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Spirits in the fairgrounds : métempsycose and its after-images

Reference: Evelien, Vanhoutte Kurt.- Spirits in the fairgrounds : métempsycose and its after-images The magic lantern at w ork : w itnessing, persuading, experiencing and connecting / Jolly, Martin [edit.]; deCourcy, Elisa [edit.] - ISBN 978-0-367-32256-4 - London, Routledge, 2020, p. 32-46 To cite this reference: https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1662000151162165141

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Spirits in the Fairgrounds: Métempsycose and its after-images Evelien Jonckheere and Kurt Vanhoutte Research Centre for Visual Poetics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp,

Considerable research in visual media has been devoted to the ‘secret life’1 of the magic lantern, the phantasmagoria or ‘ghost show’. Very little is known, however, about the métempsycose, a very peculiar ghostly attraction that, on closer inspection, was deeply rooted in popular culture as a set of practices, beliefs and amusements. The technique was part of a repertoire that used magic lanterns to evoke ghosts. In the French publication Le Grand manuel de projection, guide de l’amateur (a sort of user guide compiled in 1897 by the magician Alber and the editor A. Hegé, on commission from the lantern manufacturer Mazo), the optical illusion known as ‘métempsycose’ is regarded as a ‘dérivé de la projection’, along with microscopic projection, scientific projection, stereoscopic projection, panoramic projection, shadow play, and ‘spectres’.2 In the second volume of La pratique des projections by H. Fourtier (1893), which also contains explanations of various projection devices, the métempsycose is discussed under the heading “la fantasmagorie et les projections au théâtre.”3 It is also worthwhile examining the attraction as an independent practice. Métempsycose was an optical illusion that was popular among the broad public in and Belgium, as well as in Spain and the beginning in 1880. It received particularly high praise at carnivals. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the classical spirits that had been populating the stage were transformed into successive dissolving images of a beautiful young lady, a rose bush, a plaster bust, and a skull. Taken together, this narrative form and iconographic sequence expressed a spiritual belief in reincarnation and evolution rather than a belief in death and the great beyond.

The French film historian Jacques Deslandes is one of the few scientific researchers to discuss this optical illusion. In his key work Histoire Comparée du Cinéma (1968), he describes the images animées (“animated images”) of the métempsycose, as ‘an attraction very much en

1 Mervyn Heard “Introduction” in: The True History of Pepper's Ghost: A Reprint of the 1890 Edition of A True History of the Ghost and All about Metempsychosis (Hastings: Projection Box, 2011), IV. 2 Alber and A. Hegé, Le grand manuel de projection: guide de l’amateur (Paris: E. Mazo, 1897), 225. 3 H. Fourtier, La pratique des projections. Etude méthodique des appareils. Les accessoires, usages et applications diverses des projections. Conduite des séances. Tome second: les accessoires, la séance des projections (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Fils. Imprimeurs-Libraires, 1893), 92.

vogue’ in France during the final two decades of the century. According to Deslandes the métempsycose attraction carried influence well into the 1950s.4 This chapter examines both the technique and the narrative of the métempsycose, as well as its after-effects in the early twentieth century. Our examination reveals that the métempsycose was part of a visual literacy that was in close communication with the alternative subculture of spiritist reincarnation. We will argue that, as opposed to the UK, in Continental Europe, metempsychosis as an attraction was an expression of a widespread belief about the transmigration of souls. The show continued to exist as long as the spectacular effects of the lantern were able to compete with possibilities of photography and film. This is not to say that the métempsycose as such disappeared. In many cases, it seems that the effects were transferred into various techniques for playing out their transformative dynamics in an even wider variety of images and media.

