The twilight of the intellect

In this novel, we note a fun name to read and reread: that of positivist scientism of Aristobulus - famous discovery, the origin of which is still shrouded in mystery. Yet the character of that name is there only to delay the observation of optical or atmospheric phenomenon that gives the novel its title and adventure its pretext, and to serve as a foil to the perfect gentleman Oliver Sinclair. Besides, the pathetic Aristobulus is not much use, and sees himself ousted from the last part of the plot.
The Green Ray is neither the best nor built the best novels written by Jules Verne. Even the story of the rescue of Helena Campbell in the heart of Fingal's Cave invaded by the raging waves of the incoming tide, which should have been the highlight of this novel, bores us: technically, the omniscient point of view adopted by the author gives little relief to this struggle of man against the elements, and sentimentalism, it helps not to frighten the young audience are for the Extraordinary Voyages, is not the right tone to an episode that depicts, thinly veiled as evocation, more emphatic than really majestic, a struggle with the mineral element and the liquid element, carnal embrace "the intrepid young man" and a Miss Campbell "Failure taken" forever repeated merging of man and woman ... We are still far from the poetic intensity that reaches Zola, in the penultimate chapter of Germinal (1885), when it will unite Etienne Lantier and Catherine Maheu the heart of a natural prison rock and mud.
Some chapters reach the summits of unintentional comedy, as the protagonists - yes, our charming hero Sinclair Campbell and Helena themselves! - Vying to bombast and pedantry. This is true of Chapter XIII entitled "The magnificence of the sea", which suggests Aristobulus is perhaps not the antithesis of Sinclair ... but his double. To what excess does, in Jules Verne, the zeal of pedagogy! (Moreover, this chapter could be one source of the famous invocation to the "Old Ocean" which appears in the first of the Songs of Maldoror, rhetorical exercise saturated with adjectives and amalgamating almost shapeless magma in various commonplaces moral philosophy, the poet likes to take at face value, substituting his dreams awaited picturesque description.)
In the same vein, we reread profitably A Captain in fifteen years (1878), significantly more successful novel by the same author, a chapter just as fun as these "Magnificences of the sea": one where a Jules Verne very conscious of its educational mission begins to scientifically describe the "spontaneous combustion" of a human being reached the final stage of alcoholism ... Zola, in 1893 in Doctor Pascal, will not make more dramatic!
I still like to recommend reading the Verne farce what The Green Ray to the men and women who loved a comic published in 1987, the first album (recently reissued - Note of October 2009) of Frederick Boilet which also entitled The Green Ray: a fast-paced story, a story located at the edge of the fantastic, which alternately transported us in the observatory of the Pic du Midi and the Strasbourg Cathedral, sometimes on the steps of a little girl that accompanied a boy fearful but fascinated, sometimes on those of a young man dark and possibly mad ... all wanting to watch the famous green ray evoked by Jules Verne.