Tim Unwin
168
time moments of intense poetic effusion in the Voyages extraordinaires, comparable with the passage from Flaubert’s Novembre
quoted earlier, and in which the writer, either through the discourses
of science, or through the direct evocation of nature, has a predominantly aesthetic response to the phenomena he reports. As Michel Butor argues, his style is at times imbued with a poetic power where the
richness and strangeness of words themselves becomes a source of
fascination.
17 So there are also in Verne’s work some astonishing coincidences of style and preoccupation with Balzac and Flaubert, despite the differences to which I drew attention earlier. Verne is
perhaps closest to Balzac in certain pages of Voyage au centre de la
terre, in his vivid and enthusiastic descriptions of the quaternary era,
and most notably in the famous description of Axel’s dream in Chapter Thirty-Two of that novel. Here, Cuvier is evoked in much the same
spirit as Balzac’s quasi-poetic figure who resuscitated long-vanished
species through an almost magical act of creativity. Axel initially laments his own inability to do the same, but clearly, Cuvier provides
the inspiration and the trigger for the dream that follows:
Je regarde dans les airs. Pourquoi quelques-uns de ces oiseaux reconstruits par
l’immortel Cuvier ne battraient-ils pas de leurs ailes ces lourdes couches
atmosphériques? Les poissons leur fourniraient une suffisante nourriture. J’observe
l’espace, mais les airs sont inhabités comme les rivages. Cependant mon imagination
m’emporte dans les merveilleuses hypothèses de la paléontologie. Je rêve tout
éveillé. Je crois voir à la surface des eaux ces énormes chersites, ces tortues
antédiluviennes, semblables à des îlots flottants. Sur les grèves assombries passent
les grands mammifères des premiers jours, le leptotherium, trouvé dans les cavernes
du Brésil, le mericotherium, venu des régions glacées de la Sibérie […].
18
There is in these lines, and throughout the famous dream sequence
that follows, a near-poetic intoxication, and a verbal intensity which
fully parallels the Balzacian “éloge de Cuvier” quoted earlier. The
passage is certainly one of the most self-consciously poetic in any of
Verne’s novels, with its conspicuous enumerations, its focus on the
sounds of those difficult and strange names, and its cumulative style
which, like Balzac’s, increases in momentum and speed as it progresses. And as for similarities with Flaubert’s more direct verbal response to nature, there are many moments in Vingt mille lieues sous
___________________________
17 Butor, “Le point suprême”, pp. 130-62.
18 Voyage au centre de la terre, p. 274.
168
time moments of intense poetic effusion in the Voyages extraordinaires, comparable with the passage from Flaubert’s Novembre
quoted earlier, and in which the writer, either through the discourses
of science, or through the direct evocation of nature, has a predominantly aesthetic response to the phenomena he reports. As Michel Butor argues, his style is at times imbued with a poetic power where the
richness and strangeness of words themselves becomes a source of
fascination.
17 So there are also in Verne’s work some astonishing coincidences of style and preoccupation with Balzac and Flaubert, despite the differences to which I drew attention earlier. Verne is
perhaps closest to Balzac in certain pages of Voyage au centre de la
terre, in his vivid and enthusiastic descriptions of the quaternary era,
and most notably in the famous description of Axel’s dream in Chapter Thirty-Two of that novel. Here, Cuvier is evoked in much the same
spirit as Balzac’s quasi-poetic figure who resuscitated long-vanished
species through an almost magical act of creativity. Axel initially laments his own inability to do the same, but clearly, Cuvier provides
the inspiration and the trigger for the dream that follows:
Je regarde dans les airs. Pourquoi quelques-uns de ces oiseaux reconstruits par
l’immortel Cuvier ne battraient-ils pas de leurs ailes ces lourdes couches
atmosphériques? Les poissons leur fourniraient une suffisante nourriture. J’observe
l’espace, mais les airs sont inhabités comme les rivages. Cependant mon imagination
m’emporte dans les merveilleuses hypothèses de la paléontologie. Je rêve tout
éveillé. Je crois voir à la surface des eaux ces énormes chersites, ces tortues
antédiluviennes, semblables à des îlots flottants. Sur les grèves assombries passent
les grands mammifères des premiers jours, le leptotherium, trouvé dans les cavernes
du Brésil, le mericotherium, venu des régions glacées de la Sibérie […].
18
There is in these lines, and throughout the famous dream sequence
that follows, a near-poetic intoxication, and a verbal intensity which
fully parallels the Balzacian “éloge de Cuvier” quoted earlier. The
passage is certainly one of the most self-consciously poetic in any of
Verne’s novels, with its conspicuous enumerations, its focus on the
sounds of those difficult and strange names, and its cumulative style
which, like Balzac’s, increases in momentum and speed as it progresses. And as for similarities with Flaubert’s more direct verbal response to nature, there are many moments in Vingt mille lieues sous
___________________________
17 Butor, “Le point suprême”, pp. 130-62.
18 Voyage au centre de la terre, p. 274.