WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.219 Imagine you're following the career of this incredibly 00:00:04.219 --> 00:00:07.019 brilliant, critically acclaimed indie filmmaker. 00:00:07.219 --> 00:00:09.919 Right, someone who makes those really deep philosophical 00:00:09.919 --> 00:00:11.820 movies. Exactly. They write these beautifully 00:00:11.820 --> 00:00:15.119 complex stories that explore the human condition, 00:00:15.359 --> 00:00:17.879 the psychological weight of isolation, and even 00:00:17.879 --> 00:00:20.780 the dangers of unhinged technology. Like an auteur 00:00:20.780 --> 00:00:24.399 who agonizes over every single stylistic choice 00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:27.519 and thematic nuance. Yeah. But then, because 00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:30.399 of some bizarre distribution deals, some really 00:00:30.399 --> 00:00:32.859 heavy -handed studio interference, and terrible 00:00:32.859 --> 00:00:35.340 international marketing, history just completely 00:00:35.340 --> 00:00:37.759 rewrites their legacy. Oh, that is the worst. 00:00:37.799 --> 00:00:40.500 Right. And a hundred years later, this brooding, 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:43.340 philosophical artist gets misremembered almost 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:46.899 exclusively as a creator of, like, goofy, light 00:00:46.899 --> 00:00:48.979 -hearted Saturday morning cartoons. It sounds 00:00:48.979 --> 00:00:50.820 absurd when you lay it out like that, but I mean, 00:00:50.899 --> 00:00:53.359 the machinery of public perception is incredibly 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:55.536 powerful. It really is. Once a culture decides... 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:58.750 what an artist is supposed to be, that label 00:00:58.750 --> 00:01:01.350 just completely eclipses the reality of the actual 00:01:01.350 --> 00:01:04.370 person making the art. Okay, let's unpack this 00:01:04.370 --> 00:01:08.030 because welcome to today's deep dive. Today we're 00:01:08.030 --> 00:01:10.969 diving into a massive stack of literary critiques, 00:01:11.609 --> 00:01:13.989 historical biographies, and recovered personal 00:01:13.989 --> 00:01:16.650 letters to figure out who one of history's most 00:01:16.650 --> 00:01:19.969 famous authors actually was. We really are. Our 00:01:19.969 --> 00:01:22.689 mission today is to look at the extraordinary 00:01:22.689 --> 00:01:26.780 life and honestly the heavily, heavily misunderstood 00:01:26.780 --> 00:01:29.700 legacy. of Jules Verne. Yeah, we are going to 00:01:29.700 --> 00:01:32.579 deconstruct this stubborn myth of Verne as this 00:01:32.579 --> 00:01:34.959 magical prophet of the future who just, you know, 00:01:34.959 --> 00:01:37.239 gazed into a crystal ball. Spoiler alert, he 00:01:37.239 --> 00:01:39.500 didn't. He absolutely didn't. And more importantly, 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:41.920 we're going to reveal how extreme commercial 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:44.340 pressures and some genuinely horrific English 00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:47.120 translations completely mangled the reputation 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.780 of a man who desperately wanted to be taken seriously 00:01:49.780 --> 00:01:52.159 as a literary artist. Because when you hear his 00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:54.180 name, you instantly think of the guy who wrote 00:01:54.180 --> 00:01:56.299 twenty thousand leads under the seas and around 00:01:56.299 --> 00:01:59.609 the world in eighty. days the ultimate swashbuckling 00:01:59.609 --> 00:02:02.769 adventurer right but to see where this cartoonish 00:02:02.769 --> 00:02:05.370 adventurous spirit actually originated and to 00:02:05.370 --> 00:02:07.349 understand how it was fueled by early trauma 00:02:07.349 --> 00:02:09.530 and heartbreak we have to go back to the beginning 00:02:09.530 --> 00:02:13.689 we do we're starting in not france in 1828 you 00:02:13.689 --> 00:02:16.930 really have to picture 1830s not to understand 00:02:16.930 --> 00:02:20.030 his worldview it wasn't just some generic provincial 00:02:20.030 --> 00:02:23.689 town yeah not at all it was this massive bustling 00:02:23.870 --> 00:02:28.250 port city right on the river Loire. And young 00:02:28.250 --> 00:02:31.789 Jules Verne spent his childhood essentially just 00:02:31.789 --> 00:02:34.449 staring out at the water, deeply fascinated by 00:02:34.449 --> 00:02:37.210 these massive merchant ships coming and going. 00:02:37.210 --> 00:02:39.129 Ringing in goods and stories from all over the 00:02:39.129 --> 00:02:42.110 globe, right? Exactly. That maritime environment 00:02:42.110 --> 00:02:45.689 instilled this deep, intense wanderlust in him. 00:02:45.990 --> 00:02:48.169 And his early schooling took that wanderlust 00:02:48.169 --> 00:02:51.110 and gave it a very specific, quirky, psychological 00:02:51.110 --> 00:02:53.520 shape. Oh, the boarding school story. Yes. When 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:55.319 he was six, he was sent to this boarding school 00:02:55.319 --> 00:02:57.800 run by a woman named Madame Sambin. She was quite 00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:00.259 a character. She really was. She was the widow 00:03:00.259 --> 00:03:02.360 of a naval captain who had disappeared at sea 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:05.159 roughly 30 years prior. But the thing is, she 00:03:05.159 --> 00:03:07.400 refused to accept that he was dead. Which is 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:09.560 heartbreaking. It is. She used to tell her students 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:11.819 that her husband was a shipwrecked castaway living 00:03:11.819 --> 00:03:13.860 in this desert island paradise and that he would 00:03:13.860 --> 00:03:16.180 eventually return, just like Robinson Crusoe. 