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De stad in de bomen (1901)

door Jules Verne

Andere auteurs: Zie de sectie andere auteurs.

Reeksen: Jules Verne Wonderreizen (48)

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Le Village aérien est un roman fantastique et d'aventures de Jules Verne, paru en 1901.L'action se déroule dans la jungle africaine. De manière ludique, le roman est l'occasion de s'interroger sur le fameux « chaînon manquant » entre le grand singe et l'être humain, le débat étant à l'époque brûlant depuis la parution des travaux de Darwin. Au premier degré, il s'agit d'un roman joyeux, égrenant pas mal de morceaux de bravoure, tels des attaques d'éléphants, de rhinocéros et de phacochères.HistoriqueLe roman est écrit par Jules Verne entre le 29 janvier et le 30 avril 1896. Il paraît d'abord sous forme de feuilleton du 1er janvier au 15 juin 1901 sous le titre La Grande Forêt dans le Magasin d'éducation et de récréation, puis en volume la même année sous son titre actuel. Ces deux titres, du feuilleton, puis du tiré à part en grand format chez Hetzel, correspondent à deux des chapitres du livre.Au coeur de l'Afrique, dans une forêt impénétrable, celle de l'Oubanghi, deux explorateurs blancs accompagnés d'un indigène et d'un enfant noir découvrent une peuplade inconnue, qui vit dans les arbres. Ces deux héros, un Français et un Américain, nommés Max Huber et John Cort, les observent afin de savoir s'ils sont humains et tentent de rencontrer leur roi... Les explorateurs sont accompagnés d'un garçonnet, Llanga, qu'ils ont recueilli au cours de leur pérégrination au Congo, puisque leur voyage avait initialement pour but d'accompagner Urdax, un négociant d'ivoire portugais, et que leurs aventures commencent au retour de ce périple. Le dernier accompagnant s'appelle Khamis, le « foreloper » c'est-à-dire le guide indigène qui sert à trouver les pistes et à orienter la caravane au sein de l'Afrique sauvage.Il y a des épisodes épiques où notre quatuor de héros affronte successivementun troupeau d'éléphants déchaînés, 2 rhinocéros : un des rhinocéros plante sa corne dans un arbre et n'arrive pas à se libérer, des bandes de singes (gorilles et chimpanzés réunis).… (meer)
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review of
Jules Verne's The Village In The Treetops
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 6, 2013

Surprise, surprise, my full review is "too long" so it's here instead:

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/332108-the-village-in-the-treetops-review

I cut the end of this review out here to accommodate the word limit.

According to promotional/introductory text on the 1st printed p of this edition: "This is the first English translation of the last of Jules Verne's works to be published in his own lifetime." That, in itself, is enuf to make it fascinating for me. What makes it even more fascinating is that this novel is Verne's attempting to come to terms w/ the scientific idea of evolution vs his reputedly devout Roman Catholicism. For those of you who haven't noticed, the Roman Catholics (or, probably, all Catholics, Roman or otherwise) have had a habit of torturing & murdering people whose ideas contradict their own - ie: if they can't co-opt them. Take Giordano Bruno, eg. From I. O. Evans' intro to this edition:

"Fascinated as he was by every branch of science, Jules Verne could not but be interested in the controversy over the Darwinian Theory which was raging during his lifetime. As at the same time he was a sincerely religious man, and followed faithfully the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, he naturally regarded the extremists of the Evolutionary School of thought with a certain scepticism.

"At that time the controversy almost turned upon the possible existence of a "Missing Link," a creature intermediate between man and the anthropoid apes. Was there any such creature?"

[..]

