Credere aude
Mystifying Enlightenment
0618
2008
978-3-8233-7383-4
978-3-8233-6383-5
Gunter Narr Verlag
Giovanna Summerfield
By analyzing the Kantian response to the query What is Enlightenment?, esotericism, and, more specifically, Freemasonry as a spiritual search, this study offers a re-interpretation of the eighteenth century, one in which Enlightenment, as the predominance of rationalism, and Illuminisme are viewed as complementary rather than antithetical. By focusing on the history and nature of continental Freemasonry and the Masonic affiliation of two French authors as expressed in their work--Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Dominique Vivant Denon--this study addresses issues of importance today. Links between material possessions, human self-realization, and regeneration, which were exploited by these writers, call for a new look at the esoteric origins of and component in psychoanalysis, spirituality, sexuality, and power, and, ultimately, cause us to view our modern society as, in part, the inheritor of a spiritual legacy from the eighteenth century
<?page no="0"?> Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Credere aude Mystifying Enlightenment by Giovanna Summerfield <?page no="1"?> études littéraires françaises · 72 <?page no="2"?> études littéraires françaises collection fondée par Wolfgang Leiner directeur: Rainer Zaiser <?page no="3"?> Credere aude Mystifying Enlightenment par Giovanna Summerfield Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen <?page no="4"?> Illustration de couverture: Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers, par une société de gens de lettres. (Tome premier) A Paris : chez Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1751-1765. Information bibliographique de la Deutsche Nationalbibliothek La Deutsche Nationalbibliothek a répertorié cette publication dans la Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; les données bibliographiques détaillées peuvent être consultées sur Internet à l’adresse http: / / dnb.d-nb.de. © 2008 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. 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Internet: http: / / www.narr.de · E-Mail: info@narr.de Satz: Nagelsatz Reutlingen Printed in Germany ISSN 0344-5895 ISBN 978-3-8233-6383-5 <?page no="5"?> TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 7 C HAPTER O NE Under the Spotlight: Enlightenment, Reason, Revolution 17 C HAPTER T WO Reflections On Masonry: The Mystical Answer 33 C HAPTER T HREE Dominique Vivant Denon: Dazzling Power(s) In The Cabinet Of Wonders 65 C HAPTER F OUR Louis-Claude de Saint Martin: Illustrating Man’s Regeneration 99 Daring Conclusion 129 Notes 136 Works Cited 137 Index 145 <?page no="7"?> 1 Soboul, 343. 2 Darnton, What was Revolutionary? , 8. 3 Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 62-67. 4 Mithras is a Persian idol, the lord of light, the sun-god, whose rites were celebrated in caves and crypts first by the Persians then by the Phrygians and the Romans. Spirit of truth and justice, Mithras was also the god of loyalty to one’s word: an oath sanctioned by him was considered inviolable. Strict emphasis was also put on the regulation of conduct and of brotherhood; one class of Mithraic initiates was known as “soldiers.” That is why even in the Latin world, Mithras maintained the role of protector and leader of soldiers and armies and is often represented as slaying a bull or flanked by two lions, an embodiment of physical strength and courage (Perowne 103-108). INTRODUCTION At the beginning of August 1793, the Cordeliers raised an altar to the heart of Marat, one of the martyrs of liberty. His heart was placed in a vase and suspended from the archway of a meeting hall while a patriot praised Marat’s sanctity to the chant of “Heart of Jesus, heart of Marat.” During the following month, the busts of Marat himself and Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, a regicide deputy, preceded entire processions in the streets of Paris. The ceremonies were soon to include a third martyr, Châlier, guillotined in the month of July. 1 In the most important revolutionary building project, the lugubrious neo-classical church of Saint Geneva was transformed into an even more lugubrious crypt and monument for “the great men of the patrie,” the Pantheon, and the district of Montmartre was re-baptized Mont Marat. 2 On the 10th of November of the same year the city government of Paris was to give a festival in honor of Liberty. Though originally scheduled to take place in the Palais Royal, the event occurred in the cathedral of Notre Dame. A simulated mountain was placed at the center of the building, on which sat a temple. The inscription A la philosophie was to adorn the temple while a row of busts of philosophes embellished the path to its entrance. Two young girls, dressed in white, descended from the mountain bearing lit torches, introducing the main protagonist, Liberty. The city government had planned to use a spectacular statue for Liberty’s glorious entrance, in lieu of the one of the Virgin Mary, but, to reiterate that liberty was an integral part of the body of the French citizens, their epitome rather than their idealization, a last minute decision was made: Liberty had to be impersonated by an ordinary, Parisian young lady. 3 Whether the people of France had been blindly led toward an exit which they misinterpreted is neither the focus of my speculation nor possible to assess; the fact of the matter is that they did replace the statue of Mary with a hybrid religious substitute, wearing the main accessories of the Mitraic converts; 4 they did replace the orthodox Church with a mausoleum erected <?page no="8"?> 8 Introduction Mithras and the bull, fresco of Dura Europos datable after 168 and before 256 CE to the glory of man and to his immortality amongst his fellowmen; they did proudly display the symbols of the three fundamental alchemical elements of man (sulfur, mercury, and salt, which are respectively represented by the colors blue, red, and white). It matters little whether the people of France acknowledged the origin of characteristics of their revolution as being mystical in nature. They considered themselves to be victorious, delivered from the slavery imposed by the two colossi of time, the King and the Church. What their revolution conceived at the end was, though, a legacy of mystical exploration rather than a clear expression of secularism. As an incontestable relationship existed between the French Revolution and the European Enlightenment, is one to draw the conclusion, then, that the ceremonials of 1793 were in contrast to the standards of truth based on science and the use of reason set up by the philosophes? How can we justify the prioritization of religion in such a setting? If the philosophes had consis- <?page no="9"?> 9 Introduction tently proved to be critical of superstition, faith in revelation and blind displays of such faith, can one safely assume that the French Revolution was an exemplification of counter-Enlightenment? It becomes necessary, in order to answer these and other pertinent questions, to examine first the relatively new term of Counter-Enlightenment. Historically, as this term has been used to refer to a movement that arose primarily in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, one seems to be in the right path. Geographically, this issue becomes problematic. Though the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of a “Gegenaufklärung,” the term Counter-Enlightenment has been associated with the intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin and his widely read essay on the Counter- Enlightenment (in Against the Current, 1980). Berlin argues that, while recognizing enemies of the Enlightenment all over Europe, their opposition was not of any considerable impact until the Germans reacted. According to him, it was this German reaction to the universalism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, that one needs to see as determinant to the shift of consciousness that occurred in Europe during the eighteenth century, leading eventually to the Romantic movement. Thus, the events of 1793 would not seem to have taken place within the right geographical boundaries. Not until, that is, the claims of historian Darrin McMahon with his book, Enemies of the Enlightenment (2002). McMahon redirects the Counter-Enlightenment to France itself, unearthing a longforgotten ‘Grub Street’ literature of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries aimed at the philosophes. Graeme Garrard’s work, Counter-Enlightenments (2006), as one can deduce from its title, broadens the term even further, arguing against Berlin that there was no single movement called “Counter-Enlightenment” but rather, there have been diverse types of Counter-Enlightenments, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward. The difficulty in identifying the concept of Counter-Enlightenment, and for that matter for the similarly newly coined, Moderate Enlightenment and Radical Enlightenment, stems from a more relevant problem: our understanding of the term Enlightenment continues to be challenged. And as we are still referring to the eighteenth century as the “age of enlightenment” because, over its course, certain principles and styles of thought became a permanent part of European civilization, in spite of these recognized countercurrents, one assumes that this challenge needs to be affronted rather than ignored in order to solve all enigmatic ramifications similar to the ones which dated back to 1793. Contemporary scholars have concurred in referring to Enlightenment as to a loosely organized movement, having an international scope. The allusions to the importance of light are made evident by the nomenclature maintained for this phenomenon in all languages - “enlightenment” for English speakers, siècle des lumières in France, “illuminismo” in Italy, “Aufklärung” in Germany. The Enlightenment can be regarded as the direct successor of the <?page no="10"?> 10 Introduction 5 Schmidt, 1. 6 Ibid, 22. Renaissance and Reformation, as a process by which European thought and ways of life were challenged. And, in a sense, even though the source of darkness was still considered the same, the Enlightenment revolt against the intellectual and cultural authority of the Church was even more dramatic, as, in effect, we have been told that this is a time marked by a detachment not only from Catholic faith but from religion, in general. The main goal of the enlightened thinkers was to loosen, if not totally break, the yoke from the two most powerful sources of intellectual authority in Europe, represented by the Catholic Church and the royal leadership. The origins of these “liberating” efforts seem also clear: the free thinkers of eighteenth-century Europe referred to the works of a set of pioneers from previous centuries. First and foremost among these were figures associated with the “scientific revolution” - above all, the English physicist Isaac Newton, who became the object of a great cult of veneration in the eighteenth century. Hardly less important were the major representatives of the rationalist and the empiricist traditions - René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on the one hand; Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke on the other. These thinkers, even though not engaged in a common enterprise as were their inheritors during the Enlightenment, shared the willingness to depart from tradition in any domain of thought. As Schmidt justly states, Enlightenment has been held responsible not only for the French Revolution, but also for totalitarianism, capitalism, individualism of a destructive nature, and a high dose of contemporary nihilism, due to Enlightenment’s undying skepticism about absolute value. 5 Consequently, while Burke saw the disaster of the Revolution to lie in its forgetting of the lessons of the past, for Hegel, its disaster lay in its failure to find an institutional form adequate to the principles on which the present rests. Hegel thought to have found a solution in the development of that uniquely modern domain that he denoted with the term “civil society,” or bürgerliche Gesellschaft. In civil society individuals meet as free and independent creatures of need and carriers of rights. It is here that the bourgeois - the individual who cares only for his own interests - learns to become a citoyen - an individual who is capable of willing the general good. 6 Initiation to these societies would seem to guarantee a certain maturation while continue involvement as active membership would seem to generate a desirable philanthropy. All in all, while working for the well-being of the society as a whole, these societies would sustain the mental well-being of the individual, as an integral part of such a society. It is fair, at this point, to wonder about the identity of said individual and the nature of said societies. In my opinion, the Enlightenment (or enlightened, if you wish) individual is one who is forever trying to know what is around him and what is inside <?page no="11"?> 11 Introduction of him; a man who is trying to make sense of the events and to change them for the best; a man who is introspectively meditating to restore harmony which has been lost; a man who, while seeking to succeed individually, knows that his strength comes also from within the society in which he is involved; a man who is finally aware of his errors and by mending them acquires the wisdom to arrive at certain compromises such as tolerance and freedom for the well-being of all. While querying what surrounds him, man recognizes the necessity of querying what lurks inside of him. He becomes aware of the limited power he has without knowing himself: due to his divine nature, man’s self-knowledge will ease and clarify the knowledge he has of Nature and God; he will be able to assess and modify. Man’s revolution becomes spiritual. Consequently, my argument is rooted in two cardinal factors: the feebleness of the reason versus faith dualism and the pervasiveness and importance of the eighteenth-century sects, primarily of continental Freemasonry. A re-evaluation of the sociohistorical data to seize the reason and meaning of the flourishing of occult phenomena in the face of the Enlightenment is necessary in order to follow the development of Masonry in France since 1727, and to re-appraise its role during the eighteenth century. As it is, in fact, common belief that during the “age of enlightenment” European intellectuals relied on reason as the only indisputable certitude, the only means to discover the laws of the universe and to determine the rights of mankind in order to attain progress and happiness, it is impossible to deny that during the same historical period a wave of spiritual interest pervaded all of Europe. Protestantism continued its course, while, in the Catholic states, a more humble and mystical monastic saint-figure received popular reverence and emulation. France, most specifically, held second place in Europe for the number of people who were canonized and beatified. France also witnessed phenomena such as the convulsions of Saint Médard, Mesmerism, Hermeticism, Kabala, and Masonry. Increasingly American historians have been attending to the link between this wave of spiritualism, and more specifically between Freemasonry, and Enlightenment and French Revolution, for Masonry has, in fact, to be seen as a quest to attain self-knowledge, self-realization, and self-preservation. By assessing the past and present of man’s condition, it is the adepts’ goal to perfect their future for the respect and well-being of the individual as well as of mankind. The Masonic program is in conformity with the parameters set forth during the Enlightenment. On the other hand, literary critics are still undermining these factors, leaving undisputed the role and meaning of canonical works and, consequently, by marginalizing works that maintain commonality within the spiritual context of the period, and by “altering” the intrinsic meaning of the Bildungsroman and Bildungsreise, as emergent literary genres of the time and as vehicles of Masonic propaganda. As they are pedagogical exemplifications for <?page no="12"?> 12 Introduction 7 Jeffers, 2. Vue prise sur l’Etna en fortant de la Region des Bois et avant d’entre dans la partie de la Montagne appellée Regione Scoperta. from Voyage pittoresque ou Description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile [par l’abbé de Saint-Non] Paris : [Clousier], 1781-1786. 5 t. in 4 vols. (this ill. in vol. 4) self-evolution and self-attainment, with each stage having its own value and serving as the ground for a higher stage, and stressing the importance of perception and acceptance of others, of male bonding, and of responsibility sharing within the society, these literary phenomena provide further confirmation of the desire to cultivate a wholeness not just as a community but also as individuals as equally nurtured by the secret society, they share. The development of the two literary genres coincided with that of a particular type of educational ideal, as Thomas Jeffers suggested, articulated by two main works, that of the French Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, and of the German Friedrich Schiller, Aesthetic Education, 7 and by a feverish thirst to travel seen as a must for a young aristocrat’s cultural education. It served as an educational rite of passage for the wealthy whose main destinations were France and Italy. <?page no="13"?> 13 Introduction As Paul Fussell states, the idea of traveling for the sake of curiosity and learning was a developing idea in the 18th century. With John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), it was argued, and widely accepted, that knowledge comes entirely from the external senses that is to say, from the physical stimuli to which one has been exposed. Travel, therefore, was an obligation for the person who wanted to further develop his/ her mind and to expand his/ her knowledge of the world. The typical eighteenthcentury sentiment was that of the attentive observer, traveling through foreign lands, socializing thus acquiring certain mannerisms and a sense of the aesthetic that would eventually be a fruitful advantage to his own professional future. The traveler also had the mission of reporting his/ her findings on human nature for those who had been unable to experience first-hand, and in doing so, s/ he had the duty of educating others. Traveling observation became an obligation to society at large to increase its welfare. But these voyages did not only provide an education. On the one side they continued to be linked to individual salvation, through a redefinition of one’s inner thoughts in contact with different cultures and customs, and through a network or witnessing approach which cannot surprise; on the other they offered the opportunity to purchase things otherwise unavailable at home, and thus increased individual prestige and standing. Travelers would return with crates of exotic items of culture and art, which would be displayed in libraries, cabinets, gardens, and drawing rooms for the benefit of others and the good reputation of the possessor(s). Thus bearleaders (tour leaders or mentors) and a group of variegated artists served as mentors to the sophisticated yet green traveler who was to return transformed in every sense of the word. During the eighteenth century, travel “for pleasure” became part of the ideal education and a main component of the image of the social elite as well as an important source of descriptive hence didactic literature and art (129). The refocusing of the nature of Enlightenment, of its tight link with Freemasonry, calls for a new look at the esoteric origins of and components in psycho-analysis, spirituality, sexuality, and power, and ultimately, causes to view our modern society as, in part, the inheritor of a spiritual legacy from the eighteenth century. In view of the fact that this book aims to bridge the gap between the literature and the intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe, it would be tempting to explore all realms of contradiction and all possible avenues to disengage from a stale way of looking at literary productions with a more composite framework, bringing in the latest trends in the field of social sciences and novelistic approaches (see Dan Brown’s creative output, Da Vinci’s Code). But as it is not my nature to want to invade territories that, while appealing, are not part of my specialization and as it is my main goal to clarify ambiguous concepts, while repositioning meritorious authors and works, it is not my intent to create a monstrous and hybrid collection of essays on variegated topics that coincidentally would speak of the period and phenomena of interest. <?page no="14"?> 14 Introduction 8 Naudon, 9. 9 Ibid, 160. In this book, I offer a new approach to Enlightenment one that is better able to justify all its further ramifications, throughout the centuries and through the intellectual movements that followed. I am interested in giving literary scholars a point of departure to re-examine the well-known artistic works of the eighteenth century and to re-consider the place and value of the less-known artistic works of the same period, as they are to re-direct their attention to new perspectives with which to approach the study of said period. As I do realize that some of the preconceived notions could hinder an impartial assimilation of my research for, as Paul Naudon put it bluntly, “Esoterisme? Occultisme? De nos jours, ces mots, dont l’un appelle l’autre, portent volontiers à sourire. Les ‘gens sérieux’ n’ont foi qu’en l’austère raison et qu’en la rigueur des méthodes positivistes, » 8 I am also confident that the healthy « trail » left behind by historians and historians of ideas of a certain stature will partially cushion any potential fall. My complete warranty of safety is to be attained by the format of this book. In Chapter One, I will, in fact, anchor my argument by presenting faithfully the words of German philosophers, or Aufklärer, in defense of a misunderstanding of the term Enlightenment (and its foundational reason), of the scope of Enlightenment, of the link with the Revolution and the flourishing of sectarianism in eighteenth-century Europe. Chapter Two goes back to the origins and constituents of one of the most important and influential sects, Freemasonry, which will, on the one hand, dissipate the confusion about the religious, or lack thereof, connotation of the society, and on the other hand, sketch a working re-definition of the emergent literary means of the time, Bildungsroman and Bildungsreise, as the term Bildung is made clearer and more attuned to its backdrop, as attempts to perfection and freedom in seeking the truth are pivotal in both the literary and the social environments. Together with the « perfectionnement intellectuel et moral de l’humanité » within the Masonic lodge’s physical walls and network, the « recherche du vrai est par conséquent sa tâche primordiale.” 9 Here, I am less inclined to re-consider some of the traditional analyses given to canonical works of art of the epoch discussed. I will certainly point out some of the deficiencies and topical incongruences these analyses present, without delving, though, into the particularities of each work, because my primary interest, aligned with the re-examination of the time, its motto and goal, is to give the reader the opportunity to explore new authorial works that are representatives of this new historical and intellectual reading approach. Thus, Chapters Three and Four will provide tangible examples of such goals as two French authors, Dominique Vivant Denon and Louis-Claude de Saint Martin, and their achievements will be thoroughly analyzed. Ironically, it is through these so-called peripheral literati and their works that important <?page no="15"?> 15 Introduction developments have been carried over to the following centuries. Though singled out, in this book, for practical reasons, they do represent a minuscule percentage of the authors with whom they shared the same interests, strategies, and goals. I am not inclined to consider them as individual cases, as carriers of individual writing styles. I want to understand and to have the readers understand that they are the epitome of a period’s symptoms and trends; that they do follow the parameters sketched and provided by Enlightenment, thus allow the readers to delve into a microcosm that can be more manageable to study. In contrast, they do offer a multi-faceted picture of the authors and their backgrounds, one that leads to the examination of the role of collections, voyages, and libertinage within this newly appraised realm. In the concluding chapter, the analysis returns to a more comprehensive understanding and reading of the century and, mainly, to the consequences derived from it, the reasons why, for example, in our modern society Freemasonry continues to be pivotal, or why intellectual phenomena like Romanticism, and Modernism, and respectively the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have followed the rationale (no pun intended) of Enlightenment. This particular itinerary allows me to be attentive to the complexities of the period and phenomena here analyzed, to re-create the intricacies of the Lodge and their roles in the intellectual and spiritual revolution of mankind, and to understand what Masonic writers, as enlightened thinkers and believers, have produced in words, images, practices, as legacies of modernity. More pertinently, it seems fair to me to attempt to engage the literary community into a debate started in the late 1700s. Due to their ability to read through the texts of the epoch, regardless of their style and genre, the involvement of literary scholars could be very fruitful not only within the literary context but within our academic and social realms, contributing to granting a clearer way of deciphering and appreciating the time’s revolts and consequent reactions. <?page no="17"?> 1 Gay, 3, 130. 2 Artz, 40-41. 3 1. Man is not natively depraved; 2. The end of life is life itself: the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death; 3. Man is capable, guided solely, by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth; 4. The first and essential condition of this…is the freeing of men’s minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition, and of their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of constituted authority; 5. Man is natively good, easily enlightened, disposed to follow reason and common sense, generous, humane, and tolerant, more willing to be led by persuasion than compelled by force (102-103). C HAPTER O NE Under the Spotlight: Enlightenment, Reason, Revolution As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being (Jung, MDR 326) Past scholarship has viewed the eighteenth century as a period of secularization, and of human-centered control. An often reiterated argument has been that the Enlightenment was the predictable philosophical product of the scientific revolution. It has been presented as the heir of two major philosophical currents of the modern era: rationalism and empiricism. Indeed the Enlightenment marks the epiphany of a new disposition, of modernity; as Peter Gay emphasizes in his The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, it coincides with a time highlighted by an omnipotence of criticism, criticism of the kingpriest, of the Church and its power, of the thesis of original sin and the frailty of man, and of the mystery of the Cross. It was a time of reconsideration, an opportunity to experiment, a way to reinvent a voice of spirit, and to apply scientific methodologies in the vehement attempt to annihilate all speculation. 1 The Enlightenment marks the engagement to avail oneself of reason in a free and public way in order to effectively better one’s life, in short, to reach happiness. It was characterized by a positive attitude: faith in man, if he were ruled by reason; faith in science, which could improve man’s conditions; faith in progress and in the future; faith in various forms of freedom. 2 One cannot forget the neat summary of the Enlightenment set off in Carl Becker’s The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. 3 <?page no="18"?> 18 Chapter One 4 Ozouf, 282. 5 Bell, 24. 6 Chartier, 163-164. At the same time, scholars defending this view of the Enlightenment also remark the negative side of the propaganda pursued by the philosophes, pivotal characters in the framing of the period’s conceptualization: the condemnation of injustice, of monarchical absolutism, and above all of the Church. Entire literary masterpieces were dictated by hostility toward the power of the clergy. Montesquieu, for example, described the Pope as a magician (Lettres persanes), while Voltaire provokingly questioned the virginity of Joan of Arc (La Pucelle d’Orléans) and of nuns and priests alike. Moving from the deductive idealism of Descartes into the inductive materialism of Locke and Bayle, other literary works of the time, such as d’Holbach’s Système de la nature, make their appearance. Hostile to religion, they convey a lack of faith, stating that man is simply an aggregation of atoms, with properties such as thought, sensation, and motion (Diderot’s Rêve de d’Alembert). Increasingly historians have been attending to the tie between religion and Enlightenment and French Revolution. Following Robert Darnton’s trajectory to move toward more spiritual dimensions and drawing from Emile Durkheim’s influential theory through which he argues that the function of religion was to provide social union, emotional bond and communal rules, Mona Ozouf’s Festivals and the French Revolution argues that the life of a new society cannot be envisioned without faith. Investing into a detailed analysis of the festivals of the time, their intrinsic symbolism, their reference to a world of intelligibility, order, and stability, Ozouf uses these popular manifestations as viable demonstrations of the compatibility of the natural code, civil code, and religious code for the emergence of the reconciled man. 4 Like Ozouf’s, David Bell’s study of nationalism, The Cult of the Nation in France, reveals a cult of the nation that according to the author is not a replacement for Christianity but an expression of the new relation between the divine and human spheres. 5 Both authors have asserted to an undeniable interconnection between nationalism, politics in general, and religion, rendered manifest by the same symbolic practices and by the same attempts to save the isolated individual. Concurring with the fact that dechristianization does not imply desacralization, Roger Chartier’s The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution devotes some of its important pages to the emergence of an autonomous public sphere, and more specifically to the Masonic society, the largest of the new groups, which “set up an area of democratic sociability within a society that was far from democratic.” 6 Margaret Jacob, William Weisberger, Daniel Ligou, and Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire are part of this new trend which takes into consideration the link between Masonry and the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. They have focused their attention on the social impact of <?page no="19"?> 19 Under the Spotlight 7 Weisberger, 3. 8 Porset, 55. 9 Viatte, 6. 10 Quantitatively speaking, one cannot argue with Margaret Jacob (Living the Enlightenment 74 and 205). Yet the limited number of Masonic adherents ascribed does not imply their weakness or their lack of power. It is, in fact, important to remark that salient personalities, like some of the philosophes, such as Voltaire and Condorcet, political leaders, such as Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great of Russia, Louis XV, and Robespierre, artists, such as David, and Cazotte, to name a few, were all members of eighteenth-century secret societies. 11 Faivre, 72-76. the Masonic organization, seen as an antidote to the hierarchical structure of monarchical France, as a trampoline toward the revolutionary leap of the second half of the century. 7 Few are, though, the historians such as Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Steven Bullock, and David Hays, who have emphasized the spiritual relevance and influence of Masonry. This neglect is even greater in the literary field. As Charles Porset reports, scholars like René Le Forestier have described the French spiritualists as “des imposteurs intéressés ou des êtres credules.” 8 Auguste Viatte himself speaks of the théosophes as “homes exaltés qui paraissent des maniaques et parfois l’étaient.” 9 American literary critics who have taken an interest in Masonic exponents and their influence are indeed rare (contrary to their European counterparts Gian Mario Cazzaniga, Roberta Turchi, Ovidio La Pera, Nicole Jacques-Lefèvre, and Robert Amadou) perhaps due to such appreciation of the Masonic phenomenon, also considered to be relatively exiguous (Jacob claimed the percentage to be exactly 10% of the eighteenth century French populace) 10 and to the narrowing of the canon which leaves no space for a didactic genre of spiritual connotation. When the spiritual dimension of the eighteenth century is acknowledged, literary scholarship continues to justify it on the basis of the time frame from which specific works date. In Access to Western Esotericism, Antoine Faivre, positing the old cliché of dividing the century into two halves, declares that the years between 1770 and 1815 correspond to what is appropriately called in French Illuminisme. While he concurs with the theory that the first half of the century is to be seen as a more structured, scientific, irreligious phase and the second as a more sentimental, spiritual, and pre-Romantic development, Faivre nonchalantly boasts an extensive list of names of esoteric literary accomplishments such as Roth-Scholtz’s Deutsche Theatrum Chemicum (1728), Lenglet- Dufresnoy’s Histoire de la philosophie hermétique (1742), Dom Calmet’s Traité sur les apparitions (1746), Dom Pernety’s Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique and Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées (1758), and Oetinger’s Oeffentliches Denckmahl der Prinzessin Antonia (1763), to name but a few, as if they support his pivotal thesis concerning esotericism in the shadow of the Enlightenment. 11 <?page no="20"?> 20 Chapter One 12 Mauzi, 12. 13 The inhabitants of one of the most miserable Parisian neighborhoods convened in great numbers around the gravestone of the Jansenist priest Pâris in the cemetery of Saint Médard. They genuinely believed that he could heal all infirmities. A strange mixture of prayers and frenzied yells culminated with convulsions and voluntary acts of suffering for the sake of a final peace within and health without. Their common goal was to defeat sickness through the mediation provided by this pious man (Perkins 107-111). 14 Schmidt 49, for linguistic reasons. The German texts are, in fact, all translated in English in this collection edited by Schmidt. This theory, which has confused many scholars, is denounced by Robert Mauzi, who objects vehemently by deeming it non-chronological: d’Holbach and Hélvetius presented their manifestos of materialistic philosophy during the second half of the century, while pre-Romantic authors such as Prévost published their great novels between 1730 and 1740. 12 One has to add, accordingly, that if it is true that Mesmer’s and Cagliostro’s bold spiritual approaches took place in the second half of the eighteenth century, it is also true that mystical happenings of equal importance did mature in the early 1700s. 13 The confusion might be due not only to the complexity of the question, Was ist Aufklärung? , but also to the ambivalence of its first answer(s). What is Enlightenment? In a lecture before the Berlin Wednesday Society on the 17 th of December 1783, Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen (1722-1795), who, in 1778, became the personal physician of Frederick the Great and who was a member of a number of learned societies, including the Berlin Wednesday Society, a secret society of Friends of Enlightenment that played a major role in the discussion of the question “What is Enlightenment,” posed a series of queries about the nature of enlightenment that sparked intense debates within the Wednesday Society. Our intent is to enlighten ourselves and our fellow citizens. In order to achieve our goal, let it be proposed 1. that it be determined precisely: What is enlightenment? 2. that we determine the deficiencies and infirmities in the direction of the understanding, in the manner of thinking, in the prejudices and in the ethics of our nation - or at least of our immediate public - and that we investigate how they have been promoted thus far. 3. that we first attack and root out those prejudices and errors that are the most pernicious, and that we nurture and propagate those truths whose general recognition is most necessary. 14 <?page no="21"?> 21 Under the Spotlight 15 Ibid, 235-248. I owe the following information about the Berlin Wednesday Society to Günter Birtsch and his contribution to Schmidt’s volume. Even before presenting the answers to this challenge, it is important to pursue the current of this Society and the motivation behind its difficult task. 15 The Society of Friends of Enlightenment, or Gesellschaft von Freunden der Aufklärung, which was established in Berlin between 1783 and 1798 and was commonly known by the name Wednesday Society or Mittelwochsgesellschaft, was an elite society of intellectuals. Organized as a circle of friends, it had, though, a special significance because of the official status and intellectual influence of the majority of its members. On the border between the private circle and the secret society, the Society required, according to its founding statute, written at the end of 1783, that “each member […] on his honor hold in strict confidence everything discussed in the Society, even speaking little of its existence.” Although the maximum number of members was set at twenty-four, the frequent meetings held alternatively in the members’ homes hardly allowed the pledge of secrecy to be upheld: according to the bylaws the Society was to meet on the first and third Wednesday of each month from Michaelmas (29 Sept) until Easter; for the rest of the year it was to meet on the first Wednesday of the month. The bylaws also provided the “external” name “Wednesday Society” apparently in imitation of the Berlin Monday Club, a social organization that had been established in 1749. The “internal” name, Society of Friends of Enlightenment, corresponded to its enlightened program. The rigorously ordered agenda bore out of the educational goal of mutual and societal enlightenment. Members were bound together by a faith in the beneficial consequences of a correctly understood enlightenment and by a readiness to tear down existing barriers - insofar as this was possible and meaningful within the framework of existing social conditions - and to aid the propagation of the blessings of enlightenment in society and the state. Among the members of the society were: Wilhelm Abraham Teller, professor of theology, Johann Jacob Engel, professor of moral philosophy and fine arts, Friederich Nicolai, renowned publisher and bookseller, energetic writer and tireless defender of a German enlightenment oriented toward “healthy reason,” Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, a professor of statistics and fiscal sciences, J. Karl W. Möhsen, physician to Frederick the Great since 1778 and known as one of the most learned doctors of his time; Johann Samuel Diterich, pastor at the Marienkirche, appointed to the Upper Consistory, schooled in Wolff’s teaching on natural law, Ernst Ferdinand Klein who had been called to Berlin in 1781 by the chief chancellor, who was a teacher of law, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, pastor at the Charité (Berlin’s hospital), deacon of Marienkirche and Upper Consistory Councillor, who had made popular education his main concern, Christian Gottlieb Selle, doctor at the Charité and physician of Frederick the Great and Frederick William II, regarded as an important philosophical thinker, Friedrich Gedike, trained in <?page no="22"?> 22 Chapter One theology and classical philology, writer and leading educator became councilor in the newly founded Upper Education Board, Johann Erich Biester, librarian of the Royal Library in Berlin, together with Gedike he founded the Berlin Monatsschrift in 1783, which he also edited after 1791. Two were clergymen active as scholars and writers, the Lutheran pastor of the Church of the Royal Orphanage, Gottlieb Ernst Schmid and the Reformed pastor of the Jerusalem and New Church, Johann Georg Gebhard; two of the most important representatives of Prussian reform absolutism: Privy Justice and Upper Tribunal Councillor Carl Gottlieb Svarez and Privy Finance Councillor Karl August von Struensee. Associated with the society was also Franz von Leuchsenring, who was, for a brief period, the teacher of Frederick William III and an enthusiastic member of the Illuminati. Lastly, to enumerate among the “enlightened” were Moses Mendelssohn, honorary member of the Society, and Upper Consistory Councillor Johann Joachim Spalding who adhered to the neo-logical wing within Protestant theology. From this list, one could assert that the participants of the Society were thus almost all eminent writers and Prussian public servants; there were three groups of participants: one coming from the higher reaches of the judiciary and civil service; one consisting of ecclesiastical officeholders and members of the Upper Consistory of the Lutheran Church; and a third bringing together philosophers and publicists. Among their main endeavors, the Society had intended to clarify the concept of “enlightenment” by opening a discussion that really has not been closed. And maybe, in fact, this was a side of their wished aim: as Klein wrote “enlightenment exists in spreading such knowledge which will allow us to assess correctly the true value of things, and, taken in this sense, enlightenment must at all times have virtue and happiness as companions” (Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellsschaft 77). Diterich, without venturing to clarify the concept of enlightenment himself, warned against those “who burn away everything in the kingdom of the Truth that does not please them” and seek to justify their demolition work by saying, “they wanted to enlighten the world.” He himself had introduced into hymns pleas for “truth,” “self-knowledge,” and an “active” faith that yields the “fruits of the virtue” and had linked the aspiration to happiness with the commandment of brotherly love. The majority of the Friends of Enlightenment wished that enlightenment reach a point of irreversibility through a gradual, state-controlled process of education. Participation in the ideal of a universal enlightened reason, of which all men should partake as equally as possible, was perhaps a general aim here, but by no means an urgent one. The educator Gedike wanted unequivocally to see the process of enlightenment channeled through the traditional corporate society. The Wednesday Society dissolved itself on the basis of the royal edict of the 20 th of October 1798, emitted in order to prevent and/ or punish secret societies which could prove to be detrimental to public security. Although no <?page no="23"?> 23 Under the Spotlight 16 Schmidt, 53-54. Note from the translator: The three terms Mendelssohn employs create problems for the translator since, as he himself goes on to note, the contemporary reader could well regard them as synonymous. Bildung is a particularly difficult term, capable of being translated as “culture” “development” “formation” or “education”. To possess Bildung is to be educated, cultured, and distinguished by a “proper” upbringing. Destiny of man is the translation of Bestimmung des Menschen - Mendelssohn claimed that Bestimmung should be reserved for “determination” while the sense of “destination” is better captured by the term Beruf (calling or vocation). danger to public security was forthcoming from the Wednesday Society, the majority of members wanted to comply with the letter of the law, which in paragraph 2, section IV prohibited societies “which demand secrecy of membership or swearing oaths of secrecy.” Perhaps for the same reason, its members, at this time, also destroyed the collected papers so that the few records of the Society that survive are due more to chance than to conscious preservation. As we know, the disbanding of said society did not impede their plans to continue and, as a matter of fact, to flourish. Its merit was to instigate two important answers which were published in the Berlinischer Monatsschrift in 1784, one from Moses Mendelssohn and the other from Immanuel Kant. Moses Mendelssohn’s essay, “On the Question: What is Enlightenment? ” published as “Uber die Frage: Was heisst aufklären? ” in the Berlinischer Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 193-200, had its origins in a lecture delivered before the Wednesday Society on the 16 th of May 1784 near the end of the series of discussions sparked by Mohsen’s lecture of the previous December. It may be regarded as an attempt to summarize the main concerns which had risen in the course of the discussions. The words enlightenment, culture, and education are newcomers to our language. Education, culture, and enlightenment are modifications of social life, the effects of the industry and efforts of men to better their social conditions. Education is composed of culture and enlightenment. Culture appears to be more oriented toward practical matters: (objectively) toward goodness, refinement, and beauty in the arts and social mores; (subjectively) toward facility, diligence, and dexterity in the arts and inclinations, dispositions and habits in social mores. Enlightenment, in contrast, seems to be more related to theoretical matters: to (objective) rational knowledge and to (subjective) facility in rational reflection about matters of human life, according to their importance and influence on the destiny of man. 16 Mendelssohn’s idea of enlightenment, in correlation to intellectual development or education and culture is, basically, in line with what Bittner writes about the lexical meaning of the verb “to enlighten” as to illuminate something, that is, to gain or to communicate an understanding of it. The German verb aufklären, unlike its English counterpart to enlighten, allows a construc- <?page no="24"?