(FRAGE: hat er das vorgelesen, ist das ein Filmausschnitt, ist das ein
Hörspiel)
Mesmerist: Are you asleep?
Patient: Yes- no; I would rather sleep more
soundly.
M. [After a few more passes.] Do you sleep now?
P. Yes. (...)
M. Is not God spirit?
P. While I was awake I knew what you meant by
»spirit,« but now it seems only a word- such, for instance, as truth,
beauty- a quality, I mean.
M. Is not God immaterial?
P. There is no
immateriality- it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all-
unless qualities are things.
M. Is God, then, material?
P. No. [This
reply startled me very much.]
M. What, then, is he?
V. [After a long
pause, and mutteringly.] I see- but it is a thing difficult to tell. [Another
long pause.] He is not spirit, for he exists. Nor is he matter, as you
understand it. But there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing;
the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The
atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric
principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in
rarity or fineness until we arrive at a matter unparticled- without particles-
indivisible-one, and here the law of impulsion and permeation is modified. The
ultimate or unparticled matter not only permeates all things, but impels all
things; and thus is all things within itself. This matter is God. What men
attempt to embody in the word »thought,« is this matter in motion.
"Der Text stammt von Edgar Allan Poe, »The Mesmeric Revelation«
überschrieben, Mesmeristische Offenbarung auf deutsch, 1844 in insgesamt 7
Zeitschriften publiziert, übrigens der erste von Baudelaire
übersetzte Poe-Text überhaupt und einer, der damit die heftige
französische, bis zu Valery reichende und über Frankreich uns
erreichende Poe-Rezeption eröffnet. Bei ihrer Veröffentlichung
ließ völlig Poe offen, ob die Geschichte eine Reportage oder reine
Fiktion war."