Jules Gabriel Verne (fr. Jules Gabriel Verne). Born February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France - died March 24, 1905 in Amiens, France. French geographer and writer, classic of adventure literature, one of the founders of science fiction.
Member of the French Geographical Society. According to UNESCO statistics, the books of Jules Verne are the second most translated in the world, second only to the works of Agatha Christie.
Father - lawyer Pierre Verne (1798-1871), descended from a family of Provencal lawyers. Mother - Sophie-Nanina-Henriette Allot de la Fuy (1801-1887), had Scottish roots. Jules Verne was the first child of five. After him were born: brother Paul (1829) and three sisters: Anna (1836), Matilda (1839) and Marie (1842).
Jules Verne's wife was named Honorine de Vian (nee Morel). Honorina was a widow and had two children from her first marriage. On May 20, 1856, Jules Verne arrived in Amiens for the wedding of his friend, where he first met Honorine. On January 10, 1857, they married and settled in Paris, where Verne had lived for several years. Four years later, on August 3, 1861, Honorina gave birth to a son, Michel (d. 1925), their only child. Jules Verne was not present at birth, as he traveled around Scandinavia. The son was engaged in cinematography and filmed several works of his father - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1916), The Fate of Jean Morin (1916), Black India (1917), South Star (1918), Five Hundred Million Begums » (1919).
Grandson - Jean-Jules Verne (1892-1980), author of a monograph on the life and work of his grandfather, on which he worked for about 40 years (published in France in 1973, Russian translation was carried out in 1978 by the Progress publishing house). Great-grandson - Jean Verne (b. 1962), a famous operatic tenor, it was he who found the manuscript of the novel "Paris in the XX century", which long years considered a family myth.
The son of a lawyer, Verne studied law in Paris, but his love of literature prompted him to follow a different path. In 1850, Verne's play "Broken Straws" was successfully staged at the "Historical Theater" by A. Dumas. In 1852-1854, Verne worked as a secretary to the director of the Lyric Theater, then he was a stockbroker, while continuing to write comedies, librettos, and stories.
In 1863, he published in J. Etzel's Journal for Education and Leisure the first novel from the series Unusual Journeys: Five Weeks in a Balloon (Russian translation, 1864 edition by M. A. Golovachev, 306 pp., under the title : "Air travel through Africa. Compiled from the notes of Dr. Fergusson by Julius Verne").
The success of the novel inspired Verne; he decided to continue to work in this "key", accompanying the romantic adventures of his heroes with increasingly skillful descriptions of the incredible, but nevertheless carefully considered scientific miracles born of his imagination.
The cycle was continued by novels:
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864),
"The Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras" (1865),
"From the Earth to the Moon" (1865),
"Children of Captain Grant" (1867),
"Around the Moon" (1869),
"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870)
"Around the World in 80 Days" (1872)
"Mysterious Island" (1874),
"Michael Strogoff" (1876),
"Fifteen-year-old captain" (1878),
Robur the Conqueror (1886)
and many others.
In total, Jules Verne wrote 66 novels, including unfinished ones published at the end of the 20th century, as well as more than 20 novels and short stories, more than 30 plays, several documentary and scientific works.
The work of Jules Verne is imbued with the romance of science, faith in the good of progress, admiration for the power of thought. He sympathetically describes the struggle for national liberation.
In the novels of Jules Verne, readers found not only an enthusiastic description of technology, travel, but also vivid and lively images of noble heroes (Captain Hatteras, Captain Grant, Captain Nemo), pretty eccentric scientists (Professor Lidenbrock, Dr. Clowbonny, Cousin Benedict, geographer Jacques Paganel) .
In his later works, a fear of using science for criminal purposes appeared: “The Flag of the Motherland” (1896), “Lord of the World”, (1904), “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsac Expedition” (1919) (the novel was ended by the writer's son, Michel Verne).
Belief in constant progress has been replaced by an anxious expectation of the unknown. However, these books never enjoyed the huge success of his previous writings.
After the death of the writer, a large number of unpublished manuscripts remained, which continue to be published to this day. Thus, the novel "Paris in the 20th century" of 1863 was published only in 1994.
Jules Verne was not an "armchair" writer, he traveled the world a lot, including on his yachts "Saint-Michel I", "Saint-Michel II" and "Saint-Michel III". In 1859 he traveled to England and Scotland. In 1861 he traveled to Scandinavia.
In 1867, Verne made a transatlantic cruise on the steamer "Great Eastern" to the United States, visited New York, Niagara Falls.
In 1878, Jules Verne made a great voyage on the yacht "Saint-Michel III" across mediterranean sea visiting Lisbon, Tangier, Gibraltar and Algiers. In 1879, on the yacht "Saint-Michel III" Jules Verne again visited England and Scotland. In 1881, Jules Verne traveled to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark on his yacht. Then he planned to reach St. Petersburg, but this was prevented by a strong storm.
Jules Verne made his last great journey in 1884. On the "Saint-Michel III" he visited Algeria, Malta, Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Many of his trips later formed the basis of "Extraordinary Journeys" - "The Floating City" (1870), "Black India" (1877), "The Green Beam" (1882), " Lottery ticket No. 9672" (1886) and others.
On March 9, 1886, Jules Verne was seriously wounded in the ankle by a revolver shot by his mentally ill nephew Gaston Verne, Paul's son, and he had to forget about travel forever.
In 1892, the writer became a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Shortly before his death, Vern went blind, but still continued to dictate books. The writer died on March 24, 1905 from diabetes. After his death, the writer's card file remained, including over 20 thousand notebooks with information from all areas of human knowledge.
Jules Verne Predictions:
1. Come true:
In his writings, he predicted scientific discoveries and inventions in a variety of fields, including scuba diving, television and space flights.