> 24 Chapter One 17 Schmidt, 349. tion with an impersonal object. Thus in German one can “enlighten” a crime, an obscure passage, or the genesis of the Alps - which is simply to explain them. The term “enlightenment” is used more specifically in cases where the understanding in question has a particular importance for a person. The German term for a doctor’s obligation to inform the patient, for example, before an operation, is arztliche Aufklärungspflicht (a doctor’s enlightenment obligation). The same explanation holds for the peculiar German usage of calling the sexual education of children “enlightenment”: the information provided there is important to the child. 17 Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay is by far the most famous response to the fundamental query about enlightenment, which dates to the 30 th September, in 1784, and was written, as Kant explained in a footnote at the close of the essay, without knowledge of the contents of Mendelssohn’s response. The essay, published as “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? ” in the Berlinischer Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 481-494, was the second of the fifteen articles that Kant wrote for the Monatsschrift in the years between 1784-1796. Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurrent tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another”(85). What Kant is implying here is the ability to understand independently, to be able to make decisions for oneself, free from any manipulation that may come from external forces, whether these might be political, sentimental, or religious in nature. Kant did not supply the reader with any characteristic, any special trait which is related to “the other”; he simply states that one has to be courageous enough to act without direction from this generic “other.” On the contrary the philosopher affirms that tutelage is self-incurred when the party involved is not resolved or not daring enough to free himself from his yoke, and not when he lacks reason. Thus one can logically conclude that if Enlightenment is man’s freedom from his self-incurred tutelage, and if this selfincurred tutelage is not directly proportioned to reason or lack thereof, then Enlightenment does not imply the necessity or predominance of reason, just the freedom to exercise independent reasoning. What is Reason? To what can one equate the concept of reason? To this second query, Kant answers extensively but not clearly. This lack of simplicity and clarity has been at the heart of many misunderstandings. The most popular misconcep- <?page no="25"?> 25 Under the Spotlight 18 Rabel, vii. 19 Kemp Smith, xxii. 20 Due to my present goal, I will not elaborate on this concept. I only want to underline here its role. According to Kant, judgment stands between reason and understanding, therefore it completes the pure reason and the practical reason. As Kant explains, “its principles may be annexed to one or the other as needed … judgment itself must provide a concept, a concept through which we do not actually cognize anything but which only serves as a rule for the power of judgment itself” (Critique of Judgment 6). The task of the third Kantian Critique is to show the revelation of an intimate connection between nature and man, whether this be via an esthetical judgment, a consideration of the beautiful or the sublime, or the discovery within nature of the ethical finality (or purposiveness). 21 Kant, Critique to Pure Reason, 7. tion is that Kant’s critical philosophy carries on the Enlightenment project by rejecting any belief in God. An anecdote suggests that in the first Critique Kant threw God out of the ‘front door’ while in the second Critique he let God in again, through the “back door.” 18 This is not totally unfounded; it is just misconstrued. Because of Kant’s “open-minded recognition of the complexity of his problems and of the many difficulties which lie in the way of any solution which he is himself able to propound,” 19 his explication of the notion of reason took nine years and the production of three large volumes. In the first of the three Critiques, Kant examines the use of reason in the natural sciences; in the second the use of reason in action, that is to say the rational principles of morality; in the third the power of judgment. Kant carefully distinguishes pure (reinen) reason from practical (practischen) reason, and reason (Vernunft) from judgment (Urteilskraft). 20 These subdivisions are not only necessary in view of the different realms and faculties under analysis but they are also representative of the stages of the mental processes Kant pursues. Kant immediately realizes that the ideas of God, freedom, immortality, even though they are outside the boundary of possible empirical knowledge, inevitably arise in the human mind because reason seeks for something which can supply coherence and unity to all the different facts and objects within space, time, and categories. The problem is that the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, though extremely important to gain knowledge, abstract from all sensible content. The solution is therefore to declare them impossible to assess: human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but, which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. 21 The majority of scholars assume that Kant sought to demonstrate total disregard for the speculative disciplines, particularly in light of the fact that he <?page no="26"?> 26 Chapter One 22 Kant, Critique to Practical Reason, 160. 23 Kant, CPuR, 46. 24 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 343. 25 Ibid, 282. 26 See pages 7-10. supplied convincing criticism to the three traditional proofs for the existence of God. Yet, Kant was only trying to discover the proper foundation for the three postulates of God, freedom, and immortality; he devoted considerable effort to understand God’s nature with clarity in terms of our finite human perspectives: in regard to theoretical reason alone, considered as a basis of explanation, it can be called a hypothesis. But in reference to the understandability of an object (the highest good) assigned to us, after all by the moral law, and hence of a need with a practical aim, it can be called faith, specifically pure rational faith, because pure reason alone (in its theoretical as well as in its practical use) is the source from which it springs. 22 Kant shows here that the supreme principle of morality, the highest good, is based solely on pure reason. After all this reconfirms what Kant himself had stated in the first of his Critiques: “the unavoidable problems set by pure reason itself are God, freedom, and immortality.” 23 Whereas pure reason is, to Kant, the cognitive power, the ability to discover a priori truths about the world, where a priori stands for independence from any empirical reference, the cognition of what is, practical reason is the cognition of what ought to be. This implies an obligation to make the highest good the final goal of human existence; the moral law is to Kant the hypothetical imperative (if you want to be honest, you have to do this), and the categorical imperative (be honest). Thus, according to Kant, “pure reason is a practical power […] It contains a principle that regulates our acts, namely, the moral law; ” 24 reason is not only able to satisfy natural inclinations, it can also be practical, independent from nature, be able to impose moral laws, and to induce human beings to strive to further the highest good. The purposiveness that man must presuppose is impossible and “beyond our grasp unless we think of it, and of the world as such, as product of an intelligent cause (a God). 25 God, or the idea of a god, becomes a must. In the preface of his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant clearly states that the philosopher and the theologian should see themselves not as rivals but as co-workers, mutual friends, and companions. 26 The intrinsic duality of reason as uncovered by Kant is confirmed by the etymological definition of the term reason, that is “statement offered in explanation or in justification,” “ground or cause.” It is a term which evolved from the Latin ratio, “cause,” “motive”. It can also be found in compound words <?page no="27"?> 27 Under the Spotlight 27 See pages 127-129. 28 Hobbes, 33. 29 Ibid, 6-7. 30 Foucault, Madness and Civilization 22. such as con razon, in Spanish, corazon, which means “heart”. To follow a more expanded analysis of this term, I concur with Umberto Eco, who, in Travels in Hyperreality, proposes five different explications of “reason”; reason is, in fact, for him a natural knowledge opposed to mere instinctive reactions and to intuitive or subjective experiences which are not communicable through language; it is a special faculty of knowing the Absolute, the ego, and the prime principles, causes or motives; reason is a system of universal principles which precede man’s abstractive capacity; it is the faculty of judging and discerning good from evil, and true from false; finally rationality is exercised through the capacity to express propositions regarding the world and of making sure that these propositions are “true” and understandable. 27 Except for the first of these definitions, there is no evidence of opposition to or discrimination within a spiritual speculation, because there is no material proof directed against the essence of the absolute, the first principle, the cause. It seems appropriate to assess the definition of a related term, that is to say “knowledge,” which gives further proof of the fact that the exclusion of a less tangible experience was one goal of the intelligentsia of the eighteenth century. Deriving from the Latin word scientia and from the verb scire, “to know” is related to scindere, “to cut,” “to divide”. Only in 1704, “to know,” coupled with the adverb “better” was equaled to “learn from experience.” According to the definitions offered by many modern dictionaries, the verb “to know” means “to recognize,” “to understand,” “to be acquainted or familiar with” or “to perceive.” Again, these explanations do not imply the necessity of tactile, logical methods. Thus the terms of “reason” and “knowledge” do not discredit the mystical thought of the period, which has hitherto been classified as mere madness, for there are no restrictions posed on knowledge. Imagination or irrationality had been equated with madness. “Without steddinesse, and direction to some end, a great fancy is one kind of madnesse; such as they have, that entering into any discourse, are snatched from their purpose, by every thing that comes in their thought.” 28 From this type of unguided thinking derived “the greatest part of the religion of the Gentiles […] that worshipped satyres, fawns, nymphs, and the like; and now adayes the opinion that rude people have of fairies, ghosts, and goblins; and of the power of the witches.” 29 Yet one has to keep in mind that while the man of reason and of wisdom as we consider him by cliché is able to perceive only fragments of knowledge, the madman is able to see the wholeness of it. 30 After all, was not Christ labeled as a madman, and, at the same time, the highest point of wisdom and power? Is not the ultimate language of madness <?page no="28"?> 28 Chapter One 31 Ibid, 95, 104-106. 32 As quoted by Artz, 30. 33 Kant, CPR 141-142. that of reason itself? Madness begins where the relation of man to truth is disturbed, where all the troubles of the mind lead to pure blindness, to the culmination of the void. 31 Both the philosophes and the théosophes sought to bring light into their existence of caducity and fallacy. For the first, the light was to illuminate the trajectory, the way which would release them from immaturity. For the second, the light was to clarify their existential beginning and ending, to unite the product to the source, and vice versa, for the light had also uncovered the mystery of man’s being. Which light was to shine first is quite confusing at this point. The etymology of the term itself lends a certain perspective for the figurative spiritual sense linked to “light,” as derived from the Latin verb lucere and the adjective lucidus, suggesting its primary origin in Old English, while there are evidences that the sense of mental illumination was first recorded in 1449. The modern explanation of “light” is simply “something that makes vision possible.” A most interesting definition is that given for “to enlighten”, defined as “to instruct,” “to inform,” and “to give spiritual insight to.” There is, moreover, a specific reference to its synonym, “to illuminate.” What was the Nature of the French Revolution? In his third Critique, Kant attempts to answer another important question: “What is it, within man himself, that is a purpose and that he is to further through his connection with nature? ” (317) According to the German philosopher, the answer is happiness, which he relates to the concept of perfection, the “empirical consciousness of subjective purposiveness” (416), and which is, in turn, “identical with the totality” (417). It is not coincidental that the revolutionary Saint-Just, in a speech to the Convention, declared that “happiness is a new idea in Europe.” 32 Many scholars have taken the eighteenth-century preoccupation with happiness as a confirmation of a world-centered mentality. They have neglected to refer back to the second Kantian Critique in which he reiterates that happiness is not self-interest. Coupled with virtue, happiness amount[s] to possession of the highest good in a person, and thereby happiness distributed to persons quite exactly in proportion to their morality (as a person’s worth and his worthiness to be happy) amounts to the highest good of a possible world, the highest good means the whole. 33 <?page no="29"?> 29 Under the Spotlight 34 Ibid, 158. 35 Dictionnaire philosophique, 373 and 173, respectively. 36 Kant, CPuR, 525-526. Happiness, to Kant, must lead to the presupposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; it must postulate to the existence of God, as belonging necessarily to the possibility of the highest good (the object of our will which is linked necessarily with the moral legislation of pure reason). 34 The ideas of liberty and equality have deep roots in the Greek and the Judeo- Christian traditions; they affirmed the importance and inviolability of the individual, which include freedom of religion, pursuit of personal goals which do not infringe on someone else’s, and that, as a matter of fact, would complement the goals of others for the welfare of the community. The sensibility to the goals of others and the impact of one’s goals on the community is based on the virtue and the moral law each one possesses and obeys. Happiness is then to be linked with tolerance, with the Voltairean vertu or “bienfaisance envers le prochain” and to the individual right of man to believe “au fond d[u] coeur” to be equal to the other men. 35 Mostly, happiness equates to the Rousseanian concept of “bonheur dans la vertu” as exemplified by Julie d’Etange of La Nouvelle Héloïse. True happiness, according to Rousseau, resides in us; it is self-knowledge; it is immersion in nature, in a world one has built for oneself, where time stays still; it is the immersion in this new society, in the functionality of the community, composed by small cells (families or groups), a group within a group. It is this way of philosophizing that fueled the revolutionary ideals and actions of the late eighteenth century. The parades of 1793 are clear expressions of the concepts of virtue or respect of others, but even more of solidarity or brotherhood, of congregations that were to create a sense of belonging or personal equality, a common nation to which one was to devote all efforts to progress, of pursuit of perfection, of a better future for all, and of liberty in the sense of independence from any yoke or impediment in professing one’s religion in the manner most suitable to one’s desires and customs. Interestingly, Kant, Voltaire, and Rousseau are not followers of a revealed theology but of a natural theology or, to put it in Kantian terminology, they do not concur with a theologia archetypa (the knowledge of everything in God) but with a theologia ectypa (that part of God which lies in human nature) to which deists (believers of a God) and theists (believers of a living God) alike belong. 36 Even more interestingly, the aforementioned principles from which the French Revolution sprang are the pivots of the new religious wave of the time, in particular of Freemasonry. The revolutionary men and women’s <?page no="30"?> 30 Chapter One emblems, the national motto and flag, and their physical accessories (i.e. the Phrygian bonnet), are manifestations of the mystical postulates which mingled elements of paganism and alchemy with Christianity. As Ozouf writes, the Liberty Tree left room for a verticality that is reminiscent of the cross (260). The Masonic emblems in the medals and banners, such as the level, the compasses, the square, the joined hands and the eyes of Reason, or the Masonic vocabulary employed in the speeches or the rituals reproduced during the revolutionary festivals are the manifestation of a religion of the lodges, the transference “from the Temple-Building to the Temple-Universe” (277). The French Revolution was a revolt against the spiritual subjugation to which the citizens of France had been subjected, a revolt against the two leaders of such spiritual intolerance, the Crown and the Church, a revolt against all dogmas but not against a supreme entity, a revolt that outlived the events of 1789. In 1889, during the inauguration of the centennial of the revolution, a symbol of liberty and of modernity was erected, the highest tower of iron known to mankind, the Eiffel Tower. This new tower of Babel was the skeleton of the giant woman, the Statue of Liberty (formerly known as Liberty Enlightening the World), a gift from France to the United States. It is not a coincidence that both Eiffel and Bartholdi, respectively engineer of the tower and sculptor of the statue, as well as many artists who depicted the tower in their poems (Calligrammes by Apollinaire) or their paintings (Autoportrait aux sept doigts by Chagall) were mystical and active members of Masonry. In the same year, 1793, Jonathan Gottlieb Fichte was made a Mason. Fichte was the author of Philosophy of Masonry: Letters to Constant. This lengthy essay was not written solely to show his faith in the Masonic brotherhood but rather an opportunity to expose the centrality of an idea, for which he may have been influenced by Humboldt and Smith. Fichte believed, in fact, that the main purpose of a society was to develop “men as men; ” not merely as members of a certain class, denomination, or professional competency. Consequently, this overall societal training would result into tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and progress in general. The society Fichte was talking about was Freemasonry, a solution to “pedantry,” and perfection seeking. Fichte went further: he claimed the Masonic order to be potentially “one of the most important institutions in the world, which without it is essentially defective” (44). Though Fichte had lost his academic position at the University of Jena for suggesting that God was only alive in the human mind, in this essay the German philosopher seems to clarify his statement. In the eighth letter, he writes, in fact: The end-purpose of human existence is not at all in this present world. This first life is only preparation and germ of a higher existence, the certainty of which we feel within, notwithstanding we can think nothing as to its condition or kind or manner (45) <?page no="31"?> 31 Under the Spotlight 37 I am referring here to On Enlightenment: Is It and Could It be Dangerous to the State, to Religion, or Dangerous in General? A Word to be Heeded by Princes, Statesmen, and Clergy, 172. almost reinforcing the assurance that religion was not threatened as Andreas Riem did: 37 You will not lose the religion of your fathers; don’t worry about that. Pure reason does not undermine religion, but rather its aberrations. You will lose prejudices and retain religion. The closer you bring religion to the light of reason, the more securely and durably it will be established for the future. Religion will not have to fear any attack by the understanding because the understanding approves of it, and if the understanding is its support, religion will become necessary and holy to the human race. Fichte relies on the competency of the “enlightened” to think of the purpose clearly. “It is his purpose. He makes it an intended aim of all that he does.” (29); this “enlightened” is the Mason, “the true Mason must know what it [the purpose] does and can do, what it has brought forth in him and will bring forth in others - and that is Freemasonry” (37). In several occasions, Fichte has the chance to define what Freemasonry is to him and what it ought to be considered by others: it is the only possible vehicle to efface the one-sidedness of training of greater society, to cut the divisions created for an attainment of harmony, self-reliability, and trust. It implies then the encyclopedic repartition of knowledge and the burdensomeness of the labor involved, for the terms used are clear (among these the recurring Bildung), but not an unhappiness or a sense of self-pity. In his closing paragraph, Fichte warns that resignation and passivity are evidences of lack of manhood. Deficiency, corruption, and un-serviceableness can only spur individual motivation and general happiness, pillars of Freemasonry. If everything was already what it ought to be, there would be not need of you in the world and you would as well have remained in the womb of nothing. Rejoice That all is not yet as it ought to be, so that you may find work and can be useful toward something. (65) The rational mirroring of such spiritual concepts, as exemplified by Kantian philosophy, and Fichtean philosophy, and their longevity testify to the relevance and importance of the study of sectarianism, and in particular of Masonry in eighteenth-century France. In spite of Franco Venturi’s clear statement that no pre-existing organization, whether it be an academy, a salon, or a Masonic lodge had an influence on the philosophes and their ways of thinking, which the author considers to be a new enterprise (19), he himself reminds us of the origin of the motto “sapere aude” revealing the mystical meaning intrinsic to it. Not only does he retrace its heritage to Horace and his Epistula II, Epistularum liber primus (First Book of Letters), published in the year <?page no="32"?> 32 Chapter One 20 BC, Dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude (1.2.40) (“He who has begun is half done: dare to know! ”) but he notes that it could be found engraved on a medal in Berlin in 1736 for the Société des Aléthophiles (Society of the Friends of Truth) a group of clergy, lawyers, and civil servants dedicated to the spreading of truth in general and the Leibniz-Wolff philosophy in particular. On it, one could see: le buste d’une Minerve armée (aux traits indéniablement teutoniques). Sur son casque décoré de plumes et de couronnes, les deux têtes des philosophes Leibiniz et Wolff, se présentaient comme un Janus à deux faces, et sur le pourtour, on lisait « Sapere aude ». The founder of said society had been Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel, a very interesting figure of the first half of the century, an adventurer, a politician and a cosmopolitan savant, as Venturi presents him to us, who had founded a Masonic confraternity, at the same time of the Society of the Friends of Truth, almost considering each one of them as linked, and both as sibling organizations (35-47). Venturi’s research leads us to discover a German translation, dating about 1766, by the famous British writer Shaftesbury, bearing the same image and the same motto, and Friederich Karl von Moser’s intriguing texts, one of which carried the motto with an additional line by Lessing, “Ils ne sont pas tous libres ceux qui se rient de leurs propres chaînes.” When Kant decided to adopt the inciting motto in 1784, it surely carried baggage of its own. Kant’s choice was not fortuitous. <?page no="33"?> C HAPTER T WO A Reflection on Masonry: The Mystical Answer Une religion vraie doit être pour tous les temps et pour tous les lieux; elle doit être comme la lumière du soleil, qui éclaire tous les peuples et toutes les générations…Sa religion est la plus ancienne et la plus étendue; car l’adoration simple d’un Dieu a précédé tous les systèmes du monde (…) Faire le bien, voilà son culte; être soumis à Dieu, voilà sa doctrine (Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique 328, 361). During the eighteenth century, France was a fertile land and a strong power in continental Europe. The country had, in fact, engaged in military campaigns for the conquest of the colonies, and in exchanges via maritime commerce. It boasted a large population mainly concentrated in the countryside and in the city of Paris. In spite of all these strengths, the territory was not exploited to its utmost and the government was desperate for financial resources. As trade and communication improved, a new class of merchants and town-dwellers was established and felt the pressure for a change. These classes were naturally convinced that their earnings were the result of their individual talents and labor; they were persuaded of their capabilities to transform the world as individuals. They were frustrated by the fact that they were forced to financially support an expensive and debauched aristocracy, which was also chary of its privileges. The social repartition was thus strictly set. The French population was divided into orders: the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate (that is to say the masses and the bourgeoisie). At the head of all, was the king, by virtue of the fact that he was recognized as the direct secular representative of God. This absolute power was deteriorating due to the financial situation of the country, which was also shifting the responsibilities of the French nobility. Usually involved in military services to the Crown, the second estate was, in fact, now in charge of some administrative functions as well. The clergy’s <?page no="34"?> 34 Chapter Two 1 Death and the Enlightenment, 5. 2 As quoted by R. O’ Day, 4-5. power was also challenged. There were strong discrepancies between Jansenists and Jesuits. This disunity was considered to be detrimental to the sovereignty of the monarch and the cohesion of the nation itself. Mostly, it created disappointment in believers and an overall criticism of the established creeds. Other issues weakened and preoccupied the French population of the eighteenth century: poverty, labor, ruinous wars, diseases, and mortality. As John McManners reminds us, “death was at the center of life as the graveyard was at the center of the village.” 1 The rampant spread of epidemics, due to close quarters and poor hygienic conditions, coupled with the rudimentary state of medicine (at the time two main remedies, mercury and quinine, were offered, besides the usual bleeding and purging), are evident markers of the powerlessness of the people of France. Naturally, in such circumstances, family and kinship became very important. According to Fréderic Le Play, 2 who worked extensively on family ties of the time, the three major family forms were: the patriarchal, the stem, and the unstable. Of the three, the stem or famille souche, was predominant in France and consisted of a co-residential, extended family of at least two married couples and their children. Unmarried offspring were totally supported within the original family. Servants were also present whenever the case allowed. If one fell from favor, his or her family would also fall. If one was in need, a relative would often provide employment, financial support, or both. Family members were close physically, not only during their waking hours but also during their resting moments: communal sleeping was not unusual, especially in rural areas of France. Though, of course, this was not well regarded by the Church for fear of incest, fornication, and adultery, the practice continued sometimes even in the homes of well-to-do individuals, involving siblings or parents and young offspring. Furnishings and architectural house plans of the period confirm this view. The bed remained the center of the household, the most comfortable and intimate place for the family, the members of which were, at this point, starting either to work or to occupy social roles outside the parental home and had as their only opportunity the evening supper and the wee hours to assemble and enjoy one another’s company. The progressive stepping into an “industrialized” and more cosmopolitan world caused many individuals to leave their abode and family behind. Ceasing to reside with the biological family, members did not mean to cut ties with them; on the contrary, since they were members of an extended family, they continued the network and carried membership in several families around with them. Maybe this relationship was not constant, but it was <?page no="35"?> 35 A Reflection on Masonry 3 Death, 151. continuous and fruitful. The network was also extended to a form of mentorship, offered by the patron, the teacher, the older friend, or the companion. The upcoming of the compagnonnages, societies of journeymen in certain craft trades, continued during the eighteenth century; as a matter of fact it became more formalized (written laws were implemented) and bigger in number. In Constructing Brotherhood, Mary Ann Clawson enumerates three major compagnonnages: les enfants de Père Soubise, les enfants de Maître Jacques and les enfants de Salomon. In lieu of a direct family, and more precisely patriarchal supervision, this congregation imparted, guided, and took care of the young journeyman who was still green and lost. The internal organization of a compagnonnage resembled a family, calling their lodge Mère. As Cynthia Truant puts it, at the Mère “compagnons could be the male authorities of the household, brothers who were equal in many ways even if differentiated by seniority” (105). Emile Coornaert, tells us of some exceptions, for example the “tailleurs de pierre” had a Père as the “serruriers de Bordeaux” while at the Rochelle, in 1810 both Père and Mère had a hotel for their aggregated (178). Springing from this relation, fraternal links were in order, bringing mutual aid and fellowship of any sort: beer drinking, gaming, and spiritual or financial sharing. Engagement in prayer, aid in burials, visits to the sick and the lonely were daily occasions of displaying such relationships (30-34). Like families, these congregations were windows through which its members saw the world; they were stepping stones leading to the outer reality. Like families, such assemblies were not vulnerable. They were independent from the rest of the world: they had their own rules, their own duties and rights to impose, and their own ways of dealing with everyday issues. In spite of the Church’s and the Crown’s rulings, these compagnonnages created and recreated ways to face problems and to instruct their members on how to face them. The remedies were out of the norm, at times, but the various situations constrained mere rationality on one side and on the other repelled the stiff morality of the eighteenth-century clergy. Harmony sought within the family, or surrogates of the family such as the Masonic sects, was but only one of many attempts to confront the financial precariousness and the general fragility of life. Suicide, sexual perversion, physical and material alteration, and eventually abuse, were among the other ways of facing the reality of the period. John McManners tells us of a suicide wave in Paris which started in the late seventeen-sixties: first two lovers, then eight women died within the space of a fortnight, and finally there was the scandal of Christmas Day when two soldiers shot themselves after having dined. They left a note, advising all who were unhappy to follow their example. 3 <?page no="36"?> 36 Chapter Two 4 See Robert Darnton’s Mesmerism, Charles Gattey’s They Saw Tomorrow, various biographies on Cagliostro and Joseph de Maistre, regarding more liberal forms of worshipping; articles such as “Eighteenth-Century Christianity and Literature: Two Caveats” by Melvyn New, and books like The Church and the Age of Reason by Gerald Craggs and Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France by John McManners regarding more conservative forms. 5 Wilson, 3. Rather than confirmations of life perceived to be unimportant, suicide, sexual perversion, and material abuse were self-affirmation tactics, ways of celebrating man’s power, or quest of power, not antithetical with the more communal attempts learned and performed within the journeymen’s societies or the extended families. They were not dissimilar to the period’s experiments on the fringes of reality, the eighteenth-century dabbling in the occult with the goal of mastering a piece of the world and a piece of themselves. Doubting the feasibility of the Christian paradise, the Masons attempted to build a heaven that could and would be built on earth, replicating the rapport between man and God by consolidating their relation with others, similar to the fundamental principles around which a family evolves. This new form of religion, professed by the intellectual classes, started to intertwine a recycled neo-Platonism (fundamental ideas were borrowed from Kepler, Paracelsus, and Giordano Bruno) and the restoration of the gods of ancient Greece, which brought about a true neo-classical movement in the arts in general. In Paris, the members of la société harmonique des amis réunis were breathing and eating Mesmerism. 4 The wealthy men and women of France believed in the magical wonders of an invisible magnetic fluid which emanated from Doctor Franz Anton Mesmer’s body, and flocked eagerly to witness first-hand the power of the magnetizer. Though subject to a very high membership fee, the adepts rejoiced at the opportunity to join the chains of hands that occurred at every meeting and which often resulted in chaotic and hysterical responses. Women and men alike started to feel the force, to have convulsions, and to scream that they were free from their “disease”. These convulsions seemed contagious. As soon as one began to be convulsed, others were affected. The convulsions were involuntary motions, some of impressive duration and strength, of all the limbs or the whole body, marked by the contractions of the throat, the dimness and wandering of the eyes, sobbing or laughter. Sometimes they were accompanied by expectoration of viscous fluid tinted with streaks of blood. 5 The number of participants increased year after year and so did the number of Mesmer’s disciples. Outside the French capital, similar mystical acts were recorded within meeting halls, informal clubs and private salons. In Avignon, in 1766, a new hermetic rite was established by Antoine-Joseph Pernety and based on three principles: faith, hope, and charity. The adepts were subject to a mystical initiation and spoke directly to an invisible Intelligence named Sainte-Parole, <?page no="37"?> 37 A Reflection on Masonry 6 Bricaud, 38-48. 7 Gattey, 114, 142. using, as a password, an occult number which was instrumental to the process of questioning and responding, to be recognized by the interlocutor. They diligently worked in a laboratory seeking the discovery of the Philosophical Stone. 6 In Lyons, cabalistic rites purportedly of the eleventh century, in which Jewish metaphysics merged with obscure theories of Alexandrine philosophers, had bloomed. Established by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, this type of spiritualism, which was more intimate and individualistic, and detached from the welfare of the world, attracted a multitude of men and women in eighteenth-century France. It certainly introduced a new typology of man, a man in direct and constant rapport with a Supreme Being through prayer and repentance. Another rite, the Egyptian rite, was professed by the charismatic Cagliostro. He could not have appeared on the scene at a more appropriate time: help was sought after the success but “early retirement” of Mesmer. Cagliostro, under the influence of Swedenborg and the count of Saint- Germain, gave his followers a taste and a liking of alchemy and of the oriental cult, presenting to them the “solution” to physical deterioration and, ultimately, death. Cagliostro preached for the first time the gospel of his Egyptian rite in the Lodge of Strict Observance, with the aid of virgin youth as media to a higher entity. The pupille, dressed in a white robe, was rendered clairvoyant through count Cagliostro’s breathing in his/ her face, while the young seer, and the whole assembly, prayed. Impressed by Cagliostro’s prophetic talents and by the mysterious powers of material transformation, a great number of his disciples followed the count into his own temple at The Hague. Here Cagliostro took the office of Grand Cophta. In a black silk robe adorned with red symbols and a gold turban studded with jewels, a chain of emeralds heavy with amulets and scarabs sparkling on his chest, this new leader restored hieroglyphics, Rosicrucian symbols, Egyptian idols such as Isis, Osiris, Anubis, and the ox Apis, the crux ansata or Egyptian symbol of life, and methods typical of spiritual séances. Cagliostro’s wife, Serafina, contrary to the tradition of other Masonic lodges which rejected membership to women, led a group of female adepts. 7 The members of one sect were also in direct contact with the members of another sect, and together they were part of an extensive network that went beyond geographical borders. Through the preparatory rites, and the mentoring of older associates, the initiates would grow spiritually and their circle of friends and influence would grow concurrently; after having passed with success through their own trials, they would embark on reaching-out missions that would lead them outside their natal barriers, to England, Italy, <?page no="38"?> 38 Chapter Two 8 See Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Chapter 1. 9 Craggs, 199-200. 10 McManners, Church and Society, 234. 11 Ibid, 373. and Germany where they would be welcomed by the members of other sects of the network and introduced to new adepts and prospective adepts. The sectarian impact was considerable compared to the one of the salons, coffee houses, and clubs. The centralized structure, the mentoring process, the abatement of geographical borders, with consequent worshipping and recruiting goals were undoubtedly facilitated by the contemporary political and economical status quo: the open-market, and colonialism, the social mobility ideology, the political hierarchical system in force within the country with the idealized concept of nationalism and internationalism, the concept of family seen as the fundamental nucleus of society, the important male relationship within trade crafts, as well as in religious congregations were the cohesive elements that rendered the Masonic lodges stronger and stronger. It is true that during the Enlightenment findings of science and technology, along with the rampant establishing of capitalism, weakened the supremacy of the Church over the populace. As temporal rulers consolidated their power in Europe, the political power of the Church waned. Fragmented feudal kingdoms began to merge together into nation-states, striving to attain peace and stability. A complete process of secularization seemed to take place. 8 Yet this secularization did not necessarily undermine the stronghold of the Catholic Church and its doctrines in France. In its structure and its functions, the French Church epitomized many of the features of absolutism. The Church enjoyed the privilege of exclusive jurisdiction and exemption from taxation, while its responsibilities were very extensive: all acts of civil status - births, deaths, and marriages - were under its direct control. 9 Its power and wealth were almost equal to those of the Crown. Versailles counted nine thousand soldiers, and six thousand civilian officials, of whom two hundred were ecclesiastics. These ecclesiastics disposed of a total income twice as large as the yield of the basic land tax. Thus the Church was not far from being as rich as the Crown. 10 Contrary to common belief, the eighteenth century, prior to the Revolution, was the golden age of the Catholic Church: the clergy strove to improve standards, to care for the educational resources available to the people, to share their riches and properties with the mentally and physically ill (and with well-to-do families who considered the monasteries as lieux de villégiature), and offered the most sophisticated musical performances and the most luxurious liturgical celebrations. 11 France also held the second place in Europe for the number of people who were canonized or beatified. This sanctity came from the clergy, predominantly those of the Franciscan order, and was more masculine than feminine, more outreaching than introverted. <?page no="39"?> 39 A Reflection on Masonry 12 “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me” (Mark 10: 21). 13 Loupès, 27-30. 14 Shennan, 9. These saints were individuals who went around preaching, helping, acting as confessors or missionaries. It is interesting to see that they had the same vision as Saint Francis and the monks of the 1300s who had been condemned for heresy, excommunicated and some even burned alive for their desire to practice the commandment of Christ as illustrated in the Epistle of Mark, a hymn to poverty and gentleness. 12 Two examples of this religious vision are Jeanne Delanoue and Benoît Labre, who traveled about and consecrated themselves to the service of the poor, the sick, and the neglected. Both renounced a life of ease and comfort, choosing, in consequence, mortification and suffering. In their attempt to reunite with God, they opted to avoid all contact with that which can take the place of God. Jeanne Delanoue ate only out of garbage piles, used a rock as a pillow, and never changed clothing. She demonstrated resilient devotion by going to church everyday to have communion and to talk to her confessor, in spite of the sores and lice which afflicted her body. Benoît Labre heard the call of Providence and started a long voyage from France to Spain and then to Italy. He remained unclean and lived amongst the ruins of the Coliseum, but never forgot to carry with him and to read the New Testament. Both saints refused to respond to their physical needs in order to leave ample space to the necessities and joys of the spirit. Spiritual congregations were formed around these figures, and the number of believers increased further after their death. Several miracles were attributed to these selfless ambassadors of Christ. 13 Though some may categorize the revering of saints like Delanoue and Labre as a sign of superstition and fanaticism, one should first consider the motivations behind them, as well as the middle classes’ different response to social abuses. An overview of the historical situation under the reign of the Sun King and his heir, Louis le bien aimé, will supply the background information needed. The Monarchical Legacy: From Louis XIV to Louis XV The peasantry of France, which constituted 80% of the population, 14 found in saints not only examples to emulate but also, in turn, connection to God. There was a saint protector for any circumstance, because this individual had been victim of the same and through tests had become strong and pure: Agathe, for example, was thought to heal breast tumors because her rejected <?page no="40"?> 40 Chapter Two 15 Dabney, 86-92. 16 McKay, 679-683. 17 Artz ,32-33. 