The imagination which forged these scenes, with all their decoration, is remarkably calm, thoughtful, devoted to the real and the probable. The miza, which runs without a visible motor power, is neither more nor less extraordinary to the uninitiated spectator than many of the vehicles which traverse our roads. The colored globes placed in an aperture of the walls of the houses to light the streets recall strongly our electric lamps. Astané’s flying-machine will probably soon be realized in some form or other. The bridges which disappear under the water in order to allow boats to pass (text 25) are, save for a technical person, as natural as ours which accomplish the same result by lifting themselves in the air. With the exception of the “evocative” powers of Astané, which only concern Mlle. Smith personally and do not figure in any Martian scene, there is nothing on Mars which goes beyond what has been attained or might be expected to be accomplished by ingenious inventors here below.
A wise little imagination of ten or twelve years old would have deemed it quite droll and original to make people up there eat on square plates with a furrow for the gravy, of making an ugly beast with a single eye carry the telescope of Astané to him, of making babies to be fed by tubes running directly to the breasts of animals like the female deer, etc. There is nothing of the Thousand and One Nights, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, fairy stories, or the adventures of Gulliver, no trace of ogres nor of giants nor of veritable sorcerers in this whole cycle. One would say that it was the work of a young scholar to whom had been given the task of trying to invent a world as different as possible from ours, but real, and who had conscientiously applied himself to it, loosening the reins of his childish fancy in regard to a multitude of minor points in the limits of what appeared admissible according to his short and narrow experience.
Thirdly: By the side of these arbitrary and useless innovations the Martian romance bears in a multitude of its characteristics a clearly Oriental stamp, upon which I have already often insisted. The yellow complexion and long black hair of Astané; the costume of all the personages—robes embroidered or of brilliant hues, sandals with thongs, flat white hats, etc., the long hair of the women and the ornaments in the form of butterflies for their coiffures; the houses of grotesque shapes, recalling the pagoda, kiosk, and minaret, the warm and glowing colors of the skies, the water, the rocks, and the vegetation (see Figs. 13 and 14), etc.: all this has a sham air of Japanese, Chinese, Hindoo. It is to be noted that this imprint of the extreme East is purely exterior, not in any wise penetrating to the characters or manners of the personages.
All the traits that I discover in the author of the Martian romance can be summed up in a single phrase, its profoundly infantile character. The candor and imperturbable naïveté of childhood, which doubts nothing because ignorant of everything, is necessary in order for one to launch himself seriously upon an enterprise such as the pretended exact and authentic depictions of an unknown world. An adult, in the least cultivated and having some experience of life, would never waste time in elaborating similar nonsense—Mlle. Smith less than any one, intelligent and cultivated as she is in her normal state.
This provisional view of the author of the Martian cycle will find its confirmation and its complement in the following chapters, in which we shall examine the Martian language, from which I have until now refrained.
CHAPTER VI
THE MARTIAN CYCLE (CONTINUED)—THE MARTIAN LANGUAGE
Of the various automatic phenomena, the “speaking in tongues” is one which at all times has most aroused curiosity, while at the same time little accurate knowledge concerning it has been obtainable, on account of the difficulty of collecting correctly the confused and unintelligible words as they gush forth.
The phonograph, which has already been employed in some exceptional cases, like that of Le Baron, will doubtless some day render inestimable service to this kind of study, but it leaves much still to be desired at the present moment, from the point of view of its practical utilization in the case of subjects not in their right mind, who are not easily manageable, and who will not remain quiet long enough while uttering their unusual words to allow the instrument to be adjusted and made ready.