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Paris in the Twentieth Century
Paris in the 20th Century
Paris au XXè siècle (1863)
Member Andrew Nash’s website contains all the English title variations.Plot Synopsis:
(courtesy of member Dennis Kytasaari’s - website)
In Paris of the 1960’s, Michel Dufrenoy wins an award for a verse he’s written in Latin. The audience is amused and his family is put out. In this society everyone is obsessed with technology and life is only to be lived efficiently.
NOTE: This story was rejected for publication by Jules Hetzel in 1863 when it was written. In 1989 Jean Verne (grand-grandson of Jules Verne) was cleaning out the family house when he discovered the manuscript in a trunk. The manuscript was turned into a novel that was published in 1994; it was immediately a bestseller in France. In truth the whereabouts of the manuscript were known for many years, the story of the discovery was created as a marketing ploy.
Review(s)
Paris in the Twentieth Century
Translator: Richard Howard. Introduction: Eugen Weber. New York: Random House, 1996.
xxvii+223 pages.
Hardcover — ISBN-10: 0679444343, ISBN-13: 978-0679444343
Softcover — ISBN-10: 034542039X, ISBN-13: 978-0345420398
Jules Verne’s novel Paris in the Twentieth Century, just published
by Random House, is simultaneously less significant than some publicity has implied,
while still a work of inestimable historical importance. Purely as a work of literature,
Paris in the Twentieth Century lacks the qualities of the best novels that have
insured Verne’s reputation for over a century. Nonetheless, Paris in the Twentieth
Century will be of interest to readers for two primary reasons, because
of its prophecies, but even more because of its early position in the development
of dystopian science fiction.
The saga of the discovery of the manuscript of Paris au XXe Siècle
in a Verne family safe, and its publication in France in the fall of 1994, were
widely chronicled all over the world. In the United States, at the time, the story
was told on network news shows, National Public Radio, and periodicals from the
New York Times to the National Inquirer, as well as such scholarly
journals as Science Fiction Studies (Arthur B. Evans, “The ’New’
Jules Verne,” SFS 22:35-46, #65, March 1995). Paris au XXe Siècle
was quickly translated and published in many countries in the intervening two years,
although the English translation has been one of the slowest to appear. The sensation
created by the novel can be noted by the fact that it has already been adapted into
a stage play, in the Netherlands.
On the most basic, surface level, Paris in the Twentieth Century is an
astonishing book for its depiction of the modern age. Written in 1863, the story
is set in the Paris of the 1960s. Paris in the Twentieth Century concerns
a 16-year-old, Michel Dufrénoy, who graduates, with a devotion to literature
and the classics, but finds they have been forgotten in a futuristic world where
only technological writing is favored. The officially sanctioned creativity is government
sponsorship of the arts, resulting in lowbrow theater for the masses, composed along
the lines of the mass-produced collaborations of the 1930s Hollywood studio system.
Dufrénoy’s alienation is also inspired by Verne’s own experience.
When Verne was the same age as Dufrénoy, he too feared that he would be unable
to succeed if he followed in his family’s career plans. Verne was to inherit
his father’s law practice, but like Dufrénoy, he abandoned the path
that had been set out for him. Instead, he sought to become a writer. While authoring
Paris in the Twentieth Century, the only way he could support his family
and continue his literary work was to write in the mornings before spending his
days at the Bourse—the Paris stock market—which he loathed.
Dufrénoy determines to be an artist, working on his own, but finds that his
book of poetry is impossible to sell, and soon he is starving in the winter’s
cold, one of the few forces of nature that science has yet to overcome. In despair,
he spends his last sous to buy violets for his beloved, but finds that she has disappeared
from her apartment, evicted when her father lost his job as the university’s
last teacher of rhetoric. In a moving but excessively melodramatic climax, the heartbroken
Dufrénoy, bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen, mechanized,
electrical wonders of Paris. The subjectivity becomes steadily more surreal as the
dying artist, in a final paroxysm of despair, unconsciously circles an old cemetery.
