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Re: Resolving Alleged Chronological Discrepancies In L'Ile Mysterieuse

From: Ralf Tauchmann <ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de>
Date: 08 Jun 2006 07:21 GMT
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

"thomas mccormick" <tom_amity~at~hotmail.com> schrieb:
> T2, by contrast, is intended to represent the "real" chronology of Nemo's
> life, which Verne's "Editor's Note" tells us "could not be employed until
> now". Unlike T1, T2 attaches no actual dates to events.
[...]
> T1, to recapitulate, is the chronology of 20TL, which, as Verne specifically
> warns us in his "Editorial Note", is (in a literal sense) false; T2 is the
> "true" chronology, which "could not be given until now.".

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for forwarding your thoughts, which recapitulate the
date discrepancies. But are they actually resolved? Is it actually
possible to resolve them? In my view, Verne (and/or Hetzel) did what
many rulers in the world did : they "changed" history subsequently
in their favour and according to their needs. When I say, they
changed "history", I have the German word in mind ("Geschichte"),
which means both "history" (sequence of real events) and "story"
(sequence of fictitious events).

What I find interesting here in terms of "publishing history" is
that the author and the publisher were well aware of what they did
and they finally accepted it -- NOT TACITLY, even though not fully
honestly (because they added two "catch 22" or let's say
"short-circuiting" notes).

I believe that the discrepancies cannot be resolved from the novels
themselves, but they are an attempt to reconcile the "fictitious
events" with the "real events". Despite the publisher's notes, the
chronology of MI is not more real than the chronology of 20TL just
by the fact that it is forwarded later in time. The only way to
ACTUALLY resolve the discrepancies between the novels would be to
change REAL history.

We can of course employ our imagination and say that 20TL used false
dates in order not to compromise the person of NEMO or reveal his
identity. On the other hand, we know that Hetzel did not want to
have the title "le courrier du tzar" to avoid any problem with
Russia and so it may be possible that he urged Jules Verne to
choose another nationality thereby destroying the "story time line"
Jules Verne may have planned (I don't know whether JV intended to
write a sequel when writing 20TL, the scholars may know).

Last but not least, we must bear in mind that all these stories are
fictitious. Each novel for itself is quite properly hooked up to the
real time line, but they do not match with each other.

> Indeed, there are at least two directions in which to pursue any
> chronological problem. We must surely ponder the words of Groucho: Time
> flies like an arrow, but fruit fries prefer a banana.

... and Flench flies like it hot ! (sorry for the bad pun)

Kind regards,

Ralf Tauchmann
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Received on Thu 08 Jun 2006 - 10:27:36 IDT

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