18 Hampson, 77. Roman suitor had cut off her breasts to punish her. There was a festivity dedicated to a particular saint on a particular day, with offerings, as if the saint’s intercession were to be bought. Taine calculated that, at the end of Louis XIV’s reign, in 1715, while the country was bankrupt, about six million French peasants died of hunger. Some were even compelled to sell their clothing, furniture, and housewares to feed their families, in a daily attempt to survive. 15 Yet, in their poor abodes, with thatched roofs and dirt floors, there was always the image of a saint, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary. Local clergymen complained about the fact that their congregation was more superstitious than devout. Yet they capitalized on their audiences’ weakness to talk almost exclusively about damnation, condemning the pursuit of worldly goods in favor of spiritual salvation which guaranteed eternal life. The Church represented an information network reaching from the centers of power into every parish of the country and used the local priests (the most poorly remunerated and of lesser noble origin amid the clergy), who were closer to their congregation, to develop its own agenda. In spite of spiritual devotion and faithful church attendance, the congregation was able to recognize contradictions between the sermons and the facts: they were struggling while the Church was cashing in their tithes, but they could not break away from the parish. They had respect for the local clergyman; they viewed him as part of their family. Coinciding with the agricultural village, the parish was the focal point of the community. The popular strength of religion in Catholic France reflected religion’s integral role in community life. Religion was embedded in local traditions, processions, festivals, and in popular forms of recreation. It was a way to release their frustration and aggressiveness with the hope to attain clemency and miracles. 16 It is in this context that one should appreciate the role played by the mystical figures of the Church, the poor individuals who had sacrificed their lives and had been rewarded with eternal life and post-mortem earthly honors. Detached from the village life, the middle class reacted differently to the dogmas of the Church. Their demographic as well as economic status augmented their self-confidence and power. The middle classes could now read, had enough money to purchase books and started to ponder upon the new ideas of the times. 17 Specific matters were brought up for debate. The Scriptures themselves had become subject to rational scrutiny. Richard Simon (1638-1712) subjected the Old Testament to such scrutiny, considering the Bible as a literary product. He treated “the Old Testament as a document with a history, put together over time by a variety of authors with a variety of motives and interests, rather than a divinely-revealed unity.” 18 Although his <?page no="41"?> 41 A Reflection on Masonry 19 Goering, 3. 20 Popkin, 19-20. 21 Bellenger, 152-154. work was condemned by many Christian denominations, the die was cast, and others continued the same kind of analysis. The philosopher Voltaire saw priests and Christianity as a scourge on the human race; he saw the need to outdo l’infâme. The clergy were perceived to be corrupt, the pope considered a tyrant, and the king viewed as submissive to the Church’s power. If the Bible was the textual source of the Christian light, then the Encyclopedia was the inspiration of the Enlightenment. It was a compendium of human knowledge dealing with arts, sciences, mechanics, and philosophy which amounted to thirty-six volumes by 1780. Begun by Diderot, the Encyclopedia bore the imprint of Voltaire, D’Alembert, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Buffon, Turgot, and others. Gracing the title page of the Encyclopedia’s first edition was a drawing of Lucifer, symbol of light and rebellion, standing beside the Masonic symbols of the square and compass. 19 The rebellion was completed by the growing use of birth-control practices, of lawsuits against seigneurs and employers, and of revolts that eventually led to the making of the Revolution of 1789. 20 Within the religious institutions themselves, a wind of change was blowing. In spite of the fact that continental monasticism was subject to critique by the Enlightenment and the fact that the diligence of the monks translated more into observation than discovery, it is true that amongst the Benedictines we find curiosity and the need for new learning. In 1759 the Kremsmünster observatory was opened, and its first resident astronomer was a Benedictine, Dom Placidus Fixlmillner. French Benedictines, such as Dom Calmet and Dom Pernety, explored the spiritual world. 21 In 1706 Dom Calmet wrote his dissertation concerning vampires, demons, and ghosts from a new outlook: I shall, therefore, examine this question as an historian, as a philosopher, and as a divine. As an historian, I shall endeavour to discover the truth of the facts; as a philosopher, I shall consider their causes and circumstances; and lastly, the light which theology affords will enable me to draw from it some consequences, with a view to religion. (vii) Pernety wrote about the fine arts, traveled with the naturalist Bougainville, and saw a new world not only in geographical but also in mythological and alchemical terms. Following such parameters, some of these monks challenged the orthodox institutions, giving birth to new circles and new methodologies, which, in turn, came about because of the scientific and social innovations (or hope for <?page no="42"?> 42 Chapter Two 22 Sade, 167. 23 Voltaire, Traité sur la tolerance 18. 24 A sentence quoted by Goering (4) from Billington’s famous book, Fire in the Minds of Men. innovations) of the time. Inside the walls of the new “churches” there was space for personal growth, for social progress, for attentive observation and criticism, and for a God whose name could be pronounced differently, who could be drawn differently, whose will could be read from the pages of different sacred texts, but who was one and the same, the Supreme Being, the Beginning. There existed a special tie between believing and understanding, where “understanding is the very lifeblood of faith.” 22 In unison with the renewed love for sciences and the arts and new discoveries in these realms, France was reaching for this Entity through magnetism, meditation, alchemy, astrology, traveling, describing and categorizing nature, creating and recreating aesthetic masterpieces, experiencing, and learning from the past to apply to the present. This does not imply detachment; it means that the French men and women of the eighteenth century studied with a non-traditional outlook. They questioned phenomena within and without, and tried to control them. Above all, they questioned their status. According to this criterion, the monarchical and ecclesiastical authorities were to be supplanted. They were not the only direct representatives of God; each individual was. Though the way to truth was a narrow and solitary path, the instructions were to be laid down by a mentoring group; it was through a collective effort that individual happiness was to be achieved. For independent curious minds, the Encyclopedia was the bible and Masonry was the ritual of Reason seen as Common Sense, ‘la forza del senso comune’, as Umberto Eco calls it (23-28), the strength of the brotherhood. Imported from England, a country praised by the French philosophes for its constitutionalism and its religious pluralism, 23 Masonry became the widespread faith of intellectual France. The Spiritual Legacy: From the Templar to the Mason Obscured by the blending of provable history and legend, 24 the role of Masonry as a new approach to spirituality has been undermined. A veteran historian and biographer, Jasper Ridley, whose works include much praised portraits of Mussolini, Napoleon, Tito, and Henry VIII, has recently published a book on Freemasonry, in which he makes what I deem to be unfounded statements. The most incredible one is about the association between faith and religion within the Masonic sect: <?page no="43"?> 43 A Reflection on Masonry 25 Hammond, 15. 26 According to the Webster dictionary, religion is: 1. the service or worship of God or the supernatural; 2. an organized system of faith and worship; 3. a personal set of religious beliefs and practices; and finally 4. a cause, principle or belief held to with faith and ardor. It is easy to see why [Freemasons] are so insistent about [not being a religion]: if Freemasonry is a religion, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his bishops, the Chief Rabbi and a few Catholic Freemasons should not be attending meetings of a religion which is a different one from that of which they are prominent leaders. (291) Ridley’s opinion is shared by many. Weisberger considers the Lodge as the perfect setting for the intermingling of Catholic and Protestant nobles of eighteenth-century Paris, a collaborative environment which eventually induced them to participate in cultural institutions. No divergence in faith could stop the promotion of specific ideologies because the final goal was a civic involvement for the welfare of contemporary society and for posterity (159-168). Freemasonry is thus said to be more about morality and reaching out to others with needs. “An honest interpretation of the teachings of Freemasonry will show that instead of teaching men what to believe, men are simply asked to put religion they already have, when they become a Mason, into everyday practice.” 25 John Robinson wants us to believe that the open-mindedness professed in Masonry is to be interpreted as an absence of faith. Robinson claims, in fact, that Freemasonry “can safely be asserted to not be a religion on the simple basis that religious creeds are believed by their devotees to be absolutely true, having no space for other options. The fact that Masonry allows for any perception of God no matter the name or origin is in antithesis with other religious beliefs, therefore it makes it non-religious” (267). Robinson’s argument seems fallacious to me. The definitions of the term religion are not so restrictive. 26 Religion does not imply a certain number of deities or conformity of said deities to specific requirements; it simply implies faith, belief, worship, all of which are present in the Masonic lodges. Comparing Masonry with other religions, George Mather and Larry Nichols point out that Hinduism also believes that all paths lead to God, yet nobody has contested the fact that Hinduism is a religion (32). Some scholars have also mistakenly taken the structure of the lodges, which follows hierarchical, more or less governmental rankings, and the lack of female participation, as traits of secular republicanism. Again this can be refuted first and foremost by examples supplied by the Bible: above, the Trinity, then the archangels and angels, then humans; on earth, the same pyramid is replicated in Jesus and his disciples, then men, and then children. <?page no="44"?> 44 Chapter Two 27 Naudon, 156-158. See also « Invocation maçonnique à Dieu » in the Vocabulaire de francs-maçons by de Laurens, 101-105 and « L’invocation pour la réception d’un nouveau frère » in Chevallier ‘s Les Ducs sous l’acacia, 194. 28 Jung, Psychology and Religion, 58. 29 In Eastern religion the mandala or healing circle represents the universe and everything in it. It suggests wholeness, unity, completion, and eternity. Alchemy, cabala, and numerology are also linked with the concept of the mandala. C. Jung became interested in mandalas while studying Eastern religion and, to him, it was an expression of the individual’s inner refuge, reconciliation, and completeness. The Jungian mandala obviously reminds us of the goal and process involved in the membership of Masonry, which is to create a man, a good man, a man of honor, of charity, and of civic value, a gratified and complete man. Women, according to the Pauline epistles, did not have much say in church, and the Catholic Church reproduced yet again this hierarchy by confiding leadership to the Pope, the cardinals, the priests, who, by no coincidence, are all males. The Bible itself is to be found in the Masonic lodge, as Paul Naudon asserts: Les constitutions d’Anderson de 1723, qui en sont un peu la charte constitutive, affirment qu’un franc-maçon ne sera jamais « un athée stupide ni un libertin irréligieux »; la Franc-Maçonnerie admet en principe comme landmark que la Bible doit être placée sur l’autel pendant les tenues de loge et que les candidats sont tenus de prêter serment sur ce livre sacré. 27 As articulated before, the eighteenth century recognized the interdependence of men on each other due to socio-economical reasons. But this does not alleviate the necessity of leadership; people were looking forward to some autonomy from the constrictions of the Church and the monarchs; it is quite likely that they were in need of an unmitigated and less controlled experience of God, as often happens to adventurous and restless people, too youthful for any form of conservatism or resignation. They removed therefore the intercession of the church between God and man, some more and some less. 28 The eighteenth-century esoterics found that a different name, a different institution, a different type of worship, a disguise was the perfect antidote to such an individual and societal malaise. They found a replacement which can be compared to the experience of the mandala as explained by Jung (105-106). The mandala forms a protective wall to prevent psychological disintegration, while investing in the power of the self. In actuality it has the function of a temple or isolated sacred place in the center of which there is to be found a deity, a humanized deity, in this particular case. The mandala is a spontaneous process for a man who has reached a state of perfectibility, for a man who is complete. 29 <?page no="45"?> 45 A Reflection on Masonry In Masonry there was evidence of concern not only for the inner character of the human being as an individual but most importantly as a sociable being and as an element in a project of sociability, for the betterment of human civil society, rendered possible only through a re-appropriation of divine talents and tasks. The confusion which has enveloped the study of Masonry in the eighteenth century is undoubtedly due to the complexity of the nature of the sect itself and of its mysterious origin. If on the one hand, eighteenth century sects seemed to promote the revolutionary ideals of fraternity, relatively equal selfworth, cosmopolitanism, and humanitarianism, on the other hand their structures seemed to be very conservative. They maintained, in fact, an internal hierarchy, a system of meritocracy, centralization of power, and secrecy. Another problematic is represented by the fact that following the ideals of the time, the lodges were not discriminatory regarding the deity worshipped by their members, yet it was forbidden for them to share religious opinion (to seek converts), and, what seems to be even odder, there was no tolerance for candidates who did not have a deity to worship. Atheists were, in fact, not accepted. In opposition to the code of honor, the sworn secrecy, the privacy of the operations performed and the individual mentorship to be achieved, these sects were also, and continue to be, very much involved in public ceremonies and concerned with public opinion. In what type of categorization should we place these esoteric associations? Were their privileged, literate members active participants in the public sphere or just involved in private societies for their own individualistic purposes, thus embracing public causes only for selfish goal-attainment? This complexity is rendered even more intense when one thinks of the many ramifications and modifications of the lodges, creating entirely dissimilar rites. Recent investigations have brought to light four main tendencies with regard to the origin of Masonry. According to Leadbeater, these repartitions are: the authentic school, the mystical school, the occult school, and the anthropological school. The belief of the first school is that Masonry derives from the operative lodges and guilds of the Middle Ages, while according to the fourth school, its origin can be found in the initiatory customs of savage tribes, both in Africa and in Australia, who possess signs and gestures still used in the Masonic rites. Rather than tracing a path to a past source, the second school declares that there is an intrinsic link between the symbols and rituals of Masonry and a certain inner state of its members. Its goal is, according to the scholars belonging to this tendency, to attain a conscious union with God through rites and to live a gratifying spiritual life. Finally, the third school shares the same goals of the second one, but it utilizes different methods for its realization. The union with God can be attained only by means of knowledge and will, so that man becomes a perfect representation of the divine. Whereas the tools of the mystic are prayer and contemplation, the <?page no="46"?> 46 Chapter Two 30 Coornaert, 208. 31 Truant, 83-84. occultist does not care either for ritual or individual effort, but for collective service and sacrifice (1-7). According to the first school of thought, there is a link between the operative Masons and the speculative Masons. The stonemasons were employed during medieval times by the church or by rich landowners, and naturally worked on secular as well as religious buildings. It is not impossible, though, that a relatively small number of these craftsmen were assigned to work only on cathedrals, giving to their trade organization the opportunity to partake in trade secrecy. Medieval stonemasonry seems to logically fit the role of predecessor of the eighteenth-century compagnonnage. Both associations were artificial families apart from natural families. These new families supported the young apprentices financially and physically, but also psychologically, continuing the practice of patriarchal authority and of fraternal bond. The surrogate families replicated these values and helped in strengthening them. And in these more extended boundaries, young men had more opportunities for growth, interaction, and socialization. Within the trade organization of the stonemasons, rules and aims were well defined. Rituals were clear manifestations of them. The apprentice or adept was to be baptized, to publicly repudiate his original family, and to adopt a new name, which the “priest” sealed with the pouring of wine in the presence of a godmother and a godfather. The spiritual brotherhood was also confirmed by the male predominance in such organizations and by the ease of internal advancement. The final goal of the trade organizations was to form individuals who could not only survive in the pre-capitalist structure of the time but, most importantly, who were able to contribute to its progress and well-being. Each individual was to be an honorable member of society at large. The link between the societés compagnonniques and the francmaçonnerie spéculative was so tight that in fact the Grand Orient had welcomed a good number of “menuisiers, maçons, tailleurs, vitriers, selliers, serruriers et au moins un garçon tapissier,” in spite of some statute in 1787 that forbade the inclusion of members of “état vil et abject.” 30 By the nineteenth century the compagnonnage reflected some of the overlapping in the ritualism and symbolism, as they also adopted the square and the compass, and emphasized ranks and titles. 31 Though Mary Ann Clawson argues that this is possible due to the fact that Masonry was indeed a venture in boundary-crossing (72-73), there are also those scholars who disagree, stressing exclusivity in membership based on merit therefore on level of prosperity and social involvement. According to Margaret Jacob, it was indeed the lodges’ financial need to induce the guilds to convert into enclaves of intellectual Freemasons. The process, also called the transition from operative to <?page no="47"?> 47 A Reflection on Masonry 32 Jacob, The Origins of Freemasonry, 11-15. 33 Naudon, Les origines religieuses et corporatives de la Franc-maçonnerie , 255-267. 34 The main works consulted to trace the history of the Knights Templar are: Picknett’s The Templar Revelation, Robinson’s Born in Blood, Barrett’s Secret Societies, and Michelet’s Histoire de France. speculative masonry, started in Scotland and England, when two of the earliest non-masons to be admitted were Sir Robert Moray, a man of science associated with Bacon and Descartes, and the Oxford antiquarian Elias Ashmole, who also dabbled in alchemy. 32 The Lodge of Aberdeen comprised a membership of more than ¾ of non-masons, who according to its Laws and Statutes were dispensed “du tronc, de la marquée, du banquet et de la pinte de vin.” To designate the non-masons from the masons, different labels were employed: the first were called Geomatics while the latter were called Domatics. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the statute of the Lodge Saint- Paul allowed for the privileges of Masonry to be extended from stonemasons to all persons who wanted to participate, under the condition that their admission was authorized and they were initiated in the due manner. In a way, then, while the speculative Masonry was forged under the effect of philosophical, religious, and political influences, the corporations of stonemasons were dying out slowly. 33 The values and rituals that medieval stonemasonry and eighteenth-century compagnonnage have in common are also the pillars of another historical association, the chivalry of the Crusades. According to American historian, Steven C. Bullock, the importance of stonemasonry, chivalry, compagnonnage, and their links with King Solomon and his temple went even beyond its apologetic and historic value. It also prefigured the heavenly Jerusalem, the ultimate expression of God’s wisdom. Thus, rigorous study of even the temple’s smallest details revealed the nature of God himself. (22) The tight connection between the three aforementioned associations and the Temple is not only aesthetic but also spiritual: 34 the members of the enfants de Maître Jacques were obligated to wear white gloves, symbolizing their noninvolvement in the murder of Hiram Abiff, the architect of the temple of Solomon, and also representing the nobility pertaining to knighthood. There is thus a widespread belief that Masonry started with and because of the Knights Templar, a clerical and military foundation established by Hugues de Payens and Godefroid de St. Omer in 1118, after the First Crusade, and which received its statutes during the council of Troyes in 1128. The name is derived from the location of its first headquarters (the knights were actually given rooms in the royal palace of Baudouin I, king of Jerusalem) near the Temple of King Solomon, in Jerusalem. These soldiers destined to establish their power in Palestinian territory during the Crusades formed true <?page no="48"?> 48 Chapter Two 35 Barrett, 51. communities. They had to rely on financial support from the Church, the monarch, and the wealthy to pursue their plans of construction, deemed necessary for the physical protection of the city. 35 The Knights had to vow secrecy and to observe the three evangelical vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They had to be born in wedlock, of age, free from all obligations, even financial, and not associated with other orders. They were all single men of noble birth; married men were accepted only on the condition that they share half of their property with the order. Amongst them there was a body of clergy who were under the same vows and owed obedience only to the Grand Master of the Temple and the Pope. There were also those bearing arms, as well as menials. At the head of the organization were the Grand Master, the Seneschal, and the Marshal. In all, the Templars were believed to number around 20,000. Many were interested in joining this order because of its reputation for the mystery and the danger it offered. According to Michelet, the ceremony of initiation took place in churches of the order, at night, behind closed doors. The candidate was presented as a sinner who needed to be rehabilitated. The symbol of the Temple went beyond the concept of Christianity; it appealed to Jews and to Moslems alike. The Templars achieved such notoriety and power as to make them feared by the same individuals and institutions helping them. By the second half of the 1200s the Holy Land was lost and the defeated Knights Templar moved, dreaming of another crusade to restore their glory. But the Crown and the Church were looking forward to ending the Knights’ order. In 1307 and 1308 both the English king Edward II and the French monarch Philippe-le-Bel issued orders for the arrest of the Knights. Many were imprisoned, tortured, and killed due to their presumed denial of Christ, their faith in idols, and unorthodox sexual practices, first among these, sodomy. But many escaped and went underground, mainly to Scotland and to Ireland. Since the order of the Knights Templar had such a powerful structure and support, it was not hard to find help with transportation and refuge. But, at this point, the main concern was to go unnoticed. The Knights had very short hair but uncultivated beards, while all other men boasted long hair and cleanshaven faces. Also their outfit was odd for the period: the Knights usually wore a cowled robe, as was appropriate to monks. They had to conform to the contemporary usages, while a series of special signals and signs was necessary for them to be recognized only by their sympathizers and/ or brothers. There was indeed plenty of motivation for the groups of fugitives to form secret societies. At odds with the establishment, the fugitives were eager to go to great lengths to preserve their secrecy. They continued to utilize the code known as Atbash Cipher, the same written by the authors of the Dead Sea <?page no="49"?> 49 A Reflection on Masonry 36 Picknett and Prince, 109. 37 Solomon does not feel to be able to take over such a great project. For this reason he says: “But who is able to build Him a house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Who am I then, that I should build Him a house…” (II Chronicles 2: 6). Scrolls. 36 Their customary rites confirm even further the Knights’ link and interest in esoteric sources. It should not surprise anyone, since at the time, between the twelfth and thirteenth century, there was an emphasis on mysticism, on individual search, and on personal relationship with God. All these goals are embedded in the medieval values of chivalry, courtly love, and in the search for the Holy Grail. Chivalry meant that a knight should be a good man of courage, involved in society but also be devoted to God and be of religious as well as military proclivities. The Grail symbolized the cup of the Last Supper, an important link to God, thus the knights searching for the Grail were eager to be reunited with God. But this God was not necessarily the Christian God but a Creator, the Water of Life, of which all individuals felt to be a part. By recognizing the God within, it was considered possible to become one with the God without. This is the wisdom of the Knights Templar, the knowledge of the philosophers of the Renaissance, and of the eighteenth century. This is the mystical quest represented by the Temple of Solomon. Unlike any other church, the famous temple of Solomon was not built to contain men but God himself. In the Bible, this temple is, in fact, referred to as “the house of the Lord” (II Chronicles 8: 1), and since this was to be the divine abode, it had to be magnificent. 37 What is important to keep in mind is that Solomon was “repaying” God for a priceless gift, wisdom and knowledge. It was through acquired wisdom that Solomon knew what to use for the building. He used the best material, the biggest measurements, the perfect layout, and balance. Outside the eastern doorway stood two pillars, known as Boaz and Joachim, representing religious and political stability. It is believed that the Templars had as a mission the search for knowledge, for union with God, and for the supposed blueprints of the Temple itself. Scholars have stated that there is proof that the Templars conducted excavations at the site of the Temple. According to these theories, the Templars were responsible for the building of cathedrals, for which they followed certain geometric and architectural principles. The Templars’ patron, St. Bernard, had defined God as length, width, height, and depth. There are hermetic meanings concealed in some of the most prominent characteristics of the Gothic cathedrals built by the Knights and by the stonemasons engaged in the construction of such buildings: the alchemical awareness of the feminine in dome-like structures, and in the rose-like windows, of masculinity in steeples, as well as the concept of the hermaphrodite. The latter conceived every individual as the union of <?page no="50"?> 50 Chapter Two 38 Picknett and Prince, 106-123. 39 Robinson, 208. male and female, which is depicted in curious figures displayed in the gothic cathedrals. 38 According to a report by W. Kirk MacNutty, the idea that a temple should represent man and the universe is about 4000 years old. From the tabernacle built by Moses to our modern churches, these buildings contain the symbols of a physical world, a psychological world, a spiritual world, and the deity itself. MacNutty’s interpretation inevitably leads one to compare Freemasonry with psychoanalysis, to see it as an attempt to enter a world where the individual seeks to find an avenue of communication between his inner self and his god. The forever present Masonic representation of Jacob’s ladder conveys this goal. As there are multiple doors to physical churches, there are multiple doors to the temple of the human interior. Among them are devotion, contemplation, and action. Contemplation is the entrance chosen by the mystical school, while action is the one taken by the occult school. Though different in methods, these schools have in common the final goal, which is that the “Mason may shape himself into a stone suitable for the temple of God.” 39 Another factor they share is the assumed connection of Masonry to the Ancient Mysteries, mainly to those peculiar to the Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek civilizations. These are present in the ways of the occultists, in their initiation steps and their rituals. All participants in the initiation, that is to say the candidate and the members involved in this ritual, come to know themselves, either through observation, experience, or teaching. This also happens in the passing from one degree to the next. Action means not only engagement in the rituals but also in the society itself and in society at large, through philanthropic causes such as charitable works, social services, and political endeavors (from the eighteenth century until today there have been many Masons actively involved in local, national, and international politics; this has actually become a common trait of Masonry). The possibility of involvement and the potentiality for change are believed to be available to all individuals. But it is only through training, meditation, and experimentation that the individual can exercise his powers. The initiate is asked to sit in a dark cave and reflect upon his past life and his future goals. While by himself, he is exposed to tests, in order to prove his worthiness and his level of maturity. He is then asked to come out and answer all sorts of questions about his endurance and his new perspective. If his answers are as expected, he is shown the light. The candidate is to participate in the Ceremonies of Three Degrees by which he advances to the ranks of Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason. The number three is recurrent within the lodge; there are <?page no="51"?> 51 A Reflection on Masonry 40 In Psychology and Religion, Jung admits that in his profession he has seen many cases of people which have made him “amply aware of the extraordinary importance of dogma and ritual, at least as methods of mental hygiene” (53). 41 MacNutty, 16-32. 42 Jung on Alchemy, 116. three key symbols in the craft: the volume of the sacred law, the compasses, and the square, known also as the Three Great Lights; there are three tracing boards, on which the principles of the three degrees are illustrated. The working tools of the different degrees are in threes: the Apprentices’ tools are the gavel, the chisel, and the twenty-four-inch gauge; the Fellowcraft’s tools are the square, the level, and the plumb-rule; and the Master Mason’s are the pencil, the skirrett, and the compasses. It is interesting to parallel these tridivisions with the id/ ego/ superego of Freud, and / or the individual consciousness, the personal unconsciousness, and the collective unconscious of Jung. 40 This testifies further that Freemasonry is dealing with the body, soul, and spirit of man to attain a contact with god. 41 According to Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, the two authors of The Hiram Key, an investigation of the twin pillars of the Temple of Solomon is of the utmost importance for the understanding of Freemasonry, and if I may add, for the awareness of the religious and psychological tools proposed by this secret society and of Enlightenment itself. The twin pillars bring to light inner as well as societal stability. The right-hand pillar, Joachim, first priest of the Temple, stands for priestly power. The left-hand pillar, Boaz, great grandfather of David, king of Israel, stands for kingly power. Freemasons claim that the word ‘Joachim’ means ‘to establish’, while the word ‘Boaz’ means ‘strength.’ When the two pillars are in place, ‘stability’ is attained (205-212). This is not an original contribution of eighteenth-century Masonry: the Egyptians and the Jews had a similar symbolism, with Lower and Upper Egypt united under the power of one single pharaoh, who was to be the incarnation of Osiris, the sun-god, and with tsedeq, Jesus, and mishpat, the Davidic government, as pillars, and Yahweh the keystone of shalom, peace, who locks everything together. It is the role of alchemy in Masonry which is indeed innovative. According to the occultist school, since alchemy is perceived as a mirror of the complexity of the process of the creation of the self, the alchemists can supply the remedy to the inner maladies of man. Alchemy is, to Masonry, as Jung declared, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing unity. 42 Alchemy, according to the occult school of thought, is the key to the tension of opposites. The knowledge proposed by the alchemists is aimed at eliminating the drama of conflict and mortality by adding balance to disparity. The Trinity, for example, does not represent harmony; it is an uneven num- <?page no="52"?> 52 Chapter Two 43 Ibid, 123-127. 44 Beaurepaire, 93. 45 Derrida, Donner la mort 17. 46 Ibid, 15. 47 Homans, 26. ber, to which the alchemists add a fourth element, Maria Prophetissa, as an expression of wholeness. This fourth element to the triad divinity embodies the unity of the spiritual with the physical. 43 In considering the members of Masonry of eighteenth-century France it is evident that another unity exists, one of sociabilité in parallel with entre-soi: […] projet fondateur, réunir des hommes qui sans cela seraient restés à perpétuelle distance, s’etend donc à deux échelles: la micro-société…la loge comme cellule élémentaire de l’entre-soi fraternel, mais aussi la diaspora des ouvriers de Babel “dispersés sur les deux hémisphères” depuis sa chute…Lorsque le temple des amis choisis est solidement établi, les frères ont désormais la possibilité d’en repousser les limites jusqu’aux bornes du monde connu. 44 Once the bond has been attained within the group, the latter seeks to recruit others to change the physiognomy of society at large. This sociability is only possible, though, through the cultivation and maturation of the soi. In its turn, la genèse de la responsabilité se confondra avec une généalogie du sujet disant “moi”, de son rapport à lui-même comme instance de la liberté, de la singularité et de la responsabilité, du rapport à soi comme être devant l’autre. 45 Religion thus supposes access to the responsibility of a free self. 46 Liberty, equality, fraternity, and social progress, as well as tolerance and cosmopolitanism, were to be pursued through a self maturation, and harmony only made possible through a set of beliefs. The notion of man seeing himself as a source of all intelligibility and at the same time as the subject of all inquiry does not automatically result in happiness. Harmony does not originate from an introspective investigation of the self if the latter does not culminate in an assimilation of the human with the divine, in a communion of the two and in the acceptance of it. This is the fundamental structure of Masonry which in a way replicates the psychic structure followed by Freud. The Freudian self, the ego, is an awareness beset by instinct and culture or instinct and mind, id and superego. According to Freud there are two basic instincts, life and death, 47 Eros and Thanatos. The <?page no="53"?> 53 A Reflection on Masonry 48 Ibid, 76. needs of the self are directed toward objects; the distance between God and man is shortened by objects. Freud’s work, Totem and Taboo, offers an intriguing insight into the worship of a deified object and helps in the understanding of tribal rites, which, according to the fourth school of thought, the anthropological school, are considered to be the precursors of Masonic ritualism. Freud’s analysis of Australian Totemism is enlightening because from it one can draw analogies and find explanation to the rising of sectarian societies in the eighteenth century. The Australian tribes are, in fact, divided into sects or clans under the tutelage of the inherited totem. Their attachment to a certain totem constitutes the justification of all social obligations. The totemic bond is similar to, and sometimes even stronger than, the bond of blood or family. The sect’s members are, in fact, obliged to call brothers and sisters not only the children of their natural parents but also the children of all parental relations in their sect. Consequently, they look upon each other as brothers and sisters and look after each one, helping and instructing each other as the fathers of the group initiate each young male. They also see not only their natural sons but the entire caste’s young members as their dependent offspring. The eighteenth-century Masonic lodges presented similar behavioral patterns, maintaining hierarchical structures, initiatory ceremonies, and camaraderie-type interrelations. As members of any civic and religious congregation do, Masons abided by certain laws and prohibitions they had created in order to achieve the ultimate purpose of their assembly. The regulations imposed can be, according to Freudian terminology referred to as “taboos”. The meaning of this word was extensively researched and explained by Freud due to its contradictory nature. “Taboo” is, in fact, both sacred and forbidden. The concept of “taboo” was first used due to the fear of spiritual forces, mainly demonic, then gradually became an autonomous power detached from this context, and finally grew into customs, traditions, and rules (34). Since it is to be considered as an objectified fear, or as a consequence of such fear, Freud treats it as an unconquerable anxiety, a neurosis. He says that, in both the tribal and the psychoanalytical, the nucleus of prohibition is the act of touching, meaning not only the direct bodily contact but also the “figurative use of the phrase as to come into contact or to be in touch with some one or some thing” (38). The obsessive fear will cause displacement or, as Freud puts it, transference, because prohibitions “make use of almost any form of connection to extend from one object to another and then in turn to make this new object” (38). Neurotic restrictions, like taboo restrictions, entail renunciation, but they can be partially removed if a certain act is performed. Religion is to Freud a lapsus, an “involuntary” error, a dream symptom, or transference. 48 The ceremonial which works to eliminate anxiety is expiation and/ or purification. <?page no="54"?> 54 Chapter Two 49 See David Hays’ article “Carmontelle’s Design for the Jardin de Monceau: A Freemasonic Garden in Late-Eighteenth-Century France” to find out more about landscaping as a reflection of Masonic spirituality. 50 New Introductory Lectures, 829. 51 Homans, 77. Religious rituals are ways to expel fears of distance from the deity or dangerous proximity to the deity, and fears of coming in contact with some other spiritual force that is in opposition to the deity. The Masonic ceremonials were obsessive in this respect: certain objects were to be set facing the sunlight at a certain angle (a southern exposure for the guardian’s seat, for example), their disposition was precise to a fault, and their symbolism extensive and well studied. Recent research has also detected the same compulsion and emblems in the laying out of Masonic garden landscapes. 49 Freud reads all signs hidden in our psyche as products of the cultural and societal background of the individual. He also affirms that each human being has a hidden problem which dates back to childhood and which is externalized into anxiety. If religion is motivated by such anxiety, it has to conceal some kind of unsolved issue. The issue represents a sense of longing, of nostalgia, due to loss or separation. Besides the subject, an important role is played by the parent. In the case of religion, one could argue that the separation is the one Adam (and, with him, the rest of the human species) experienced at the time of the Fall, when a disappointed parent chased his son and daughter away from the garden. In Masonry, the lodge satisfied the desire for reunion after a rejection/ loss, according to historians of this sectarian faith such as Giuseppe Giarrizzo. Giarrizzo claims that the Masons’ objective was the ‘physical’ surpassing of such a barrier, reinforced by the presence of an angel, who was required by God to guard Eden and prohibit the re-entry of Adam and Eve. The best method was to be found in attempts to attain immortality and high knowledge, two traits exclusively divine. In achieving them, man could become immortal, that is divine, thus one with god (148). The analysis given by Freud about the occurrence of telepathy in children is relevant to some of the issues discussed here. In light of Freud’s findings, children are constantly afraid that parents know all their thoughts, even prior to children’s confessions; that is to say children fear that their parents can read their minds. 50 Religion as a father-son relation has the characteristic ambivalence of submission and rebellion. Whereas the first assures protection and favor from the parent, the latter results in independence but also in loneliness. The separation from the parent ironically creates a different type of dependency, which is social and unconscious in nature. 51 This state generates a need for knowledge. The thrill of being able to know can be explained as a game of competition between man and his god or, again, as an attempt, successful or not, to regain communication with him, to be closer to the <?page no="55"?> 55 A Reflection on Masonry 52 Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution 69-70. 53 Anderson, iv. 54 Jacob, Living the Enlightenment 36. 55 Ibid, 8. father whom man has lost due to his erroneous acts and/ or thoughts. The Creator, like any other parent, saw through his children, Adam and Eve. He was able to read their sense of shame and guilt. No hiding place could do them any good for their parent could always find them. No social communion can do man any good unless the community offers a way to find and/ or replace the lost parent and the lost relationship. In eighteenth-century France, the lost parent could also be identified with the monarch, and the lost relation could be the hierarchical pyramid with nobility and clergy at the top. “The father is now absent and the brothers are uniting to take his place [but] in Freud’s terms they were stuck in that phase where no one was able to or was allowed to attain “the father’s supreme power.” 52 The brothers had to be “good and true men, freeborn and of mature and discreet age, no bondsmen, no women, no immoral or scandalous men, but of good report…hale and sound, not deformed or dismembered at the time of their making; but no woman, no eunuch.” 53 There was a meritocracy in place, with different degrees to pass and different functions to assume. Finally the Grand Master had to be of noble descent or “a Gentleman of the best fashion, or a Scholar or some curious Architect, or other Artist.” 