Electric chair.
Airplane("Lord of the world").
Helicopter("Robur the Conqueror").
Flights into space, including to the moon("From the Earth to the Moon") interplanetary travel("Hector Servadac").
In the novels From the Earth to the Moon by a Straight Road in 97 Hours and 20 Minutes and Around the Moon, Jules Verne anticipated some of the future of space exploration: The use of aluminum as the base metal for the construction of the shell car. Despite the high cost of aluminum in the 19th century, its future widespread use for the needs of the aerospace industry is predicted.
The location of Stones Hill in Florida was chosen as the start of the lunar expedition. This location is close to the location of the modern spaceport at Cape Canaveral.
The first flight to the moon and Jules Verne, and in reality took place in April, the crew included three astronauts and both spacecraft splashed down in the same area of the Atlantic.
Video communication and television("Paris in the 20th century").
Construction of the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian Railways("Clodius Bombarnac. Reporter's Notebook on the Opening of the Great Trans-Asian Highway (From Russia to Beijing)").
Variable thrust aircraft("The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsak Expedition").
Principal passability of the Northern Sea Route in one navigation(“The Foundling from the Lost Cynthia”).
Verne is sometimes erroneously credited with predicting the submarine. In fact, submarines already existed in Verne's time. However, according to the described characteristics, the Nautilus surpasses even the submarines of the 21st century. It is also not entirely correct that Verne is credited with predicting cinema in the novel "The Castle in the Carpathians" - in the book, the singer's vision was a static hologram made using a magic lantern. However, the question of the possible priority of the description of invisibility remains controversial - the novel "The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz" was written after the stories of Fitz James O'Brien and Edward Mitchell Page, and was published only in 1910.
1. Unfulfilled:
Earth at the North Pole(The Adventures of Captain Hatteras) and ocean in the south(“Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”): everything turned out to be the opposite.
Underground strait under the Suez Canal("Twenty thousand leagues under the sea").
Manned flight to the moon in a cannon shell. It is worth noting that it was this “mistake” that prompted K. E. Tsiolkovsky to study the theory of space flights.
The Earth's core is cold.
The series "Robur the Conqueror", "Lord of the World" describes 3 types of aircraft heavier than air: a helicopter, an ornithopter and a paraglider. But the most common paraglider in our time has not been honored with its history. Instead, there were Albatross and Grozny.
Jules Gabriel Verne
(Verne, Jules Gabriel, 1828 - 1905)
2005 was the date celebrated by the literary and readership not only in France, but also in many other countries. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the great French writer Jules Gabriel Verne, who is considered their idol by millions of readers in various countries.
Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in the city of Nantes, on one of the many islands in the Loire. Nantes is located a few tens of kilometers from the mouth of the Loire, but it has a large port visited by many trading sailboats.
Pierre Verne, Verne's father, was a lawyer. In 1827 he married Sophie Allot de la Fuy, the daughter of a neighboring shipowner. The ancestors of Jules Verne on the mother's side trace their origins to the Scottish shooter, who entered the service in the guards of Louis XI in 1462 and received a noble rank for the services rendered to the king. On the paternal line, the Verns are descendants of the Celts who lived in ancient times in France. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Verns moved to Paris.
Families at that time were often large, and together with the first-born Jules, brother Paul and three sisters, Anna, Matilda and Marie, grew up in the Vernov house.
From the age of 6, Jules goes to lessons with a neighbor, the widow of a sea captain. At the age of 8, he enters first at the Seminary of Saint-Stanislaus, then at the Lyceum, where he receives a classical education, which included knowledge of Greek and Latin, rhetoric, singing and geography. This is not his favorite subject, although he dreams of distant lands and sailing ships.
Jules tried to realize his dreams in 1839, when, secretly from his parents, he got a job as a cabin boy on the three-masted schooner Coralie, which was leaving for India. Fortunately, Jules's father managed to catch the local "pyroscaphe" (steamboat), on which he managed to catch up with the schooner in the town of Pembeuf, located at the mouth of the Loire, and remove the failed cabin boy from her. Promising his father that he would never repeat anything like this, Jules imprudently added that from now on he would travel only in dreams.
Once, the parents allowed Jules and his brother to ride on a pyroscaphe down the Loire to the place where it flows into the bay, where the brothers saw the sea for the first time.
“With a few jumps, we got off the ship and rolled down the stones covered with a layer of algae to scoop up sea water and bring it to our mouths ...
“But it’s not salty at all,” I muttered, turning pale.
“It’s not salty at all,” the brother replied.
- We've been deceived! I exclaimed, and there was a terrible disappointment in my voice.
What fools we were! At this time, the tide was low, and from a small depression in the rock, we scooped up the water of the Loire! When the tide came in, the water seemed to us even more salty than we expected!”
(Jules Verne. Memories of childhood and youth)
After receiving a bachelor's degree in 1846, Jules, who agreed - under great pressure from his father - to inherit his profession, begins to study law in Nantes. In April 1847 he went to Paris, where he had to pass the exams for the first year of study.
He leaves his native home without regret and with a broken heart - his cousin Caroline Tronson rejected his love. Despite numerous sonnets dedicated to her beloved and even a small tragedy in verse for the puppet theater, Jules did not seem to her a suitable party.
Having passed the exams at the Faculty of Law for 1847, Jules returns to Nantes. He is irresistibly attracted to the theater, and he writes two plays ("Alexander VI" and "The Gunpowder Plot"), read in a narrow circle of acquaintances. Jules is well aware that the theater is, first of all, Paris. With great difficulty, he obtains permission from his father to continue his studies in the capital, where he goes in November 1848.
