II. Later Development of the Martian Cycle
This development was not effected in a regular manner; but for the most part by leaps and bounds, separating stoppages more or less prolonged. After its inauguration in the seance of November 25, 1894, it suffered a first eclipse of nearly fifteen months, attributable to new preoccupations which had installed themselves on the highest plane of Mlle. Smith’s subconsciousness and held that position throughout the whole of the year 1895.
Compared with the seance of November, 1894, that of February, 1896 (of which a résumé follows), shows interesting innovations. Raspail does not figure in it and henceforth does not appear again, which was probably due to the fact that Mme. Mirbel had failed to make use of the method of treatment which he had prescribed for her eyes. Young Mirbel, on the contrary, sole object of the desires and longings of his poor mother, occupies the highest plane, and is the central figure of the vision. He now speaks Martian and no longer understands French, which complicates the conversation somewhat. Further, not possessing the power of moving tables upon our globe, it is through the intervention of the medium, by incarnating himself momentarily in Mlle. Smith, that he henceforth communicates with his mother. These two latter points in their turn cause certain difficulties to arise, which, acting as a ferment or a suggestion, will later usher in a new step in the progress of the romance: Alexis Mirbel cannot return to incarnate himself in a terrestrial medium if he is imprisoned in his Martian existence; he must first terminate that and return to the condition in which he again floats in interplanetary space; which “fluid” or wandering state permits him at the same time to give us the French translation of the Martian tongue; since, according to spiritism, a complete memory of previous existences, and consequently of the various languages pertaining to them, is temporarily recovered during the phases of disincarnation.
These anticipatory hints will assist the reader in following more easily the thread of the somnambulistic romance in the résumé of its principal stages.
February 2, 1896.—I sum up, by enumerating them, the principal somnambulistic phases of this seance, which lasted more than two hours and a half, and at which Mme. Mirbel assisted.
1. Increasing hemisomnambulism, with gradual loss of consciousness of the real environment—at the beginning the table bows several times to Mme. Mirbel, announcing that the coming scene is intended for her. After a series of elementary visual hallucinations (rainbow colors, etc.), meaning for Mme. Mirbel that she would finally become blind, Hélène arose, left the table, and held a long conversation with an imaginary woman who wished her to enter a curious little car without wheels or horses. She became impatient towards this woman, who, after having at first spoken to her in French, now persisted in speaking in an unintelligible tongue, like Chinese. Leopold revealed to us by the little finger that it was the language of the planet Mars, that this woman is the mother of Alexis Mirbel, reincarnated on that planet, and that Hélène herself will speak Martian. Presently Hélène begins to recite with increasing volubility an incomprehensible jargon, the beginning of which is as follows (according to notes taken by M. Lemaître at the time, as accurately as possible): “Mitchma mitchmon mimini tchouainem mimatchineg masichinof mézavi patelki abrésinad navette naven navette mitchichénid naken chinoutoufiche”.... From this point the rapidity prevented the recognition of anything else, except such scraps as “téké ... katéchivist ... méguetch,” ... or “méketch ... kété ... chiméké.” After a few minutes, Hélène interrupts herself, crying out, “Oh, I have had enough of it; you say such words to me I will never be able to repeat them.” Then, with some reluctance, she consents to follow her interlocutrix into the car which was to carry her to Mars.
2. The trance is now complete. Hélène thereupon mimics the voyage to Mars in three phases, the meaning of which is indicated by Leopold: a regular rocking motion of the upper part of the body (passing through the terrestrial atmosphere), absolute immobility and rigidity (interplanetary space), again oscillations of the shoulders and the bust (atmosphere of Mars). Arrived upon Mars, she descends from the car, and performs a complicated pantomime expressing the manners of Martian politeness: uncouth gestures with the hands and fingers, slapping of the hands, taps of the fingers upon the nose, the lips, the chin, etc., twisted courtesies, glidings, and rotation on the floor, etc. It seems that is the way people approach and salute each other up there.