54 The eighteenth-century fraternities were not for everyone. The adepts were charged membership fees, particularly high in the circles where the leaders had charisma and prestige. To join the Mesmerist society, for example, entailed a fee of 100 louis or 600 livres, a huge amount for the time. It is not to be forgotten that rather than being a hindrance to recruitment, the membership fee was actually an appealing trait, for it excluded undesired members of the population. The parameters imposed on the new assemblies resembled militaristic circles. According to Daniel Ligou, the Parisian lodges consisted of 60% military members, while in the provinces they were only 47%. It is not hard to comprehend the sympathy the French military nurtured for the lodges; the presence of a code of honor, of a dress code, of camaraderie, and of ranking was enough to make them feel at home. If on the one hand, one can see the Masonic lodge as a micro monarchical society, on the other hand one has to agree with Jacob’s statement that the structure implemented in the lodges was innovative and later copied by the new revolutionary government which, like the lodges, governed locally and centrally through a system of departments and districts. 55 Thus we have to assert that the lodges were not a phenomenon of mirroring but of interchangeability, as they were not trying to re-establish a relationship between a governmental leader and the people. The Church and the Crown saw in the lodges a constant menace to stability and morality, targeting them <?page no="56"?> 56 Chapter Two 56 Cazzaniga, 14. for their printing and assembly activities; it is indeed true that it was within the context of the intellectually engagés, of editorial houses, antiquarian societies, museums and libraries privately owned and funded but open to the public, of philanthropic programs, and grand tourism, that the lodges are to be located and examined. Freedom of association did imply freedom of thought and speech, including freedom of religion; and freedom was accompanied by tolerance and diversity. Not all members shared the same political ideology, or for that matter the same ideological background. The complexity of the Masonic sects’ identity and networking does not prevent us from claiming the importance of the nascent lodges of the 1700s. The existence and strength of the eighteenth-century lodges were justified by the necessity of searching, typical of this era. The Masonic lodges were laboratories of ideas, of good habits (moeurs, Sitten, Morali), separate settings which allowed all brothers to communicate with one another, 56 to instruct one another in order to find themselves first as individuals, and secondly as integral parts of a group, of a network. Masonry was a response, nurtured through the cultural and psychological turmoil of the century, by men who wanted eagerly to discover the truth, and to attain peace and happiness through the divine. In 1737 a Scot, Andrew Michael Ramsay, tutor to royalty, member of the Royal Society, chevalier of the Order of St. Lazarus, and grand chancellor of the Grand Paris Lodge of Freemasonry, delivered for the first time an oration at the Masonic Lodge of Saint Thomas in Paris which summarizes all qualities and intents required to become a Freemason, and the true aims of the French order. In it, Ramsay explained that the original Masons were men who had taken vows to restore the Temple of Christianity in the Holy Land: We want to bring together men of an enlightened mind and an agreeable temper not only by the love of fine arts but just as much by the grand principles of virtue, where the interests of the brotherhood becomes that of the whole humanity, where all Nations can draw on real knowledge, and where all the subjects of the different kingdoms can agree together without jealousy[…]The Order of Freemasons was instituted to make men worthy, good citizens and good subjects, inviolable in their promises, faithful worshippers of the God of Friendship, loving virtue more than recompense[…]We have among us three types of brothers[…]To the first we explain moral and philanthropic virtues, to the second heroic virtues, to the third the virtues of the superhuman and the divine. (par. 1) <?page no="57"?> 57 A Reflection on Masonry 57 Robinson, 183. 58 See the records left by the novelliste de la Nationale in 1745, as they are reported by Chevallier, 125-126. 59 Apologie by Procope, as reported by Chevallier, 200. Though the road to success was arduous and long, the means were readily available. Inspired by Ramsay’s oration, new Masonic degrees and rites, some of which were exported to other countries, exploded in France. One French system evolving from the result of the speech of Ramsay, the Scottish Masonry, graduated up to a thirty-third degree and was exported to the United States. 57 From the Mason to the Rest of the World The image that most of us have of the Freemasonry is one enveloped in a veil of mystery, secrecy, rituals, sacrifices, even death as portrayed by filmmakers and writers in recent times. But one shall not look to secondary sources to seize the correct picture of this enclave of “free men” or “servi veri.” Much literature has been left behind about or by Masons: from records about their meetings 58 to philosophical treatises, essays, novels, and poetic compositions about their identity: Qu’est ce qu’un Franc-Maçon? En voici le portrait : C’est un bon citoyen, un sujet plein de zèle, A son Prince, à l’Etat fidèle, Et de plus un ami parfait. Chez nous règne une liberté, Toujours soumise à la décence, Nous y goûtons la volupté, Mais sans que le ciel s’en offense Quoiqu’aux yeux du public nos plaisirs soient secrets, Aux plus austères loix l’ordre sait nous astreindre. Les Francs-Maçons n’ont point à craindre Ni les remords ni les regrets. Le but où tendent nos desseins Est de faire revivre Astrée, Et de remettre les humains, Comme ils étoient du tems de Rhée. Nous suivons tous des sentiers peu battus Nous cherchons à bâtir et tous nos édifices Sont ou des prisons pour les vices Ou des Temples pour la vertu. 59 Some of these were even sung during special celebrations to stimulate veteran and proselyte Masons: <?page no="58"?> 58 Chapter Two 60 Chanson maçonnique, as reported by de Laurens, 112. 61 Klein’s “On Freedom of Thought and of the Press: For Princes, Ministers, and Writers,” 93, from Freedom and Property (1790) purported to be a series of dialogues between members of the Wednesday Society. La lanterne à la main En plein jour dans Athène Tu cherchais un humain, Sevère Diogéne; De tous tant que nous sommes Visite les maisons, Tu trouveras des hommes Chez tous les Francs-Maçons. 60 Writers and readers were invited to be careful about the scope of their literary creations within a universal plan in which truth needed to be spread. The German Masons Klein and Fichte give us two important evidences about the respective audiences: Writers! If you would teach mankind, then prove that you deserve this sublime title. Remove all suspicion of low purposes, or hasty passion. Do not touch persons, but strike at things. Show not only wit and boldness, but also deliberation and high-mindedness. Think, when you write, not only of the fame that you will earn, but above all of the utility you will provide. Your writing is an arrow whose influence you cannot stop, once you have sent it on its way. 61 I in these letters sought to set forth the most intimate spirit of All possible mysteries according to my best knowledge and power And in no way kept anything back to myself, while I always made Use of the form of argument and ordinary speech. But at the same Time I am very sure that I have not revealed either to you or to Anyone who might chance to read these letters what he may not Know and I may not say. For there are in all bookstores books For open sale which, although indeed they treat of Masonry, yet Do not reveal a syllable of Masonry. But on the other hand - and Mark this diligently - there are in all bookstores books of Masons And of non-Masons which make no mention of Masonry, whose Authors perhaps did not know one word of Masonry, which Nevertheless are throughout genuinely Masonic. (Fichte 61) After having grown himself, the Mason had the duty to spread the light, to enlighten others. The manner in which he was to do that was to be subtle, as Fichte suggested, revealing as much as possible for the sake of humanity, for individual and overall progress, but without shedding too much light on the secret conventions of the order. It was easy to transpose the stages of growth or Bildung into written pages as examples to others, without being too <?page no="59"?> 59 A Reflection on Masonry 62 See her article “Paideia as Bildung in Germany in the Age of Enlightenment.” http: / / www.bu.edu/ wcp/ Papers/ Mode/ ModeGiac.htm preachy or too personal. The secret was going to lurk behind the typology of literature used. The secret could be revealed by getting more acquainted with the term Bildung, already introduced by Mendelssohn and Fichte, and other German Freemasons. Paola Giacomoni does a wonderful job at summarizing the tradition of this term. As she states, Bildung is not an eighteenth-century neologism even though it becomes a key word to voice the new intellectual attitude of the men of the Enlightenment. The verb bilden presents two different elements: on the one side the activity of producing, of giving shape to a concrete object and, on the other, the relationship of likeness or imitation between the original image (Bild or Urbild) and its resembling reproduction (Abbild). Such a double meaning of Bildung corresponds to the double meaning given by the medieval mystics which they derived directly from certain passages of the Bible. The first translates the act of creation as the place where something active and productive gives rise to an organized entity, a form of life (in this instance Bildung translates the dialectic of forma-formatio). The second meaning corresponds to the fact that this creation or production occurs “in the likeness of the Creator”; its physionomy is thus determined on the basis of an original model, of an image which gives meaning and function to new life. Bildung, in this case, expresses the relationship between imago-imitatio. The concept of Bildung has gone through many stages and turning points, from the mysticism of Eckhart, in which man as a divine image is reborn by divesting himself of his external shape and reforming through total detachment from the world, through Böhme’s reflections on man’s choice of divine image in the struggle against evil, to Pietist Empfindsamkeit (sensitivity), in which Bildung meant abandon, even sentimental, to divine will; in these cases the dimension of spirituality, in various ways, always prevailed. In the Age of Enlightenment, from Shaftesbury’s “forming form” concept which had great influence in the German world, more specifically to Lessing’s Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, Bildung was self-education for humanity, which took on a more and more dynamic and progressive dimension and which followed the direction of research into the sphere of spirituality. At the end of the 18th century, the term had then reached its maximum expansion and it is at this point, that new literary genres are invented, such as, the Bildungsroman and Bildungsreise. The subject of these genres is the individual’s complex itinerary in the search for himself. The model to which reference is made represents the image of universal perfection which is definable on the basis of precise rules; it is an imago dei, a process of development which represents the product between an internal law and the circumstances of the external environment. 62 These two literary genres seemed fitting for the new disposition of the time and the propagandistic effectiveness. Material and spiritual progress, the concept and <?page no="60"?> 60 Chapter Two 63 Jung, Archetypes, 179. goal of perfectibility, male bonding, curiosity, civility, and social mobility became the recurring themes of the flourishing travelogues and novels of formation. It is difficult to separate the apparent physical travel from the psychological travel: the voyage reproduces the classical model of the recovery of the social order as a reflection of a cosmic order, thus of the conscious recovery of that which is inside of oneself, a quest for the self, according to Freud and Jung. The voyager or Bildungsheld reminds us of the Jungian child archetype, which is of great importance in the maturation process of personality acquired through the analysis of the unconscious. So the child motif, which is a picture of certain memories of childhood unconsciously buried in a repository, the psyche, can be applied to individual experiences and to historical settings alike. This can spur the party to envision himself at the original state, which is certainly true in the case of religious practices, and of religious man. In spite of the regression that this new “identity” may bring, the child archetype signifies development, progress, the genesis of the self. This self is threatened by external forces, the dangers of the new consciousness. It is confrontation that makes consciousness possible. The known and the unknown, the independent and the dependent, the isolated and the sociable, the carnal and the divine, are all attributes of the new creation, which “determine[s] the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality,” 63 and at the same time a quest for otherness, as an attempt to know oneself as a stage of maturation; the Bildungsroman is a double story of the bourgeois who emancipates from the condition of sub-alternity through apprenticeship which integrates him within the social order and of the subjectivity which is protagonist of the story. Both involve the reader in the same process of development as the main character. Their aim is to affect the reader’s personal growth as well; the reader, in effect, learns from the situation before the protagonist or, otherwise, compares his own morality against the morality of the story and of its hero and, in the case of the travelogue, sees with the eyes of the writer (who is also the protagonist of the travelogue) the faraway lands with all their treasures, people, and habits. In a few words, the material and spiritual progress witnessed is therefore achieved. The pedagogical process is two-fold. All Masons saw in their new community a great opportunity for the individual to reach full maturity, through initiatory rites, fellowship, mentorship, and a commitment that was to demonstrate an immeasurable sense of selflessness and open-mindedness. The young man was first instructed in loco, then asked to start his personal voyage for the completion of his professional and aesthetic education. The young noble coming from the north, financed by his sect, followed a certain network and a certain path which seemed inevitably to take him to the south, where he was officially <?page no="61"?> 61 A Reflection on Masonry accepted as adept or where he would meet other members to start his public pan-European revolution. It is the figure of the adept which looms in the pages of the literary works as well as the historical events of the time. His voyages, which at first sight seem aimed at enlarging the intellectual baggage of the voyager and that of readers of the detailed account of these enterprises, are proofs of a true business plan, undeniable declarations of a gained level of maturity as an individual but first and foremost as a Masonic member. The voyages are demonstrations of the possibility of upward mobility, and of intellectual enrichment that is only possible through the assent of the person involved. The voyage is indeed a victorious stage of the sect as well as of the adept himself. It can be compared to a rite of initiation, to the overcoming of obstacles. The voyage of the eighteenth century is an odyssey of the soul, a rigorous self-realization through the attainment of knowledge of nature, of others, and of oneself. While seeing, touching, and categorizing rocks, new animal species, plants, and geographical places, the individual discovers the identity of Nature and sees his primary role as king of the earth fulfilled. In contact with other populations and customs, being attentive and receptive to the diversity encountered, the individual learns of the existence of the other, of the uniqueness of man, and of the unlimited possibilities offered to him. While comparing and contrasting his physical as well as societal traits, the individual is able to better gain self-assertion, self-confidence, and self-realization. Above all, the young man is able to see a common denominator, an entity outside himself, creator of all men and of Nature, which he understands to be the beginning and end of all knowledge. The knowledge that he is attempting to grasp during the adventurous trajectory taken will prove to be an indispensable tool for a total self-identification, the legitimacy to say scio ergo divinus sum. The adept was initiated by members of his social class and of the nation in which he was hosted. The European net of Freemasonry coincides with the circuits of the Grand Tour not coincidentally, as Gian Mario Cazzaniga has boldly asserted. It is neither coincidence that in a fairly new Freemasonic dictionary, sprung from an online glossary dated 1997, compiled by Joseph Castelli, the term “voyage” is defined as épreuve de l’initiation, reconfirmed by its predecessor Jean Louis Laurens, author of Vocabulaire des Francs-Macons, according to whom On donne ce nom [voyages] a une partie des épreuves que l’on fait subir au récipiendaire et qui consistent à le faire voyager sur tous les points du monde. (47) It is not a coincidence that the first Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meisters Lehjahre, or Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, (1796) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, <?page no="62"?> 62 Chapter Two was followed by Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, or Wilhelm Meister’s Travels (1821-29). It is not a coincidence that the author was a Mason and that he made several specific references to Freemasonry (the Turmgesellschaft or Society of the Tower, and its impact on the life of the protagonist, to name one major reference). The Masonic tone is even more pronounced in the successive epic. While a British “brother” of no lesser importance was also writing stories of crafting, learning, mastering, a crescendo of tests and conquests (Robinson Crusoe was not the only Defoe’s characters in which one can detect these phases, a certain routine typical of initiations and apprenticeship - one cannot forget, in fact, Moll Flanders, the urban survivor, Colonel Jack, the itinerant adventurer, or Roxana, the middle class femme fatale, to name a few), in France, masterpieces such as Manon Lescaut, Candide, Les Egarements du coeur et de l’esprit and Point de lendemain were also published. On verra dans ces mémoires un homme tel qu’ils sont presque tous dans une extrême jeunesse, simple d’abord & sans art, & ne connaissant pas encore le monde où il est obligé de vivre. La première & la seconde parties roulent sur cette ignorance & sur ses premières amours. C’est, dans les suivantes, un homme plein de fausses idées, & pétri de ridicules, & qui y est moins entraîné encore par lui-même, que par des personnes intéressées à lui corrompre le cœur, & l’esprit. On le verra enfin dans les dernières, rendu à lui-même, devoir toutes ses vertus à une femme estimable. (Crébillon, preface) As Claude Reichler speaks of the triadic format of the most popular eighteenth-century novels (that is to say, of idealization, maîtrise/ disillusion, poursuite d’un objet inaccessible) (49), other tri-dimensional components can be easily found in them (i.e. adept, mentor, goddess/ the unattainable). If seduction games and love triangles are recurring themes in these literary works, they mostly represent methodical initiations to a new religion. Overtly initiatory steps are therein included: the entering into the society, or baptism, with all its trepidation and expectations; the temptation, or ultimate seduction where all barriers are finally down; and the transformation, where the initiate assumes a completely different identity - he is a new creature, educated, socially and physically ready to “attack,” fit to win other souls. As in any religious setting, alongside with the new recruit, there is always a veteran, someone who sustains the adept(s), a fellowship, one peer or multiple ones to help. This could be a priest, or an ecclesiastical leader, a higher-ranking peer or an “acquired” brother or sister in faith. In eighteenthcentury Bildungsromane, these aids take the resemblance of friends, mates, or mentors who have espoused the same cause, and maybe, either in the past or in a more recent time, have experienced the same tribulations. In Les Egarements du coeur et de l’esprit, the supporter of Meilcour is Versac. Versac is <?page no="63"?> 63 A Reflection on Masonry 64 Brady, 175. a self-sufficient, self-styled Don Juan, an ideal, someone to imitate, Meilcour’s alter-ego. He knows all the rules of the game of seduction; he manipulates them; he invents his own. Versac gives lessons of love and esprit; he chooses his preys for his new student; he plans his next moves and asks for full attention and total obedience. Overall, he imposes secrecy. Similarly in Manon Lescaut, des Grieux’s faithful companion, Tiberge, succeeds, patiently and persistently, in his salvation plan. Des Grieux will be redirected to his longlost family and virtue. The Abbé Prévost’s purpose seems to be purely didactic; he wants to be useful to society by redirecting the naiveté of youth, by instructing them on embracing virtue: Si le public a trouvé quelque chose d’agréable et d’intéressant dans l’histoire de ma vie, j’ose lui promettre qu’il ne sera pas moins satisfait de cette addition. Il verra, dans la conduite de M. Des Grieux, un exemple terrible de la force des passions. J’ai à peindre un jeune aveugle, qui refuse d’être heureux, pour se précipiter volontairement dans les dernières infortunes; qui, avec toutes les qualités dont se forme le plus brillant mérite, préfère, par choix, une vie obscure et vagabonde, à tous les avantages de la fortune et de la nature; qui prévoit ses malheurs, sans vouloir les éviter; qui les sent et qui en est accablé, sans profiter des remèdes qu’on lui offre sans cesse et qui peuvent à tous moments les finir; enfin un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d’actions mauvaises. Tel est le fond du tableau que je présente. Les personnes de bon sens ne regarderont point un ouvrage de cette nature comme un travail inutile. Outre le plaisir d’une lecture agréable, on y trouvera peu d’événements qui ne puissent servir à l’instruction des mœurs; et c’est rendre, à mon avis, un service considérable au public, que de l’instruire en l’amusant. (preface) Another lesson of life imparted by Pangloss is attentively listened by Voltaire’s Candide, in order to achieve progress, through experience, from innocence to wisdom. Amongst the most central themes are those of evil (of Nature to man, of man to man), happiness (ideal-love, Utopia; real-pleasure, achievement), and maturation (from idealism to realism and meliorism [happiness through work]). 64 Candide’s iter is clear: from the fall, the lost paradise, symbolized by the castle of Westphalia to another paradise, an eternal paradise. The first paradise belongs to God, while the second belongs to man (hence the possessive notre before jardin and the necessity of cultivation, of physical tender care). <?page no="64"?> 64 Chapter Two While Eden and the universe itself are God’s museum, man-made museums as temples and collections of man-made creations were expressions of new confidence, new attempts of perfection as envisioned by Masonry. Denon’s belief in personal growth as shown in his Bildungsroman, Point de lendemain, is paired by an encyclopedic material display of this growth as part of the history of a nation and of humankind: the Louvre, of which he became the first director, and of personal collection were the products of his unquenchable thirst for the unknown and the unusual. Eighteenth-century collections, just like the Bildungsroman and Bildungsreise, bearing Masonic signatures, were indeed ways of revealing a period of conscious research of the soul and the body. Denon’s biography and works embody all these philosophies and genres. In spite of his monumental (in more ways than one) contribution, he remains to be considered a marginal representative of the century. It is my desire to chart this unexplored territory. <?page no="65"?> C HAPTER T HREE Dominique Vivant Denon: Dazzling Power(s) in the Cabinet of Wonders Parvenus à Altichiero, nos voyageurs trouvèrent d’abord un bois d’arbre auguste, où les rayons du soleil ne pénétraient que faiblement et donc l’ombre majestueuse semblait porter dans l’âme une douce mélancolie (Denon, Lettres à Bettine 606). Tout était éclairé, tout annonçait la joie (Denon, Point de lendemain 387). A true polymath, Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, the first director of the Louvre, French ambassador, right arm of Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign, writer, graveur, and collector, has left behind provocative and enigmatic records of his life and of his artistic productions. The interpretations that have derived from past and recent studies explain Denon and his contributions under the rubrics of nationalism, curiosity, hedonism, and sentimentality. Two glaring omissions in these interpretations are at the center of my analysis of Denon and his times: his extraordinary and peculiar private collection and his identification as a Mason. Recent scholarship has established a close link between collection and fetishism. Such association can be extended to religion, or worship, but also to a form of libido dominanti, an obsession to control, a deeper thrust behind the urge for instant gratification. The Masonic rites taking place in the intimacy of a lodge can be seen as parallel to the ritualism of preserving and cataloguing within the privacy of a personal cabinet. In both settings, the involved party is able to replicate the role of a god, able to create, modify, maintain, and terminate all which lies under his jurisdiction. The substantiation of religion as power, or search for power, is evident in the unfolding of the French Revolution. Denon’s révolution en esprit, constructed as a movement of progress, charge, and transformation, corresponds to the societal upheavals of post-1789; without repudiating the structure of the institutions of early modern France, the largest museum of the world, the Louvre, and the most vast and interesting private collection of the time overseen by Denon are repositories of knowledge and disciplinary observatories, in short they are the epitomes of Foucault’s theory of pouvoir/ savoir. <?page no="66"?> 66 Chapter Three 1 Julie ou le bon père, a play in three acts, in prose, which will be discussed later in this chapter. 2 It is common knowledge that Denon used to walk by the royal garden hoping to see the king. One day, he succeeded in entering the garden. Though stopped by the guards, Denon had thus the opportunity not only to see the king but also to flatter him. 3 Denon is particularly renowned for his travel logs. See Voyage en Sicile and Voyage dans la Basse et Haute Egypte pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte. 4 Among his friends were sovereigns such as Catherine the Great, Frederick II, the already mentioned Louis XV, and Louis XVI; artists, philosophers, and politicians such as David, Voltaire, Robespierre, and Danton. The awareness of Denon’s religious creed is crucial to understanding not only his writing, but also his travels and his role as a national and private collector. Acknowledging the origin of his motives is indispensable to understanding Denon, but also his contemporaries. In spite of the label of uniqueness given to this interesting character, there were many individuals in eighteenth-century Europe who shared his proclivities. To substantiate these assertions, it is necessary to investigate Denon’s identity and to examine his artistic creations. Born de Non at Givry, near Chalon-sur-Saône, in 1747 from a family of petite noblesse, owners of a vineyard, Dominique Vivant Denon was sent to finish his studies in Paris at the age of 18 by his father with the hope that he would become a magistrate. Some years later, more precisely in 1769, while studying drawing and writing a theatrical play, 1 Denon mysteriously gained the respect and trust of Louis XV, becoming the person in charge of the collection of the pierres gravées owned by the marquise de Pompadour, and a gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi. 2 The mystery continues with the development of a diplomatic career which allowed him to travel to countries such as Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. This opportunity proved itself to be a significant inspiration for his literary production. 3 Denon’s path crossed that of many illustrious men and women of Europe. Many of these contacts were to be instrumental to his survival during a time of ferment and political uprising. 4 Denon sailed through troubled waters with ease and enthusiasm thanks to his own charm and talent, appearing to nurture the desire to honor his country and fellowmen; for this reason several scholars have remarked that Denon was a nationalist. They stress the fact that his main objective as first director of the Louvre was to overwhelm the public of the entire world with the greatness of France, and of its past and present leaders. Scholars such as Edward P. Alexander and Elaine Williamson, commenting upon the methods employed by Denon for his public and private exhibits (among these the historical arrangement of paintings and works of art, set chronologically by schools and artists, the selection of certain works which were successful in demonstrating the evolution of human capabilities), testify that the works of art in Denon’s possession served indeed to demonstrate the advancement of society, the glory of past civilizations from which <?page no="67"?> 67 Dominique Vivant Denon 5 See Museum Masters, by Edward P. Alexander, chapter 4, dedicated to Denon and the Louvre, “The Art Museum as Symbol of National Glory” 97. On the same matter, see Elaine Williamson and her “Denon et la Propagande” 48. 6 In one of Denon’s letters addressed to Isabella Teotochi Marin, he referred to the sainte ampoule as a possible future “omelette.” (see Lettres à Bettine, 128). The ampoule, containing the oil to deposit on the head of the king of France during the coronation was, according to legend, brought by a dove to the archbishop of Reims to baptize the first monarch, Clovis. 7 Sollers, 178. 8 For example, Pierre Rosenberg and Judith Nowinski. France derived its own, and finally the respect due to the nation hosting such precious gems, France. 5 Although Denon’s assertion of art as an important tool to show the efforts and eventual successes of man and of the French in particular is undeniable, one must not forget his dubious faithfulness to his homeland; his irreverence for the “sacred” past of France; 6 his less than exemplary behavior as a French representative abroad, with sodomite tendencies and with a taste for books and things which were contrary to the law; 7 and his volatile political preferences. The nationalistic nature of his collections does not explain either his personal attitude or the curious nature of his possessions. Denon’s thirst for collection (even the eccentric gatherings he accomplished for his own personal use) seems to be easily justified by a developed sense of curiosity, as suggested by recent scholars. 8 Further his taste and inquisitive mind have been labeled as hedonistic. This should not surprise any individual with a minimum knowledge of the artistic heritage revived so often and heartily in eighteenth-century Europe. Denon was not insensitive to this trend. He cultivated an evident love for the beautiful, and imitated the predominant Greco-Roman concepts of aesthetics. It is also true that Denon liked to experiment. This is particularly tangible in his representations of human physical features. As Deidre Lynch points out, in both literary and artistic works of the eighteenth century, the body was viewed as a dualistic unit - dependent and perfect on one side, independent and vulnerable on the other. At times, it is represented as an exaggerated, exuberant, sensual subject; at others, a target of morbid seduction, defenseless under physical pain, an inanimate object. The human body appeared as a natural, physical component and/ or as a psychological projection of erotica. In some cases, it was beautiful, intact; in others it was displayed as mutilated, diseased. In the eighteenth century this was a way for artists to disfigure identities, to mock a Supreme Being, to challenge the given (112-43). In both his pictorial and literary representations, Denon followed these two schemes, leaving his own senses unbridled. His love for Nature and Beauty is confirmed by the pages of his travelogues where he minutely describes the landscape: the bodily and facial expressions of the people he <?page no="68"?> 68 Chapter Three 9 Denon, LAB 245. meets, as well as the characteristics of rocks and of plants, and even weather conditions. His desire to fully participate in the process of creating, owning, decomposing, or preserving all that was, is otherwise proven by the fragments of bones, teeth, clothing, and the embalmed animal and human parts Denon jealously kept in his cabinet of wonder at quai Voltaire. The intimate and long-lasting correspondence maintained by Denon and Isabella (a.k.a. Bettine) Teotochi, rather than revealing a man of sentiment, reiterates at first analysis an opportunistic attitude. This “Madame de Staël de la Sérenissime” was married to a certain Marini, actively involved in the government of Venice, 9 an important link for someone who was seriously in trouble with the Venetian authorities under suspicion of insurrection. Denon also “exploited” his friendship with Bettine for more practical reasons, such as the forwarding of needed supplies, and as a point of contact for business transactions. Although Denon is depicted as the one faithfully in love with this wealthy, young, cultivated, and attractive lady, there are no tangible proofs of his affection for her, except for a visible devotion not dissimilar to the one that friends and business partners alike may have for each other. If this relation was of another nature, it remains to be proven. There is one key that fits all locks in the affaire Teotochi Marin, one missing piece to the puzzle which will reveal the complete image. The solution is Freemasonry. Teotochi’s two successive husbands were, in fact, members of a Masonic Lodge. It was mandatory for a member not to have a sentimental and/ or sexual relation with another member’s wife, sister, or daughter. This code may justify the conclusion that Denon kept his distance from Bettine because he was actively involved in Masonry. To establish that Denon was indeed a Mason, and that such connection was of significance in his life and works, and not mere speculation on my part, one must examine some factual data. The evidence is provided by a number of credible sources. Among these are Philippe Sollers’s Le cavalier du Louvre, in which in turn the author quotes the Dictionnaire de la Franc- Maçonnerie by Daniel Ligou. In the latter Denon is listed as a member of the sacred order of the Sophisiens and of the Lodge La parfaite réunion. Denon’s status as active member is confirmed by Michel Gaudart de Soulanges in his Dictionnaire des Francs-maçons français, where one can find an extensive list of other Masonic members. It is no coincidence that this list features the name of many of Denon’s “friends” and superiors (Voltaire, Napoleon, Louis XV, Frederick the Great, David, Robespierre, the Prince of Biscari). Yet one is still bound to prove whether there are tangible influences of this membership on Denon’s works. Did Denon’s role in the arts and history fit with the Masonic creeds and social rulings that permeated the period in which he lived? As Giuseppe Giarrizzo attests, after the 1750s an authentic fever of sectarianism spread all over Europe: in a context of wars and social <?page no="69"?> 69 Dominique Vivant Denon 10 The simplest explanation is supplied to us by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1974), which declares that a museum is an institution devoted to the procurement, care, and display of objects of lasting interest and value. challenges, the fragility of the old societies and the aggressiveness of the new ones required the redefinition of a system of values that these sects could indeed offer (146-149). With its pyramidal structure, Masonry set elitist rulings in order that the nobility could maintain its predominance in the social scale. It also allowed a certain communal forum wherein the ideologies and erotic activities of the time could be shared. It represented a safe haven for the noble libertine, a perfect place for congregation for a young provincial man like Denon. But Masonry offered more to individuals like Denon. It offered the possibility of re-stating the glory of man as it had been given to him at the beginning of the world. The Lodge appealed to some of man’s nobler impulses, including the desire for acceptance and the craving to be part of something great. Masonry could supply the means to capture the primeval reward man had received: immortality through a solid interconnection between the Creator and the one created. Though the bridge between heaven and earth had been broken, Masonic brothers were rebuilding a chain of trust in themselves and in others, a circle with no beginning or end. They were accumulating knowledge and possessions to pass on to the other brothers to come. Resembling a horizontal Tower of Babel, the Lodge offered its members the internal harmony they sought and, to a certain extent, achieved. As we have seen, in Les Ducs sous l’acacia, Chevallier records Freemasons as following paths seldom taken and attempting to construct buildings which are either prisons for vices or temples for virtues. Nothing exemplifies better the character of Denon, and his inclination to build a temple, sign of an aspiration for union, a way to fit into the divine plan for the betterment of the state of mankind, a temple of pleasure and an altar of virtues at the same time, which readers can find in Denon’s novella Point de lendemain. Masonry is recognizable in Denon’s two most important achievements: art collections and literature. Relying on his knowledge and talent, Denon created his own temple. Denon’s Private Collection New scholarship on collecting offers a variety of tools to re-examine not only Denon’s public accumulations but primarily his private ones, which have received, thus far, scant attention. Following the perspectives of scholars such as P. Findlen, L. Auslander, and S. Pearce, with their respective psychoanalytical, historical, and anthropological approaches, one can finally comprehend the influence of Masonry in both of Denon’s contributions to art collections. The starting point is undoubtedly the definition of the term “museum” itself. 10 The history of the meaning inherent in this institution is of utmost <?page no="70"?> 70 Chapter Three 11 Findlen, 16. 12 p. 3. The writer’s choice of the word worshippers is indeed interesting. We will see that this is not fortuitous. The galleries which hold works of art, which in turn attract the attention of many individuals no matter their origin, race, or age, are comparable to churches or to places of devotion. importance. As remarked by Paula Findlen, according to Kircher, a midsixteenth century Jesuit in Rome, the first museum was Noah’s Ark. For him, as for many naturalists, the Ark was, in fact, the greatest homage ever built to pure knowledge. While Eden, and by extension the universe in itself, was God’s museum, the Ark was man’s attempt to imitate God: built outside of Eden, the Ark was outside the moral universe of Paradise, yet contained its remnants. The relationship between human identities and the objects that humans possess has always been important. From the Renaissance up to the eighteenth century, man created a cabinet of the world which was a mirror of the entire world and that the entire world had in common. Collections become thus central not only to the glorification of man but to the understanding of man and of the material world in which he lived. Driven by curiosity about their own identities and surroundings, humanists and aristocrats (collectors) resorted to antiquities and items collected to launch their investigation. Museums incarnated the scope and outlay of laboratories of human behavior. 11 E. Alexander highlights the fact that in the eighteenth century the word museum appears in Museographia (1727) by Casper F. Neickel of Hamburg, as a chamber of treasures, rarities, objects of nature, of art and of reason while in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), the same word refers to a repository of learned curiosities. Johnson’s term learned curiosities suggests that the audience of the museums of the time was formed by collectors, connoisseurs, scholars, educated and wealthy worshippers. 12 Furthermore James J. Sheehan reveals to us the fundamental innovations during this period (many of which are to be attributed to Denon himself), regarding the accessibility of works of art. The most important among them was the way the art was displayed and consequently the way it was experienced. The reception became more private; it involved a direct and individualized connection between viewer and object. No longer a backdrop for courtly ceremony or religious ritual, art started to be seen as a source of its own special kind of spirituality and moral richness. It is no coincidence that Goethe, a friend of Denon himself, describes as follows his trip to the Elector’s gallery in Dresden: The space, which was used for viewing rather than for work, conveyed a unique feeling of solemnity that resembled the emotion one has upon entering a shrine. (169-171) Playing with words, one could say that the Musée can be seen as the dwelling of the Muses. In a time when power came from the unity of society, the <?page no="71"?> 71 Dominique Vivant Denon 13 As quoted in Michael Steinberg’s “The Collector as Allegorist,” 117-118. This article reproduces also the episode of H.D. and Freud as it appeared in another of John Forrester’s works, “Mille e Tre: Freud and Collecting,” in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge, Mass., 1994). formation of the country as a Nation, yet where it was not quite clear how the Nation’s will was to be recognized in practice, symbols of this power were replaced by others which did not necessarily imply a drastic change or open confrontation with the old ones but rather an incorporation, maintaining a spiritual inspiration. The Revolution denoted that there was a need for destruction and rebirth; this remaking was in the hands of mankind. If on the one side, people felt they were in control, on the other they felt the stress of anxieties that came with that responsibility. The replacement/ possession of things, new as well as old, helped to overcome this sense of despair and temporarily filled a void that had never been so consciously apparent before. John Forrester reminds us that one century later Freud’s own relation to his considerable private collection reiterated the interplay of the words sanctuary/ museum, and of gods/ goods, reporting the episode recorded by H. D., the poet friend and patient of Freud, who described thus her first contact with the display Freud boasted in his office: A lover of Greek art, I am automatically taking stock of the rooms’ contents. Precisely lovely objects and displayed here on the shelves to the right, to the left of me […]What he said - and I thought a little sadly - was, ‘You are the only person who has ever come into this room and looked at the things in the room before looking at me.’ (121) When the exiled Freud took up residence in London, in 1938, H.D. sent him gardenias, which reminded him of Rome, where he had previously spent some time. She attached a card on which she wrote” “To greet the return of the Gods” (132-133). The remarkable and remarked interplay of the terms goods/ gods comes to express that for Freud goods meant not only what is exchanged, but rather what is highest, most ethical, and aesthetically pure, in resemblance to gods. Likewise Heidegger advances a similar connection in which, though, the roles are reversed: if for Freud gods become goods, for Heidegger goods become gods. Thus Heidegger writes, “The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves. This view remains open as long as the work is a work, as long as the god has not fled from it.” 13 Denon attempted to stop his gods from parting from him, when twelve years after his appointment as director of the Musée Français or National, freshly renamed Musée Napoléon, with objects belonging to the royal palace and others resulting from confiscations and wars, the Germans demanded that their works of art be returned. He defended his belongings with “une <?page no="72"?> 72 Chapter Three 14 Savoy, “Le naufrage de toute une époque,” Dominique Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon, 259. 15 Duval, 335. 16 Ibid, 336. ferveur monomane.” 