The strange case of Eusapia Palladino
An excerpt from Herald of a Restless World
Here is an excerpt from chapter 11: “The Strange Case of Eusapia Palladino”:
Nine months before Pierre Curie died, his head crushed under the wheel of a carriage, and two years after he and his wife Marie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on radiation, the physicist took part in a bizarre experiment.
Curie sat at a table with other scientists and scholars in a small, dimly lit room in the centre of Paris. His left hand was wrapped firmly around the right hand of a middle- aged woman sitting next to him, while her right foot rested upon his left shoe. The woman was Eusapia Palladino, a world-famous medium born in the mountains of Abruzzi, at the top of the heel of Italy’s boot. In her everyday life, she did not bother to adopt the air of grandiosity of some of her spiritualist peers. But in her element, in the right conditions, she transformed into an impressive and intimidating presence.
That day, her round eyes widened with such intensity that a shiver of anticipation rippled through the room. Because she wore all black, her body blended in with the dark velvet curtain behind her, and her worn, pale face appeared to hover, disembodied, above the table. The flickering of a gas lamp intermittently highlighted a single striking streak of white on her forehead, which contrasted starkly with the rest of her dark grey hair. It was sometimes told that the discolouration was not a sign of advancing age but dated from around the time of her first birthday. Left unsupervised, she had fallen, and blood had gushed out of her tiny head. The hair on the sunken part of her wounded skull had grown white ever since. Some of those who attended her demonstrations said that when she exerted her psychical powers, a cold breeze could be felt emanating from her vestigial cranial cavity, as though her past trauma had become a portal for spirits to travel into our world.
Curie felt Palladino’s hand shaking in his. Though she was not touching the table before her, the movements of her body vibrated through the wooden surface, which started rattling uncontrollably. Her face twisted and spasmed in what appeared to be an immense effort of concentration. She was now all grunts, moans, sweat, and convulsions. Some said that in this trancelike state she often appeared to glow an eerie blue, not unlike the radioluminescence emitted by the dangerous decaying substances the Curies studied in their laboratory. Suddenly, the whole table lifted thirty centimetres off the ground and hovered there for seven long seconds. Aside from the hand Palladino held flat on the table’s surface, Curie and the other assessors were almost certain that there were no other points of contact between the medium and the heavy object.
The sight they were treated to next was even more implausible. A shadowy arm slowly reached out from behind the curtain in the background, a space that had been empty when they entered the room. The official report later stated that five eyewitnesses, “Messrs Curie, Bergson, de Gramont, Komyakoff and Youriévitch,” had all seen it. Curie, who was closest to the curtain, felt the arm hit him, pull his hair, pinch and punch him, and even give him a few sharp slaps when he dared to move his face towards the source of the aggression. After that, objects hidden behind the curtain were thrown about by an invisible force, and one of the heavier ones levitated above the table for all of them to see. To end the session, Palladino tapped Curie’s shoulder twice, and a few seconds later two knocks were heard, echoing out of the table, beyond the medium’s reach.
You have just read an excerpt from my forthcoming biography of Bergson, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (2024 Basic Books).
You can order the book here.
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There have already been two very nice reviews of Herald of a Restless World: Kirkus Reviews call the book “A solidly researched and earnestly accessible portrait of a creative, free-thinking intellect” and Publishers Weekly describe it as a “scintillating debut […] [w]ritten in graceful prose and drawing a clear analogy with contemporary techno-optimism and its discontents, this captivates.”
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a creative week!
Emily