Captain Nemo

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Captain Nemo with a sextant on his submarine Nautilus , book illustration from 1869

Captain Nemo (in French original "le capitaine Nemo" [ lə kapitɛn Nemo ]) is a fictional character , the first time in Jules Verne's work 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea appears. Nemo is the commander of the Nautilus submarine . It also appears in Verne's 1874–1875 novel The Mysterious Island and in the 1882 play Voyage à travers l'impossible .

Captain Nemo is considered the most famous figure in the works of Jules Verne. The Latin word “nemo” means nobody .

The person Nemo

First conception

In the original conception of the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , Jules Verne envisaged portraying Captain Nemo as the Polish aristocrat of the Szlachta . This fictional character would have wanted to avenge his own family, who perished during the January uprising of 1863/1864 against Russian oppression. A manuscript is not known. The Vernien Volker Dehs assumes that the idea in the first talks between Jules Verne and his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel was discarded. The publisher is likely to have feared the censorship of the book by the Russian Empire and losses in the export of its products to the Russian Empire .

description

In the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , the learned and brilliant engineer Nemo is portrayed as a mysterious man.

Only the novel The Mysterious Island mentions the origin of Captain Nemo. After that he is Indian who was born as Prince Dakkar . He is the son of a Rajah from the formerly independent Bundelkhand territory and nephew of the Indian hero Tippo-Saib . At the age of ten he was sent to England by his father in order to receive a good upbringing there and later to be able to fight against the British, whom his father regarded as the oppressors of his country. Nemo loves western science and culture, but retains its Indian identity. After returning to India, he married and planned to drive out the English who were occupying the country. However, his revolt was bloodily suppressed and his entire family was killed. Embittered, he turns his back on the world and withdraws with a few loyal companions. Nemo has a bitter hatred of Britain . After the uprising of the Sepoys , Nemo builds the Nautilus , which was originally planned as a research ship, with the rest of his fortune in the greatest secrecy on a desert island . Then he begins his campaign of revenge, in which he crosses the seas with a dedicated team. He found the lost Spanish Armada and raised the gold, which he used from then on to support the freedom struggle of oppressed peoples.

Towards the end of the novel The Mysterious Island , Captain Nemo dies at the age of 60 on the Nautilus , which is stuck in an underground grotto on the fictional island of "Lincoln" in the South Pacific . The boat is then finally buried by a volcanic eruption.

  • Captain Nemo (right) as a book illustration by Alphonse de Neuville and Edouard Riou, 1870

  • Captain Nemo watches a sea monster at the Nautilus window

  • "Farewell, sun!", Saying of Captain Nemo while hoisting his flag at the South Pole

  • Captain Nemo on his deathbed, book illustration by Jules Férat

Work interpretations

Captain Nemo with a sextant, sculpture erected in 2004 in Nantes near the Musée Jules-Verne

In later literary studies, some authors see parallels in the figure of Captain Nemo with the Homeric hero Odysseus . In both works, the respective heroes are intellectually open-minded captains of a ship and commanders of a loyal crew. In the course of their journey they encounter strange surroundings and strange creatures. The naming of Nemo is also associated with the Odyssey of Odysseus in later interpretations of the work by some cultural scientists . In the ninth song he tells that he initially withheld his true name from the Cyclops Polyphemus and called himself Οὖτις, the ancient Greek word for nobody.

reception

Film adaptations

In film adaptations, the character of Captain Nemo is represented by the following actors:

music

  • 1980: The pop group Dschinghis Khan releases the song Käpt'n Nemo on their second album Rome as a tribute to Captain Nemo.
  • 1983: The fourth album Built to destroy the Michael Schenker Group is an eponymous instrumental included.
  • 1993: The concept album Mobilis in Mobile by the French group L'Affaire Louis' Trio pays homage to Captain Nemo. The songs Captain , Mobilis in Mobile and The Last Hour contain precise references to the character. The recordings contain underwater and machine noises as well as whale songs.
  • 2003: In the chanson Elle préfère l'amour en mer. (She prefers love at sea) Philippe Lavil mentions that the Navy is proud of Captain Nemo.

Captain Nemo as namesake

literature

Web links

Commons : Capitaine Nemo  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nemo alias Dakkar, September 16, 2017 - January 7, 2018 , press release from the Musée Jules Verne
  2. ↑ Volker Dehs : Afterword in Jules Verne: 20,000 miles under the sea , Düsseldorf, 2007, pp. 698-699
  3. ↑ The Mysterious Island, Chapter Sixteenth. zeno.org , accessed January 2, 2014 .
  4. ^ Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): Nemo in: Jules Verne manual. Bertelsmann Club, Stuttgart 1992, p. 230.
  5. ↑ See literature: Stephen Bertman Captain Nemo's Classical Pedigree
  6. ↑ Youtube , song from 1980 with visual representation of images relating to Captain Nemo, accessed on October 18, 2019.