Julio Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne, known in Spanish-speaking countries as Jules Verne (Nantes, February 8, 1828-Amiens, March 24, 1905), was a French writer, playwright, and poet, noted for his adventure novels and for his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction.

Born into a bourgeois family, he studied to continue in the footsteps of his father, Pierre Verne, as a lawyer, but at a very young age he decided to abandon that path to dedicate himself to literature. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel resulted in the creation of Extraordinary Voyages, a popular series of carefully documented and visionary adventure novels^{[citation needed]} including the famous From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) or The Mysterious Island (1874). He had previously published Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864).

He is one of the most important writers in France and throughout Europe thanks to the evident influence of his books on avant-garde literature and surrealism, and since 1979 he is the second most translated author in the world, after Agatha Christie He is considered, along with H. G. Wells, one of the "fathers of science fiction". He was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1892 for his contributions to education and science.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Nantes from l'Île Feydeau at the time of the birth of Verne. Turner's acquittal.

He was born on February 8, 1828 in a neighborhood of Nantes, France, on an islet nestled in the Loire River called Île Feydeau, where his grandparents lived. He was the eldest of five children (Julio, Paul, Anne, Mathilde and Marie) who had the marriage formed by Pierre Verne, who came from a family linked to jurisprudence (his grandfather was a notary advisor to Louis XV and president of the Nantes Bar Association),^{[quote required]} and Sophie Verne, née Allotte de la Fuÿe, belonging to a family of sailors and shipowners. His brother Paul was born a year after him, and his three sisters, years later: Anne, in 1836; Mathilde, in 1839, and Marie, in 1842. From 1834 to 1836 Jules Verne went to a boarding school run by a captain's widow. From 1837 to 1847 he went to the Saint-Stanislas College, where he demonstrated his talents in geography, Greek, Latin and music. When he finished his first cycle of studies, his father, Pierre Verne, gave him and his brother, Paul, a sailing jib with which they planned to descend the Loire to the sea; However, Julio declined at the time of undertaking the adventure since the planning of the trip had not been sufficient.

Many biographers claim that in 1839, at the age of eleven, he ran away from home to be a cabin boy on an India-bound merchantman named Coralie, intending to buy a pearl necklace for his cousin Caroline (with whom he was in love), but his father caught up with the boat and took Julio down. And from there he began to write stories, but he really became interested in writing when a teacher told him anecdotes about her sailor husband. Verne was interested in poetry and science.^{[citation needed]} He read and collected scientific papers, displaying an almost unhealthy curiosity that would last a lifetime. In 1846 he returned from the Royal High School of Nantes with a high average; he probably wins a geography prize.

Verne with 25 years

In 1847 he began his law studies in Paris. His cousin Caroline became engaged. He writes a play: Alexander VI . In 1848 he was introduced by his uncle Francisque de Chateaubourg into literary circles, where he met the Dumas, his father and son; the first will have great personal and literary influence on Verne.

In 1849 he obtained a law degree and his father allowed him to stay in Paris. He continues to write theater and opera scripts (from 1848 to 1863).His father wanted him to dedicate himself to his career in law, but he was not for that work and his father, angry with him, stopped financing him. In addition, all his savings were spent on books, while he spent long hours in the libraries of Paris wanting to know everything. Verne barely had enough money to feed himself, which is thought to have caused him bowel incontinence, facial paralysis, as well as diabetes.^{[citation needed]}

Verne in 1856.

Work from morning to night without stopping, and so every day (...) The stomach's still good, but the shrimp in my face bothers me a lot; besides, as I always have to take something, I no longer sleep at all. (...) All these discomforts come from the nerves that I always have in extreme tension.

Major Orgillés, David, Great Biographies: Jules Verne

This is how he writes a letter to his mother, talking about the problems that arise from lack of food:

A life that limits to the north with constipation, to the south with decomposition, to the east with the exaggerated lavatives, to the west with the astringent lavatives (...) You're probably aware, my dear mother, that there's a hiatus that separates both innkeepers and it's just the remate of the intestine. (...) However, in my case the rectum, prey to a very natural impatience, has a tendency to go out and, therefore, not to retain as hermetically as it would be desirable its very high content. (...) serious inconveniences for a young man whose intention is to alternate in society and not in dirt. Why say it once?

