I have proposed this book of essays as a geographical introduction to the fictional world of Verne. Therefore, not to all his literary production but only to that referred to his dozens and dozens of travel and adventure books. I have attempted to address his original treatment of the relationship between the abundant and influential geographic base of his stories, sometimes realistic and many times fantastic, without fear of your mix, and the adventures that unfold in such terrain. I have tried to select those elements that express your favorite landscapes, since the magnitude of Verne's novel work does not recommend another procedure in a geographical essay.
I have explained it in a way that allows us to gradually move from the general to the particular.: first, with an allegorical consideration of fantastic geographies in general and their internal connections or digressions; after, with a comprehensive review of Verne's system of novel maps, the invented atlas or its literary planet; and, finally, separating his extraordinary trips by geographical themes, its chronicles and its imaginary places.
I have proposed this book of essays as a geographical introduction to the world of Verne's novels.
When doing this review, author and reader recover a planet, existing and non-existent, the “planet Verne”, and also an Earth that passed, that left, in facts and dreams. Even many of the Vernian futuristic actions are, by its treatment or by its compliance or by its design, past thing. Others may be yet to come., although its possible expression will depend on how new times shape and concretize them.. The book thus takes us through entertaining geographical and literary digressions..
For my part, It is evident that I am pleased to write a few pages on fantastic geography, and especially about the one created or recreated by Jules Verne, adapted to his novels of marvelous journeys and extraordinary adventures. And so I have followed in the footsteps of his Extraordinary Journeys through the Poles, mares, islands, mountains, caves, Volcanes, rivers, forests, steppes, cities, roads, the air, the moon, comets and the future.
I have followed in the footsteps of his extraordinary journeys through poles, mares, islands, mountains, caves, Volcanes, rivers, forests…
This book is, as, a tribute to the geographer and teacher Jules Verne. It has been written calmly, savoring each place, each island, desert, ocean, jungle, volcano the chicken. Step by Step, adventure the adventure, landscape to landscape, evocation by evocation, with the slowness appropriate to the rhythm of nature and with the emotion of the storm. The author of this essay has gladly stopped at the paintings of nature described by Verne, patient has attended (the throbbing) to the outcome of the characters' adventures, He has been present at the eruptions of volcanoes that do not exist and has descended endless rivers between paper alligators..
In these landscapes there are beautiful and cruel seas that please their sailors and torture their shipwrecked people.
Those landscapes that we have visited and that represent the essence of Verne's Earth have mountains that suggest the best beauty of the Planet, caves that shine like diamonds, erupting volcanoes that amaze their spectators, frozen regions where the poetry of desolation is found, beautiful and cruel seas that please their sailors and torture their castaways, islands where you can learn to be men or where you can stop being one, rivers that mark difficult paths towards lost sources, forests that keep secrets without time, deserts without concessions towards those who enter them, cities that are like honeycombs segregated by hive-men where our ideals and perversities are directly manifested, paths that unite regions and continents for better understanding and prosperity or arising from the will of the walker, the air that surrounds us and preludes the takeoff from the ground, and the cosmos, finally, that discovers our insignificance and fills us with loneliness in the midst of an infinite unknown. The entire nature is at the same time a wonder, resource, obstacle and indifferent machine – with its forces, rules, chaos or chaos- to the circumstance of its inhabitant, namely, the ti, from my, enthusiastic readers and innocent earthlings.
“The Land of Jules Verne” (Editorial Forcola), by Eduardo Martínez de Pisón, will be presented in Madrid next Thursday 27 to 19:00 hours in the Desnivel bookstore (Matute Square, 6).