Jules settles down in Paris on Rue Ancien-Comédie with his Nantes friend Edouard Bonami. In 1949, he received a degree in law and could work as a lawyer, but he was in no hurry to get a job in a law office and, moreover, was not eager to return to Nantes.
He enthusiastically visits literary and political salons, where he meets many famous writers, including the famous Alexandre Dumas père. He is intensively engaged in literature, writing tragedies, vaudevilles and comic operas. In 1948, 4 plays appear from his pen, the next year - 3 more, but all of them do not reach the stage. Only in 1850 did his next play, Broken Straws, manage to see (with the help of the elder Dumas) the footlights. In total, 12 performances of the play took place, bringing Jules a profit of 15 francs.
Here is how he tells about this event: “My first work was a small comedy in verse, written with the participation of Alexandre Dumas, son, who was and remained one of my best friends until his death. It was called "Broken Straws" and was staged on the stage of the Historical Theater, owned by Dumas Père. The play had some success, and on the advice of the elder Dumas, I gave it to print. “Don't worry,” he encouraged me. - I give you a full guarantee that there will be at least one buyer. I will be that buyer! [...] It soon became clear to me that dramatic works would not give me either fame or livelihood. In those years, I huddled in the attic and was very poor.
(From an interview with Jules Verne)
How great was the limited means of subsistence that Verne and Bonami had, can be seen from the fact that they had only one evening dress, and therefore they went to social events in turn. When one day Jules could not resist and bought a collection of plays by Shakespeare, his favorite writer, then he was forced to fast for three days, because he had no money left for food.
As his grandson Jean Jules-Verne writes in his book about Jules Verne, during these years Jules had to seriously worry about earnings, because he could not count on his father’s rather modest income at that time. He gets a job in a notary's office, but this job does not leave him time to write, and he soon leaves it. For a short time he gets a job as a bank clerk, and in free time is engaged in tutoring, coaching students of the Faculty of Law.
Soon the Lyric Theater opens in Paris, and Jules becomes its secretary. Service in the theater allows him to earn extra money in the then popular magazine Musée de Familia, in which in 1851 his story “The First Ships of the Mexican Navy” (later called “Drama in Mexico”) was published.
The next publication on a historical theme took place in the same year in the same magazine, where the story "A Voyage in a Balloon" appeared, better known as "Drama in the Air", under which it was published in 1872 in the collection "Doctor Ox".
Jules Verne continues to develop the success of his first historical and geographical works. In 1852, he published the story "Martin Paz", which takes place in Peru. Then the fantastic short story The Master Zacharius (1854) and the long story Wintering in the Ice (1855) appear in the Musée des Families, which, not without reason, can be considered the prototype of the novel The Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Thus, the circle of Jules Verne's preferred topics is gradually being refined: travel and adventure, history, exact sciences, and finally, fantasy. And yet, young Jules continues to stubbornly waste his time and energy on writing mediocre plays ... During the 50s, librettos of comic operas and operettas, dramas, comedies came out from his pen one after another ... From time to time, some of they appear on the stage of the Lyric Theater (Blind Man's Bluffs, Companions of Marzholena), but it is impossible to exist on these odd jobs.
In 1856, Jules Verne is invited to the wedding of his friend in Amiens, where he meets the bride's sister. This is the beautiful twenty-six-year-old widow Honorine Morel, née de Vian. She recently lost her husband and has two daughters, but that doesn't stop Jules from becoming infatuated with the young widow. In a letter home, he speaks of his intention to marry, but since the starving writer cannot give the future family sufficient guarantees of a comfortable life, he discusses with his father the possibility of becoming a stockbroker with the help of his fiancee's brother. But ... to become a shareholder of the company, you need to deposit a round sum of 50,000 francs. After a short resistance, the father agrees to help, and in January 1857, Jules and Honorine bind their destinies by marriage.
Vern works hard, but he has time not only for his favorite plays, but also for trips abroad. In 1859, together with Aristide Inyar (author of music for most of Verne's operettas), he traveled to Scotland, and two years later he went on a trip to Scandinavia with the same companion, during which he visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In the same years, the theater stage saw several new dramatic works Verne - in 1860 " Lyric theater"and the theater" Buff "staged comic operas" Hotel in the Ardennes "and" Mr. Chimpanzee ", and the next year the theater" Vaudeville "was successfully held a comedy in three acts" Eleven days of the siege ".
In 1860, Verne met one of the most unusual people of that time. This is Nadar (as Gaspard-Felix Tournachon called himself briefly), a famous aeronaut, photographer, artist and writer. Verne has always been interested in aeronautics - suffice it to recall his "Drama in the Air" and an essay on the work of Edgar Poe, in which Vern devotes a lot of space to the "aeronautical" short stories of the great writer revered by him. This apparently influenced the choice of subject for his first novel, which was completed by the end of 1862.
Probably the first reader of the novel "Five Weeks in a Balloon" was Alexandre Dumas, who introduced Verne to the then famous writer Brichet, who, in turn, introduced Verne to one of the largest Parisian publishers, Pierre-Jules Etzel. Etzel, who was about to start a teenage magazine (later to become widely known as the Journal of Education and Entertainment), immediately realized that Vern's knowledge and abilities were in many ways consistent with his plans. After minor corrections, Etzel accepted the novel, publishing it in his journal on January 17, 1863 (according to some sources - December 24, 1862). In addition, Etzel offered Verne permanent cooperation, signing a contract with him for 20 years, according to which the writer undertook to transfer the manuscripts of three books to Etzel annually, receiving 1900 francs for each volume. Now Vern could breathe easy. From now on, he had, although not too large, but a stable income, and he had the opportunity to engage in literary work, not thinking about how he would feed his family tomorrow.
