Spiritist novel by Mr. Élie Sauvage, member of the
Society of Men of Literature.
[1] The year 1867 started, for Spiritism, with the publication of a work that, in a way, inaugurated the new path opened by the Spiritist doctrine in literature.
Mirette is not one of those books in which the Spiritist idea is a mere accessory, as if thrown there, for the sake of effect, by chance of imagination, without the animation or warmth of belief; it is the very idea that forms its fundamental pillar, less for the action than for the general consequences that flow from it.
In Théophile Gautier's Spiritist, the fantastic by far outweighs the real and the possible, from the point of view of the doctrine. It is less a Spiritist novel than the novel of Spiritism, and that the latter cannot accept as a faithful depiction of manifestations; moreover, the philosophical and moral content is almost null there. This work was, nonetheless, very useful to the popularization of the idea, by the authority of the name of the author, who knew how to give it the stamp of his undeniable talent, and by its publication in the official journal. It was also the first work of its kind of real importance, in which the idea was taken seriously.
Mr. Sauvage's work is conceived on a completely different level; it is a painting of real life, where nothing deviates from the possible, and in which Spiritism can accept everything. It is a simple, naive story of continual interest, and even more attractive because everything is natural and plausible in the story; one does not find romantic situations there, but touching scenes, elevated thoughts, characters drawn from nature; we see the noblest and purest feelings there, grappling with selfishness and sordid malice, faith struggling against disbelief. The style is clear, concise, without lengths or unnecessary accessories, without superfluous ornaments, and without pretensions to effect. The author proposed, above all, to write a moral book, and he drew its elements from the Spiritist philosophy and its consequences, much more than from the fact of manifestations; he shows to what elevation of thoughts these beliefs lead. On this point we sum up our opinion by saying that this book can be read with benefit, by the youth of both sexes, that will find beautiful models, good examples, and useful instructions there, without prejudice to benefit and pleasure, that can be taken at any age. We will add that to have written this book, in the way it was done, it is necessary to be deeply embedded in the principles of the doctrine.
The author places his action in 1831; he cannot, therefore, nominally speak of Spiritism, nor of current Spiritist works; so he had to trace his apparent point of departure back to Swedenborg; but everything here is in agreement with the data of modern Spiritism, that he studied carefully.
Here is the subject of the book, in two words:
Count de Rouville, suddenly forced to leave France during the revolution, on leaving for exile, had entrusted a large sum and his family titles to a man, on whose loyalty he believed he could count on. This man, abusing his confidence, misappropriates this sum, with which he enriches himself. When the emigrant returns, the custodian declares not to know him and denies the deposit. Mr. de Rouville, stripped of all his resources by this infidelity, dies of despair, leaving behind a little three-year-old girl, named Mirette.
The child is taken in by a former servant of the family, that brings her up as his daughter. She was barely sixteen when her adoptive father, very poor himself, died. Lucien, a young law student, with a great and noble soul, who had assisted the old man in his last moments, becomes the protector of Mirette, who remained without support and without asylum; he had her admitted to her mother’s house, a rich baker, with a hard and selfish heart. Now, it turns out that Lucien is the son of the spoiler; the latter, on learning later that Mirette is the daughter of the one whose ruin and death he had caused, falls ill and dies, filled with remorse, in convulsions of frightful agony. From there complications, because the young couple love each other, and despite all, end up getting married.
The main characters are: Lucien and Mirette, two elevated souls; Lucien's mother, the perfect type of egoism, greed, narrowness of ideas, struggling with maternal love; Lucien's father, the exact personification of troubled conscience; a basely wicked and jealous bread delivery woman; an old doctor, an excellent man, but incredulous and mocking; a medical student, his pupil, spiritualist, man of heart, and skillful magnetizer; a very lucid somnambulist, and a sister of charity with broad and lofty ideas, a typical character.
We have heard the following criticism of this book:
The action begins, without preamble, with one of those spontaneous manifestations of events, as we often see nowadays, consisting of knocks on the wall. These noises lead to the meeting of the two main characters in the story, Lucien and Mirette, unfolding thereafter. People say that the author should have given an explanation of the phenomenon, for those persons foreign to Spiritism, and who happen to have a point of departure that they do not understand. We do not share this opinion, for the same should be said of scenes of ecstatic visions and somnambulism.
The author did not want, and could not, given that it is a novel, make an educational treatise on Spiritism. Every day writers base their conceptions on scientific, historical or other facts, that they can do no less than assume to be known to their readers, or pay the price of transforming their works into encyclopedias; it is up to those that do not know them to look for them, or to ask for an explanation. Mr. Sauvage, placing his subject in 1831, could not develop theories that were not known until twenty years later. The rapping Spirits, as a matter of fact, have enough resonance in our days, thanks even to the hostile press, that few people had not heard of them. These facts are more vulgar today than many others that are quoted daily. The author seems to us to have, on the contrary, enhanced Spiritism by posing the fact as sufficiently known, to spare explanation.
We do not share either the opinion of those who reproach it for its somewhat familiar and vulgar setting, the few complications of the plot, in a word, for not having made a more masterful literary work, that he was certainly capable of. In our opinion, the work is what it should be, to achieve the proposed goal; it is not a monument that the author wanted to erect, but a simple and graceful little house where the heart can rest. As it is, it is addressed to everyone: large and small, rich and proletarians, but above all, to a class of readers to whom it would have been less suitable, if it had taken a more academic form. We believe that reading can be very beneficial to the working class, and as such we would like it to have the same the popularity of certain writings whose reading is less healthy.