14 His profession as the direct guardian of such treasures, the High Priest of the temple he had erected, provided him at once with a refuge from ordinary society and a mission within it; above all it gave him power. As a man of his time, he saw himself as both the source of all intelligibility and the agent of all inquiry, thus separated from God’s creation and sovereign in place of God. Collecting for Denon did not begin in the museum: né avec un goût décidé pour les arts, dès mon enfance, je leur ai voué un culte plutôt qu’une admiration. 15 Rather than seeing the museum as a point of departure, one should imagine it as the end, the resolution of a long and complicated process of traveling, from purchasing or discovering of an object until this object was possessed by human hands, continuing to the point at which it was to become a specimen displayed in the museum for the gratification and worship of others. How can one locate the private collection in this scheme of gratification of others? Some claim that this aim continued after Denon’s resignation from the official position of Director of the prestigious Louvre, since Denon was said to host tourists, curious visitors, and friends in his private quarters. Yet no “private exhibition” has been systematically analyzed, in spite of the written reports of Lady Morgan and Thomas Dibdin’s visits (respectively L’hôtel du Baron Denon, and Voyage bibliographique, archéologique et pittoresque en France) which might represent isolated cases. Up to this point, Denon’s private cabinet and the accumulations contained within remain unexplored. Contrary to widespread opinion, Denon’s private collection did not start as a consequence of his retiring from the position of Director of the Louvre; neither had it started concurrently with this task. It had all started precisely in 1777 during a voyage to Calabria and Sicily, which, as he himself reported ralluma toute ma passion pour les arts, me fit reprendre mes crayons et entreprendre des fouilles dans la Terre de Labour et dans la Pouille. La découverte d’un vase grec ou d’un vas quelconque de forme nouvelle me paraissait un service signalé que je rendais au bon goût. Je reviens en France si chargé de poteries que je ne savais où les placer. 16 Apart from these early artifacts, the possessions Denon had were quite unique. His belongings, which were finally sold in 1826, after his death, were spread all over the globe due to a lack of direct heirs and of interest on the <?page no="73"?> 73 Dominique Vivant Denon 17 pp. 392-395. One should not forget that amongst all the Egyptian souvenirs Denon boasted « un Fragment de pierre calcaire détaché du Chéops, la plus haute des Pyramides de Gizeh, et un autre de grès de la Statue de Memnon, de la plaine de Thèbes » (Ulric Richard-Desaix, p.30). part of the surviving relatives. The sale catalogue, Description des objets d’arts qui composent le cabinet de feu M. le Baron V. Denon, listed 3178 lots of ancient, historical, and modern antiquities, bronzes, medals, vases, oriental objects, paintings, drawings, engravings, and miniatures. According to Dibdin, this was what the visitors saw when they entered the private quarters of Monsieur Denon: La première [pièce] renferme des bustes en bronze, et des tableaux de Téniers, de Watteau, et de l’école moderne de Paris … Dans un coin est placée une momie de femme renfermée sous glace, et dont les tégumens sont conservés dans un panier. On regarde cette pièce comme également rare et curieuse. M. Denon en montre, avec un air de triomphe et une satisfaction admirable, le pied, qui n’est absolument que muscles et os … La seconde pièce contient une admirable collection de curiosités phéniciennes, égyptiennes, et autres de l’Orient; et dans le coin, à gauche, est un meuble à tiroirs, rempli de médailles fort curieuses dans tous les genres, et des personnages les plus remarquables … La troisième pièce est plus grande, et la plus richement ornée de peintures … En approchant de la cheminée, l’attention est vivement attirée vers une petite figure de bronze, en pied, qui représente Bonaparte, appuyé contre une table, et la main droite posée sur son front … On entre ensuite dans une espèce de petit boudoir qui renferme, à mon avis, les morceaux les plus précieux et les plus curieux que possède le baron Denon, sous le rapport de l’art. C’est une suite des productions de la peinture des différentes écoles, depuis le commencement de renaissance de l’art jusqu’à l’école qui a précédé l’école actuelle … De là on entre dans une quatrième pièce, qui est la chambre à coucher de M. Denon. Près de la cheminée on voit un grand nombre de jolies petites productions de l’art du dessin … Ce sont là, je crois, les bijoux de prix de cette chambre à coucher… C’est ici que le maître de la maison se tient habituellement, et c’est ce qu’il appelle son atelier. (2-5) But this is certainly not a complete account of all that Denon displayed in his abode. Marie-Anne Dupuy enlightens us by mentioning that in Denon’s first room, or antichambre, besides the paintings and the mummified human already mentioned, the owner displayed a human arm; meanwhile, in the dining room, Egypt was purportedly overbearingly present with 500 scarab beetles, figurines, and amulets, and with several mummies of children and even an embalmed fetus. 17 These are not the only oddities in his collection. Of greater value and astonishment are in fact the accumulations Denon so jealously held in a reliquaire de forme hexagone et de travail gothique, flanqué à ses angles de six tourillions attachés par des arcs-boutants à un couronnement composé d’un <?page no="74"?> 74 Chapter Three 18 Ulric Richard-Desaix, 11. 19 This is not a fortuitous guess, but rather it is a claim supported by the work of Denon himself, that is to say a giant lithography representing about thirteen self-portraits which are subdued by the “white-bearded” Time, which in turn two putti try to prevent from progressing (see p. 105 of Dominique Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon). This is undoubtedly the metaphorical work of someone who feared time and its consequences and who attempted to fight against it, by “possessing” it. 20 Duval, 337. 21 Denon, VHBE 302-304. 22 As quoted by Steinberg in Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History 92. petit édifice surmonté de la croix : les deux faces principales de ce reliquaire sont divisées chacune en six compartiments, et contiennent les objets suivants: Fragments d’os du Cid et de Chimène, trouvés dans leur sepulture, à Burgos; Fragments d’os d’Héloïse et d’Abélard, extraits de leurs tombeaux, au Paraclet; Cheveux d’Agnès Sorel, inhumée à Loches, et d’Inès de Castro, à Alcobaça; Partie de la moustache de Henri IV, roi de France, qui avait été trouvée tout entière lors de l’exhumation des corps des Rois à Saint-Denis, en 1793; Fragment du linceul de Turenne; Fragment d’os de Molière et de La Fontaine; Cheveux du général Desaix. Deux faces latérales du même objet sont remplies: l’une par la Signature autographe de Napoléon, l’autre contient un Morceau ensanglanté de la chemise qu’il portait à l’époque de sa mort, une Mèche de ses cheveux, et une Feuille du saule sous lequel il repose dans l’île de Sainte- Hélène. A cette énumération déjà longue, il conviendrait d’ajouter encore: « la moitié d’une Dent de Voltaire ». 18 What motive(s) could have inspired Denon to gather such diverse objects and to go through the trouble of carrying or forwarding them somewhere he called home? The fact that Denon’s final project was to complete a book on the history of art suggests that he put his faith in those things of the past that he knew so well because he was scared of the present and of the future that awaited him. 19 The more Denon gains, the more he knows that his control has increased: ce que je ne possédais pas et qui me plaisait me parut important. 20 […]par la possession d’un manuscrit même que je trouvai dans la main d’une superbe momie, [je]sentis que j’en pâlissais[…] la voix me manqua […] je n’osais le confier à personne, le déposer nulle part: était-ce l’histoire du personnage? 21 As Walter Benjamin put it, he experiences “self-understanding as well as […] understanding of the historical object-world.” 22 Denon, the collector, thus has a dialogue with the past which translates into a confidence in the present and a less strenuous relation with the future. From the past, Denon wanted to resuscitate a present full of hope, freshness, and freedom, maybe of complete <?page no="75"?> 75 Dominique Vivant Denon 23 I am referring more specifically to Masons and collectors like him, such as Ignazio Paterno’, principe di Biscari and Cavaliere Saverio Landolina in Catania, Sicily. According to S. Russo, Denon forwarded several letters to Cavaliere Landolina in which he openly recommended to his care other “amateurs de curiosité,” mostly of French and Polish origin, who were in need of “éclairement” and who had “envie” to trade “pierres de marbre et de lave” (68). Denon was invited to Prince Biscari’s inauguration of his museum in 1758, during which the prince recited a poem and had a medal engraved with his own profile on one side and an inscription on the other: “Publicae Utilitati Patria Decori Studiosorum Commodo Museum Construxit” that is to say to be visited by the public, to give glory to Catania, his residence, to become a place of study and of research (Vallet 151). Certainly this museum gained the interest of Denon who took three days to visit it. Anna Lucia D’Agata and Claudia Guastella uncovered the fact that Denon shared with these Sicilian collectors more than a love for material antiquities: they all held a membership in the Masonic Lodge and maintained a tight relation with the churches of the surrounding area. This placed them at the center of the region’s intellectual and cultural life (10). 24 Forrester, 115-118. 25 In spite of the insistent summoning on the part of his father who was experiencing a state of ill health, Denon did not show any concern and did not attend his father’s deathbed. This led to the father’s decision to retract his son’s name from the will and to divide his fortune among other family members. (Dominique Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon 495). libertinage, where man was in control, an ideal, a lifestyle shared by others in eighteenth-century Europe. 23 One can easily determine that, in one way or another, the attachment to things expresses a sense of isolation, of chosen detachment from the rest of the world and its inhabitants. Yet while representing this movement of withdrawal, it also marks a will to attain a reattachment to the world, the will to possess it, a struggle with the world and with time, a fantasy of immortality. It is through Freud that one can further support this statement, for the Austrian psychoanalyst started his own collection of artistic objects just after the death of his father in October 1896, and explicitly in response to that event since he himself declared that those objects supplied him with exceptional renewal and comfort, reinforced by the success of his psychoanalytic theories. 24 Like Freud, Denon met a period of disgrace and pain upon the death of his father, in 1785, a condition aggravated by his announced disinheritance; 25 Denon felt isolated while in Italy and while divested of his own wealth and position once back in France, even though in both cases one can also see the positive effects of these conditions - the wonderful opportunities offered abroad in spite of the crumbling situation in his motherland are not to be forgotten. Collection thus can be seen as a movement of withdrawal and detachment from the world, accompanied by a subsequent reattachment reminiscent of Freud’s theory of narcissism and in particular its application to the processes underlying paranoia. Whereas the paranoiac experiences “a detachment of the libido from the inanimate objects,” a reverse course is taken by the collec- <?page no="76"?> 76 Chapter Three 26 Forrester, Dispatches 119. tor who “directs his surplus libido onto the inanimate objective.” Whereas the paranoiac fails to reestablish libidinal relations, the collector restores ties with the world, even though he re-establishes contact with objects rather than people. 26 Collections become the realm of spiritual devotion and psychoanalysis, where collected things will be referred to as relics and where spirituality will overlap with sexuality, and more precisely with fetishism. Identifying Dominique Vivant Denon’s collections as gods or representations of gods does not come here as a revelation, for one can observe the same behavior in the early Christian churches and even in the modern Catholic Church. It is not a mystery that even today believers around the globe revere and trust body parts belonging to saints. It is common knowledge that the city of Catania, in Sicily, relies on the protection of its patroness, Saint Agatha, to safeguard its inhabitants from the frequent volcanic eruptions. Her body parts are secured behind seven golden gates, in the Cathedral of the city; to this saint and her remains people offer jewels, money, candles and prayers, and every year a feast of blind devotion is carried out to remain in the saint’s favors. Collecting and Spirituality According to collection specialist Susan Pearce, relic is the word commonly used to describe material arriving to us from the past. Thus museum collection and private collection pieces alike are ordinarily described as relics, for the word itself means “something left behind” and in earlier times it also meant “the living dead at work amongst us,” a voice from the past fully absorbed in the present. Nothing can better describe the bloody shirt, hair, and mutilated limbs of important figures in the life of Denon and of his French contemporaries. The collections relating to famous individuals and their related belongings are akin to the medieval relics of actual human remains (197). Corpses were seen as worthy of veneration because they were believed to belong to saints who could act as intercessors with God and could benefit those venerating them by miracles. Whereas the preservation of such remains can be translated into the need and resurrected capacity to link the supernatural with the human (198), it served also the purpose of uniting ancestors and heirs. The human being living in the present, by being able to experience what it was like to live in the past thought to possess the same power transmitted by the corpse and its past belongings. The possession of relics gave political power and wealth to the establishment or individual who owned them as well as to the inhabitants of the region, since relics attracted visitors and protected the spiritual as well as the economic health of the area. Christianity fostered this “fashionable adoration” <?page no="77"?> 77 Dominique Vivant Denon 27 Burckhardt, 496-499. 28 Auslander, 275. 29 It was after all as early as 1790 that the destruction of all monuments created during the feudal regime was ordered, that all reminders of Darkness had to disappear, allowing man to be confident, “enlightened” as he was by his infallible Reason (Goody 121). and relics came to be frequently used as talismans. Aquinas himself permitted the wearing of amulets for protection, as part of the promotion of the doctrine of bodily resurrection. A trade of relics took place especially between churches and rulers in order that they might receive greater and better reputation. It was not unusual to find certain priests adept in the inaugural rites, the telesti, who would “guarantee” the future prosperity of the city by burying under the foundations of its monuments certain relics serving as talismans or telesmata. 27 Nothing is more natural than the solicitude felt by all men for the bodies of the people they love and who have expired, as a way of continuing the life on earth of the deceased, with the purpose of selfishly appeasing their desperation at loss, and/ or of filling the void such deaths have created. Objects can and do take the place of their owner, in representation of the power, and of the role the being had while alive. The first and most obvious example which comes to mind is the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus, legacy of his sacrifice while on earth to save man from his sins. As for an example of earthly power, Leora Auslander, speaking of the power of the crown in seventeenth-century France in her Taste and Power reminds us that when servants and courtiers went about King Louis’s bedroom in Versailles they bowed before the royal nef, a gold ship-like vessel containing the king’s cutlery. This was done whether the king was present or not (35). Objects can then mark boundaries between their owner’s class and other classes, but they can also serve as a linkage within families for self-preservation. Simultaneously these objects could embody past, present, and future. It was not uncommon, for example, for family furniture to be passed on from generation to generation. Certain items, such as beds, carried a symbolic connection within the family line, for on the same bed several generations had been conceived and delivered. 28 In a way, the careful conservation of family belongings would glorify the original owner while assuring respect to the new owner, receiving praise not only for being related to the originator of such items but for the admirable stamina and passion demonstrated while achieving or restoring a connection between the members of a family and/ or the different generations in time and place. Was not Denon acclaimed for his taste and energy in filling entire rooms with curiosities and works of art? Yet, if indeed there are spiritual and psychological motives behind the feverish accumulations of Denon and his contemporaries, should they not be objects of derision and disappointment? Should they not be regarded as gullible and fanatic, thus, against the leading philosophy of the time? 29 On the contrary, <?page no="78"?> 78 Chapter Three 30 Immortality as a post-mortem glorification was a very popular concept in eighteenthcentury France. Patriots, men of science, and of letters, involved as they were in the events of the time, were often seen as heroes. Heroes were given the attributes of saints. by preserving and respecting relics, these individuals adhered to the standards of wants and needs of the time. According to Guy Le Gaufey, the establishment of relics flows from theological reasoning, based on a principle which was recognized as crucial for the Christian religion: the Resurrection, not only of the soul but also of the body. It seems evident that the Bible’s prophecy was taken to indicate a literal resuscitation of the blessed ones in their “glorious bodies.” In this light, it is easy to appreciate the preference given to relics rather than to images. The former, in fact, are the only ones deemed to come alive at the end of the world. The relic is thus “une promesse d’avenir” (14-15), a sign of eternity for men, a proof that indeed men can be immortal. 30 Another justification of Denon’s collecting, which reflects the historical happenings of his time, is provided by Linda Orr’s Headless History. Here the author highlights a society which, to bring about its own identity and legitimacy, had to posit, after the fact or simultaneously, its grounds and foundations. By casting doubts upon the official view of the socio-political institutions which emphasized God’s close involvement in human affairs and the need to seek salvation in an afterlife, the post-revolutionary society wanted to recreate earth, rebuilding upon the destruction of absolutism, elitism, and institutionalization, thus gaining prestige and immortality through the things (re)created. As Edmund Burke tells us, “views of ambition were in France, for the first time, presented to these classes of men: objects in state, in the army, in the system of civil offices of every kind. Their eyes were dazzled with this new prospect”(65). One can easily see the connection between this manner of philosophizing and Denon’s personal beliefs which led him to join the Masonic Lodge and more specifically the Order of the Acacia, flower of immortality. Denon was simply looking for ways to avoid total disintegration. A physical duplication was not in fact possible since the baron did not bear any direct heirs. In this context, it is not coincidental that Denon resorted to collections for, as Auslander reminds us, collections were clear statements of masculinity. Not only were collections rewards of adventurous exploits of research and of confiscation as in the case of Denon - all occurrences which demanded persistence, physical strength, and boldness which in turn are connoted manly attributes - but male collectors, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were “defined to be participating in a very different kind of creative activity when they consumed” (411) from women. Whereas women’s collecting was regarded as a sort of consuming aimed at the décor of the domestic abode and in the interest of the family by creating a pleasant environment, male collecting was considered in itself a work of art. By acquiring such <?page no="79"?> 79 Dominique Vivant Denon Zix Benjamim (1772-1811). Imaginary view of Dominique Vivant Denon’s Study. Ca. 1809-1811. Pen and brown ink. Photo: Jean Schormans. Louvre, Paris, France. Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY. important cultural pieces, male collectors were active political agents: they acted as producers, whereas women remained consumers. After having considered collections as extensions of lineage conservation, memory preservation, and as expressions of self-glorification and immortality, one can see their connection to sexuality and procreation. The Portuguese colonizers, witnessing the cult that savages developed for certain objects, <?page no="80"?> 80 Chapter Three 31 Le Gaufey, 10-11. 32 See the intriguing scenes in the dressing room in Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro, and the short novellas La Petite Maison written by de Bastide and, naturally, Point de lendemain by Denon. baptized the latter with the term of feitiços, artificial (representation) derived from the Latin facticius. Interestingly the word feitiço can also signify ‘made by man,’ thus becoming, in the words of Freud and Lacan, a symbol of symbol which ceases to be just an object. 31 This object is the protagonist of the literary micro-genre known as “cabinet fiction.” In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the genre became a testimony not only to the importance of the place where the object and passion for the object were located, namely in the bourgeois interior of the cabinet, but also to the commonplace examples of the lover’s frenzied hypostatization of his love, a love which is focused more on the object than on the human being who owns it. This type of love is more appropriately known as fetishism. Collecting and Sexuality In Feminizing the Fetish, Emily Apter takes us through the different evolutions of the meaning of the word cabinet during the time of transition in which Dominique Vivant Denon lived: “from work space and display case to water closet” (39); from “zone(s) forbidden to the opposite sex, …[a] gendering divide within the interior” (39) to an architecture embedded with the same feature of eroticism, interplay, misunderstanding and mystery that we find in several contemporary theater plays, such as those of Beaumarchais, but also in the novellas of Jean-François de Bastide and of Denon himself; 32 from pornographic alcove and erotic collection case, as depicted in other eighteenth-century writings such as Le Sopha by Crébillon fils and Les Bijoux indiscrets by Diderot (41); to a place of retreat or evident receptacle of spasm, where thoughts and memories are released, as described in the nineteenth century works of Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, and of Edmond de Goncourt, La Maison d’un artiste, in which, in the midst of his belongings, the protagonist wonders upon his hunger to possess: Seated beside this hearth, during breaks from work, a cigarette between my lips, my eyes roving over all the bric-a-brac that surrounds me, I often question myself about this passion for the bibelot which has rendered me miserable and happy all my life. And remembering the months of privation that my brother and I endured, years at a time spent in cheap painter’s hostels in order to pay off an extravagant purchase, and finding in my memory these feverish days of insane buying from which one walked away still unsatisfied, feeling like one had been up all night gaming and suffering that bitter-taste in the mouth that <?page no="81"?> 81 Dominique Vivant Denon 33 As quoted and translated by Emily Apter, 61. 34 See Ashcroft-Nowicki’s The Tree of Ecstasy, esp. “Sex in Ancient Cultures - Sex in Modern Times.” only water of a dozen oysters could cleanse, I would ask myself if this sickness were an accident, an evil contracted by chance, or whether it were rather some of hereditary illness, a contagion similar to madness or gout. 33 Through the history, literature, and etymological meaning of the word cabinet as well as the word feitiços, one can easily associate collecting with physical pleasure, sexuality, with a related insane thirst, a form of perversion. Psychoanalysts have viewed collecting as a perverted form of sexual drive and activities. Freud, for example, associated the notion of collection with elements of anal-eroticism, besides narcissism where the collector sees an extension of his own body in the things he has collected. Collecting reveals a process of sexual maturity, that is to say, from infant gratification seeking to obstinate and obsessive orderliness, and/ or from infant insecurity to adult fears such as loss, sexual impotence, et cetera. Denon had, due to his “curiosity” and interest in the Egyptian and Greek cultures, not only witnessed but also underlined the sexuality embedded in the everyday objects of these two civilizations, by drawing one of his obsessive recurring images, namely the phallus (Le Phallus phénoménal and Les Noces des 50 Filles du Roy Testic to name a few), and by preserving those items which reminded him of and stimulated in him corporeal desires. All these were linked to religious beliefs and customs. The Egyptian god Osiris, symbol of (re)generative power, was sometimes depicted with three phalli, to show his power to rise again. Other Egyptian gods were represented as carrying rods or scepters with a phallic head or shown with an erect penis, and entire processions of adorers with movable sex organs were attached to a cord and carried to the temple. Denon had been fascinated by some of these figures and above all by the worship of the Apis bull. He expressly spoke of finding the embalmed phallus of a bull interred with a female mummy in Egypt. A similar god was Denon’s inspiration for his pictorial representations: Pan or Priapus (himself, half animal and half herdsman) worshipped in rural Greece, especially at harvest time. Though a protector of flocks and wild animals, Priapus was known for lascivious behavior with human women and nymphs. 34 One must not forget that amongst his most valuable pieces, Denon had several small statuettes of fertility gods. The fertility represented by each one of these statuettes ultimately embodies the fertility and sexual potency sought by the owner of the collection; they offer a continuity that is replicated in the bones of the most glorious of France that Denon so jealously kept in his private quarters. These reproductions and skeletons of the past alleviated the burden of fears, and of problems of a <?page no="82"?> 82 Chapter Three 35 Foucault, Les mots et les choses 219. 36 Ibid, 244. 37 Power/ Knowledge 39. country and a man in turmoil. It was justifiable that man would hide his unsuccessful attempts, his frustrations and hungers, for, according to the century’s philosophy, if displayed they would denote vulgarity and banality. Hence the need to lock himself in a cabinet of collected wonders. Magically, man’s identity would be transformed: in his cabinet, Denon could play any role he wished; he could pretend with no limits. Through possessions he could exercise the power he did not have elsewhere: the master of the cabinet could act out the part of the Master of the Universe. Like God, the cabinet’s owner built, created, organized, and controlled his world: consequently, man’s expectations and rewards equaled those of the Creator - servile worship, uttermost respect, irreversible immortality. Because of their containment, inside the cabinet, man and world alike were manageable: they could be analyzed, and catalogued; they were physically approachable. Like Freud, who had his statuettes lined up in his study, coercing clients’ glances while he discussed their problems, Denon displayed his treasures, making them the center of discussion, possibly diverting intimate questions. They gave him an identity that was partially his own. Just like Freud, who, stroking them once alone in his study, was able to renounce his hypocrisy of altruism to reveal and to comfort his selfhood, Denon was seeking a gratification he did not find in any relation he had, in any country he visited. Collecting and Power After the cosmic syntheses of similarities and resemblances of the Renaissance and the Cartesian knowledge-system based on rational observation, and empirical comparison, eighteenth-century collecting became a form of showcasing of man as the primary subject and object of all knowledge; it was a confirmation of evolution, of historical variations, a “continuum de la représentation et de l’être […] et l’être manifesté par la présence de la representation,” 35 as Denon’s attempt to compile a history of the arts from antiquity to modernity (published posthumously, in fragments, as Monuments des Arts du dessin) seemed to have been. From 1775 the classification of natural kingdoms had changed from four to two, that is to say the organic and the non-organic, “le vivant et le non-vivant […] l’un jouit et l’autre est privé de la vie.” 36 Knowledge and power became thus intertwined. Foucault identifies the eighteenth century as the period during which a synaptic regime of power was paramount. It was a power exercised within the social body rather than from above it; 37 a power which was aimed to control and transform individuals. <?page no="83"?> 83 Dominique Vivant Denon 38 Ibid, 146-164. The emergence of man, with the consequent shift of nature of knowledge as power, necessitated the creation of collective consciousness, nationalized registers of memory, and tools of improvement/ integration for the general welfare. Great state apparatuses developed such as army, police, and fiscal administration; most importantly, confinement techniques (within institutions such as asylums, prisons, military schools) were established following recognition in the mirror, perpetual judgment, and “the eye in the sky” of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. 38 Likewise collections changed identity: from royal storehouses and family hoards to public showcases of chronological progress. This type of power, maturing during the eighteenth century, stemmed out of two major concepts: the desire to uncover all areas of darkness, and the belief that man was a machine, a manageable object, which could be used, transformed, and most importantly, improved. The architectural strategies which allowed for an overseer to monitor the movements of the inmate, madman, or schoolboy inside his cell were aimed to be vehicles of deterrence as well as of knowledge; they were designed to be rehabilitating as well as debilitating. It was a power which was able to (re)integrate an individual or to (dis)integrate him. The confinement of individuals under the surveillance of prison-guards, hospital or school personnel, is not dissimilar to the confinement of objects within the walls of a cabinet of curiosities under the supervision of its owner and curator. As far as the public collection of the Louvre was concerned, Denon classified the works of art by schools, allowed a more private viewing, and established a schedule of visits. The physical display of the works, lined up chronologically against the walls, leaving ample space for the observers, was complemented by the architectonic structure, the lighting, the majestic proportion of the building itself. The museum became an observatory, a place where one could observe not only the objects contained within but also the viewers of the objects. Disciplinary power was manifested by arranging objects, by submitting them to the scrutiny of the viewers, and, in turn, by directing the viewers, imposing certain rules, such as the hours of viewing and the manner in which the viewing had to be observed. The individual observations were part of a large-scale parade, a final exam which gratified the owner or curator of the public collection. The Louvre, once royal residence, was a nationalized place of modern humanity’s training, recording and observing, where life was reshaped into an order of things. In this type of setting, one can realize that there is still a divide between living and non-living, the subject and the dominator. Contrary to common belief, the viewers are not the dominators in this relation; the overseer is the one in control of both the non-living and the living. <?page no="84"?> 84 Chapter Three In the same manner, Denon catalogued and displayed his private possessions by allocating specific rooms to specific themes, schools, or forms of art. He confined his more precious relics inside six individual cells, physically surmounted by a cross, and surveilled by his owner who was the only one with easy access to the collection. The body parts he preserved are explicit examples of a power that is not only manifested through his brilliance as a collector but by the objectification of those on whom this power was applied. The possession and control of these body parts allowed, in fact, the formation of a body of knowledge about the individuals to whom these parts belonged. The same can be said of the paintings and sculptures Denon possessed. It was not a type of power which deployed signs of physical coercion, which is, at any rate, logically impossible on mutilated corporeal components. By possessing the objects, artistic creations and body fragments of famous Frenchmen, Denon fulfilled his desire to know more about his own country’s past, thus to fully control his present and future. He was able to stop time. The power Denon sought was biological in nature; it was a power of life and death. As, in eighteenth-century France, the social body was exercising this type of power in lieu of the king, Denon was substituting God in the right to administer life to what had been declared dead. This possibility was centered again on the concept that man as machine can be restored, optimized, as far as his capabilities and usefulness are concerned, and (re)integrated, increasing his value as well as the value of the system to which he belonged. The value of Denon’s collection was far more than financial. Within a setting of increased genetic awareness, political involvement, and economical empowerment, Denon had created a microcosm inside his cabinet of wonders. He had resurrected to life the dead men who had made a difference in the history and culture of France, and in so doing he had wanted to improve his own life. He had gone beyond all the challenges and oppressions of his time, rediscovering the value of man, relatively disengaged from the sovereignty of political as well as spiritual powers. The concept of power exercised within confinement and based on the well-spread belief of man as machine, as the important links between collection and spirituality, and collection and sexuality, is retraceable in Denon’s most famous literary work, Point de lendemain. The Wonders of Denon’s Cabinet in Point de lendemain From the onset, the protagonists of Denon’s novella are subjected to some power struggle, involving two or more persons at a time, and taking place in the confinement of a theatrical lodge, a coach, a castle, and, ultimately, a pavillon, overseen by the builder and owner of the pavillon itself. The reference to homme-machine (394) and the objectification of the living within the <?page no="85"?> 85 Dominique Vivant Denon walls of the cabinet of illicit love built by an absent owner, refracted by a number of mirrors “sur lesquel[…]s les objets étaient si artistement peints que, répétés, ils produisaient l’illusion de tout ce qu’ils représentaient” (397), are clear evidence of the aforementioned power quest experienced by the author. This triangle, self-object-other, which can be seen from a more spiritual perspective, is at the center of Denon’s masterpiece. The husband of Madame de T., the cabinet builder; his wife, the person for whom the cabinet has been built; and her lover, who is well-aware of the seductive games of the household and who has been a guest of honor in the cabinet are the triad’s steady elements. Since this is partially a closed and closeted society, the lover becomes initiator, a witness to others. The initiate, as expected, is young, innocent, easily taken, playing along without any pretension. By manipulating their heart and mind, all the characters involved in this initiation are able to introspectively seize themselves, thus re-evaluating the situation in which they are engaged. Point de lendemain is to be seen as a testimony of the author’s affiliation to Masonry, and an illustration, not only of the power embedded in collecting but also in recollecting, that is to say as a psychoanalytical tool to better know oneself and others. I will analyze Point de lendemain first by highlighting the associations between the text and Masonic structures: the stages through which the protagonist is submitted are to me ways of testing the spiritual commitment of the initiate. Guided by the Grand Master (Madame de T.’s husband, the cabinet builder) and sponsored by the Fellowcraft (Madame de T.’s steady lover), the apprentice blindly concurs with Madame de T.’s concupiscence and enters this “nouveau temple” (396), accessible only to those who have “ferveur et dévotion” (396) and erected to “la déesse” (387), “par la porte secrète artistement fabriquée dans un lambris de la boiserie” (396), as an initiate who has already gone through his first hierarchy of tests and has now to overcome the Second Great Initiation. According to the Order, this corresponds to the stage of the incarnation of Christ, which is typified in turn by the Baptism, in which an expansion of the intellectual faculties takes place. It is during this stage that the inner trial, representing the temptation in the wilderness experienced by Christ, takes place in the life of the candidate. « Mon coeur palpitait comme celui d’un prosélyte que l’on éprouve avant la célébration des grands mystères » (397), declares the narrator while in the presence of Madame who « débarass[ée] de tout ornament superflu, [n’a qu’] un simple ruban [dans] les cheveux…et une robe ouverte » (396). Following the other compulsory stages of initiation, the young man of Point de lendemain goes through the splendor of Transfiguration, when, according to the Masonic Order, the Monad descends and transforms the ego into the likeness of His own glory, gathering “des couronnes et des guirlandes, […] et du côté un dais sous lequel s’accumulait une quantité de carreaux, avec un baldaquin soutenu par des amours” (397). It is at this point that the <?page no="86"?> 86 Chapter Three 39 Leadbeater ,47. 40 Giarrizzo, 111. young protagonist confirms that his ultimate aspiration, the attainment of the union with God and the likeness to God, is gratified when he bluntly confesses to Madame “j’étais un mortel […] vous m’avez fait un dieu” (398). The fourth and final stage corresponds to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, when the candidate passes through the valley of the shadow of death, which in Denon’s piquant account could be represented by the climax of the coitus, thus its end: “tout s’évanouit avec la même rapidité que le réveil détruit un songe” (398). During this mythical death, re-enacted with a resemblance to the crucifixion, with the same physical pain and placement of the candidate’s body in a vault and then in an immense sarcophagus, the initiate goes through many odd experiences in the astral world. On the fourth day, he is finally brought to the outer air so that the first rays of the rising sun might awaken him from his long sleep. 39 Denon closes pertinently this process of acceptance, and the love adventure with the following words: “La fraîcheur et l’air pur de ce moment calmèrent par degrées mon imagination et en chassèrent le merveilleux” (398). But the initiation stages in Denon’s masterpiece are not the only evidence of the Masonic manifesto. During Denon’s times, the French Grande Loge de Clermont embraced the Kabala as a means to provide an exogenous control of natural forces and of passions. Libertinage and Kabala, both of which are present in the Masonic realm, can be found intertwined prior to the end of the 1700s when the Kabala rediscovered its autonomy and confronted the libertine, rationalist, tolerant, and skeptic culture. 40 This marriage of Kabala and libertinage gave birth to a mysterious, luxurious language, which Denon reveals in one of Point de lendemain’s lines, “nous nous entretenions dans le silence par le langage de la pensée” (392). Another manifest expression of this was the Egyptian myth of transcendentalism, which purports to be not an allegory but a reality, a concealing of the deepest quasi-alchemic secrets. Everything in the furnishings and architectonic structures of the Masonic lodges presents signs, emblems, links that are kept and transmitted by memory and that will take on a hermetic-cabalistic dimension. The lodge masters have access to these “mysteries” of the world by observing the signs and the shadows of their god. In silence, they learn the introspective writing and technique used to spell, to revoke and combine signs. Architecture can retrace with geometry the divine idea and, thusly, it becomes an insidiously secret science. “Il [I will call him, the mason] tient à mon appartement” (395). From the “carpets of ranks” with their markings traced on the floor to indicate the walk of the initiate to the ornate table, on which the master sits, to the chairs of the dignitaries; from the lighting (a southern exposure for the guardian’s seat) to the checkerboard-like pavement and the lodge’s columns, everything <?page no="87"?> 87 Dominique Vivant Denon 41 See Giarrizzo’s Massoneria e illuminismo, Jacob’s Radical Enlightenment, and Living the Enlightenment. 42 Leadbeater, 10. The abbreviation T.G.A.O.T.U stands, according to Masonic standard, for “The Great Architect of the Universe” (God). 43 Giarrizzo, 13. 44 Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique 34. is planned to reveal to the elect that the final salvation 41 is to be built, to be wanted and achieved. The Masons, relying on their knowledge and talents, build. Their god himself is referred to as the Great Architect. He writes the plans and the masons possess “layer after layer of meaning applicable to the consciousness of T.G.A.O.T.U., the constitution of the universe, and the principles in man” 42 according to the occult law adopted by alchemists and students of the cabala in later ages. The Masons are active: in total antithesis to the Christian concept of grace, the Mason, faithful to his beliefs, works to attain what is in his desires. Identified with geometry, masonry was allegedly founded by Jabal, the first son of Lamec and brother of Noah, whose sons, in turn, fearing the rage of God for their sins, engraved in columns of stone the most prominent human inventions that survived the destruction of the Flood. These “scientific” columns served as textbooks to the surviving nephew of Noah to teach science to his compatriots. Nimrod was also a mason who taught his subordinates signs and tokens so that they could distinguish one another from all the rest of mankind on earth. 43 Building, according to Masonic custom, does not imply the physicality of edifice, and of objects; this term is applicable to the consolidation of relationships and most importantly to the teaching of the young apprentice. Similar to a traditional family, it is the responsibility of the older “brothers” and of the family as a whole to impart lessons to the ingenuous new arrival, the “child” of the family. The libertine philosophy of the eighteenth century had given birth to an exasperated exaltation of love, and more specifically of lovemaking, to a full-fledged admiration for everything that was pleasant to the senses, with a consequent lack of reverence for innocence, consciously preserved, lengthy commitment, to a new definition of love: Il faut ici recourir au physique…Veux-tu avoir une idée de l’amour, vois les moineaux de ton jardin; vois tes pigeons; contemple le taureau qu’on amène à ta génisse; regarde ce fier cheval que deux de ses valets conduisent à la cavale paisible qui l’attend, et qui détourne sa queue pour le recevoir. 44 Thus it was deemed necessary that young men and women be instructed and initiated to this new type of life. Ignorance of its laws was inadmissible, abiding by them was the only way to survive. Seduction was perceived firstly <?page no="88"?