Hélène Smith and the Martian Language
French in Martian Dress
- First attested
- 1896Flournoy dates the birth of the Martian language to the séance of 2 February 1896, and the word-by-word translations, delivered through the control Esenale, from 2 November 1896; Martian handwriting appeared only in August 1897, the first written text at the séance of 22 August that year. The Martian romance itself he traces to a séance of 25 November 1894, from the circle's records rather than his own presence: he was admitted in December 1894, and the Hindu cycle had begun on 16 October 1894, eight weeks before. Müller's first words in an unknown tongue — Koos oluu opoq unly, over which the sitters asked the table whether it was Hungarian and were told it was — are dated 26 May 1895 in Auguste Lemaître's notes, printed by Mireille Cifali. The analysis is Flournoy's own, Des Indes à la planète Mars, 1900, chapter VI section III.
The best-documented mediumistic language of its age was refuted inside its own source: Flournoy's 1900 book prints Hélène Smith's Martian glossary beside his demonstration that its word order is French and one Martian word answers each French one.
A famous 1890s spiritualist case where linguists proved a medium's channeled 'Martian' language was cryptomnesia of French.
Catherine-Élise Müller (1861–1929) held a responsible post in a Geneva commercial house and gave séances for nothing; Théodore Flournoy, admitted to her circle in December 1894, called her Hélène Smith in print. His Des Indes à la planète Mars — Eggimann in Geneva, Alcan in Paris, 1900 — reproduces her Martian texts, alphabet and glossary, then takes them apart. Martian, born at a séance of 2 February 1896, uses no sound absent from French and lacks five of its letters; its word order is identical; one Martian word answers each French word, across a dozen texts and 160 distinct words. It is only disguised French, Flournoy wrote. Ferdinand de Saussure, whom he consulted, worked mainly on her Hindu cycle's pseudo-Sanskrit. In further texts of 1899–1900, printed in the 1901 sequel, Martian nouns still carried their French gender.
Light
A department manager in a Geneva commercial house, who had entered it at fifteen, built an alphabet, a lexicon and an inhabited planet out of her own French; Flournoy met five years of it with analysis rather than accusation, and psychology gained a case.
Shadow
Müller consented to the séances, not to the book. Sightseers came to her office to stare; she wrote that the science she served had shown her its ingratitude, and kept her last visions from him. A study can honour its subject and still consume her.