Dufrénoy encounters the modern tool of criminal execution—the electric
chair (yet another scientific prediction, opposed to the guillotine of Verne’s
time)—before freezing to death.
The macabre imagery of this peroration to Paris in the Twentieth Century
may be inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was one of Verne’s principal models
as a writer, and was also the subject of Verne’s only literary essay—written
at the time of Paris in the Twentieth Century. Poe may have also provided
direct impetus for the characterization of Dufrénoy. Like his portrayal of
Dufrénoy, Verne believed that Poe’s potential creativity had clashed
with the uncongenial background of an industrial, material society in America. The
strange end of Poe’s life, when he wandered for several days, lost, before
his death, may even have provided the idea for the bizarre climax of Paris in the
Twentieth Century and the death of Dufrénoy.
This climax also has a timeless impact; Verne clearly foresaw the growth of teen
rebelliousness in his portrayal of Dufrénoy. Had the Verne family safe been
opened thirty years ago, and Paris in the Twentieth Century published in
the time of its setting, the 1960s, it would surely have become a cause célèbre
among a generation of youth in revolt. The novel would have been regarded as a paean
to their cause, and Dufrénoy a model of their disenchantment.
Verne’s prophecies of the world to come in Paris in the Twentieth Century,
both in technical and cultural terms, are breathtaking in their extent and nearly
unerring accuracy. Virtually every page is crowded with evidence of Verne’s
ability to forecast the science and life of the future, from feminism to the rise
of illegitimate births, from email to burglar alarms, from the growth of suburbs
to mass-produced higher education, including the dissolution of humanities departments.
The accuracy of the prophecies cannot be overstated, and I would estimate that nearly
90% have come to pass. Perhaps Verne’s most amusing error was in anticipating
that the government would conduct itself in such a businesslike way as to show a
dividend.
However, Verne’s publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, rejected Paris in the Twentieth
Century as simply unbelievable. He also disapproved of the pessimistic,
dystopian tone of the novel, believing that it would not attract readers and might
potentially destroy Verne’s promising career after the publication of his
first scientific adventure and popular success, Cinq Semaines en ballon
[Five Weeks in a Balloon]. As a result of the rejection, Verne not only
locked away Paris in the Twentieth Century for the remainder of his life, but avoided
fiction with a futuristic setting. Instead, he wrote of advanced technology in his
own time, a pattern that gives his writing today the unique quality of science fiction
set in the past. Even Paris in the Twentieth Century displays this same
propensity: its modern marvels were set amid a Paris where 1860s readers would have
recognized contemporary monuments represented as decaying a century later. Perhaps
Verne himself was equally uncertain about setting a novel in the future, considering
how easily he was dissuaded from the idea. Certainly at this early stage in his
career, he did not want to endanger the commercial success offered by his association
with Hetzel.
However, not all of Hetzel’s judgments were so questionable. He also recognized
that from the standpoint of the requirements of novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century
was structurally weak, particularly in the narrative elements Hetzel believed were
so necessary in speculative fiction. While characterization was seldom Verne’s
strength as a writer, usually the fault was obscured by the context of the story,
with an adventurous, scientific, fantastic, or comedic setting. In Paris in the
Twentieth Century Verne centers his narrative, for the only time, on self-consciously
artistic characters—and the results are noticeably neither credible nor intriguing.
Hetzel’s stroke of genius was in urging Verne to wed science fiction with
the plot formula of an adventure story, a marriage that dominated the genre into
modern times. For instance, Five Weeks in a Balloon told not only of a
new aerial navigation device, but its use in a voyage of discovery across Africa.
Instead of Paris au XXe siècle, Voyage au centre de la Terre
[Journey to the Center of the Earth] became Verne’s second full-length
published novel. Journey to the Center of the Earth utilizes the same pattern
as Five Weeks in a Balloon : the chronicle of an incredible quest for the
Earth’s core, a trek that is simultaneously an initiatory, first-person account
of a youth’s coming-of-age. The other work-in-progress which Hetzel accepted
at the time, called Voyages et aventures du Capitaine Hatteras [Journeys
and Adventures of Captain Hatteras], an imaginary account of the first
trip to the North Pole, also fit the generic melding that Hetzel sought.
