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A year full of fantastical events

In 2005, France is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the death of one of its most popular writers: Jules Verne. The many events organised for this national commemoration will principally be held in Nantes, the novelist's birthplace in western France, and in Amiens, his place of residence, in the north.

Jules Verne

Exhibits, concerts, and shows have been planned throughout the year to honour Jules Verne, in a spirit of creativity and imagination worthy of the illustrious author of The Extraordinary Journeys in the Known and Unknown Worlds.

Jules Verne tickled the imagination of millions of children worldwide, conjuring up the adventures of Captain Nemo, Michel Strogoff, and Phileas Fogg, with his loyal servant Passepartout. Many of us remember our youthful emotion upon reading The Mysterious Island or the thrilling adventures of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Jules Verne's playful writing also seduced adults. His goal was both to educate the young by gathering together all the knowledge of his era, and to entertain his audience by narrating action-packed and exotic stories. Influenced by Edgar and Daniel Defoe, Jules Verne created a new form of literature that he dubbed, "for lack of a better word", the "scientific novel".

Through his work, science (in the general sense, including the social sciences) became fodder for fiction. From 1862 until his death in 1905, encouraged by his editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Jules Verne produced some sixty novels grouped under the broad title Extraordinary Journeys. His genius lies in his ability to draw poetry out of the most austere learning and to create an atmosphere of fantasy based on exact scientific data.

The writer's dreamlike and avant-garde vision will be represented on stage by the street theatre company "Royal de Luxe" during a large town parade and four days of festivities in Nantes, from 19 to 22 May, and in Amiens, from 16 to 19 June.

The programme enticingly announces "The Visit of the Sultan of India Atop His Time-Travelling Elephant". The show will go on tour to Le Havre, in the north of France, in mid-July, then London in September, wrapping up in Bilbao, Antwerp and Calais in 2006. In parallel to this, video director Pierrick Sorin will present a short film on the same theme, inspired by the gigantic, elephant-shaped steam engine imagined by Jules Verne in his novel The Steam House.

Jules Verne's world abounds with machine used as means of transport that were revolutionary for his time, such as the Nautilus, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which foreshadows the submarine, or the Albatros, similar to a helicopter, in Robur The Conqueror.

Two exhibits, one in Nantes and the other in Amiens, demonstrate how the novelist's clever mechanics were taken up in the world of illustrations and comic strips, in particular through the works of Jacques Tardi and Francois Schuiten. For the occasion, France's national railway company, the SNCF, is putting into service a TGV linking Nantes and Amiens and sporting the writer's colours.

Muscovite artist Alexandre Ponomarev is contributing a colossal sculpture that will stand proud in the Port of Crotoy (located in the natural reserve of the Bay of Somme, in northern France) from July to September. Entitled HEMO-BEPH ("Nemo-Verne" in Russian), the sculpture will conjure up the spectre of the Nautilus and its nautical pipe organ. A flock of colourful hot air balloons will float through the skies of Amiens on 21 and 22 May, in direct reference to Five Weeks in a Balloon.

Travel has always been the backdrop for Jules Verne's tales. His heroes journey to every corner of the planet, even exploring the star system. Various nationalities star in his works: while Americans, Brits and Frenchmen abound, there are also plenty of Russian and Chinese characters.

And so, throughout 2005, "Around the World in Eighty Concerts" will showcase music from other countries. "Jules Verne's mastery, via art, of science's fusion with the cosmic world has always been a great source of inspiration for me", states composer Pierre Henry.

On 3 April, at the Maison de la Culture d'Amiens, he will perform an original musical score, "The Chase of the Golden Meteor", in honour of the celebrated writer, while from 9 March to 29 April in Paris, the Musee de la Marine (Navy Museum) will showcase the many ties linking the writer to ocean navigation by presenting a large exhibit entitled "Jules Verne: the ocean novel".

In 1888, Jules Verne was elected to the town council of his adopted city Amiens. He distinguished himself in his post as an ardent defender of the arts, commissioning a circus amphitheatre that today bears his name.

From 7 to 10 June, juggler Jerome Thomas, who has performed in the amphitheatre for the past three years with the Nantes theatre company "Non Nova", will appear in "Jules for Ever", a dizzying challenge to the laws of gravity. During his lifetime, Jules Verne also encouraged painter Puvis de Chavannes to renew his contribution to the Museum of Picardie by painting a series of decorative frescos that have graced the building's stairway since 1861. A photograph immortalises the two men's first meeting.

From 18 June to 6 November, the exhibit "Puvis de Chavannes, an invitation from Jules Verne to continue....." brings together the respective approaches of these two unclassifiable artists who, each in their own way, combined tradition and modernity.

In October, philosopher Michel Serres will chair a colloquium on Jules Verne and science, organised by the prestigious engineering school of Nantes, while a lecture course at the University of Picardie will focus specifically on the writer's novelistic innovations.

In November, a science fiction festival, "Les Utopials", will be held in Nantes under the city's patronage. The Jules Verne Museum, located in the writer's birthplace, will reopen at the end of December, following the restoration of its exhibit rooms and archive collections, which comprise some of the writer's original manuscripts.

A new edition of Jules Verne's famous and little-known masterpieces is to be released by publishing house Actes Sud, while Cherche-Midi is putting out the writer's dramatic works, hitherto unpublished.

Another unique release: a CD produced by the Academie de Bretagne et des Pays de la Loire, featuring songs written by a young Jules Verne and set to music by his friend Aristide Hignard.

It would be difficult to list all of the events planned during this year of Jules Verne, so eclectic the commemoration promises to be. In 1899, Jules Verne wrote a fanciful short story entitled "The Will of an Eccentric". In 2005, the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of his death are certainly living up to this legacy - much to everybody's delight!

Pierre-Henri Casamayou