"This remarkable story, which has apparently never hitherto been translated into English, was originally entitled Le Village Aérien. This, however, especially as connected with the name Jules Verne, would rather suggest some sort of super flying-machine, and it is for this reason that I have given it a different title, which I think conveys its theme more clearly. My only other alteration is the omission of a few short passages of geographical detail now completely out of date." - p 5

As I've noted in at least one previous review of a Verne bk translated by Evans, The Demon of Cawnpore, I find the translator's changes to be objectionable:

""Impressed and at the same time horrified by the stern efficiency with which the British had suppressed the Indian Mutiny - for in his time the world was not so accustomed to reprisals as it is today - Verne ingeniously worked into his narrative the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. In the original version he devotes a whole chapter to the Mutiny and its suppression,* [*Omitted in the present edition as holding up the story and lacking in interest.] so tendential that his original translators disavowed responsibility for its "facts or sentiments" in a foot-note!" - p 6

"I call the reader's attn to the admission here that the publishers omitted a chapter present in the original bk! Shame on them!! This is the Fitzroy edition published by Ace! Don't bother to read this one, try to find an edition w/ the chapter omitted here! I will." - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17618514-steam-house

What if Le Village Aérien, translated more accurately as The Aerial Village had some other meaning for Verne? A pie in the sky type meaning expressive of fancy &, therefore, metaphorically critical of evolutionary theory? I admit, such a proposal seems unlikely to me but I assume that if Verne wanted the bk to be called The Village In The Treetops he wd've called it such. As for omitting "a few short passages of geographical detail now completely out of date": why not leave them in w/ an explanatory footnote? That wd be more scholarly.

I've criticized Verne for being somewhat racist toward the Chinese in The Begum's Fortune & somewhat anti-Semitic in Carpathian Castle but his biases are usually tempered & I have to give him credit for that. The Village In The Treetops starts off w/ a Frenchman & an American discussing the colonization of Africa:

""Well, my dear John, if things go on as they are the European nations will end up by sharing all Africa between them - over ten million square miles! Are the Americans going to leave all that to the English and French and Germans and so on?"

[..]

""Well, my dear John, one of these days the Federal Government will be demanding its slice of the African cake. There's a French Congo, a Belgian Congo, and a German Congo, not to mention the Independent Congo, which is only waiting for a chance to give up its independence! And all this country that we've been travelling over these last three months..."

""As travellers, just as travellers, Max, not as conquerors."" - p 7

Immediately, Verne sets the tone of the imperialist mindset but has the American philosophically opt out of conquering. While that might not be a realistic depiction of American policy, it's at least refreshing that Verne doesn't completely mindlessly embrace his French character's position & uses it as a critical ploy instead. Nonetheless, 19th century ecological oblivion reigns: "a harvest of first quality ivory sufficient to supply enough piano-keys for the whole world... And you say you're not satisfied!"" (p 8) Perhaps it's w/ a sense of poetic justice that Verne has the expedition thoroughly routed by an elephant stampede.

&, yes, Verne has some pro-missionary bullshit polluting slightly: "Its peoples are continually at war, enslaving or killing one another, and living on human flesh. And, what is worst of all, these cannibalistic instincts are usually satisfied on the children. The missionaries, therefore, devote themselves to saving these tiny creatures, either by carrying them off by force or by ransoming them, and they give them a Christian education in the Missions founded along the river Siramba." (p 11) I reckon Verne's account, presumably like all the geographical details in his bks, is based on whatever sources he had access to in France - since he didn't visit Africa. But how reliable wd such sources have been? & how sensationalizing & self-justifying? When I think of missionaries, I think of cultural imperialism, I think of fanatics who believe that they have the right to invade countries & force the people to think-like-them. These cultural imperialists are then paving the way for the other exploiters, the diamond miners, etc, essentially capitalist enslavers. Then I think of groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda & the government forces that they rival. Both are somewhat rooted in Christinanity & between the 2 of them they're ripping the people to shreds. Literally. Cd things have been any worse before missionary influence? I doubt it.

As usual, the European & American 'heros' 'have to have' servants &, in Africa, these are Africans: "Accustomed from their childhood to be porters, they would go on being porters until their legs gave way under them. Nonetheless their task was hard, having to be carried out in such a climate, their shoulders bending beneath the heavy ivory of the weighty boxes of provisions, their skins chafed by the coarse undergrowth, for they went almost naked, and their feet bleeding, they journeyed from dawn to eleven in the morning and went on until evening as soon as the heat of the day had passed. / But in their own interests the merchants had to see that these men were well paid, and they were well paid; that they should be well looked after, and they were well looked after; that they should not be driven beyond all reason, and they were not over-driven. The perils of the elephant-hunting were very real, not to speak of the chance of meeting lions or panthers, and the leader had to be able to count on his personnel." - pp 13-14

As noted before, Verne's accts are based on other people's accts & those accts were most likely from Europeans & not from the Africans themselves. Therefore, is it any surprise that they, the Africans, are depicted as being 'saved' from their own 'barbarity' by missionaries? Missionaries who 'save the Africans from their practice of eating children' (how do they make future generations exactly?) so that they can be 'benevolently' used from childhood as porters for European resource plundering & ecology destruction?

