This winter counted on a very successful performance, at the
Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, of a charming operetta entitled:
The Elixir of Cornelius, in which reincarnation is the very crux of the plot. Here is the account given by the Siècle on its issue of February 11th, 1868:
“This Cornelius is an alchemist who is particularly concerned with the transmigration of souls. Everything that is told on this subject he listens eagerly, as if it had happened. However, he has a daughter who did not wait for his permission to procure a suitor. No, but he refuses his consent. What to do then to get over his resistance? An idea: the lover tells him that his daughter, before being his daughter, a long time ago, was a gambler, runner of adventures and alleys. At the same time, he, the lover, was a charming young woman who was deceived by the adventurer of fortune. The roles are reversed, and he asks her to give him back his former honor.“Ah! you tell me so much!”, answers the convinced old doctor. And this is how one more marriage is accomplished before the public, that is so often responsible for replacing the mayor.The music is as cheerful as the subject that inspired it. Particularly noticed are the serenade, the verses of Cornelius, the burlesque duet, and the finale, written simply and easily.”As we see, the substance of the story here rests not only on the principle of reincarnation, but also on the change of sex.
The dramatic subjects are exhausted, and the authors are often very embarrassed to leave the cliched paths; the idea of reincarnation will provide them with a profusion of new situations for all genres; having the road open, it is likely that all theaters will soon have their reincarnation play.
The
French Theater had a play, at the end of May, in which the soul plays the main role; it is
The Rooster of Mycille, by Messrs. Trianon and Eugène Nyon, with the following main subject:
Mycille is a young shoemaker from Athens; across from his stall, a young magistrate, archon
[1] Eucrates, lives in a delightful marble house. The poor cobbler envies Eucrates, his wealth, his wife, the beautiful Chloe, his kitchen, his many slaves. The opulent archon, prematurely aged, crippled by gout, envies Mycille for his good looks, his health, the disinterested love shown to him by a pretty slave, Doris. Mycille has a rooster given to him by the young Doris, and that wakes the archon in the morning with its song.
The latter orders his slaves to beat the cobbler if he does not silence his rooster; the cobbler, in turn, wants to beat the rooster; but at that moment the animal is metamorphosed into a man: it is the philosopher Pythagoras whose soul had come to animate the body of the rooster, according to his doctrine of transmigration. He momentarily assumed his human form to enlighten Mycille on the foolishness of the envy that he carries to the position of Eucrates.
Unable to persuade him, he says: “I want to give you,” he said, “the means of enlightening you by your own experience. Pick up that feather you dropped from my rooster body; put it in the lock of the door of Eucrates; his door will immediately open; your soul will pass into the body of the archon, and conversely the soul of the archon will pass into your body. However, before doing anything, I urge you to think carefully. Then, Pythagoras disappears. Mycille thinks, but the thirst for gold wins, and prompted by various incidents, he makes up his mind, and the metamorphosis takes place. So, here we have the cobbler who has become the rich archon, but sick and gouty, and the archon who has become a cobbler. This transformation brings with it a host of comic complications, and consequently each one dissatisfied with their new position, they resume the one they had before.
The play, as we can see, is a new edition of the story of the cobbler and the financier, already exploited in so many forms. What characterizes it is that instead of the cobbler himself, body, and soul, who takes the place of the financier, it is the two souls that exchange their bodies. The idea is new, original, and the authors explored it with a lot of wit; but it is in no way borrowed from the Spiritist idea, as we had said; it is taken from a dialogue by Lucien:
The song and the rooster. We only mention it to point out the error of those who confuse the principle of reincarnation with the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis.
Cornelius' play, on the contrary, is entirely within the Spiritist idea, although the alleged reincarnation of the young man and the young girl is only an invention on their part to achieve their ends, while the latter stays away from it completely. First of all, Spiritism has never admitted the idea of the human soul retrograding into animality, because it would be the negation of the law of progress; second, the soul does not leave the body until death, and when, after a certain time spent in erraticity, it begins a new existence again, it is by passing through the ordinary phases of life: birth, childhood, etc., and not by the effect of an instantaneous metamorphosis or substitution, only seen in fairy tales, and are not the gospel of Spiritism, whatever the critics may say, who do not know much about it.
However, although the data is false in its application, it is nonetheless founded on the principle of the individuality and independence of the soul; it is the soul distinct from the body, and the possibility of living again in another envelope put into action, an idea with which it is always useful to familiarize public opinion. The impression that remains from it is not lost for the future, and it is more valuable than the plays that stages the shamelessness of passions.
[1] A chief magistrate in ancient Athens (T.N.)
