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Re: Verne, Esperanto and Venezuela

From: Garmt de Vries <G.deVries~at~phys.uu.nl>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 18:38:26 +0200 (CEST)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Dear Victor,

> The word "esperante" is not used in Spanish. It is not correct Spanish to say
> "Padre Esperante".

OK, thanks for confirming that.

> I conjecture in my article that the name of the character "Le P`ere
> Esperante" in "Le Superbe Or'enoque" refers to the language Esperanto.
> Since Verne has shown previously interest in the artificial
> (constructed) languages.

You are right that Verne had an interest in these languages, and it could
well be that he already knew about Esperanto when he wrote "Orenoque". One
wonders though, as you say in your article, why he would give such an
implicit reference to Esperanto when there is no further mention of it in
the rest of the novel. Another point is that Colonel de Kermor probably
didn't know about Esperanto: he left Nantes in 1875, and was in San
Fernando in 1879. The Unua Libro was published in 1887. But this is
another level, and anachronisms are of course possible.

So, I like your conjecture, I hadn't thought of a possible Esperanto
connection before, but I'm not entirely convinced it was Verne's intent.

> Later he started to write the novel "Esplorvojagxo" (Voyage
> d'exploration), where the language Esperanto plays an important role in
> its plot. However he never finished this novel. He only wrote four
> chapters and started the fifth.

And his son Michel eliminated all Esperanto references from "L'Etonnante
aventure de la Mission Barsac", his heavily modified version of the novel.

> My article was written for esparantists during the centenary of Verne's
> death, I plan to translate it in English soon and post it in my web page.

Good idea. Although Esperanto is quite easy to read if you know a couple
of other languages, many people still prefer to read in English.

Cheers,
Garmt.
Received on Mon 07 Aug 2006 - 19:38:34 IDT

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