Traces du mesmérisme dans les littératures européennes du 19ème siècle/ Einflüsse des Mesmerismus auf die europäische Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts

The title of the present volume is somewhat misleading, as the focus of the various contributions is almost exclusively on French and German literature. An introductory article claims that programme constraints precluded adequate coverage of Mesmerism in other continental and in Anglo-Saxon literatures. Any conference organizer would sympathize, but one wonders whether some of the fifteen essays in this collection might not have been sacrificed (or severely edited) to facilitate the broader perspective, if, as is implied, there were more proposals on other literatures. So what advantage has been gained from depth of coverage? The tome opens with an account by Bertrand Meheust of what Mesmerism was (or what authors understood it to be) and of its intellectual roots. This will prove invaluable to the uninitiated. The collection closes with two studies by Sonja Vanderlinden and Jean Dierkens that set Mesmerism in a durable tradition of faith in alternative remedies. The latter considers how justified modern Western medical science is in equating Mesmerism's techniques with quackery. He notes that hypnosis has acquired a certain respectability in the treatment of psychosomatic illness. The sceptic is less likely to be won over by the case made for taking seriously the relevance of astrology to medicine. Between these bookends there are surveys of Mesmerism in German and French literature of the early nineteenth century (Jurgen Barkhoff, Tanguy Loge), analysis of contemporary accounts of seances (Roland Mortier, Bettina Gruber), essays on Mesmerism and Goethe and E. T. A. Hoffmann (Lauren van Eynde), Kleist (Hans-Jurgen Schrader), Jung-Stilling, Kerner, Schelling, and Schopenhauer (Leonardy), Immermann (Hubert Roland), Bellini (Marie-France Renard), Nerval (Michel Brix), Balzac and Dumas pere (Georges Jacques), and Flaubert (Claudine Gothot-Mersch). A number of these contributions are rather descriptive, listing references to Mesmerism in the works of the author in question, usually nuanced by some indication of scepticism concerning its efficacy; these are often attributed to some Romantic interest in the mysterious, the paranormal. Most will be of interest primarily to specialists on the particular authors. Brix and Schrader may prove of more general relevance. The former explores the influence of Neoplatonistic mysticism on contemporary European culture and points out that Nerval's reflections on madness, informed by his travels in the east, in some ways anticipate Foucault in their awareness that it is a culturally determined concept. Schrader challenges what he sees as an over-comfortable perception of Kleist as a modern writer, situating him instead in a pre-modern intellectual world