The novel "Five Weeks in a Balloon" appeared exceptionally timely. First of all, the general public these days was carried away by the adventures of John Speke and other travelers who were looking for the origins of the Nile in the unexplored jungles of Africa. In addition, it was during these years that the rapid development of aeronautics took place; suffice it to say that in parallel with the next editions of Vern's novel appearing in Etzel's journal, the reader could follow the flights of the giant (it was called “Giant”) Nadar balloon. Therefore, it is not surprising that Verne's novel won incredible success in France. It was soon translated into many European languages and brought the author international fame. So, already in 1864, his Russian edition was published under the title "Air travel through Africa."
Subsequently, Etzel, who soon became a close friend of Jules Verne (their friendship continued until the death of the publisher), always showed exceptional nobility in financial relations with the writer. Already in 1865, after the publication of the first five novels of Jules Verne, his fee was increased to 3,000 francs per book. Despite the fact that, under the terms of the contract, the publisher could freely dispose of the illustrated editions of Verne's books, Etzel paid the writer compensation in the amount of five and a half thousand francs for 5 books published by that time. In September 1871, a new agreement was signed, according to which Verne undertook to transfer to the publisher not three, but only two books annually; the writer's fee from now on was 6,000 francs per volume.
Here we will not only not dwell on the content of everything that was written by Jules Verne over the next 40+ years, but we will not even list the titles of his numerous - about 70 - novels. Instead of bibliographic information that can be found in the books and articles by E. Brandis, K. Andreev and G. Gurevich, dedicated to Jules Verne, as well as in the biography translated into Russian, written by the writer's grandson Jean Jules-Verne, we will dwell in more detail on the peculiarity creative method writer and his views on science and society.
There is a very widespread opinion, a kind of myth, that Jules Verne expressed in his works "the shock of man by the power of technology, hopes for its omnipotence", as his biographers usually noted. Sometimes, however, they reluctantly admitted that towards the end of his life the writer became more pessimistic about the ability of science and technology to make humanity happy. Jules Verne's pessimism last years his life was attributed to his poor health (diabetes, loss of vision, an injured leg causing constant suffering). Often, as evidence of the writer’s gloomy view of the future of mankind, his long story called “Eternal Adam”, written at the end of the 19th century, but first published after the writer’s death in the collection “Yesterday and Tomorrow”, published in 1910, was mentioned.
An archaeologist of the distant future discovers traces of a highly developed civilization that disappeared thousands of years ago, destroyed by the ocean that flooded all the continents. Only on the land that rose from the Atlantic after the catastrophe, seven people survived, laying the foundation for a new civilization that had not yet reached the level of the previous one. Continuing the excavations, the archaeologist discovers traces of an even more ancient dead culture, apparently created once by the Atlanteans, and bitterly realizes the eternal cycle of events.
The writer's grandson Jean Jules-Verne defines the main idea of the story as follows: “... Man's efforts are in vain: they are hindered by his fragility; everything is transient in this mortal world. Progress, like the universe, seems to him boundless, while a barely noticeable shudder of the thin earth's crust is enough to make all the achievements of our civilization in vain.
(Jean Jules-Verne. Jules Verne)
Jules Verne went even further in the novel The Amazing Adventures of the Barsac Expedition, published posthumously in 1914, in which he shows how a person uses scientific and technological achievements for a criminal purpose, and how he can destroy with the help of science what was created by it.
Speaking about Jules Verne's views on the society of the future, one cannot fail to say a few words about another of his novels, written in 1863, but discovered only at the end of the 20th century and published in 1994. At one time, the novel "Paris in the 20th century" actively did not like Etzel, and after lengthy discussions and discussions, it was abandoned by Jules Verne and thoroughly forgotten. The significance of young Verne's novel does not lie in the visionary, sometimes surprisingly accurate technical details and scientific discoveries; the main thing in it is the image of the future society. Jules Verne skillfully highlights the features of contemporary capitalism and extrapolates them, bringing them to the point of absurdity. He foresees the stateization and bureaucratization of all sectors of society, the emergence of strict control not only over the behavior, but also over the thoughts of citizens, thus predicting the emergence of a state of police dictatorship. "Paris in the 20th century" is a warning novel, a real dystopia, one of the first, if not the first, among the famous dystopias of Zamyatin, Platonov, Huxley, Orwell, Efremov and others.
Another myth about the life of the writer says that he was an avid stay-at-home, and very rarely and reluctantly made small trips. In fact, Jules Verne was a tireless traveler. Above we have already mentioned several of his travels in 1859 and 1861 in Scotland and Scandinavia; he made another fascinating journey in 1867, visiting North America, where he visited Niagara Falls.
On his yacht "Saint-Michel-III" (Vern had three yachts under this name - from a small boat, a simple fishing boat, to a real two-masted yacht 28 meters long, equipped with a powerful steam engine), he twice went around the Mediterranean Sea, visited Portugal, Italy, England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Holland, Scandinavia.
The observations and impressions received during these travels were constantly used by the writer in his novels. Thus, the impressions of a trip to Scotland are clearly visible in the novel "Black India", which tells about the life of Scottish miners; voyages across the Mediterranean served as the basis for vivid descriptions of events taking place in North Africa. As for the voyage to America on the Great Eastern, there is a whole novel devoted to it called The Floating City.