Métempsycose in the fairgrounds According to press reports and archival sources dating back to 1887, several fairground artists presented métempsycose attractions at carnivals in Belgium, France and Spain.5 The name of the show derives from the Greek word metempsukhosis, which literally means ‘changing soul’. A plaster or stone bust transformed into an animated woman, a skeleton and a bouquet of flowers, and then back again to a woman. In some cases, images of a cage containing live birds, or a goblet with fish, were inserted into the sequence of projected images. We find similar attractions with such names as ‘Métempsycose’, ‘le rêve de Pygmalion’, ‘le secret de Pygmalion’, ‘le triomphe des dieux de l’Olympe’ between 1887 and 1890. Dutch showmen achieved considerable success with similar displays,6 and the attraction was even exported to Colonial Indonesia.7 In his Impressions de théâtre (1888-1898), the famous French theatre critic, Jules Lemaître wrote an eloquent report on what was to be seen on the inside of such a métempsycose booth, relaying observations from his visit to the Parisian Foire de Neuilly in

4 Jacques Deslandes, Histoire comparée du cinéma. Vol. 1. (Paris: Casterman, 1966), 159. 5 Press Reports on the topic of Métempsycose / Galathée / Galathea: La Meuse, November 5, 1887, 2 ; La Meuse, November 19, 1987, 6; Gazette de Charleroi, November 14, 1887, 2; La Meuse, September 13, 2, 1887; La Meuse, July 28, 1888, 5; La Meuse, October 8, 1888, 2 and October 10 1888, 2; La Meuse, September 16, 2, 1887; La Meuse, February 4, 1888, 2; Journal de Bruxelles, January 27 1889, 2; La Meuse, October 2, 1889, 2; La Meuse, May 14, 1890, 3; La Meuse, October 4, 1890, 2; Journal de Bruxelles, November 9, 1890, 2; El Adelanto: February 22, 1890, 3; El Nuevo Progresso: 22 February 1890, 1. 6 De Gooi en Eemlander, July 28, 1888, 1; Algemeen Handelsblad, March 16, 1897, 2; Haarlem’s Dagblad, January 16, 1888, 1; Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, September 14, 1892, 1. 7 Matthew Isaac Cohen, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903 Vol. 112 (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006), 98.

1887.8 The French author and travelling journalist Hugues Le Roux gave a lively description of métempsycose in Les Jeux du Cirque et la vie Forain (1889):

The beautiful head of Miss Lutèce was transformed into a death’s head right before the audience. Then, from this young skull, polished like ivory, there burst forth a rosebush. This contrast, eminently philosophical, inspired Mr Sténégry the father to astonishing variations. I recommend to collectors of amusing curios his “Program of Visible and Mysterious Apparitions”.9

Both Le Roux and Deslandes count the Sténégry family among the most influential métempsycose performers.10 Even though there were many different exploiters of the métempsycose, including the ‘professors’: Berbuto, Dulon, and Henry Wilden, no métempsycose attraction has indeed been so well documented as that of the French Sténégry family (Figure 1). For example, a poster depicting the various transformations of the soul in this Sténégry family’s métempsycose attraction has been preserved, as have lovely photographs of their hut at the 1898 ‘Fête des Invalides’ in Paris (Figure 2). The photograph was taken by the famous Parisian photographer, Eugène Atget and it features a poster advertising métempsycose (Figure 3).

Unfortunately, these photographs provide only a view of the exterior of the hut, and we therefore do not know exactly how the illusions operated. Fairground artists were also reticent with regard to revealing their techniques. They did not wish to diminish the attraction’s mystery through divulging its mechanics, and therefore diminishing its commercial value. Moreover, there were patents, as well as a trade in distributors who sold the tricks to fairground artists. In 1887, various domestic and foreign newspapers reported on the French lawsuit between Voisin, a successful merchant of illusion techniques, and the famous fairground artist Delille, which revolved around the application of rights to display the métempsycose. The case clearly demonstrates that, as an optical illusion, the métempsycose was ‘big business’, and that plagiarism of the attraction was policed through legal recourse.11

8 Jules Lemaître, Impressions du théâtre Vol. 2. (Paris: Société française d'impr. et de libr.,1898) 387-388. 9 Hugues Le Roux, Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine (Paris: E. Plan, Nourrit, 1889), 54. 10 Deslandes, Histoire comparée du cinema, 159. 11 For additional information on this case, see our contribution about the case in Evelien Jonckheere & Kurt Vanhoutte, “Metempsychosis as Attraction on the Fairground: The Migration of a Ghost,” Early Popular Visual Culture, 18 (2019) (forthcoming).