The following two passages can give an idea of the spirit in which the work is conceived. The first is a scene between Lucien and Mirette, at the funeral of her adoptive father:
“
My poor father, then I won't see you again!" said Mirette, sobbing.
“
Mirette,” Lucien replied in a soft and grave voice, “
those who believe in God and in the immortality of the human soul should not be sorry, like the unfortunate people who have no hope.
For true Christians there is no such thing as death. Look around us: we are seated amid tombs, in the terrible and funereal place that ignorance and fear call the field of the dead. Well! the sun of May shines here as it does in the happiest fields. Trees, shrubs, and flowers flood the air with the sweetest perfumes; from the bird to the imperceptible insect, each being of creation throws its note in this great symphony that sings to God the sublime hymn of universal life. Isn't that, tell me, a brilliant protest, against nothingness, against death? Death is a transformation for matter; for good and intelligent beings, it is a transfiguration. Your father fulfilled the task that God had entrusted to him: God called him; may our selfish love not envy the palm of the martyr, the crown of the conqueror! … But do not think that he forgets you. Love is the mysterious link that connects all worlds. The father of a family, forced to make a long journey, does he not think of his cherished children? Does he not watch over their happiness from afar? Yes, Mirette, may this thought console you; we are never orphans on earth; to begin with, we have God that allowed us to call him our father, and then the friends that have preceded us in eternal life. - The one you cry, he is there, I see him… he smiles at you with ineffable tenderness, … he speaks with you… listen…Lucien's face suddenly assumed an ecstatic expression; his fixed gaze, his finger raised in the air, showed something in space; his strained ear seemed to hear mysterious words.
“
Child,” he said, with a voice that was no longer his, “
why fixate your eyes, veiled with tears, on this corner of the earth, where my mortal remains have been laid? Look up to the sky; it is there that the Spirit, purified by suffering, by love and by prayer, flies towards the object of his sublime aspirations!
What does it matter to the butterfly that spreads its radiant wings in the sun, what does it matter the debris of its coarse envelope? Dust returns to dust; the spark goes back to its divine home. But the Spirit must go through terrible trials before receiving his crown. The earth, on which the human anthill crawls, is a place of atonement and of preparation for the blissful life. Great struggles await you, poor child, but have confidence: God and the good Spirits will not forsake you. Faith, hope, love, let that be your motto. Farewell."The work ends with the following account of an ecstatic excursion by the two young people, then married:
After a journey that they could not appreciate the duration, these two air navigators approached an unknown and marvelous land, where it was all light, harmony and perfumes, where the vegetation was so beautiful, and differed as much from that of our globe as the flora of the tropics differs from that of Greenland and the southern lands. The beings that inhabited this world, lost amidst the worlds, resembled the idea that we have of angels down here. Their light and transparent bodies had nothing of our coarse earthly envelope, their faces radiated intelligence and love. Some rested in the shade of trees laden with fruits and flowers, others strolled, like those blessed shadows that Virgil shows us, in his lovely description of the Elysian Fields.
The two figures that Lucien had already seen several times, in his previous visions, came forward with outstretched arms towards the two travelers. The smile with which they were embraced, filled them with a heavenly joy. The one that had been Mirette's adoptive father, said to them with ineffable gentleness: “
My dear children, your prayers and your good works have found grace with God. He has touched the soul of the guilty, and sends him back to earthly life, to atone for his faults and to purify himself with new trials, for God does not punish eternally, and his justice is always tempered by mercy."Here is now the opinion of the Spirits about this work, given at the Parisian Society, in the meeting in which it was reported:
(Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, January 4
th, 1867 – medium Sr. Desliens)
“
Every day belief detaches an irresolute mind from the adverse ideas; every day new obscure or illustrious followers come to take shelter under its banner; the facts multiply, and the crowd reflects. Then the feeble take their courage in both hands, and cry: Forward! with all the strength of their lungs. Serious men work, and moral or material science, novels, and short stories, allow the new principles to break through in eloquent pages. How many Spiritists, without knowing it, among modern spiritualists! How many publications are missing a single word to be designated, to public attention, as emanating from a Spiritist source!The year 1866 presents the new philosophy in all its forms; but it is still the green stem that encloses the ear of wheat and waits to show it, until the heat of spring has made it ripen and open. 1866 prepared, 1867 will mature and achieve. The year opens under the auspices of Mirette, and it will not go by without seeing the appearance of new publications of the same kind, and of more serious still, in the sense that the novel will become philosophy, and that philosophy will make history.Spiritism will not become an ignored belief, and accepted only by a few so-called sick brains; it will be a philosophy admitted to the banquet of intelligence, a new idea having a seat alongside the progressive ideas that mark the second half of the nineteenth century. So, we warmly congratulate the one that was the first to put aside all false human respect, to display his intimate belief frankly and squarely.Dr. Morel Lavallée”
[1] 1 vol. in-12. Authors' Bookstore, 10, rue de la Bourse. Price 3 fr. By post, for France and Algeria, 3 fr. 30 c.