> 88 Chapter Three 45 This is the name given to Denon’s protagonist in the 1777 version of Point de lendemain. I will comment on his name and the similarity to another of Denon’s creatures later in this chapter. as the initiation to a forbidden liaison; secondly as a mystical experience; and lastly as a game, a theatrical act. Many of the novels of the century have to be read following this perspective. They are, in fact, marvelous testaments to this philosophy of life, Bildungsromane depicting the stories of ingenuous, virginal youths who are eventually overpowered by lust, by lies, and by the she and he-devils who want to steal away their “victim” from virtue, and chastity. The seducer of Denon had the Marian traits of an older woman, an eligible mother-figure. The young prey and Madame de T., the goddess, are enveloped first in the greenery of a private garden, then into the darkness of a cave, a hidden refuge which seems to emulate the act of birth, or re-birth, an enclosed harbor, the female uterus. She is the one who delivers him; she is the mother, both earthly mother and celestial. The picture is complete: from the traditional social perspective, we have a mother, a father, and a brother; from the religious one, in Point de lendemain, the Trinity is exemplified by the Father (Monsieur de T.), the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, the One who carries out the plans (Marquis), and the Son (Damon). 45 Madame de T. assumes thus the important role of the Church (the Mother). As Jung reminds us in describing in detail the phenomenology of the child archetype, through his apprenticeship and eventual transformation, this child assumes at times the semblance of a god (Denon’s protagonist clearly mentions his change of role, from mortal to god, thanks to his experience with Madame); at other times the semblance of a hero (Damon is “designed” to never displease the readers - he puts up a good fight at first; he demonstrates that he is a skillful actor and a real gentleman; at the end he will go back to the Comtesse, his fiancée, more mature). Ultimately he is the embodiment of the genesis of the self, the renatus in novam infantiam, the beginning and the end, the pre-conscious and the post-conscious, wholeness (165-178). The title itself and the final allusion to the lack of a future (“je cherchai bien la morale de cette aventure, et… je n’en trouvai point” 402) are doubly loaded. Indeed it refers to the concentrated beginning and end of this adventure. Even before his experience, the child had a psychic life; he just did not know how to read its meaning. Through his experience, he became able to see clearly (“je sentais la vérité rentrer dans mon âme, mes pensées […] se suivre avec ordre” 398), what lurked inside himself. Even when he thinks that all he has encountered has vanished into nothing, he carries with him a form of knowledge and a maturity that pass understanding. This is very similar to the purification and the ecstasy of a religious commitment as well as to a psychoanalytical séance. <?page no="89"?> 89 Dominique Vivant Denon 46 Ecrits I, 93. If Damon has a hard time recognizing it, readers cannot avoid visualizing a certain odd attachment the child seems to feel for the Mother. The triangle of love is far more complicated than one would want it to be. The child shows respect and subjugation toward the Builder, the Father. He feels extraneous, unwanted yet the child looks for his approval and care (“on me trouvait trop abattu…et on me conseillait de regagner la ville. Le Marquis m’offrit sa chaise, je l’acceptai: tout allait à merveille et nous étions tous contents” 401). They are competing to attain the attention of the mother, with the frustration of feeling animosity and empathy/ sympathy simultaneously. It is the agony brought about by the loi du père. La loi du père is a term which denotes the role of the father, the holder of the “phallus” as the pivotal element of the family. It is he who establishes the familial configuration of the three individualities-mother, father, and son. If, according to Lacan, there is in the first instance or stage a relation of identification (narcissistic) of the son with the mother where the father does not yet have a distinct role; afterward, during the second stage, which has been named stade de l’Oedipe, the role of the father becomes that of negation, which in a way explains the absence of the mother or disintegration of the rapport son-mother, and is seen as the cause of this loss and separation. Due to the presence of the father, the son recognizes the impossibility of recreating the solidarity, even self-identification once achieved with his genitrix. The Lacanian theory is a theory of the self, a fragmented, incomplete self; it is the drama of the “formation de l’individu […] dont la poussée interne se précipite de l’insuffisance à l’anticipation.” 46 Whereas Freud speaks of three stages children go through (oral, anal, and phallic), Lacan speaks of three categories in which humans develop: the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, with their correlated concepts of need, demand, and desire. If at first, the baby has no sense of self, he does not perceive any independence from the object that meets his needs (food and safety), between the age of six and eighteenth months, the baby feels threatened by separation from the mother (or the other). At this point, the baby shifts from having needs to having demands which are not satisfiable with objects; they are requests of recognition from another. This is where “le stade du miroir comme identification” takes place. Having not yet mastered control over his own body, the child is enthralled by the cohesion of his image in the mirror; he forms a compensatory identification with his mirror-image. The mirror-image is not his real self; it is the “je idéal.” The never-ending lack that a human endures during his maturation is what Lacan calls desire, the desire to be the other. The child seeks less to have the phallus than to be the phallus for the mother, that is to say rather than wanting to possess or use the other for his immediate satisfaction his desire is to be the object of the other’s desire. His desire is narcissistic. <?page no="90"?> 90 Chapter Three 47 See for example Diderot and Saint-Martin. With the latter, Denon shares the disobedience shown regarding his career and the recall to his land due to the ill condition of the father, to which Saint-Martin and Denon responded respectively, one with resentment and the other with the utmost delay, causing disinheritance. 48 I will be shortly discussing in detail the only theatrical play Denon wrote, Julie ou le bon père, in which the father-figure is controlling and revered. Damon’s sexual and sentimental inadequacy is the reason why he embraces Madame de T’s propositions: he finds physical as well as psychological unity in her body “le visage de madame de T…et le mien s’entretouchaient (386-387). But Damon’s well-played role has been more to his mistress’s satisfaction than to his own, “tu lui en as servi, tu l’as amusée sur la route, c’est tout ce qu’elle voulait” (399); “[on l’a] payé d’un beau rêve […][on le] rend plus tendre, plus délicat, et plus sensible” (402). Due to the decentering and the relations between selves and others typical of the eighteenth century, the psychoanalytical term loi du père has been recently adopted by socio-historians and sociologists to describe and understand the traditional patriarchal setting, even the monarchical system, of precapitalist and colonialist societies. The loi du père has also a purposefully religious reference intended to underscore that the psychotic lacks not his father but a point of reference for the position of the father. The conflict between father and son, the patriarchal and hierarchical system were realities in the life and work of Denon. The relation Denon had with his father was perhaps typical of many of his contemporaries: 47 Denon showed neither interest in the paternal advice nor in his father’s personal condition. Yet it is apparent that Denon was always in search of a fatherfigure; his literature 48 attests to this as well as his need for family-like aggregations and his marked fetishism. From the socio-political perspective the triad presented in Denon’s short novella could represent the three most important elements of the period’s society, that is to say the monarchical power, the Church, and the intelligentsia, with the protagonist being the commoner who is “prey” to the games of these authorities. On a personal note, the last comment used to close the relation and Point de lendemain itself may justify the impotence Denon must have felt and the resolution taken to escape the situation by finding refuge in foreign countries and secret societies. According to Lacan, this is not out of the ordinary. The father cannot be considered a legislator unless and until he is the transcendental subject, promulgator of a law by which he himself has to abide. Point de lendemain presents elements “borrowed” from psychoanalysis, such as condensation, displacement, and rationalization, or going back to the Jungian theory, the unconscious, conscious, and individuation. The protagonist is firstly to face his personal experiences, his past, things that he has repressed and things that he had simply forgotten (amongst these his engage- <?page no="91"?> 91 Dominique Vivant Denon ment to the Comtesse, Madame’s reputation, her lover, Monsieur de T., and the world outside the cave of love). Once he is outside Madame’s cabinet and its bucolic surroundings, the protagonist becomes “conscious”: he searches for answers and assumes his previous responsibilities. His voyage from unconscious to conscious can only terminate with an attained self-realization. He is able, or at least so it seems, to divest the self of the falsehood of the persona. Independently from the fact that his new love affair may be hopeless, Damon is not the same, after his love adventure. In turn, he will face other challenges and live other experiences, which will change him even more. Through his lifetime experiences, he will be restored into the most important archetype, the self, the midpoint between consciousness and unconsciousness, the god within man. His original triangle will eventually turn into a quartet; a larger group is further involved. The Wonders of Denon’s Village in Julie ou le bon père The name of Damon has a certain similarity to the protagonist of another work by Denon, the theatrical play Julie ou le bon père. Damis seems to be the result of a literary triad, Rousseau-Diderot-Denon: in Damis’s struggles and aspirations, we see the continuous reference to simplicity, voluntary solitude, and nobility of the heart, so predominant in the Rousseauian works and philosophy; we feel the contradictory and lacerating rapports of love and hate between a son and his father, which Diderot sagaciously depicted in some of his literary creations (Entretien d’un père avec ses enfants, for example); we can sense the trepidations of a young initiate who tries to belong. Damis is victim of a complicated love-triangle. He has to share his love for Julie with her own father, Lisimond. In reality, Damis is not trying to convince the father that he is the perfect match for Julie but that he is worthy of his acceptance. To attain his goals, Damis avails himself of different mediators. First, he asks for his valet’s aid, second for Julie’s confidante’s, Agathe, and finally, for Clement’s. He believes that this plain peasant, friend of Lisimond, can “[lui]rendre la vie” (28). The matter of the fact is that Clement has from the beginning revealed his favoritism toward Damis, claiming to find him “[ayant] l’air d’un gentil cavalier” (28), and, most importantly that Clement seems to be the one who decides whom to accept and whom to deny. Clement is the representative of a group, the one Lisimond refers to as the ones “parmi vous [qui ont] au moins connu un bien que l’opulence empêche de connoître, la vérité” (6). Clement and Lisimond are bons amis and Damis wants to be an ami as well. He seems to share with them the view that grâce, vertu, beauté are the most important values. He promises that he will love Julie forever, and that he wants his happiness to depend on Julie and her Father (29). Damis will <?page no="92"?> 92 Chapter Three 49 There is a haunting reference to noeuds in this play (between Lisimond and Clement - original spelling of this name -, between Lisimond and Julie, between Julie and Damis, and between Damis, Lisimond and Julie, at the end). conceal his affiliation to the group, as he has been told (31), and he will abide by any other law of the group, i.e. the spiritual and material sharing herein imposed (6, 30). This is not an intolerable sacrifice, because “un ami vaut tous les biens de l’univers” (36). Damis proves, thus, his sincere commitment, his worthiness, while the Father proves to be a good father and not a tyrant. What was sought from the beginning has been achieved: the knots 49 are tied. Damis and Julie are married. The newly-weds are not alone. Lisimond needs them; he claims that “[sa] félicité dépend [de la leur]” (37). This does not come as a surprise to anyone. The fourth scene of the Second Act is a tangible proof of the odd, intense relationship Lisimond and Julie have (“quand je presse ma Julie sur mon sein, l’univers disparoît pour moi” 20). On the one hand, Julie is the perfect daughter, full of respect, trust and tenderness for her genitor. She blindly obeys in exchange for wisdom and interior peace. On the other hand, Lisimond only has eyes for his sweet daughter. He does not wish to subjugate her; he claims that her “coeur est libre” (21). He only fears for his daughter due to her innocence and desire for someone who might force her to separate from her father. This intense tie can be compared to the dependence of the Church on the commands of God, which are dictated by His interest in man’s welfare, and marked by constancy and sincerity on the part of the believers. More specifically, this can elucidate the status of the Masonic god. He is neither the careless Father of the deists (“Julie, je ne suis point injuste […] je ne veux pas même pénétrer trop […] mais tu es dans un âge où le piége est sous tes pas: tu as besoin d’un guide, tu as besoin d’un ami” 21) nor the overbearing and chastising Entity of the Christian faith (“Puisque tu veux que je te le dise, j’ai cru m’appercevoir d’un peu de contrainte dans tes discours et dans ta conduite” 21); he is rather a benevolent father whose countenance is not detailed and whose interest cannot pass unnoticed. The obsessive liaison between Lisimond and Julie can also suggest the morbidity which marks the Electra complex. According to Freud, the girl during the phallic stage becomes so strongly attached to her father as to want to possess him utterly; this attachment consequently calls for the elimination (or the desire of such elimination) of her direct rival, that is to say the mother. In Denon’s play, the mother is totally absent, lost with all other possessions, belonging to the world which Lisimond and his daughter have left behind. Julie resents the fact that someone is interested in her and wants to crown her reine (4). She only has one king; that king is her father. Nobody should come between the two of them (23). Though, at the end, Julie decides to avoid her father’s company during the jeux de son âge and choose a different <?page no="93"?> 93 Dominique Vivant Denon guide (21), the feelings between the two will not be altered. Julie and her genitor come to the understanding that since they are both present in each other’s heart, they can never be separated (5). It is practically impossible to separate from such an individual, such an entity whose name is Lisimond, the one through whom one can read the world (on lit le monde) or, if associated with the verb lisser, the one who smoothens the world. It seems that it would be useful, almost imperative, to have him by one’s side. Damis has purposely left his abode and his surroundings to join the ones who benefit from his presence. He wants to join a world which looks up to Lisimond, a world that is possible to read through him. Both Damis, and Dumon(t) come from the grand monde; it is through clemency, purity, sincere commitment that Damis will be admitted to the congregation here depicted. The unwillingness to change, the desire to be loved without fair exchange of this sentiment will be met with denial. Inequality of status is also mentioned throughout the play. In one of the final scenes, Damis learns that the present economic condition of Julie is not the one she used to enjoy in her pays natal. This news renders Damis happy. It is the injustice of men which has changed the circumstances of Julie and her father; and it is the justice of fate which eventually parallels the status of Damis and Julie. Once different, they are at this point equal. Sacrificing a past to which they no longer belong, Damis and Julie are united by the wish to replace it, to follow the advice and choices of their Father, a good Father. All three of them will continue to live together in the simplicity and virtue they have espoused; “on peut être heureux au Village; on peut l’être par-tout où il y a du bien à faire” (37). This quasi-paradisiacal society where people could live in harmony, if they are of a certain frame of mind, maturity, and evidently of an economical status that confers a bit of savoir faire, virtue, and enlightenment, is without doubt the Masonic lodge to which the young Denon had been initiated some time after his arrival in Paris. Mentorship by noble and erudite older men had replaced the figure of a strict and practical father, one who evidently did not want what Denon wished, one who was the earthly reproduction of the Catholic God to which Denon had certainly been exposed in his provincial Chalon. A denial is engraved in this play: God cannot be a violent, revengeful, bloodthirsty creator; He has to be a caring father, le bon père, understanding and attached to his creatures, a parent who, instead of wishing for sacrifices and suffering, can offer appealing options to a forced isolation from the mediocre and material world. This type of father does not abandon but follows his creatures until the time is due, at which point he will be replaced by an entire congregation, which, through the teaching of grace, clemency, beauty, trust, and equality, can serve as a safe haven for a genuinely good permutation of what once was man. The “village” of the first and only play by Denon takes a formal name, in a short story the baron sent to Isabella Teotochi during their many epistolary <?page no="94"?> 94 Chapter Three 50 The story can be found in Lettres à Bettine, 606-607. The Italian term Altichiaro stands for ClearHigh. Throughout the work, for unknown reasons, the name is spelled differently: Altichiero. 51 Trentafonte, 14. 52 In the passage, another name is openly mentioned, the one of the Marquise de Grollier. The Marquise was an intimate friend of the famous painter Vigée Lebrun, who had in turn painted by commission of the same Denon, the portrait of his dear Isabella. Madame de Grollier, herself a very skillful painter, had married Pierre-Louis de Grollier, who was an avid collector. exchanges. This name is Altichiaro. 50 Denon’s narration provides more evidence of the importance of the Masonic creed and the centrality of collecting in the works of this author. As with the two previous literary creations, he has added to the fiction some autobiographical data, his odd relationship with Isabella and her husband(s). Both of Isabella’s husbands, Signor Marini and Signor Albrizzi, were active members of the same Masonic Lodge to which Denon belonged. Altichiaro is a place where was located the villa of Angelo Querini, a Venetian Mason. He opened the doors of his private abode to Carlo Antonio Pilati, another Masonic member, around the year 1767 when his first publication, Di una riforma d’Italia, caused havoc and the condemnation of the text as well as of the author. 51 More interestingly, Daniela Gallingani informs us that senator Querini and his nephew, judge Lauro Querini, were among Denon’s “puissants amis” (12). Reading Denon’s writing, one can recognize one of the two protagonists mentioned above and the goal of their meeting which was to maintain the power of Masonry itself. 52 In “Altichiaro” prominence is given to the terminology, the symbols, and finally the striking evidences offered by a temple, a monument through which man expresses his deepest wishes: to be buried in this temple, to secure posterity’s veneration, thus to attain immortality, embodied by none other than a serpent, the Anti-Christ, Anti-God. The temple, of which Denon writes, has been well taken care of and imitated. Inside it, one can find the heart of its builder; literally the organ is stored within the monument’s walls because it was in the temple that the builder had spent the majority of his days talking about death as a transition, and confessed to the youngest ones that to lose the temple was to him a discomfort. Thence forward this temple was the place of destination of the young generation of the village, who went along with their wise fathers to celebrate the virtues of the man who had passed away leaving behind this legacy. In turn, they brought their own children. Even the two French travelers, protagonists of the story, are so fascinated by it that they cannot leave the village without keeping some of its debris as souvenirs; they see in the temple the proof of friendship’s endurance through hardship and time (“ils emportèrent ce tableau précieux et l’idée consolante que le temps, qui ne respecte rien, épargne quelquefois la tendre reconnaissance et la douce amitié”). Baron <?page no="95"?> 95 Dominique Vivant Denon 53 Lettres à Bettine, 607. Denon, very succinctly but effectively, gives us a picture of the value Masonry had for him and his contemporaries. In the temple, as in the museum and the cabinet of wonders, time cannot corrupt values; “on voyait le serpent symbole de l’immortalité, avec le mot Altichiero”; 53 within the walls of a temple, a museum or a personal cabinet, man is in control over his own destiny. He sought to resolve the conflict between reason and irrationality within the Enlightenment project itself. Denon’s (Re)-Interpretation Resolved to prove the inadequacy of the four ways (nationalistic, curiosityrelated, aesthetic, and sentimental) of reading Denon’s life and literary/ artistic works, I have analyzed his ties with the Masonic Lodge to explain not only his biography, but also his direction of the Louvre and especially the formation of his private collection, his works of art and his writings and, in turn, to have a better understanding of his aspirations to glory and immortality, his attempts to control the trajectory of his life. Just as the concepts of building and accumulating/ ions contain each other, neither category can be defined without reference to the other, so both of them refer and contain the Masonic creed, to be found in Denon’s works and collections. This is not to be restricted to Denon alone, for as I have mentioned, many other men of the century were acting similarly. I am here not only referring to other Masonic members, or for that matter, to other “religious fanatics” of the time, but to the savants who observed and never ceased to inquire, to separate and catalogue each branch of knowledge. I am clearly referring also to the Encyclopédistes and their extraordinary work of accumulation, selection, division, and re-construction. Their efforts paralleled Denon’s in terms of the time he put into the building of that superb modern temple, the Louvre. Both the Encyclopédie and the Louvre are majestic mementos of a time heavily influenced by Freemasonry, for both re-establish the dignity of the artisan, the collector, who according to the preface of the Encylopédie, boasts such admirable qualities as the “sagacité de l’esprit,” “patience,” and “ressources” (I, xii). They translate into the Masonic key concepts of knowledge, tolerance and material power, and consequently godlike ability. After all, was not the initial and most predominant objective of Masonry to revindicate the nobility and dignity of the bricklayer and to connect it to the work of cultural ennobling in which was rooted the institution of Masonry itself? <?page no="96"?> 96 Chapter Three 54 Incidentally the episode of the self-coronation was magnificently painted by Denon’s long-time friend and co-worker, David, and is currently displayed in the Louvre. The analysis of Freemasonry presented here serves to prove that Denon did not attempt to merely quench a thirst that more than one scholar has identified as curiosity; he did not work under the stress of a propagandistic campaign that he had to tailor for his own emperor and country. He wanted what the philosophers of the Encyclopedia wished as well, an instrument by which he could exercise his own control, his own power of judgment, of choice. To attain it, he was able to seize the opportunities offered by the new- Caesarism of Napoleon, which was a celebration of the individual in defiance of the Christian God, as represented by Napoleon’s self-coronation rather than by the “direct” intercessor of divine power on earth, namely the Pope. 54 Revisiting Denon’s cabinet and uncovering the skeletons kept in his cabinet is a way of revealing a period of conscious research of man’s body and soul, a marvelous investigation of human skills and a challenge to all possible abilities and expectations. It sheds new light on a bracket of time which is usually recognized for the fruitful works of the intellect but which is seldom referred to as the dawn of an introspection that allowed mankind to know, or to try to know, its limitations and reliance on a Supreme Being whose innate immortality provoked the jealousy and incomprehension of many. Denon renders humanity and himself a god against God, one who wants to attain all powers to attest to his godlike features. It is the Masonic god that one can see depicted in all Denon’s works and collections, the vision of a god that is the response to all contradictions of the time represented by stiffness and cold rationalism on one side and the incongruent vitality of sentimentalism and naturalism on the other. The Masonic god is the solution to all exigencies and illogical models provided by the established creeds which called for an ethics that was to be independent from the Christian faith. The Masonic lodge welcomed all efforts at self-discovery and at constant search for betterment, for it offered the maintenance of the social status quo and celebrated acceptance of all religious manifestations and philosophies for the safeguard of earthly harmony. Most importantly, this new social and religious order allowed man to acquire enough power as to present himself as a god, enjoying the same “privileges” as the God from which he had originated and somewhat departed. It is following this reading that one can comprehend the importance of the belongings of Denon, for through possessing goods he could embody his desire and need to create an extension of himself, to deal with old trauma and emotional turmoil, to find a palliative and to assert that he, the goods’ owner, was in control, of things or reified beings, master of all: past, present, and future. It is in this light that one has to re-write and re-read Denon’s biography embedded in the history of a period and of a mental/ spiritual perspective shared by others. <?page no="97"?> 97 Dominique Vivant Denon One should not identify the Louvre as a rendition of national glory or a celebration of aesthetic parameters; one should not view Point de lendemain as an orgy of pleasure and immorality, for it is not a mere unfolding of events leading to sexual intercourse; one has to recognize instead in its pages the physical and moral transformation of a young man through the stages of Freemasonry; one should not see Denon’s travels as attempts to learn other customs and discover new frontiers, for he set out to find himself and to collect new things to possess and to preserve in his own shrine; one should not see his private collections as pedagogical tools and new occasions of socializing, but as demonstrations of his own position as a semi-deity, of his own power. Whereas Denon follows the traditional parameters dictated by the Masonic agenda, it is, first, through the personal growth related to us in the form of a philosophical and historical diary and then through a series of essays that Saint-Martin depicts his journey toward self-realization and collective happiness. In his peculiarities as an individual he finds the commonalities of all men. He exhorts all men to depart from their guilt in order to arrive at the accomplishment of a divine desire through the way of the heart. Saint-Martin bestowed on his voyage du coeur all “the graces, the refinements and the good taste, essential qualities in an Order, the base of which is wisdom, strength and the beauty of the spirit” (Ramsay par. 9). Let us follow the footsteps of the nouvel homme of eighteenth-century France. <?page no="99"?> 1 For a brief history of the Martinist Order in England, refer to its official website, http: / / www.bmosite.org. 2 See Faivre, Access 79-85; Jacques-Lefèvre 11. C HAPTER F OUR Louis-Claude de Saint Martin: Illustrating Man’s Regeneration Je voudrois trois choses. 1 Que l’homme n’oubliât jamais qu’il y a une autre lumière que l’élémentaire et dont celle-cy n’est que le voile et le masque 2.Que l’homme se persuadât que rien ne peut et ne doit l’empêcher de faire son travail. 3.Qu’il sentît que ce que l’homme sçait le mieux, c’est ce qu’il n’apprend point (Saint-Martin, Mon Portrait Art. 146). Whereas overseas Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin is considered to be the most important esotericist of his time whose influence has never ceased to spread, to the English reader, he is a mystery. This is primarily due to the fact that his writings are almost impossible to find in languages other than French, but also to the absence of a more direct influence of the doctrine of this mystical eighteenth-century author. If, in fact, disciples of Saint-Martin spread his beliefs in many European countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and Russia, creating a federation of the order, it has only been a decade since an English-speaking country has been exposed to such creeds. In 1991 the British Order was born in the Templar Chapel at Rothley, followed by ramifications in Manchester, Leicester, and London, England, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Trinidad, West Indies. 1 The study of Saint-Martin’s theosophy is essential not only to have a more complete picture and understanding of eighteenth-century mysticism but also of nineteenth-century Romanticism. In Germany translations of Saint-Martin were widely read and influenced theosophers such as Franz von Baader and Johann Friedrich von Meyer, and well-known philosophers such as Schlegel; his obsessive theme of man’s reintegration after the Fall inspired French writers like Charles Nodier, Honoré de Balzac, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, and George Sand, and poets like Lamartine, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. 2 Saint-Martin’s original theory, a perfect combination of feeling and thinking under the incitement of willingness to overcome guilt, can be seen <?page no="100"?> 100 Chapter Four 3 The works consulted to compile Saint-Martin’s biography are: Ovidio La Pera’s Riflessioni su alcuni temi di Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Papus’s L’illuminisme en France: 1771-1803. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Gérard de Nerval’s Les illuminés, and Louis-Claude de Saint- Martin’s Mon portrait historique et philosophique. The direct quotes from Mon portrait are here presented in the original French. 4 As quoted by La Pera in Riflessioni su alcuni temi di Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 111. Sophia is the Greek name for Wisdom. In Gnosticism, a religion that preaches a hidden as the epitome of self-knowledge as knowledge, “se connaître pour connaître”. His connubial necessity of rationality and irrationality parallels the spirit of the time, a striking shift in the way France’s elites perceived themselves and the others. Although Saint-Martin took no active part in the French uprising of 1789 other than serving in the Garde Nationale and becoming one of the guards of the little Dauphin, it was Saint-Martin’s sacred ternary - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - which was adopted as the special motto of the Revolution. Saint- Martin believed in the need for a change in governmental structure. The synarchy proposed by Saint-Martin in lieu of monarchy is a leadership of the elect, of men who, after undergoing self-testing and group-therapy (secret society membership), are fully restored and matured, that is to say they have acquired self-realization. The link between Saint-Martin’s new man within sectarianism and the Revolution becomes clear thanks to the works of this théosophe. Saint-Martin gives us invaluable tools with which one can read both the history and psyche of eighteenth-century man. Saint-Martin’s Biography and Influences Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin was born of a poor though noble family at Amboise, in Touraine, France on the 18th of January 1743. 3 Having lost his mother, Louise Tournyer, a few years after his birth, he was brought up by his stepmother, Marie-Anne Trezin, and by his father, Claude-François, both very pious individuals. Saint-Martin’s own description of the relation with his beloved stepmother and his father in Mon portrait historique et philosophique leads us to believe that while he felt a certain degree of hostility toward his father, who evidently did not share his inclinations, he nourished an odd admiration, not of an asexual nature, toward his surrogate mother. He claimed, in fact, that through her sweet, attentive, and devout upbringing, he was shaped into a person much loved by God and men alike. Only by her side did he feel free. At the same time, he felt obliged to hide from his father as if he were committing a crime (Art. 111). Saint-Martin’s biographer, Robert Amadou (1907-1997), takes this relationship very seriously, treating it not only as a sexual infatuation but most importantly as a spiritual conversion into the cult of woman, mother, and Sophia. 4 It is true that Saint-Martin saw in woman the necessary comple- <?page no="101"?> 101 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin wisdom only to a select group as necessary for salvation or escape from this world, Sophia is revered because she is a representation of wisdom, knowledge and independence (as God’s female equal, Sophia is capable of independent creation). 5 “Prière” as quoted in L’illuminisme en France, 59. ment to man. He considered man and woman to be the same spirit divided into two, but the woman, specifically, is for him la gardienne sur Terre du Principe plastique universel dénommé par Moïse Yonah. Elle est capable de donner forme vivante à toute création humaine, soit un enfant soit une idée que le cerveau de l’homme ne peut que créer brutalement et sans art. 5 Whether it was the strong attachment to his stepmother or the intimidation felt toward women that caused him to fail at courting is not quite clear. All we know is that Saint-Martin remained single until his death. He saw in this a confirmation of his mystical commission: Trois personnes ont voulu que je me mariâsse, et ces trois personnes sont une demoiselle que j’appelle l’ange, moi, et le diable; mais une quatrième personne ne l’a pas voulu, et l’emportera selon toute apparence sur les trois autres, car cette quatrième personne est le bon Dieu qui n’a cessé de renverser tous les projets des désirs humains et temporels qui nous gouvernoient tous trois, et de venir au secours de mes foiblesses en me préservant lui-même de moi. (Art. 27) Notwithstanding the fact that he wanted to pursue his interests in religion and philosophy, Saint-Martin’s father sent him to study jurisprudence at Orleans. He qualified as a King’s Advocate of the High Court of Tours, but he really did not prove to be at all interested in the law, and besought his opposing parent to take him from the legal profession. It is upon the positive response to his request that a friend of the family, the Duke of Choiseul, obtained for him a lieutenant’s commission in the regiment of Foix, based at Bordeaux. This calling seems indeed odd and inappropriate for a man with a fragile body and sweet spirit. In time, the newly acquired responsibilities proved to be extremely important for the development of Saint-Martin’s philosophy. While in Bordeaux, serving in the army, Saint-Martin became the friend of another officer, Monsieur de Grainville, initiate of a very important local secret society, the Order of the Elus Cohens, led by Martines de Pasqually. From 1768 to 1774 Saint-Martin worked as the secretary of Pasqually. In <?page no="102"?> 102 Chapter Four 6 Pasqually was called on family business to St. Domingo, in Haiti, in 1774 without returning to France. He died, in fact, under mysterious circumstances at the early age of 47. 7 I was able to read a facsimile edition of Traité and Cathéchismes et Rituels Coens via the internet posting on the site http: / / www.kingsgarder.org/ french/ organization.f/ om.f/ Martinez/ ManuscritAlge (Ed. des montagnes bleues, Rock Tavern, New York, 2002). 1771 he decided to quit his military duties to become apprenti compagnon maître, a charge which entailed corresponding with other members and traveling to other French cities, such as Lyons and Paris, on the Order’s business. Whether Saint-Martin’s extensive travels were tangible attempts to enlighten and recruit les non-voyants to expand the course of his mission is not yet clear. These are mere speculations based on the fact that he was a charming speaker and well received in many salons and lodges. What is known at the present time is that he came into contact with several illustrious foreigners already belonging to the same esoteric circle, and that his most faithful travel companion was Prince Feodor Galatzin (a.k.a. Galitzin). This Russian exiled in France is believed to have been a member of the Northern School, together with Cagliostro, whom he visited with Saint-Martin during Cagliostro’s imprisonment in Rome. Saint-Martin was in Italy for three years, from 1775 to 1778. In 1785, he visited London where he met William Law, considered to be his English counterpart. Law had, in fact, pursued serious studies of the works of Jakob Boehme and was certainly inspired by them. Though of very short duration, 6 Saint-Martin’s relationship with Pasqually influenced him enormously. Pasqually was an initiate of the Rosicrucians, and a disciple of Emanuel Swedenborg. Like Swedenborg, Pasqually believed in a realm of spiritual beings with which he maintained a constant rapport. Pasqually, a native of Grenoble and of Hispanic-Jewish background, had always felt a keen interest in the esoteric occidental tradition. During his youth, he pursued journeys to Egypt and Palestine to learn as much as possible of their spiritual doctrines in order to shape his own. Upon his return, and after joining a Masonic lodge, he felt the need to form a new rite based upon a hybrid formula. He fused, in fact, Gnosticism of Catharistic origin with hermetical Christianity and kabbalistic mysticism, and named this religious sectarian body the Order of the Knights Elus Cohens, also known as Knights Mason, Elect Priests of the Universe. Cohens comes from the Hebrew word Cohanim, that is to say the highest class of priests in Jerusalem during biblical times, believed to be direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. Only a Mason who had reached the third degree (maître) was to be admitted into the Pasqually-founded sect. To understand the objectives of this sect, one must refer to the founder’s written works, one of which is Traité de la réintegration des êtres dans leurs premières propriétés, vertus et puissances spirituelles et divines. 7 Emphasis is given to the doctrine of the fall of angels, the fall of man, the secret esoteric history of <?page no="103"?> 103 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 8 Franck, 14. 9 “Lorsque dans les premiers tems de mon instruction je voyois le maître Pasqually préparer toutes les formules et tracer tous les emblêmes et tous les signes employés dans ses procédés theurgiques, je lui disois: Maître, comment, il faut tout cela pour prier le bon Dieu! ” (Mon portrait, Art. 41). the cosmos, the esoteric role of evil forces, and man’s ultimate goal to reinstate his original status. According to Pasqually, God is one but his power is triad and his essence quadruple. His primary ‘extensions’ are Jesus Christ and his angels. Another of God’s extension but of lesser importance and spiritual strength is man. Due to his feebleness, Adam, divine androgynous creation, succumbed to evil temptations. His final defeat was sexual lust and his copulation with Eve. Victory, according to Pasqually, could only be attained through a plan of reintegration. Man had to purge his body and soul of all sins, by becoming a man of desire, who accepted to put his self to death in order to reconcile with his spiritual being. This process was not simple. Pasqually created a series of rules such as praying on Wednesday and Saturday nights, vows and works which must take into consideration the different plans of operation of Adam, Cain, Noah, and Abel (specific physical settings, in lieu of the planetary positions). It is, indeed, of the utmost importance the fact that only the elect, the Cohen, is the one who would succeed. Pasqually’s temple was a setting of rituals, of integrated initiations, of mini-reproductions of the steps of Christ. Pasqually firmly believed that if Jesus Christ, responding and conforming to the will of God, became the Son of God, and God himself, man could also attain eternal union with God thus proving his divine origin. By rejecting Satan, man would become one with God, and consequently with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 8 Pasqually’s temple, rather than standing on the Christian principle of grace and salvation through the shedding of the blood of Jesus, was founded on man’s self-empowerment through works and rites. In regards to such pomposity, Saint-Martin displayed a certain discomfort. 9 To the theurgy of his mentor, he opposed a theosophy developing from the pivotal concept of re-integration. The means to attain the eternal reunion of man with his universal and spiritual onset was, according to Saint-Martin, not an external, fabricated avenue but an inner way, the way of the human heart. This innovative method was undoubtedly inspired by the transcendental psychology forged by the seventeenth-century shoemaker and mystic, Jakob Boehme. In the first of the two dialogues contained in The Supersensual Life: Two Dialogues between a Disciple and His Master Concerning the Life which is above Sense, Boehme stated that the way to God is in man, in contemplation and prayer, after having resigned his will to God, and having bowed his soul under the Cross. Expectedly, man’s first reaction is confusion, for whereas God has created him king of all earthly things man is also required to withdraw from <?page no="104"?> 104 Chapter Four all earthly possessions and pleasures. Boehme clarifies by stating the importance of distinguishing “the Thing and all Image thereof…the Sovereignty which is substantial and the inward Nature Sovereignty which is substantial and the inward Nature which is imaginary…between angelical and bestial.” Boehme’s mysticism fascinated not only Saint-Martin but many philosophers who followed (Schopenhauer, Schelling, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger), and the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. Having experienced a profound mystical conversion at the age of twentyfive, Boehme firmly believed that man encompassed all kinds of controversy within himself; he saw in himself the divine, the angelical and the dark world; consequently he was convinced of the importance of knowing the whole Being in evil and good. His was a type of philosophical theology, founded on a transforming dynamic of the psyche to reach through alchemical symbolism a certain evaluation and individuation. Boehme’s explication of the plan of salvation shows us how reality is in constant tension between affirmation and suppression of the self, how man’s self-knowledge comes from the God-man, Adam-Christ, and how the three-fold Deity is manifest in Wisdom (Sophia) the feminine side of the androgynous divinity. According to Boehme, man must not only know himself, and explain himself but also what is external to him in Nature. Because, as Boehme reminds us in his dialogues, man is to be the lord of things, he is responsible not only for his own well-being but also for that which is around him, what belongs to him. As a subordinate to a superior entity, he is responsible for recognizing his dependency and the importance of his selflessness. These are concepts that influenced the basic principles of the French Constitution. and, simultaneously, shaped the revolutionary approach of Saint-Martin. Through them, Saint-Martin was able to denounce the irrelevance of belonging to an organized and restricted society. As a matter of fact, Saint-Martin considered sociability to be a sin, [le] seul péché à l’homme sur la terre, c’est [celui] d’approcher des autres hommes, et ce péché-là est la source de toutes ses ténébres, de toutes ses ignorances, de tous ses vices, et de toutes ses passions. Dieu et la vérité ne se trouvent que dans l’isolement et la paix ne se trouve que dans Dieu et la vérité. (Art. 80) Man does not have any need to be with others because his essence is essential to him only. Human interrelation can lead to destruction, for the opinion that others have of us is often all we go by, acting and reacting accordingly. According to Saint-Martin, humans live in disguise. They cover all their iniquities by falling further and further into despair. It is necessary to rebuild the temple of God. It is necessary that man recognize in himself not only his sins and faults, but also his divine nature. The new temple is not to be rebuilt of physical walls but within the heart of the nouvel homme. <?page no="105"?