6
L. Le Dû-Blayo and O. Musard
the vast farming plains, these landscapes were late to be brought to light; attention
then turned to picturesque valleys and rocky coastlines, and subsequently to the
sublime frozen or maritime horizons; lastly, in the twentieth century, human societies
developed a fascination for untamed, rebellious nature.
Thus, very close to our towns and cities, high reliefs and sea beds offer a gradient
of environments, areas and perceptions producing a gradient of landscapes which
paradoxically function and are structured in a similar way. Such similarities argue
in favour of greater recognition of underwater seascapes, within the meaning of the
European Landscape Convention.
1.3 Culture and Nature
1.3.1 Social Emergence of a Term
The terms underwater seascape or landscape immediately became part of the language used by the very first deep-sea divers (Diolé 1954), particularly those keen
to take underwater pictures during their dives, such as L. Boutan in 1893 (Boutan
1893; Weinberg et al. 1993), and J.-Y. Cousteau (“Silent Landscapes”, 1947 film).
This representation is in line with a process already initiated by Jules Verne in his
novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870). The undersea walks and
travels take place in a luxuriant setting and the fauna and flora are described in great
detail. The narrative employs the full array of landscape description terms and pours
forth a taxonomic classification, as if the liquid element were a totally transparent
expanse, as if the sea had opened up, offering the human observer the spectacle of
its depths, and their diversity and particularities. Jules Verne describes his characters’ travels amidst underwater forests and landscapes with unquestionable literary
rotundity. Yet, he achieves an amazing feat since the term “underwater landscape”
is never used in the text except for the title of the famous and no doubt one of the
most well-known engravings captioned “Underwater landscape of Crespo Island”
showing divers walking along a path lined with seaweed and cnidaria, and a few
jellyfish swimming above.
The representation of this underwater space to which Jules Verne’s characters take
us is not that of the ocean deeps but a near undersea environment, discontinuous and
shallow, with different features, characterised by its relief, the texture of the ground,
the fauna and the vegetation. In fact, this further confirms the territorialized nature
of the “Underwater landscape of Crespo Island”: “We at last arrived on the borders
of this forest, doubtless one of the finest of Captain Nemo’s immense domains. He
looked upon it as his own, and considered he had the same right over it as the first
men had in the first days of the world. And, indeed, who would have disputed with
him the possession of this submarine property?” Insofar as Captain Nemo, his men
and his three guests are the only visitors, it is a proto-territory, a sort of frontier. This
approach does not bear the hallmark of Jules Verne, a positivist writer developing
half-fiction, half-scientific novels. It marks a turning point, even a break, in the
conception of the undersea world, which was explored with increasing frequency at
L. Le Dû-Blayo and O. Musard
the vast farming plains, these landscapes were late to be brought to light; attention
then turned to picturesque valleys and rocky coastlines, and subsequently to the
sublime frozen or maritime horizons; lastly, in the twentieth century, human societies
developed a fascination for untamed, rebellious nature.
Thus, very close to our towns and cities, high reliefs and sea beds offer a gradient
of environments, areas and perceptions producing a gradient of landscapes which
paradoxically function and are structured in a similar way. Such similarities argue
in favour of greater recognition of underwater seascapes, within the meaning of the
European Landscape Convention.
1.3 Culture and Nature
1.3.1 Social Emergence of a Term
The terms underwater seascape or landscape immediately became part of the language used by the very first deep-sea divers (Diolé 1954), particularly those keen
to take underwater pictures during their dives, such as L. Boutan in 1893 (Boutan
1893; Weinberg et al. 1993), and J.-Y. Cousteau (“Silent Landscapes”, 1947 film).
This representation is in line with a process already initiated by Jules Verne in his
novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870). The undersea walks and
travels take place in a luxuriant setting and the fauna and flora are described in great
detail. The narrative employs the full array of landscape description terms and pours
forth a taxonomic classification, as if the liquid element were a totally transparent
expanse, as if the sea had opened up, offering the human observer the spectacle of
its depths, and their diversity and particularities. Jules Verne describes his characters’ travels amidst underwater forests and landscapes with unquestionable literary
rotundity. Yet, he achieves an amazing feat since the term “underwater landscape”
is never used in the text except for the title of the famous and no doubt one of the
most well-known engravings captioned “Underwater landscape of Crespo Island”
showing divers walking along a path lined with seaweed and cnidaria, and a few
jellyfish swimming above.
The representation of this underwater space to which Jules Verne’s characters take
us is not that of the ocean deeps but a near undersea environment, discontinuous and
shallow, with different features, characterised by its relief, the texture of the ground,
the fauna and the vegetation. In fact, this further confirms the territorialized nature
of the “Underwater landscape of Crespo Island”: “We at last arrived on the borders
of this forest, doubtless one of the finest of Captain Nemo’s immense domains. He
looked upon it as his own, and considered he had the same right over it as the first
men had in the first days of the world. And, indeed, who would have disputed with
him the possession of this submarine property?” Insofar as Captain Nemo, his men
and his three guests are the only visitors, it is a proto-territory, a sort of frontier. This
approach does not bear the hallmark of Jules Verne, a positivist writer developing
half-fiction, half-scientific novels. It marks a turning point, even a break, in the
conception of the undersea world, which was explored with increasing frequency at