Major Orgillés, David, 'Grandes Biographies: Jules Verne'

In 1850, at the age of twenty-two, he wrote a light comedy, The Broken Straws, which he managed to premiere in Paris thanks to Dumas, with modest success. The following year he published two stories in the illustrated magazine El Museo de las Familias: "Martín Paz" (a fantasy inspired by the paintings of the Peruvian artist Ignacio Merino) and "Un drama en México" (a short story inspired by the Voyage to the American Equinox, by the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt) and several plays, librettos for fashionable operettas and short novels. During this time he is secretary of the National Theater of Paris, recommended by Dumas. But what little money he can get together he invests in a piano.

In May 1856, he met his future wife, a woman named Honorine Hebe du Fraysse de Viane, who is Morel's widow and mother of two daughters (Valentine and Suzanne). He marries (betraying the cause of his misogynistic group of friends The Womanless Eleven) to Honorine on January 10, 1857, believing that he will find the emotional stability he lacks. He asks his father for 50,000 francs to invest in the stock market; after a long discussion his father agrees.

Marriage, instead of helping him, quickly despairs him. Every time she gets the chance, she eschews her spousal duties. On one occasion when the couple travels to Esonnes to spend some time with Honorine's sister, Julio takes a boat to Scotland, forcing his wife, who knew nothing about him, to return to Paris alone (that's the first time Verne travels by boat). He then decides to undertake another trip to Norway and Denmark.

Four years after getting married, Julio plans a trip, which would later result in leaving Honorine alone while she gave birth to the only child of the marriage, Michel Verne.

Extraordinary Journeys

In 1859 he traveled to Scotland with his friend Hignard. His first work of science fiction is also the first novel he wrote, Paris in the Twentieth Century, and one of the few he did not publish in his lifetime—it was printed in 1994. Pierre-Jules Hetzel, his publisher, rejected the novel because of the pessimism it contained, as it heralded a society in which people live obsessed with money and faxes.

In 1863 Jules Verne published the first of his sixty Extraordinary Voyages, Five Weeks in a Balloon, «a sudden success thanks to which he signed a splendid contract with the publishing house of Hetzel, who guaranteed him the annual amount of 20,000 francs for the next twenty years, in exchange forced himself to write two novels of a new style every year." The series, which lasted for almost forty years, would include deliveries of the stature from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and The Sons of Captain Grant (1867). In 1869 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) was published, followed by The Mysterious Island (1874), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Miguel Strogoff (1876) —the best alibi for those who consider him a reactionary—, The Ice Sphinx (1897) or The superb Orinoco (1898). Tireless worker, he cultivates, parallel to his travels, his first vocation: playwright, writing and adapting some pieces for the stage.

Cover of the French edition of Hetzel The adventures of Captain Hatteras.

In 1861 he managed to raise enough money to travel to Norway and Iceland with his wife, but she was unable to travel because she was pregnant. On her return, she receives him with her newborn son Michel Verne, the only fruit of the marriage.

In 1863 he became friends with the adventurer, journalist and photographer Nadar. With him, she investigates the improvements that could be made to some flying devices, which she describes in Five weeks in a balloon . Nadar recommends him to Hetzel, owner of the Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation ('Illustration and Recreation Magazine'), who publishes the first installment of the serial. Due to the success of this work, the owner of the magazine offers him a twenty-year contract at twenty thousand francs per year (a small fortune for that time). In 1863, following the success of his third novel, he traveled to the United States in a lecture series with his brother Paul Verne. Two years later he publishes the story of a trip to the Moon in two parts: From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon . One of the characters, the intrepid Frenchman Michel Ardán —anagram of Nadar— is a spitting image of his dear friend. The other, Impey Barbicane, is based on the character of US President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated earlier that year.