The following description of the métempsycose spectacle by a commentator only identified as ‘Burton’ appeared in a Belgian newspaper in 1887:

[T]he direct observation of an object slowly disappeared behind the reflection of an object from backstage in a two-way mirror, vertical, tilted at 45 degrees (…) placed at an angle at the opening of the stage entrance.12

Burton proceeded to describe how the gradual dimming of the lighting on the bust and the simultaneous strengthening of lighting on the head of the invisible woman produced the reflection of Galatea on the glass. The métempsycose would not fully expose its subjects as the bust behind the reflection was subsequently replaced by yet another object, that would gradually became visible in a third set and which could once again be projected. This working method is confirmed in the scarce descriptions that have been preserved in the contemporaneous literature, as in the description by Julien Lefèvre in L’Electricité au théâtre of 1894.13

Ghostly sightings The descriptions of the technique of the métempsycose in French regions differ markedly from those of the metempsychosis in the Anglophone world. This is quite revealing, as it tells something of the nature and scope of the métempsycose/metempsychosis. In his famous 1897 work Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Albert A. Hopkins identifies ‘Professor’ John Henry Pepper, the famous scientist, inventor and lecturer at the Royal Polytechnic in London, as the founder of the illusion of the same name, albeit with a description that diverges on a few fundamental points from the Continental métempsycose represented by Lefèvre.14 Hopkins bases his description on the sketch published in 1890 in Pepper’s The true history of the Ghost: And all about Metempsychosis.15 Pepper, who demonstrated this technique in lectures at the London Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1879, more specifically claimed that his invention, patented in the same year, was based on a new

12 Gazette de Charleroi, November 14, 1887, 2. 13 Julien Lefèvre, L’Electricité au théâtre (Paris: A. Grelot, 1894), 237-239; similar descriptions can be found in the narrative in Le Roux, Les Jeux du Cirque, 54; Emile Kress, Trucs et Illusions. Applications de l’Optique et de la Mécanique au Cinématographe (Paris: Comptoir d’Edition de ‘Cinéma-revue’, 1912), 13-14. 14 Albert A. Hopkins. Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions. Including Trick Photography (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1897) 534. 15 The True History of Pepper's Ghost: A Reprint of the 1890 Edition of A True History of the Ghost and All about Metempsychosis, Hastings: Projection Box.

type of glass that he had developed in collaboration with the American organ builder, James Walker.16 This new type of glass purportedly combined the transparent glass and a mirror in a single piece of glass. This glass was not an ordinary mirror, but one with increasingly thicker embedded strips of the silver, leaving it transparent in those positions. On the left side, the glass was almost entirely a mirror, while on the right, it was much more like a plain piece of glass. When the glass was slid on or off the stage, the reflected image seemed to dissolve gradually into view, appearing out of nowhere. As in the Continental métempsycose, the projected images were placed next to the stage, such that no below-stage mechanics were needed to execute the illusion (in contrast to the classic ‘Pepper’s Ghost’).

The difference between Pepper’s metempsychosis and Continental métempsycose is partly related to the use of the lanterns in the elaboration of the technique. As explained by a journalist of La Gazette de Charleroi and by Julien Lefèvre, respectively, while Pepper’s metempsychosis was based on the sliding of the mirror, the Continental métempsycose was based on gradual dimming and at the same time increasing the light at different angles. To enhance this specific lighting technique, the French lantern producer Mazo developed special taps: the robinet fondant.17

Even more important is the difference in narrative and iconography between the Continental métempsycose and the Anglo-Saxon metempsychosis. The illusion was constructed to appeal to different cultural sensitivities. The focus of Pepper’s metempsychosis show was not so much on evoking the transmigration of souls and a life after death as it was on the nearly satirical humor of the burlesque transformation. Instead of beautiful Galateas, the moving souls in Pepper’s metempsychosis were oranges transformed into marmalade and sausages transformed into a poodle, culminating in a spectacle that Simon During aptly termed “a comic overturning of the science lecture” in his in Modern Enchantments.18 Pepper also integrated the illusion into such comic sketches as Curried Prawns: a dyspeptic illusion, a scene based on a text written by F.C. Burnand, in which the effects of a man hallucinating after eating curried prawns were demonstrated. In another sketch, entitled The Artist’s Dream,

