AtD: not as weird as history

[Mark Kohut]

No, in thunder! ( and I have just been discussing Captain Nemo and his bio with someone. Who will now learn this. ) 

Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 7, 2016, at 11:28 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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