A Journey to the Interior of the Earth
By: Jules Verne
A historical manuscript penned by a medieval Norse poet. A mysterious code. Three intrepid explorers. A subterranean world filled with prehistoric creatures and proto-humans. These are some of the brilliant ideas that are superbly blended in A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne. Jules Verne, the French writer who created several works of science fiction, adventure stories and very popular novels, wrote A Journey to the Interior of the Earth in 1864. Some of his other books explore different aspects of geography, space and time travel. Known as the “Father of Science Fiction” Verne's books have retained their freshness and appeal though many of the ideas propounded in them have been proved erroneous as a result of modern discoveries and explorations. Though Verne wrote popular fiction, few readers would know that he based his writing on solid research and scientific principles. A Journey to the Interior of the Earth drew inspiration from the works of a Victorian geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, who wrote extensively on the origins of the human race from a geological perspective. The book was originally translated into English by Rev. F A Malleson in 1877. Since then several English translations have been made, with the title being sometimes changed to A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Other publishers have had the book completely rewritten, with additions, omissions and changes of name. In this original version of the novel, Professor Otto Lidenbrock is a German mineralogist who lives in Hamburg. He rushes home one afternoon, elated by his purchase of an ancient manuscript from an antique shop. His nephew, Axel who lives with him is less than enthusiastic when he hears that the book is written in Runic script and is an Icelandic saga concerning the old Norse kings. A dirty piece of parchment falls out of the bundle of pages and it appears to be written in code. This grabs Axel's interest and the two spend days trying to crack the cipher. When they finally do, they discover that it has been written by an alchemist who claims that he has traveled to the interiors of the earth via a volcanic tube. Excited beyond measure, the professor drags his reluctant nephew to Iceland, where a local hunter joins them in a truly fantastic voyage.
The story begins in May 1863, at the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, Germany. Professor Otto Lidenbrock dashes home to peruse his latest antiquarian purchase, an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written by Snorre Sturluson, "Heimskringla", a chronicle of the Norwegian kings who ruled over Iceland. While leafing through the book, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. (This novel was Verne's first to showcase his love of cryptography; coded, cryptic, or incomplete messages would appear as plot devices in many of his works, and Verne would take pains to explain not only the code itself but also the mechanisms for retrieving the original text.) Lidenbrock and Axel transliterate the runic characters into Latin letters, revealing a message written in a seemingly bizarre code. Lidenbrock deduces that the message is a transposition cipher, but achieves results no more meaningful than the baffling original.
Professor Lidenbrock locks everyone in the house and forces himself, Axel, and Martha the maid to go without food until he cracks the code. Axel discovers the answer when fanning himself with the deciphered text: Lidenbrock's deciphering was correct but simply needed to be read backward in order to reveal a paragraph written in rough Latin.[a] Axel tries to hide his discovery from Lidenbrock, afraid of the professor's maniacal reactions, but after two days without food, he knuckles under and reveals the secret to his uncle. Lidenbrock translates the paragraph, a 16th century note written by Saknussemm, who claims to have discovered a passage to the center of the earth via the crater of Snæfellsjökull in Iceland. In what Axel calls bastardized Latin, the deciphered message reads:
In Sneffels Yokulis craterem kem delibat umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. Kod feci. Arne Saknussemm.
which, when translated into English, reads:
Go down into the crater of Snaefells Jökull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth. I've done so. Arne Saknussemm
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FrenchPublished In
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Jules Verne
France
Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation was markedly different in an...
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