of the text. But making sense is not really
the point. Often, meaning beyond the sounds and the strangeness of
___________________________
4 “The Voyages, anticipating the closure of the circle of knowledge, the attainment of
omniscience, aim to supplant mimesis by mathesis, deploying science to abolish fiction. But the Vernian savant is always threatened, in the course of his journeys of intellectual discovery, by the catastrophic reduction of science to nescience” (Andrew
Martin, The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne, (Cambridge:
CUP, 1985), pp. 6-7).