(61) Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, 1910) (1 volume) 54K words


The 61st and second to last Extraordinary Voyage, the seventh one published posthumously, takes place in the fictional Hungarian city of Ragz. It's the last science fiction novel by Verne (if we don't count some futuristic technology in "The Barsac Mission"), and despite the urban setting it also has some elements of Gothic horror, combined in a way that reminded me of "The Carpathian Castle".


First read or reread?: First read for me.


What is it about?: French engineer Henri Vidal is invited by his younger brother Marc to visit him in the (fictional) city of Ragz, Hungary, on the occasion of his wedding. Marc is engaged to Myra Roderich, from a respected and well-liked local family. Before leaving Paris, Henri learns that a man named Wilhelm Storitz had proposed to Myra, but had been refused. Wilhelm, who is the son of a famous physicist and chemist, the late Otto Storitz, has sworn vengeance against the family that rejected him, claiming to have powers beyond human understanding. Soon it becomes apparent that Wilhelm's threats were not empty, and he uses his astonishing powers to harass the Roderich family in an attempt to prevent the wedding.


As always for these posthumous novels, I'm reading the version that was originally published as part of the Extraordinary Voyages, the one edited and modified by Michel Verne, and not Jules Verne's unedited manuscript. In the case of this novel, Michel's changes are less extensive than in the previous two novels: He just changed the timeframe, taking the story to the 18th century, and made a modification to the ending, making it happier.

Moving the story from the 19h to the 18th century seems rather pointless, since it doesn't really play a role in the story. According to the correspondence between Michel and the publisher it was done at the request of the publisher. Maybe he thought that taking the story back one century would make the popular superstition around Otto Storitz's work seem more natural, although I think that in fact the end of the 19th century would work better for the kind of scientific discoveries that his son Wilhelm put to such evil use.

The change to the ending is easier to understand, being an attempt to make the story more pleasing to the general public and therefore more commercial.

The plot here was a bit thin, and maybe it would have worked better as a novella rather than a novel. As a result, the first part is slow, which is something unusual in Verne's shorter novels (the one-volume ones). We get an account of Henri's trip to Hungary, and in the short section where he sails down the Danube we probably are treated to more descriptions about the river and the riverside cities than we got in "The Danube Pilot", where the whole novel was devoted to such a trip. Not that there are that many descriptions here, it's just that there were barely any in "The Danube Pilot".

The characterization is quite conventional. The female characters are delicate, quick to faint and lose their minds. I mean, Verne is a writer of his time, and I don't ask for all of his female characters to be like the title character from "Mistress Branican" or like Paulina Barnett from "The Fur Country", but this fragility was a bit excessive. The male characters are also pretty conventional, nothing like the Kaw-djer from the previous novel ("The Survivors of the Jonathan"), who was full of internal conflict.

Verne's dislike of Germany, which as I have commented elsewhere began after the disastrous Franco-Prussian war, is apparent here, while Hungary is described as being friendly with France.

The plot includes a couple of unlikely coincidences. However, even a minor Verne has good things to offer, and once the hostilities began in the second half of the book, the atmosphere became tense and frantic, in a very enjoyable manner. I think Verne made the right choice in telling the story from Henri Vidal's perspective, since for this kind of story a first-person narration makes the reader feel closer to the characters as they go through the whole ordeal.

Readers familiar with H.G. Wells' work will notice that the premise of this story is similar to one of Wells' most famous novels. Wells' novel was published before this one, and maybe Verne got the idea from there but, beyond the premise, the two stories are different. Still, the idea is more what one would expect from Wells than from Verne. After all, Verne's science fiction was usually more grounded on contemporary scientific knowledge, while Wells didn't let a lack of scientific basis deter him. This is definitely more a Wells kind of plot.


Enjoyment factor: I did enjoy it, despite some flaws. Maybe a minor work, but in the second half the atmosphere was suitably disquieting and the whole thing was entertaining.


