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Re: Roth's preface to Baltimore Gun Club

From: Walter J Miller <wjm2~at~nyu.edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 18:55:41 -0800
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
Cc: wjm2~at~nyu.edu

Dear Norman and All: See my Annotated Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon (Crowell, 1978) for the complete story about Roth. Walter James Miller

----- Original Message -----
From: Norm Wolcott <nwolcott~at~kreative.net>
Date: Monday, February 17, 2003 2:53 pm
Subject: Roth's preface to Baltimore Gun Club

> 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.
> - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - -
>
>
> 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 Wed 19 Feb 2003 - 04:57:10 IST

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