00:03:16.379 --> 00:03:19.979 That is such a crucial, poignant detail. I mean, 00:03:19.979 --> 00:03:21.979 imagine being a six -year -old boy hearing that 00:03:21.979 --> 00:03:23.680 story from your teacher. It would stick with 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:26.180 you forever. It did. It planted the seed for 00:03:26.180 --> 00:03:29.419 what the French call Robinsonades, which are 00:03:29.419 --> 00:03:31.840 stories specifically about castaways surviving 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.379 on deserted islands. Right, like a whole subgenre. 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:38.060 Exactly. And that theme absolutely dominates 00:03:38.060 --> 00:03:41.960 his later masterpieces, like The Mysterious Island 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:44.300 and The School for Robinsons. But he didn't just 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:46.800 write about survival, did he? he was captivated 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.400 by the actual mechanics of it. He was obsessed 00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:51.960 with the idea of taking the chaos of a shipwreck 00:03:51.960 --> 00:03:54.740 and using human intellect to build a perfectly 00:03:54.740 --> 00:03:57.400 ordered world from scratch. Right, he doesn't 00:03:57.400 --> 00:03:59.900 just have his characters find a convenient cave 00:03:59.900 --> 00:04:02.419 and like eat coconuts. Definitely not coconuts. 00:04:02.580 --> 00:04:04.620 In the mysterious island, he literally walks 00:04:04.620 --> 00:04:07.400 you through the chemical process of rendering 00:04:07.400 --> 00:04:10.520 animal fat into glycerin and then mixing it with 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:13.639 nitric acid to manufacture homemade nitroglycerin 00:04:13.639 --> 00:04:15.729 just so they can blow up a gran - cliff to make 00:04:15.729 --> 00:04:18.709 a shelter. Gets intense. He grounds the fantasy 00:04:18.709 --> 00:04:22.149 of survival in rigorous methodical science. Which 00:04:22.149 --> 00:04:24.850 is exactly why the myths about his own childhood 00:04:24.850 --> 00:04:27.769 are so frustrating to scholars. Yes, because 00:04:27.769 --> 00:04:29.689 if you know anything about Jules Verne, you've 00:04:29.689 --> 00:04:31.889 probably heard this incredibly famous legend. 00:04:32.009 --> 00:04:34.850 The cabin boys. The cabin boy story. The legend 00:04:34.850 --> 00:04:38.170 goes that when he was 11 years old, he secretly 00:04:38.170 --> 00:04:41.610 sneaked onto a three -mast ship called the Coralie 00:04:41.610 --> 00:04:44.509 as a cabin boy. Right, to sail to the Indies. 00:04:44.750 --> 00:04:47.790 Yeah, supposedly to bring back a coral necklace 00:04:47.790 --> 00:04:51.110 for his cousin Caroline. But his dad caught him 00:04:51.110 --> 00:04:53.490 at the very last second, dragged them off the 00:04:53.490 --> 00:04:55.949 boat, and made him promise to travel only in 00:04:55.949 --> 00:04:58.949 his imagination. It is a brilliantly constructed 00:04:58.949 --> 00:05:01.430 piece of PR. It really sounds like a movie trailer. 00:05:01.709 --> 00:05:04.490 It perfectly fits the public image of a daring, 00:05:04.970 --> 00:05:07.329 adventurous young author whose spirit was just 00:05:07.329 --> 00:05:09.889 too big for his hometown. Too bad it's completely 00:05:09.889 --> 00:05:12.550 fabricated. Entirely made up. Wait, entirely? 00:05:12.569 --> 00:05:15.490 Yes, it was invented decades later by Verne's 00:05:15.490 --> 00:05:17.709 first biographer. Who was his niece, right? Marguerite, 00:05:17.709 --> 00:05:20.730 yeah. She deliberately embroidered his life to 00:05:20.730 --> 00:05:23.149 fit the public's perception of him, essentially 00:05:23.149 --> 00:05:25.350 just feeding the commercial myth -making machine 00:05:25.350 --> 00:05:28.279 that his publisher had built. Wow. Well, I have 00:05:28.279 --> 00:05:30.439 to push back on that romanticized image of the 00:05:30.439 --> 00:05:33.040 young swashbuckling writer anyway, because the 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:35.040 reality of his early life is actually kind of 00:05:35.040 --> 00:05:37.319 miserable. It was very restrictive. Right. He 00:05:37.319 --> 00:05:40.339 wasn't a daring cabin boy. He was a frustrated, 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:43.600 heartbroken law student rebelling against a very 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:46.639 domineering dad. His father, Pierre, was a strict 00:05:46.639 --> 00:05:49.560 bourgeois lawyer. Who demanded that Jules, as 00:05:49.560 --> 00:05:52.279 the oldest son, inherit the family law practice. 00:05:52.569 --> 00:05:56.029 The pressure to conform to this stifling upper 00:05:56.029 --> 00:05:59.050 middle class existence was immense. And on top 00:05:59.050 --> 00:06:01.470 of that, he suffered a devastating romantic rejection 00:06:01.470 --> 00:06:03.670 that really broke him. Oh yeah, Rose Hermione. 