This man had an amazing destiny. He seemed to have lived several lives, for he possessed many wonderful talents: he was an artist, a science fiction writer and, moreover, managed to look into the future and … ridicule him.
His brilliant foresight and drawings still amaze us; using modern terminology, we can say about him that Albert Robida, undoubtedly, had the abilities of a psychic. Exploiting his colossal capacity for work and wide knowledge, he wrote fifty-four books, providing them with 55 thousand first-class illustrations.
Albert Robida was born in Compiegne in the south of France on May 14, 1848. He began to paint very early. Already in elementary school, in cartoons, which he made at lightning speed, using only a pencil or a pen, he depicted his loved ones, teachers and classmates, scenes from the life of the school. Moreover, almost always from memory, and all of his drawings were very successful. Once the school principal approached him and asked him to show the drawings, looked them over carefully and said that he would not mind if Albert decided to draw a cartoon on him too: “When you are famous, I will show the drawing to my grandchildren, friends and family members and remember you. … In the meantime, I want to appease you with these colors …"
In 1866, at the age of eighteen, Albert made his debut as a cartoonist in the humorous edition of the Journal amusant, and at twenty-three he became a member of the editorial board of the luxurious magazine La vie parisienne (Parisian life). At the same time, he soon began to collaborate with the Viennese satirical magazine Der Floh (Flea), as well as Philipon, where the world famous cartoonist Daumier and no less famous book illustrator Gustave Dore worked.
Parisian magazines often sent him to the most remote corners of France, receiving from him travel sketches, cartoons and humorous descriptions of his adventures. With a large umbrella for protection from hot sunlight or rain, a sketchbook and a soldier's backpack, he walked almost all of France on foot, making sketches in Normandy, Brittany, Provence, Thuringia.
Along the way, Robida collected historical information, legends, folk songs, jokes and drew, drew tirelessly. He once painted a small group of French workers working on the construction of a new railroad. They, perched on the sleepers, gathered to have a snack. One of the workers, pouring wine, pointed to a locomotive standing in the distance with a long smoking pipe:
- Before the "locomotive" (engine) for the legs was wine, but now there will be steam!
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This remark seemed to Albert not devoid of deep meaning, and soon he made a symbolic drawing: a huge knight with a long spear, in strong armor, on a strong and beautiful horse, involuntarily backing away from an approaching steam locomotive - a symbol of the era of steam.
In 1883, Robida's book "The Twentieth Century" was published in Paris, and a few years later, "Electric Life". Soon the books were translated into Russian, and they were read with great interest in Russia. In the books of Robida, there were many exciting and interesting and very instructive. Robida not only looked into the 20th century and described the "technical wonders of the coming century", but also with great sadness told that we will regret a lot, because, according to Robida, humanity can be reckless and surprisingly short-sighted. He illustrated this idea on the very first page of Electric Life:
“The gray-haired Genius, having attached the globe to a tricycle as a front wheel and overthrowing Faith, Hope and Love, pedals and rushes through space and time along a huge spiral. Under the picture there is an eloquent inscription: “Forward, without looking back.” Leafing through this book now, one is surprised with what amazing insight he foresaw the coming technological progress and the events awaiting humanity in the XX century.
Robida begins Electric Life with a description of a "terrible catastrophe" that happened at a powerful power plant under the letter "14" (nuclear?) Due to an accident "in a large tank" (reactor?). Here are the first lines of the novel:
“In the afternoon of December 12, 1955, as a result of some accident, the reason for which remained unclear, a terrible electrical storm broke out over the whole of Western Europe - the so-called tornado. Having caused profound disturbances in the correct course of public and state life, this accident brought with it many surprises …"
Despite the fact that the date of the accident at the power plant is given with an error of more than thirty years, the current reader will involuntarily think about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant …
Robida also judges our achievements in the field of technology and interplanetary flights quite correctly:
“Electricity is an inexhaustible source of heat, light and mechanical power. This energy sets in motion both a huge number of colossal machines in millions of factories and factories, as well as the most delicate mechanisms of advanced physical devices.
It instantly transmits the sound of a human voice from one end of the earth to the other, removes the limit to human vision and carries through the air its master, a man - a creature who, it seems, was destined to crawl on the ground, like a caterpillar that did not live to turn into a butterfly.
Not content with the fact that electrical energy is a powerful instrument of production, a bright beacon, a mouthpiece that transmits a voice to any distance on land, at sea and in interplanetary space (the issue of telephony from one celestial body to another, although it has not yet been resolved in a completely satisfactory way, but, obviously, nearing resolution), electricity also performs thousands of other various duties. By the way, it also serves as a weapon in human hands - a deadly and formidable weapon on the battlefields …
The final subjugation of electricity, this mysterious engine of the worlds, allowed a person to change what seemed unchanged, to transform the order of things that existed from time immemorial, to improve the created and remake what, apparently, should have remained inaccessible for people forever …"
A person remains a person and, like thousands of years ago, strives for happiness. The main thing in the book is a description of the changes that will occur in a hundred or more years with the inhabitants of Paris and other cities.
