Focus: The Otherworldly War: Hallucinations, Specters, and Prophecies in the First World War

On Tuesday, January 23rd, the second event of the series of meetings organized by the cultural association "Manlio Cecovini Study Society" took place.

In the prestigious Antico Caffè San Marco, historian Luca G. Manenti - the scientific director of the Association - delved into the theme of spiritualism in front of an audience of enthusiasts. Spiritualism, a doctrine born in the United States in the mid-19th century, quickly gained popularity in Europe.

As a tile in the cultural mosaic characterized by the overwhelming advance of the irrational, opposed by the Church and ridiculed by the standard bearers of positivism, spiritualism garnered widespread support across classes, genders, and states. It presented itself as a democratic remedy for the grief of those who not only wanted to remember the fallen but also desired to see and speak with them. The evocation of the deceased - an ancient procedure wrested from the jealous hands of the magician-priest - represented an indelible aspect of modernity, irrevocably linked to the terrible carnage of the Great War.

The seances were mainly animated by women, often poor and illiterate. The presumption that they were fragile and hypersensitive, and therefore receptive to the supernatural, elevated them to the protagonists of the performances that took place in the dimness of spiritualist cabinets. Through these events, they could earn money, invent a career, and corrode the fabric of conventional relationships between the sexes. One of the main advocates of the new spiritual revelation, as he called it, was Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the hyper-rationalist Sherlock Holmes. The unwavering faith of the Scottish writer in the possibility of the dead visiting the living was clear evidence that people of all backgrounds and intellectual levels were knocking on the doors of divination and telepathy.

In Trieste, where the president of the Circle of Spiritualist Studies was arrested for espionage in 1915, Nella Doria Cambon brought joy to the evenings of the spiritualists. As the wife of the Freemason Costantino Doria, a poet with a Catholic faith versed in theosophical studies, she organized sessions in her living room. A typist would transcribe the accounts, which, after being revised, turned into moderately successful books. In the Doria household, the pantheon of Italian literature and patriotism was evoked, from Dante to Oberdan, along with the heroes of the First World War. Even Italo Svevo played with spiritualism, maintaining a simultaneously cautious and interested approach.

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