Peter Schulman

The Legacy of Paris au Xxème siècle: Eccentricity as Defiance in Jules Verne's Uneasy Relationship with His Era

N ous sommes nialades, cela est bien certain, malades de progrPs,” Zola announced in Mes haines. “Cette victoire des nerfs sur le sang a dtcidt de nos moeurs, de notre littirature, de notre epoque rout entihe” (Zola 57-58). Although Jules Verne’s mosc famous works, such as Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours and Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, are considered by many to be encomia to technology and progress, the recently rediscovered manuscript of Verne’s vision of Paris in 1960, Paris au Xdme sikle, so scathingly denounces the dehumanizing aspect of modernity that it also sheds doubt on the more cheerful nature of Verne’s later relationship with his era.’ Indeed, Michel, the protagonist of Paris au &;me si& cle, is considered dangerously eccentric by the cold and mechanized society that Paris has become because he is one of the last to resist the scientific innovations of his time. A lover of art, music, and poetry, he is destined to remain a miserable outcast; as a banker declares: “La machine devient un instrument dangereux entre ses mains [. . .] il nous apporte des additions pour des soustractions, et n’a jamais pu nous donner un calcul d’intCrCt” (62). After his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, rejected Paris au &?me sii.cle in 1862, Verne wrote the more popular, upbeat byages Extraordznaires, which are filled with wonders and discoveries.? Yet, just as machines become dangerous in the hands of those who cannot use them appropriately, the Verne books that make