There are several similarities with the first true trip to the Moon, that of Apollo 8 in 1968: three astronauts travel on the ship, the United States is the promoter and producer of the feat, they take off from the state of Florida, they escape from the terrestrial gravity at 11 km per second, they require 150 hours of travel to reach the Moon, they do not land on the moon but orbit the satellite several times, and then return to Earth.

The day of the premiere of his stage adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days, Verne lived the only experience of his existence worthy of his characters: he insisted on personally inspecting the basket that would lead to Phileas Fogg and his inseparable Passepartout on the back of a real elephant. The fall of a part of the stage frightened the animal, which ran terrified from the theater with the author on its back, to walk along the Boulevard des Capuchins until the tamer caught up with them at the Tuileries.

Verne came to own up to three ships: the Saint Michel, the Saint Michel II and the Saint Michel III. Between 1868 and 1886 he made many sea voyages, and as he sailed he got to know various cities.

Julio Verne in the 1870s

In 1870 he published Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a novel in which the Vigo estuary appears, in relation to the battle of Rande, fought between the Spanish and the English during the War of Succession to beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1878 Jules Verne wanted to see this place in person and, aboard his yacht Saint Michel III , he headed for Vigo, where he stayed from June 1 to 4. During his stay he attended the procession of the Victory and the Reconquest festivities.

After visiting that Galician city, he headed for Lisbon. In a letter to his friend and editor Jules Hetzer he wrote:

I will talk to you about the places we visit: everything is truly beautiful. Vigo and Lisbon very beautiful, really, and they welcomed us very well everywhere

After visiting Lisbon, he will stop over in Cádiz, Tangier, Gibraltar, Málaga, Tetouan and Algiers.

On his return he went to reside in the city of Amiens. During the following two years he continued to travel: he toured Ireland, Scotland and Norway (1880) England, the North Sea and the Baltic (1881).

Verne would return in May 1884 to visit Vigo, in whose port he repaired his yacht.

His son Michel Verne was very rebellious; he was confined in an asylum at the request of Julio. After a few years, Michel was released, but he always took it very badly that his father had hospitalized him. Michel had already been a small boarding school in a correctional facility.

His last years

When Verne was fifty-eight years old, in March 1886, a tragic event took place: while he was walking back home, his twenty-five-year-old nephew Gastón, with whom he had a cordial relationship, shot him with a revolver with no clear motivations. The first bullet misses the target, but the second hit him in the left leg, causing him to limp from which he did not recover. The incident was covered up by the press and Gastón spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

Verne in 1892.

After the deaths of Hetzel and his mother in 1887, Julio began writing more somber works. In part this could be due to changes in his personality, but an important factor was the fact that Hetzel's son, who continued to run his father's company, was not as rigorous in his corrections as he had been. it had been that It is said that sometimes, from so many hours working for his works, he had facial paralysis.

In 1888, Verne decided to participate actively in the political life of Amiens, where he was elected as a councilor for the Town Hall. For fifteen years he develops his activity defending a series of improvements for the city.

Two years before his death, Verne accepted the presidency of the Amiens Esperanto group and undertook to write a book, in which this language would play an important role. The book in question, The Impressive Adventure of the Barsac Mission, could not be finished by him and when it was published, all reference to Esperanto had been removed.

Julio Verne after his death (March 24, 1905).

On March 24, 1905, suffering from diabetes for years, Verne died at his home at 44 Longueville Boulevard (now Jules Verne Boulevard). He was buried in the La Madeleine cemetery, located northwest of Amiens, whose tomb depicts Verne emerging from the tomb, the work of the sculptor Albert Roze. His son Michel Verne supervised the publication of his latest novels The Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World . The Extraordinary Journeys series continued for an extended period at the same rate of two volumes a year. It was later discovered that Michel had made extensive changes (The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, The Castaways of the Jonathan) or completely new versions of these stories (The Eternal Adam (1910) and The impressive adventure of the Barsac mission (1919)), whose original versions came to light at the end of the 20th century.