00:06:03.930 --> 00:06:06.250 Yes. He was intensely in love with this young 00:06:06.250 --> 00:06:08.769 woman in Nantes named Rose Hermione. He wrote 00:06:08.769 --> 00:06:11.329 her dozens of these agonizingly earnest poems. 00:06:11.629 --> 00:06:14.329 But in that era, marriage was largely an economic 00:06:14.329 --> 00:06:17.019 transaction, wasn't it? Absolutely. Her parents 00:06:17.019 --> 00:06:19.300 looked at this daydreaming young law student, 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:21.899 decided he had no financial future, and married 00:06:21.899 --> 00:06:23.860 her off to a rich landowner who was ten years 00:06:23.860 --> 00:06:26.920 older than her. Verne was absolute crushed. He 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.160 wrote this hallucination of a letter to his mother, 00:06:29.420 --> 00:06:32.220 half drunk. By the way, describing his misery 00:06:32.220 --> 00:06:35.800 in incredibly dark terms. It was a very dark 00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:38.079 period for him. And if you look closely at his 00:06:38.079 --> 00:06:41.360 bibliography, this early heartbreak permanently 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.139 scarred his writing. It sparked what literary 00:06:44.139 --> 00:06:48.000 scholars call Hermione complex. The mechanics 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.540 of that complex are fascinating really. Throughout 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:54.060 his novels you constantly see young vibrant women 00:06:54.060 --> 00:06:56.420 who are trapped in social cages. Always being 00:06:56.420 --> 00:06:58.379 married off against their will. Frequently married 00:06:58.379 --> 00:07:01.860 off against their will to Older, wealthy men, 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:05.300 yes. He was processing his own trauma by repeatedly 00:07:05.300 --> 00:07:07.920 putting variations of Hermione into his fiction. 00:07:08.180 --> 00:07:11.339 And it also gave him this lifelong anti -establishment 00:07:11.339 --> 00:07:13.819 streak. It really fueled his rebellion. He developed 00:07:13.819 --> 00:07:16.180 an intense aversion to the traditional paths 00:07:16.180 --> 00:07:19.000 expected of him. And he harbored a real burning 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.139 grudge against the bourgeois society of Nantes 00:07:21.139 --> 00:07:22.980 that had looked at him and deemed him unworthy. 00:07:23.100 --> 00:07:25.560 So to escape that suffocating environment, he 00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:27.740 runs away. But how did a depressed provincial 00:07:27.740 --> 00:07:30.100 student actually manage to break into the elite 00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:32.800 Parisian literary scene? Well, that refusal to 00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:36.360 conform drove him to Paris in July of 1848, which 00:07:36.360 --> 00:07:39.379 was an incredibly volatile time. He arrives right 00:07:39.379 --> 00:07:42.220 in the middle of a literal revolution. Talk about 00:07:42.220 --> 00:07:45.779 bad timing. Or maybe good timing. The barricades 00:07:45.779 --> 00:07:48.319 had just gone up a month prior, blood was being 00:07:48.319 --> 00:07:50.980 washed off the cobblestones, and the entire social 00:07:50.980 --> 00:07:53.540 order was shifting. So he moves to this chaotic 00:07:53.540 --> 00:07:56.500 Paris, uses some of his uncle's connections to 00:07:56.500 --> 00:07:59.740 get into these fancy literary salons, and he 00:07:59.740 --> 00:08:01.939 actually starts hanging out with Alexandre Dumas 00:08:01.939 --> 00:08:04.879 -Fields. The Bohemian son of the famous author 00:08:04.879 --> 00:08:06.759 of The Three Musketeers. Right. They even write 00:08:06.759 --> 00:08:09.139 a stage comedy together. And finally, he tells 00:08:09.139 --> 00:08:12.790 his dad flat out. I am not taking over your dusty 00:08:12.790 --> 00:08:16.050 law practice. I can only find success in literature. 00:08:16.230 --> 00:08:19.750 But as any aspiring artist knows, passion alone 00:08:19.750 --> 00:08:22.009 does not pay the rent. That is the universal 00:08:22.009 --> 00:08:24.810 truth. Even though he was writing plays and churning 00:08:24.810 --> 00:08:27.329 out popular science articles for family magazines, 00:08:27.790 --> 00:08:30.569 his financial situation was incredibly precarious. 00:08:30.850 --> 00:08:33.429 He was essentially starving for his art. Here's 00:08:33.429 --> 00:08:36.029 where it gets really interesting. Vern goes to 00:08:36.029 --> 00:08:37.970 a wedding in Armenian and falls in love with 00:08:37.970 --> 00:08:41.250 the bride's sister. a 26 -year -old widow with 00:08:41.250 --> 00:08:43.889 two kids named Onoreen. He needed to prove he 00:08:43.889 --> 00:08:47.370 was stable. Exactly. To win her family's favor, 00:08:47.889 --> 00:08:50.169 he realizes the Bohemian playwright lifestyle 00:08:50.169 --> 00:08:53.809 just isn't gonna cut it. He needs a real, steady, 00:08:54.190 --> 00:08:56.710 respectable income. So he pivots completely. 