Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a writer, editor, historian, philologist, folklorist, jurist and politician, described by Mircea Eliade as ‘the most erudite Romanian of the 19th century.’ He was born in 1838 at Cristinești, Moldavia, where his middle-class family owned a small estate. His father, also a polymath, had an interest in esoteric writings. The story of the grand building Bogdan Hasdeu erected at Câmpina, known as the Iulia Hasdeu Castle, is well known, his experiments in psychic photography less so.
His beloved only daughter Iulia
contracted tuberculosis and died in 1888 at the age of 18. She was buried in Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest
in an elaborate tomb. Highly talented, she
had studied at the Sorbonne, spoke several languages, and left a large quantity
of writings that indicated great promise.
As a result of his bereavement, Hasdeu became a Spiritualist, or perhaps
had previous Spiritualist leanings confirmed, and was influenced by the ideas
of Allan Kardec.
His Sic Cogito, the
first book on Spiritualism in Romanian, was published in instalments in his journal Revista
Nouă from March 1891, and in book form in 1893, with a third edition in
1895. In it, he describes how in March
1889, six months after his daughter died, he was sitting at his desk when he
suddenly began to write automatically, producing a message in her handwriting
which said she was happy, she loved him, and they would meet again. This was the first in a series of communications
purporting to come from Iulia.
Iulia’s Castle was intended both as
a tribute to her and as a way to maintain contact. The elaborate structure, full of esoteric
symbolism, was built between 1894 and 1896 to his own design in mediumistic
consultation with Iulia, and séances were held there. As well as his daughter, his father,
grandfather, brother and wife (also named Iulia, who died in 1902) communicated.
Hasdeu lived in the house from 1897 to
his death in 1907. Restored after having
fallen into neglect during the Ceaușescu years, it is now the Bogdan Petriceicu
Hasdeu Memorial Museum.
As well as conducting séances, Hasdeu
actively pursued his interest in Spiritualism more broadly. A brief news item in Two Worlds in July 1891 relates that he had written to the Revue Spirite to introduce a young Romanian
medical student, ‘mechanical writing medium’, and member of the Spiritual
Society of Bucharest (of which Hasdeu was presumably
also a member) who was about to arrive in Paris.
Determined to put his
investigations on a scientific basis, Hasdeu explored the possibilities of
photography as a means of objectively recording psychic phenomena. His article ‘Studie Fisice asupra Spiritului:
D. Fourtier si Fotografia Extra-Retinala’ [‘Physical Study on the Spirit: D.
Fourtier and Extra-Retinal Photography’] which appeared in the February-March
1894 issue of Revista Nouă was accompanied by one of his psychic photographs
(Appendix 1 lists publications in which Hasdeu’s photographs can be seen).
The
Religio-Philosophical Journal of 2 June 1894, and Light, 30 June 1894, both carried articles drawing on a report by
Rossi de Glustlanianl in La Revue Spirite. This stated that Spiritualism was making
great progress in Romania, largely thanks to the efforts of Hasdeu. He was holding seances twice weekly, the
sitters were all professionals, and allegedly even the mediums had university
degrees. Whatever the truth of the
latter claim, Hasdeu’s social standing had certainly attracted a circle of
intellectuals. The reports referred to
photographic experiments in similar terms, that in Light concluding:
‘Some spirit heads, more or less
visible, have been obtained by photography in the most complete darkness, the
photographic apparatus being hermetically closed and sealed. M. Hasdeu expects, in a new work which he is
preparing, and which will be a sequel to his “Sic Cogito,” to include all the
spirit photographs which he has obtained, and to give, at the same time, all
the details of these curious and interesting experiments.’ (Hasdeu’s obituary
in The Annals of Psychical Science in
1907 states that Sic Cogito was ‘his
only spiritistic work.’)
Reference was made in an article on
spirit photography written by M. Lecomte in Paris-Photographe (30
December 1894) to two articles Hasdeu had published
in Bucharest. Lecomte included one of Hasdeu’s
images that had appeared in the February-March 1894 issue of Revista Nouă.
