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Re: Resolving Alleged Chronological Discrepancies In L'Ile Mysterieuse

From: Ralf Tauchmann <ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de>
Date: 09 Jun 2006 07:28 GMT
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

"thomas mccormick" <tom_amity~at~hotmail.com> schrieb:
> The only remaining "contradiction", then, would be with the real world,
> since there is no Nemo, Cyrus Smith, etc. therein. Novels, of course, are
> supposed to do that!

Dear Tom,

Thank you again. I think I understand better now what your initial
reasoning is. I'd just like to point out what I personally meant
by "REAL time line", which I would like to distinguish from what
you call "real WORLD" above.

Jules Verne follows Alexandre Dumas in terms of starting out from
a historic background and imparting to his characters "identity"
or let's say "credibility" by "tying" them to historic(al) events.

In his trilogy Grant/20TL/MI, Jules Verne (suddenly ?) needs NEMO
(as well as Ayrton) as "deus ex machina" character in a story built
around the American Civil War and decides (for any reason whatsoever,
be it commercial reasons, doesn't actually matter) to "transfer" NEMO
subsequently from the original "point of time" to a new "point of time"
better suited for the new purpose (like taking off a mural painting
without the wall to put it up in another place on another wall,
spatially speaking).

So Nemo loses a bit of his "credibility" or, to express it in a more
positive way, becomes kind of "hidden time traveller" in the world of
Jules Verne, who strengthens NEMO's "real-world" identity while depriving
him of part of his "real-time" identity.

I hope you don't mind me trying to reconcile this with your thoughts:
Your attempt to resolve the chronological discrepancies means (if I'm
not wrong) a formal resolution (that is what obviously missed when
reading your first message) by introducing a kind of "chronological
sliding scale" made up of a "large-scale TIME line" (intervals,
backgrounds, tendencies, "flow of time") with one or several
"small-scale TIME lines" (made up of exact dates and "fixed points
of time") shiftable against the "flow of time".

This could be an interesting story telling and plot building approach
or may even have been the approach of Dumas and Verne? ... invisible
most of the time, but emerging with NEMO because of the obvious
shift in time... ???

Kind regards,

Ralf Tauchmann
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Received on Fri 09 Jun 2006 - 10:31:14 IDT

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