00:08:56.809 --> 00:08:59.429 So... The man we know as this great literary 00:08:59.429 --> 00:09:02.370 visionary takes a full time job as the stockbroker 00:09:02.370 --> 00:09:05.269 and agent to change on the Paris force. The contrast 00:09:05.269 --> 00:09:07.830 between those two worlds is just jarring. I mean, 00:09:07.889 --> 00:09:10.070 the 19th century Paris force was essentially 00:09:10.070 --> 00:09:14.149 a screaming pit of men in top hats, chaotic and 00:09:14.149 --> 00:09:16.950 entirely focused on cold, hard capital. Basically 00:09:16.950 --> 00:09:19.429 becomes a modern side hustler. He really does. 00:09:19.610 --> 00:09:21.889 Imagine the physical toll of this. He would wake 00:09:21.889 --> 00:09:24.330 up at five in the morning every single day to 00:09:24.330 --> 00:09:26.669 write and do research in the silent cavernous. 00:09:26.509 --> 00:09:28.649 halls of the National Library. Before anyone 00:09:28.649 --> 00:09:31.169 else was awake. He'd pour over geography and 00:09:31.169 --> 00:09:33.809 science texts, obsessively copying facts onto 00:09:33.809 --> 00:09:37.070 little index cards. And then, mid -morning, he'd 00:09:37.070 --> 00:09:39.210 put on his suit and go to Wall Street, basically, 00:09:39.429 --> 00:09:41.769 to scream trades on the stock exchange floor. 00:09:41.929 --> 00:09:44.629 And he wasn't even that good at it. No. By all 00:09:44.629 --> 00:09:46.289 accounts, his colleague said he was much better 00:09:46.289 --> 00:09:48.429 at witty repartee and cracking jokes than he 00:09:48.429 --> 00:09:50.110 was at actually doing the business of trading. 00:09:50.370 --> 00:09:52.690 But those early mornings in the library were 00:09:52.690 --> 00:09:55.940 the crucible for his genius. It was there he 00:09:55.940 --> 00:09:59.259 met Jacques Arago, this brilliant, completely 00:09:59.259 --> 00:10:02.639 blind explorer. Wow, a blind explorer. Think 00:10:02.639 --> 00:10:05.919 about the poetry of that. A blind man teaching 00:10:05.919 --> 00:10:09.100 Jules Verne how to see the world. Arago had traveled 00:10:09.100 --> 00:10:11.620 the globe before losing his sight and wrote these 00:10:11.620 --> 00:10:14.779 incredibly witty, detailed travel accounts. That 00:10:14.779 --> 00:10:16.559 friendship really pushed Verne toward travel 00:10:16.559 --> 00:10:18.779 writing, didn't it? It did. He started formulating 00:10:18.779 --> 00:10:21.879 an idea for a new kind of book, a novel of science. 00:10:22.460 --> 00:10:25.580 He wanted to take all those dry, factual, geographical 00:10:25.580 --> 00:10:28.700 details he was hoarding on his index cards and 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:31.139 weave them into a fictional adventure. And that 00:10:31.139 --> 00:10:33.460 leads to the ultimate turning point of his life, 00:10:33.799 --> 00:10:36.100 meeting the publisher Pierre Jules Hensel. Hetzel 00:10:36.100 --> 00:10:38.519 was an absolute heavyweight in the Parisian literary 00:10:38.519 --> 00:10:40.019 scene. We're talking about the guy who published 00:10:40.019 --> 00:10:43.279 Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand. So Verne brings 00:10:43.279 --> 00:10:45.200 him a rough manuscript about a balloon journey 00:10:45.200 --> 00:10:47.679 across Africa. And Hetzel sees the potential. 00:10:48.019 --> 00:10:50.419 Hetzel gives him some notes. Verne revises it 00:10:50.419 --> 00:10:53.940 in a frenzy over two weeks. And in 1863, Five 00:10:53.940 --> 00:10:56.419 Weeks in a Balloon is published to massive success. 00:10:56.700 --> 00:10:59.600 What's fascinating here is Hetzel's brilliant, 00:10:59.740 --> 00:11:02.399 but highly controlling vision. He was a very 00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:05.120 demanding boss. Very. Hetzel was launching a 00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:07.879 family magazine, the magazine d 'éducation et 00:11:07.879 --> 00:11:10.379 de récréation. He was essentially building the 00:11:10.379 --> 00:11:13.299 19th century equivalent of a modern algorithmic 00:11:13.299 --> 00:11:16.080 subscription service. Like Netflix for Victorian 00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:19.580 families. Basically. He needed reliable, morally 00:11:19.580 --> 00:11:22.179 uplifting educational content that families would 00:11:22.179 --> 00:11:25.220 pay for month after month. And he saw in Verne 00:11:25.220 --> 00:11:28.970 the absolute perfect vehicle for this master 00:11:28.970 --> 00:11:31.889 plan. So he locks him in. He locked Vern into 00:11:31.889 --> 00:11:34.129 a long term contract where Vern had to produce 00:11:34.129 --> 00:11:37.309 three volumes a year for a flat fee. And thus 00:11:37.309 --> 00:11:39.909 the famous Voyages Extraordinaire series was 00:11:39.909 --> 00:11:43.090 born. Think of Hetzel like a modern cinematic 00:11:43.090 --> 00:11:47.110 universe producer like Kevin Feige from Marvel. 00:11:47.210 --> 00:11:48.970 That's a great comparison. Hetzel had a very 00:11:48.970 --> 00:11:51.649 specific formula and he expected his creators 00:11:51.649 --> 00:11:54.120 to stick to it. His stated goal for Verne was 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:56.679 terrifyingly ambitious. He wanted him to outline 00:11:56.679 --> 00:11:59.379 all modern geographical, geological, physical, 00:11:59.539 --> 00:12:01.860 and astronomical knowledge amassed by science 00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:04.480 and weave it into entertaining stories. Verne 00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:07.360 agreed, but he fully understood the impossible 00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:09.679 scope of what he was signing up for. How could 00:12:09.679 --> 00:12:12.259 you even do that? You couldn't. He once noted 00:12:12.259 --> 00:12:14.639 that to actually leave a completed work behind 00:12:14.639 --> 00:12:16.799 that covered the whole earth and universe, a 00:12:16.799 --> 00:12:19.159 man would need to live to be at least 100 years 00:12:19.159 --> 00:12:22.100 old. Now, to be fair, Hetzel gave Verne wealth. 