C.W. Gross is the writer of the blog Voyages Extraordinaires: Scientific Romances in a Bygone Age and has recently published the anthologies Science Fiction of America's Gilded Age and Science Fiction of Antebellum America.
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C.W. Gross • Jul 07, 2020
Jules Verne: A Literary Pilgrimage - Part One
By C.W.Gross
The extent to which Jules Verne is known today, it is more often as an icon than a writer. Widely renowned as the father of science fiction, he is seen as the beneficent, bearded symbol of optimistic futurism and technological possibility. His stories, known more by reputation and cinematic adaptation, are regarded as preternatural prognostications of lunar flights and submarine journeys, interesting mainly as quaint historical artefacts or Steampunk costume patterns.
No small part of this reputation is due to Walt Disney. Himself as much an icon as a man, Disney likewise stands as an emblem of mid-century optimistic futurism. His dreams of “Tomorrowland” are also seen as naive vestiges of another time, when the Space Race was just getting started. The two personalities, Verne and Disney, became intertwined in 1954 with the release of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
In the wake of World War II, Disney was looking to expand his studio's operations. They had dabbled in live-action films using funds tied up on England during the war, the most notable being Treasure Island. These modest successes sold him on the possibility of taking on live-action at a grand scale. The result was a wide-screen Cinemascope spectacle that deftly wrapped mid-century atomic anxiety in a stirring character drama.
Part of Walt Disney's appeal, then as now, was his attitude of reassurance. Disneyland itself is a massive architecture of reassurance: the reassurance of quaint “Main Street” values, of childhood flights of fancy, a settled frontier and a utopian future. In short, the reassurance of America's political, technological, economic, and moral primacy in a Cold War world. By placing atomic anxiety 100 years in the past, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea offers its reassurances that humanity has progressed out of atomic infancy and into the maturity to use this power responsibly, just as Captain Nemo would have it.
The success of 20,000 Leagues inspired over a decade of Vernian adaptations, including Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mysterious Island, Master of the World, Five Weeks in a Balloon, and Disney's own In Search of the Castaways. Each of these solidified Verne's reputation as an optimistic futurist whose charming predictions of a century before were coming true today. It also furnished Disney with decades of theme park attractions. My love for both Jules Verne and Walt Disney has taken me to nearly every one, from the film's prop organ in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion to the exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, and from the tributes to Walt Disney World's now-defunct submarine ride to Tokyo DisneySea's very active Mysterious Island with its 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth attractions.
A nonplussed author, with my Jules Verne pin collection, in the queue for Walt Disney World's Little Mermaid attraction. This attraction is where the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine ride used to be, hence the Nautilus carving in the rocks in the lower left corner. Photo © C.W. Gross.
Perhaps the most appropriate place to find Jules Verne the Icon is Disneyland Paris. When designing the park, Imagineers went out of their way to appease France's cultural gatekeepers by highlighting the connections between French culture and Disney product. In place of Walt Disney's Tomorrowland is a retro-futuristic “Discoveryland” in homage to Jules Verne. Until 2004, guests could join Verne on a time-travelling adventure in Le Visionarium, soar to the moon in Space Mountain: De la terre à la lune, and investigate the Mysteries of the Nautilus walkthrough attraction. Discoveryland recreated the colourful atmosphere of a Paris Exposition Universelle, directed by Verne's visionary technological prophecies. A monument to Verne even quotes his famous line: "Tout ce qui est dans la limite du possible doit être et sera accompli"... "All that is within the limits of the possible should be and will be done."
Discoveryland's monument to Verne. Photo © C.W. Gross.
The Nautilus and Space Mountain in Discoveryland. This Space Mountain's launch mechanism echoes the Columbiad canon of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon. Photo © C.W. Gross.
Nevertheless, the Nautilus of the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a unique creation of Harper Goff's and Disneyland Paris' Space Mountain owed more to fanciful filmmaker Georges Méliès than to literature. These visualizations are stunningly beautiful and that are enjoyable and entertaining in their own right, though one must inevitably be aware that it is a myth constructed over time.
The Nautilus and its lighthouse in Discoveryland. Photo © C.W. Gross.
Not far from Disneyland Paris we meet Verne the author, Verne the husband and father and civil servant, and Verne the very mortal man with an immortal imagination and Divine hope. An hour on one of France’s high-speed trains took us from Paris to the charming city of Amiens, in the Picardie region, where one still finds La Maison de Jules Verne.
: La Maison de Jules Verne. Photo © Laurent Rousselin – Amiens Métropole.
Though born in Nantes in 1828 and living amidst the hustle, bustle and literary-artistic culture of Paris when he wrote his first novels, Verne's association with Amiens began in 1856 when he attended the wedding of a friend. Weddings are often efficacious for spurring new romances, and Verne fell for the sister of the bride, a widow named Honorine. The following year the pair were married, but living in Amiens was still a long way off.
His father was a lawyer and expected his firstborn son to follow in his footsteps, taking up the family practice. But seeing ships drift in and out of Nantes' harbor, seized the young boy’s mind. He particularly enjoyed the story of Robinson Crusoe, and when he was 11 years old, had tried to stow away as a cabin boy on a vessel bound for India. The expanse of ocean and all it represented about the unknown, romantic, and adventurous had seized young Verne's imagination.
After a doomed romance with a girl whose father forced into a marriage of convenience with a wealthy older man, Verne left Nantes for Paris to complete his legal studies. When he arrived in 1848, his family connections admitted him to the most chic of literary salons. The French Revolution of 1848, collapse of the July Monarchy and the Second Republic, and the rise of the Second Empire, within only a few years deeply affected Verne. So too did the rising pace of Industrialization during the Second Republic and Second Empire. The mid-1800's were a new time, an age of political, social, and technological upheaval. Verne was captivated by the idea of progress tinged with catastrophe, and yearned to express it some way. He was inspired and encouraged to begin publishing plays and short stories that explored the social issues of the scientific age. Verne's greatest opportunity came with meeting Pierre Jules Hetzel, a visionary publisher who saw Verne as a new type of author for a new era… An author of "Scientific Romances," encyclopedic novels of exotic adventure in far-flung locales and the progress of technological invention.
l’Île Mystérieuse - Librairie Jules Verne, a bookshop in Paris specializing in the works of Jules Verne. Photo © C.W. Gross.
Jules Verne: A Literary Voyage is a three part series, written by C.W. Gross - Parts two and three coming soon!
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