Magnetic Cure in William Blake's THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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1 Magnetic Cure in William Blake's THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Rix, Robert Explicator; Jul-Sep2010, Vol. 68 Issue 3, p , 5p Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

2 The Explicator, Vol. 68, No. 3, , 2010 Copyright C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: print / X online DOI: / ROBERT RIX University of Copenhagen Magnetic Cure in William Blake s THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Keywords: animal magnetism, William Blake, mesmerism, radicalism, The French Revolution Written in 1790, William Blake s poem The French Revolution is an eccentric account of the earliest phase of upheaval in France. It focuses on the challenge mounted by the Third Estate to the ancien regime, and the ways in which the aristocracy responds to the sentiments of equality and sympathy the liberal Duke of Orléans puts forward in a long speech in the National Assembly. Orléans (later known as Philippe Égalité) had joined the National Assembly in early July of As depicted by Blake, Orléans s speech and conduct are strikingly odd for a political agitator and warrant explanation: Then Orleans generous as mountains arose, and unfolded his robe, and put forth His benevolent hand, looking on the Archbishop, who changed as pale as lead; Would have risen but could not, his voice issued harsh grating; instead of words harsh hissings Shook the chamber; he ceas d abash d. Then Orleans spoke, all was silent, He breath d on them, and said, O princes of fire, whose flames are for growth not consuming, Fear not dreams, fear not visions.... (lines ) To approach an interpretation of this scenario, it is important to note that Blake represents France as a diseased body politic. In the lines just below those of this 167

3 168 The Explicator passage, Orléans questions the present government: Is the body diseas d when the members are healthful? (182). Its tyranny is a symbol of all Kings... [who] are sick throughout all the earth (61). The Archbishop of Paris is represented as the final voice for the old order. As adviser to Louis XVI, he is part of the foul miasma influencing the Prince, who lies Sick, sick... on his couch, wreath d in dim / And appalling mist (2 3). Orléans inhibits the Archbishop from continuing his malign influence on the National Assembly and thereby helps doctoring France to social and political health. The effect Orléans s hand gesture has on the Archbishop and the way his speech mesmerizes the listeners are modelled on the curative practices first introduced by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer ( ). He used the term animal magnetism to explain the principle of attraction which harmonized nature and humanity. Cure was achieved through manipulating the flow of an invisible fluid permeating all living things, which was disrupted in patients. Notoriously, magnetic therapy involved holding the patient in a form of hypnotic trance. Blake s use of metaphors from animal magnetism is well-documented, but the way in which he connects it with political change in The French Revolution has not been examined. 1 In the passage, a significant reference to magnetic cure is Orléans s strange breathing upon the National Assembly, which Blake uses as a metaphor for him convincing the members that liberty and sympathy among all men are important values. The literature on animal magnetism often described the breathing upon a subject as part of the therapy. According to one account: The principal means used to produce the effects of animal magnetism, are... touching and stroking with the hands... breathing on a person, fixing the eyes upon him, &c (Lieber 205). 2 The magnetizer s use of eyes and hands was often stressed in depictions of the practice. 3 Among the well-known effects of magnetic manipulation were patients experiencing paralysis or loss of voice. Blake is likely to have known such phenomena; if not first hand, then at least from the many publications about magnetism that flooded the market. A Royal Commission appointed by King Louis XVI of France in 1784 examined these and a number of other physical effects allegedly connected with magnetic therapy. A highly skeptical report was submitted by the commissioners led by Benjamin Franklin. 4 The report was translated into English in 1785 for the bookseller Joseph Johnson, Blake s employer for book illustrations. It was Johnson who later set up Blake s The French Revolution in typescript, but for unknown reasons never published it. Long before Blake wrote The French Revolution, the connections had been drawn between animal magnetism and revolutionary tendencies. The popularity of Mesmerism in France alarmed the monarchy, nobility, and police. A main worry was that Nicolas Bergasse and other revolutionary agitators in the Mesmerist

4 Magnetic Cure in William Blake s THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 169 Society for Harmony opposed the established order and made use of the new therapy as a platform for social and political subversion. 5 A central figure in Blake s The French Revolution is Marquis de La Fayette ( Fayette ), who had in fact enrolled as a disciple of Mesmer (Silverberg 24). Magnetic metaphors were used, often negatively, in political debates (see Fulford). From the beginning, critics seized on the angle that magnetizers seemed to use hypnosis to rob their patients of volition and free will. This belief could readily be applied to the fervor over revolutionary politics. On March 4, 1795, for instance, the royalist newspaper The London Times accused Emanuel Swedenborg, whose theories were propagated in several secret Masonic lodges, of nurturing a plot to overturn European governments. Swedenborg was the chief of the somnambulists, whose influence on the revolutionarily exalted has prepared the public mind for great political convulsions (qtd. in Schuchard 23). Blake would have been aware of Orléans s connection with libertarian and illuminist Masonry through the English press, which often commented on his association with the Prince of Wales. The outcome of Orleans s salutary gestures in the National Assembly is that France is moved towards revolution. Blake describes how Great Henry s soul shudder[s] (200), how France shakes! And the heavens of France... vibrate, how the Bastile trembles, and how its dens shook and tremble (52). At first, the king sits pale and cold in midst of his peers, paralyzing the whole body politic with his tyranny ( his pulses/suspended their motion ). Then he develops a chill cold sweat, which frees his peers, leaving them groaning and shaking [like] forests and floods ( ). These metaphors are partly borrowed from the apocalypse in Revelation, but they are merged with the effects known from the so-called magnetic crisis. Mesmerized patients often experienced violent spasms, epileptic seizures, high fevers, and chills as part of the healing process, when disease left the body. 6 As the body politic is cured of its monarchy, the nerves of five thousand years ancestry tremble, shaking the heavens of France (70). Blake symbolizes France s awakening to a new political and spiritual reality with the image of how its frozen blood reflow [s] (299). This reminds us of the advice of the leading English magnetizer, John de Mainauduc: the stagnant blood must be pushed on to circulation, and a free passage produced for [circulation of] the general atmosphere (150). Blake s emphasis on Orléans s benevolence is important, since magnetism was often linked with ideas of philanthropy. For example, a contemporary book advised that success of cure is centrally dependent upon the magnetizer s capability of sympathy: his strong, fervent, benevolent wish to perform... wonder or cure. At all times, there must be sympathy, or a sympathetic concern for the person relieved (Martin 62). John de Mainauduc held that Mesmer had debased the