16 Although Walker had already developed the technique in 1869 to obtain a ghost effect for “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” the Metempsychosis would not be patented by Walker and Pepper until March 28, 1879 (see: Jeremy Brooker, The Temple of Minerva: Magic and the Magic Lantern at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, London, 1837-1901 (London: Magic Lantern Society, 2013), 136.) 17 Alber and Hegé, Le Grand Manuel de projection, 224. 18 Simon During, Modern Enchantments:the cultural power of secular magic (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 148.

the metempsychosis illusion enabled a figure staged in an artist’s backdrop to transform completely into the painting.19 The Artist’s Dream would live on for some time in many illusions, including in adaptations such as that by great British illusionist, David Devant and, later, those by Maskelyne and Cooke.20 The Blue Room was also based on this, with the artist introducing a similar motif of animism. This work would ultimately be performed by the famous American illusionist, Harry Kellar.21 The audience watched as Kellar gradually vanished and turned into a skeleton or made roses grow instantaneously from seeds in full view of the audience, under bright lights, and without covering.22

In both The Artist’s Dream and The Blue Room, the artist took center stage, and the illusion was mediated by the mythological theme of a work of art coming to life. This essentially brought the transformational force into the realm of aesthetics. Both illusions portrayed tableaux that were generally recognised as belonging to art history. Such a classic (i.e., manageable and straightforward) interpretation of the metempsychosis illusion was far removed from the Continental ‘transmigration of souls’ on the fairgrounds, which drew less on art and its associated dramaturgy, instead largely alluding to the unknown territory after death. This was not so much a question of art as it was of philosophy. The reference proved to be the Greek interpretation of the transmigration of souls that had been eagerly adopted by the French spiritists of the late 19th century, as it offered a view on the exchange between death and life that was so dear to them. For example, in his influential study of occultism and Spiritism in nineteenth century France, the French author, Félix Fabart cites Empedocles, the Sicilian philosopher and follower of Pythagoras, writing in Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte: magie, sorcellerie, spiritisme (1885): ‘I have appeared successively in the form of a young man, a girl, a plant, a bird, a fish.’23 This succession of states closely resembled the order of the métempsycose shown at the fair. In the remainder of this article, we explain the extent to which the French Spiritism and its influence – particularly on the French decadent artists – could be regarded as a breeding ground for the métempsycose.

19 Jeremy Brooker, “The polytechnic ghost: Pepper’s ghost, metempsychosis and the magic lantern at the royal polytechnic institution.” Early Popular Visual Culture 5, 2 (2007):189-206. 20 Lynda Nead, The haunted gallery: painting, photography, film c. 1900. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) 87. 21 Hopkins, Magic Stage Illusions, 532. 22 https://www.academia.edu/25831410/Interrogating_the_Blue_Room_Reflections_on_a_Turn-of_the- Century_Magic_Show_and_the_Veracity_of_the_Senses 23 Félix Fabart, Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte (Paris: Flammarion, 1885), 119.

Spiritualist beliefs The most fervent and emphatic defenders of the métempsycose doctrine were the French spiritualists in the tradition of Allen Kardec, who introduced a doctrine of Spiritism with a pronounced Christian accent within a larger global movement of spiritualism.24 The former educator attained a legendary status based on his books, a magazine, a spiritist society, and public lectures, which he brought to France. To this day, his work remains an important reference for a broad audience interested in the afterworld. His tomb at Père Lachaise in Paris is inscribed with a quotation from his influential Livre des Esprits: ‘Be born, die, be born again and constantly progress, such is the law’.25 Kardec developed a philosophy that was spiritual in its motivation, but scientific in its search for observational facts and rational arguments. Spiritists actively searched for empirical proof of their assumptions. Revelation and faith did not rule out science and rational thought. This is also evidenced in the specific interpretation to which Kardec and his disciples subscribed with regard to the course of soul transmigration. ‘Can a spirit that has animated a human body incarnate in an animal?’ wonders Kardec in Le livre des Esprits? To ask the question is to answer it: ‘No, because this would be a regression, and a spirit never regresses. A river does not flow back to its source’.26 Modern Spiritists tended not to believe that a human soul could return to stone, plants, animals, or minerals once they had reached a stage of “humanity” in their evolutionary progress.27

