The Secret History of Magic by Peter Lamont & Jim Steinmeyer

Author:Peter Lamont & Jim Steinmeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

THERE IS A “chicken and egg” problem that presents itself at turning points in history. In this case, we can see that Victorian magic—a burgeoning interest in conjuring that attracted a wide range of creative thought—needed a master and a philosopher. Magicians became successful enough that they needed to erect a statue to someone. Robert-Houdin perfectly suited the bill, but first, magicians needed to overlook the strange qualities of his books and exaggerate the sections that echoed their new sensibilities.

In this way, his contradictions were convenient. He pledged himself to a new magic “divested of all charlatanism” but achieved his triumph in Algeria by appealing to base superstitions, adding importance to his role of a magician. He inspired magicians’ textbooks and catalogs of convenient tin boxes, trays, tables, and other apparatus, but offered a battle cry to magicians: “Real sleight of hand must not be the tinman’s work but the artist’s, and people do not visit the latter to see instruments perform.”57 In fact, the early reviews of Robert-Houdin suggested that audiences did purchase tickets to see the instruments perform.

Although he was cast as the “Father of Modern Magic,” Robert-Houdin wasn’t actually the origin of modern magic. He inspired the perfect origin myth, and that myth continued to be expanded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.