Leo Perutz and the Mystery of St Peter's Snow
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Time and Mind: The Journal of Leo Perutz and the Archaeology, Mystery of St Peter’s Consciousness and Culture Snow Volume 6—Issue 2 July 2013 Alan Piper pp. 175–198 DOI: 10.2752/175169713X13589680082172 Alan Piper graduated in 1986 in the History of Ideas at Reprints available directly Kingston University (Surrey). His research interests include from the publishers the history of esoteric thought and the role of mind-altering Photocopying permitted by plant drugs in the history of human culture. His work has license only been published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Entheos: © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc The Journal of Psychedelic Spirituality, and in the Sino-Platonic 2013 Papers series. [email protected] Abstract A novel published in 1933, describes the isolation of a hallucinogenic drug from an ergot-type fungus. It remarkably predates the discovery the hallucinogenic properties of the ergot-derived alkaloid lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) by ten years. It also identifies ergot as the secret psychoactive sacrament of the ancient mysteries forty years before this hypothesis became a matter of academic and scientific investigation. In the novel, a central character plans to use an ergot derived drug as an agent of popular religious renewal, prefiguring the New Age religious revival initiated by the popular use of LSD. The story involves the mass testing of a hallucinogenic drug on the unsuspecting inhabitants of an isolated village almost twenty years before the Pont St Esprit incident of 1951, which has been ascribed to the CIA’s plans for experimental dosing of unsuspecting civilians with psychoactive drugs. This article investigates how the author could have managed to foresee these future events in such prophetic detail and reveals the sources that were available. In this article the history of psychoactive drugs is set in the context of the political, scientific, literary, and philosophical culture of the interwar period and shows that the cultural history of psychoactive drugs is enhanced by such context. Time and Mind Volume 6—Issue 2—July 2013, pp. 175–198 176 Leo Perutz and the Mystery of St Peter’s Snow Alan Piper Keywords: Leo Perutz, St Peter’s Snow, Competing versions of incidents play on the history of ergot and ergotism, discovery central question of which is the real version. of LSD, psychoactive sacraments, drugs in St Peter’s Snow, like his other drug novel, The science fiction Master of the Day of Judgement (1994), is really a psychological detective story. Rather than embracing the supernatural, both novels The Mystery actually feature rational explanations for In 1933, the year in which Hitler proclaimed mysterious or apparently supernatural events. the Nazi party the only political party in Regardless, Leo Perutz’s novel has to be seen Germany and all others were others were as extraordinarily prescient, if not prophetic, banned, the Austrian author Leo Perutz of some extraordinary subsequent historical published a novel called St Petri-Schnee events and perhaps has yet more mysterious (Perutz 1933). It was soon published in resonances. English as The Virgin’s Brand (Perutz 1935), Here is a book that appears to be at but was not published in English again until least ten, if not twenty or even forty, years there was a later translation in 1990 as ahead of its time. It describes the isolation St Peter’s Snow (Perutz 1990). The novel of a hallucinogenic drug from an ergot-type describes how, in 1932, a gentleman scientist fungus ten years before the discovery of seeks to discover a drug that will inspire lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the testing religious fervor and how an experimental of that drug on the unsuspecting population administration of the drug to the local of a small isolated village twenty years before population has a disastrous result. The the mysterious “Pont St Esprit” incident, novel is sometimes categorized as science which has been attributed to secret testing fiction (Rouiller 2002), or categorized of a psychoactive drug (Albarelli 2011),1 and with the fantasy and occult fiction of it identifies ergot as the secret psychoactive other contemporary Austrian writers sacrament of the ancient mysteries forty such Gustav Meyrink, whose occult novels years before the this was proposed in the feature transcendental drug experiences. multidisciplinary study The Road to Eleusis: In addition to his novels Perutz’s shorter The Unveiling of the Mysteries (Wasson et al. work was published in what has been 1978). described the world’s first fantasy magazine, Der Orchideengarten (The Orchid Garden), Who Was Leo Perutz? which featured short works of the fantastic Leo Perutz was an Austrian writer born in and macabre by contemporary and