Obscure Visions: The 1867 Aquarium and Its Literary Legacy

The aquarium constructed for the 1867 Exposition captivated nineteenth-century attendees through its unprecedented design uniting two spatial imaginaries exploited by writers and explorers alike: the underground and the underwater. This article will consider the legacy of the 1867 aquarium through a dual approach. First, after evaluating accounts of the spectacle from guides to the fair, I will demonstrate how this unconventional space introduced new modes of vision by creating an immersive experience of the underwater world. In a second step, I will analyze excerpts from Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) and Jules Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870) to elucidate the aquarium’s connection to novelistic representations of underwater space. The essay will argue that Hugo’s sea epic initiated a new visual paradigm relying on spatial enclosure, a perception that finds an echo in the spectatorial perspective generated by the 1867 aquarium. In tracing out the interrelations between the hybrid space of the aquarium and literature of the era, this article foregrounds the reciprocal impact of public spectacle and literary description, in addition to the intricate ways in which exhibitions at the 1867 Exposition joined entertainment and technology, science, and architecture.