Although Kardec was involved in several fraud cases at the end of his life, which ultimately came in 1869, his teachings would attract quite a number of new members in France and Belgium in the 1880s. International conferences were held in which followers spread the belief in progress through métempsycose. In her ground-breaking work on Spiritism in France, Lachapelle writes that ‘in September 1889, as many as 40,000 participants came to Paris for

24 For more information on the position of French Spritism within spiritualism, see Sofie Lachapelle, Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research &Metaphysics in France, 1853-1931 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011), 1. 25 Fabart also refers to this famous quotation of Kardec in: Fabart, Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte, 119. 26 Allen Kardec, Anna Blackwell (transl.) The Spirits’ Book. Containing the principles of Spiritist doctrine on the immortality of the soul: the nature of spirits and their relations with men: the moral law; the present life, the future life, and the destiny of the human race. According to the teachings of spirits of high degree, transmitted through various mediums, collected and set in order by Allan Kardec. (Boston: Colby and Rich Publishers, 1893) 244. 27 Fabart, Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte, 119.

the first meeting of the Congrès spirite et spiritualiste international’.28 The after-effects of Kardec were anything but homogeneous, as the French occultist movement held different convictions concerning the passage to the afterworld. However, as Lachapelle remarks, ‘French occultists did believe in reincarnation and saw it as a return of the spiritual being to a new physical envelope’. People apparently remained convinced that, by doing good, every human would return in a better physical form after death, coming progressively closer to God through other-worldly materialisations.29 It is thus no coincidence that Sténégry’s poster (Figure 2) depicted God as an almighty spectator overseeing the spectacle of the métempsycose, despite being absent as a character in the show. One could also wonder whether the attraction’s popularity, which almost tangibly visualised what was playing out in people’s minds, might have been based on the expression of a ghostly belief in visible facts. Witnessing was believing, and the métempsycose could well have expressed the demand to base religious beliefs on scientific facts rather than on blind faith.

In contrast to the spiritist movement on the Continent, the Anglophone world was anything but responsive to the doctrine of métempsycose, instead being impressed primarily by the ghost as an independent entity. In Spectres of the self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost- seeing in England, 1750-1920 (2010), Shane McCorristine describes the lengths to which Spiritualists would go in their attempts at ghost-seeing and providing evidence of ghost- return.30 The dynamics of métempsycose did not seem to be a central concern in England. Evidence that the English travelling artists and their projected phantasmagorias were dominated by the spirit can also be found in The Haunted: A Social History (2007) where Owen Davies argues that, ‘(d)uring the last 25 years of the nineteenth century numerous such shows toured the country, the most notable being Wall’s “Grand Phantascope”, Captain Payne’s “Ghost Show”, Wallser’s “Ghost Illusion”, and Bidall’s wonderfully titled “Phantaspectra Ghostodrama”.’31 In this light, reincarnation appeared less ordinary.

One element that was shared by the Anglo-Saxon world and the Continent was the resistance that professional illusionists waged against Spiritism. As was the case with the well-known

28 Lachapelle, Investigating the Supernatural, 34. See also: Lynn Sharp, Secular spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-century France (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2006), 167. 29 Fabart, Histoire philosophique et politique de l’occulte, 118. 30 Shane McCorristine Shane, Spectres of the Self. Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750- 1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 31 Owen Davies, The Haunted. A Social History of Ghosts (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan 2007), 209.

