Jules Verne, travels form the pen – Libération

From the age of 31, the Nantes writer set sail on journeys which nourished his novels. For its centenary, Arthaud is offering an anthology enriched with previously unpublished material, entitled “En voyage”.

No one has the same relationship with travel. Jacques Lavaret would rather be the type to dream of somewhere else and to rush headlong; Jonathan Savournon hates improvisation and mishaps that delay things. The first takes advantage of the moment and flows in the direction of the wind, the second moans when you have to wait for the ship or the next day’s tide to be able to dock. The tandem ofEngland and Scotland Travel Essay (1859), started in Nantes, then embarked in Bordeaux on the Hamburg. He has just set foot on the Liverpool quay. This is the moment when we see them talking about buying train tickets to travel to Edinburgh.

“—The program is perfect. So on the way.

— But where are we going?

— I don’t know, replied Jacques, and that’s what makes our trip so charming; one never goes so far as when one does not know where one is going, said a speaker at the Convention.

— As long as we come back in time, I have nothing to object. On the way.”

Jules Verne took generations of readers far away with his Extraordinary Voyages (sixty-eight novels), imaginary and visionary escapes. We always assimilate the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to the spirit of adventure, to the call of the open sea, to fantastic expeditions. We know him