> 105 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 10 Ecce Homo 38. 11 See Mon portrait, Arts. 1, 488, and 1135, amongst the most salient ones. 12 Even the term Martinism can be confusing. While Saint-Martin’s short biography by Antoine Faivre appeared in Encyclopedia Universalis supplies a glimpse of clarity on the history of the term Martinism, which, during the time of Martines de Pasqually, Saint- Martin, and Willermoz was used to refer to the doctrines of Pasqually, Saint-Martin and Willermoz, in Les illuminés Gérard de Nerval underlines the inadequacy of this usage by distinguishing three doctrines and by adopting three terms, martinésisme, martinisme and willermozisme (12). Today Martinism refers to the Martinist Order founded by Papus, which continues to support Saint-Martin’s ideal of free initiation conferred from master to disciple without formal structure, and which has followers in many European countries. The coming of the kingdom of God with the consequent regeneration of man and of his rapport with his creator, as implied by Saint-Martin, is not a work of cooperation but one that stresses the importance of self-knowledge, of individual effort and achievement. Yet one must not think that a discouragement of discipleship was at hand. Saint-Martin believed in the missions of godly ministers, of prophets, or as he called them, “commissaires divins,” who were chosen and happy to follow the will of their Master. They will tell you that vous ne pourrez être en effet les témoins de votre Dieu qu’autant que vous serez véridiques, vérifiés et dans la justice, et ils vous citeront en exemple les simples tribunaux humains où on fait jurer aux témoins de dire vérité, mais où on ne reçoit point pour témoins des gens diffamés; instruction simple mais profonde, qui peut agrandir votre vue, et sur votre nature primitive, et sur l’étendue de vos devoirs. 10 This reveals the first series of misundertandings about Martinism, viewed as a mystical individual experience, a form of introspection, of asceticism. It is indeed true that the author himself has supplied posterity with statements which call for presumptions and misreadings. 11 But it is also accurate to claim that Saint-Martin’s thought is the product of many elitist doctrines rather than the result of a refutation a priori of the ceremonials which accompany the formation of a specific secular or non-secular circle. According to Arthur Edward Waite in his French Mystic and the Story of Modern Martinism, and Gérard Encausse, also known as Papus, founder of an Ordre Martiniste (1891), 12 Saint- Martin’s name has been associated with the Masonic rite rectifié (1757) and the Scottish rite rectifié of Germany (1782), with the Strict Observance Order in France, and with an official sect in Russia started during the regency of Catherine the Great, the Order of Strict Templar Observance. All this is unfounded. What has been proven, through Saint-Martin’s personal correspondence and Portrait is that he had many disciples, met perhaps during his travels inside France and to England, Italy, Germany, and Russia. Though his <?page no="106"?> 106 Chapter Four 13 Le Nouvel homme, 40. goal was influenced by the ones of others who instructed him or who surrounded him, his methodology was quite different: Ma tâche dans ce monde a été de conduire l’esprit de l’homme par une voie naturelle aux choses surnaturelles qui lui appartiennent de droit, mais dont il a perdu totalement l’idée, soit par sa degradation, soit par l’instruction fausse de ses instituteurs. Cette tâche est neuve, mais elle est remplie de nombreux obstacles…Mais elle est si vaste et si sure que je dois grandement remercier la Providence de m’avoir comme chargé de cet emploi que je n’ai vu jusqu’ici exercer à personne, puisque ceux qui ont enseigné et qui enseignent tous les jours ne le font qu’en exigeant la soumission ou qu’en racontant des faits merveilleux. (Art.1135) Saint-Martin had experienced this first-hand as secretary of Pasqually, as a Mesmerist (Saint-Martin actually joined the Société des Amis Réunis in 1784), and as an initiate of the Société des philosophes inconnus, and founder of the Société des Initiés/ Intimes (as mentioned by Saint-Martin himself in his Crocodile). According to Saint-Martin, it is by philosophizing that man can retrace the path to God. Saint-Martin believed that the human soul, the human intellect, the spirit of the universe, and the elements of matter are the four stages in this regeneration, with Man being the immediate reflection of God, and Nature in turn a reflection of Man. The only difference between God and his creation is that God is himself “pensant, parlant et opérant,” while Man is “un Dieu pensé, parlé et opera.” 13 This manner of thinking was the result of years spent studying other philosophers, such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Pascal, and Jacques Abbadie, and in particular Abbadie’s work, L’Art de se connaître soi-même. The affiliation to all the secret societies aforementioned had shaped the incorruptibility of his persona, his discretion, and his curiosity for all sciences. The series of enigmas encountered in these settings and maintained by way of self-discipline had led Saint-Martin to believe in the power of the word and of its transmission. Similarly, his thought evolved from the mysteries and charms of magnetism and alchemy to the mysticism of kabala which led him to counterattack the doctrines of his philosophical contemporaries and to explain his belief only to those who were interested to know and only with a sense of humbleness and of practicality. Two comparisons, one to one of Saint-Martin’s contemporaries, Rousseau, and the other to one of Saint- Martin’s predecessors, Socrates, seem to be necessary in order to give clear examples of Saint-Martin’s animosity to the philosophes and Saint-Martin’s sympathy for the ancient Greek “self-knowledge for knowledge” theory and <?page no="107"?> 107 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin methodology. The first one was drawn by Saint-Martin himself; the second one is attempted by me. Saint-Martin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau Saint-Martin often compared himself to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, finding many resemblances but certainly differences as well: Ce n’est pas seulement dans le caractere, et dans la destinée que je me suis trouvé des ressemblances avec Jean-Jacques Rousseau. V. no.60. C’est aussi dans les principes philosophiques que les diverses situations de notre vie nous ont fait appercevoir et adopter. Quand il dit 1. vol. des Confessions page 127: Cette grande maxime de morale, la seule peut-être d’usage dans la pratique, d’eviter les situations qui mettent nos devoirs en opposition avec nos interêts, et qui nous montrent notre bien dans le mal d’autrui; sur que dans de telles situations, quelque sincere amour de la vertu que l’on y porte, on foiblit tôt ou tard sans s’en appercevoir, et l’on devient injuste et mechant dans le fait, sans avoir cessé d’etre juste et bon dans l’âme. Quand il dit, même vol. p. 147, La vertu ne nous coute que par notre faute, et si nous voulions etre toujours sages, rarement aurions-nous besoin d’etre vertueux; il m’est impossible de ne me pas reconnoitre, comme lui à ces vérités; enfin je ne jette presque jamais les yeux sur son historique, et sur les tableaux de son âme sans appercevoir combien la nature nous avoit donné de choses de commun l’un avec l’autre, quoique, comme je l’ay dit, je ne me compare en rien avec lui ni pour la vertu, ni pour les talents. (Art. 419) Further, Saint-Martin recognized that Rousseau was more alert to see around him a need for action, whereas Saint-Martin was always eager to find an opportunity to learn: Rousseau étoit meilleur que moi, je l’ay reconnu sans difficulté. Il tendoit au bien par le coeur, j’y tendois par l’esprit, les lumières et les connoissances; c’est là ce qui nous caracterise l’un et l’autre. Je laisse cependant aux hommes de l’intelligence à discerner ce que j’appelle les vraies lumières, et les vraies connoissances, et à ne les pas confondre avec les sciences humaines qui ne font que des orgeuilleux, et des ignorants. (Art. 423) But the distinctions between these two philosophers are much more profound. They are predominantly socio-political and religious in nature. Rousseau believed that man is naturally good, that society has corrupted man’s good nature and state of happiness, and that this happiness is to be regained through the founding of a collective democratic socio-political power where <?page no="108"?> 108 Chapter Four 14 Lettre à un ami 33-34. 15 Bell, 39. 16 Ibid, 76. the general welfare has priority over the individual one. Naturally, Saint- Martin could not subscribe to these beliefs, for he did not concur with the innate innocence and good will of mankind, and consequently could not see a human association as a solution for the evil created on earth. Though convinced of the capabilities and the ingenuity of Rousseau, a man whom he considered to be a prophet, a sensitive heart, Saint-Martin reproached him for demonstrating a certain ignorance of man’s nature which led him astray. Unprepared though highly aware of the unfairness and unhappiness of man’s condition, Rousseau imagined the first human beings living in the forest as would animals and placed them together into a society foreign to them. Still, enthralled by their simplistic ways of living, he considers them to be the signs of the real youth of the world and consequently warnings against extending any further. Rousseau considered the primeval state of man’s wilderness to be far better than the subsequent state of wickedness which civil and political man had reached. Yet this natural society praised by Rousseau is founded on the passions of a beastly being, and/ or on his fragile reason, both of which are subject to be altered over time. Based on these assumptions, all societies would be loose gatherings of wild beasts, none of which is superior or inferior, each with the same tendency and wish to devour the other. 14 According to Saint-Martin, man, due to his own sins, has fallen from the divine order to the natural order, from joy and immortality to pain and destruction. Man’s first transgression was that of weakness rather than of pride. He was, in fact, lured by the beauty of the natural universe, forgetting thus the perfection of the divine universe. Man will only be able to redeem himself through the wise guidance of some elected messengers of God, far superior in intelligence and knowledge. As Rousseau had also proclaimed, man was in need of a lawgiver who invoked divine authority for his laws and a “civil religion” which inspired man to love his responsibilities. 15 In an attempt to construct the nation, the French men and women of 1789 were trying to attain regeneration, an operation directed by men “on the religious model: the image of the resurrection, of the second coming, of regeneration, haunted them.” 16 It is thus with a highly developed form of theocracy, or as the followers of Saint-Martin call it, synarchie, that Saint-Martin wants to replace the popular sovereignty proposed by Rousseau and above all the contemporary government of France. In the first page to Lettre à un ami ou Considérations politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses sur la Révolution française (1795), Saint-Martin welcomes the intervention of Providence to purge all the abuses which have <?page no="109"?> 109 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 17 Lettre à un ami 57-58; Mon portrait Art. 846. 18 Lettre à un ami, 7-9. infected in all its parts the French government, and to purify the spirit of all French citizens, whom he found too weak to act independently. If it were true that the primitive society was good and just, then one should have been able to see a grouping of fraternal associations to fit the truth and innocence of primitive man. The actual state of man, according to Saint-Martin does not prove this theory to be correct. Both the ecclesiastical and monarchical authorities have failed in their duties. God is the only sovereign of man. The leaders of the nations should be His representatives. The people will voluntarily abdicate their power to these elected prophets because they will be able to trust their faithfulness, their sense of justice, and their perseverance in pursuing the will of God. 17 Without doubt, Saint-Martin strived to be this new type of self-realized individual, whom he considered to be eventually necessary in leading the country. In his autobiographical collection, he compares himself to the hero of Daniel Defoe’s masterpiece, to the extent of coining a nickname for himself, “le Robinson de la spiritualité” (Art. 458). He was the incarnation of the Prophet, the Man of Desire who held the mirror shattered by the philosophers of his times. Saint-Martin’s intention was not only to denounce man’s separation from his true source, but to proclaim that there is a way to reunite these two divided entities. This was, according to him, the immanent meaning of religion, to “relier” to their principle all beings which stood far from it. This term does not imply a constriction, Saint-Martin is quick to add, for God has given man ample liberty to choose his own destiny so that one can equate the word “religion” to “gifts.” 18 According to Saint-Martin, unfortunately these gifts are left untouched. Man opts for erudition, consults books, which even when sacred are only representations of the truth so generously offered by God and contain explanations of facts and things which are external to man. Saint-Martin dwells on the importance of understanding the concept of religion by proclaiming that the Bible itself contains the term “religion” as a rite, a set of laws, only four times. To it the Holy Writ opposes the innumerable quotations apropos of Christianity. Christianity, that is to say the power to be made into the son of God, and the spirit of the sons of God or Apostles of Christ (John 1: 12), is the only universal light. Christianity pivots around the name of the Man, and of His followers, of His battle and victory. Christianity promotes salvation through the knowledge and love of man rather than by ritualistic expedients. Because of the constant reference to Christ, thus to the necessity of being followers of Christ, Saint-Martin’s theology has been erroneously labeled as a mysticism within the Christian tradition. His Christ is much different from the Christian God-Son figure. The Verb, or “Réparateur,” often cited by Saint- <?page no="110"?> 110 Chapter Four 19 Le Nouvel homme 197. 20 Theaetetus §§ 148-150 Martin in Le Nouvel homme, contrary to the Christian doctrine, has not come to save us but to show us the way to salvation. He has not wiped away man’s guilt of original sin; He has diminished the resistance put up by man’s carnality and selfishness. By the shedding of His blood, Christ has shown to man the path to purification of earthly corruption. He has performed, in front of man, an alchemical transmutation which needs to be repeated individually. He has created an example that man has to follow; actually man can do even “de plus grandes choses” than Christ himself “parce que le Réparateur n’a fait que semer les germes de l’oeuvre et que le nouvel homme peut entrer en moisson.” 19 Saint-Martin’s depiction of Christ introduces the methodology the Philosophe Inconnu embraced and which is patterned after Socrates’s midwifery (maieutica) according to which the teacher only animates the knowledge already present in the pupil’s mind and soul. Saint-Martin and Socrates Socrates used two metaphors to better describe the nature of his work as a philosopher; he compared himself to a gadfly, and a midwife. In his Apology we read: I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you. (§ 31) Socrates stings with his questions, awakens the Athenians; he also helps them to give birth, to extract something within you which you are bringing to birth […]. And have you never heard, […] that I am the son of a midwife[…]And that I myself practice midwifery? […] my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies; and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth[…]It is quite clear that they never learned anything from me; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery. 20 The Greek philosopher’s task was in short to encourage others to think for themselves, to desire to attain true knowledge. This was possible to Socrates <?page no="111"?> 111 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 21 The Republic VI, § 490. 22 Tableau naturel 148-149. by first acknowledging human ignorance, and secondly by submitting oneself to a total purification from degrading and false thinking. As for a definition of knowledge, in Meno, Socrates supplies it by stating that real knowledge is “recollection,” an “unforgetting” of all truths stored in the immortal portion of the soul; the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint. (§ 81) To Socrates, the true lover of knowledge is always striving after Being until he has attained this knowledge by the power of the soul and by this power drawing near and eventually becoming one with the Being. 21 Saint-Martin’s philosophy is not dissimilar to Socrates’s. First of all, Saint- Martin refuses to feed his readers « des résultats qui resteraient nulls pour [leur] instruction jusqu’à ce qu’il[s] s’en fu[rent] assuré[s] [eux]-même[s]. » 22 Saint-Martin’s way of communicating is not indocrination but democratic didactics. He wants to teach his readers not his philosophy but how to create their own, how to think for themselves. Saint-Martin does not transmit the truth; he tries to spur his readers to seek it. His writing is to be compared to the Word of God, not the commands of the Old Testament but the Christic sensibility and passion. Man has been given free will; he has the choice to take the way which will lead him to God or to go astray. Saint-Martin, in his attempts to be like Christ, reiterates that his way of thinking is the way to reconciliation, but he does not impose it. He presents the facts; he points to the need for change; he gives his testimony. Yet he leaves ample space to his readers to make their decisions. One should remember that Saint-Martin’s Christ did not descend on earth to purge all sins and to sacrifice his life for the well-being of others; he came to show the way, to give men some parameters to emulate, without crushing their worth, but, on the contrary, emphasizing it. Though displaying the irony of Voltaire and the sensitivity of Rousseau, condemning injustice on the part of the clergy and nobility, and making man the center of his speculation and of the universe, Saint-Martin stands in clear opposition to his contemporaries and in agreement with Socrates. The knowledge he seeks, the type of change he wishes for, the methods through which all knowledge and change are attainable, do not follow the parameters laid by the philosophes. Saint-Martin does not brandish a sword in his hands. He just reports his own battle hoping that this will be an inspiration to others. He is convinced that the battle is an individual attempt at victory; half the battle is <?page no="112"?> 112 Chapter Four won once the interest of man is conquered, once he is able to spur the reader to acknowledge his shortcomings and to aspire to truth. Like Socrates, who admitted to his bareness, his ignorance, his inability to bring something to light due to his lack of wisdom, Saint-Martin does not present himself as a demagogue or a leader but as a lover of true knowledge, as a man who has made his own errors and through them has resolved to change, to better his condition. Through his own historical and philosophical journal, and his philosophical essays, he presents himself as a man in transition, a man who needs to evolve through the consideration of his own past, here intended as his personal as well as historical background. As in the case of Meno’s slave boy guided by Socrates to the solution of a mathematical problem, where to illustrate his idea of knowledge the Greek philosopher points out that true learning is not a factual acquisition but a recollection, Saint-Martin’s process to knowledge is similar to an introspective investigation, a psychoanalytical endeavour; it is a self-guided search to the innermost side of man. Saint-Martin proposes an attentive resurfacing of all secrets, of all which is hidden to cleanse oneself, to start anew. Saint-Martin’s philosophy of self-knowledge is tri-partite in nature: first the awareness of one’s faults, secondly the need for mending such faults and thirdly the regaining of one’s lost identity, thus the restoration of the original unity with the matrix from which one derives. It can be applied not only to the healing process of an individual but also to the one of a nation. Its links with psychoanalysis are as obvious as are its correlations to the historical perspective of Saint-Martin. Its tripartite stages correspond to a review of the past, with a consequent reassessed control of the present and hope for the future. These stages, marking Saint-Martin’s reintegration of man as an individual as well as the major protagonist of history, are epitomized by the author’s main works. Ecce Homo Though Saint-Martin’s bibliography is quite extensive (more than 40 works) and varied in genre (from pamphlets to epistles, treatises, odes and prayers), I will focus my analysis on the written trilogy of man’s regeneration which mirrors his tri-partite theory, a meddling of rationality and emotion, which highlights the links of Martinism with psychoanalysis and history. These works are: Ecce Homo, Le Nouvel homme, and Le Crocodile, which will be analyzed here chronologically and comparatively. In 1775, Saint-Martin published his first work, Des Erreurs et de la vérité, in which he denounced the multiplicity and gravity of man’s shortcomings (hence the plural here used for error), and the uniqueness and absolutism of the truth. Interestingly, Saint-Martin’s book was hailed as a treasure of Masonic science. In 1790 L’Homme de désir made its first appearance. The <?page no="113"?> 113 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin protagonist of this treatise is a man who starts to see, through the example of the Cross, the happiness that is possible then becomes eager to mend the gap between God and man, even though he is struggling with the choices and means of the regenerative process. Paradoxically, his desire, a direct consequence of the separation between the “dieu créé” and the “dieu créant” who feel the necessity to be united, due to the analogy of their nature, is both in God and man. In man the desire is the development of the divine attributes while in God it is the communicating of these attributes. It is through this desire that God enters man’s heart and that, if willing, man can enter His Creator. The “homme de désir” is to man as a larva to a butterfly. He has the potential to reach his goal; he has the ability to discern right from wrong and prefers the first to the second. Yet he is not able to make a commitment, to spread his wings and fly. He is like a fruit. He is not ripe but not tainted either. He has to put up with privations, temptations, hesitations, and frustrations. Awaiting his time of maturity and glory, the man of desire suffers. And, most importantly, in his suffering he feels as if alone, deaf to the suffering of others. Man pities himself because he is aware of the way he could have been. His guilt is to have lost the title of Deus and to have acquired the one of Homo. It is in 1792 that Saint-Martin puts forth this thesis in his work Ecce Homo. It is said that this little book was written while Saint-Martin was in Paris, thinking about ways to dissuade his friend, the Duchess of Bourbon, Grand Mistress of the Adoptive Rite in France, from believing in superstitions and the oddities of the times. Indeed it is an exhortation to be cautious, for there are many false prophets and many false idols. The importance of this writing goes beyond the simple message of man’s abasement and its oxymoronic scope of regenerating. The “qualité humiliante,” the “titre humiliant” of Homo embodies again the superimposition of man and Christ; it underscores the recurrent autobiographical theme of Saint-Martin’s oeuvre; thence it assumes the didactic aim of comparing/ contrasting Christ and self, then Christ and humanity simultaneously with the self and others in order to accomplish the self-knowledge that leads to knowledge. To Saint-Martin, Dieu et l’homme sont des êtres vrais qui peuvent se connaître dans la même lumière et s’aimer dans le même amour. (3) Consequently, Saint-Martin’s last exhortation is: Hommes, mes frères, si vous pouvez ainsi lire dans ce réparateur l’histoire universelle de l’homme, […] nous devons être sûrs de remonter un jour vers les régions de la lumière. (61) <?page no="114"?> 114 Chapter Four Man’s plan of regeneration is methodically set: he has to resuscitate from a state of crime and prevarications by remembering that, in spite of this present state, he is the living testimony of God (“la dignité de notre origine, la grandeur de nos droits, et la sainteté de notre destination” 8); he has to follow the path marked by Jesus by avoiding all dangers and temptations; finally he has to realize that his regeneration is not earthly, as he has been led to believe by false oracles. His regeneration does not represent a change, a transformation; it means going back to man’s “primitive destination” (chap IX). Thus, in Ecce Homo, Saint-Martin gives a picture of a man evolving from “l’état où il a été réduit par le crime primitive et par toutes ses prevarications sécondaires” (28) to “le signe et le témoin du principe éternel des êtres, […] la manifestation vivante de l’universel axiôme” (61), emphasizing the core of the regenerative process, which is to grow in strength and knowledge by recognizing the identity of false prophets. The author goes even further by assigning such evil characters to three categories: the false prophets who seek earthly praises and glory; the false prophets who create rules and monastical restrictions; and those who are women, and who have subjugated the world with the consent of men (32-38). Saint-Martin’s categories do not pertain only to false religions. Availing himself of the textual support of the biblical prophecies (from Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Malachi to Saint John’s Revelation), Saint-Martin refers specifically to the ministers who have lied to all nations disant avec assurance qu’elles s’engraissent dans vos paturages tandis que vous leur avez ainsi diminué leurs subsistances et même, dans celle des saintes institutions que vous avez conservées, n’avez vous jamais donné le moyen pour le terme, des formes pour le moyen, et des traditions où la loi, comme le réparateur le reprochait aux docteurs juifs, Mathieu 15? (52) Yet Saint-Martin insists on communicating to the readers that his purpose is not to incriminate the false agents of God; he feels that it is his duty to warn his readers from the seducing wonders that these agents announce (46). He has experienced these challenges himself and cannot bear the abuse any longer. His is a cry of solidarity and incitement to all men of “will” who want to break the chains of their slavery, who wish to finally open their eyes, “fermés [par] ces ministres trompeurs” (53). In light of the fact that this text presents some autobiographical traits and implies, at the same time, a response on the part of the individual reader, and, more naively, due to a homonymy hard to conceal, I find it pertinent to analyze this text in parallel with the work to which Friedrich Nietzsche gave the same title. <?page no="115"?> 115 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 23 “Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man! (Ecce Homo)” (John 19: 5). 24 See Jacques Derrida, “Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name” from the Ear of the Other, 1-38. In the first analysis, one has to re-evaluate the importance of the association between the title, Ecce Homo, used by these two different authors, during two different centuries, and the words pronounced by Pontius Pilate as reported in the Bible. 23 The duality of such a short statement is indeed remarkable in all three references, for if in the biblical instance one can read it on one hand as the man whom you want to kill, and on the other hand as God who made himself man for humanity’s sake, in the two literary works the statement Ecce Homo can be analyzed as an auto-statement (I am the man) or as reader-response tactics (We are that man). In both, the biblical and the literary references, one can thus perceive on the one hand a sign of blasphemy, a counterattack against God himself, and on the other hand a warning, a lecture to others who might not know or acknowledge the identity of the man in question. Yet the two readings of such a statement are one and the same. Saint- Martin’s homme is the incarnation of both Christ and man: he is sensitive to others’ needs, and mediator between God and mortals for these needs; he is vested of such universality that he will become the example to his fellows: Si l’homme est le seul être qui soit envoyé pour être le témoin universel de l’universelle vérité, recueillons donc ses témoignages. (7) Similarly the Nietzschean Ecce Homo leads us to believe that we are reading the life and critical work of the author. Swindled by the authoritative “Do not mistake me for someone else” of the preface, we are ultimately astonished to find out that this man is also a deity of removed inhibitions (Dionysus), a god-son, an opposite to all. He is both, his father and his mother, life and death, degeneration and regeneration. Nietzsche claims to write to tell his life to himself, but his readers are often startled by imperatives such as “one should really read this essay,” and “hear me! ” (217) This proves that rather than being autobiographies, the Nietzschean Ecce Homo and the Martinist Ecce Homo are otobiographies; they link the individual life of the author to the structure of the text authored; they come alive only through the “ear” (the auto-turns into oto-) of the other, the listener, the reader, the public to which the work is directed. 24 Both texts are to be validated by their readers. Only when the readers become allies with the authors can the texts be understood. In the same fashion, when man allies with Christ, or Dionysus for that matter, and in turn man allies with another man, there is a high possibility of comprehension of what is external to those beings, of what surrounds the persons involved. Saint-Martin’s regeneration <?page no="116"?> 116 Chapter Four 25 Here again, there is an amazing similarity between Saint-Martin’s work and Nietzsche’s. In the Nietzschean Ecce Homo, one can find innumerable questions about understanding. The verb to understand alone, without counting its synonyms and antonyms, is to be found 22 times (that is to say at least once every 5 pages). process is about acquiring knowledge and understanding through emulation and assimilation. The story of Christ becomes for him valid only when man understands that he can be and should be as Christ to understand and to know God. The Gospel itself is thus to be regarded rather than as an autobiographical text (for it is said that the Apostles wrote it by divine inspiration) as an otobiography for it is through the recognition of man as the Son and through an individual interpretation of His words and deeds that man finally arrives at the knowledge of God and of his relation with God. It is through the ear, and to be exact through the “ear of the heart” (Derrida 80) that man can fill the gap of the unknown. It is Saint-Martin himself who teaches the importance of the inner way, the way to the heart, to be re-integrated, re-generated. As Freud used to say of Nietzsche that “he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live”(Jones 344), one can easily say the same for Saint-Martin who proposes a theology of self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment to be in touch with his immateriality. It is a theology that resembles psychoanalysis. This selfanalysis starts with retracing the path or way of life, with “how one becomes what one is,” (interestingly, this is the subtitle of the Nietzschean Ecce Homo) normally by way of parental pedagogy. In the case of Saint-Martin, due to the lack of an influential father figure, the principles of life are imparted by a Father who is dualistic in nature. He represents life and death, masculine and feminine, body and spirit, judgment and pardon (in Ecce Homo, especially in the first chapters, Saint-Martin often calls God “sagesse suprême” or “vérité universelle,” probably in reference to Sophia, as he often reiterates the spirituality and carnality of God/ man). And the relation with the Father repeats this dual series of states. It is communion and separation, love and discipline at the same time. Everything in his life becomes complicated, as everything usually is in the life of man. His family relations, like his outside relations, his likes and dislikes about art, philosophy, government seem to follow the same complicated pattern. Yet this becomes an advantage rather than a disadvantage, for he is better able to understand his equal as well as his superior; this becomes a device for self-protection. As in the case of Nietzsche, Saint-Martin decided to live isolated, in order to impeding things or people from coming too near, thus to prevent temptations from intruding into his life. Far from being solely a form of selfishness, this decision became a testimony to all mankind. From his words one heard a haunting desire to understand. 25 And it is by attaining understanding that <?page no="117"?> 117 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 26 Nietzsche, 315, 307. his maturity had been achieved. His success turned him into “he that brings glad tidings.” The self-analyst becomes the savior not only of himself but of humanity. From ecce homo to homme de désir and subsequently to nouvel homme, Saint-Martin’s man evolves, or rather one should say he recycles, he goes back to the one he was. The overabundance of light and power has reduced him to a lamentable state, “night has come…something unstilled, unstillable is within me…A craving of love within me…Light am I.” 26 Le Nouvel homme <?page no="118"?> 118 Chapter Four The tripartite process of regeneration, the evolution of man as proposed by Saint-Martin’s Ecce Homo is mirrored by the author’s bibliography and contemporary history. During the same year as Ecce Homo, Saint-Martin published Le Nouvel homme, a work which he had compiled in Strasbourg on the advice of the nephew of Swedenborg, le chevalier Silverhielm. The main idea of this book, written in the form of an exhortation rather than a sermon, is the necessity to rid oneself of the old man to give birth to the new man. The obstetrician on duty is once again the man of desire. No special treatment is involved, no membership in a specific association. The victorious end lies inside oneself, in one’s heart. In this text, Saint-Martin makes a clear distinction between the two parts into which the human heart is divided: the inferior one which is accessible to the enemy; and the superior one which is accessible to the angel, who is his faithful friend. This means that Saint-Martin is alert to the fact that man’s nature is divided between evil and good and that man has to be cautious every time he needs to make a decision. There are other subdivisions within the steps, here presented, of man’s regeneration, which closely follow the stages in the life of Christ: the annunciation, the birth, the presentation at the temple, the baptism, the sacrifice of the lamb, the resurrection, and the ascension. These categorizations are not original, yet new is the way Saint- Martin articulates them and reproduces them side by side with some of the unorthodox key concepts of his doctrine, which is, at times, a voice of occultism as well as a voice of humanism. From the very first pages, Saint-Martin claims to desire an alliance between truth and man, in other words, between God and man. As he did in Ecce Homo, Saint-Martin displays a remarkable talent in confusing the identity of his protagonist. Even the picture on the frontispiece is ambiguous: a partially naked man, whose mid-section is carefully covered and whose facial features resemble the ones we have learned to associate with Christ, carrying the staff of the shepherd, with a cross-shaped superior end, rejoicing in an Eden-like environment. This god-like figure is embedded in a heart-shaped wreath. As the Archangel Gabriel did with the Virgin Mary, Saint-Martin announces the birth of our son: Le moment de la naissance est arrivé. Les puissances supérieures après avoir formé en nous par l’esprit la conception de notre fils spirituel, ont décrété selon leur sagesse que le moment est venu de lui donner le jour. (57) Some pages later, this creature becomes us and we become Christ, born in a manger, parmi des animaux, tu [homme] ne naîs que dans l’humiliation, tandis qu’auparavant tu existais dans des abîmes. Ces animaux vont faire pour toi, ce que tu <?page no="119"?> 119 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 27 La Pera, 11-14. aurais dû faire pour eux si tu eusses conservé tes droits; ils vont te rechauffer de leur haleine, comme tu aurais dû les rechauffer de ton esprit, et leur conserver par là leur caractère, et leurs formes primitives. Car c’est aujourd’hui ta forme qui te préserve, au lieu qu’autrefois tu aurais dû préserver ta forme. (59) The tripartite division seems to be the replica not only of the one found in the Ecce Homo’s message but also of the emblem of the Martinist theosophy, a triangle circumscribed into a hexagon, which in turn is enclosed in a circle. The importance of numerology and more specifically of the number three is paramount in the doctrine of Saint-Martin. This is easy to deduce both from one of his publications solely dedicated to aritmosofia or sacred science of the numbers, Des Nombres, a posthumous work appearing in 1843, and from all the Martinist oeuvre. According to Saint-Martin, numbers represent the translation of the language of the truths and laws whose text and concepts are in God, in man and in nature. More specifically, the number 3 is the number of the circle of the inferior spirits from which, by the order of the Creator, emanated the three spiritual essences which constitute all matter, that is to say salt, sulfur, and mercury. Three is the number of the temporal world and of man. The aforementioned ternary is to be distinguished from the sacred ternary, which has always existed and will exist forever. This is indispensable for man. Without it, he would not be able to see and to know that which he sees and knows. This tri-repartition extends to the human body. Saint-Martin dissects it into head, chest, and stomach, which correspond respectively to salt, sulfur, and mercury. 27 Shifting from the individual to the collective realm, Saint-Martin points at other important trinomials, such as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which in turn correspond to Education, Economics, and Justice; Force, Beauty, and Wisdom, which in turn correspond to Wanting, Thinking, and Feeling. Feeling implies a certain communication, a physical contact between two entities; Thinking, which is at the core of the Martinist credo, is a pure thinking, a living thought of the Supreme Being, of the intelligent cause; Wanting is a desire which is innate in man. He will have to decide to renounce his own wanting in favor of the wanting of God. As the divine faculties are three-fold, due to the trinity of His essence (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, in layman’s wording intellect, body, and soul, but in Martinist terminology pensée, action and volonté), the internal equilibrium of man’s tripartite faculties is the key to self-knowledge and knowledge. <?page no="120"?> 120 Chapter Four 28 Even though the text was finished the 7th of August 1792, some parts were changed and added until April 1798. A year later Le Journal typographique announced Le Crocodile in the list of the new books of the 10 floréal an 7 (29 April 1799), by the same publisher of Ecce Homo and Le Nouvel homme, that is to say Le Cercle social, a philosophical club based on Masonic principles and founded by Nicolas de Bonneville and l’abbé Claude Fauchet. Fostered by the aforementioned trinomials, other trinomials are protagonists in the world of Saint-Martin: the three important cities of Paris, Strasbourg, and Amboise, representing for him respectively “purgatoire, paradis et enfer” (Art.282); the three main spiritual influences, the ones of Martines, Swedenborg, and Boehme; the three special women who shared his faith, his stepmother, the Duchess of Bourbon, and Charlotte Boecklin, “une amie comme il n’y en a point” (Art. 103); the dates of his birth and his death, containing the number 3 (1743 and 1803) and whose addition is a multiple of 3 (Saint-Martin underlines the importance of the presence of the number 3 in his birthdate by creating, in Le Crocodile, a character, Madame Jof, whose birthdate corresponds to his); and the trilogy of his homo/ homme. L’Inconnu in Le Crocodile Though Saint-Martin’s thematic is still the same, several things seemed to have changed from 1792, year of the Nouvel homme to 1799, the date of publication of his poème épico-magique, Le Crocodile, ou la Guerre du Bien et du Mal arrivée sous le règne de Louis XV. 28 Saint-Martin decided to adopt another style, one which resembles the medieval tradition and Egyptian mythology, embedded with an unoriginal yet clever allegory and intertextuality, and with important jeux de mot hard to decode. The tone seems to be less authoritative, more to the point, quasi-burlesque. The author’s plan of mockery starts in the classification of this text as a poem, concealed in the relevant form of chants, which should have instead been called chapitres. In reality, Le Crocodile is a treatise camouflaged as a novel, with a very grave goal. The subtitle, La Guerre du Bien et du Mal, reveals that this literary work is about a battle which has both a historical and a spiritual message. The battle of which Saint-Martin writes seems to describe the French Revolution, and the parties involved seem to represent two creeds or better yet, two typologies of creeds: on the one hand materialism, sensualism, perverted occultism and doctrinism; on the other hand, Martinism, Rosicrucianism, and, in general, faith. As Stanislas de Guaita suggests, we could say that it is a fight between adepts of two different initiations (305). This struggle between forces is caused by the infiltration of evil within the French society of the eighteenth century. This is incarnated by the Crocodile, which in turn is nothing other than a serpent, a reptile symbolizing sin, craftiness, violence. The serpent is an infernal animal which, during the time <?page no="121"?> 121 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 29 Among the most important ones are Le Diable amoureux by Cazotte, and The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily by Goethe. Other famous novels of the eighteenth century described the devil in disguise: The Monk by Lewis, Le Diable boiteux by Le Sage, the gothic works by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, respectively The Castle of Otranto and Mysteries of Udolpho, and Absalom and Achitophel by Dryden. One must not forget also the reference to the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, in which entire chapters are dedicated to perils of the underworld. 