Paris in the Twentieth Century was not the only early Verne work rejected
by Hetzel because it did not fit the genre he was hoping to establish for a series
of “Voyages Extraordinaires.” Voyage à reculons en Angleterre
et en Ecosse [Journey to England and Scotland] (translated in
1992 as Backwards to Britain, another recently discovered Verne text that
Hetzel had turned down, indicates what the addition of adventure meant for Verne’s
narratives. Journey to England and Scotland is a dry, mundane travelogue,
without the combination of an adventurous plotline that would make such later Verne
works as Le Tour du monde en 80 jours [Around the World in 80 Days]
into enduring classics. Although Verne internalized many of Hetzel’s strictures,
as late as 1870, after seven popular “Voyages Extraordinaires,” Hetzel
would reject l’Oncle Robinson [Uncle Robinson] (published
in France in 1992 and not yet translated into English), which Verne reconceived
as L’Ile mystérieuse [The Mysterious Island] and
several other later castaway stories.
Paris in the Twentieth Century will most disappoint readers because its
plot is thin and lacks substance. The story consists largely of loosely related
episodes, in almost a drawing room style, constructed to facilitate a catalog of
prophecies about life in the metropolis of the 1960s. Perhaps some of the intrinsic
weakness in the plot might have been diminished had Verne proceeded with the sort
of extensive final rewriting that he always gave his published works. The minimalist
quality of Verne’s storyline may also be regarded as another aspect of its
prophetic view. In contrast to the 19th-century style that dominated
most of his writing, Verne presents here a more modernist narrative, concentrating
on a veritable free-flow of minimally-motivated events that befall the hero.
In rejecting Paris in the Twentieth Century, Hetzel advised Verne to try
a futuristic theme again when he had reached greater maturity as a writer. However,
all of the tales of this type that Verne would eventually produce were short stories
and novelettes, where the length could conceal the flimsy plot in a way that the
longer novel form in Paris in the Twentieth Century had highlighted, to
its own detriment. “Une Ville Idéale” [“An Ideal City”],
an 1875 forecast of Amiens in the year 2000, and “Au XXIXeme Siècle:
Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889” [“In
the 29th Century: The Diary of an American Journalist in 2889”]
(written primarily by Verne’s son Michel) are, like Paris in the Twentieth
Century, similarly slight in their plot, with events arranged to showcase
a series of predictions of the distant future. And, unlike Paris in the Twentieth
Century, both of these stories are optimistic in their tone. Only in Verne’s
last such futuristic work, the novelette L’Eternel Adam [The Eternal
Adam] (probably authored by Michel using his father’s name), set
many millennia from now, did Verne offer a forecast even more bleak than Paris in
the Twentieth Century. On the basis of Michel’s involvement in the
creation of “2889” and Eternal Adam, the belief had arisen among Verne
scholars that futuristic speculation was primarily interpolated into the father’s
oeuvre by the son; Paris in the Twentieth Century for the first time confirms
that Michel derived inspiration from Jules in this regard.
Woven into Paris in the Twentieth Century are countless allusions to individuals,
works, and events of mid-19th century France. Sadly, while these might
have been clear to Verne’s intended contemporary readers, much of Verne’s
satire and irony is lost today to any reader without a specialized background. Some
long portions of Paris in the Twentieth Century, such as Chapter 10, are
basically extended literary commentaries by Verne on the authors of his day, expressed
through the dialogue of his characters. Several pages of notes at the conclusion
of the book explain only a small portion of these allusions, frustrating the scrupulous
reader. In fact, the English translation contains only a fraction of the number,
or depth, of the notes appearing in the French edition. As a result, for an English-language
audience, some of the possible impact of Paris in the Twentieth Century
is lost.
