Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

The title of the novel refers to the distance traveled below the surface of the sea, and not to the depth of immersion, since 20,000 leagues are about 110 thousand kilometers, or about 9 diameters of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is 4 leagues (that is, about 22 km: almost twice as deep as the Mariana Trench - the deepest place in the world). The original name speaks of the seas in the plural, meaning "seven seas", along which the characters of the novel sailed.

In 1866, an unusual object began to catch the eye of sailors, surpassing the whale in speed and size. Newspapers, followed by scientists, became interested in an unknown object, which, after much discussion, was considered an animal unknown to science, presumably a giant narwhal . Academic interest gave way to purely practical, when as a result of collisions with an object several ships got holes. It was decided in 1867 to equip an expedition in the military sailing-steam frigate "Abraham Lincoln", owned by the US Navy, to find and destroy an animal dangerous for navigation.

After a long search, the expedition encounters an “unknown animal” in the Pacific Ocean, but as a result of a collision with it, the frigate is damaged, and Professor ( Pierre Aronnax ), his servant . - advice) and harpooner ( Ned Land ) find themselves in the water, after which they get on board the submarine, which, as it turns out, was mistaken for an “unknown animal”. Her master is introduced as "Captain Nemo" ( lat. Nemo - Nobody). He declares rescued that they are aboard the Nautilus submarine belonging to him. Captain Nemo, along with his comrades, broke all ties with human society and retired to the ocean to live freely. Secretly from everyone having built and equipped the Nautilus in such a way as to have the possibility of almost unlimited autonomy on it, Nemo and his comrades, who made up the crew of the ship, went into the ocean forever. Since Nemo is interested in maintaining the secrets of the Nautilus, he decides to detain those saved on the ship for an indefinite period, and the heroes, who, in fact, are faced with a choice between captivity and death, have to come to terms with his decision. The captain invites Professor Aronax to participate in the scientific research and observations that he conducts on the Nautilus, climbing into the depths of the sea that are inaccessible to earthly science, but the professor’s companions are not discussed at all: gentlemen and servants are different layers of society. As a result, the harpooner Ned Land (feeling particularly humiliated) constantly provokes all the involuntary "passengers" of the Nautilus submarine to escape from the submarine.

Over the next seven months, the heroes experience adventures in all the oceans of the globe, except the Arctic. During this round-the-world trip on the surface and in the depths of the seas and oceans, they participate in spearfishing, visit the islands of New Guinea, collect pearls and fight sharks in the Indian Ocean, visit the flooded ruins of Atlantis , fight sperm whales and octopuses. "Nautilus" overcomes the ice of the South Pole and Captain Nemo opens there - the Pole.

During this journey, it becomes clear to the heroes that the crew of the Nautilus, although it has left the land, remains in the know about the events taking place there and actively helps the peoples fighting against the colonialists. At the end of the story, the Nautilus engages in battle with an English warship and mercilessly drowns it with a ramming blow. So the heroes learn that the captain, among other things, executes personal revenge.

Throughout the story, the heroes constantly return to the question of escaping from the Nautilus, which Ned Land especially insists on. But “to escape from an underwater prison is doubly impossible.” It is impossible to find an accomplice among the crew - the sailors speak only their own language, which none of the heroes knows, and the crew does not communicate with the captives at all, with the exception of Captain Nemo. Finally, after the battle with the English ship, when the captain seems to be depressed and loosens control over what is happening, Ned Land discovers that the Nautilus is near some land and offers to escape, capturing the boat. At the last moment, it turns out that the ship got into Malstrom - a powerful whirlpool - but it's too late to change anything. Aronax and his companions miraculously escape and get to the Norwegian coast; the last chapter of the novel ends with Aronax’s reflections on the difficult fate of Captain Nemo and the question, is the mysterious captain still making his revenge, taking revenge on the whole world?

While sailing on the Nautilus , Professor Pierre Aronaks kept a diary, from which it appears that the voyage lasted from November 8, 1867 to June 23, 1868 .

In the novel Mysterious Island , published in 1874, Jules Verne described the end of the story of Captain Nemo and Nautilus: Nautilus overcame Malstrom, which he entered before the flight of Professor Aronax and his friends, after which he sailed for many more years in the ocean. In the end, a very aged Nemo, having outlived his entire crew, put the Nautilus to the last parking lot in a cave formed in the vent of an extinct volcano on a Pacific island and lived out its last days on a ship. When Americans were abandoned by a hurricane on the island, the captain sometimes anonymously helped them. In the final part of the novel, the captain meets the heroes, tells them his story and soon dies. The Nautilus with the captain’s body remains at the bottom of the cave when the island plunges into the ocean as a result of the eruption of an awakened volcano.

