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1 On a summer evening the Russolos were entertaining a guest,when Russolo,pleading fatigue and sleepiness, went to bed. The lady and the guest continued chatting for a little longer, until she, the good nights said, retired.While ascending the internal staircase, her gaze was attracted upward: something that had never happened to her. It was then that she saw a kind of white ghost appearing at the banister of the landing, and quickly recognized its familiar face: it was Russolo, leaning on the banister, all illuminated by the full moon. His wife gazed at him amazed and asked what he was doing and why he was standing there so calmly, and wrapped up in his white nightshirt. He did not respond, nor did he move.Alarmed by his silence, Madame Russolo descended the few steps to call on the guest so that she could be reassured that this was not an illusion . But at their return the white vision had disappeared. She felt humiliated and almost offended by the teasing of her guest, who treated her as a visionary. They quickly entered Russolo’s room and found him deeply asleep, calm, breathing very regularly. In silence, they left. Later, rethinking the incident, the wife was not able to convince herself that it had been a hallucination. The morning after the event Madame Russolo recounted the scene to her husband , who, with evident satisfaction, asked: “Ah! Do you really say? You saw me, actually me in that state? But then I have finally succeeded! I have obtained the doubling of my body. That which you saw, you really saw it: it was my etheric body, perhaps coming to see you go up to your room, while my physical body lay inert in bed. Good! Good! I am more than happy about this. But I pray you: don’t tell this story to anyone now; the reasons for silence are obvious and you understand them by yourself.” Introduction To enrich means to add, not to substitute or to abolish. —Luigi Russolo, The Enharmonic Bow 2 . introduction The preceding paragraphs are a verbatim translation of an anecdote that Maria Zanovello, the widow of the futurist Luigi Russolo, recounted in the third person in the biography of her husband that she published after his death.1 Her experience can confidently be dated in the late 1930s, years the Russolos spent in Cerro di Laveno, a small and idyllic northern Italian town on the shores of Lago Maggiore. Surprising as it may seem, this anecdote was not the result of Russolo’s wife’s fevered imagination; rather, it can be directly linked to Russolo’s writing (and practices) at the time, as the following passage from his 1938 book Al di là della materia exemplifies: By continuing the process of magnetizing a subject, once the phase of exteriorization of sensibility has begun, the layers of sensibility around the subject becomes larger and larger in concentric layers that gradually condense in two masses: one on the left, colored in orange, and one on the right, colored in blue. These two masses soon connect, as they are attracted one by the other—the right one, usually passing from behind the subject, reunites with the left one. These two masses, now joined, take a shape vaguely resembling a human body a little bigger than the subject ’s body, and that stays, at least at first, on its left. This form is connected to the body of the subject via a special tube or vapor-like cord about a finger in thickness, departing from the stomach region (solar plexus) and joining this vaporous mass at the same point. This is a true ghost or, as occultists call it, an etheric double. To follow the phases of this phenomenon, it is necessary that clairvoyants be present, or that a subject in somnambulic state sees and describes the unfolding of the phenomenon. Other experimental tests have been run to ascertain the presence of this double. A screen of calcium sulfide becomes brilliant and luminous if this double, which one can also cause to move to a nearby room, passes over or near the screen. It is possible to cause this double to execute actions like moving light objects: it is, in short, something resembling the apparitions of ectoplasm that occur and have been photographed in séances such as those done by Crookes.2 At this time in his life Russolo had set aside musical research and was almost...

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