AtD: not as weird as history

[Monte Davis]

It's full of treats: did you know that Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, Robur
the Conqueror and other fiercely anti-statist rebels were inspired by  a
Communard playwright / politician / self-promoter / blowhard named
Rochefort? I didn't.
On Jul 7, 2016 10:42 AM, "Mark Kohut" <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I second and third that. I'm gonna read this book.
> Mucho Thanks.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jul 7, 2016, at 10:21 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks. This kind of thing is one of the best features of the p-list.
> >> On Jul 7, 2016, at 9:52 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Too recent to be a source for Against the Day, but surely drawing on
> the same scholarly/documentary sources: Alex Butterworth's The World that
> Never Was (2010) is an entertaining narrative history of anarchist,
> communist, and more or less revolutionary socialist groupuscules -- and
> secret-police infiltration of them -- from the Paris Commune to 1917. This
> passage is from the feverish Boulanger years in France (late 1880s):
> >>
> >> "While Juliette Adam [feminist, anti-Bismarck editor and writer, sought
> to foster] a Franco-Russian alliance, others in her circle took a more
> purely esoteric approach to international affairs. The occultists’ first
> foray into geopolitics had been to court the maharajah Dalip Singh to stage
> an insurrection against British rule, offering the inducement of a
> Franco-Russian alliance that they were in no position to deliver. Their
> fanciful aim then may have been to facilitate access to the technologically
> and spiritually advanced Holy Land of Agartha, buried deep under the
> mountains of Asia, from whose Grand Pandit their own guru [Alexandre
> St-Yves] d’Alveydre claimed to have learned the secrets of synarchy. In
> 1887, however, they turned their attention to matters closer to home.
> >>
> >> "Gérard Encausse, the scientific hypnotist at the Salpêtrière [see
> Pinel, Charcot, Freud, Janet] who was now beginning to establish himself as
> a mystical visionary under the name ‘Papus’, had, together with Paul Adam,
> a bon viveur, Boulangist and literary acolyte of Fénéon’s decadent
> movement, been engaged for some time in the investigation of consciousness,
> and the possible interpenetration of times past, present and future.
> History as it was experienced, they had come to understand, was merely an
> echo of strife and turmoil in the spiritual realm, and France’s defeat at
> the Battle of Sedan was the clear consequence of the superior invocatory
> powers of Prussia’s scryers. At a personal level, Encausse fought duels
> over accusations that he had attacked his enemies with volatised poison,
> but was alert too to conflict on a larger scale. If Boulanger was going to
> wage war, they must have concluded, then it was the patriotic duty of
> France’s psychic brigade to be in peak condition and free of earthly
> distractions..."
> >>
> >> Sometimes I imagine Pynchon must have a sampler above his desk with the
> words of the great singer-comedienne Anna Russell as she explained the plot
> of the Ring Cycle: "I'm not making this up,. you know."
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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