Modernism and magic : experiments with spiritualism, theosophy and the occult

201 Pages·2013·1.678 MB·English

by  Wilson, Leigh

edinburgh critical studies in modernist culture
MODERNISM
AND MAGIC
experiments with spiritualism,
theosophy and the occult
LEIGH WILSON
MODERNISM AND MAGIC
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd ii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
E dinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture
Series Editors: Tim Armstrong and Rebecca Beasley
Forthcoming Series Volumes:
Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism,
Theosophy and the Occult, Leigh Wilson
Sonic Modernity: Representing Sound in Literature, Culture and
the Arts, Sam Halliday
Modernism and the Frankfurt School, Tyrus Miller
Late Modernism, Laura Salisbury
Modernism, Space and the City, Andrew Thacker
Modernism and the Idea of Everyday Life, Leena Kore-Schroder
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iiii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
MODERNISM AND MAGIC
Experiments with Spiritualism,
Theosophy and the Occult
Leigh Wilson
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iiiiii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
For my parents, with love,
and in loving memory of Helen Litt
© Leigh Wilson, 2013
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Sabon and Gill Sans
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2769 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3165 0 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7233 2 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7234 9 (Amazon ebook)
The right of Leigh Wilson
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iivv 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
CONTENTS
Series Editors’ Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 ‘But the facts of life persist’: Magic, Experiment and the Problem of
Representing the World Otherwise 22
2 ‘And what has all this to do with experimental writing?’: Words
and Ghosts 44
3 A ‘subtle metamorphosis’: Sound, Mimesis and Transformation 75
4 ‘Here is where the magic is’: Telepathy and Experiment in Film 103
5 ‘Disney against the metaphysicals’: Eisenstein, Pound, Ectoplasm
and the Politics of Animation 135
Bibliography 168
Index 184
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vv 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
This series of monographs on selected topics in modernism is designed to
refl ect and extend the range of new work in modernist studies. The studies in
the series aim for a breadth of scope and for an expanded sense of the canon of
modernism, rather than focusing on individual authors. Literary texts will be
considered in terms of contexts including recent cultural histories (modernism
and magic; sonic modernity; media studies) and topics of theoretical interest
(the everyday; postmodernism; the Frankfurt School); but the series will also
re-consider more familiar routes into modernism (modernism and gender;
sexuality; politics). The works published will be attentive to the various cul-
tural, intellectual and historical contexts of British, American and European
modernisms, and to inter-disciplinary possibilities within modernism, includ-
ing performance and the visual and plastic arts.
vi
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vvii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely grateful to Becky Beasely and Tim Armstrong for giving me
the opportunity to write this book, for their patient support during its writing,
and for their useful comments and suggestions. The book would have taken
even longer to complete without the generous funding of research leave by
the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University
of Westminster. I am very grateful for this, and more generally for the friend-
ship and support provided by members of the department. In particular, my
thanks go to Alex Warwick for her long and most valued friendship. Alex,
David Cunningham, Michael Nath and Anne Witchard all read portions
of this book, and gave generous comments and advice. Along with them, I
would like to thank other colleagues in the department and elsewhere for
friendship and support during the long gestation of the ideas that make
up the book, in particular Simon Avery, Monica Germanà, Mary Grover,
Tatiana Kontou, Roger Luckhurst, Sas Mays, Kaye Mitchell, Laura Salisbury,
Justin Sausman, Marquard Smith, Louise Sylvester, Andrew Teverson, Pam
Thurschwell. Thanks too to all at Edinburgh University Press, especially Jenny
Daly, James Dale and Rebecca Mackenzie.
Thanks also to my family and friends outside the academy for their sterling
attempts at being interested (‘What, you’re still working on the same book?’).
Special thanks go to my parents, Bob and Averil Wilson, for their love and
support; and thanks and much love to Toby Litt, Henry Wilson-Litt and
George Wilson-Litt, who are magic.
Figure 5.1 from Sergei M. Eisenstein (1986), Eisenstein on Disney, edited
by Jay Leyda, translated by Alan Upchurch, introduced by Naum Kleiman, is
reproduced with kind permission of Seagull Press.
Extracts from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and Four Quartets by
T. S. Eliot reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright
©1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1950, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968,
1970, and 1971 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions
Publishing Corp and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Extract from ‘Spring and All’ by William Carlos Williams from Imaginations
vii
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vviiii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
MODERNISM AND MAGIC
(1970), edited and with an introduction by Webster Schott, is reprinted by
kind permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. (USA and Cananda) and
Carcanet Press (UK and Commonwealth).
viii
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vviiiiii 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377
INTRODUCTION
This book argues that the aesthetic experiments of the fi rst half of the twenti-
eth century that we call modernism drew on the discourses of the occult domi-
nant during the period – in particular on spiritualism and theosophy – because
in them it saw the possibilities for a reconceptualisation of the mimetic. While
these discourses have been much investigated in critical works of the last few
decades, what neither recent scholars nor many practitioners, or indeed critics,
at the time have admitted is the extent to which they have magic at their heart.
Yet these occult discourses provided possibilities for experiment for writers,
fi lmmakers and artists because in them resided a productive magic; productive
because it was a magic that fundamentally understood that the mimetic is able
to produce, not just an inert copy, but an animated copy powerful enough to
enact change in the original.
That the period encompassing the end of the nineteenth century and the begin-
ning of the twentieth century experienced an occult revival is now well estab-
lished. There have been numerous cultural histories of this over the last thirty
years or so, establishing occult beliefs, magical thinking or belief in the survival
of the individual beyond death as central to the construction of modernity
during this time (Oppenheim 1985; Owen 1989; Thurschwell 2001; Luckhurst
2002; Owen 2004; Warner 2006). Rather than embarrassing aberrations, in
these works such beliefs are claimed as central to the production of what was
considered modern. These cultural histories have been accompanied by works
attempting to establish the importance of these discourses for m odernist artistic
1
WWIILLSSOONN MMAAGGIICC 99778800774488662277669911 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd 11 2233//1100//22001122 1144::3377