Jules Verne really did not like being called a predictor of the future. What descriptions scientific discoveries and the inventions contained in the novels of Jules Verne are gradually coming true, the science fiction writer explained as follows: “These are simple coincidences, and they are explained very simply. When I talk about some scientific phenomenon, I first research all the sources available to me and draw conclusions based on a lot of facts. As for the accuracy of the descriptions, in this respect I am indebted to all sorts of extracts from books, newspapers, magazines, various abstracts and reports that I have prepared for future use and are gradually replenished. All these notes are carefully classified and serve as material for my stories and novels. None of my books are written without the help of this file cabinet. I carefully look through twenty-odd newspapers, diligently read all the scientific reports available to me, and, believe me, I am always overwhelmed by a feeling of delight when I learn about some new discovery ... "
(From an interview with Jules Verne)
Throughout his life, the writer was distinguished by an enviable diligence, perhaps no less fantastic than the exploits of his heroes. In one of the articles about Jules Verne, an excellent connoisseur of his life and work, E. Brandis, cites the writer's story about his methods of working on manuscripts: “... I can reveal the secrets of my literary cuisine, although I would not dare to recommend them to anyone else. For every writer works according to his own method, choosing it instinctively rather than consciously. This is, if you like, a matter of technique. Over the years, habits are developed that cannot be abandoned. I usually begin by choosing from the card index all the extracts related to the given topic; I sort them, study and process them in relation to the future novel. Then I do preliminary sketches and plan chapter by chapter. After that, I write a draft with a pencil, leaving wide margins - half a page - for corrections and additions. But this is not yet a novel, but only the framework of a novel. In this form, the manuscript is sent to the printing house. In the first proofreading, I correct almost every sentence and often rewrite entire chapters. The final text is obtained after the fifth, seventh, or sometimes ninth proofreading. I see the shortcomings of my work most clearly not in the manuscript, but in the printed impressions. Fortunately, my publisher is well aware of this and does not put any restrictions on me ...
Thanks to the habit of daily work at the table from five in the morning until noon, I have been able to write two books a year for many years in a row. True, such a routine of life required some sacrifices. So that nothing could distract me from my work, I moved from noisy Paris to calm, quiet Amiens and have been living here for many years - since 1871. Why did I choose Amiens, you ask? This city is especially dear to me because my wife was born here and here we once met her. And the title of the municipal councilor of Amiens, I am proud of no less than literary fame.
(E. Brandis. Interview with Jules Verne)
By the end of the 19th century, the writer was more and more overcome by the accumulated long life ailments. He has hearing problems, severe diabetes that affects his vision - Jules Verne sees almost nothing. The bullet left in the leg after a ridiculous attempt on his life (he was shot by a mentally ill nephew who came asking for a loan of money) barely allows the writer to move around.
“The writer withdraws more and more into himself, his life is strictly regulated: getting up at dawn, and sometimes even earlier, he immediately gets to work; about eleven o'clock he leaves, moving extremely carefully, for not only is his legs bad, but his eyesight has deteriorated greatly. After a modest dinner, Jules Verne smokes a small cigar, sitting in an armchair with his back to the light, so as not to irritate his eyes, which are shadowed by the peak of his cap, and silently meditates; then, limping, he goes to the reading room of the Industrial Society ... "
(Jean Jules-Verne. Jules Verne)
In 1903, in a letter to his sister, Jules Verne complained: “I see worse and worse, my dear sister. I haven't had a cataract operation yet... Besides, I'm deaf in one ear. So, I am now able to hear only half of the stupidity and spitefulness that go around the world, and this consoles me a lot!
Jules Verne died at 8 am on March 24, 1905 during a diabetic crisis. He is buried near his home in Amiens. A few years after his death, a monument was erected on his grave, depicting a science fiction writer with his hand outstretched to the stars.
Until 1914, the books written by Jules Verne (more or less significantly modified by his son Michel), the next volumes of Extraordinary Journeys, continued to be published. These are the novels "Invasion of the Sea", "Lighthouse at the End of the World", "Golden Volcano", "Thompson & Co", "Meteor Hunt", "Danube Pilot", "Jonathan Shipwreck", "The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz", " The Amazing Adventures of the Barsak Expedition, as well as a collection of short stories called Yesterday and Tomorrow.
In total, the Extraordinary Journeys series included 64 books - 62 novels and 2 collections of short stories.
If we talk about the rest of the literary heritage of Jules Verne, then it includes 6 more novels that are not included in the "Extraordinary Journeys", more than three dozen essays, articles, notes and stories that are not included in the collections, almost 40 plays, major popular science works "Illustrated geography of France and its colonies", "Scientific and economic conquest of the Earth" and "History of great travels and great travelers" in three volumes ("Discovery of the Earth", "Great Travelers of the 18th century" and "Travelers of the 19th century"). The poetic heritage of the writer is also great, numbering about 140 poems and romances.
For many years Jules Verne has been one of the most frequently published writers in the world. In the preface to the biography of Jules Verne, written by his grandson Jean Jules-Verne, Yevgeny Brandis reports: “During the years of Soviet power in the USSR, 374 books by J. Verne were published with a total circulation of 20 million 507 thousand copies” (data from the All-Union Book Chamber for 1977) . In terms of the number of translations into the languages of the peoples of the world, the books of Jules Verne in the late 60s and early 70s were in third place, second only to the works of Lenin and Shakespeare (UNESCO Bibliographic Directory).
Let us add that a very complete collection of Vern's works in 88 volumes began to be published in Russia by Soikin's publishing house, starting in 1906, that is, immediately after the death of the writer.
In the 1990s, several multi-volume collected works of Vern were published in Russian: in 6 (two editions), 8, 12, 20 and 50 volumes.
In many countries, societies of admirers and lovers of Jules Verne have been created and are actively working. In 1978, the writer's museum was opened in Nantes, and 2005, which marks the 100th anniversary of the writer's death, was declared the year of Jules Verne in France.
