Mesmeric Revelation
Mesmeric Revelation is the title of a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe that appeared in The Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine in August 1844 and has been reprinted many times .
As in the stories A Story from the Rough Mountains and The Facts in the Waldemar Case , it is also about the subject of mesmerism, popular in black romanticism .
The focus is on a long philosophical dialogue between a hypnotist and his consumptive patient who, in the mesmerized state, answers questions about immortality , life after death , ether and the essence of God and thereby comes ever closer to death.
content
At the beginning, the first-person narrator , a doctor, defends the existence of mesmerism, which is recognized almost worldwide and with the proof of which he does not want to bore the readers. Instead, he replays a conversation with a patient named Vankirk, who suffers from consumption and whom he has been mesmerizing for some time.
One night Vankirk calls him to the hospital bed to discuss his psychological impressions and beliefs. So far he had denied the immortality of the soul despite a vague feeling that it did exist. Works by Victor Cousin and some of his epigones as well as philosophical treatises could not help him on the way to knowledge. So he asks the doctor to mesmerize him and then ask him as a medium , because in this state one has a deeper self-knowledge .
Vankirk thinks he is going to die of his illness, but that doesn't affect him. For him God is neither immaterial , spiritual nor material in nature, but consists of a form of matter that can no longer be broken down into particles , permeates and drives everything. What one calls thought is this moving subtle matter. Spirit is "indivisible matter, that is, God, at rest."
The narrator asks whether it is disrespectful to equate God with mere matter. According to Vankirk, on the other hand, God with all “ascribed (s) to the spirit” forces is only the highest level of matter; all creatures up to humans are "thoughts of God". He understands death itself as a painful metamorphosis from the present incarnation to perfection and immortality. Just as the caterpillar does not recognize the meaning of the metamorphosis, the living human being also does not yet know anything about the future destiny, which eludes his rudimentary senses , which are only directed towards the bodily shell. Its organs resembled a cage, which "necessarily surrounds the still imperfect beings until they have fledged" and passed over into eternal, inorganic life.
The mesmeric consciousness resembles eternal life , since the senses rest and things can be known immediately . In the further course Vankirk speaks about the movements of celestial bodies , about the atomic structure of matter, the difference between it and the ether and about the ultimately unfathomable spirit . In “inorganic life” nothing existed that would hinder “divine willpower”. In the realm of the organic with its restrictive laws, however, these imperfections are necessary and lead to injuries, injustice and suffering. However, this suffering is not pointless either, because in order to be happy one must have previously suffered at the same point. "The suffering of this life on earth is the only basis on which the bliss of that life in heaven is based."
As Vankirk whispers his last words, the narrator notices a strange expression on his face and wakes him up, worried. Shortly afterwards, however, the patient sinks back into the pillow with a smile and dies. Since the rigor mortis sets in unusually quickly and the forehead of the deceased is ice cold, as if “ Asrael's squeezing hand” had already been on it for a long time, the narrator wonders whether he has heard the last words from beyond .
Background and influences
Mesmeric Revelation was the first story by Poe that Charles Baudelaire translated into French and thus decisively shaped the European and later American reception of the oeuvre. Besides the extensive late essay Heureka , it is his only lengthy philosophical study.
The spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis spent the summer 1844 in New York lectures on mesmerism and related phenomena, probably visited the Poe. In his autobiography, The Magic Stuff , Davis wrote that he had spoken to Poe about a story that was invented, but whose philosophical train of thought was consistent and true. Poe, who said goodbye after the conversation and did not return, did not think much of Davis, however, because in his collection Fifty Suggestions he significantly modified a quote from Hamlet : “There can be no more things in heaven and on earth than your school wisdom (oh Andrew Jackson Davis!) Makes you dream. “Azrael is the name of the angel who accompanies the dying man and loosens his soul from the body; it can also be found in Poe's fragmentary drama Politian, as in his short story Ligeia .
The success of the work motivated Poe to revisit animal magnetism in his short story about the dying M. Ernest Valdemar, whose body is only held together by magnetic force and ultimately crumbles into a disgusting mass. Many readers thought the stories were authentic reports, which explains the numerous reprints.
If Immanuel Kant rejected mesmerism and put it on a par with the practices of ventriloquists and black artists, it was taken up again in black romanticism. Even the German idealism did not remain unaffected. Schelling believed that people in magnetic sleep could advance "to the highest inner clarity and self-awareness", while Hegel recognized both possibilities and risks. For him, the “sleepy magnetic state” could unite the torn person with himself; the division of the person could, however, lead too far and become pathologically entrenched.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. The black cat. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 320
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. The black cat. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 324
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. The black cat. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 327
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. The black cat. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 328
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. The black cat. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 329
- ↑ Kuno Schuhmann: Notes on Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe: The Black Cat, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 626
- ^ Cit. after: Kuno Schuhmann: Notes on Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe: The Black Cat, Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 626
- ↑ Kuno Schuhmann: Notes on Ligeia In: Edgar Allan Poe: König Pest, Gesammelte Werke in 5 volumes, Volume I. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 354
- ^ So Kuno Schuhmann: Notes on Mesmeric Revelation. In: Edgar Allan Poe: The Black Cat , Collected Works in 5 Volumes, Volume III. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger, Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 626
- ↑ Quoted from: N. Herold: Mesmerismus . In: Joachim Ritter , Karlfried founder (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of philosophy . Vol. 5, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt, p. 1157