3. This sort of dance having suggested to one of the sitters the idea of performing upon the piano, Hélène suddenly fell upon the floor in an evidently hypnotic state, which had no longer a Martian character. At the cessation of the music she entered into a mixed state, in which the memory of the Martian visions continually mingle themselves with some idea of her terrestrial existence. She talks to herself. “Those dreams are droll, all the same.... I must tell that to M. Lemaître. When he [the Martian Alexis Mirbel] said ‘Good-day’ to me, he tapped himself upon the nose.... He spoke to me in a queer language, but I understood it perfectly, all the same,” etc. Seated on the ground, leaning against a piece of furniture, she continues, soliloquizing in French, in a low voice, to review the dream, mingling with it some wandering reflections. She finds, for example, that the young Martian (Alexis) was a remarkably big boy for one only five or six years old, as he claimed to be, and that the woman seemed very young to be his mother.
4. After a transitory phase of sighs and hiccoughs, followed by profound sleep with muscular relaxation, she enters into Martian somnambulism and murmurs some confused words: “Késin ouitidjé” ... etc. I command her to speak French to me; she seems to understand, and replies in Martian, with an irritated and imperious tone, I ask her to tell me her name; she replies, “Vasimini Météche.” With the idea that, perhaps, she “is incarnating” the young Alexis, of whom she has spoken so much in the preceding phase, I urge Mme. Mirbel to approach her, and thereupon begins a scene of incarnation really very affecting; Mme. Mirbel is on her knees, sobbing bitterly, in the presence of her recovered son, who shows her marks of the most profound affection and caresses her hands “exactly as he was accustomed to do during his last illness,” all the time carrying on a discourse in Martian (tin is toutch), which the poor mother cannot understand, but to which an accent of extreme sweetness and a tender intonation impart an evident meaning of words of consolation and filial tenderness. This pathetic duet lasted about ten minutes, and was brought to an end by a return to lethargic sleep, from which Hélène awakened at the end of a quarter of an hour, pronouncing a short Martian word, after which she instantly recovered the use of her French and her normal waking state.
5. Questioned as to what had passed, Hélène, while drinking tea, narrates the dream which she has had. She has a sufficiently clear memory of her journey and of what she has seen on Mars, with the exception of the young man, of whom she has retained only a recollection of the scene of incarnation.
But suddenly, in the midst of the conversation, she begins to speak in Martian, without appearing to be aware of it, and while continuing to chat with us in the most natural manner; she appeared to understand all our words, and answered in her strange idiom, in the most normal tone, and seemed very much astonished when we told her that we did not understand her language; she evidently believes she is speaking French.[14] By questioning her concerning a visit which she had made a few days before to M. C., and asking her the number and the names of the persons whom she met there, we succeed in identifying the four following Martian words: Métiche S., Monsieur S.; Médache C., Madame C.; Métaganiche Smith, Mademoiselle Smith; kin’t’che, four. After which she resumes definitively her French. Interrogated as to the incident which has transpired, she is astounded, has only a hesitating and confused memory of her having spoken at all this evening of her visit to M. C., and does not recognize nor understand the four Martian words given above when they are repeated to her. On several occasions during this seance I had made the suggestion to Hélène that at a given signal, after her awaking, she would recover the memory of the Martian words pronounced by her and of their meaning. But Leopold, who was present, declared that this command would not be obeyed, and that a translation could not be obtained this evening. The signal, though often repeated, was, in fact, without result.
It has seemed to me necessary to describe with some detail this seance, at which the Martian language made its first appearance, in order to place before the reader all the fragments which we have been able to gather, without, of course, any guarantee of absolute accuracy, since every one knows how difficult it is to note the sounds of unknown words. A curious difference is to be noticed between the words picked up in the course of the seance and the four words several times repeated by Hélène, the meaning and pronunciation of which have been determined with complete accuracy in the post-hypnotic return of the somnambulistic dream. Judged by these latter, the Martian language is only a puerile counterfeit of French, of which she preserves in each word a number of syllables and certain conspicuous letters. In the other phrases, on the contrary, also making use of later texts which have been translated, as we shall see hereafter, it cannot be discovered what it is. We are constrained to believe that these first outbreaks of Martian, characterized by a volubility which we have rarely met with since then, was only a pseudo-Martian, a continuation of sounds uttered at random and without any real meaning, analogous to the gibberish which children use sometimes in their games of “pretending” to speak Chinese or Indian, and that the real Martian was only created by an unskilful distortion of French, in a post-hypnotic access of hemisomnambulism, in order to respond to the manifest desire of the sitters to obtain the precise significance of some isolated Martian words.