00:12:22.330 --> 00:12:24.730 He gave him international fame. He gave him a 00:12:24.730 --> 00:12:27.409 yacht. A literal yacht. Yeah, Verne bought a 00:12:27.409 --> 00:12:29.710 boat called the Saint Michelle and sailed around 00:12:29.710 --> 00:12:32.509 Europe as his books blew up. But that success 00:12:32.509 --> 00:12:35.570 came with immense creative compromising. Massive 00:12:35.570 --> 00:12:37.929 compromise. And those compromises would alter 00:12:37.929 --> 00:12:40.600 Verne's legacy forever. The relationship between 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:43.120 the artist and the publisher started out friendly, 00:12:43.639 --> 00:12:46.299 but grew incredibly tense over time. Because 00:12:46.299 --> 00:12:48.159 Hetzel was always thinking about the bottom line. 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:51.740 Always. He was aiming for a lucrative, family 00:12:51.740 --> 00:12:54.679 -friendly market, which meant he frequently forced 00:12:54.679 --> 00:12:57.100 Vern to change endings to make them more palatable. 00:12:57.320 --> 00:12:59.620 Right, like in the adventures of Captain Hatteras. 00:13:00.019 --> 00:13:03.240 Exactly. Vern originally wrote a deeply tragic 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:06.220 climax where the title character dies. Hetzel 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:08.639 said absolutely not. The hero has to survive 00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:11.000 for the family audience. So Verne just had to 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:13.820 cave. He was forced to rewrite it, yes. And Hetzel 00:13:13.820 --> 00:13:16.440 outright rejected an entire manuscript called 00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:19.700 Paris in the 20th century. This is a massive 00:13:19.700 --> 00:13:22.639 aha moment in Verne's history. It really changes 00:13:22.639 --> 00:13:26.659 how you view him. Verne wrote this story in 1863, 00:13:26.779 --> 00:13:30.440 said 100 years in the future. In 1960, it had 00:13:30.440 --> 00:13:34.179 glass skyscrapers, gas -powered cars, a global 00:13:34.179 --> 00:13:36.259 telegraph network that basically functioned like 00:13:36.259 --> 00:13:39.519 the internet, and execution by electric chair. 00:13:39.820 --> 00:13:42.600 He saw it all coming. He did, but the world was 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:45.679 miserable. It was a deeply pessimistic dystopia 00:13:45.679 --> 00:13:48.379 where technological progress had completely killed 00:13:48.379 --> 00:13:50.759 the arts and humanities. People were depressed 00:13:50.759 --> 00:13:53.039 and alienated. And Hetzel's reaction to that 00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:55.440 manuscript was visceral. He thought it was way 00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:58.179 too subversive, depressing, and cynical for his 00:13:58.179 --> 00:14:00.019 wholesome family magazine. He didn't want to 00:14:00.019 --> 00:14:02.240 bum out the subscribers. Right. He called it 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:05.200 tabloid journalism and literally told Verne to 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:07.549 lock it in a safe. And he listened. And it stayed 00:14:07.549 --> 00:14:09.950 there. The manuscript wasn't discovered and published 00:14:09.950 --> 00:14:14.110 until 1994, over a century later. That is just 00:14:14.110 --> 00:14:17.429 wild. But the most famous creative clash, I think, 00:14:17.909 --> 00:14:20.850 was over 20 ,000 leagues under the seas. Oh, 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:24.110 the Captain Nemo debate. Yeah. Verne had initially 00:14:24.110 --> 00:14:26.590 conceived of his famous submariner, Captain Nemo, 00:14:26.769 --> 00:14:29.509 as a Pollock scientist. His motivations were 00:14:29.509 --> 00:14:33.799 deeply political. Nemo was sinking ships seeking 00:14:33.799 --> 00:14:36.080 vengeance against the Russians who had slaughtered 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:38.899 his family during the January uprising. But Hetzel 00:14:38.899 --> 00:14:41.840 looked at the geopolitics and the sale sheets. 00:14:42.100 --> 00:14:44.620 The spreadsheets ruined art again. Always. The 00:14:44.620 --> 00:14:47.139 Russian Empire was a massive market for French 00:14:47.139 --> 00:14:49.809 books. Hetzel basically said, we cannot make 00:14:49.809 --> 00:14:52.250 the Russians the bad guys and alienate our biggest 00:14:52.250 --> 00:14:54.570 buyers. So what do you want? He demanded Vern 00:14:54.570 --> 00:14:57.049 make Nemo an enemy of the slave trade instead. 00:14:57.149 --> 00:15:00.049 And Vern hated that. Vern fought him tooth and 00:15:00.049 --> 00:15:02.230 nail. He felt it ruined the character's core 00:15:02.230 --> 00:15:04.669 motivation. Finally, they reached a standoff 00:15:04.669 --> 00:15:07.350 compromise where Captain Nemo's past is just 00:15:07.350 --> 00:15:10.019 left entirely mysterious. Which works. But it 00:15:10.019 --> 00:15:13.139 was a massive artistic concession. And as bad 00:15:13.139 --> 00:15:15.559 as Hetzel's meddling was, it was a drop in the 00:15:15.559 --> 00:15:17.620 bucket compared to the utter tragedy of the English 00:15:17.620 --> 00:15:19.500 translation. Oh, the translations are a nightmare. 