Hasdeu was
in close touch with his counterparts in France, but Paris-Photographe
was a general photography magazine, suggesting interest outside Spiritualistic
circles in his activities.
Hippolyte Baraduc (who the same
year Hasdeu died himself lost a child of a similar age to Iulia) promoted Hasdeu’s
photographic experiments in his book L'Ame Humaine,
published in 1896 and translated into English as The Human Soul in 1913.
L'Ame Humaine was drawn on by the
July 1896 issue of W T Stead’s Borderland, which included a lengthy section
devoted to articles on ‘psychic photography’, largely dealing with images
obtained without an exposure.
Baraduc printed what he termed a ‘psychicone’
(‘psychic icon’) made by Hasdeu and described as showing ‘the possibility of
the creative spirit acting on a plate without the help of the hand.’ A patch in a photograph was said to represent
Hasdeu’s brother Nicolae, who like Iulia had died at the age of 18, his image
having been ‘modulated’ in Hasdeu’s mind and then projected (in a chapter in Sic Cogito on ‘Materialism in
Spiritualism’, Hasdeu said that ‘In the phenomenon of the spiritualist
photography, the sensitive plate does not transcribe a real shape, but only an
idea that is occurring in a medium’s brain at that moment’).
Baraduc and Borderland also provided
an account, and psychicones, of an experiment with Istrati. This involved telepathic transmission between
Hasdeu and his colleague and friend Dr Constantin Istrati. Istrati was, according to Baraduc, about to
travel to ‘Campana’ (actually Câmpina, location of both his home and the future
location of Iulia’s Castle, just under a hundred kilometres from Bucharest), and
he agreed to try to project himself onto Hasdeu’s plates at Bucharest. When Hasdeu went to bed on the night of 4
August 1893, he placed a camera at his head and another at his feet (Borderland
erroneously assumed he had only put plates at his head and feet).
As Istrati fell asleep, he exerted
his will to appear on Hasdeu’s plates. When
he awoke, he felt he had succeeded, as he dreamt he had appeared to Hasdeu. The Borderland article reprints part
of a letter Hasdeu wrote to ‘M. de R’ (Albert de Rochas) and forwarded to Borderland:
‘Upon the plaque A there are are (sic) three attempts of which one...is
extremely successful. The doctor is seen looking attentively into the
apparatus, the bronze extremity of which is illuminated by the light peculiar
to his spirit.’ On his return to Bucharest, Istrati was astonished at the
resemblance to himself of ‘the fluidic image’.
Borderland refers to ‘the already famous portrait of Dr. Istrati,’
implying wide circulation.
Hasdeu has generally been
overlooked by recent historians of psychic photography. A notable exception is Andreas Fischer, who
opens his essay ‘“La Lune au Front”: Remarks on the History of the Photography
of Thought’ in the 2005 volume The
Perfect Medium with an account of Hasdeu’s August 1893 experiment. Fischer states that Hasdeu used cameras set
up in his bedroom with the shutters open, and quotes from a letter Hasdeu sent
to de Rochas, dated 12 August 1895 (presumably the letter a copy of which de
Rochas sent to Stead at Borderland), held in the Rochas Archives,
American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia: ‘I picture the Doctor
with the…desire to bring his spirit before my cameras during the night.’
Fischer notes that this has generally
been considered the first experiment in thought photography, but points out
that it differs little from previous attempts at photographing a double, for
example the 1875 projection of the ‘spirit’ of Stainton Moses while asleep in
London to the camera of Édouard Isidore Buguet in Paris. He reproduces one of Hasdeu’s images, with a
comparison portrait of Istrati, which are held in the Rochas Archive in
Philadelphia. This is taken from an
original gelatin silver print and is uncropped, whereas that in L'Ame Humaine
and Borderland shows only the portion said to be of Istrati.
In recent months the website Camera Arhiva has scanned and put online
a large number of Romanian magazines published between 1947 and 1989. Perhaps surprisingly, given the ideological
climate, in 1979 Revista
Manuscriptum published a number of Hasdeu’s psychic photographs, though
less surprisingly Hasdeu’s preoccupation was cast in pathological terms. An accompanying article signed by C.