In 1863, Verne had written a novel called Paris in the Twentieth Century about a young man who lives in a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas cars, calculators, and a global network of communications, but which cannot achieve happiness and is heading for a tragic end. Hetzel thought that the pessimism of this novel would harm Verne's promising career and suggested that he wait twenty years before publishing it. He put the manuscript in a safe, where it was "discovered" by his great-granddaughter in 1989 and published in 1994.

Work

Estatua de Julio Verne en Vigo, Spain, realized in 2005 by the sculptor José Molares for the centenary of his death.

He was a forerunner of science fiction and the modern adventure novel. He was a student of the science and technology of his time, which —together with his great imagination and his capacity for logical anticipation— allowed him to anticipate his time, describing among other things submarines (Captain Nemo's "Nautilus", from his famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), the helicopter (a yacht that at the top of its masts it has propellers holding it up, in Robur the Conqueror).

His characters were always heroes, good men on the social ladder. Faced with the conservative Verne imposed by his publisher Hetzel and by his upbringing as the son of a Catholic lawyer and from a time when the Old Regime was tottering, it is not surprising his initial defense of the status quo, a position which over time will be tempered until giving way to conceptions radically opposed to those suggested in his first works, thanks to his contacts with socialist and anarchist circles. The philo-revolutionary Verne can be seen in one of his less widespread works, perhaps because of his sympathy for the revolutionary cause, Matías Sandorf (1885), in which he narrates the experience of a rebel against the tyranny of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In addition to his novels and plays, he wrote twenty short stories.

Classification of his work

Verne's works are usually divided into three parts: Discoveries, Maturity and Disenchantment.

Discovery

Verne's pen shows signs of innovation, with fresh ideas and progressive heroes who dream of discovering new worlds and going where no one has gone before for the benefit of humanity, from the poles in The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, to the center of the Earth in Journey to the Center of the Earth, and even to the Moon in From the Earth to the Moon.

Maturity

Verne begins to write in a more serious way, with more human heroes (Strogoff, Sinclair, Fogg). He gave birth to what was his greatest literary success with a novel full of life such as Around the World in Eighty Days . But it also seems that some ideas are exhausted when he takes up the previous ones ( The country of furs ). He even writes (perhaps due to pressure from his publishers) works not entirely his own ( The five hundred million of the Begún ).

Disenchantment

The personal problems that Verne had to face during his life (the never happy marriage, the illness of his nephew or the bad relationship with his son); and the sociopolitical experiences of his time (the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War; the Paris Commune; French imperialism) will lead an already tired Verne to conceive cold and gloomy stories, in which his first vision of science as the driving force behind the progress of humanity is exchanged for another in which human beings are consumed by that same science and by capitalism (The Eternal Adam). He makes a strong criticism of imperialism ( The impressive adventure of the Barsac mission ), and even goes so far as to openly expose his political ideas in The castaways of Jonathan . He also had time to reflect on his disenchantment with the new-style riches in The Gold Volcano . It is also in this period when he turns more fully into science fiction with The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz. He will also find time to light pleasant continuations of a previous work of his own in The Secret of Maston, and another not his own in The Ice Sphinx, a continuation of The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe.

Anticipations

Julio Verne Museum in Nantes.

Although Jules Verne is considered by many to be the father of science fiction, he never really wanted to cultivate this genre. Rather, Verne is an author of scientific literature, but an author who wishes to make new scientific knowledge and its admirable technical applications accessible to the public, dreaming that this will accelerate progress and the liberation of humanity. In this work that is half literary and half informative, he manages to anticipate with amazing success scientific findings and inventions that would astonish the world long after his death. Some of the anticipations that we find in Verne's work are:

• Before the flag, The Five Million Begun: weapons of mass destruction.
• Robur the Conqueror: helicopter.
• From Earth to Moon, Around the Moon: spacecraft.
• A floating city: large transatlantic dolls.
• Paris in the 20th century: internet, explosion engines.
• 20,000 underwater leagues, The mysterious island: submarine, electric motors.
• The mysterious island: elevator.

