I Read Books: A Romance Of Two Worlds
A Romance Of Two Worlds
A female musician is ill (lack of energy rather than anything unpalatable, maybe depression?) and is sent to stay with friends in the south of France to recover. There she encounters Cellini, an Italian painter, who has some especially bright pigments that don’t fade, which he claims to have rediscovered. He offers her a potion; she has a good night’s sleep with vivid dreams and afterwards regains much of her energy. He tells her that it comes from Heliobas in Paris and suggests she goes to see him to be treated (they communicate by giving letters to a dog that rides the trains).
In Paris she meets Heliobas, a mystic, an electric physician, who has various powers (including hypnosis, here still called animal magnetism and related to electricity). He preaches an Electric Christianity, that the power of electricity is related to the divine power. While being treated she also meets Heliobas’s sister Zara, a sculptor, and the two become intimate friends. Also there is Prince Ivan, who is pursuing Zara.
Heliobas treats her and she recovers, her music if anything better than ever. Prince Ivan assaults Zara and is repelled by an electric shock; Zara, like Heliobas has developed her electric organ. When the narrator has advanced enough Heliobas gives her a hallucinogenic drink and she has a vision of a guardian angel and flies through the planets to see the universe. The guardian angel tells her that the nature of Christ is electric, and also that Heliobas’s own salvation is in danger. Returning Heliobas gives her both the secret teachings (not included in the novel) and his Treatise On The Electric Principle Of Christianity which is included in the book.
Zara asks her to destroy the statue she’s working on if anything should happen, following which she is struck by lightning and dies. Prince Ivan blames Heliobas, challenges him to a duel. Our narrator intervenes, preventing him from killing Prince Ivan. Finally the nature of the universe, the secrets of the ancients and several other phenomena are again asserted to be electric.
This was Marie Corelli’s (daughter of Charles Mackay) first novel, one that propelled her into great fame and popularity. What to make of her attempts to combine the science of electricity, Christianity, and more fringe beliefs, such as reincarnation and astral projection? When the story moves it’s fine, but unfortunately the novel keeps stopping for multi-page lectures on dubious science and idiosyncratic theology. The vision of the universe is followed by a dull tract. A couple of good characters shine through, yet even for it’s time it’s not very well written or structured, going on and on.
Read This: A curiosity of an extremely well-known book of
the late 19th century, now obscure
Don’t Read This: Leave it obscure
Out Of Copyright: And available to read online
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