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Re: kéraban

From: Nejat Bayramoglu <neckobay~at~ttnet.net.tr>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:47:10 +0300
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Dear Ralf,

I was not at all offended by your reaction. But I want to underline that I
don't consider Verne a "lesser" writer.

I started reading him at the age of eight and his works formed an impressive
part of my informal education. I am sure I would have been a different
person had I not read Verne.

It's only that I find some of his work not as fascinating as you might do.
But then, "de gustibus non est disputandum."

I don't say vaudeville is not Verne's genre, but even as a vaudeville I find
Kéraban "medium" (or "blunt"), wheras vaudeville in "80 Days" is
"successful" ("refined") -- not in a commercial, but literary sense. And I
believe Mike Todd decided to make "80 days" a movie because he saw the
vaudeville in it could be exploited commercially, which he realized through
using Niven and Cantinflas (both great actors of vaudeville).

As for the wordplay in the telegraph: I have read the Turkish translation of
Kéraban and it lacks creativity, describing the wordplay in a translator's
footnote. I am not sure whether there's an English translation of Kéraban.

(Garmt wonders why the telegraph is in French when, logically, it had to be
in Dutch. I would say that's asking too much logic from a writer of fiction!
If one goes into the factual mistakes in Kéraban, of which Garmt gives only
a couple of examples, one could write a pretty long essay.)

Best,
Nejat


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralf Tauchmann" <ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de>
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: kéraban


Dear Nejat,

Sorry for my quick reply this morning when I started work.
I see my message back and it may seem impolite (that was not my
intention).

> "Kéraban" as one of the lesser works of Verne.
[...]
> ... Verne is not as successful with Kéraban as he is with Phileas Fogg .

I think I felt a bit embarrassed by your link between "lesser"
and "not as successful as", i.e. between "generally accepted value"
and "commercial success". Important for book sellers, but not for
readers... Except for readers who follow the "mouton de Panurge"
principle (read and find good what other say it's good).

Why not try to discover the VAUDEVILLE Verne? Verne did not
neglect his "son" KERABAN, he liked him and one can feel that
when reading the novel.

By the way, how is the telegram mistake translated in English?
I find that "died" instead of "did" could work (although not
actually the same style), or one could use the polysemic field
around "departure" with an "embedding mistake" instead of
misspelling...

Kind regards,

Ralf Tauchmann
---------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de
tel: +49-351-8336141 fax: -8336142
http://www.ratau.de ; http://tauchmann.ratau.de
---------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Wed 27 Oct 2004 - 19:46:27 IST

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