DEAR DIARY
Extracts from the Diary of Moritz Svengali – Alfred Welch
This peculiar little book, Extracts from the Diary of Moritz Svengali, is a product of ‘Trilbyana’ – the whirlwind of memorabilia and merchandising that followed the publication of George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby.
The novel’s heroine, Irish-English artist’s model Trilby O’Ferrall, and the trio of young British gentlemen-painters she’s knocking about with in Bohemian Paris, are the story’s focal point. But it is Svengali – the Jewish maestro hypnotist who turns Trilby into a hypnotic-puppet singing sensation – who soared into the public’s consciousness, and who continues to ‘conduct’ perceptions and experiences of hypnosis as he would an orchestra to this day.
Of course, Svengali is an antisemitic and all round problematic creation. Du Maurier defended his character against antisemitic and xenophobic standards and definitions of his day. I suppose drawing on the persona of a privileged Jewish friend and mashing that up with negative stereotypes of faraway, disenfranchised peoples of indeterminate Eastern European Jewish heritage to make a malevolently novel ‘alien’ villain was a complex and, perhaps, un- or semi-conscious artistic expression at the time.
Trilby was also a mash up of real and imagined women who du Maurier and his pal Felix Moscheles, upon whom Svengali was based, knew well. Perhaps it is this hypnotic blend – this glimpse into what lies beneath the guarded veneers of our personas and proscribed social roles – that made Trilby such a sensation..? That could certainly explain why a man named Alfred Welch was moved to write this thought exercise on Svengali’s secret musings, published in the US in 1897.
I can’t find anything about Welch on the internet aside from the fact that he penned Extracts. Was he a writer capitalising on a publishing phenomenon? Or a ‘super-fan’ embodying his favourite character? It’s funny how we apply these modern, commercial, binary perceptions to past minds. And – time-travelling psychoanalyst that I am – I can’t help but note that Welch reveals far more about himself than Svengali, so maybe it’s more the latter...
Welch’s diary introduces us to a Svengali who is a misunderstood and flawed yet largely sympathetic antihero. He arrives in Europe a shunned foreigner fighting for his deserved place in music and society, only to fail in poetic yet unconvincing melodrama as Welch fails to find a coherent alternative spin on du Maurier’s characters’ motivations and machinations. Svengali’s obsessive, possessive ‘love’ for Trilby is natural and righteous, and the prejudice and abuse he experiences seem closer to those experienced by adult public schoolboys of an Anglo-American Christian background. It’s an emotional, sentimental outpouring.
Welch writes little about Svengali’s power and use of hypnosis: soon after they meet, he cures Trilby of a headache in good faith only to be mocked and abused by the painters; and, later, as the diary reveals his musical adventures with Trilby that, in the novel, remain a mystery, he teaches Trilby to sing using hypnosis only because, being a mere female, she can’t cope with conscious brain usage. Extracts from the Diary of Moritz Svengali is, instead, then, Welch stepping into the shoes of Svengali – The Ultimate Hypnotist – and wandering about in the imagined reality of du Maurier’s novel, rewriting the nuances of its psychology according to his perspective and understanding.
That, ultimately, is the power that roleplaying Svengali, The Hypnotist, provides. So, there is the dissonance of trepidation mixed with fiery confidence in Welch’s words: assuming he was an American, perhaps he projected his own aspirations and slights onto Svengali as a metaphor for his own ‘hero’s journey’ in a young nation? Or maybe, as so many readers were, he was simply plagued by the suspicion that Svengali was boffing the lovely Trilby and needed to persuade himself back to a purer point of view.
Either way, it feels like the act of writing the diary was, and still is, a reminder that hypnosis is more than just a power dynamic and transaction. ‘Svengali’, or ‘The Hypnotist’, is a collaborative, generative creation that can take people wherever their minds and imaginations wish to go.
It must have been fascinating – phantasmagorical, even – for George du Maurier to witness the public’s response to his creation.