As a result of scientific discoveries, the plot of a science fiction novel unfolds against the backdrop of a funny story. A young French engineer, Georges Lorris, fell in love with the charming Esteline Lacombe, and this soon led to important events. It all happened as follows. During the aforementioned accident at the power plant and the explosion on it of the "reservoir of electricity" in the houses of the city, spontaneous switching on of channels in the "telephonoscopes" a mountain of textbooks and preparing for the next exam for the title of engineer.
In the dialogue that took place, Georges learns that Estella, due to her natural shyness, fails every time in exams. Georges became her tutor, fell in love with her and soon proposed to her, much to the chagrin of his father, the great inventor, "Doctor and Professor of All Sciences" Philoxen Lorris.
The latter considered that his son was acting frivolously, since this was only a fleeting hobby, and Georges and Estella would certainly quarrel soon. To bring the moment of this quarrel closer and "save" his son, the professor assigned his secretary Sülfaten to the young people, who was grown in a test tube and for this reason has many advantages, including ideal genes, and almost no human disabilities.
But this “ideal Sülfaten” did not live up to his hopes: forgetting about his duties as a “secretary-villain”, he suddenly falls in love with the actress. Learning about the failure of his plans, the professor, using his weight in the government, is seeking to call Georges into the army for retraining and to participate in the "great national maneuvers", in which the French generals practiced the techniques of "chemical and medical warfare."
However, on maneuvers, Georges shows himself from the best side and receives the rank of major. This upsets his father so much that in his "laboratory of miasms" he accidentally breaks a test tube containing extremely dangerous disease-causing bacteria. In Paris, an epidemic of a new, unknown disease, reminiscent of the "plague of the 20th century" - AIDS, instantly flares up.
However, confused by everything that happened, the professor accidentally makes an important scientific discovery, on the basis of which he quickly prepares a life-saving vaccine. A dangerous epidemic is defeated. For the sake of the future generation of the French, the government and parliament decide to instill in everyone "the national and patriotic medicine of the professor of all sciences Philoxenus Lorris", which further contributes to his glory. Georges and Estella are together again, the former "humunculus" Sülfaten marries an actress, and Robida's science fiction novel ends with a honeymoon in the south of France "in the manner of the ancestors at low speed in a stagecoach." Albert Robida writes: “Our heroes finally managed to breathe in themselves clean air, not polluted by the smoke of monstrous factories and factories; here it was possible to give complete rest to the brain and nerves,feel the happiness of rebirth and the joy of life! " This is the brief plot of the novel Electric Life.
But Russian readers of that time were attracted to the novel not by a love intrigue, but by something else. The illustrations of Robida fascinated and aroused burning interest: huge airships, aerial competitions on "propeller-driven aircraft", air crews and cabriolets, as well as images of the subway, telephonescope, phonograph, chemical artillery guns, torpedoes and submarine battleships, in a word - technical wonders of the 20th century …
Aeronaut Santos Dumont was delighted with Robida's drawings and based on them he built several of his "air gig-dirigibles", on which he "moored" directly to the balconies of Parisians, unexpectedly appeared at balls and receptions. After giving a brief speech on technical progress, spectacularly illuminated by the flashes of newspaper reporters, he left the meeting the same way he arrived at it - through the window.
Albert Robida assured that in 1955 Paris should look quite amazing. This city is completely entangled in a network of electrical wires; "air yachts and convertibles" will fly in the sky, easily mooring to "landing stages" on the roofs of houses (for this reason, the numbering of floors in the houses will be carried out from above). Under ground and above ground, there will be giant "metro and electric pneumatic trains, which will allow people to cross France from end to end in a short time."
Parisians will live "in houses of glass and artificial granite" using "refractory plastics and tubular aluminum." Houses ten to eleven meters high will be cast by builders right on the spot from the foundation. An indispensable attribute of the interior of every house will be a "telephonoscope" (TV and at the same time a videophone), which will allow the residents of Paris to listen to a "TV newspaper" with news, business advertisements, lectures or music by simply pressing a button.
"Telefonoscope" will provide an opportunity "to visit relatives and be on a visit without leaving home." Kitchens in homes will be absent as unnecessary, since Parisians will be able to order ready-made meals using the "telephonoscope" or eat "concentrates in the form of pills."
