|
Victor Hugo and the spirits !
When Louis Napoleon dissolves the Assembly in 1851 for then, in 1852, appoint himself Emperor of France, Victor Hugo, who was in favor of the democracy, had to leave the country. It is on the Island of Jersey, an English possession that he found refuge with its family in August 1852. But this Island is pretty morbid and the author, whose fame in France was not any more to make, is bored there mortally.
Since 1847, the phenomenon of the speaking tables had crossed America and attracted rich people. One had fun to make turn and speak the tables. The spirits appeared. Allan Kardec was known. Hugo did not escaped that fashion and during almost two years and a half, he and his close relations worked hard, on the Island of Jersey, to receive messages from the spirits.
The strangeness of the phenomenon is that the majority of the messages which they received had the liveliness and the verb of Hugo himself. However, it was not Hugo which made turn the table, but his son or his wife, or some other person present. Hugo however wrote down the received messages. The number of blow given to the table meant the letter, one blow for A, two blows for B, etc. We can imagine how long and difficult these meetings were. But Hugo had been caught with the play and baited himself every night to transcribe these messages.
Here is one message which is worthy of mention. It was received Thursday December 28, 1854:
"the Man is not one of simple, he is one of complexities. In his skin, there is a million of beings which are a million of hearts. In his flesh, there is a million of beings which are a million of hearts. In his bones, there is a million of beings which are a million of hearts (...) Each breath of his mouth is a puff of hearts; each glance of his eyes is a radiation of hearts (...) God put the germ of all the beings in each being (...) and God puts Itself in all and It put all in Itself, so that if one day it happened that a swirl, flood, hurricane destroyed men, animals, plants and stones, if it happened that a comet devoured stars and, vanishing itself, did not leave more creation that a sand grain, God would smile and taking the sand grain in Its hands, It would launch it in space and say : “Live, million of worlds !"
|