Speaking about the amazing popularity of the great writer, one cannot fail to note the enduring importance of Jules Verne, as one of the first science fiction writers in both French and world literature. The famous contemporary French science fiction writer Bernard Werber said: "Jules Verne is the pioneer of modern French science fiction." Verne is rightly considered not only the creator of the "scientific" novel, but also one of its "founding fathers" along with the Englishman HG Wells and the American Edgar Allan Poe.
Shortly before the end, Verne wrote:
“My goal was to describe the Earth, and not only the Earth, but the entire Universe, because in my novels I sometimes took readers away from the Earth.”
It is impossible not to admit that the writer achieved his grandiose goal. The seven dozen novels written by Vern form a real multi-volume geographical encyclopedia containing a description of the nature of all the continents of the Earth. Vern also fulfilled the promise to take his reader away from the Earth, since out of almost two dozen of his novels, rightfully attributed to science fiction, there are such as "From the Cannon to the Moon" and "Around the Moon", which make up the space "lunar" dilogy, as well as another space novel "Hector Servadak" about traveling around the solar system on a piece of land knocked out of the Earth by a comet that collided with it. A fantastic plot is also present in the novel "Upside Down", in which in question about trying to straighten the tilt of the earth's axis. Not without reason, the geological epic "Journey to the Center of the Earth", two novels about the conqueror of the air element Robur, the novel "The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz" about the adventures of the invisible man and many others are classified as science fiction.
However, a specific feature of Verne's fiction is that it is usually not overly fantastical; for example, the writer never said a word about the meeting of earthlings with aliens, did not touch on the problem of time travel and many other science fiction topics that later became classics. In the middle of the 20th century, Verne's fiction would have been called short-range fiction, which in the USSR included the works of Okhotnikov, Nemtsov, Adamov, and many other representatives of science fiction officially recognized by the Soviet state. Even putting forward a fantastic hypothesis, Vern tries to substantiate it scientifically, often with the help of mathematical calculations, or gives an explanation that does not contradict the basic laws of science. So, if Edgar Allan Poe ends his "The Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym" with a mystical vision of a giant human figure in a shroud, embodying mortal horror, then in the written continuation, the novel "The Ice Sphinx", the death for sailors who carry iron objects brings magnetic iron rock.
But it should be noted that in many respects the blame for such "earthiness" of Verne's fiction can be assigned to Etzel, who always considered Vern's main task to write not so much science fiction as popular science books, in which the adventure shell was skillfully combined with geographical or historical filling, to which Verne sometimes added elements of fantasy. According to Etzel, Verne's books were intended primarily for the education and entertainment of the reader. school age. Fortunately, Jules Verne's magical talent allowed him to avoid creating boring and uninteresting popular science lectures on the natural sciences or historical themes. A masterfully constructed fascinating adventurous plot fascinated the reader, imperceptibly carried him into a world in which science and fantasy, adventure and literature, mystery and mathematical calculation were skillfully combined ... If not for this, it is unlikely that both children and adults read the writer's books a hundred years after his of death...
Here is how the French critic Jacques Chenot explains the secret of the immortality of Jules Verne's books, their growing popularity even today, when most of the writer's technical predictions have been realized, and in many respects surpassed: “If Jules Verne and his extraordinary travels do not die, it is only because they - and with them the so attractive 19th century - posed problems that the 20th century could not and will not be able to escape from.
I. Naidenkov
Jules Verne (1828-1905), French science fiction writer.
Born February 8, 1828 in Nantes. The son of a lawyer and a lawyer himself. He began to print in 1849. At first he acted as a playwright, but his plays did not enjoy success.
Glory to Verne brought the first novel "Five Weeks in a Balloon", which was published at the end of 1862 (although dated 1863).
Verne turned out to be an unusually prolific writer - he created 65 novels of science fiction and adventure-geographical nature. Sometimes he wrote satirical works, ridiculing contemporary French bourgeois society, but they succeeded much less and did not bring fame to the author. He was truly famous for Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Captain Grant's Children (1867-1868), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869-1870), Around the World for 80 days" (1872), "The Mysterious Island" (1875), "The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain" (1878). These novels have been translated into many languages and read with interest all over the world.
It is curious that the author of travel books himself did not make a single long journey and wrote based not on experience, but on knowledge and (mostly) on his own imagination. Jules Verne often made rather blunders. For example, in his novels one can find a statement about the existence of museums where octopus skeletons are exhibited; meanwhile, the octopus is an invertebrate animal. However, the entertaining stories of Jules Verne atoned for such flaws in the eyes of readers.
The writer adhered to democratic convictions, corresponded with utopian socialists, and in 1871 supported the Paris Commune.
Promoting science, he warned more than once about the danger of using its achievements for military purposes. It was Verne who became the first creator of the image of a mad scientist dreaming of world domination (“500 million Begums”, 1879; “Lord of the World”, 1904). Later, fiction has resorted to characters of this kind more than once. Apart from works of art Verne wrote popular books on geography and on the history of geographical exploration.
The writer has always been very popular in Russia - since his first novel was translated into Russian in 1864 (in Russian translation "Air travel through Africa").
A crater on the far side of the moon is named after Jules Verne. He died on March 24, 1905 in Amiens.
Jules Gabriel Verne is a world-famous French prose writer, a classic of adventure prose, who acted as the founder of science fiction. In addition, Jules Verne was a member of the French geographers and is considered a highly successful playwright.
Read a short biography of Jules Verne below.
Early years, Jules Verne's family and early successes
Literary biography Jules Verne is rich in that the works of the famous writer have been translated into almost 150 languages, and are still incredibly popular and successful.