00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:22.200 British and American publishers saw this massive 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:25.100 hit happening in France and just scrambled to 00:15:25.100 --> 00:15:27.019 rush his books into print in English to make 00:15:27.019 --> 00:15:29.179 a quick buck. It didn't care about the art. Not 00:15:29.179 --> 00:15:31.580 at all. And they made a deliberate, calculated 00:15:31.580 --> 00:15:35.039 business decision to market his books. only to 00:15:35.039 --> 00:15:38.559 kids. This is where the real lasting damage to 00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:41.600 his legacy was done. In Victorian England, education 00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:44.139 and entertainment were heavily compartmentalized. 00:15:44.379 --> 00:15:46.200 You couldn't really mix them. No, you either 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:49.120 read dense scientific texts or you read simple 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:51.919 adventure yarns. The English publishers looked 00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:54.759 at Verne's mix of science and adventure and decided 00:15:54.759 --> 00:15:57.539 it was just too complicated. So they dumbed it 00:15:57.539 --> 00:16:00.480 down. They treated the books as cheap, juvenile 00:16:00.480 --> 00:16:03.539 pulp. They hired translators who worked in extreme 00:16:03.539 --> 00:16:06.360 haste, paying them by the word. To give you an 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:09.320 idea of how bad it was, these translators, like 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:12.379 Louis Page -Mercier, who was notoriously reviled 00:16:12.379 --> 00:16:15.519 by Verne scholars, literally took scissors to 00:16:15.519 --> 00:16:17.460 the text. Fiscal scissor! They stripped out the 00:16:17.460 --> 00:16:19.779 complex science, they dumbed down the vocabulary, 00:16:20.059 --> 00:16:22.159 and they removed any political nuance that might 00:16:22.159 --> 00:16:24.500 offend British sensibilities. It was literary 00:16:24.500 --> 00:16:26.830 butchery. The modern author Michael Creighton, 00:16:27.049 --> 00:16:29.809 the guy who wrote Jurassic Park, was absolutely 00:16:29.809 --> 00:16:32.409 outraged by this. He noted that Verne's original 00:16:32.409 --> 00:16:35.070 French prose is lean, fast -moving, and very 00:16:35.070 --> 00:16:37.389 modern. It is beautifully written. But Creighton 00:16:37.389 --> 00:16:39.210 pointed out that these translators provided, 00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:43.570 quote, clunky, choppy, tone -deaf prose. They 00:16:43.570 --> 00:16:45.450 blithely altered the text, giving characters 00:16:45.450 --> 00:16:48.070 new names, and sometimes added whole pages of 00:16:48.070 --> 00:16:50.519 their own invention. If a paragraph had too much 00:16:50.519 --> 00:16:52.700 math or physics, they just deleted it. Okay, 00:16:52.740 --> 00:16:55.000 I have to ask on behalf of anyone listening right 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.620 now who is confused by this. If English readers 00:16:57.620 --> 00:17:00.679 were fed this choppy tone -deaf prose that completely 00:17:00.679 --> 00:17:03.019 erased his beautiful style and complex science, 00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:05.759 how on earth did Jules Verne become the second 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:08.160 most translated author in the entire world? It 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:10.859 seems impossible, doesn't it? Right. Since 1979, 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:12.940 he's ranked right between Agatha Christie and 00:17:12.940 --> 00:17:16.099 William Shakespeare. How does a botched, heavily 00:17:16.099 --> 00:17:18.720 censored translation become that globally popular? 00:17:18.859 --> 00:17:21.460 If we connect this to the bigger picture, it 00:17:21.460 --> 00:17:24.099 perfectly explains the complete bifurcation of 00:17:24.099 --> 00:17:26.740 his legacy, the pure narrative thrust of his 00:17:26.740 --> 00:17:29.920 stories, a submarine journey, a trip around the 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:32.759 world traveling to the center of the earth, those 00:17:32.759 --> 00:17:36.099 conceptual hooks. are so universally compelling 00:17:36.099 --> 00:17:38.900 that they survived even the worst translations. 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:41.920 The ideas were just too good. Exactly. The bare 00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:44.339 bones of the plot were enough to hook the English 00:17:44.339 --> 00:17:46.640 -speaking world. But while English audiences 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:49.140 were getting bad comic book style summaries, 00:17:49.640 --> 00:17:52.980 the French were reading a brilliant, sophisticated, 00:17:53.359 --> 00:17:56.160 stylistic artist. That split identity between 00:17:56.160 --> 00:17:59.269 being dismissed as a popular children's entertainer 00:17:59.269 --> 00:18:01.789 in the Anglosphere, while desperately wanting 00:18:01.789 --> 00:18:04.190 to be considered a serious artist in his homeland, 00:18:05.109 --> 00:18:07.009 really plagued him. It haunted him his whole 00:18:07.009 --> 00:18:09.069 life. He once gave an interview late in life 00:18:09.069 --> 00:18:11.670 where he said, the great regret of my life is 00:18:11.670 --> 00:18:14.130 that I have never taken any place in French literature. 