Paris in the Twentieth Century was translated into English by Richard Howard,
previously familiar to Vernians for translating into English the essays on Verne
of such prominent theoreticians as Roland Barthes and Michel Butor. Like these earlier
essays, Howard’s work is satisfactory. There are some occasional questionable
translations, such as “Société Générale de Crédit
instructionnel”into “Academic Credit Union,” or the occasional
odd choice of words, such as having Verne observe that many ancient languages, including
French, had become obsolete, when Verne actually seems to say they were sacrificed
(page 7). Howard’s translation of Paris in the Twentieth Century is generally
literal, faithful to the wording and syntax of Verne, to the point of preserving
the flow of Verne’s wording in an unwieldy manner for modern readers. However,
Howard goes so far in this direction as to be unnecessarily awkward. He amplifies
every nuance that surfaces from each phrase and verb conjugation in the process
of translation, to the point of adding complexity that is not present in the original
text (perhaps an echo of Howard’s work translating many continental literary
theorists). Howard thus creates more convoluted phrasing than was necessary, when
a more direct and less complex style would have been more readable and still faithful
to the text.
Howard’s most evident changes to the text are in format, such as inserting
breaks in chapters where there are none. Howard also occasionally merges short paragraphs
into fuller paragraphs, or consolidates brief, single-phrase sentences into longer,
more properly grammatical sentences. However, by doing so, Howard loses some of
the intended staccato effect of Verne’s style and the meaning it creates;
for instance, the impact of Dufrénoy expiring in the snow is lessened by
combining into a single paragraph the final, closing lines of the novel.
In an interview published by Random House, Howard said that since the novel was
such an early Verne book, he did not try to make the style consistent with other
Verne translations—a fortunate decision. However, Howard does not seem to
have investigated what such a step would have meant, and is apparently unaware that
many if not most Verne translators had been unable to avoid the temptation to alter
Verne’s literary style and the substance of his work.
Howard does not seem to know of the recent tradition of Verne translations over
the last forty years, although his work falls squarely within the attempt to evoke
a Verne closer to the original French texts than had been the case in 19th
century translations. In this respect, Paris in the Twentieth Century follows
the precedent of the 1993 Oxford University Press publication of another recent
translation (by Evelyn Copeland) of a Verne book never previously published in English,
Verne’s only fairy tale, Aventures de la Famille Raton [Adventures
of the Rat Family], with its highly faithful translation. A number of other
notable translations have appeared in recent years as well, correcting and re-translating
classic Verne works that had been victimized by dismal—yet endlessly reprinted—19th
century renderings into English, most notably Voyage au centre de la Terre
and Vingt mille lieues sous les Mers [20,000 Leagues Under the Seas].
Howard offers a translator’s note that treats the assignment lightly, choosing
to tell the reader how he first discovered Verne as a form of escapism while a child
of alcoholic parents. Howard relates nothing about how the translation was done
or the challenges it posed. This turned out to be indicative of the manner in which
Howard approached the translation of Paris in the Twentieth Century. In
conversation with this reviewer, Howard defended the inaccurate 19th
century translations for their “wonderful tonality,” but did not elaborate.
He described Verne as an easy writer to translate. Howard also revealed that he
was unaware of the serious literary studies of Verne outside of those that he had
translated himself, such as the essay by Michel Butor. He described Verne as analyzed
only by a few “eccentrics.”
In a lecture on Verne at the French Institute—Alliance Française in
New York City on January 24, 1997, Howard revealed his knowledge of, and approach
to, Verne. Howard’s affected and rambling presentation, while moving toward
a valid conclusion, sadly contained many inaccurate statements. He noted that literary
histories have accorded Verne only the merest mention, usually in the marginal categories
of science fiction and prophecy. Academics, Howard maintained, only acknowledge
Verne because he is so widely read, and dissertations ignore Verne. (Howard is apparently
unaware of the long and increasingly prolific number of dissertations on Verne.)
Culture has placed Verne in the neglected realm of juvenile stories, particularly
for boys, situating Verne as an author only to be read at the beginning of our reading
lives. To turn out two books annually, according to the conventional wisdom, Verne
must have been a manufacturer, not an artisan. Yet a number of quotes reveal a depth
in Verne that Howard compared to Nietzsche, Rimbaud (echoing a Roland Barthes essay
that Howard translated), and Moby Dick (a comparison most often promulgated by Ray
Bradbury).