Jules Verne was born in the small town of Nantes, France, in 1828. His father was a lawyer, there were five children in the family, and Jules Verne was the eldest of them. The father insisted that the eldest son go to Paris to study law. There Jules Verne began an active literary activity, skillfully combining it with the work of the director's secretary, and later a stockbroker. However, in the end he devoted himself completely to literature. In 1850, the creative biography of Jules Verne was marked by the play Broken Straws. It was not just staged by the "Historical Theatre", the play produced a storm of emotions and enthusiasm, and was a dizzying success.
Personal life and further work in the biography of Jules Verne
In 1857, Jules Verne entered into a legal marriage with Honorine de Vian, who already had two children. The couple also had a son, who became their only joint child.
It is known that in the works of Jules Verne different countries are described very clearly and in detail, geographical details are given, a description of the world of animals and nature, and much more, for which readers love him so much. The fact is that Jules Verne really saw and knew a lot, because he often traveled around the globe, loved to travel. The impressions of these travels then formed the basis of his literary masterpieces.
Speaking of creative biography Jules Verne, it is definitely worth mentioning that his only son, a cinematographer, successfully filmed part of his father's works (In general, read the article about film adaptations). And the grandson of Jules Verne wrote a monograph on the life and work of his grandfather. In addition, it is known that the son of Jules Verne's grandson discovered among the manuscripts the novel "Paris in the 20th century", which was considered lost, and even those who were close to Jules Verne and knew him well doubted its authenticity.
The Last Days of Jules Verne
In 1886, Jules Verne's nephew Gaston Verne, who had mental disabilities, shot his uncle and wounded him in the ankle. The injury was not easy, and the great French writer could no longer travel. Toward the end of his life, he was also struck by blindness, which, however, did not prevent him from continuing to work, because Jules Verne dictated his works.
Jules Verne died in 1905 from diabetes. The biography of Jules Verne is especially interesting because in the writer's file cabinet, which was preserved after him, about 20,000 manuscripts containing information from various fields of science were found.
If you have already read a short biography of Jules Verne, you can rate this writer at the top of the page. In addition, we bring to your attention the Biographies section, where you can read about other popular authors.
Verne Jules Gabriel
Life story
When the writer's name is surrounded by legends, rumors and conjectures, this is glory. Jules Verne did not have to occupy it. Some considered him a professional traveler - Captain Verne, others claimed that he never left his office and wrote all his books from other people's words, others, amazed by his immense creative imagination and multi-volume descriptions of distant lands, argued that "Jules Verne" - it is the name of the geographical society whose members collectively compose the novels published under that name.
Some went to the extreme of deification and called Jules Verne a prophet of science who predicted the invention of the submarine, steerable aeronautics, electric lighting, the telephone, and more, and more, and more.
On the basis of indisputable facts, we report Jules Verne - a specific historical person who has specific parents and was born in a specific place. All his scientific and technical predictions are the result of brilliant self-education, which made it possible to guess future discoveries in the first timid hints and assumptions that appear in scientific literature, plus everything, of course, the innate gift of imagination and literary talent for presentation.
Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in the ancient city of Nantes, located on the banks of the Loire, not far from its mouth. This is one of the largest ports in France, from where ocean-going sailboats made voyages to distant shores of various countries.
Jules Verne was the eldest son of the lawyer Pierre Verne, who had his own law office and assumed that over time his son would inherit his business. The writer's mother, nee Allotte de la Fuye, came from an ancient family of Nantes shipowners and shipbuilders.
The romance of the port city led to the fact that at the age of eleven, Jules almost fled to India, hiring as a cabin boy on the schooner Korali, but was stopped in time. Being already famous writer, he admitted "I must have been born a sailor and now every day I regret that a maritime career did not fall to my lot from childhood."
According to the strict instructions of his father, he was supposed to become a lawyer, and he became one, having graduated from the School of Law in Paris and received a diploma, but he did not return to his father's law office, tempted by a more tempting prospect - literature and theater. He stayed in Paris and, despite a half-starved existence (his father did not approve of "bohemians" and did not help him), he enthusiastically mastered his chosen path - he wrote comedies, vaudevilles, dramas, librettos of comic operas, although no one managed to sell them.
Intuition led Jules Verne to the National Library, where he listened to lectures and scientific disputes, made acquaintance with scientists and travelers, read and copied from books information that interested him on geography, astronomy, navigation, and scientific discoveries, not yet fully understanding why he needed it. may be needed.
In this state of literary endeavor, expectation and foreboding, he reached the age of twenty-seven, still pinning his hopes on the theatre. In the end, his father began to insist that he return home and get down to business, to which Jules Verne replied, “I have no doubts about my future. By the age of thirty-five, I will have a solid place in literature.
The forecast turned out to be accurate.
Finally Jules Verne managed to publish several sea and geographical stories. As an aspiring writer, he met Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, who began to patronize him. Perhaps it was Dumas, who at that time was creating a series of his adventure novels covering almost the entire history of France, who advised the young friend to focus on the topic of travel. Jules Verne was ignited by the grandiose idea of describing the entire globe - nature, animals, plants, peoples and customs. He decided to combine science and art and populate his novels with hitherto unknown heroes.
Jules Verne broke with the theater and completed his first novel in 1862. "Five Weeks in a Balloon". Dumas recommended that he contact the publisher of the youthful Journal of Education and Entertainment, Etzel. The novel - about geographical discoveries in Africa, made from a bird's eye view - was evaluated and published early next year. By the way, in it Jules Verne predicted the location of the sources of the Nile, which at that time had not yet been discovered.
It was only after writing Five Weeks in a Balloon that Verne realized that his true calling was novels.
"Five Weeks in a Balloon" aroused great interest. Criticism saw in this work the birth of a new genre - "a novel about science." Etzel concluded a long-term contract with a successful debutant - Jules Verne undertook to write two volumes a year.
Thus, a novelist was born from a Parisian lawyer. And along with it, a new genre appeared - science fiction.