00:18:14.430 --> 00:18:16.589 It's heartbreaking. He saw himself as an artist 00:18:16.589 --> 00:18:19.529 in pursuit of an ideal, but the critical establishment 00:18:19.529 --> 00:18:22.549 of his time heavyweights like Emile Zola snubbed 00:18:22.549 --> 00:18:24.829 him. Because of the genre. Because he wrote popular 00:18:24.829 --> 00:18:27.009 science fiction, yeah, he wasn't even nominated 00:18:27.009 --> 00:18:30.190 for the Academy Fonses. And the irony is, as 00:18:30.190 --> 00:18:33.990 he aged, his reality grew much darker and more 00:18:33.990 --> 00:18:36.410 restrictive than any of his fictions. The later 00:18:36.410 --> 00:18:39.430 years of his life are incredibly tragic. Think 00:18:39.430 --> 00:18:42.589 about the irony here. The man who wrote about 00:18:42.589 --> 00:18:45.710 boundless exploration and traversing the globe 00:18:45.710 --> 00:18:48.549 spent his final years physically trapped. The 00:18:48.549 --> 00:18:51.809 incident with his nephew? Yeah. In 1886, as he 00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:55.150 was walking home, his 26 -year -old nephew Gaston, 00:18:55.490 --> 00:18:58.069 who suffered from severe mental illness, shot 00:18:58.069 --> 00:19:01.190 at him twice with a pistol. Out of nowhere! One 00:19:01.190 --> 00:19:03.750 bullet hit Vern in the left leg. The bullet could 00:19:03.750 --> 00:19:05.869 never be removed, leaving him with a painful 00:19:05.869 --> 00:19:08.390 permanent limp for the rest of his life. Gaston 00:19:08.390 --> 00:19:10.470 spent the rest of his life in an asylum. And 00:19:10.470 --> 00:19:12.589 shortly after that trauma, both his mother and 00:19:12.589 --> 00:19:15.109 his controlling publisher Hetzel died. So his 00:19:15.109 --> 00:19:17.529 whole world just collapsed. Without Hetzel there 00:19:17.529 --> 00:19:20.210 to enforce the cheerful family magazine mandate, 00:19:20.569 --> 00:19:22.730 Vern's later works became noticeably darker, 00:19:22.970 --> 00:19:25.490 more cynical, and much more critical of human 00:19:25.490 --> 00:19:27.809 nature. And his health was fading fast, too. 00:19:28.109 --> 00:19:30.759 His health rapidly declined. He suffered from 00:19:30.759 --> 00:19:33.559 chronic diabetes, excruciating stomach cramps 00:19:33.559 --> 00:19:35.519 that he had had since his youth, and he lived 00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:38.779 with the terror of facial paralysis. That sounds 00:19:38.779 --> 00:19:42.500 awful. When he finally died in 1905, it was from 00:19:42.500 --> 00:19:45.099 diabetes and complications from a stroke that 00:19:45.099 --> 00:19:47.759 paralyzed his right side. And even in death, 00:19:48.019 --> 00:19:50.380 his work wasn't safe from being tampered with. 00:19:50.500 --> 00:19:53.039 Oh, his son, Michelle. Yeah, his son, Michelle, 00:19:53.180 --> 00:19:55.339 who he had a very strained relationship with 00:19:55.339 --> 00:19:58.140 early on, took over his posthumous manuscripts. 00:19:58.880 --> 00:20:01.230 Michelle made it. extensive entirely unapproved 00:20:01.230 --> 00:20:03.450 changes to his father's final stories before 00:20:03.450 --> 00:20:04.849 publishing them. He could have helped himself. 00:20:05.009 --> 00:20:07.569 He rewrote chapters, added characters, and changed 00:20:07.569 --> 00:20:10.009 tones. The original versions weren't restored 00:20:10.009 --> 00:20:12.549 until the late 20th century. It's a legacy built 00:20:12.549 --> 00:20:15.329 on layers of alteration by his publisher, by 00:20:15.329 --> 00:20:17.690 his translators, and finally by his own son. 00:20:17.849 --> 00:20:20.410 It's unbelievable. But perhaps the most persistent 00:20:20.410 --> 00:20:23.150 myth we need to dismantle before we wrap up is 00:20:23.150 --> 00:20:26.269 the idea of Jules Verne as a magical prophet 00:20:26.269 --> 00:20:28.490 of the future. Yes, because people always point 00:20:28.490 --> 00:20:31.460 to and say he predicted submarines. He predicted 00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:34.450 the moon landing. He's a psychic visionary. Verne 00:20:34.450 --> 00:20:37.609 flatly denied it. He famously said, I have invented 00:20:37.609 --> 00:20:40.329 nothing. He hated that label, didn't he? He was 00:20:40.329 --> 00:20:42.670 actually quite annoyed by the title of Profit. 00:20:42.829 --> 00:20:45.650 He said any connection between scientific developments 00:20:45.650 --> 00:20:48.529 and his work was mere coincidence. But what does 00:20:48.529 --> 00:20:51.890 this all mean? Honestly, knowing he just aggressively 00:20:51.890 --> 00:20:55.490 scraped data from 5 .0 AM library sessions kind 00:20:55.490 --> 00:20:57.549 of ruins the magic for me. You think so? I mean, 00:20:57.549 --> 00:20:59.950 it makes him sound less like a visionary genius 00:20:59.950 --> 00:21:02.650 and more like a 19th century Wikipedia crawler. 00:21:03.079 --> 00:21:05.579 Does that diminish his legacy? Not at all. In 00:21:05.579 --> 00:21:08.240 fact, his synthesis of information is actually 00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:10.819 far more impressive than magical prophecy. Oh, 00:21:10.980 --> 00:21:13.400 so. Well, data without narrative is just a textbook. 00:21:13.700 --> 00:21:15.579 Anyone can make a wild guess about the future. 