5 170 The Explicator true mystical wisdom of the art, and himself claimed to perform the Almighty s real science, which he aligned with the spiritual cures performed by Christ and his disciples (de Mainauduc ). Sympathy, benevolence, and mercy are precisely the issues addressed in Orléans s long speech. In the passage quoted above, Orléans also gives another indication of what constitutes a healthy political body. His advice is that of a religious enthusiast: Fear not dreams, fear not visions. This refers to the phenomena of clairvoyance, extra-sensory experiences, and artificially induced somnambulism, which were effects connected with magnetic cures. For some magnetizers, these effects became the main goal of therapy. In France, magnetizers tended increasingly to neglect the sick in order to decipher hieroglyphics, manipulate magic numbers, and communicate with spirits (Darnton 69 70). Animal magnetism based its cures on reconnecting the divine and the human, the visible and the invisible, which appealed to Blake. In its mystical manifestations, the emphasis visionary experiences would have had an attraction. For Blake, true revolution was more than a change of government institutions; first of all it was predicated on a mental change in each individual. Restoration of social health was inseparably connected with a return of Vision, which false Church religion (represented by the Archbishop) had banished. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790), Blake refers to the folly of churches and alludes to his own message as salutary and medicinal, which allegedly could open the readers perception to the infinite which was hid. 7 Blake presents Orléans as someone who helps France regain its ancient spiritual and visionary health, which all mankind and nations once shared. Notes 1 For Blake s poetry and references to animal magnetism, see Schuchard; Rix; and Schott. 2 See also, e.g., Deleuze 31; Gregory 188; and Didier For several reprints of such pictures and caricatures, see Fara. 4 For the inability to move, paralysis of limbs, and loss of speech when magnetized, see Franklin Commission xii, 68, 74 5, 76, 89, and See Lanska and Lanska The convulsions were described in minute detail in Franklin Commission and These lines appear on plates 14 and 21 in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Blake 39, 43). Works Cited Blake, William. Complete Poetry and Prose. Rev. ed. Ed. David V. Erdman. New York: Doubleday, The French Revolution. Complete Poetry and Prose The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Complete Poetry and Prose

6 Magnetic Cure in William Blake s THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 171 Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. New York: Schoken, Print. Deleuze, Joseph Philippe François. Practical Instruction in Animal Magnetism. Trans. T. C. Hartshorn Providence: B. Cranston & Co., Print. de Mainauduc, John. The Lectures of J. Mainauduc MD. London: Executrix, Print. Didier, Adolphe. Animal Magnetism and Somnambulism. London: T. C. Newby, Print. Fara, Patricia. An Attractive Theory Animal Magnetism in Eighteenth-Century England. History of Science 33 (1995): Print. [Franklin Commission]: Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin and Other Commissioners Charged by The King of France with the Examination of the Animal Magnetism as Now Practised at Paris. London: J. Johnson, Print. Fulford, Tim. Conducting the Vital Fluid: The Politics and Poetics of Mesmerism in the 1790s. Studies in Romanticism 43.1 (2004): Print. Gregory, William. Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism. London: Blanchard and Lea, Print. Lanska, Douglas J. and Joseph T. Lanska. Franz Anton Mesmer and the Rise and Fall of Animal Magnetism: Dramatic Cures, Controversy, and Ultimately a Triumph for the Scientific Method. Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Neuroscience. Ed. H. Whitaker, et al. New York: Springer, Print. Lieber, Francis, ed. Encyclopaedia Americana. Vol. 8. Philadelphia: Lea & Carey, Print. Martin, John. Animal Magnetism Examined: In a Letter to a Country Gentleman. London: n. pub., Print. Rix, Robert W. Healing the Spirit: William Blake and Magnetic Religion. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 25 (2002). Web. Schott, G. D. William Blake s Milton, John Birch s Electrical Magic and the Falling Star. The Lancet 362/9401 (2003): Print. Schuchard, Marsha Keith. Blake s Healing Trio: Magnetism, Medicine, and Mania. Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 23 (1989): Print. Silverberg, Robert. Scientists and Scoundrels: A Book of Hoaxes. New York: Crowell, Print.

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8 Copyright of Explicator is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd. and its content may not be copied or ed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or articles for individual use.