War Of The Worlds (1897)
Noter que ce roman est dans le domaine public.
Adapté en dramatique radio en 1938 par Orson Welles.
Ici l'article de ce blog sur l'adaptation en film La guerre des mondes (1953, War Of The Worlds)
Adapté en album musical de rock progressif en 1978 par Jeff Wayne.
Ici l'article de ce blog sur l'adaptation en film La guerre des mondes (2005, War Of The Worlds)
Sorti en Angleterre de avril à décembre 1897 dans PEARSON'S MAGAZINE UK (illustré par Warwick Gobble).
Sorti en France en 1906 chez VANDAMME FR (grand format édition de luxe, illustré par Henrique Alvim Corrêa)
Sorti en France en 1950 chez MERCURE DE FRANCE FR (Traduction de Henry D. Davray)
De H. G. Wells.
Résumé à venir.
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(traduction au plus proche)
LIVRE UN
L'ARRIVEE DES MARTIENS
CHAPITRE UN
LA VEILLE DE LA GUERRE
Nul n'aurait cru en ces dernières années du dix-neuvième siècle que ce monde se trouvait être surveillé attentivement et de près par des intelligences supérieures à l'homme et pourtant d'une mortalité semblable à la sienne ; que, alors que les humains vaquaient à leurs diverses affaires, ils étaient scrutés et étudiés, peut-être d'aussi près qu'un homme au microscope aurait pu scruter les créatures éphémères qui grouillent et se multiplient dans une goutte d'eau...
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(le texte original du roman version 1898)
BOOK ONE
THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
CHAPTER ONE
THE EVE OF WAR
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
With infinite complacency men went to and from over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.
Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.
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(Traduction de Henry D. Davray de 1950)
LIVRE PREMIER
L'Arrivée des Martiens
1
A LA VEILLE DE LA GUERRE
Personne n’aurait cru, dans les dernières années du XIXe siècle, que les choses humaines fussent observées, de la façon la plus pénétrante et la plus attentive, par des intelligences supérieures aux intelligences humaines et cependant mortelles comme elles ; que, tandis que les hommes s’absorbaient dans leurs occupations, ils étaient examinés et étudiés d’aussi qu’un savant peut étudier avec un microscope les créatures transitoires qui pullulent et se multiplient dans une goutte d’eau...
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