earlier Prague. In his professional life he was an authors and whose illustrations often actuary but also a highly successful novelist. displayed a taste for the kind of erotic His family was of Jewish-Spanish ancestry, decadence associated with the Germany but largely secularized and not particularly of the Weimar years. Perutz’s novels religious. His family moved to Vienna where often contain an element of the fantastic, Perutz attended a number of schools and with dramatic plots featuring confusing colleges and eventually studied probability and conflicting interpretations of events. theory, statistics, actuarial science, and Time and Mind Volume 6—Issue 2—July 2013, pp. 175–198 Alan Piper Leo Perutz and the Mystery of St Peter’s Snow 177 economics. He then worked for various and which formed a major part of the insurance companies including that of his popular resistance movement against Nazism father and the Assicurazioni Generali in following the Anschlus, the Nazi occupation Trieste for whom Franz Kafka also worked. of Austria, in 1938. As an actuary, he calculated mortality tables In 1933 Perutz’s novel St Petri-Schnee and fact-based insurance rates and published appeared in Germany, but after the takeover on this subject in professional journals. by the Nazis could hardly be sold there. In Vienna, Perutz frequented the literary Perutz himself was not on the list of banned cafes, such as the Museum Café and the Café authors, but his publisher Zsolnay was Central. Among his literary acquaintances considered Jewish and could not deliver were Peter Altenberg, Hermann Bahr, Oskar his books to Germany and Perutz thus Kokoschka, and Alfred Polgar. In the period disappeared from its main market. before the First World War Perutz took an In 1934 Perutz met his second wife, intensive part in the literary and musical life whom he married in 1935. After the of Vienna and made several trips to France, Anschluss, in 1938 Perutz fled with his family Italy, Spain, North Africa, Turkey, Lebanon, first to Venice, from there to Haifa and Palestine, and Egypt. eventually settled in Tel Aviv. Perutz and his Perutz published his first novel in 1915, wife still managed to travel to Austria and in The Third Bullet (Perutz, 1915), and in 1916, 1952 Perutz resumed Austrian citizenship. a second novel, The Mango Tree Miracle, In the following years, he always spent the co-written with Paul Frank (Perutz and Frank summer months in Vienna. In 1957 Perutz 1916). Both books were quite successful and fell ill during a visit to Bad Ischl, died, and was the film rights to the The Mango Tree Miracle buried in the cemetery there. were sold. The film version was premiered While he was a bestselling author in in 1921 under the title The Adventures of Dr. Germany in the 1920s and 1930s Perutz Kircheisen. Perutz enlisted during the First lapsed into relative obscurity after the war World War and was sent the Russian front and was little known outside Austria and where he suffered a lung shot that meant a Germany. Jorge Luis Borges liked Perutz’s long stay in hospital. work and supported the publication of Shortly after the birth of his son Felix in translations into Spanish in Argentina. 1928 Perutz’s wife, Ida, died which plunged Publication of a number of his novels in him into a deep crisis. After the death of English by Harvill Press in the 1980s and his wife Perutz met occultists with whom 1990s promoted renewed interest and he tried to contact his dead wife, while at reflected Perutz’s growing acceptance as the same time he remained skeptical. The an important twentieth-century European economic crisis beginning in the late 1920s author. Perutz’s novels often follow the fate detracted from Perutz’s income and, formerly of individuals, contain an element of the politically a Social Democrat, in the 1930s fantastic, and are usually located in the past Perutz turned to legitimism, represented or refer to the past. The plot is exciting by a variety of groups that looked to a and is told by numerous allusions, irony, and Hapsburg or other monarchical restoration confusing, conflicting interpretations of the Time and Mind Volume 6—Issue 2—July 2013, pp. 175–198 178 Leo Perutz and the Mystery of St Peter’s Snow Alan Piper events. A central theme is the question anticipated that a chemical isolated from an “What is real?”2 ergot-type fungus would provide an agent for religious renewal? This was indeed the Leo Perutz—Prophet or Initiate? case when in the 1960s and 1970s the So exactly what are we to make of the transcendental experience bestowed by multiple mysteries of Leo Perutz’s novel St LSD led many to seek meaning in the new Peter’s Snow? Well, at the heart of its story is religious movements of that era, as people the isolation of a hallucinogenic drug from sought a framework within which make sense a fungal parasite of wheat, which has been of their drug experiences (Stevens 1987).