Phantasmagoria (spectacle)

“Fantasmagores” of the 18th century

The basic apparatus of the fantascope, apparatus used at the time of the spectacles of phantasmagoria, is the Magic lantern, well-known since the 17th century.

Very early, the hawkers or lanternists include/understand the stakes of this new shape of spectacle: it is necessary to quickly strike and strong the imagination of a public especially made up of illiterates with terrifying, edifying images or of the images obscenes. But the subjects evolve/move very quickly during the 18th century: in order to avoid making come on their premises from Auvergnats and Savoyard, the easiest aristocrats and middle-class men order directly with the workshops of the lanterns for their personal use. The lantern is also used as teaching instrument. The count de Paroy puts his talents of painter and lanternist at the service of the education of the Dolphin: he composes for the son of Marie-Antoinette of the biblical and historical images, that the catch of Tileries of 1792 does not enable him to complete. The count de Paroy is that which advises with Etienne-Gaspard Robert says Robertson to improve the lantern of Paul Philidor and to assemble a spectacle for children.

Paul Philidor, whose identity is not firmly proven, is the first to use the word “phantasmagorie” to indicate its spectacles with appearances of spectra and evocations of famous characters. Probably, Robertson assists several times with the spectacles of Philidor announced in the Newspaper of Paris at the end of 1792. It is there that would have been born its vocation from fantasmagore. The count de Paroy advises with that which is not called yet Robertson, but the Robert abbot, to add the suffix to its with his name.

Etienne Robertson is the most known representative of the “fantasmagores” and will want to preserve more the possible for a long time the monopoly of its technique.

The fantascope of Robertson and techniques of projection of “animated” images

In its completed version, the fantascope is a large box of mobile projection able to carry out simultaneously two handling become banal today: on the one hand, dissolves, also called “seen melting” (translation of “dissolving views”) and, on the other hand, dollies before and back, carried out behind the fabric of projection.

The rétroprojection constitutes a major innovation compared to the traditional use of the magic lantern. The lighting system inside the case includes/understands one or more lamps (“quinquets”) and of the mirrors laid out behind these sources of light. The lantern is provided with an optical tube of square form containing a set of adjustable thanks to a toothed rack and, at its end, a “cat's eye”, i.e. a “diaphragm with two blades, manoeuvrable lenses by means of strings” or with a small crank and a button. To this device the system of the double plates introduced into the slide carrier is added, with the junction of the case and the objective. One, fixes, represents the body of the projected figure; the other, superimposed on the first, is mobile. Actuated with strings, it makes it possible to animate the eyes, the language or the members, like the arm of a skeleton holding a scythe. Gone up on rails or casters, the device must be entirely dissimulated behind the fabric of projection, “a white curtain of fine percale tended well, which it is temporarily necessary to dissimulate with the sight of the spectators by a black fabric curtain”. According to an engraving drawn from the picturesque Store (1849) Robertson specifies that “during walk carriage, the physicist must make agree progress of the objective and the movements of the blades”: in other words, it is necessary to synchronize the displacement of the fantascope behind the curtain with the adjustment of the lenses and the “cat's eye” in order to obtain effects of clearness or blur, darkening or explanation, contracting or enlarging, according to whether the fantascope is very close to the screen or that it moves away from there. The enlarging is already known in France thanks to the “mégascope” of the physicist Charles who projects nontransparent bodies like the low-reliefs, engravings and the medals. Robertson thus combines its clean discovered with those of Charles and the scientists who improved the technique of the magic lantern since the time of Kircher. It projects also its images in smoke according to various well-known processes at the end of the century. It is the abbot Guyot who explains of it the technique in his `' New recreations physical and mathematics'' published in 1769. Robertson creates many of other optical effects described in its Memories: for example, the reduction of shades called the “dance of the witches”, which “consists in making move shades geared down thanks to the use of several candles that one agitates” to produce a moving light. It sets up a system of double projection with two fantascopes, creates “travelling phantoms”, such “Diogène with its lantern”; it also makes take part of the actors dressed up at the time of its phantasmagorias alive as Chinese shade.

Description of a meeting of phantasmagoria of Robertson

The `' Memories'' of Robertson give a report on its various experiments and contain also the most eulogistic testimonys of the journalists and witnesses of the time. Here the text of the first public advertisement intended to present the first phantasmagoria of Robertson. This advertisement dated January 20th, 1798 (1st pluvîose), the spectacle taking place three days later:

'' Appearance of spectra, Phantoms and Ghosts, such as they had and could appear in all times, all the places and among all people. Experiments on the new fluid known under the name of galvanism, whose application returns for a time the movement to the bodies which lost the life. An artist distinguished by his talents will touch harmonica there. One subscribes for the first meeting which will take place Tuesday, 4 pluvîose, with the House of the Chess-board. ''

Phantasmagoria begin in general with experiments from experimental physics: the galvanism, magnetism and the demonstrations resorting to electricity are with the mode. The principal spectacle, made up of luminous projections followed on varied supports. To the visual effects are added acoustic effects created by the “tearing sounds of the harmonica” and by the Chinese tamtam used at the strong moments of the spectacle, when for example, the head of Jellyfish emerges, who must give the impression to throw himself on the public. Sound effects are produced by an instrument imitating the rain, the wind, the hurricane, the thunder and the funeral bell. To crown the whole, of the incense odors are diffused in the room despectacle.