In In the 29th Century: An American Journalist's Journey in 2889, Jules Verne glimpses other technological advances, such as ways to travel at 1,500 kilometers per hour.

Your vision of anticipating future discoveries and historical events is also recognized, such as:

• The discovery of Nile sources (Five weeks balloon)
• The conquest of the poles (The adventures of Captain Hatteras, The sphinx of ice, 20,000 underwater leagues)
• Totalitarian governments (The Five Million Begun).
• Trip to the Moon (From Earth to Moon, Around the Moon)

Accommodations

Of Jules Verne's novels, 33 have been made into films, giving rise to a total of 95 films, not counting the television series. The work most times adapted has been Michael Strogoff (16 times), followed by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (9 times) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (6 times).

Theater

For the adaptation of his novels for the stage, Jules Verne relied on experienced playwrights, with whom he personally collaborated, such as Adolphe d'Ennery.

Main Movies

The most famous frame Travel to the Moon (1902), directed by Georges Méliès. This film was still made in the life of the writer.

• Travel to the Moon 1902, led by Georges Méliès.
• The mysterious island 1951, led by Spencer Gordon Benet and starred at Richard Crane.
• 20,000 underwater leagues 1954, led by Richard Fleischer with Kirk Douglas on the role of Ned and James Mason as Captain Nemo.
• Miguel Strogoff of 1956, directed by Carmine Gallone and Curd Jurgens as Miguel Strogoff.
• Round the world in eighty days from 1956, directed by Michael Anderson with David Niven as Phileas Fogg and Cantinflas as Passepartout (or Picaporte).
• From Earth to Moon 1958, led by Byron Haskin with Joseph Cotten, Debra Paget and George Sanders.
• Travel to the center of the Earth 1959, led by Henry Levin and starred at James Mason.
• Dueño del mundo 1961, led by William Witney and starred at Vincent Price.
• The mysterious island 1961, led by Cy Endfield with Michael Craig as protagonist.
• Captain Grant's children from 1962, led by Robert Stevenson and Maurice Chevalier, George Sanders and Hayley Mills as protagonists.
• Five weeks balloon from 1962, led by Irwin Allen with Red Buttons.
• The Light of the End of the World 1971, directed by Kevin Billington and interpreted by Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner and Fernando Rey.
• 20,000 underwater leagues from 1997, led by Rod Hardy and interpreted by Michael Caine, Bryan Brown, Patrick Dempsey and Mía Sara.
• Round the world in 80 days of 2004, directed by Frank Coraci, produced by Disney with Jackie Chan.
• The mysterious island of Julio Verne of 2005, directed by Russell Mulcahy and interpreted by Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart and Gabrielle Anwar.
• Travel to the center of the Earth from 2008, directed by Eric Brevig and interpreted by Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem.
• The mysterious island 2012, directed by Brad Peyton and starring Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzmán and Vanessa Hudgens.

Tributes and homages

Monument in Round, Pontevedra, showing Captain Nemo and two divers. It was made in 2004 by Sergio Portela.

• In 1870, Ferdinand de Lesseps, at the summit of fame for the recent inauguration of the Suez Canal, led by his enthusiasm for the Vernian work, had asked for Verne the decoration of Knight of Legion of Honor, which he finally received in 1892.
• Since the diffusion of his work, one can count for hundreds the list of famous characters who, in one way or another, have recognized the imprint that Verne's work left in their lives (for example, Yuri Gagarin said: "It was Julio Verne who decided me to the astronautics."
• The Soviet Union paid tribute to the writer by giving the name of Verne to one of the mountains of the hidden face of the Moon.
• The lunar crater Jules Verne and the asteroid (5231) Verne bear the name of the French literate in his honor.
• In honor of this writer, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched on Sunday, March 9, 2008 from the space port of Kourou (French Guiana), with the Ariane 5 rocket, a space freighter with its name (Jules Verne), a cylinder of 4.5 meters in diameter and 9.8 meters in height and with a weight of twenty tons for the International Space Station (ISS).
• The public university of the Picardía region, where it lived for more than twenty-five years, received its name as a tribute in 1991.