The impossibility, announced by Leopold, of procuring a translation that same evening of the pretended Martian spoken for the first time during that seance, and the fact that it could not again be obtained, give some support to the preceding theory.
The circumstance that Hélène, in remembering her dream in phase No. 3, had the sentiment of having well understood this unknown jargon, is not an objection, since the children who amuse themselves by simulating an uncouth idiom—to recur to that example—do not retain the least consciousness of the ideas which their gibberish is assumed to express. It seems, in short, that if this new language was already really established at that time in Hélène’s subliminal consciousness to the point of sustaining fluently discourses of several minutes’ duration, some phrases at least would not have failed to gush forth, spontaneously sometimes, in the course of ordinary life, and in order to throw light upon visions of Martian people or landscapes. More than seven months had to elapse before that phenomenon, which was so frequent afterwards, began to appear.
May we not see in this half-year a period of incubation, employed in the subliminal fabrication of a language, properly so called—that is to say, formed of precise words and with a definite signification, in imitation of the four terms just referred to—to replace the disordered nonsense of the beginning?
However it may be, and to return to our story, one can imagine the interest which that sudden and unexpected apparition of mysterious speech aroused, and which the authority of Leopold would not allow to be taken for anything other than the language of Mars. The natural curiosity of Hélène herself, as well as that of her friends, to know more about our neighbors of other worlds and their way of expressing themselves should naturally have contributed to the development of the subliminal dream. The following seance, unhappily, did not justify the promise with which it began.
February 16, 1896.—“At the beginning of this seance, Hélène has a vision of Alexis Mirbel, who announces, by means of the table, that he has not forgotten his French, and that he will give a translation of the Martian words another day. But this prediction is not fulfilled. Whether Hélène, for the reason that she is not feeling well to-day, or that the presence of some one antipathetic to her has hindered the production of the phenomena, the Martian somnambulism, which seemed on the point of breaking forth, did not make its appearance. Hélène remains in a crepuscular state, in which the feeling of present reality and the Martian ideas on the level of consciousness interfere with and mutually obscure each other. She speaks in French with the sitters, but mingling with it here and there a strange word (such as méche, chinit, chéque, which, according to the context, seem to signify pencil, ring, paper), and appears far away from her actual surroundings. She is astonished, in particular, at the sight of M. R. occupied in taking notes by the procès verbal, and seems to find that manner of writing with a pen or pencil strange and absurd, but without explaining clearly how it was to be otherwise accomplished. The importance of this seance is in the fact that the idea stands out clearly (which was not to be realized until a year and a half later) of a mode of handwriting peculiar to the planet Mars.”
This seance, which was almost a failure, was the last of that period. Hélène’s health, which became more and more impaired by standing too long on her feet and overwork at her desk, necessitated her taking a complete rest. I have mentioned the fact that during these six months, without any regular seances, she was subject to a superabundance of spontaneous visions and somnambulisms; but these automatisms belonged to the Hindoo or other cycles, and I do not believe that she experienced during that time any phenomena which were clearly related to the Martian romance. On the other hand, as soon as she was re-established in and had returned to her normal mode of life, the latter appeared again with all the more intensity, dating from the following nocturnal vision. (See [Fig. 9.])
September 5, 1896.—Hélène narrates that having arisen at a quarter-past three in the morning to take in some flowers that stood upon the window-sill and were threatened by the wind, instead of going back to bed immediately she sat down upon her bed and saw before her a landscape and some peculiar people. She was on the border of a beautiful blue-pink lake, with a bridge the sides of which were transparent and formed of yellow tubes like the pipes of an organ, of which one end seemed to be plunged into the water. The earth was peach-colored; some of the trees had trunks widening as they ascended, while those of others were twisted. Later a crowd approached the bridge, in which one woman was especially prominent. The women wore hats which were flat, like plates. Hélène does not know who these people are, but has the feeling of having conversed with them. On the bridge there was a man of dark complexion (Astané), carrying in his hands an instrument somewhat resembling a carriage-lantern in appearance, which, being pressed, emitted flames, and which seemed to be a flying-machine. By means of this instrument the man left the bridge, touched the surface of the water, and returned again to the bridge. This tableau lasted twenty-five minutes, since Hélène, upon returning to consciousness, observed that her candle was still burning and ascertained that it was then 3.40 o’clock. She is convinced that she did not fall asleep, but was wide awake during all of this vision. (See [Figs. 10] and [11.])