Săvulescu describes how he was researching a history of Romanian photography
when he discovered a large quantity of Hasdeu’s plates, and six of these are
reproduced (as shown above). Constantin
Săvulescu was a historian of photography who published Cronologia Ilustratǎ a Fotografiei din România : Perioada 1834-1916
in 1985.
This is a translation of
Săvulescu’s text:
‘During research undertaken
for a possible history of photography in Romania, a lot of 68 original images
(12 x 16 format), made by B.P. Hasdeu
between 1893-1896, were identified in the holdings of the State Archives in
Bucharest.
‘Examining them, I found
that on the back of many of them the writer had made some notations in pencil.
Here are some: Code II, 825/3 <<No. Wednesday to Thursday, 21 July. You
were evoking Dr. Istrati who is in Constanța. Not only was the room made a dark
room, but precaution was taken so that no light would pass through. The device was
opened in the dark at 11 hours, closed at 8 ¼ >>.
‘Code II, 825/2: <<
No. G. 15 July, Thursday to Friday. Went to bed late, woke up around 8 o’clock,
it was exposed too short a period >>.
‘Code II, 825/17: <<
No. V. Tuesday to Wednesday 18 Oct with the red light and the camera open, and
on Wednesday, evoking Dr. Istrati, there was nothing >>.
‘The photos represent some
curiosities, the consequence of some obsessions arising from the famous drama
that marked the last years of the writer's life. Experiences like this
represent an unwelcome scene, just as at the time they aroused the irony and
compassion of some of his contemporaries. Dr Istrati, invoked here, recorded in
his diary on 1 August, 1907: <<... so many charlatans pretending to be
inspired and who deceived him with their mediumship, distancing him from his
real friends. Now there is nothing left to squeeze, they are notable by their
absence>>.
‘Entrusting these few
photos to the press, we are left with the feeling that another secret from the
nebulous universe of the romantic poet was betrayed by reality.’
C. Săvulescu
Săvulescu’s reference to 68 images means
there are 62 more sitting in an archive in Bucharest that have possibly never
been published. One or two points are raised
by these sample descriptions, and doubtless further study of the collection
would raise more.
The dates Hasdeu
provides are ambiguous as a single date is assigned to two days, but
presumably indicate that the experiments were carried out overnight. This is indeed the case: 21 July was a
Tuesday in 1891, a Thursday in 1892 and a Friday in 1893; 1892 was a leap year,
hence there was no Wednesday 21 July. So
‘Wednesday to Thursday, 21 July’ must refer to Thursday 21 July 1892. 15 July was a Friday in 1892. Thus, it can be seen Hasdeu was conducting
experiments at least a year earlier than the famous 4 August 1893 effort,
attempting to communicate with Istrati at Constanța on the Black Sea coast. The other date noted, 18 October, was a
Wednesday in 1893.
There is clearly further research
to be conducted on Hasdeu’s experiments, in order to assess which archives hold
his results, to ascertain the composition of those experiments, and to examine
what he himself said about them. He made
a significant contribution to the field of psychic photography, and his output
deserves to be better known.
References:
Lacroix, Henry. ‘The “Revue
Spirite” (Paris)’, The Two Worlds,
Vol. 4, No. 190, 3 July 1891, p. 396.
Hasdeu, B.P. ‘Studie Fisice asupra
Spiritului: D. Fourtier si Fotografia Extra-Retinala’ [‘Physical Study on the
Spirit: D. Fourtier and Extra-Retinal Photography’], Revista Nouă,
Nos.11-12, February-March 1894.
‘Spiritualism in Roumania’, The Religio-Philosophical Journal, Vol.
5, No. 2 (new series), 16 June 1894, pp. 40-41.
‘Interesting Experiments in
Roumania’, Light, Vol. 14, No. 703,
30 June 1894, p. 304.
Lecomte, M. ‘Photographie Spirite’,
Paris-Photographe, 30 December 1894, pp.