Now, I, too, haven't been to Africa, & certainly wasn't in Africa in the 19th century, but I'm very suspicious of the one-sidedness of Verne's depiction of things: "No mercy was to be hoped for from the tribes of the Oubanghi. Nobody knew what limits there might be to their cruelty, and the fiercest tribes of Australia or of the South Sea Islands, would be hard to compare with these natives. Towards the centre of the region there are nothing but cannibal villages, and the Fathers of the Mission, who dare the most frightful of deaths, have some reason to know it. In this equatorial Africa where strength is everything and weakness is a crime, one feels inclined to class such beings, wild beasts with human faces, among the animals! Moreover, even in maturity few of these natives can boast even the vestiges of the intelligence of a child of five or six." - p 22

WHEW! What a huge load of unintrospective crap we have there! The "fiercest tribes of Australia" were pretty soundly brutalized by Europeans & were still classified legally as flora & fauna all the way up 'til 1968!! Maybe these Africans had a pretty good idea of what was in store for them from the Europeans, eh?! As for "one feels inclined to class such beings, wild beasts with human faces, among the animals": make way for nazism: 'subhumans' anyone? Classifying people as 'animals' is always the imperialist subtext for a cruelty far crueler than ever seems to be acknowledged by the imperialists. &, uh, excuse me, but I've never seen an animal yet that wd invade Nanking or drop atomic bombs on Japan. Animals are always getting a bad rep for ferocity but, let's face it, humans are fierce way beyond any need for survival - humans are downright sadistic. & as for "these natives can boast even the vestiges of the intelligence of a child of five or six"? By whose IQ test? I reckon these natives cd survive in Africa where a European or American child of 5 or 6 wd soon be killed or starve. In other words, their intelligence is suitable to their environment & not to some irrelevant European classroom. Of course, as w/ the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan narratives, the 'white' man plopped into Africa becomes the 'Lord of the Jungle' b/c of his 'inherent superiority'. Imagine George Bush Jr plopped into the African jungle at age 6. Wd he have ruled over Africa in no time?! I think not.

I like to look at old encyclopedias to see what currently unacceptable racist & eugenicist propaganda they hold. Then I like to critique the secret agendas of contemporary equivalents. I like Wikipedia & use it all the time but I'd never be so naive as to claim that it isn't ruled by subtextual agendas. The last time I went to accurately alter an incorrect entry I found that I was blocked by a Wikigardener - a person I don't know who's decided that my input shd be banned. &, yet, for most of the time that I've made alterations to Wikipedia the entries I've corrected have been on subjects that I'm a prominent expert on. EG: I added links to an entry on neoism, a movement I cofounded. The link was to MY YouTube channel, to MY movie, of a neoist festival that I organized. How much more direct from the source can you get? &, yet, it's apparently for doing things like this that I'm blocked.

In what's the most recent (as of the writing of this review) RAMPIKE magazine from CacaNada, Vol. 22/No. 1: "Re-recorded Histories", there's a great piece by Diane Schoemperlen that quotes from the Ontario Public School Geography textbook from 1946. Quote # 43 of Schoemperlen's piece is this:

"Europe has long been the home of the most highly civilized races in the world. Her people have long been foremost in industry, commerce, science, and art. Europe's importance is due chiefly to the fact that it is the home of the white peoples of the world. The white races have proved themselves superior to all others in many ways. They are more eager to acquire knowledge and to put it to practical use. They are more energetic. They have a greater capacity for organization, which is one of the chief characteristics of civilized man."

