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Malta-literature

From: <ian.thompson~at~ges.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:59:43 -0000 (GMT)
To: jvf~at~Gilead.org.il

Having listed the persons aboard the St Michel and visited the site of its
first landing in Malta, my next step was to search for literature
regarding Verne's visit, mainly in the National Library of Malta. In fact
the amount of publication is very sparse. I found only one article in
English. "Jules Verne's visit to Malta in 1884", Harry Redman Jr and
Bernard Clarke Weber, Scientia, A Quarterly Science Review, vol XXVIII,
19623. The authors are both American.This is of little interest as it
simply takes extracts from Mathias Sandorf and assumes that this is an
accurate account of Verne's visit, whereas I have argued that the reverse
process is more scientifically logical..ie. attempt to reconstruct Verne's
visit from documentary sources then see how far this is reflected in the
novel.A short article in Maltese,"Meta Jules Verne gie jifli lil Malta",
Torca, Il Hadd, 7 ta'Lulju,2002, by Carmel Micallef, falls into the same
trap.A more interesting article was published by V.Laurenza, "Malta in un
viaggio Giulio Verne",Archivum Melitense, March 1920. It too argues from
Mathias Sandorf to reconstruct Verne's visit but its interest is that the
author discovered the testimonial, and autographed copy of "Face au
Drapeau" given to Samuel Grech for his assistance in the repair of the St
Michel.In other words he discovered these crucial documents 53 years
before Pierro Gondolo della Riva reported on them in "Jules Verne à Malte"
in the Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne, no. 25, 1973.
The local press was also of no significant value. Verne's visit was
reported in "Il portafoglio maltese", no 4025, 26 juin, 1884, but the
quite lengthy article in Italian consists of a literary review of Verne's
work with no information on what Verne did during his visit.
The main guide for further research was therefore Philippe Valetoux's
 "Jules Verne en mer et contre tous", Magellan,2005 page 151 which gives
some detail based on Verne's carnets which I could follow up. I
disregarded earlier brief accounts, eg M. Allotte de la Fuye as being too
brief and unreliable. My next posting will report what I was able to
confirm and discover, and also what I was unable to prove.
Ian Thompson.
Received on Mon 30 Oct 2006 - 19:59:56 IST

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