anti-Spiritist séances of Maskelyne and Cooke32 and of Harry Houdini,33 many European illusionists were skeptical about the unbridled proliferation of optical illusions in the hands of ‘somnambulists’, or other alleged charlatans. Even more remarkably, the métempsycose was usually not counted among the fraudulent and deceptive illusions. For example, the French illusionist Raynaly notes that this attraction required a certain investment on the part of the operators, and that it could therefore be displayed only by experienced fairground artists with a certain level of financial standards, authority, and professionalism. The techniques – and particularly the lighting – were expensive, as were maintenance and insurance, not to mention the costs of transport and location. In short, ‘we are very far from the man who will offer his little performance as though it were a mere stroll in the park, as it were’.34 These investments lent a certain element of the sérieux, or authority, to the attraction. In their turn, the showmen eagerly exploited this in order to lure their audiences to the spectacle. ‘Come and see the masterpiece of my research into métempsycose, which will undergo its revelations and its revolutions in front of the audience members, who will themselves become devotees’ as Sténégry was said to have addressed to passers-by’.35 The sérieux is also tangible in the symbolic weight that has been ascribed to the attraction by contemporary visitors such as Lemaître, who addressed “the merit of being eminently symbolic”36 to the métempsycose fairground attraction and Le Roux, who labelled the same show as “eminently philosophical.”37 These characterizations suggest that the iconography of the métempsycose attraction were not just a matter of sensation, but that they at the same time also appealed to questions of life and death, probably nourished by the popularity of spiritism and spiritualism at that time.

Art spheres By the end of the nineteenth century, occultism had become part of the cultural landscape in France and Belgium. In particular, Decadent and Symbolist artists gave voice to these fascinations for all things odd and mystical. It is therefore no coincidence that, as an attraction, métempsycose appeared in the cabaret philosophiques and the cabaret artistiques. Beginning in 1892, people could visit the Cabaret du Néant (Tavern of the Dead) on the Rue

32 Simon During, Modern Enchantments,157-167. 33 Ibidem, 177. 34 E. Raynaly, Les Propos d’un Escamoteur. Etude Critique et Humoristique. Prestidigitation, Magnétisme, Spiritisme. (Paris: Imprimerie et Librairie de Ch. Noblet, 1894) 71-72. 35 Hugues, Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine, 54. 36 Lemaître, Impressions du théâtre. 389. 37 Hugues, Les Jeux du Cirque et la Vie Foraine, 54.

Cujas in the Parisian district of Montmartre. This type of tavern was already established in Brussels, and it would later be found in New York as well.38 Artists, tourists, and Bohemians were attracted to this place, as it confronted them in an ironic and amusing way with a visible belief in le néant or nothingness. The owner, Dorville, was an illusionist who often acted in the films of Méliès. He created the establishment’s decor, every detail of which was suggestive of death. Coffins were used as tables, the waiters wore black cowls, and the aperitifs had such names as ‘arsenic’, ‘cholera’, ‘pestilence’, and ‘fresh sighs of the dying’. The tavern was even pervaded with a scent reminiscent of dead bodies.39

The highlight of any visit to the Cabaret du néant was the disintegration room, where the d’outre-tombe could be experienced, for example by witnessing a spectacle scientifici- magnético-spirite. Although these displays were sometimes deceivingly referred to as X-rays, they were actually related to the métempsycose (Figure 4). Dorville invited patrons to this declaring: ‘Come to experience a spasm at the scientifico-magnético-spirites spectacle, what gives you a sweet death in Dorville’s lair, who created the cabarets of Death’.40 When the American art student, W.C. Murrow reported his encounter with this particular scene in his notes for Bohemian Paris of To-Day (1899), he somberly stated that: The power is given to those who merit it, not only to return to life, but to return in any form and station preferred to the old. So return if thou deservedst and desirest. After these words, the bones of a dead body in a coffin, presented in the back of the room, became covered with flesh and cerements. There was the smiling young woman back again.41 With their attractions diaboliques,42 these and other cabarets (e.g., Cabaret du Ciel and Cabaret de l’Enfer) could be regarded as the precursors of the ghost houses or haunted mansions, the first of which made its début on an English fairground in Liphook in 1915.43

