Verne, Michelle

The only son of Jules Verne and his wife Honorina, was born in Paris in 1861. His mother was engaged in his upbringing, he also inherited the stubborn and keen character of his father. At school, he consistently showed himself to be the worst student, as a result, in 1876, his father sent his son to a colony for difficult teenagers, and after a suicide attempt, he assigned him as a navigator’s apprentice to a merchant ship. Returning to Amiens in 1880, he entered into a relationship with the local theater actress Teresa Dughazon, and began an independent life. His father determined the content of 1,000 francs per month, but Michel constantly tried to organize business enterprises and got into debt. He tried to invent a new type of lamp, founded a mining company and a bicycle company; without exception, all enterprises ended in bankruptcy. Jules Verne once declared that his son’s business ventures cost him nearly 300 thousand francs, he even had to sell his yacht Saint Michel ^{[4] [5]} .

Around 1888, a reconciliation of father and son took place; Michelle first tried his hand at journalism and literature, writing several science fiction essays published in England and the United States under the name of his father (Courier Train of the Future - the first project of the Transatlantic Tunnel , One Day of a Journalist in 2889, etc. .) ^[6] . However, in general, literature did not interest him too much, and he returned to entrepreneurial activity. After parting with his wife and two children, he married the 16-year-old Jeanne Reboul, from whom he also had a son, Jean Jules Verne (1892-1980), who wrote a biography of his grandfather published in France in 1973 and translated into Russian in 1978 . It is characteristic that he tried to report about his father to a minimum degree and did not mention a word about his literary activity.

In 1912, Michel Verne founded the film company Le Film Jules Verne , and in 1916-1917 he filmed the novel Black India , and in 1918-1919, The Southern Star, 500 Million Beguma and The Fate of Jean Moren. This enterprise did not bring much success ^[7] . In 1925, Michelle Verne died of throat and stomach cancer.

After the death of his father in 1905, Michel Verne inherited the family archive, having received a number of drafts, drafts and preparatory materials for books. Under an agreement with the publishing house of Etzel, he continued the work of his father, and until 1910 he published annually posthumous editions of new novels by Jules Verne, including short stories published in the collection Today and Tomorrow (1910). These novels include Pursuit of the Meteor , Danube Pilot , Shipwreck of Jonathan and The Extraordinary Adventures of Barsak's Expedition (partially published in 1914 and entirely in 1919), the story Eternal Adam and the novel " Lighthouse at the End of the World ." Already in the 1970s, it became clear that all these works were entirely written by Michel Verne on the plot ideas of his father. For example, “The Shipwreck of Jonathan” in Jules Verne’s draft contained 16 chapters, Michel finished writing 15 more and radically redid what his father had already written. “In pursuit of a meteor,” Michel introduced a new storyline, and so on. The novel “ Thompson & Co. Agency ” was completely written by M. Vern (no material was found by J. Vern on this novel) ^[8] .

These novels were stylized in the style of J. Verne, but from a literary point of view they were very different from everything he wrote in the 19th century. Regardless of the year of writing and publication, all the novels of Jules Verne are written in a leisurely and thorough manner, with a huge amount of popular science information (often eliminated in translations) ^[9] , they have a positive outlook and belief in the triumph of progress . Novels published after 1905 are distinguished by the complete absence of “lecture” material, more rapid action, gloomy and pessimistic in their worldview. The new books deal with atomic energy and its practical use, television, jet aircraft and remote-controlled missiles ^[10] . , who worked with the Jules Verne archives, claimed that

Michelle was undoubtedly a better writer than the late Jules Verne, whose plot developed slowly, tautly, confusedly. If you do not touch on ideology, then everything written by Michel represents ... a positive phenomenon from the literary point of view ^[11] .

• Brian Taves , Michel Verne de l'écrivain au réalisateur // Revue Jules Verne 19/20, 2005, p. 190-195.
• Brandis E.P. Next to Jules Verne. - 3rd ed. - L .: Children's literature, Len. Dep., 1991 .-- 207 p. - ISBN 5-08-000087-2 .

• Andrew Nash. Exhaustive Complete List of Jules Verne Titles (Neopr.) . JulesVerne.ca A Resource for Collecting the Books of Jules Verne and Ephemera related to Jules Verne the French Author (2011). Date of treatment August 9, 2016.
• Unknown writer Verne (neopr.) . WordPress (08/03/2012). Date accessed August 9, 2016. Archived July 20, 2019.