From that time the spontaneous Martian visions are repeated and multiplied. Mlle. Smith experiences them usually in the morning, after awaking and before rising from her bed; sometimes in the evening, or occasionally at other times during the day. It is in the course of these visual hallucinations that the Martian language appears again under an auditive form.
September 22, 1896.—During these last days Hélène has seen again on different occasions the Martian man, with or without his flying-machine; for example, he appeared to her while she was taking a bath, at the edge of the bath-tub. She has had several times visions of a strange house the picture of which followed her with so much persistency that she finally painted it (see [Fig. 12]). At the same time she heard on three different occasions a sentence the meaning of which she does not know, but which she was able to take down with her pencil as follows: “Dodé né ci haudan té méche métiche Astané ké dé mé véche.” (As was ascertained six weeks after, by the translation given in the seance of the 2d of November, this phrase indicates that the strange house is that of the Martian man, who is called Astané.)
This phrase was undoubtedly Martian, but what was the meaning of it? After having hoped in vain for nearly a month that the meaning would be revealed in some way or other, I decided to try a disguised suggestion. I wrote to Leopold himself a letter, in which I appealed to his omniscience as well as to his kindness to give me some enlightenment in regard to the strange language which piqued our curiosity, and, in particular, as to the meaning of the phrase Hélène had heard. I asked him to answer me in writing, by means of Hélène’s hand. We did not have to wait long for a reply. Hélène received my letter the 20th of October, and on the evening of the 22d, seized with a vague desire to write, she took a pencil, which placed itself in the regular position, between the thumb and the index-finger (whereas she always held her pen between the middle and index-finger), and traced rapidly, in the characteristic handwriting of Leopold and with his signature, a beautiful epistle of eighteen Alexandrine lines addressed to me, of which the ten last are as follows, being an answer to my request that the secrets of Martian be revealed to me:
“Ne crois pas qu’en t’aimant comme un bien tendre frère
Je te diroi des cieux tout le profond mystère;
Je t’aideroi beaucoup, je t’ouvriroi la voie,
Mais à toi de saisir et chercher avec joie;
Et quand tu la verras d’ici-bas détachée,
Quand son âme mobile aura pris la volée
Et planera sur Mars aux superbes couleurs;
Si tu veux obtenir d’elle quelques lueurs,
Pose bien doucement, ta main sur son front pâle
Et prononce bien bas le doux nom d’Esenale!”[15]
I have been very sensible to the pledges of fraternal affection that Leopold has accorded me, but this time I was especially moved, and although the very uncommon name of Esenale meant absolutely nothing to me, I took care not to forget the singular rule which had been furnished me. At the following seance an opportunity for using it presented itself, and Leopold went so far as to direct himself the application of his method by giving us his instructions, sometimes with one finger, sometimes with another, during Hélène’s Martian trance.
Monday, November 2, 1896.—After various characteristic symptoms of the departure for Mars (vertigo, affection of the heart, etc.), Hélène went in a deep sleep. I had recourse to the prescribed method, but Leopold, by the fingers of the right hand, indicated that the proper moment had not yet arrived, and said: “When the soul shall again have regained possession of itself thou shalt execute my order; she will then describe to you, while still asleep, that which she shall have seen on Mars.” Shortly after he adds, “Make her sit down in an easy-chair” (instead of the uncomfortable one which she had taken, as was her wont); then, as her peaceful sleep still continued, he informs us again that she is en route towards Mars; that once arrived up there she understands the Martian spoken around her, although she has never learned it; that it is not he, Leopold, who will translate the Martian for us—not because he does not wish to do so, but because he cannot; that this translation is the performance of Esenale, who is actually disincarnate in space, but who has recently lived upon Mars, and also upon the earth, which permits him to act as interpreter, etc.