To the New York Times, on January 21, 1997, in publicity for his lecture,
Howard took a different approach. There, he commented that Verne, “Like Dracula
… works for us, not so much for the quality of literature but for the involvement
in myth he takes us on.”
Sadly, in other ways the American edition of Paris in the Twentieth Century
shows signs of hasty construction, despite Random House having spent two years on
the effort. The half-dozen minimalist line drawings serving as illustrations are,
in a word, pathetic. Five Weeks in a Balloon is twice misdated as having
been published in 1853, not 1863.
Paris in the Twentieth Century is billed on the cover as “the lost
novel;” in fact it is only the latest “lost” Verne work to surface
in the last decade. In addition to Journey to England and Scotland and
Uncle Robinson, a third novel has been published in France, Un Prêtre en
1835 [A Priest in 1835], written before Verne was twenty. A number
of short stories and novelettes have also been discovered and published for the
first time. Many of the novels issued after Verne’s death turned out to have
been rewritten and in some cases created by his son Michel, and the original texts
by the senior Verne have also been recently published. Paris in the Twentieth Century
has earned more publicity than these others simply because it is the only book never
before published in any form to be science fiction, associating the author with
the genre with which he is best known.
Most regrettably, the scholarly preface to the original French edition by Piero
Gondolo della Riva was not utilized for the English translation. Gondolo della Riva
is a noted Verne authority who owns the Hetzel letter refusing to publish Paris
in the Twentieth Century, a document which helped to authenticate
the novel. Gondolo della Riva’s preface discussed the origin of Paris in the
Twentieth Century, why it was lost for over a century, and how the aborted
effort impacted other Verne stories. Instead, Random House commissioned an introduction
by Eugen Weber, an expert in French history.
Weber’s meandering, unfocused piece contains a number of factual errors, and
contributes little context or understanding of the novel. For instance, Weber fails
to understand that the giant ledger at which Dufrénoy works is not a prophecy,
but a symbol of the oppressive dominance of commercialism. He seems unaware that
the “Voyages Extraordinaires” are full of social satire, with the most
relevant counterpoint to Paris in the Twentieth Century being L’Ile
à hélice [Propeller Island], another story of an
apparent municipal utopia gone awry. There are also such minor errors as giving
the date of Verne’s death as 1904 instead of 1905, and describing Georges
Méliès’s version of Verne’s lunar novels “Le Voyage
dans la Lune” [“A Trip to the Moon”] (1902) as “one of the
first French films made,” when in fact France was already a world leader in
filmmaking throughout the 1890s.
Weber says that Verne has been translated on 224 occasions in 23 countries. Considering
that there are more than that number of translations of Verne into English alone,
and (as Weber himself later notes) that 30 translations have recently been made
of Paris in the Twentieth Century, Weber’s estimate is clearly inadequate.
Verne’s works have, in fact, been translated into some 150 different languages
in over a century, making him the most enduringly popular author of fiction in the
world, according to UNESCO surveys.
All in all, Paris in the Twentieth Century is an important book for historical
reasons, but probably readers should be pleased that Verne followed Hetzel’s
advice and concentrated on adventurous science fiction. Previously, readers have
been able to see Verne’s pre-Hetzel work in short stories and novelettes of
adventure and fantasy, but not in science fiction. As Verne’s first science
fiction story, Paris in the Twentieth Century demonstrates that even in
the genre that ultimately made his reputation, his success was due in no small measure
to Hetzel’s influence. Without it, the other great classics that have secured
Verne’s immortality in the literary pantheon, such as De la Terre à
la Lune [From the Earth to the Moon] or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
the Sea, might never have been written. Rejected and unpublished, this
early seed of futuristic and dystopian science fiction that Jules Verne’s
Paris in the Twentieth Century represents in the evolution of the genre
would be cultivated and brought to fruition only by Verne’s successors.