Albert Robida believed that chemistry as a science would reach a higher level and find wide practical application in the national economy. With the help of chemistry, fertility will be restored in the soil. The seeds will undergo electrical treatment to stimulate their germination and growth.
He also reports on some other fantastic things that aroused interest and, at the same time, alarm among the Parisians of the 19th century. For example, Robida said that the nervous system of people of the 20th century will wear out much faster and that forty-five-year-old Frenchmen will correspond to those of seventy for health reasons. Therefore, rejuvenation will become necessary "in the feverish haste of the life of the 20th century." The revival of the aging organism will be carried out in special devices under special caps, which Robida depicted on the pages of "Electric Life".
Robida predicted that “photo painting” and “photo panel” on the walls of houses would flourish in Paris, and the plots would change all the time (indeed, such panels have now been created). In the aquariums, "electric fish" will swim, indistinguishable from the real ones. In general, people will learn to counterfeit everything, especially products, and ersatz will be sold everywhere. Under the surface of the seas and oceans "elusive underwater mineships from different countries" will scour. In this regard, Robida describes in detail the large exercises of all the armed forces of France with the participation of electric bombs from shells (tanks). Humanity will begin to populate a huge continent - Antarctica.
However, he warns that a man of the 20th century can get bored with many technical miracles and crazy speeds: “The feverish and haste existence among monstrous factories and plants polluted with smoke will make a person flee from everything created by him, in search of silence and a breath of clean air …” “How an amazing sight for our descendants will be a live horse, a completely new sight and full of the greatest interest for people accustomed to flying through the air! People will be treated with calmness in boarding houses, where there will be special music and songs for them, and they will be happy that they have escaped from smoky cities, where rivers are full of miasms, and the water in them is almost not drinkable …
This is what Albert Robida wrote over a hundred years ago. Along the way, we will name some of his other books: "War in the XX century", "Paris at the crossroads of centuries" (history of Paris in pictures), "Travel to the country of sausages" (satire on German militarism). His last science fiction novel, Hours of Ages Past (about the aftermath of a nuclear war) was translated into Russian and published in Russia in 1904.
In it, Albert Robida described the events that, in his opinion, await mankind because of the confrontation between large and small states and because of the desire of some to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
In the twentieth century, many technical inventions, including the "pea-sized bomb capable of destroying a city", will make some politicians extremely violent, which will inevitably lead to "great disaster" and "great horror." Robida in this amazing science fiction novel tells about humanity, which finally, having come to his senses from the "great horror", tries to reunite, creates the "Great Council for Preventing the Errors of the Past Without Politicians" and adopts a new chronology.
“The human race,” he writes, “that survived and did not perish, at least completely, has finally made good sense. The man came out of the great calamity and began to march along the furrows drawn by his ancestors."
One of the characters in the novel, a certain Robert Lafocard, speaks prophetic words: “The communists, who will seize power tomorrow, perhaps rudely and on not entirely legal grounds, will overthrow the old order. The entire leadership of the country will be carried out by people from a special Central Committee (!), And half of its own population will be imprisoned …"
In her memoirs, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova writes that their family had a book "by the famous French cartoonist Robida, which Volodya loved to look at." Did she influence Lenin to some extent? It is quite possible that it influenced, like the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels.
Robida's prophecies, as well as his drawings, amused the readers. They were especially amused by the seemingly incredible statement that at the end of the 20th century in England … a woman would be the prime minister! The prediction that the revolution in Russia would take place after the war in Europe, in 1924, was also surprising.
Unfortunately, the novel has never been reprinted, which is a pity. The current reader would certainly ponder over the fantasies that once caused bewilderment and laughter and suddenly became the realities of our turbulent time.
It is noteworthy that Robida's humor wins in this book as well. In order not to intimidate the reader completely, the author told a story about how people suddenly discover that time has flown back. People began to lose their gray hair, everyone began to get younger, cheerfulness came from somewhere, and they again began to do stupid things. The novel "Hours of Past Epochs" ends with the following words: "Behind each epoch a new one is visible, behind each generation you can already hear the steps of the next, which will take the stage when its hour strikes on the clock of eternity."
Albert Robida lived a long life. He worked until his last hour and, as friends assure, he became very similar to Doctor Faust. He was destined to see the First World War and learn about the use of mustard gas against the French (he once described something similar in his science fiction novel); he saw cities destroyed by bombs dropped from airships and planes, and many other fulfilled prophecies. The only thing he could not have imagined was the deaths of his two sons in the meat grinder of the world war he once described.
Albert Robida died surrounded by honor in Neville in 1926. A modest monument was erected to him. This wonderful man is remembered when his books are reopened with funny drawings and "incredibly fantastic" prophecies.