433-41.
Hasdeu, B.P. Sic
Cogito: E Viaţa? Ce e Moartea? Ce e Omul? Bucharest: Editura Librăriei
Socecŭ, 3rd edition, 1895.
First published in instalments in Revista Nouă from March 1891.
‘Psychic Photography’, Borderland, Vol. 3, No. 3, July 1896,
pp. 313-21.
Baraduc, H. L'Ame Humaine, ses
mouvements, ses lumières, et l'iconographie de l'invisible fluidique.
Paris: Georges Carré, 1896.
‘The Death of Prof. Bogdan P.
Hasdeu’, The Annals of Psychic Science, Vol. 6, No. 36, 1907, pp.
440-442.
Flournoy, Theodore. Spiritism
and Psychology (translated and abridged by Hereward Carrington). New York:
Harper & Bros., 1911.
Delanne, Gabriel. ‘Le Spiritisme
est une Science’, La Vie Mystérieuse, 10 December 1911, pp. 356-7.
Baraduc, H. The Human Soul, its Movements, its Lights, and the Iconography of the
Fluidic Invisible. Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle,
1913.
Duxbury, E. W. ‘M. Leon Denis on
Automatic Writing’, Psychic Science, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 1927, pp.
123-28.
Săvulescu, C. ‘B. P. Hasdeu’, Revista Manuscriptum, Issue 34, 1979.
Fischer, Andreas. ‘“La Lune au
Front”: Remarks on the History of the Photography of Thought’ in The Perfect Medium: Photography and the
Occult. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 139-153. Originally
published in French as Le Troisième œil: La photographie et l'occulte,
Paris: Gallimard, 2004.
Mihalcencova, Corina. ‘B. P. Hasdeu Under
the Lens of Spiritual Practice’ in conference proceedings Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu: Patrie, Onoare şi Ştiinţă [Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu: Homeland, Honor
and Science], Cahul, Moldova, 23 March 2018. Cahul: 2018, pp. 70-80.
Nemes, Constantin. ‘Practica
spiritista a lui Hasdeu’ [‘Hasdeu's Spiritualist Practice’],
https://www.rauflorin.ro/practica-spiritista-a-lui-hasdeu/,
11 June 2011, retrieved 17 March 2021.
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu Memorial
Museum website, http://muzeulhasdeu.ro/en/index.php, retrieved 30 March 2021.
Appendix 1
Images by Hasdeu can be seen in the
following publications. As a number
reprinted the same images, these represent only a small proportion of his
output. I would be interested to hear of
other publications which have covered Hasdeu’s photography.
Hasdeu, B.P. ‘Studie Fisice asupra
Spiritului: D. Fourtier si Fotografia Extra-Retinala’ [‘Physical Study on the
Spirit: D. Fourtier and Extra-Retinal Photography’], Revista Nouă,
Nos.11-12, February-March 1894.*
Lecomte, M. ‘Photographie Spirite’,
Paris-Photographe, 30 December 1894.
‘Psychic Photography’, Borderland,
Vol. 3, No. 3, July 1896.
Baraduc, H. L'Ame Humaine, ses
mouvements, ses lumières, et l'iconographie de l'invisible fluidique.
Paris: Georges Carré, 1896.
Baraduc, H. The Human Soul, its
Movements, its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible. Paris:
Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913.
Săvulescu, C. ‘B. P. Hasdeu’, Revista
Manuscriptum, Issue 34, 1979.
Fischer, Andreas. ‘“La Lune au
Front”: Remarks on the History of the Photography of Thought’ in The Perfect
Medium: Photography and the Occult. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
*Illustrated in blogpost by
Constantin Nemes, ‘Practica spiritista a lui Hasdeu’, posted 11 June 2011.
Appendix 2
A note on spelling.
While Hasdeu did not spell his name using the diacritic (i.e., Hașdeu), it is pronounced as though the diacritic is present. Romanian-language sources are divided on whether to include the diacritic or omit it, and I have chosen to spell the name as Hasdeu himself did.
