31 August 2017

Jules Verne in Le cimetière de La Madeleine, Amiens (80), Somme (80)



'Jules VERNE
NÉ À NANTES
LE 8 FÉVRIER 1828
DÉCÉDÉ À AMIENS
LE 24 MARS  1905
HONORINE ANNE HÉBE DE VIANE
SON ÉPOUSE 1829–1910'

Understandably the most popular grave in the cemetery, this is one of a number of sculptures here by Albert Roze, entitled 'Vers l'immortalité et l'éternelle jeunesse' ('Towards Immortality and Eternal Youth'). Verne's biographer Jean Jules-Verne (via his translator Roger Greaves), states that Verne's wish was to have a simple grave, which was originally the case. However, his son Michel is responsible for the ostentatious (but quite brilliant) update created two years later, showing a representation of the writer breaking free from his shroud and breaking the tomb lid, his outstretched arm and his face turned toward the sky.

As I have previously said of the strikingly similar grave of symbolist poet and novelist Georges Rodenbach (1855–98) in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Charlotte Besnard (1854–1931) sculpted it and Albert Roze was inspired by it to create this addition to the grave of Jules Verne.

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