"The Spirit Moving Him": Allan Kardec's Spiritisme in, and around, Joyce's Ulysses

Abstract

As the “codifier” of Le Spiritisme, the French writer, translator, and educator Allan Kardec (1804-1868) was a prominent figure among the promotors of the occult. The five books he wrote on the spirit world became best-sellers, both in France and abroad. Joyce, whose largely sceptical interest in the occult has been widely researched, owned one of Kardec’s works, and flagged passages in it. This article considers the varied ways in which Joyce may have used Kardec’s teachings and vocabulary (e.g., “metempsychosis”, “reincarnation”, “noctambules”) in Ulysses. The cabman’s shelter of “Eumaeus,” in particular, functions as a spirit cabinet fit for a séance to be witnessed by Stephen and Bloom, “our two noctambules” (U 16.325).