Next up: The Barsac Mission


See all my Verne reviews here: https://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/reading-vernes-voyages-extraordinaires.58... ( )

Alchymie a tajemno již dlouhá léta patří mezi oblíbená témata mnoha čtenářů. V tomto románu rozhodně nepřijdou zkrátka, neboť právě alchymie zde hraje velmi podstatnou roli. A to v podání Wilhelma, syna zemřelého věhlasného alchymisty Otty Storitze. Wilhelm po svém otci zdědil recepturu na kapalinu, jejíž požití učiní člověka neviditelným. Účinek této řídké tekutiny je trvalý, pokud není požita druhá látka, která působení první zruší. Tuto látku chce Wilhelm využít pro získání Myry Roderichové, která ovšem miluje inženýra Henriho Vidala. Když Myra jednoho dne zmizí, Henri následně dokáže neviditelného Storitze zabít. Ten si však tajemství obou látek vezme s sebou do hrobu. Podaří se Myru učinit znovu viditelnou i bez receptu na potřebný elixír?

H.G. Wells beat Jules Verne to the punch with “The Invisible Man,” published in 1898. Probably inspired by Wells, Verne soon began writing his own novel about invisibility, which he called “The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz.” It was not published in France until after his death, but only after his son had badly mangled it with substantial editing and rewriting. Several of Verne's other late books suffered a similar fate.

Not until a decade ago was Verne's novel restored to the way he wrote it and, unlike so many other Verne novels in the past, given a decent English translation. The result is a book that, even if it came after the much more famous Wells book, is original and entertaining in its own way.

Henry Vidal travels from France to Hungary for the wedding of his brother, Marc, to a lovely young woman named Myra Roderich. Myra had previously spurned a proposal from Wilhelm Storitz, the son of a noted, if mysterious, Prussian scientist. Wilhelm has vowed to prevent the marriage of Marc to Myra from ever taking place.

As the wedding approaches, mysterious things begin to occur, such as disembodied voices and objects seemingly moving by themselves through the air. When it finally becomes clear that Wilhelm has found the secret of invisibility, panic overtakes not just the wedding party but the entire city. How can anyone be confident of privacy ever again? How can any secret be safe? How can Wilhelm be found, let alone captured, when he cannot even be seen? The story reaches it crisis point when Myra herself disappears.

Myra's importance to the plot is one reason this novel is considered noteworthy among Verne's work. Mostly he wrote books for boys, who had little interest in female characters. This novel appears to have been written more for an adult audience, especially as it contains romantic scenes and wedding details. Yet Verne perhaps does women no favors by making both Myra and her mother so fragile that they faint and must be carried to bed because of the shock caused by events.

I won't discuss Verne's dramatic ending, one of the things that his son had badly rewritten, except to say that it is exceptional. H.G. Wells may have wished he had thought of it. ( )

In “The Secret of Wilhelm Sotritz”, Verne is giving us a view of the scientific and spiritual aspects of being invisible.

On one hand he addresses the havoc that could ensue if one had the ability to become invisible; the concerns from personal family life to political security that would be breeched. On the other hand he gives us insight to some 19th century social concerns about spirituality.

Wilhelm is a bachelor, foreigner, and a stranger and as such is suspect from the beginning in the community that he is residing in.

Because Wilhelm is rejected by Myra’s family for her hand in marriage he socially becomes invisible and not able to become spiritually complete in marriage, basically a nobody. So in essence, because he cannot attach himself to the well respected Roderich family and become somebody, he then falls back on the power that invisibility gives him to create havoc and terror in the unenlightened superstitious population of the town.

The story is a quick read and very well written. I would recommend it to anyone who likes some of the late 19th century science fiction writings. ( )

Though well-written enough, it's not that interesting to the modern reader - but there's a lot of historical interest in the book, since this is the first English translation based on the actual Jules Verne manuscript and not changed by his son and by publishers.
I can see how at the time the novel would seem innovative, and the ending is quirky even by today's standards. Also, some of what Verne says about the paranoia of being observed by someone invisible, and what this would do to society, will resonate in this day of the almost ubiquitous videocamera. ( )