Journey to the Center of the Earth: A New Translation

by Jules Verne

He was an egotistical scholar, a deep well of scientific knowledge whose pulley screeched when you tried to draw something out of it. In a word, he was a miser.

"I wonder now if even then Saruman was not turning to evil ways. But at any rate he used to give no trouble to his neighbours. I used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind." (JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings") "Well, now, I've known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of him—any ideas, you know." (George Eliot's "Middlemarch")

But a book was only valuable to him if it was impossible to find, or at least impossible to read.

I tend not to read a book unless the author is dead

This bad Latin can be translated like so: Descend into the crater of Snæfellsjökull, which the shadow of Scartaris caresses before the First of July, brave traveler, and you will reach the center of the earth. I have done so myself. Arne Saknussemm.

"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” (JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit")

“Has the master gone insane?” she said to me. I made a sign of affirmation. “And he’s taking you with him.” I affirmed this as well. “Where to?” she said. I pointed toward the center of the earth. “Into the cellar?” “No,” I finally said. “Deeper than that.”

I expected to see Hamlet’s ghost wandering on the legendary ramparts. “You sublime madman!” I said. “No doubt, you would have approved of our trip. Maybe you could follow us to the center of the earth to find a solution to your eternal doubt.”

Hamlet might at least sympathize with having a problematic uncle.

Hans had finished loading our luggage without appearing to have moved.

a line from Virgil that seemed to have been written for us uncertain travelers on the road: Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur. “And let us follow whatever path Fortune has given us.”

This is from Aeneid Book 10, line 49. The speaker is Venus, and the line is actually "et, quamcumque viam dederit Fortuna, sequatur" The father may be cast on coasts unknown, Struggling with fate (Dryden translation) Aeneas can be tossed on unknown seas, following whatever Path Fate gives. (Shadi Bartsch)

Everywhere I looked in this fog, I caught sight of small, blond, slightly melancholy heads. They were like a garland of unwashed angels.

bands of Eloi

The countryside became more and more desolate. At times, however, a human shadow would seem to flee away from us in the distance.

Stapi is a small town of about thirty houses, and built directly on top of a lava bed under the sunlight reflected from the volcano.

Not far from the mouth of the Forest River was the strange town he heard the elves speak of in the king’s cellars. It was not built on the shore, though there were a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which formed a calm bay. A great bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. (JRR Tolkien, "The Hobbit")

“That’s enough. Once science has spoken, there’s nothing more to be said.”

science doesn't do well in silence

We quickly devoured our dinner, and made camp as best as we could. My bed was hard, the shelter was not stable, and the situation was uncomfortable at five thousand feet above sea level.

‘We have passed no place on the way up that offered more shelter than this cliff-wall we are under now.’ ‘Shelter!’ muttered Sam. ‘If this is shelter, then one wall and no roof make a house.’ (on the slopes of Caradhras in JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings")

We were in a sort of cavern with no lack of air. On the contrary, we could feel a draft. What was causing this?

From JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings": They seemed to have passed through some arched doorway into a black and empty space. There was a great draught of warmer air behind them, and before them the darkness was cold on their faces....The Company spent that night in the great cavernous hall, huddled close together in a corner to escape the draught: there seemed to be a steady inflow of chill air through the eastern archway.

At one point, a succession of arches unfolded before us like the vaults of a Gothic cathedral. The artists of the Middle Ages could have learned here all they needed to know about this form of religious architecture, which was based on the pointed arch. A mile farther, we bowed our heads beneath low arches in the Romanesque style, and large pillars connected to the walls bowing under the load of the vaults.

So technically (architecturally) this is a Gothic novel

When I saw that I was beyond all human help, and incapable of doing anything to save myself, I began to think of help from heaven. Memories of my childhood–of my mother, whom I only knew from her kisses–flooded back into my mind. I resorted to prayer, with whatever right I had to be heard by God, whom I had waited so long to address, and I fervently implored him. This return to trusting in divine providence calmed me down a little, and I could concentrate on my situation with the full power of my intelligence.

When I came to, my face was damp, but damp with tears. I couldn’t say how long I had been unconscious. I had no way to tell what time it was. Never had anyone faced solitude as complete as mine. Never had anyone been abandoned so completely.

From JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit": When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright! He could hear nothing, see nothing, and he could feel nothing except the stone of the floor. Very slowly he got up and groped about on all fours, till he touched the wall of the tunnel; but neither up nor down it could he find anything: nothing at all, no sign of goblins, no sign of dwarves.

All at once, the ground was no longer beneath my feet. I felt myself spinning and bouncing off the protrusions of a vertical shaft–practically a well. My head hit a sharp rock, and I lost consciousness.

Bilbo's fall in JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit": Quite suddenly Dori, now at the back again carrying Bilbo, was grabbed from behind in the dark. He shouted and fell; and the hobbit rolled off his shoulders into the blackness, bumped his head on hard rock, and remembered nothing more.

Hans arrived. He saw my hand in my uncle’s. I dare say that his eyes showed the signs of happiness.

Hans is Bjorn Borg

But, in the end, it was not the sun, since its light lacked the same level of heat. The effect was sad, and unappealingly melancholy.

not so different from Iceland

I could sense above these clouds a granite vault,

a firmament in the ancient sense

this “Mediterranean” sea. It certainly was more deserving of this name than any other body of water, since it truly was in the middle of the earth.

Something to do with Tolkien's Middle Earth?

“I’m mostly convinced that this is unbelievable!”

Centuries pass like days. I travel back through the sequence of terrestrial transformations. The plants disappear. The granite rocks lose their hardness. They transition from a solid state to a liquid state under the action of the incredibly intense heat. Water covers the surface of the earth.

the first time machine: digging

It’s disturbed some marine animal that was resting, and now we’ll probably be attacked along the way!”

From JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings": The stone vanished with a soft slap; but at the same instant there was a swish and a bubble. Great rippling rings formed on the surface out beyond where the stone had fallen, and they moved slowly towards the foot of the cliff. ‘Why did you do that, Boromir?’ said Frodo. ‘I hate this place, too, and I am afraid. I don’t know of what: not of wolves, or the dark behind the doors, but of something else. I am afraid of the pool. Don’t disturb it!’

It would be common sense to run away. But we haven’t come this far to act sensibly.

There’s a limit to all ambition down here.

As Victor Hugo said: “Immanis pecoris custos, immanior ipse.” A shepherd of monstrous flocks is even more monstrous himself.

And they run from this shepherd as they had shunned the leper in Iceland -- who likewise had come up in their view in this ghostly, unexpected manner

It must have been an ape, however unlikely that seemed. But could it be a living man, and with him a whole generation buried in the bowels of the earth? Never!

There are echoes here of the rejection of Darwinism, with people of the time incredulous that man could be an ape

we became a toy in the hands of the earth’s inner forces.

I don’t believe that a being endowed with free will should despair as long as his heart is still beating and his blood is still flowing.”

I have confused recollections of continuing explosions, the rock walls shaking, a spinning movement, and the raft. It swayed on waves of lava, in the middle of a rain of ashes. The roaring flames enveloped it. A hurricane that seemed as if it was driven by a huge fan stoked underground fires.

escaping the Death Star

We were well within the Mediterranean, in the middle of the Aeolian Islands, remembered in the ancient mythology of the Greeks as Strongyle, where the wind-god Aeolus kept the winds and the storms chained up.

This is a nice touch, the travelers just having experienced an entire storm trapped by the Earth itself. Axel had observed: "The clouds look like a wineskin with a hurricane trapped inside."

We had entered through a volcano, exited through another, and this other one was situated more than three thousand miles from Snæfellsjökull. We had been thrown from the barren country of Iceland to the far borders of the world. The perils of this expedition had transported us to the heart of the mildest region on earth. We had abandoned the country of eternal snow for one of infinite greenery, and left behind the dull fog of the icy climates for the azure sky of Sicily above our heads.

Dante, in the "Inferno," began and ended his journey to the very center of the Earth at two points thousands of miles apart on the globe's surface, in fact two points directly opposite one another.

The superstitious beliefs of the Italians could not help but see us as demons expelled from the heart of the inferno.

"If Dante in one capacity is the companion of Homer, Virgil, and Wordsworth, in the other he is the father of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Moderns must not be shocked at this; the ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’ branches of almost every art are usually specializations from an earlier and more fully human art which was neither or both." - C. S. Lewis, "A Preface to Paradise Lost"