In a much later novel, The Flag of the Homeland , the author returned to the subject of the outlawed captain of the submarine. The main villain of the book, Ker Carrage, a notorious pirate who acts solely for the purpose of profit, is completely deprived of the nobility of Nemo, thanks to which he is capable of especially brutal murders: a characterization familiar to readers.

Like Nemo, Ker acts as a “host”, inhospitable to the French, but, unlike Nemo, who managed to escape from all his pursuers, Carragee's criminal career ends thanks to a combination of international efforts and the uprising of his hostages. Despite the fact that the novel was published in a large circulation and translated into many languages, its popularity did not reach “Twenty thousand leagues”.

More similar to the original Nemo, although less worked out, is Robur from the novel Robur the Conqueror . The plots of both novels are also similar to each other. In both books, the inventor who has left the world of people abducts several people, and they are forced to travel around the world.

• Pierre Aronax ( FR. Pierre Aronnax ) (40 years old at the start of the journey) is a professor at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, speaking in the novel as a storyteller. Proficient in botany, zoology and mineralogy, he wrote the book "Secrets of the deep sea", which became a bestseller. Before taking the place of a professor, he was engaged in medical practice. Of all three strangers who got to the Nautilus, the least inclined to escape and most interested in the personality of Captain Nemo.
• Consel ( French Conseil ) (30 years at the start of the journey, 10 years as a servant of Professor Aronax) It is believed that he received such a name in honor of one of the inventors of the "semi-submersible ship" Jean-Francois Consel. Described by the professor as "a bold Flemish minor of thirty years." Phlegmatic, jack of all trades and at the same time, in spite of his surname (from the French - “Council”), he never gives advice. A connoisseur of the classification of animals, while apparently distinguishing them very poorly.
• Ned Land is a Canadian harpooner who is considered one of the best specialists in his field and therefore invited to board the Abraham Lincoln to hunt for the alleged sea monster. Very strong and agile in handling a harpoon. He is also an excellent storyteller of countless whale hunting stories. In full accordance with his last name (from the English - “Earth”) he feels worse than anyone else on a submarine and most of all seeks to escape from it.
• Captain Nemo ( French Le capitaine Nemo ) is the captain and builder of Nautilus, who for some reason hated society and hid from it in the ocean. He is engaged in the study of the deep sea, and also helps revolutionaries and residents of countries oppressed by the European colonialists.
• Captain Farragut ( eng. Commander Farragut ) - Captain of the American frigate "Abraham Lincoln", sent in search of an unknown marine object, which turned out to be "Nautilus". It is possible that he received the surname in honor of the really existing Admiral Farragut , who became famous during the Civil War in the United States.