00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:19.819 But Verne took the hard, dry facts of thermodynamics, 00:21:20.200 --> 00:21:22.299 geography, and engineering and gave them a soul. 00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:25.440 He made them exciting. He wove them into narratives 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:28.859 that felt entirely plausible. He taught generations 00:21:28.859 --> 00:21:31.660 how to dream using the actual building blocks 00:21:31.660 --> 00:21:34.039 of real science. That makes a lot of sense. It's 00:21:34.039 --> 00:21:36.779 why his work directly inspired real world pioneers. 00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:40.079 Like Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. 00:21:40.940 --> 00:21:43.619 Wernher von Braun, the aerospace engineer. The 00:21:43.619 --> 00:21:46.380 polar explorer Richard E. Byrd. They didn't cite 00:21:46.380 --> 00:21:49.019 a textbook as their inspiration. They specifically 00:21:49.019 --> 00:21:52.259 cited Jules Verne. Exactly. Ray Bradbury summed 00:21:52.259 --> 00:21:55.019 it up perfectly when he said, we are all, in 00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:58.140 one way or another, the children of Jules Verne. 00:21:58.279 --> 00:22:00.980 And he essentially spawned the entire steampunk 00:22:00.980 --> 00:22:04.400 genre just by glamorizing 19th century technology. 00:22:04.599 --> 00:22:07.720 And thankfully, he finally got his literary vindication. 00:22:08.220 --> 00:22:11.880 In the 1960s and 70s, a massive Jules Verne cult 00:22:11.880 --> 00:22:14.799 emerged in France. The critics finally came around. 00:22:14.940 --> 00:22:17.799 They did. Heavyweight literary critics and philosophers 00:22:17.799 --> 00:22:21.009 like Roland Barthes and Michel started rigorously 00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:23.789 studying his texts. They finally recognized what 00:22:23.789 --> 00:22:26.529 the English translations had obscured. His stylistic 00:22:26.529 --> 00:22:29.009 innovations. His innovations, his deep thematic 00:22:29.009 --> 00:22:31.289 resonance, and his complex views on humanity, 00:22:31.869 --> 00:22:34.150 they elevated him to his rightful place in the 00:22:34.150 --> 00:22:36.769 legitimate French literary canon. Which is amazing. 00:22:37.009 --> 00:22:38.869 So to quickly recap this incredible journey, 00:22:38.990 --> 00:22:40.869 we started with a heartbroken provincial law 00:22:40.869 --> 00:22:43.410 student staring out at ships on the River Loire. 00:22:43.630 --> 00:22:45.819 A long way from where he ended up. He defies 00:22:45.819 --> 00:22:48.380 his domineering father, becomes an overworked 00:22:48.380 --> 00:22:50.980 stockbroker, leading a grueling double life, 00:22:51.579 --> 00:22:54.119 and transforms into a commercially controlled 00:22:54.119 --> 00:22:57.180 superstar. With a yacht. With a yacht. A man 00:22:57.180 --> 00:23:00.200 whose true literary genius, psychological depth, 00:23:00.559 --> 00:23:02.779 and complex worldview were hidden from English 00:23:02.779 --> 00:23:05.980 readers for an entire century beneath bad translations 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:08.950 and greedy marketing. It's a powerful reminder 00:23:08.950 --> 00:23:11.690 of how fragile an artist's legacy really is and 00:23:11.690 --> 00:23:14.150 how heavily it relies on the people who package, 00:23:14.329 --> 00:23:16.450 translate, and distribute their work. Which brings 00:23:16.450 --> 00:23:19.250 me back to you listening right now. Think about 00:23:19.250 --> 00:23:22.170 the classic books or the childhood heroes or 00:23:22.170 --> 00:23:24.589 the foundational stories you hold dear. The ones 00:23:24.589 --> 00:23:26.809 that really shaped you. Are you remembering the 00:23:26.809 --> 00:23:29.589 true complex story or are you remembering an 00:23:29.589 --> 00:23:32.390 abridged culturally altered version handed down 00:23:32.390 --> 00:23:34.109 to you by someone who is just trying to sell 00:23:34.109 --> 00:23:36.700 a product? It is a question worth asking every 00:23:36.700 --> 00:23:39.019 time we consume a piece of classic media. What 00:23:39.019 --> 00:23:41.180 was left on the cutting room floor and who decided 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:43.400 to cut it? And I want to leave you with one final 00:23:43.400 --> 00:23:46.400 thought to mull over. Consider the fact that 00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:50.440 his publisher, Hetzel, completely rejected Verne's 00:23:50.440 --> 00:23:53.200 manuscript, Paris in the 20th century, because 00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:55.839 its pessimistic view of technological progress 00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.599 was deemed too subversive and depressing for 00:23:58.599 --> 00:24:01.170 families to read. That decision changed everything. 00:24:01.509 --> 00:24:04.029 If the man who is universally hailed today as 00:24:04.029 --> 00:24:06.369 the enthusiastic visionary father of science 00:24:06.369 --> 00:24:09.029 fiction was secretly terrified that technology 00:24:09.029 --> 00:24:11.109 would eventually strip the world of its humanity, 00:24:12.269 --> 00:24:14.170 what does that say about our own blind obsession 00:24:14.170 --> 00:24:16.589 with innovation today? It's a chilling thought. 00:24:16.890 --> 00:24:18.529 Maybe the indie filmmaker was trying to warn 00:24:18.529 --> 00:24:20.609 us all along, but we were just too busy watching 00:24:20.609 --> 00:24:22.329 the Saturday morning cartoons to notice.