Electromagnetic Thought in Balzac, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Joseph Breuer

Electromagnetism as Scientific and Literary Breakthrough

In La Vie et ses Problèmes (1939), French biologist Jean Rostand writes "They say a living being is always born of someone similar to him. But until the discovery of electrical magnetization, one could also have said that every magnet originated from a pre-existing magnet" (14). Since Thales of Miletus, the understanding of the elusive notion of "life" has been linked to magnetism. ¹ Rostand's analogy partakes of this tradition but also alludes to a rupture. Following the discovery of electromagnetism during the first half of the nineteenth century, the generation of life could be conceived not only in terms of the reproduction of the same, exemplified by magnetic contagion, but also in terms of a relation based on the difference between two forces of nature--electricity and magnetism--distinguished by their own physical laws. Thus the advent of electromagnetism and its subsequent applications--most notably the dynamo--provided a new physical model for conceptualizing difference and repetition.

Rostand points to this epistemological breakthrough as a new type of magnetic trope--what I shall call a magnetotrope--that can be traced throughout the nineteenth century in the various magnetic analogies that evolved in discourses attempting to convey the nature of vital and cognitive forces. The conceptual matrix of Balzac's oeuvre was originally based on an eighteenth-century interpretation of magnetism popularized by Mesmer's "animal magnetism," ² before progressively registering the epistemological transition Rostand attributes to the discovery of electromagnetism. During the 1830s, Balzac even started to conceive of the mind as a kind of dynamo. At the close of the nineteenth century, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's L'Ève future and Joseph Breuer's proto-psychoanalytic theory would give full expression to the electromagnetic mind by turning vital and cognitive forces into "dynamo effects."

Electromagnetism was discovered in 1820 when Hans Christian Ørsted realized that a current-carrying wire induced motion in a nearby compass needle, and concluded that the wire was endowed with magnetic power. The proof of the interrelation between magnetism and electricity gave birth to electromagnetism, a new field of research prompted by the necessity of studying them in tandem. A year after Ørsted's discovery, Michael Faraday succeeded in making a current-carrying wire rotate about a magnet, and vice-versa. The interaction of an electrical current and a magnet could animate objects. By 1831, Faraday devised an experiment that showed how an electrical current could be generated by moving a magnet near a conductor. Although this electromagnetic effect had been anticipated throughout the 1820s, Faraday's proof is considered the discovery of "electromagnetic induction." Since the motion of a magnet produced electricity, a mechanical force could be converted into electric power, providing the blueprint for the dynamo. ³ The acceleration of industrialization made possible by the dynamo and its counterpart, the electric motor, arose from the discoveries of electromagnetic effects demonstrating how electricity, magnetism, and motion were interrelated.

Before tracing the impact of dynamo effects on nineteenth century thought, let us first turn to the source of Rostand's electromagnetic analogy of life, Oliver Lodge's Life and Matter (1905), which sets out the philosophical stakes of the new magnetotrope. Lodge formulated it as an alternative to the "cheap monism" of German biologist Ernst Haeckle. Lodge sees danger when a renowned scientist like Haeckle dispenses dogmas based on an uncritical resolution of the problems posed by monism (11). Haeckle claims that "matter" is continuous with life because the latter is merely a byproduct of the former. This thesis faces at least two difficulties: the fact that the nature of "matter" itself is subject to change as scientific understanding evolves, and the enigma of how matter can actually generate life. For Lodge, Haeckle can only "solve" that enigma by "spontaneous generation." This begs the question of what exactly in matter gives life to life. Lodge follows his critique of Haeckle with his own hypothesis that life is a "permanent entity" independent of but rendered temporally manifest by matter. Given the state of knowledge about the...