Then, as if making up for lost time, he released masterpiece after masterpiece Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Journey of Captain Hatteras (1865), From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870). In these novels, the writer involved four problems that occupied the scientific world at that time - controlled aeronautics, the conquest of the pole, the mysteries of the underworld, flights beyond the limits of gravity. Do not think that these novels are built on pure imagination. So, the prototype of Michel Ardant from the novel "From the Earth to the Moon" was a friend of Jules Verne - writer, artist and photographer Felix Tournachon, better known under the pseudonym Nadar. Passionate about aeronautics, he raised money for the construction of the balloon "Giant" and on October 4, 1864 made a test flight on it.
After the fifth novel - Captain Grant's Children (1868) - Jules Verne decided to combine the books he had written and conceived into the Extraordinary Journeys series, and Captain Grant's Children became the first book in the trilogy, which also included Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. (1870) and "The Mysterious Island" (1875). The trilogy is united by the pathos of its heroes - they are not only travelers, but also fighters against all forms of injustice, racism, colonialism, and the slave trade.
In 1872, Jules Verne left Paris forever and moved to a small country town Amiens. Since that time, his entire biography has been reduced to one word - work. He himself admitted “I have a need for work. Work is my life function. When I am not working, I do not feel any life in me. Jules Verne was at his desk literally from dawn to dusk - from five in the morning until eight in the evening. During the day he managed to write one and a half printed sheets (according to biographers), which equals twenty-four book pages. It's hard to even imagine such a performance!
An extraordinary success was caused by the novel (1872), which was inspired by a magazine article proving that if a traveler has good means of transport, he can travel around the globe in eighty days. This became possible after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1870, which significantly shortened the route from the European seas to the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The writer calculated that you can even win one day if you use the geographical paradox described by Edgar Allan Poe in the novel Three Sundays in One Week. Jules Verne commented on this paradox as follows: “For three people in one week there can be three Sundays if the first makes a trip around the world, leaving London (or any other point) from west to east, the second from east to west, and the third will remain in place. When they meet again, they will know that for the first Sunday it was yesterday, for the second it will be tomorrow, and for the third it is today.”
Jules Verne's novel inspired many travelers to put his claim to the test, and a young American, Nellie Vlay, circumnavigated the world in just seventy-two days. The writer greeted the enthusiast with a telegram.
In 1878, Jules Verne published the novel Captain Fifteen, which protested against racial discrimination and became popular on all continents. The writer continued this theme in the next novel "North against the South" (1887) - from the history civil war 60s in America.
In 1885, Jules Verne, on the occasion of his birthday, received congratulations from all over the world. Among them was a letter from the American newspaper king Gordon Bennett. He asked to write a story specifically for American readers - with a prediction of the future of America.
Jules Berne complied with this request, but the story, entitled “In the XXIX century. One day of an American journalist in 2889 ”, was never released in America. And there was a prediction - a curious action takes place in Centropolis - the capital of the American empire of the dollar, dictating its will to other, even overseas, countries. Opposing the American Empire only mighty Russia and the revived great China. England, annexed by America, has long since become one of its states, while France ekes out a miserable semi-independent existence. Francis Bennet, owner and editor of the World Herald newspaper, controls the entire Americanized hemisphere. This is how the French visionary imagined the geopolitical alignment of forces in a thousand years.
Jules Verne was one of the first to raise the question of the moral side of scientific discoveries, a question that in the 20th century will acquire a Shakespearean scale to be or not to be for mankind - in connection with the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. In a number of Jules Verne's novels - "Five Hundred Million Begums" (1879), "Lord of the World" (1904) and others - a type of scientist appears who seeks to subdue the whole world with the help of his inventions. In such works as Alignment with the Banner (1896) and The Extraordinary Adventures of the Varsak Expedition (published in 1914), the writer showed another tragedy when a scientist becomes a tool of tyrants - and this was the beginning of the 20th century, which left many examples of how a scientist in conditions of a dungeon, he was forced to work on the inventions of exterminating substances and tools.
International fame came to Jules Verne after the first novel. In Russia, Five Weeks in a Balloon appeared in the same year as the French edition, and the first review of the novel, written by Saltykov-Shchedrin, was published not just anywhere, but in Nekrasov's Sovremennik. “The novels of Jules Verne are excellent,” said Leo Tolstoy. - I read them as adults, but still, I remember, they delighted me. In building an intriguing, exciting plot, he is an amazing master. And you should have listened to how enthusiastically Turgenev speaks of him! I don't remember him admiring anyone else as much as Jules Verne."
During his life, Jules Verne paved the way to the center of the globe ("Journey to the Center of the Earth"), flew around the Moon ("From the Earth to the Moon"), traveled around the world along the 37th parallel ("Children of Captain Grant"), plunged into secrets of the underwater world ("Twenty thousand leagues under water"), lived for many years as Robinson on the "Mysterious Island", circumnavigated the Earth by land and water in 80 days and performed many more feats, for which, it seems, a dozen would not be enough human lives. All this, of course, in their books.
That's what the writer Jules Verne was like. He was the father of science fiction, the brilliant predecessor of HG Wells, Ray Bradbury, Kir Bulychev and our other favorite writers.
Leo Tolstoy's drawings for Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days, made by him for children, are known. Dmitri Mendeleev called the French writer a "scientific genius" and admitted that he had re-read his books more than once. When a Soviet space rocket transmitted the first photographs of the far side of the moon to earth, one of the craters located on that side was given the name "Jules Verne".
Science has come a long way since the time of Jules Verne, and his books and heroes never get old. However, nothing surprising. This indicates that Jules Verne managed to realize his cherished idea to combine science with art, and real art, as we know, is eternal.
