EDUCATION QUIBBLER I liked the book a lot; this was the first book by Jules Verne that I’ve read and I think this was a good start – I want to read other books by this author. “The Mysterious Island,” “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” are some of this author’s other titles that I want to read, among other books in French, and I hope to do a review for all of them. A Journey to the Center of the Earth is very funny. The main characters are Axel (the narrator), the professor Otto Lidenbrock (Axel’s uncle) and Hans (the Icelandic guide) who aids the two Germans to arrive at Mount Sneffels, which is located at the entrance to the tunnel that ends up in the center of the Earth – according to Arne Saknussem, an ancient Icelandic scholar, whom professor Lidenblock likes and admires. The professor is a very peculiar person, he is super curt, abrupt and not very gentle; so there are many lines that sound very impolite towards his nephew, but the nephew, you can notice, is, naturally, already used to the manners of his uncle and doesn’t get offended by his curt words. The professor, by the way, doesn’t ever lose his hope that Arne Saknussem hasn’t lied to them and that the center of the Earth is really how he has said and that they’ll succeed in their goal of finding it. Axel doubts it very much, but the uncle always has an explanation for all the questions made by the nephew. “You see that it is nothing and that the facts, following their
[26/05/2022] [by u/iguerr] [Translated from French by the author]
Small Review of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne AUTHOR’S NOTE: I DECIDED TO TRY AND DO A SMALL REVIEW/ COMMENTARY FOR THE BOOKS THAT I READ IN FRENCH AS A WAY OF PRACTICING. I JUST FINISHED RECENTLY READING A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD BY JULES VERNE AND WILL DO A SMALL REVIEW.
habit, have just denied the theories” (Chapter XXV). The professor’s determination is, at times, amusing, because he gets to the point of being imprudent. Below are a couple instances: “Oh well, Axel, my uncle says, that’s that, and the most difficult part is done. – How so, the most difficult part? I exclaimed. – Without a doubt, now we just need to descend! – If you look at it that way, you are right; but at the end, after having descended, it’ll be necessary to climb back, I imagine? – Oh! that doesn’t bother much! (...)” (Chapter IX). “It is allowed you to be shut, Axel, when you want to talk out of reason.” (Chapter XXV). The professor also seems to make a lot of use of luck and chance. It seems that he isn’t afraid of dying in the journey, as long as arrives at his goal of finding the center of the Earth. “Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur” (Chapter XI). “And whatever road fortunes throws our way, it must be followed.”¹ ¹Our translation. The book also presents us with beautiful descriptions of the things the three travelers find in the subterranean terrains, as Axel calls it sometimes. “The undulations of these infinite mountains, which their layers of snow seemed to render foaming, called to my
memory the surface of an agitated sea. (...) Where the land ended, where the waves began, my eye hardly distinguished” (Chapter XVI). Here are some other quotes that I also find beautiful. “I hardly thought about the sun, the stars, the moon, the trees, the houses, the cities, all the terrestrial superfluities of which the sublunar being has made a necessity. In our quality of fossils, we couldn’t care less about these useless wonders” (Chapitre XXV). “Science, my boy, is made of mistakes, but mistakes which it is good to make, because they take us bit by bit to the truth” (Chapitre XXXI). “If at each instant we can perish, at each instant we can also be saved” (Chapitre XLII).
[Editorial note: to find the original in French, as well as other writings from this author, go to metamorfema.tumblr.com]
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