Ha ha! GEE, I wonder if a 'white' guy wrote that?!! If that had been written by an African dictator about black men many people might consider it to be a hilarious piece of megalomania. Here, it's 'received 'wisdom''. Yuk. I reckon it was 'white superiority' that inflicted opium on those 'uncivilized' Chinese, eh? Read The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia to know more about what I'm writing about. Thank you, Diane Schoemperlen, for bringing this to our attn.

ANYWAY, Verne seems decent in contrast to such garbage published 45 yrs later for 'educational' purposes! At least Verne has sympathetic African characters & has his 'missing link' peoples be kind. But there're still loads of problems: "Thenceforward the travellers would have less to fear from contact with the nomadic tribes which, through the initiative of the European nations are being driven back towards the distant lands of Darfour." (p 23) Nomadic peoples, like animals, are always getting a bad rep. Jews & Gypsies were both targetted by the nazis for extermination. WHY? What the fuck's 'wrong' w/ being nomadic?! It seems to me that people who travel must at least attain some knowledge of multiple languages & cultures w/o having to invade. Well, I have no realistic handle on the current condition of Darfur except to say that there's a war going on. How rooted is it in what Verne mentions in passing? Dunno.

Verne seems to generally like Americans. Do contemporary French readers read him & scoff at that? "John Cort had a very serious and very practical mind - qualities usual among the people of New England. Born in Boston, although he was a Yankee by birth he showed only the better qualities of the Yankee. Deeply interested as he was in geography, anthropology, the study of the races of mankind, most attracted his attention. To these merits he added a high courage, and he would have carried his devotion to his friends to the last sacrifice." - p 45

& Verne has the Portuguese leader of the expedition not be a genocidal maniac: "Urdax belonged to that Association of Ivory Hunters which Stanley had met when he was coming back from the northern Congo. But he did not share the bad reputation of his colleagues, most of whom, on the pretext of hunting the elephant, devote themselves to the massacre of the natives, so that, as that daring explorer of equatorial Africa said, the ivory that they collect is stained with human blood." (p 46) Stained w/ elephant blood, yes, stained w/ human blood, no. At least Verne acknowledges that such hunters who killed humans as well as elephants exist(ed). He's trying, he really is. It's easy to retroactively criticize him. Wd I've been any 'better' in his day? Maybe not. Who will be ripping me a new asshole 110 yrs hence?

Verne has Africa's nighttime be quiet, apparently devoid of the sounds of nocturnal creatures: "In the depths of the forest all the noise of the day had ceased and nothing could be heard except a sort of regular breathing, the respiration of the sleeping trees." (p 58) Cd that possibly be realistic?

I'm sure that this review seems like little more than my political diatribe but I really did enjoy this as a tale so I'm not exclusively preoccupied w/ the racist & imperialistic undertones of it all. The plot interested me. Verne has a central theme be one of interspecies communication attempts - a subject I'm fascinated by. "The efforts made by American Professor Garner may still be remembered - his scheme for studying the language of the monkeys and of giving his theories experimental verification." (p 81) Garner is disposed of pretty quickly as an academic fraud of sorts that borders on parody of academicism but the subject of interspecies communication isn't completely discarded. Nonetheless, Verne, ever mindful of catering to Roman Catholic prejudices in favor of man as 'God's chosen creature' or whatnot, has this disclaimer:

"Even before Professor Garner had begun his studies, it was well known that such mammals as dogs and monkeys have their mouths and throats arranged somewhat on human lines and their glottis organized to emit articulate sounds. But it was known too - with due regard to the monkey-lovers - that thought came before speech. In order to speak it is necessary to think, and thinking demands the power of using general terms - a faculty which the animals lack. The parrot talks, but it does not understand a word of what it says." - p 82

Maybe it's US that doesn't understand what THEY'RE SAYING. Why not?

"Finally, and according to his opinion, in conformity with the Darwinian theory of the unity of species and the hereditary transmission of physical qualities and not of defects, it could be said, "If the human races are derived from an ape-like stem, why should not the human language be derived from the primitive speech of these anthropoids?" the only thing was, did man really have monkeys for his ancestors? . . . That was what remained to be shown and what has not been shown." - p 84

I wonder what Verne wd've made of the teaching of the gorilla Koko (& others) sign language? The Village In The Treetops struggles w/ Darwinism, racism, etc, throughout - & that's largely what made it intellectually stimulating for me.

