The mysterious island

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Title illustration by Jules Férat from the original French edition
Map of the mysterious island. Illustration by Jules Férat from the original edition by Hetzel
The last voyage of the Nautilus

The mysterious island is a novel by the French author Jules Verne . The novel was first published in 1874/75 by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel under the French title L'Île mystérieuse in three volumes. The first volume is subtitled Les Naufragés de l'Air ( The Shipwrecked of the Sea of ​​Air ), the second volume L'Abandonné ( The Forsaken ) and the third Le Secret de l'Ile ( The Secret ). The first German-language edition appeared in 1875/76. The novel makes reference to the previously published Jules Verne works 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Children of Captain Grant .

action

The novel tells the story of five people on an unknown island in the Pacific .

March 1865. The engineer Cyrus Smith, his black servant Nab, the war correspondent Gedeon Spilett, the seaman Pencroff and his foster son Harbert, and Smith's dog Top, flee in a free balloon from the besieged Richmond , Virginia , on a stormy night just before the end of the American Civil War . However, the hurricane is driving them far beyond the United States. Completely without aids, they end up near an island in the southern Pacific . Since they can no longer leave the island, which they call the island of Lincoln , they settle down there and, above all, with the help of Smith's scientific knowledge, get everything they need to live: a safe shelter in a cave, food , Clothes and weapons. In dangerous situations, there are always inexplicable events that help them. There is a deep shaft in her den, near which the dog Top is always restless. The engineer suspects an underground connection to the sea through which a sea monster penetrates.

In a stranded box, the "colonists", as they call themselves, find tools, instruments, household appliances, books and other useful items , including a sextant , so that the engineer can record the exact position of the island.

The colonists build a small ship and drive around the island. Harbert fishes a message in a bottle that a shipwrecked man threw into the sea on the neighboring island of Tabor . Harbert, Pencroff and Spilett sail to Tabor, find the neglected shipwrecked man and bring him to the island of Lincoln. He calls himself Ayrton and tells that he had been exposed as an exposed privateer twelve years earlier by Lord Glenarvan after the events surrounding the search for Captain Grant on the island of Tabor. However, he knows nothing about a message in a bottle.

When a ship approaches, the colonists are already hoping to be rescued, but it is a pirate ship whose captain wants to take the island as a hiding place. The colonists have nothing to counteract cannon fire. But when the situation seems hopeless, the pirate ship explodes for unknown reasons.

After almost four years on the island, they receive a message that leads them to an undersea cave entrance. It turns out that this is where Captain Nemo lives in his submarine Nautilus . He is the unknown benefactor who repeatedly intervened in the lives of the colonists without being recognized. He is dying and tells them that he was born in India as Prince Dakkar, son of a Rajah from the formerly independent Bundelkund territory and nephew of the Indian hero Tippo-Saib. His father sent him to Europe when he was ten years old, so that he could enjoy the best possible upbringing and later be able to fight with the same weapons against those whom he regarded as the oppressors of his country. Nemo had broken with humanity, but the colonists' camaraderie restored his trust in humanity. He had climbed up the shaft and overheard their conversations - which made the dog restless. Right before his death, Nemo tells the engineer about an imminent volcanic eruption that will destroy the island. After Nemo's death, the colonists, in accordance with his wishes, let his body sink to the bottom of the sea in the Nautilus. Then they set about building a larger ship to escape the island before the volcanic eruption, which they fail, however - the earlier seawater enters the volcanic vent and the island is completely destroyed except for a small bare cliff who finally hope to be saved. The steam yacht Duncan appears , which is run by Robert, the son of Captain Grant. After twelve years Robert wanted to keep Lord Glenarvan's promise to bring Ayrton back from the island of Tabor after a reasonable period of purification. There he only found a message with the coordinates of the unknown island of Lincoln - apparently deposited there by Nemo.

Back in the United States, the Iowa colonists use money given by Nemo to build their own empire in which they continue to live together.

style

The Mysterious Island is one of the better known Jules Verne novels. The book can be seen as a continuation of his novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Children of Captain Grant , although there are some logical inconsistencies. The action takes place immediately after the American Civil War, long before the events in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Children of Captain Grant . (In particular, according to the chronology, Captain Nemo died on the Mysterious Island in 1867, two years before he embarked on his world tour 20,000 leagues under the sea .)

Originally published as a serialized novel, the story consists of a series of various smaller adventures, some spun out over several chapters (like the battle with Ayrton's pirates), some only one chapter long (like the discovery of a tobacco plant or the attempt to make sugar). A slowly increasing arc of tension runs through the stories: The airship wrecked people are not alone on the island. Only in the last part of the story does Captain Nemo reveal himself. This does not end the story, but leads directly to the final adventure: the dying captain reveals to the engineer Smith that the volcano will erupt on the island and destroy the island. The book ends with a race against time, a shipwrecked drama, and a last-minute rescue by Lord Glenarvan from The Children of Captain Grant .

Adaptations

Film adaptations

Comic

The story was published as a comic in the pioneer newspaper drum (DDR) from issue 20-39 in 1980 (a second time in 1987). The drawings were made by the Hungarian Balázs Feyér.

Radio plays

  • Heikedine Körting (Ed.): From the radio play label Europe with Horst Frank as the spokesman for Captain Nemo.
  • Jules Verne : The Mysterious Island. The exciting radio play based on the world-famous novel. Label: Maritime. Publisher: Gruner und Jahr. Year of release: 1977. Director: Toyo Tanaka. With Rolf Mamero as spokesman for Cyrus Smith, with Franz-Josef Steffens as spokesman for Captain Nemo.

Others

The computer game Myst , released in 1993, is based on individual elements of the novel. Both the name and the atmosphere of the game are derived from the book.

literature

expenditure

  • Jules Verne : The Mysterious Island . Based on an edited and slightly shortened old translation. Illustrated by Horst Bartsch and Hille Blumfeldt. Published by Verlag Neues Leben Berlin, 1979
  • Jules Verne: The mysterious island (original title: L'île mystérieuse ). Adapted from an older translation by Waltraut Henschel-Villaret . With all illustrations from the original edition by P. Ferat. Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart and Munich 1989, 611 pp. (Special edition with the splendid binding of the classic Hartleben edition. It is a complete and the best translated and furnished German edition of the novel.)

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : The Mysterious Island  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: L'Île mystérieuse  - sources and full texts

Footnotes

  1. ↑ GDR comic (slide show)