After half an hour of waiting, Hélène’s calm sleep gave way to agitation, and she passed into another form of somnambulism, with sighs, rhythmic movements of the head and hands, then grotesque Martian gestures and French words murmured softly to the hearing of Leopold, who seems to accompany her on Mars, and to whom she confides some of her impressions in regard to that which she perceives. In the midst of this soliloquy a vertical movement of the arm, peculiar to Leopold, indicates that the moment has arrived for carrying out his directions. I place my hand on Hélène’s forehead, and utter the name of Esenale, to which Hélène replies in a soft, feeble, somewhat melancholy, voice: “Esenale has gone away ... he has left me alone ... but he will return, ... he will soon return.... He has taken me by the hand and made me enter the house [that which she saw in her vision, and of which she made the drawing a month ago—see [Fig. 12]].... I do not know where Esenale is leading me, but he has said to me, ‘Dodé né ci haudan té méche métiche Astané ké dé mé véche,’ but I did not understand; ... dodé, this; né, is; ci, the; haudan, house; te, of the; méche, great; métiche, man; Astané, Astané; ké, whom; dé, thou; mé, hast; véche, seen.... This is the house of the great man Astané, whom thou hast seen.... Esenale has told me that.... Esenale has gone away.... He will return ... he will soon return ... he will teach me to speak ... and Astané will teach me to write.”
I have abridged this long monologue, constantly interrupted by silences, and the continuation of which I only obtained by having constant recourse to the name of Esenale as the magic word, alone capable of extracting each time a few words from Hélène’s confused brain. After the last sentence or phrase, in which one can see a categorical prediction of the Martian writing, her weak, slow voice was finally hushed, and Leopold directs by means of his left middle finger the removal of the hand from the forehead. Then follow the customary alternations of lethargic sleep, sighs, catalepsy, momentary relapses into somnambulism, etc. Then she opens her eyes permanently, very much surprised to find herself in the easy-chair. Her brain is greatly confused. “It seems to me as though I had a great many things on my mind, but I cannot fix upon anything.” By degrees she regains a clear consciousness, but of the entire seance, which has lasted an hour and a half, there only remain some fragments of Martian visions and no recollection whatever of the scene with Esenale and that of the translation.
This process of translation, the first application of which is here presented, becomes from this time the standard method.
For more than two years and a half, the imposition of the hand upon Hélène’s forehead and the uttering of the name of Esenale at the proper moment during the trance constitute the “open sesame” of the Martian-French dictionary buried in the subliminal strata of Hélène’s consciousness. The idea of this ceremonial is evidently to awaken by suggestion—in a certain favorable somnambulistic phase, which Leopold recognizes and himself announces by a gesture of the arm—the secondary personality which has amused itself by composing the phrases of this extra-terrestrial language.
In spiritistic terms, it amounts to invoking the disincarnate Esenale, otherwise called Alexis Mirbel, who, having lived on both planets, can easily devote himself to the functions of an interpreter.
The only difference between this scene of translation and other seances is in the ease and rapidity with which it is performed. Esenale seems sometimes to be thoroughly asleep and difficult to awaken; Hélène persists in replying by the stereotyped refrain, and incessantly repeats, in her soft and melancholy voice, “Esenale has gone away—he will soon return—he has gone away—he will soon return.” Then some more energetic passes or friction on the forehead are necessary, instead of the simple pressure of the hand, in order to break up this mechanical repetition, which threatens to go on forever, and in order to obtain, finally, the repetition and translation, word by word, of the Martian texts. Otherwise the voice continues identical with that of the refrain, soft and feeble, and one can never know whether it is Esenale himself who is making use of Hélène’s phonetic apparatus without modifying it, or whether it is she herself, repeating in her sleep what Esenale has told her; the categorical distinctness and absence of all hesitation in pronunciation of the Martian are in favor of the former supposition, which is also corroborated by the fact that it was also in this same voice that Alexis Mirbel (Esenale) spoke to his mother in the scenes of incarnation. (See [Fig. 13.])
Fig 13. Martian landscape. Greenish-yellow sky. A man with a yellow complexion, dressed in white, in a boat of brown, yellow, black, and red colors on a blue-green lake; rose-tinted rock, with white and yellow spots; dark green vegetation; buildings of brown, red, and rose-lilac tints, with white window-panes and curtains of bright blue.