• Georges Sand , who was friendly with Etzel and praised the first novels from the series “Extraordinary Travels” - “ Five Weeks in a Balloon ” and “ Journey to the Center of the Earth ” - suggested Vernu the idea of ​​the plot of the novel based on an underwater trip.
• One of the first translators of the novel from French into Russian was Maria Aleksandrovna Vilinskaya , who is personally acquainted with Jules Verne (and with his permission), she is also Marco Vovchok (for translation, see ↓ ).
• Jules Verne, while working on the novel, was impressed by the Polish uprising of 1863 . Initially, Captain Nemo was a Polish aristocrat ^[4] , fighting against the Russian oppressors, who destroyed his entire family. But under the pressure of his publisher Etzel, who came not only from the political situation, but from the sound calculation that the Polish aristocrat simply did not have enough money to build such an underwater vessel, Vern “deprived” Nemo of a nationality that remained unknown to Aronax and his companions. Only the portrait of the revolutionary Tadeusz Kosciuszko , who is among the others in the captain’s cabin, recalls the “Polish trace” in his history. Later, in the novel Mysterious Island, Verne will reveal Nemo incognito and present him as the fugitive Indian prince Nan Saghib , who escaped to the sea after the failure of the sepoy uprising and avenging England, enslaving his homeland.
• "Nautilus" was one of the first submarines created by the English engineer Robert Fulton , who in 1800 introduced her model to Napoleon Bonaparte. Subsequently, this name was given to the first electric-powered submarine launched in England in 1886 ^[5] , as well as the world's first nuclear submarine , which, like the ship Verna, made a voyage to the pole - though North, not South . At the same time, however, Verne, born in 1828, never mentioned Fulton’s name in any of his works, especially since he offered his submarines not only to France, but also to its potential enemy - Great Britain ^[6] . It is worth noting that at the end of the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” “Nautilus” is attacked by an English ship (this is not directly indicated, but rather hinted at). Thus, Verne had no reason to name a fictional submarine in honor of a real one. Moreover, the novel describes an episode when passengers of the Nautilus watch a flock of nautilus mollusks (they are called Argonauts in the novel) and compare the mollusks and their shells with Captain Nemo and his ship ^[7] . The same episode reveals the meaning of the motto "Nautilus" - "Moving in the movable" ("Mobilis in mobile") ^[8] . Often the prediction attributed to Verne in the novel of the very idea of ​​a submarine is erroneous. So, at the time of its writing, among others, the project of the largest submarine of the XIX century - Plongeur , created in France, with which the author was familiar, was already presented. It is noted ^[9] that the Nautilus had a number of technological borrowings from the French submarine: a reservoir for compressed air in the bow, a mechanical propeller drive, and a boat.
• Describing the weapons of the Nautilus, Jules Verne never mentioned torpedoes in his novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, although the idea of ​​a torpedo was proposed in 1865, four years before the publication of the book ^[10] . However, the book "Mysterious Island", which served as a continuation of the history of "Nautilus" describes a torpedo attack of a pirate ship. There is a legend that, having learned about the invention of the torpedo, the writer unsuccessfully tried to buy up the entire circulation of the book ^[11] . Subsequently, Vern found himself in a similar situation of annoying omission with the novel Floating Island - despite the fact that experiments in the field of radio transmission took place in 1893–1894, Vern provided a standard cable for connecting with the ground Island with a giant cable that stretches behind it across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco itself.
• The absence of an air regeneration system (described by Verne in the previous novel “ From the Earth to the Moon ”; it is mentioned here too, but Nemo considered it unnecessary) and the need for regular ventilation ^[12] deprive the Nautilus of complete autonomy (the maximum duration of the Nautilus’s immersion) - about five days) ^[13] .
• In the first English translation of the novel, made by Lewis Mercier, several major mistakes were made at once ^[14] . So, the "diving suit" was somehow translated as a "cork vest", which led to confusion. In addition, when describing portraits of historical figures in the cabin of Nemo in the first English edition, Daniel O'Connell, a fighter for independence of Ireland, was “excluded”.
• In the novel, Verne makes a rather large number of errors and inaccuracies - in modern publications they are marked by footnotes. So, describing the fauna of the Southern Polar Basin, Vern mistakenly places walruses there ^[15] - they are found only in the Northern Hemisphere. The reason is that by the time the novel was being written, the Antarctic was still relatively poorly explored, and for the first time people reached the South Pole only in 1911 - after the author’s death.
• The existence of an underground passage ^[16] between the Red and Mediterranean Seas, along which the Nautilus passes, is an author's fiction.
• The artist Riu, illustrating the first edition of the novel, gave Professor Aronax a portrait resemblance to Jules Verne, and, by mutual desire, Vern and Etzel portrayed Captain Nemo as Jean Sharras, a Republican colonel expelled from France after the accession of Napoleon III .

The novel was repeatedly filmed , including in the USSR (television three-part film " Captain Nemo ", 1975).

The premiere of the first full-length film adaptation of the novel took place in the United States on December 24, 1916.

• 1907 - “ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ” a short film, France, dir. Georges Méliès.
• 1916 - “ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ” USA, dir. Stuart Peyton. The film, shot with the direct participation of the son of Jules Verne - Michel. ^[17]
• 1985 - , an Australian cartoon,
• 1954 - “ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ” USA, dir. Richard Flisher
• 1975 - “ Captain Nemo ”, mini-series, USSR, dir. Vasily Levin
• 1997 - “ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ” USA, dir. Rod Hardy
• 1997 - , television movie, USA, dir. Michael Anderson
• 2002 - “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” USA, dir. Scott heming

In addition, the characters of the novel and Nautilus proper appear in the film League of Outstanding Gentlemen (2003).

In 1952, a free account of the history of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus boat was shown in 2 episodes ^{[18] of the} American science fiction series Tales of Tomorrow, currently the first part of the story is considered lost, only the second part is preserved. ^[19]

The modernized film adaptation of the novel is the film Nautilus: Lord of the Ocean (the English name is “30,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, 2007).

• Plongeur is a 19th century French submarine.
• Captain Nemo

• Верн, Жюль. Двадцать тысяч льё под водой / пер. с фр. Н. Яковлева, Е. Корш. — М. : Государственное издательство художественной литературы, 1956. — 478 с. — (Собрание сочинений : в 12 т. / Ж. Верн ; 1954—1957, т. 4).

• Параллельный англо-русский перевод книги (неопр.) . getParallelTranslations.com. Дата обращения 2 июня 2014. Архивировано 11 марта 2012 года.
• Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1866–69) (неопр.) . The Illustrated Jules Verne. — Иллюстрации к прижизненному изданию. Дата обращения 2 июня 2014.
• Прашкевич Г.М. // Жюль Верн. — серия: Жизнь замечательных людей. — Молодая гвардия, 2013. — ISBN 978-5-235-03599-7