Wanderlino
Arruda
The
dreams of Jules Verne, so beautifully lived
at the turn of the Nineteenth Century, and then
evolving into the reality of our present days,
are widely read, the French writer being appreciated
today by young and old alike. Once he had realized
a new idea, his creative impulse and curiosity
satisfied, he would go on to a new fantasy dream,
a new tentative illusion or calling to his willful
creativity. Intelligence and art are extremely
demanding, dynamic “par excellence”,
never pausing, and that is what human progress
is made of, as evolution, it can’t stop,
because if it did, everything would become immobilized
by inertia, an unsupportable routine, unimaginable
to our evolving tendency, always ascending,
always better. To live life is to make dreams
come true.
Jules Verne was the great dreamer of things
to come, creator of the concept that “whatever
one man can dream, another man can then realize”.
He envisioned the television before the radio
was invented, naming it a “phonotelephoto”,
that is, an instrument that can carry voices
and images, connecting two distant points. He
visualized the helicopter half a century before
man learned to fly. He presented plans for the
construction of submarines, airplanes, neon
lights, escalators, air conditioning, skyscrapers,
guided missiles, tanks of war, space food, oxygen
production, and human movement in the absence
of gravity in spacecraft. He prophesized a whole
universe of fantastic inventions. Without a
doubt, he was the father of science fiction,
a forerunner of reality, an intuitive medium.
In other words… he was a prophet.
One
day I had the sensation that I was feeling very
near Jules Verne, drinking from the spring of
his life of inspiration, and of his scientific
and literary sensibility. It was one of these
confused interpretations that every mortal occasionally
makes, mainly those like me, distracted daydreamers,
off exploring the moon in a curious kind of
insight, unfocused, in a special second of curious
opportunism. Once, meandering in the vicinity
of the Louver museum in Paris, I saw the banner,
“Jules Verne, Today and Tomorrow”,
and I immediately misunderstood that, if I didn’t
take advantage of that golden opportunity of
these precious two days, I would lose an exhibition
that was fatally ending on the next day. I didn’t
think twice. In I went! It was an exhibition
presented by the Italian car company, Fiat.
Everything was displayed in an extraordinary
manner, with projects, drawings, instruments,
calculating machines and everything else that
the French writer used to develop his ideal
reality. But there was no indication determining
the ending date of the exhibition. Everything
was fresh, completely looking as though it had
opened on that very day, “Today and Tomorrow”
on the banner, actually meant the “Today
and Tomorrow” of Jules Verne, in his best
dreaming form…
Only
a few times in my life have I had so powerful
a conception of the enormity of such a magnificent
visionary, of a creative mind capable of trespassing
all barriers of human mentality. Only a few
times before and after this landmark exposition
have I ever intimately observed an admiration
so great for natural optimism, confiding in
the ascending logic of evolutional destiny and
the belief of constant progress into a better
world, worthy of the continuing efforts of science
and poetry. To me, at that moment, Jules Verne
became the synthesis of the faith that God deposits
in mankind. It is the guarantee of our future
and its ascending evolutionary trajectory as
part of a divine plan and intelligence. Jules
Verne was present, right there at that exhibition,
through his incredible life experience, of a
whole universe of research, simple dreaming
of the probable, the possibilities of historic
invention in human evolution, an unmistakable
moment of respect for free thought of the valorization
of the right to think and feel.
Wouldn’t
it be good if we could get back to reading again,
reading the writers of science fiction once
again, searching for comprehension of the creators
of our very own present and future? In truth,
the present reality is not enough to satisfy
man’s nearly divine imagination.
