The Arch of Kerguelen: Voyage to the Islands of Desolation

by Jean-paul Kauffmann, Patricia Clancy

Release Date: 05 November, 2000

Edition: Hardcover

Price:

More Info

Mysteries, mysteries

I liked the book in French, and French friends who read it enjoyed it. OK, there's some of that lyricism the French enjoy and English-speakers are a little allergic to, but the tone, overall, is not that different from the Kerguelen articles Matthew Parris wrote for the (London) Times a couple of years ago (you can read them on the Net). The sense Kauffmann gives us of the Kerguelen landscape is probably accurate - his descriptions strikingly agree with mountaineer/doctor Andr� Migot's 1956 account, The Lonely South. Unfortunately this English edition is a little bit couldn't-care-less. A big black mark is someone's decision not to bother tracking down various material that was originally in English. So instead of genuine extracts from Rallier du Baty's 1908 book, 15,000 Miles in a Ketch, what we have here is passages translated back into English from the French translation of 15,000 Miles, and similarly an English translation of a French translation of the wonderfully obsequious dedication (p71) that Captain Robert Rhodes put on his chart of Kerguelen, and an English translation of a French translation of the allegedly unfindable epitaph (p197) on Captain Matley's gravestone. A pity because, although Kerguelen is now French, its past was largely Anglo-American and there was a chance here to give us some authentic voices from those days. Peculiarities and implausibilities also keep jumping out of the page at you. For instance, randomly and by no means exhaustively, why has Major Couesnon turned into a captain by page 103? If you want to check on where Port-aux-Fran�ais and Christmas Harbour are located, be prepared to use your powers of deduction, because the map provided calls them something else. Minus 41 Fahrenheit, we are told, isn't harsh as temperatures go (p42) (the arithmetically challenged really should double-check their centigrade-Fahrenheit conversions). The sun 'shined' for an hour (p42). The blurb drastically relocates the Kerguelens to SE of Australia. Would soldiers march through the wilds in 'raincoats', what kind of fog makes a raincoat flake, and how 'brand new' would a flaking raincoat look (p129)? In the Williams engraving of J.C. Ross's ship Terror - it was used as the cover illustration for one of the French editions of the book - those sailors supposedly hauling on the sails (p.166) are keeping a very low profile. What are Decauville tracks (p105)? (For the answer to this, look no further than the big Harraps French-English dictionary - though maybe someone could have saved us the trouble.) Emperor penguins (p196) are Antarctic birds - the tall penguin species found on Kerguelen is the king penguin. A ship, the Loz�re, 'comes in contact with a raised part of the sea bed' (p190). (Or did it maybe just run aground?) What are 'modified makeshift repairs' (p162)? Do trains do 'fast switches' (p80), and if so, what are they? Do loaves have 'soft, damp interiors' (p46) (as opposed to being, say, moist and pleasantly chewy inside)? Isn't it a little odd to talk about an islet being 1,650 feet from the shore (p197), as if someone had been out there with a very long tape measure? Frankly, does it make any sense to talk about earth mounds 'adapting themselves to the ground' (p157) (ie gradually settling or subsiding)? You might get the wrong idea about Captain Peretti's wife, who apparently spent a lot of time 'thinking up' underwear (p179). If you wanted to catch a cross-section of the local insect population, would you position your traps inside a hut (p72) or outside? Doesn't having numerous Lake Josettes and Dani�le Valleys (p58) in the one small island confuse people? If Christmas Harbour is so difficult to enter (p.165), why didn't Captain Cook tell us? In heavy rain, would cardboard boxes 'regain some of the shape they used to have' (p110)? Mysterious place, Kerguelen - but maybe not quite as mysterious as some of this would suggest.

A cloudy window on a fascinating land

This book is neither a travelogue (in the usual sense), a natural history treatise, nor a serious historical overview of the French islands of Kerguelen (also called Desolation Island.) Although there are some evocative phrases that approach description (for example, "it's the land of 'the eternal late autumn.'"), author Jean-Paul Kauffmann never seems to get around to actually describing much more than the ever present wind.

Why travel to Kerguelen? Well, there's a rock arch. And a failed explorer. And it's difficult to get to. But overwhelmingly, one gets the feeling that the author made this journey because he couldn't think of anything better to do.

Not that that's a bad idea, mind you. But once he's arrived, he doesn't seem particularly interested in either noticing details or passing them on. His historical snippets of earlier explorers are truncated and flimsy. And he seems completely uninterested in the other human beings whom he encounters. Perhaps it's because most of them are scientists.

I betray my interest in natural history by pointing out that every time Jean-Paul Kauffman gets to an interesting fact or description of this most remote of all places on earth, he punts it by either declaring that science has taken the poetry out of nature-- the man has obviously never read Loren Eiseley-- or adds it as an unexplained addendum ("...the meteorite lying amid the ruins is like the dead soul of Port Jeanne d'Arc..." Hey, wait a minute, what meteorite?)

Despite its flaws, or possibly because of them, this book entices you to learn more. One hopes that the next adventurer to Kerguelen arrives with an actual sense of adventure and the descriptive power to pass it on.