“ Captain Nemo was an Indian prince, the Prince Dakkar, the son of the rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund, and nephew of the hero of India, Tippo Saib. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe.” Regarding Nemo’s Origin: “ Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund. Here are some samples the fragments on the left are from Kingston’s censored version, the ones on the right are from the much more accurate version by Stephen White.ġ. Kingston– encountered a very different version. ![]() However, readers of the English translation– by W. In 1875, five years after 20,000 leagues, Jules Verne wrote L’île mysterieuse ( The Mysterious Island).įrench readers learnt that Nemo was Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand, a distant relative of “Tippo Saib” ( Tipu Sultan) someone who’d fought for freedom in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, and whose family had been murdered by the British. Just compare him with Captain Ahab, in whom motion and motive merged in an ivory stump.īut characters like Nemo do not leave their authors in peace. Captain Nemo became a man driven by a series of general nouns. But Russia happened to be a pal of France at the moment, and Verne’s editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, “persuaded” him to omit crucial details. Verne had wanted Nemo to be a Polish rebel who’d participated in the January Uprising and whose family had been murdered by Tsarist Russia for that reason. ![]() I’m the law, I’m the tribunal! I’m the oppressed, and there are my oppressors! Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of everything I loved, cherished, and venerated–homeland, wife, children, father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out of you!īut who destroyed everything Nemo loved? Which homeland? 20,000 leagues was deliberately silent on these issues. As Captain Nemo readies to destroy an enemy ship– of unspecified nationality– he rages at the tale’s protesting narrator in an Ahab-type outburst: This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he’s a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he himself creates a holocaust he detests imperialism, yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole….Hate swallows him whole. However, Verne gives his hero’s brilliance and benevolence a dark underside–the man’s obsessive hate for his old enemy. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he’s a trail-blazing creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Larsen. …much of the novel’s brooding power comes from Captain Nemo. How did Captain Nemo ever become something more than one of Verne’s story pegs? F. Thus does a good tale overshadow the romance of real life…. ![]() Hjort of the Michael Sars, Prince Albert of Monaco, and of the various marine biological stations– has won less of public attention and interest than did a single one of Jules Verne’s heroes, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus. …all the work of our modern oceanographers– of Sir John Murray of Challenger fame, Dr. In 1912, some forty odd years after the publication of 20,000 leagues Under The Sea, Sir Earnest Shackleton wrote in The Future of Exploration: For the most part, his people are two-dimensional cross-hairs their main role is keep track of places in the reader’s mind.īut there is one marvelous exception. Verne liked to place his human characters in enclosed, self-contained, unique spaces of one kind or the other– heavier-than-air flying machines, isolated islands, floating cities, villages on tree-tops, the earth’s core, cannon-balls to the moon, steel submarines 20,000 leagues under the sea– and send them out for a spin. There are four recurring characters in a Jules Verne novel: air, fire, earth and water. Just as you are the great chronicler of history, I shall be the chronicler of geography.Īnd he proceeded to do just that. Like many current science fiction authors, Jules Verne would’ve been surprised to learn he was one. The Politics Of Captain Nemo September 17, 2006 /
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