30 The analogy between the Martinist reptile’s doom and the biblical account of Satan is obvious. Both Christ and man do not annihilate the devil: he is to be bound for a thousand years before the final judgment and the rise of the New Jerusalem. On a daily basis, man is always subject to evil temptations, even though he is conqueror of some. 31 The reference is not of physical nature (the waters of the Nile and of Seine are not directly connected); it is rather emblematic. Life itself is always portrayed as an overflowing body of water in analogy to the embryonic fluid. Water, though not the one contained in a lake or a river, also represents the ebb and flow of life. There are also several biblical references to water as life, which I will not even attempt to mention, but one that might be of pertinence and interest here is the episode of Christ and Peter walking on water (faith and ability to conquer life). of Saint-Martin, had become the protagonist of novels. 29 Saint-Martin preferred a variation of the serpent, a crocodile, mainly because of linguistic and geographic associations. One of the three ways in which Crocodile is expressed in Hebrew is RaHaB, which means pride. This beast comes from Egypt, where he will return, at the end of Part III, “sous sa pyramide,” while the two armies reconcile and look back at the temple of Memory as a vestige to false knowledge. The Crocodile will not die because it has a preeminent part in the universe. He was after all one of the principles of creation. Man is only able to condemn him to submission and to auto-punishment. The same venom (pride) that he injects in man’s heart was also the cause of his fall and will continue to be the cause of his isolation and loss. 30 The geographical origin and target - Egypt and France (Paris) - of the animal purportedly link evil with materialism, self-reliance, and the occult. Their nations connected by water, 31 the forces preparing to attack the status quo during the French Revolution have come into contact with these philosophies and are thoroughly absorbed by them. The French men and women of eighteenth century believed in their physical capabilities and in their will power. They are assured by a glorious past that this is possible. As the Egyptians built one of the most intricate and majestic buildings to their bodies and belongings, seeking an immortality they could not find in this world, the eighteenth-century challengers were eager to raise a temple to human reasoning and accomplishments. Saint-Martin’s Crocodile is a teaching ex cathedra, a warning to his contemporaries that these philosophies are erroneous and that they are only able to create problems. Revolutionary Paris is not entirely lost. The city hosts a clever and worthy man, Eléazar. The details about this Spanish immigrant with a Jewish background, are borrowed from the biography of Saint-Martin’s own maître, <?page no="122"?> 122 Chapter Four 32 Interestingly this powder is composed of three substances, which are equivalent to the three spiritual faculties of its user, pensée, sentiment and volonté. These natural elements are: racine, tige and feuilles. 33 Jacques-Lefèvre, 173. 34 Of noticeable interest are the remarks Madame Jof makes in front of the members of the society, in Chant 15. On one side she praises them for their wisdom and their devotion to have become amis de la vérité; on the other she manifests her resentment towards all those who, instead, have tried and are not dissuaded to continue to try to seize the secret of the universal principle of existence. Martines de Pasqually. He is the one who is first attacked by the evil forces. But he is not alone. Lined up in his defense are his daughter Rachel, his disciple Sédir, and the volunteer Ourdeck. To defend himself, his aides, and ultimately the whole of humanity, Eléazar utilizes powder 32 and meditation which are always at his avail. At the end, though, the reason which leads him to victory is his internal strength. This internal strength is materialized in the presence of his student, Sédir, a name whose anagram is désir. By finding l’homme de désir, one feels compelled to search for l’homo and le nouvel homme, which are to be retrieved respectively in the roles of Ourdeck and Rachel. The first, “le volontaire Ourdeck” symbolizes a devout citizen, voluntarily involved in the salvation of the country, his country; he is the incarnation of volonté, an essential element in the Martinist doctrine. The latter is the personification of the Sophia of the théosophes. 33 The good army is backed up by two major spiritual figures, Madame Jof, and her spouse, known as le Joaillier or simply as l’Inconnu. An anagram of the name Jof unveils its real identity (Foi), but one has to look a bit further to realize that this character is none other than Saint-Martin himself. Madame Jof is the only personage whose biographical details, such as her birth date and place, are revealed, and these are identical to the ones of the author. Another important similitude is Madame Jof’s connection with a secret society, namely la société des Indépendants. 34 One is led to believe that this secret society is completely different from any other, much more ethereal and detached from all other human beings and their assemblages, to the point that Saint-Martin himself tells us of an odd ability that each one of its members has. They were, in fact, able to know all that could escape their visual senses through inner glances. Because of this, they were not compelled to meet with one another. In brief, they had the power of ubiquity (Chant 14). Since omnipresence is always described as being one of the divine powers, one can safely claim that, to Saint-Martin, the société des Indépendants is a real image of the divine society, where universal harmony will reign because all its members will be able to react, individually and collectively, against the intellectual germ stored within each one of them. Though in touch with themselves, they remain incognito with one another. Secrecy is the leitmotiv of this poem. The ability to keep it is handsomely rewarded. Both Eléazar and Sédir are partakers of the generous gift offered by <?page no="123"?> 123 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 35 It is by Saint-Martin’s own hand the statement written in 1796: « C’est le mardi 7 août 1792 à une heure après midi que j’ai fini le Crocodile, dans le petit cabinet de mon appartement de Petit-Bourg donnant sur la Seine; c’est dans cette même semaine que la Révolution française a fait un si grand pas, puisque c’est le 10 août qu’arriva la grande bagarre à Paris » (Mon portrait, Art. 669). the sect membership. Their initiation in the circle of les Indépendants is officially chaired by the spouse of Madame Jof. Upon the special event, he will live within them and they will live in him. The spiritual union is extended to another pair, Rachel and Ourdeck, who will be united in marriage and united with Madame Jof and l’Invisible. Saint-Martin does not find it necessary to unveil this mysterious character but, as spouse of the Church and faith, and as a being extraordinarily sage and magnificently shining, one cannot but predict that he is the incarnation of Christ. It is through the newly acquired identity, the meeting, and ultimate union with Rachel and the teachings of Madame Jof that the accession to theosophical truth is possible. It is the final victory of Ourdeck, and according to Saint-Martin, of any man living during his challenging times. The majority of Saint-Martin’s critics have concluded that Le Crocodile is a utopian attempt to save the society in which Saint-Martin lived, a work mostly dictated by the historical events of the last decade of the 1700s. I propose that one can read Saint-Martin’s text following three different critical analyses: one historical, one biographical, and one psychoanalytical. In my opinion none of them negates the other; they rather complement each other. They intersect perfectly. They give less space for hurried conclusions or forced attempts to fit the texts to clichés; moreover they offer more sophisticated mechanisms to understand and validate the period’s and the individual’s needs (and by individual I mean not only the author of the text but also the reader of the text). Through Le Crocodile, one can see the preoccupation of a man discomforted by the events of his time. While Saint-Martin was writing it, flashes of wars, philosophical theories, and religions were coming up in his mind one after the other. He saw confusion and violence everywhere he turned. He saw battles occurring outside his own window. 35 In 1794, while still working on this manuscript, Saint-Martin was even compelled to evacuate the area due to the progression of events and his social status. It is thus understandable that he experienced a high level of anxiety, and a desire to analyze and better his situation. His point of view, here expressed, gives us an insight not only into his reactions but into those of others during these days and prior to them. Notwithstanding the fact that these visions might not be partial (after all we are looking through a product created by a single mature individual, with a developed set of opinions), the text still gives ample parameters for historical data collection, which aid us primarily in understanding the author and <?page no="124"?> 124 Chapter Four 36 Jacques-Lefèvre, 43. his work(s), and secondarily in understanding the culture and literature of the time (which ultimately has an impact on our contemporary culture and literature). History is important to Saint-Martin. He does not talk about reintegration but about regeneration; his is not a suggestion to return to the past but to resurrect from the past, to learn from it and move on. He does not want to erase history but, thanks to past experiences, to build a future. He sees history as a perpetual transformation. 36 The term régénération goes hand in hand with révolution, the beginning of a new era when man is ready to be involved in his own destiny. The Revolution of 1789 is an apocalypse, a providential intervention, a critique of man and of his abuses, injustices, governmental laws, just as the regeneration proposed by Saint-Martin has to have the same cleansing purpose. And so it is that, for Saint-Martin, the history of the world is never separated from the history of the individual and vice versa. It is history that will dictate directions to the path of man’s regeneration. The nouvel homme, the mature man will be able to accomplish his mission, his ministère. Happiness will be in the hands of a man, and of a group of men to be more precise, who have ceased complaining and are resolved to go straight ahead, without changing paths. The theocracy Saint-Martin proposes in opposition to monarchy is the intermediary between God and the universe, the light perhaps not yet disclosed to the eyes of all mankind, but to all wise voyants. Or, talking about the author and his text can only lead us to the two other models of literary analysis mentioned above. I have already pointed at the fact that there are many personal allusions in the corpus of the poem. Le Crocodile’s cast has been recruited among “family” members. There are roles for everyone well-known to the author: his mentor Pasqually, Cagliostro (le grand homme sec), various sectarian figurants (even the abbreviations S.I. - that usually stand for Supérieur Inconnu, the highest rank in this type of sect, or for Société des Intimes - often found in many of the secret societies Saint-Martin joined, are also the abbreviation of the name of the society herein described), and, most importantly, Saint-Martin himself. More than a mere autobiography, the text becomes a tool to analyze, to seize the mystery of man’s intellect, a séance, or in terms adaptable to our popular culture, a couch session. In Part II of Le Crocodile, a new character enters the scene. His name, rather his part, is Psychographe, a term which means a psychological diagram that shows a system of relations between things. He resumes the narration from the point where Ourdeck left off all that he has seen while underground, entrapped by the Crocodile. We are in front of a seer of people and events belonging to the past, present, and future, who appeared to Ourdeck while he was fighting the evil force with the strength and subjectivity of his mind. The reader has the feeling that Ourdeck <?page no="125"?> 125 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 37 As related to me by Robert Amadou’s friend and colleague, Maurice Warnon, Martinist librarian, responsible for the bibliographies posted by http: / / www.kingsgarden.org/ OM (June 2004). 38 At present, the original manuscript is at the Bibliothèque de la Société Théosophique of Paris. An excerpt has been made available to the public by Maurice Warnon in http: / / kingsgarden.org/ OM. is revoking the events he experienced in a dream; the Psychographe is the interpreter of such a dream. Saint-Martin was not indifferent to para-normal phenomena. He had been interested in magnetism, visions, and dreams. According to Robert Amadou, 37 Saint-Martin wrote Des Rèves around 1774, year of his Mesmerist affiliation. As he continued to do in his later works, Saint-Martin presented a human state of subjugation, or mental alteration; man is yet again prey of uncontrollable forces within and without which reinvent his identity. In Des Erreurs, man was subject to temptation, pride, and any other sort of carnal fallacies; in Ecce Homo, he was subject to false prophets and prophecies, which materialized in historical characters and trends in Le Crocodile; in Des Rèves, man is under the yoke of material passions which make him more courageous, confident and safe, ready to overcome all dangers which would appear impossible during the wake: Je me suis trouvé pendant un rêve dans une grande salle où plusieurs batteries de canons croisées tiraient à boulets rouges, et où je voyais ces boulets traverser l’étendue de cette salle et passer sur ma tête et autour de moi, et cependant je n’avais pas peur. Aurais-je répondu de moi si je m’étais trouvé en réalité dans une semblable position? (n.p.) 38 It seems clear to me that it is not mere coincidence that the tripartite model of salvation proposed by Saint-Martin (homo, homme de désir and nouvel homme) corresponds to the tripartite model of the mind proposed by Freud (id, ego, and super-ego). Saint-Martin’s philosophy uses precocious forms of psychoanalysis, inasmuch as it posits the importance of the spiritual quality of which man is not always conscious and which he must develop or release by freeing himself from the illusion of other philosophies, first among others, materialism. In eighteenth-century France, Saint-Martin was aware not only of the struggle between the authorities and the subjects of his country, and of the internal and personal battle between good and evil; he was first and foremost aware of the friction between unconscious and conscious, and the absolute necessity to know what is repressed inside in order to overcome it, and to attain peace. Le Crocodile is a vision of another world which symbolizes the darkness of the spirit and the complexities of human psyche. <?page no="126"?> 126 Chapter Four 39 At the end of the poem the sciences will exclaim “Nous attendons de vous notre déliverance! ”(163). 40 Jacques-Lefèvre, 181. The sciences Saint-Martin depicted as amidst the evil forces have to succumb to the efficiency and the warranty of truth of the “new science” 39 he proposes; through this new methodology, man will be able to save himself and to free the sciences with him. He sees the need for intelligibility, the hunger for knowledge, the material appetite as a regression, a return to brutality. The libido sciendi transforms itself into bestial appetite, voracité de la faim. 40 According to Saint-Martin, the earth, the world ruled and recreated by man, whether inside or outside himself, is full of mysterious events, characters, signs; it is only when the vapors dissipate that man can really see and know. This clarity becomes possible only through his abilities, his desire to free himself of all mysteries in order to change his destiny. Ultimately, the individual transformation becomes a collective event. In Le Crocodile, one is aware of the archetype of the Wise Old Man, the helper and redeemer, not only incarnated in Eléazar for the sake of Ourdeck, but also in l’Invisible for the whole of humanity. The cultural change, whether progression or regression is foreseen, is to be considered the by-product of a strategy of analysis and redemption which is to be applied individually for the welfare of mankind. The obsessive allegory of the three, which mirrors the psychoanalytical triad, is evident throughout the poem: the Joaillier’s apparitions are three (to hold a lecture in front of Sédir, to hold a ceremony in honor of Eléazar, and to appear through secret signs to both heroes); the unions celebrated are three (Eléazar and Sédir, Rachel and Ourdeck, Le Joaillier and his elect); the enlightening correspondence of the young characters of this text, the ones whose lives need to be shaped for the sake of the nation’s future, with the prefixed stages of salvation are three (Ourdeck =ecce homo=volonté; Sédir = homme de désir=penser; Rachel=nouvel homme=sentiment). The triad here represented, especially under the specific circumstances where the hero is to go through a set of tests, is equivalent to the different stages or rites of passage of a society (secret or not) where the individual voluntarily (Ourdeck is a volunteer after all) submits to the first stage of detachment, then to an interval of inaction where rituals are enacted in order to introduce him to the proper ways of his new life, which he will be able to pursue once he is reborn to his new self (Ourdeck goes underground with the Serpent, and then, after fighting the good fight, he marries Rachel). This explains why one cannot classify Saint-Martin’s evocations entirely as autobiographies. The existence of several personal details is not to be denied, besides the existence of an easily detectable transparency of the author’s personal repressed desires (see for example his feminine role in Le Crocodile and the sweet poetic allusions to God as mother, and the readers as <?page no="127"?> 127 Louis-Claude de Saint Martin 41 Ibid, 257. 42 Le Livre rouge, Art. 675. His offspring, in his Stances); yet the scenario described by Saint-Martin is ultimately universal. Equally, one cannot read his texts solely as historical reportages and/ or moral admonitions. This would also explain the setting and the role of sects, for, according to psychoanalysis, grouping is vital to repress or transform the id-desires, the unacceptable impulses, and to direct them toward more humanitarian, social activities which will eventually prove to become social achievements. Saint-Martin’s Stance Saint-Martin proposes an original idea of man, struggling between historicity and intimacy, between apathy and energy, between nostalgia and regeneration, between individual conscience and collective welfare. 41 He was convinced that through introspection and trust in his own Creator (as source of himself), man could start to value himself, through self-knowledge and peaceful relations with his surroundings. Man could re-acquire his own identity through his own will power and his fully-pledged acceptance. This wish and ability to help not only himself but humanity is a Christ-like feature. Saint-Martin was not a mystical Christian. His philosophy was embedded with various influences of the esoteric elements of his time, to which in one way or another he had contributed. His manner of speculating was saturated with spiritualism and reverence toward God, though he was confident in man’s capabilities. Saint-Martin’s was a reasoned religion, which was the precursor of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, where knowledge is a source of improvement. Almost two hundred years before Jung, Saint-Martin had proven that man’s main obsession is his relation with God, and his main desire is to fill the gap between the two in order to clearly see, to know. Saint-Martin had found a way to investigate the psyche, to render to each his own identity. His first fundamental step had been taken: it was to assess the mistake, to give full responsibility of the mishap to the one who had committed it, and to overcome it through an extensive self-examination, that is to say through prayer or meditation, se nettoyer, c’est prier, parce que c’est combattre. 42 Saint-Martin’s originality is also due to his insistence on the effects of the acquired knowledge not only on the subject, but also on the object to be known, that is to say Nature or God. Therefore, to him, knowledge, true knowledge came from all the works of the divine science, from experience and sentiment. The stimulation coming from external resources caused a reactivation, a maturation of the internal elements, and, ultimately, a connec- <?page no="128"?> 128 Chapter Four 43 “Si tu veux connaître les autres, commence par te connaître toi-même, car chacun est un mirroir” (Ibid, Art. 361). 44 Ibid, Art. 286. 45 Kant, “What is Enlightenment” 85. 46 Ibid, 85. tion between the external resources and the internal elements. Saint-Martin’s methodology implied an explanation of things through man and not vice versa; it was necessary, to him, to know the origin, the nature of man in order to understand and appreciate the world over which man ruled. And because of the divine nature of man, it is through faith that man could acquire knowledge, which is also divine. Saint-Martin’s theory of self-knowledge and self-realization concurs with Kant and the Enlightenment’s philosophy inasmuch as they highlight on the one hand the awareness of responsibility and on the other the limited nature of man. It is not an attempt for individual improvement, but a step toward a collective welfare, as the French Revolution was supposed to be; 43 it was a rational justification to faith. Saint-Martin showed through his life, his works, and his historical background that it is impossible to accomplish anything without seeking first an inner completeness. Spurred on the one hand by contemporary queries to which all philosophes strove to give answers, while on the other supported by ancient philosophy and mathematics, Saint-Martin arrived at an original mystical solution which highlights the centrality of man in an overall scheme to change the world: La manière de demander à Dieu de nous élever au-dessus de nos sens, c’est de nous y élever nousmêmes. 44 In personal as well as in public matters, his plan of man’s regeneration was a release from self-incurred tutelage; it proved that no “book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth” 45 was necessary. Saint-Martin had, on the contrary, warned from this type of “guardians [who] have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered” 46 ; he had personally taken the courage to use his own reason and had shown others how to do the same. <?page no="129"?> 1 Nerval, 36. 2 See Weisberger, 168 and Jacob’s Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans. Daring Conclusion Cieco chi non vede il sole, stolto chi nol conosce, ingrato chi nol ringrazia, se tanto e’ il lume, tanto il bene, tanto il beneficio; per cui risplende, per cui eccelle, per cui giova; maestro de sensi, padre di sustanze, autor di vita (G.Bruno 67). Some years prior to the French Revolution, the castle of Ermenonville was the meeting place of many “nobles voyageurs, porteurs des secrets pour changer la vie”: sitting at a table lavishingly set for the souper, the count of Saint Germain, Mesmer, Cagliostro, Robespierre, son of the founder of the loge écossaise d’Arras, Senancour, Saint-Martin, and Cazotte 1 exchanged “odd” ideas about the complete transformation of a society whose wrinkles could not be concealed by the powders and laces in fashion. Recently, American historians have underscored the link between religion and Enlightenment. Scholars such as William Weisberger and Margaret Jacob recognized Masonry’s centrality, as a considerably organized and significant cultural movement, 2 key to fostering radical innovations which eventually culminated with the Revolution itself. They have attributed to Masonry an impact on the pursuit of certain ideologies which are characteristic of the eighteenth century from the cultural and intellectual point of view. They have analyzed how the integration of a horizontal as well as a vertical organizational structure of the lodges, the fervid civic involvement and sense of community, the effervescent need of intellectual growth corresponded with the overall interest of the eighteenth century individual and society. In fact these organizational ideals, which have been translated into symbols, ceremonials, and individual philosophies, examined more closely from the sociohistorical perspective, leave no room for doubt: Masonry was first and foremost a religious sect with the aim of discovering and transforming man spiritually. <?page no="130"?> 130 Daring Conclusion Funeral Procession, Encyclopedia of Illustrations, Johann Heck, 1865. Rpt by Dover Publications, NY, 1994 as Heck’s Pictorial Archive of Military Science, Geography and History. Paris was overpowered by the charismatic figures of Masonic members who talked about liberty, equality, fraternity; wearing the Mithraic cap, crowds of new believers worshipped the saints of the new orders, inside the walls of temples erected in the honor of new Madonnas and decorated with the effigies of the new man and the colors of the new Republic. The source of dazzling light beaming throughout the nation was neither daring reason nor mere madness. Learning from the past, man had realized that he had to keep his distance from the tree of knowledge. In his attempt to create a bridge of communication between himself and his creator, he had built another tower of Babel but this time no chaos was allowed to reign: everyone was supposed to speak the same language; everyone was to communicate with each other through a defined hierarchy both internal and external; everyone was to respect and aid each other. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a genuine demonstration of a certain maturity level on man’s part sought for and partially achieved. Placing himself at the center of the Universe was justified and justifiable via the nature of his origin. There was no flaw in the Aristotelian way of philosophizing: God is knowledgeable, man is of God, therefore man is <?page no="131"?> 131 Daring Conclusion 3 Kant, “What is Enlightenment” 85. 4 Schneider, 14. knowledgeable. It clearly marked a prise de conscience, a renewed sense of identity; man had cogitated, investigated the deepest and most mysterious facets of his character to discover his true self; most importantly he had proven his maturity by admitting his powerlessness in front of the impossible. The true light was within him, but it was not located only within the walls of his brain but within the indescribable boundaries of his spirit. Therefore man had the power to withdraw from laziness and cowardice, in order “to make use of his understanding without direction from another.” 3 A close analysis of the Kantian definition of enlightenment and of the eighteenth century does not support the traditional bi-divisions of reason and irrationality, exact and occult sciences; it does not justify the common belief that spiritualism, in general, and Masonry, in particular, represent a Counter- Enlightenment or a Radical Enlightenment. Examining the etymology of the word, theosophy conveys a type of philosophy, for the term means “divine wisdom,” the knowledge of God through the direct intuition of the divine essence. It is an esoteric form of knowledge, an inner one contrasted with that which is outer or exoteric. The theosophers imply that true knowledge or wisdom is not solely obtainable by using minds and brains; it can be gained by experience, where experience is not only the physical contact praised by the philosophers, but the direct link between consciousness and the divine, which confirms the ability to have conscious awareness of one’s own soul, or self. 4 Esotericism, and more specifically Masonry, in the sense of spiritual search, was Enlightenment, a daring solution to release oneself from selfincurred tutelage. Within the French lodges, the freedom of which Kant speaks was applied: the Mason had “complete freedom, even the calling, to communicate to the public all his carefully tested and well-meaning thoughts on that which [wa]s erroneous in the symbol and to make suggestions for the better organization of the religious body and church” (88). Masons promoted enlightenment by renouncing their guardians, by working themselves “out of the life under tutelage” (86), by declaring their new disposition to posterity in order to prevent “to injure and trample on the rights of mankind” (90). Their public agenda, the spreading of freedom which Kant wishes is accomplished by the Masons through the networking of lodges in many parts of the continent, and through the writings of many eminent representatives. In the previous chapters I have examined the thought and work of comte Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who is still little known in the United States, and baron Dominique Vivant Denon, who, in spite of his instrumental role in founding and maintaining the Louvre as a museum of art, and of his travel journals of great relevance, is only instead remembered, especially by the American scholars, for a conte libertin. It was my intention to demonstrate that <?page no="132"?> 132 Daring Conclusion these two authors of great literary and philosophical value were especially interested in the self-knowledge, self-realization, and self-preservation of man as part of a spiritual revolution which they deemed necessary. As members of Masonry, they established parameters upon which many of the modern institutions and their related principles are based: the tricolored banners representing the American and French nations, the motto liberté, egalité et fraternité, a merit-based bureaucratic system, together with a circular networking of small, specific cells/ branches governed by one of bigger dimension and charges, a societal system in which each individual is recognized by the intensity of his philanthropy, civic engagement, moral values and in which the individual should be guaranteed the aid of his peers, without suffering any discrimination or judgment based on his beliefs. As men of letters and the arts, Saint-Martin and Denon were the precursors of new disciplines and promoters of new approaches to old disciplines: they prepared the ground for inner investigation and healing, exploring the effect of the external influences on the psyche and body of man; they discovered and analyzed unknown cultures, without revamping missionary duties, collecting the data necessary to social scientists; they proposed innovative ways of reading, understanding, and displaying, in the case of aesthetical artistic creations, art; they showed the importance of intertextuality and integrated it in their works wherever appropriate; they promoted interdisciplinarity, presenting connubial formations of medicine, religion, physics, literature and philosophy, marrying natural sciences with liberal sciences. Both authors realized and reassured others of the limitations of possibilities seizable by human beings. Assessing the past and the present situation of man, they understood that it was practically impossible to know and to comprehend everything inside and outside of him, unless he acknowledged his divine origin. This meant firstly to recognize the existence of a Supreme Entity, and the powerfulness transmitted to all he had created. According to the mystics of the eighteenth century, man cannot rely on his corporeal abilities, his tactile responses, to know the world that surrounds him. His knowledge is guaranteed only by admitting a link between man and his creator, by knowing thoroughly both, and by experiencing not through the mind, brain, eye, arm, and nose but through the heart and the soul. It is for this reason that Saint-Martin as well as Denon started to recognize the power of God through themselves, then analyzed themselves, and joined forces with their peers. To them, it is a relation that starts from above, then goes within, and finally reaches out. It resembles a physical movement, a scientific theory with a constant: man. Man is at the center no matter what and regardless of the outlook. Yet it cannot be labeled as humanistic because man is at the center only due to the fact that he was placed there by a higher authority; it is man’s responsibility to maintain this stability but it is not his merit to have acquired it. <?page no="133"?> 133 Daring Conclusion 5 Kant, “What is Enlightenment” 89. In spite of the aforementioned similarities, Saint-Martin’s and Denon’s man looked different. The first is a man in recovery: having disobeyed his father, and subdued to his own pride and material needs, he is in need of mending the relation, to learn from his own mistakes in order to continue his walk of life. The ugly duckling, according to Saint-Martin, will be one day a beautiful white swan: from guilt-stricken to willingly engaged and finally to reintegrated, restored creature, man has the power to resurrect. Saint-Martin does not reveal anything else of man’s new life; he does not go any further. Saint-Martin’s function is that of a psychoanalyst: he helps through the process and then fades out, leaving ample space to the patient to reinvent himself. Denon picks up from where Saint-Martin ends. His man is confident, ready to face the future. He trusts his abilities to accomplish his own creations. At times, he becomes possessive, agitated by the loss of what he has salvaged, transformed, made; at times, he is reassured by his possessions that he will reign forevermore because they will outlive him and testify for his glory and him. Overtaken by changing psychological moods and changing cultural modes, Denon’s man, in spite of his announced individuality and individualism, needs a type of security that comes from without: he is not the introverted being presented by Saint-Martin, who finds comfort in prayer and meditation; he is a man who needs guidance and inspiration, one who appreciates aesthetical perfection. He sees in beauty a form of the divine, and retains it in order to remind himself that, as owner of the divine, he is divine as well. The knowledge and understanding of the authors and works here analyzed, as representatives of a mystical approach, of Masonic faith, are important for the understanding of the continental eighteenth century and our modern world; “through writing, on the erroneous aspects of the present […], through uniting their voices they could bring a proposal to the throne to take those congregations under protection which had united into a changed religious organization according to their better ideas.” 5 The new religious organization of eighteenth-century Europe, Masonry, experimented with variegated tools to have a better grasp of man’s identity as part of a divine plan, thus to attain harmony and happiness. These types of experimentations are still relevant after the eighteenth century; they give plausible justification to the unfolding events of the following years such as the phenomena of Romanticism, the Italian Carboneria, and even Surrealism, all with their emphasis on individualism, self-understanding, self-realization, idealism, and liberty of the human spirit, which can be accordingly seen as a continuum of the true Enlightenment rather than a contradiction. Such spiritual approaches influenced the constitutions of America, France, as well as other European states, and more recently of the <?page no="134"?> 134 Daring Conclusion 6 Ibid, 90. 7 Fichte, 33. United Nations and the European Community. The reverberation of the mystical thoughts of the eighteenth century is thus not only evident in the symbols, ceremonials, expectations, and events of 1793 but in the symbols, ceremonials, expectations and events of our modern society. “We do live in an age of enlightenment […] we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely deal with these things.” 6 Masonic philanthropic programs, philosophical battles over freedom, collecting and traveling interests, parameters for new sociability, universal concepts of peace, fraternity, and equality, federative structure, mentorship and social mobility are the ground-stones for some of the most important institutions of our times (military and honorary society collegiality; juvenile clubs; public art displays); Masonic symbolism and ritualism are the inspiration for some of the most important works of art of our times (sculptures such as obelisks, towers and pyramids erected everywhere in the new world, national mottos and flags; monetary engravings; selected literary works); Masonic concept of man, as divine creature, able to make, know, transform, destroy all that surrounds him is the foundation of our ambitious and capitalistic societies. Therefore there should be no doubt that the inclusion of an exploration and glorification of man’s inner light, as practiced by Masonic members, is necessary in reading and interpreting the Enlightenment and its legacy. Kant’s response to the query Was ist Aufklärung? was a call to maturity, to audacity. Kant invited all to a daring knowledge, to submit everything to criticism for the well-being of the individual and of society. Kant’s Enlightenment was a response to blind obedience, to total resignation; his was an appeal to recognize the difference between the present and the past in view of a better future. The man presented by Saint-Martin, Denon, and the many esotericists of the eighteenth century responded boldly to this appeal. It is time, for American literary critics to parallel the important contributions of historians about the religious aspect of the Enlightenment and of their European counterparts who have started to reconsider some authors and works denied access to lasting fame and to re-evaluate the most popular representatives of the eighteenth century (see for example the new scholarship on Goldoni); it is time to dare to include, rather than to isolate, the exponents of what has been commonly labeled Illuminisme, in opposition to Enlightenment, for a better and more complete understanding of our past as well as of our present. By doing so, we continue to maintain the one-sidedness condemned by the enlightened thinkers, the “one-sidedness and superficiality which stands in the way of the highest possible development and hinders the individual man as well as mankind as a whole from a happy progress to the goal.” 7 <?page no="135"?> 135 Daring Conclusion 8 de Laurens, 26-27. The analysis of the two French writers and thinkers presented here should serve as a trampoline to such inclusion in appreciation of the Enlightenment, of the real light of which the enlightened spoke, the torch to keep lit along the path of self-search, during a physical or psychological voyage which serve to mold an individual and consequently to reshape society. To be enlightened was synonymous of “recevoir la lumière, être initié aux mystéres” as well as “donner la lumière à un profane,” who in turn, and gradually, would vest the title of première lumière, then of seconde et troisième lumières; 8 “dare to know” meant “dare to believe,” to believe in oneself and to transmit this belief to others for the sake of humankind. 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Wilson, Benjamin. “An Extraordinary Popular Delusion.” Publius Theologicus, 1 (1998). 1-10. <?page no="145"?> Index A Abbadie 106, 137 adept 46, 51, 61, 62, 77 Alchemy 44, 51, 140, 143 Altichiaro 94 Apollinaire 30, 137 Architect 55, 87 B Baader 99 Bacon 10, 47 Balzac 99 Bartholdi 30 Bastide 80, 137 Baudelaire 99 Beaumarchais 80, 137 Berlin 9, 20, 21, 32 Berlin Wednesday Society 20, 21 Biester 22 Bildung 14, 23, 31, 58, 59 Bildungsreise 11, 14, 59, 64 Bildungsroman 11, 14, 59-61, 64 Biscari 68, 75 Boehme 102-104, 120, 137 bourgeoisie 33 Bruno 36, 129, 137 Burke 10, 78, 137 C Cagliostro 20, 36, 37, 102, 124, 129 Carboneria 133 Cazotte 19, 121, 138 Chagall 30, 138 Châlier 7 Christ 27, 39, 48, 85, 86, 94, 103, 104, 109, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118, 121, 123, 127 Christian 21, 29, 36, 41, 49, 76, 78, 87, 92, 96, 103, 109, 127 Church 7, 10, 17, 18, 22, 30, 34-36, 38, 40, 44, 48, 55, 76, 88, 90, 92, 123, 138, 141 clergy 18, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40, 41, 48, 55, 111 collection 13, 20, 64-67, 71-73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, 84, 95, 109, 123 collections 15, 64, 67, 69, 76, 78, 79, 83, 95-97 colonialism 38 compagnon 102 compagnonnage 35, 46, 47, 143 Counter-Enlightenment 9 D David 18, 19, 51, 54, 66, 68, 96, 137, 140 Defoe 62, 109 Delanoue 39 Denon 14, 64-78, 80-86, 88, 90-97, 131-134, 138, 139, 141-144 Descartes 10, 18, 47 d'Holbach 18, 20 Diderot 18, 41, 80, 90, 91, 138 Diterich, 21, 22 Dohm 21 E Eiffel 30 Encylopédie 95 Engel 21 Enlightenment 8-11, 13-15, 17-25, 31, 34, 38, 41, 51, 55, 59, 87, 95, 128-131, 133-135, 137-141, 144 Entered Apprentice 50 Esotericism 19, 131, 139, 141 F faith 9-11, 17, 18, 21, 22, 26, 30, 36, 42, 43, 48, 54, 62, 74, 92, 96, 120, 121, 123, 128, 133 family 34-36, 38, 40, 46, 53, 63, 66, 75, 77, 78, 83, 87, 89, 90, 100-102, 116, 124 feitiços 79, 81 Fellowcraft 50, 85 fetishism 65, 76, 80, 90 Fichte 30, 31, 58, 134, 139 Flaubert 80 Foucault 27, 65, 82, 139, 143 France 7, 9, 11, 12, 18, 19, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36-40, 42, 47, 52, 54, 55, 57, 62, 65-67, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 84, 97, <?page no="146"?> 146 Index 99-102, 105, 108, 113, 121, 125, 133, 137-143 Frederick the Great 19-21, 68 Freemasonry 11, 13-15, 29-31, 42, 43, 47, 50, 51, 56, 57, 61, 62, 68, 95-97, 140, 141, 144 Freud 51-55, 60, 71, 75, 81, 82, 89, 92, 116, 125, 139, 140 G Gautier 99 Gedike 21, 22 God 11, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42-45, 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 63, 64, 70, 72, 76, 78, 82, 84, 86, 87, 92-94, 96, 100, 101, 103-106, 108-111, 113-116, 118, 119, 124, 126, 127, 130-132 Goethe 61, 70, 121, 140 Goncourt 80 Guaita 120, 140 H happiness 11, 17, 22, 28, 29, 31, 42, 52, 56, 63, 91, 97, 107, 113, 133 Hegel 10 Heidegger 71, 104 Hélvetius 20 Hermeticism 11 Hiram Abiff 47 Hobbes 10, 27, 140 I Illuminisme 19, 134 internationalism 38 J Jung 17, 44, 51, 60, 88, 104, 127, 140 K Kabala 11 Kant 23-26, 28, 29, 32, 128, 131, 133, 134, 140-142 King 8, 39, 47, 77, 101 Klein 21, 22, 58 knowledge 11, 13, 22-25, 27, 29, 31, 41, 45, 49, 51, 54, 56, 58, 61, 65-67, 69, 70, 76, 82-84, 87, 88, 95, 100, 101, 104-106, 108-114, 116, 119, 121, 126-128, 130-134 L Labre 39 Labre, 39 Lacan 80, 89, 90, 141 Lamartine 99 Law 101, 102 Le Play 34 Lepeletier 7 Leuchsenring 22 liberty 7, 29, 30, 52, 100, 109, 119, 130, 133, 143 Locke 10, 13, 18 Louvre 64-68, 72, 83, 95-97, 131, 138, 143 M maieutica 110 mandala 44 Manteuffel 32 Marat 7 Martinism 105, 112, 120, 143 Masonic 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 30-32, 35, 37, 38, 41-45, 50, 53-58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 68, 75, 78, 85-87, 92-97, 102, 105, 112, 120, 130, 133, 134, 140, 141 Master Mason 50 Mendelssohn 22-24, 59 Mesmer 20, 36, 37, 129 Mesmerism 11, 36, 138 Meyer 99 Mitraic 7 Moderate Enlightenment 9 Modernism 15 Möhsen 20, 21 Montesquieu 18, 41, 106, 141 Moser 32 museum 64, 65, 69-72, 75, 76, 83, 95, 131 mystical 8, 11, 20, 27, 30, 31, 36, 40, 45, 49, 50, 88, 99, 101, 104, 105, 127, 128, 133 mysticism 49, 59, 99, 102, 104, 106, 109 N Napoleon 42, 65, 68, 96 nationalism 18, 38, 65 Nature 11, 28, 61, 63, 67, 104, 106, 127, 139 network 13, 14, 34, 37, 40, 56, 60 Nicolai, 21 <?page no="147"?> 147 Index Nietzsche 9, 104, 114-117, 138, 142 nobility 33, 47, 55, 69, 91, 95, 111 Nodier 99 P Panopticon 83 Paris 7, 33, 35, 36, 43, 56, 66, 73, 93, 102, 113, 120, 121, 123, 125, 130, 137-143 Pasqually 101-103, 105, 106, 122, 124, 141 Pernety 19, 36, 41 Philosophe Inconnu 110 Pope 18, 44, 48, 96 power 11, 13, 17-19, 25-27, 33, 36, 38, 40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 58, 65, 70-72, 76, 77, 81-85, 90, 94-97, 103, 106, 107, 109, 111, 117, 121, 122, 127, 131-133 Prevost 63 psychoanalysis 50, 76, 90, 112, 116, 125, 127 R Radical Enlightenment 9, 131 Ramsay 56, 57, 97, 142 reason 8, 11, 14, 17, 21-27, 29, 31, 49, 66, 70, 90, 95, 108, 122, 128, 130-132 régénration 124 religion 8, 10, 18, 27, 29-31, 33, 36, 40-44, 54, 56, 62, 65, 78, 100, 101, 108, 109, 127, 129, 132 Revolution 8-11, 14, 18, 28, 29, 38, 41, 55, 65, 71, 100, 120, 121, 124, 128, 129, 138, 140, 142, 143 Rimbaud 99 Robespierre 19, 66, 68, 129 Romantic 9, 19, 20 Romanticism 14, 15, 99, 133 Rosicrucians 102 Rousseau 12, 29, 41, 91, 106-108, 111, 142 S Saint Martin 14 Saint-Martin 37, 90, 97, 99-129, 131-134, 137, 139-143 Sainte-Beuve 99 Sand 99 sapere aude 31 Schiller, 12 Schmid 22 sectarian 38, 53, 54, 102, 124 sectarianism 14, 31, 68, 100 Selle 21 Shaftesbury 32, 59 Socrates 106, 110-112 Solomon 47, 49, 51 Spalding 22 Spinoza 10 Spinoza, 10 spiritual 11, 13, 15, 18-20, 27, 28, 30, 31, 35, 37, 40, 41, 45-47, 50, 52- 54, 59, 60, 71, 76, 77, 84, 85, 92, 96, 100, 102, 103, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 131-133 stonemasons 46, 47, 49 Surrealism 133 Swedenborg 37, 102, 118, 120 synarchy 100 T Taine 40 telesti 77 Teller 21 Templars 48, 49 Teotochi 67, 68, 93 theocracy 108, 124 Travel 13 Travelers 13 V Voltaire 18, 19, 29, 33, 41, 42, 63, 66, 68, 74, 87, 106, 111, 143 W Wednesday Society 20-23, 58 Wolff 21, 32 Z Zöllner 21 <?page no="148"?>
