Edmondo De Amicis...

...writes on page 32 of his travel book Constantinople [published in 1877; I quote here from the 2005 Hesperus Edition, translated by Stephen Parkin], "to describe great things you must be at a distance from them, and to remember them well, you must have forgotten them a little first." The "great thing" that he is referring to here is Constantinople itself. De Amicis can't process his first sight of the Turkish city, let alone describe this first impression to the reader. He finds that not only can language not help him communicate what he sees, but he is unsure exactly what it is that he is seeing.

As his boat approaches the city, he is momentarily frustrated that his initial view will be spoiled by the fog that has enveloped the Sea of Marmara; but the fog slowly lifts, almost on cue, unveiling the city piecemeal to the eager eyes of De Amicis. So works the mechanism of fog...

Jules

Sometime toward the end of the nineteenth century, De Amicis traveled to Amien, France to visit the great Jules Verne, author of the fictional travel book Around the World in 80 Days and scores of other books. You can read De Amicis's account of his visit

here.

Despite their relative nearness in age -- De Amicis died in 1908 in his early 60s. Verne died in 1905 in his mid 70s -- De Amicis here seeks Verne out as an elder sage, and this trip is more of a pilgrimage than anything else. He unabashedly approaches Verne to elicit some creative secret, to gain some elixir of genius. And in an interesting way, he does.

When De Amicis first sees Verne, we get the conventional disorientation of the young enthusiast meeting their hero for the first time, as he tries to bring the fantasy of Verne the genius and the reality of Verne the man into focus. But that foggy disorientation passes as Verne talks about his writing habits. De Amicis writes:

Contrary to what I had thought, he does not first imagine the characters and facts of he novel he is to write, and then begin to make investigations into one or more countries for his scene of action. On the contrary he reads up the history and geography of the countries first, just as if he intended to do nothing else than describe them fully and minutely. His characters, the leading facts and episodes of his story, rise up in his mind during the reading, which is really an object in itself and not a mere means to acquire useful notes for his book.The reading of books on foreign countries is, it appears, Verne's true object, not the stories he creates about them. It's as if the stories serve no purpose but to knit the facts together in a useful way, so they won't be forgotten.

This may seem an odd description of Verne if you have read any of his globetrotting novels. Countries are often so much backdrop, as, for example with 80 Days, where characters have more important things on their minds then stopping off and going native, and where technology has as its main goal the eradication of space, trouble, and all but the most obvious differences between people.

But as De Amicis learns more about the man whom he knew only through books and reputation, he finds that even the reading of books on these countries was not Verne's true object as he had first guessed, but rather a means to a much more ambitious, and, in its way, poignant end:

In regard to the choice of countries which are to be the scenes of his romances he is guided by an idea I was very far from anticipating. His intention is to describe the whole earth in his books and he goes from region to region in a certain redetermined order, not retracing his steps unless through necessity, and then as quickly as possible. He still has many parts of the world left, and has estimated the number of stories he must still write in order to fill out his entire plan. “Shall I have time for them all?” he asked, smiling.

I once taught Verne's Around the World in 80 Days in a course on Cultural Studies, where I was focusing on the twentieth century travel book, in which these writers' goals were much more modest: to diagnose a particular political situation; to understand how the past overlays the present; to find out the cause of war... I thought it would be a lark to start with Verne, and I made some points about technology and fantasy, not realizing at the time the sheer scope of Verne's ambition.

I was in the book store the other day and I saw a new biography of Verne. I browsed through it while standing there and noted the lack of De Amicis's name in the index; but I may get it anyway, because I would like to learn more about Verne than I now know. It was interesting to see how De Amicis's thoughts of Verne were clarified as he talked with him and as Verne answered questions about the secret of his craft, as the fog of unknowing dispelled to reveal Verne's city-hungry mind.