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Roth's preface to Baltimore Gun Club

From: Norm Wolcott <nwolcott~at~kreative.net>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 17:53:36 -0500
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

The following is the complete preface to the Baltimore Gun Club which I
copied out of an original copy. It is interesting that Roth, after
criticizing the "bad" translations of the English translators, then goes on
and apparently tries to do them one better. It appears from the preface that
Roth has written what he wished Verne had written, obviously with a social
agenda in mind.
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                  Preface to Baltimore Gun Club

                               by

                       Edward Roth (1878)


Six years ago Verne's wonderful stories, among others his De la
Terre à la Lune, fairly fascinated me. The boldness of the
conceptions, the naturalness of the incidents, the details
founded on the strictest practical knowledge-all revealing a mind
that had sounded the depths of many an intricate scientific
problem-were indeed a new revelation. Not only that. The elements
usually considered indispensable in the ordinary novel, were
totally absent. There was no killing, no betraying, no
persecution, no heart breaking, no courtly pageantry, no
metaphycical speculations, no mystery, no complicated plot, no
thrilling descriptions, no fine writing, no photographic sketches
of real life, no turning the human heart inside out, no
apotheosis of nastiness-and still the story was profoundly and
absorbingly interesting! An ideal story, pure as a sunbeam, less
elaborately constructed than Poes's, but like them appealing
altogether to the intellect of the reader and his innate love of
the marvellous.

Surely, I thought, Verne's are just the books for our clear-
brained, quick witted, inquisitive, restless, reality loving
Young America, so different from his brothers in Euroope, whether
plodding Teuton or visionary Celt.

Our boys, I said, devour dime novels by the millions, for want of
something better. They read English reprints, written for a lower
order of minds, and therefore sure to deprave their tastes if not
to corrupt their hearts. They blind themselves, physically and
mentally, over books intended for older readers of more vigorous
stamina, and therefore less liable to irreparable injury. Their
school books are so irksome and apparently useless, having so
little in common with the volumes they find lying about at home.

Would not Verne's stories, I asked, suit them exactly? They treat
on healthy and manly subjects; they give the intellect an
exciting but not an enervating stimulus; they are more suggestive
of a breezy walk over sunlit mountains than the painted
gorgeousness of a theatre of the sickening perfumes of a ball
rooom;; they present pictures that invest studies in geography,
chemistry, geology, history, and mathematics and physcs
generally, with a charm that is never discovered in school books.
They inculcate earnestness, steadiness, thoughtfulness. When a
bright eyed, pure hearted boy asks his teacher what book he can
recommend, he may be answered at once, without any hemming or
hawing.

Therefore, I fondly concluded, Verne's books are going to be
immediately translated by enterprising American publishers, and
scattered by tens of thousands all over the land.

How I reckoned without my host!

For five or six years not a single work of Jules Verne issued
from the American press, except "Five Weeks in a Balloon," which,
though in the main a good translation, contains so many
geographical mistakes that it must have been done in a hurry.

Whence proceeded this indifference of American publishers to the
Daniel Defoe of the nineteenth century? Was there some radical
defect in his stories so great as to counterbalance his
innumerable merits? No doubt some thought so. Cool heads might
consider his conceptions rather extravagant, the incidents
impossible, his science now too profound, now hard to separate
from mere fancy, his local coloring distortion rather than
exaggeration, his humor too thin to bear translation, his men
machines rather than human beings, his sentiments odd, his
English names harsh and even absurd, and hiw whole book, in fact
intended for a cast of mind essentially different from the
ordinary American reader.

Charges of this nature, whether well or ill founded, seemto have
completely blinded American publishers for several years, with
regard to the merits of Jules Verne.

How little they knew the American public. In spite of the alleged
drawbacks, hasty translations of Verne's works by English hands,
in which, either through ignorance, incapacity or prejudice, his
errors-sometimes merely typographical-were uncorrected, his
defects exaggerated, and even some of his best passages
omitted-these translations, reprinted by American publishers,
spread like wild fire last year over the country and were
everywhere hailed with the greatest delight by both young and
old.

Then my resolution was taken. It was to make an original
translation, the best I could, of works which, while strictly
following the spirit of the author-this it could not do if
slavishly bald and literal-would try to make the most of his
strong points, throw the weak ones into the shade, soften off
extravagances, give names a familiar sound, correct palpable
errors-unless where radical, and then say nothing about
them-simplify crabbd science, explain the difficulties, amplify
local coloring, clear up unknown allusions, put a little more
blood and heart into the human beings-in short a translation
which should aim as far as possible at that natural, clear,
familiar, idiomatic style which Verne himself would have used if
addressing himeslfin English to an American audience.

Such services rendered to Jules Verne's stories, if done
honestly, unobtrusively, and with even tolerable success, could
hardly fail to be of decided advantage to the American public.

The present volume is my first installment. In it the reader has
Jules Verne done into real English, corrected, edited, annotated,
revised-

Improved?

Well-I only hope the public may kindly think so.

                                        E. R.

Broad Street Academy
     Philadelphia, April, 1874.

nwolcott~at~kreative.net Friar Wolcott, Gutenberg Abbey, Sherwood Forrest
Received on Tue 18 Feb 2003 - 01:03:34 IST

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