These multisensorielles experiments impressed much the public. A few weeks after the first meeting, the Poultier chronicler, of the newspaper the Friend of the Laws, reports in detail the course of a meeting:

'' At seven specific times, a man pale, dry, entered the apartment where we were; after having extinguished the candles, he says: Citizens and Sirs, I am not these adventurers, of these shameless charlatans who promise more than they do not hold: I ensured, in the Newspaper of Paris, which I ressusciterais deaths, I will ressusciterai them. Those of the company which wish the appearance of people who were expensive to them, and whose life was finished by the disease or differently, have to only speak; I will obey their command. It was done one moment of silence; then a man in disorder, the roughcast hair, the sad eye and hagard, the aspect arlésienne, said: Since I could not, in an official journal, to restore the worship of Marat, I would like at least to see his shade. Robertson pours, on an ignited stove, two glasses of blood, a vitriol bottle, twelve drops of etching, and two specimens of the newspaper of theFree ones; at once rises, little by little, a small livid, hideous phantom, armed with a dagger, and covered with a red bonnet: the man with the roughcast hair recognizes it for Marat; he wants to embrace it, the phantom makes an appalling grimace and disappears. ''

The experiment is renewed with the appearance of other shades of missings: an young man claims the appearance of his beloved “of which it shows the portrait in miniature with the fantasmagorien, which throws on the blazing inferno of the feathers of sparrow, some phosphorus grains and a dozen butterflies; soon one sees a woman, the discovered center, the floating hair, and fixing his young friend with a tender and painful smile”. Other ghosts are ressuscities: another man wants to see his wife last once; Switzerland, which would be Laharpe in person, one of the directors of the proclaimed Swiss Republic a few days before, on March 22nd, 1798, claims the appearance of Guillaume Tell; Delille wants to see Virgile, another author asks for the shade of Voltaire. Each time, Robertson deploys an arsenal of chemicals and accessories symbolizing the characters ressuscities: arrows and a large hat for Guillaume Tell; a laurel wreath for Virgile; blood, vitriol and etching for Marat; feathers of bird and a handle of butterflies dried for the young women. It creates also the phantoms of outgoing Robespierre of its tomb, Lavoisier and Rousseau.

Paradox of phantasmagoria

The superposition of the pagan and Christian references is typical religious syncretism of the time. After the disappearance of the worships founded under Terror (worship of the Reason, at the end of 1793, and worship To be it supreme in May 1794) took place a return in strength of the esotericism and practices mystical on the scenes of theater, in the private living rooms, where one started to convene deaths and to make turn the tables, and in the rooms of phantasmagoria. The countryside of Egypt supported certainly the renewed interest for the mysteries of old Egypt, in an end of century when the reason wavered under the push of the old fears returned like phantoms after decapitation of the political certainty. The combination of the scientific knowledge of Robertson and the magic effects that it obtains some on bottom of religious syncretism is with the image of alliances against nature which take place, at the end of the XVIIIe century, between new sciences and old knowledge, materialism and spiritualism, as many alliances which make re-appear funds of beliefs, myths and superstitions that the attempts at eradication of the Lights did nothing but exacerbate. Chemistry taking source in alchemy, the physique making trade with metaphysics, the idea of nature metamorphoses in a worrying way under the influence of the creed of the supernatural one. However, the scientists of the time, just like Robertson, do not cease proclaiming their will to rationalize the knowledge and to cut it its occult roots. In spite of their statements of principle, the return to the old knowledge resulting from graeco-latin mythology and Egyptian woman belongs to a vaster movement of return at the origins, of regeneration of human and company.

This association of the occultism and the scientific spirit evokes with many regards the context in which is born the magic lantern at the 17th century, in Holland. It also is “girl of optics, sciences, arts and the magic”. Before being described as magic, she was baptized besides “lantern of fear”. Its inventor, Christiaan Huygens, was Protestant a priori not very inclined to add faith to the superstitions and to adore the images. He is conscious of the danger which the projection of images can represent in front of a public not informed and refuses to reveal the technique of it during more than ten years.

When the “fantascope” of Robertson enters the public domain the “machines to phantoms” are spread everywhere in Europe, a trade is established between Paris and London.

Perenniality of the fanstamagorie

It will have to be waited six decades before the photographic objective does not fix for eternity the ultimate image of died before their burial.
the advent of the cinematograph will give very an other dimension to the search of the “fantasmagores” of the end of the 18th century.
Walt Disney was certainly influenced by the “fantasmagores” of the end of 18th and the beginning of the 19th century to work out the haunted Maison of its amusement parks.

Sources

University of Waterloo Conference of the Wild Emmanuelle April 16th, 2004 - “phantasmagorias of Robertson, between instructive spectacle and mystification”, University of Waterloo, Conference of April 16th, 2004

Random links: