Journey to the Centre of the Earth: Jules Verne’s Optimistic Descent into the Unknown
A coded note tucked inside an old Icelandic manuscript, a professor who cannot resist a riddle, and a nephew who would much rather stay at home: that is how Jules Verne sets off one of the great adventure stories of the nineteenth century. First published in French in 1864, Journey to the Centre of the Earth still makes an impossible trip feel, for a few hundred pages, entirely plausible.
Author: Jules Verne (1828–1905)
Title: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre, 1864)
Format: English paperback (Penguin Classics), 288 pages, translated by Frank Wynne, introduction by Jane Smiley
Scope: Classic adventure and early science fiction: a descent through an Icelandic volcano into a hidden world underground
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0141441976 (ASIN 0141441976)
A Parchment, a Volcano and a Reluctant Nephew
Professor Lidenbrock, a brilliant and hot-tempered geologist, finds a parchment left by the sixteenth-century alchemist Arne Saknussemm, claiming that the crater of an extinct Icelandic volcano, Snaefells, leads all the way down to the centre of the Earth. With his nephew Axel and the calm Icelandic guide Hans, he travels by train and by sea to Iceland, and only then does the real journey begin.
Down in the galleries and corridors beneath the volcano, the explorers find far more than rock and ash: an underground world full of life and unsolved mysteries, where they live through some of the most extraordinary and exciting situations in Verne’s work.
Verne the Persuader
Verne has a gift for convincing even the most sceptical reader that the voyage is possible, or at least for planting the wish to make it. His overflowing imagination turns a descent to the centre of the planet into something that feels reasonable while you are reading. He opens the door to a new world and passes on an optimism that lets the reader hope, one day, to see such things come true.
Today we know that such a journey is physically impossible. Yet the book still makes us think about how little we know. Countless species in the deep ocean remain uncatalogued and unstudied, and large parts of our own planet are still unknown; our knowledge of the interior of the Earth is tiny. Verne makes that point quietly, inside an entertaining science-fiction story full of adventure.
Science, Speculation and a Stubborn Professor
Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel argue throughout the descent about what they should find: Axel expects the heat to rise until it kills them, while his uncle insists the centre of the Earth need not be molten. That argument mirrors a real scientific debate of the 1860s, and Verne uses it to keep the reader thinking as well as gasping. Their silent Icelandic guide, Hans, is the one who actually keeps them alive.
Which Translation to Read
Verne was badly served in English for a long time. The first English version, published in 1871, renamed the professor "Hardwigg" and his nephew "Harry" and took liberties with the text. Frank Wynne’s modern translation for Penguin Classics goes back to the French, and Jane Smiley’s introduction and the notes help place the novel among Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires, the series his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel launched after Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863). Readers who enjoy it could go on to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, which owes it an obvious debt.
Why Read It Now
The "absurd idea" at the heart of this novel has earned the respect of critics for over a century and a half, and Verne’s reputation as a visionary rests on books like this one. Frank Wynne’s Penguin Classics translation is a lively, modern way in; read it for the adventure, and come away with a renewed curiosity about the ground under your feet.
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