Métempsycose and the cinematic image

38 The Journal, March 21, 1896. 39 Susan McCosker, Representative Performances of Stage Magic, 1650-1900 (Doct. Diss. New York University, 1982), 688 and Hopkins, Magic Stage Illusions, 55. 40 During, Modern Enchantments, 147. 41 W.C. Murrow, Bohemian Paris of To-Day (Philadelphia & London: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1900), 272- 275. 42 Georges Renault and Henri Château, Montmartre (Paris: Flammarion, 1897) 281. 43 David Annwn Jonesand David James Jones, Gothic effigy: A guide to dark visibilities (Chesire: Manchester University Press, 1918)

The iconography of the métempsycose also spread outside the fairground and artistic cabarets to reach wax museums, scientific theatres and, eventually, even the cinema. For example, a buste-trucqué was found in the Parisian Théâtre Robert-Houdin at the time during which it was operated by the famous illusionist and early cinema producer George Méliès. Méliès, who had studied with Voisin, would perform a related illusion in the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in 1889.44 The Fairy of the flowers, or Cagliostro’s Mirror called upon a spectator to come on stage and gaze at his reflection, whereupon the mirror transformed into a bed of flowers, in the center of which was a large bouquet in a vase with a woman’s head in the middle. The illusion was achieved using a technique similar to métempsycose.45 It is thus no coincidence that the cinematographic projects of Méliès often alluded to the iconography of the métempsycose. Examples of the cultural traction of métempsycose can be found in, “Escamotage d’une Dame au Théâtre Robert Houdin” (1896), “Pygmalion et Galathée” (1898), “Extraordinary Illusions” (1903), and “Le Parapluie fantastique, ou dix femmes sous une ombrelle” (1903).46

Another telling example of métempsycose cultural longevity is its appearance in a 1907 film by Segundo de Chomon, produced in Paris before he returned to Barcelona three years later. Vaudeville was crucial for the Spanish artist, whose enchanting theatricality runs throughout his work. If viewed against the backdrop of the fairground attractions, Chomon’s film appears to be a meta-commentary on the intermedial transition from illusion theatre to the cinema. The movie commences with a woman, a quasi-assistant, to an absent illusionist, placing a bust on a table in a theatrical frame. The plaster comes to life briefly before transforming into dancing midgets and a butterfly. Finally, the woman pulls babies out of a large cabbage, out of the cinematic backdrop and into the foreground, holding the newborns demonstratively before the camera. The butterflies in their various stages of emergence and the overarching theme of fertility are thus also quite consistent with the dynamics of reincarnation.

44 Jacques Malthête and Laurent Manonni, Méliès, magie et cinema (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2002). 45 McCosker, Representative Performances of Stage Magic, 671. See also Sofie Lachapelle, A History of Scientific Entertainment and Stage Magic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 111 and Deslandes, Histoire Comparée, 153: “Cette attraction, de la famille des ‘spectres vivants et impalpables’, mise à la mode par Robin, avait été adoptée même par les petites loges foraines. Dans son théâtre du Boulevard des Italiens, Georges Méliès en avait donné en 1889 une version très transposée intitulée la fée des fleurs ou le miroir de Cagliostro.” 46 Deslandes, Histoire comparée, 153. See also Gaudreault, André. “Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 15, 3 (Fall 1987): 110– 119; Bloom, Michelle E. “Pygmalionesque Delusions and Illusions of Movement: Animation from Hoffmann to Truffaut.” Comparative Literature, 52, 4 (2000): 291–320.

Conclusion The popularity of the métempsycose attraction at the fairground and its afterlife in new illusions, cabaret and cinema were closely interwoven with the philosophy of métempsycose and, more specifically, with Kardec’s progressive Spiritism, as it was spread throughout France and its neighboring countries. It clearly inspired early popular visual culture and was consequently spread among a large part of the population in France, Belgium, Spain, and even The Netherlands. To some people it might have illustrated a poetic journey into belief, philosophy, or symbolism. To most, however, it was probably nothing more than an entertaining visual novelty to be witnessed and mused over. It illustrated the materialist paradox of Spiritism by trying to expose the immaterial through materiality, in this case a stone bust, living woman, roses, a skull, fish, or birds. Nevertheless, the omnipresence of the métempsycose in various visual contexts suggested a certain visual literacy in Spiritism, whether people were persuaded by the otherworldly spectacle or not.

