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Re: Forum

From: Jean-Michel Margot <jmmargot~at~mindspring.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:23:25 -0400
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

On 3/29/2010 7:54 AM, Walter J Miller wrote:
> Yes, I would like someone of J-M's stature to give us a "brief traduction" of what happened, Walter James Miller
Ok, ok... You got me once more, Walter...

  ;-) ;-) ;-)

Here is the short story, for our Anglo-saxon friends.

In the seventies, Daniel Compère created the "Centre de documentation Jules Verne" in Amiens. It was in the family garage and its objective was to offer information and documentation about JV, the man and his works, just the opposite of a gift shop!

His parents, Cécile and Maurice took over and in more than 20 years, putting all their free time into it, they created an entity which served the whole world, accumulating around 20000 documents of all kind.

It was THE place where anybody, scholars and general public, could get true and reliable information and bibliographic references about the REAL JV.

Cécile and Maurice were very close friends and I use this opportunity to state that the Vernian scholarship today wouldn't be what it is without them.

I worked closely with Cécile and Maurice, helping them to increase the documentation at the Centre: about 50% of the documents of the Centre are xeroxes of documents I had in my own collection (which is now publicly availabe in Switzerland, at the House of Elsewhere).

Around the Centre was created a society of friends to support the Centre, which, after a few years, was housed in JV's house - Rue Charles Dubois, the house with the tower.

In the nineties, JV's house and the Centre were recognized as THE JV entity in Amiens. It was so successful that some people wanted to use it for their personal promotion.

The name "Documentation" was dropped and replaced by "International", which gives the following title: "Centre International Jules Verne" or CIJV. In fact, it's not international, but remains typically French. Some years ago, the CIJV dedicated an issue of the REVUE JULES VERNE to "Jules Verne in America". Two articles written in English by two American scholars were translated and published in French!

Today the CIJV is a shiny entity, serving the icon JV, not the real writer and his works. No JV specialist works there anymore, and the documentation collection is abandoned. The JV house has been transformed in a gift shop promoting the name more than the works.

The last exchange of "nasty" emails in the JV Forum (mainly in French) is due to the exasperation of the European JV scholars who see the CIJV leaving the area of Verne scholarship and taking more and more the direction of promoting JV as an icon, a symbol - the same way ESA took in naming the first ATV Jules Verne.

Jean-Michel Margot
226 Thomas Ruffin Str.
Hillsborough, NC 27278
USA
Tel: (919) 644-7327
Fax: (919) 640-8794
jmmargot~at~mindspring.com
www.ajmm.net
www.najvs.org
www.verniana.org
www.against-the-tide.org
Received on Tue 30 Mar 2010 - 02:23:23 IDT

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