It would be wearisome to recount in detail all the further manifestations of the Martian cycle, which occur frequently in numerous seances and also under the form of spontaneous visions in the daily life of Mlle. Smith. The reader can gain an idea of them both from the remarks of the following paragraph, as well as from the explanatory résumés added to the Martian texts, which will be collected in the following chapter. It merely remains for me to say a word here as to the manner in which the pictures of Hélène relative to Mars, and reproduced in autotype in the Figs. 9 to 20, have been made.
None of these pictures has been executed in complete somnambulism, and they have not, consequently, like the drawings of certain mediums, the interest of a graphic product, absolutely automatic, engendered outside of and unknown to the ordinary consciousness. They are nothing more than simple compositions of the normal consciousness of Mlle. Smith. They represent a type of intermediary activity, and correspond to a state of hemisomnambulism. We have seen above (p. [p. 20]) that already in her childhood Hélène seems to have executed various pieces of work in a semi-automatic manner. The same performance is often reproduced on the occasion of the Martian visions, which sometimes pursue her so persistently that she decides to execute them with pencil and brush; work which, in anticipation, often frightens her by its difficulty, but which, when the time comes, accomplishes itself, to her great astonishment, with an ease and perfection almost mechanical. Here is an example:
One Tuesday evening, having already retired, Hélène saw on her bed some magnificent flowers, very different from ours, but without perfume, and which she did not touch, for during her visions she has no idea of moving, and remains inert and passive. The afternoon of the following day, at her desk, she found herself enveloped in a red light, and at the same time felt an indefinable but violent affection of the heart (aura of the voyage to Mars). “The red light continues about me, and I find myself surrounded by extraordinary flowers of the kind which I saw on my bed, but they had no perfume. I will bring you some sketches of them on Sunday.” She sent them to me, in fact, on Monday, with the following note: “I am very well satisfied with my plants. They are the exact reproduction of those which it afforded me so much pleasure to behold [No. 3, in [Fig. 16], which, beforehand, Hélène despaired of being able to render well], which appeared to me on the latter occasion, and I greatly regret that you were not here to see me execute the drawing: the pencil glided so quickly that I did not have time to notice what contours it was making. I can assert without any exaggeration that it was not my hand alone that made the drawing, but that truly an invisible force guided the pencil in spite of me. The various tints appeared to me upon the paper, and my brush was directed in spite of me towards the color which I ought to use. This seems incredible, but it is, notwithstanding, the exact truth, The whole was done so quickly that I marvelled at it.”
Fig. 9. Martian landscape. Pink bridge, with yellow railings plunging down into a pale-blue and purple-tinted lake. The shores and hills of a red color, no green being visible. All the trees are of a brick-red, purple, or violet tint. [From the collection of M. Lemaître].
Fig. 15. Light-brown and yellow trunk and leaves; double-lobed flowers of a vivid red, out of which proceed yellow stamens like black threads.Fig. 16. Large leaves, light yellowish brown; flowers with purple petals with black stamens and black stems covered with little purple leaves like petals.Fig. 17. Large violet fruit with black spots, surmounted by a yellow and violet plume. The trunk of brown color with black veins, with six branches of the same character ending in a yellow hook. Red-brick soil.
The house of Astané (Fig. 12), and the extensive landscapes of Figs. 13 and 14, are also the products of a quasi-automatic activity, which always gives great satisfaction to Mlle. Smith. It is, in a way, her subliminal self which holds the brush and executes, at its pleasure, its own tableaux, which also have the value of veritable originals. Other drawings, on the contrary (for example, the portrait of Astané,[Fig. 11]), which have given Hélène much trouble without having satisfied her very well, should be regarded as simple copies from memory, by the ordinary personality, of past visions, the memory of which is graven upon her mind in a manner sufficiently persistent to serve as a model several days afterwards. In both cases, but especially in the first, Hélène’s paintings may be considered as faithful reproductions of the tableaux which unfold themselves before her, and consequently give us better than most verbal descriptions an idea of the general character of her Martian visions.
Let us see now what kind of information the messages and somnambulisms of Hélène furnish us in regard to the brilliant planet whose complicated revolutions formerly revealed to a Kepler the fundamental secrets of modern astronomy.