Abstract
This chapter traces the history of research into the relationship between occultism and literary modernism in Europe. Earlier scholarship on this topic has failed to fully appreciate the extent of the interactions between occultism and modernism. This overview of scholarship is divided into three periods or ‘generations’, and identifies how the various limitations of these generations can be used to refine our current understanding of occultism and modernism. Suggesting that today’s academics have a responsibility to learn from the successes and failures of the past, the chapter outlines how a new ‘generation’, at once comparative, interdisciplinary and multilingual, can help advance the theoretical and methodological state of the art of scholarship on occult modernism.
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- 1.
‘Att tänka på Förläggare i Sverge [sic] för min Inferno är väl ej lönt, utan måste väl skrifva den på Franska för att bli läst; kanske blott i manuskript. Det vore ju idealet för ockultistiskt skrifsätt.’ Letter to the prominent Swedish Theosophist Torsten Hedlund ( Strindberg, 1948–2001, vol. 11, 323). All translations in this chapter are my own; original will be provided in the notes.
- 2.
For a discussion of how Strindberg scholarship has dealt with his occultism, I humbly refer to my own study (Johnsson, 2015).
- 3.
Size constraints prohibit the inclusion of German-language scholarship here. The most relevant studies are Fick (1993), Hilke (2002), Magnússon (2009), Pytlik (2005), Rausch (2000), Spörl (1997), Stockhammer (2000) and Wagner-Egelhaaf (1989). Important anthologies are Baßler, Moritz and Hildegard Châtellier, eds. (1998); and Gruber, Bettina, ed. (1997).
- 4.
As I make no claim to completeness, subsequent studies will without a doubt include material I have missed. A few promising areas can be suggested: Russian symbolism, multilingual authors such as Stanisław Przybyszewski and Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz , the Italian ermetismo movement and the work of Spanish and Portuguese authors such as Rúben Darío and Fernando Pessoa . While these authors and movements have of course been studied in their own right, their relationship to occultism is still understudied.
- 5.
As noted in one of the few historical overviews of the research topic, Ross (2010).
- 6.
‘Non pas l’aboutissement, l’étape dernière de l’œuvre de Nerval , mais une véritable somme de son expérience pour toute la période qui va de 1841 à 1853’.
- 7.
‘Conte initiatique ou du récit de voyage allégorique’, italics original. Of note is also a later, more wide-ranging study ( Richer, 1980). On Nerval, see also Kaplan (1967).
- 8.
For more on Swedenborg , see Hanegraaff et al., eds. (2005, 1096–1105).
- 9.
See, for instance, the highly critical review by Torchiana (1960).
- 10.
The title of Mercier’s study naturally brings to mind Viatte’s Les Sources occultes du romantisme, which Mercier’s work complements.
- 11.
As an example, the issue of Revue du monde nouveau in which Stéphane Mallarmé’s ‘Le Demon de l’analogie’ was first published (1874, vol. 1, 14–16) also featured an essay by the magazine’s editor, Charles Cros , on ‘L’Alchimie moderne’ (pp. 58–62). For a survey of symbolist periodicals, see Genova (2002).
- 12.
For more on Péladan and the Salons de la Rose + Croix he helped organize, see Pincus-Witten (1967).
- 13.
In regard to surrealism, the second volume of the Cahiers du Centre de Recherche sur le Surréalisme (Paris III), Mélusine II: Occulte-occultation (1981), edited by Henri Béhar , constitutes a landmark in the study of the relationship between surrealism and occultism. The center is now called Association pour la Recherche et l’Étude du surréalisme (APRES).
- 14.
Several of Bays’s articles are relevant in this context (Bays , 1954, 1967).
- 15.
On the trope of the author-seer in modernism, see also Cattaui (1965) and Wacker (2013).
- 16.
In his monograph Tindall (1955, 54–55) made note of the overlap between authors such as Arthur Rimbaud and occultists such as Éliphas Lévi.
- 17.
On the latter topic, see Harper (2006).
- 18.
More recent studies of Yeats’s occultism include Gorski (1996), Maddox (1999) and Monteith (2008).
- 19.
See Faivre (1996 [1986]).
- 20.
Mention should also be made of the anthology edited by Surette and Tryphonopoulos (1996). Almost all of the contributions deal with English-language modernist poetry.
- 21.
See also Kokkinen (2013).
- 22.
A few examples may suffice. On Joyce , see Enrico Terrinoni (2007). On Robert Musil , see Genese Grill (2012). On H.D ., see Matte Robinson ( 2016).
- 23.
See also Hjartarson (2013).
- 24.
That being said, the topic of the Orientalizing discourses to be found in works of occult modernism is worth investigating, especially in conjunction with the ‘anti-Orientalizing’ tendencies of some writers who may distance themselves from movements such as Theosophy because of their perceived ‘non-Western’ origins. A case in point is Strindberg , who prefers contemporary French occultism to Theosophy, arguing that the latter is too ‘Oriental’, unscientific and much too invested in the women’s liberation movement. See (Johnsson, 2015).
- 25.
To give just one example, any scholar wishing to write a monograph on the art and occult thought of Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli would need to master Arabic, French, Italian and Swedish.
- 26.
Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia, August Strindberg’s Inferno (1897) and André Breton’s Nadja (1928), for instance, can be characterized as occult novels, autobiographical narratives, medical case records, confessional texts and modernist fiction—all at once. Indeed, the defying of genre norms and/or hybridization of genres, furthermore across disciplinary boundaries such as between literature and painting, is not only characteristic of modernism but is frequently found in occultism as well.
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Johnsson, H. (2018). A History of Research into Occult Modernist Literature. In: Bauduin, T., Johnsson, H. (eds) The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76499-3_2
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