""After all," Max Huber added, "nothing could be more natural! Aren't we in the center of Africa? Well, between the natives and the apes of the Congo - except for Khamis [their black African guide] , that's understood - I don't think there's very much difference."

""But you have to remember," John Cort replied, "that the distinction between the man and the animals is that one is equipped with intelligence and that the other is dominated by an impersonal instinct..."

""The latter is much more certain than the former, my dear John!"

""I don't say no, Max. But these two factors of life are separated by a gulf, and as this has never been crossed the evolutionists have no grounds to claim that man is descended from the monkeys..."" - p 100

But, despite Verne's Roman Catholicism, this is all a set-up for leading the reader into imagining a missing link & to, therefore, accepting Darwinism. & he later explores this theme in a different bk in a short story that he supposedly dictated on his deathbed, "The Eternal Adam" [to be reviewed later].

See the rest of the review here:

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/332108-the-village-in-the-treetops-review
( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
This was definitely one of the weaker Verne stories. Published in 1901 towards the end of his life but not translated into English until 1964, this concerned African natives and simians and the discovery by two French explorers of a new race that they come to see as representing the "missing link" between the Darwinian ape ancestor and modern man. In the pen of a Rider Haggard or a modern author like Michael Crichton, this could have been a decent story reflecting the viewpoint of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, but it simply collapsed under the weight of poorly written and stereotypical scenes and characters. 1.5/5 ( )
  john257hopper | Apr 5, 2012 |
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» Andere auteurs toevoegen (6 mogelijk)

AuteursnaamRolType auteurWerk?Status
Verne, JulesAuteurprimaire auteuralle editiesbevestigd
Evans, I. O.Secundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
FariñasIllustratorSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
Gracia, FernandoVertalerSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
Roux, GeorgeArtiest omslagafbeeldingSecundaire auteursommige editiesbevestigd
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Le Village aérien est un roman fantastique et d'aventures de Jules Verne, paru en 1901.L'action se déroule dans la jungle africaine. De manière ludique, le roman est l'occasion de s'interroger sur le fameux « chaînon manquant » entre le grand singe et l'être humain, le débat étant à l'époque brûlant depuis la parution des travaux de Darwin. Au premier degré, il s'agit d'un roman joyeux, égrenant pas mal de morceaux de bravoure, tels des attaques d'éléphants, de rhinocéros et de phacochères.HistoriqueLe roman est écrit par Jules Verne entre le 29 janvier et le 30 avril 1896. Il paraît d'abord sous forme de feuilleton du 1er janvier au 15 juin 1901 sous le titre La Grande Forêt dans le Magasin d'éducation et de récréation, puis en volume la même année sous son titre actuel. Ces deux titres, du feuilleton, puis du tiré à part en grand format chez Hetzel, correspondent à deux des chapitres du livre.Au coeur de l'Afrique, dans une forêt impénétrable, celle de l'Oubanghi, deux explorateurs blancs accompagnés d'un indigène et d'un enfant noir découvrent une peuplade inconnue, qui vit dans les arbres. Ces deux héros, un Français et un Américain, nommés Max Huber et John Cort, les observent afin de savoir s'ils sont humains et tentent de rencontrer leur roi... Les explorateurs sont accompagnés d'un garçonnet, Llanga, qu'ils ont recueilli au cours de leur pérégrination au Congo, puisque leur voyage avait initialement pour but d'accompagner Urdax, un négociant d'ivoire portugais, et que leurs aventures commencent au retour de ce périple. Le dernier accompagnant s'appelle Khamis, le « foreloper » c'est-à-dire le guide indigène qui sert à trouver les pistes et à orienter la caravane au sein de l'Afrique sauvage.Il y a des épisodes épiques où notre quatuor de héros affronte successivementun troupeau d'éléphants déchaînés, 2 rhinocéros : un des rhinocéros plante sa corne dans un arbre et n'arrive pas à se libérer, des bandes de singes (gorilles et chimpanzés réunis).

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