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Bloom, Michelle E. “Pygmalionesque Delusions and Illusions of Movement: Animation from Hoffmann to Truffaut.” Comparative Literature 52, 4 (2000): 291–320.

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Index: Key words:

Spirits Spiritualism Spiritism Occultism Magie Sorcellerie Somnambulists Charlatans Fairgrounds France Belgium Metempsychosis/Métempsycose Ghost show / Spectres Phantasmagoria/Fantasmagorie Optical illusion Reincarnation Pygmalion Galatea/Galathée Mysterious apparitions The Artist’s Dream Blue Room Transmigration of the soul Evolutionary progress Cabaret Philosophique Cabaret Artistique Cabaret du Néant / Tavern of the Dead Le néant/nothingness Afterlife/d’outre-tombe Cabaret du ciel/Cabaret de l’Enfer Théâtre Robert-Houdin

Names of authors Alber Fourtier Jacques Deslandes Jules Lemaître

Hugues Le Roux Julien Lefèvre Albert A. Hopkins John Henry Pepper Simon During F.C. Burnand Félix Fabart Allen Kardec Lachapelle Shane McCorristine Owen Davies Raynaly M.C. Murrow

Other names: Mazo Sténégry Berbuto Dulon Burton Wilden Eugène Atget Henri Evenepoel Voisin Delille James Walker Segundo de Chomon Dorville Méliès Empedocles Pythagoras David Devant Maskelyne Cooke Harry Houdini Harry Kellar

Image References:

1. Métempsycose in the fairgroud by Prof. Dulon, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Ghent University Library, BIB.VLBL.HFI.F.033.05 2. Le Salon de Métempsycose de Sténégry. Picture by Eugène Atget at the Fête des Invalides 1898, © Eugène Atget, Musée Carnavalet, Roger-Viollet 3. Au secret des dieux – Métempsycose Sténégry, 1887, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ENT DN-1 (LEVY,Emile/2)-ROUL 4. An ‘x-ray’ illusion at Cabaret du Néant in: Albert A. Hopkins, Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions. (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1897), 58.

ABSTRACT:

A plaster or stone bust transformed into an animated woman, a skeleton and a bouquet of flowers, and then back again to a woman. This sequence of images, produced by a complex interplay of reflecting mirrors and lanterns, was presented by several fairground artists. According to press reports and archival sources on the continent dating back to 1887, this attraction was named as ‘Métempsycose’, ‘le rêve de Pygmalion’, ‘le secret de Pygmalion’ or ‘le triomphe des dieux de l’Olympe’. It refined and elaborated the classical Pepper’s Ghost with better mirroring techniques and seamless dissolving views. Its narrative form and iconographic sequence expressed a spiritual belief in reincarnation and evolution rather than a belief in death and the great beyond. By examining both the technique and the narrative of the métempsycose, as well as its after-effects in the early twentieth century, métempsycose is revealed as part of a visual literacy on the continent that, in contrast to British audiences, expressed a widespread belief in transmigration of the soul. The continental show continued to exist as long as the spectacular effects of the lantern were able to compete with possibilities of photography and film.

Notes on Contributors:

Evelien Jonckheere ([email protected]) is a postdoctoral researcher on the project B-magic at Antwerp University where she inquires the magic lantern projections and adaptations in spectacular attractions at fairground booths, the circus, variety theatre or vaudeville and different kinds of café-culture show. Her PhD, an investigation of the tensions between the Belgian café-concert, variety theatre and official theatre, was defended at Ghent

University in 2014, awarded and published by Leuven University Press in 2017. She published several articles, book chapters and books on popular entertainment and artistic practices in Belgium.

Kurt Vanhoutte ([email protected]) is professor of Performance Studies and

Visual Criticism at the University of Antwerp, where he helped to establish and currently coordinates a Master program in Theatre and Film Studies. He is founding member and director of the Research Centre for Visual Poetics. Vanhoutte is spokesperson-coordinator of

B-magic, a large-scale research project (EOS – Excellence of Science, 2018-2022) on the magic lantern and its impact as visual mass medium.