the ocular harpsichord of louis-bertrand castel - Gewina

16 Maarten Franssen
as the direct stimulus of the use of synaesthetic imagery in literature."^ Such a
hypothesis is, of course, extremely difficult to prove. What I intend to do in this
study is rather to chart the responses to the ocular harpsichord throughout the
eighteenth century, and thereby discover what support there is for another
conjectural assertion of Von Erhardt-Siebold, that "the ocular harpsichord
counted as an invention that one had to come to terms with, and even while it
was mostly rejected, even by the Romantics, as a practical instrument, there was
wide recognition of the basic ideas behind it".' First, however, it is important to
consider how scientific and aesthetic arguments intermingled in Castel's own
defense of his instrument and, even, whether there ever was an ocular harpsichord.
Castel's professional career*
The history of Castel's ocular harpsichord
When Louis-Bertrand Castel announced his "invention" of the ocular harpsichord
in 1725 he was by no means a unknown man. Born in MontpcUier, he had
entered the Jesuit Order when he was fifteen years old, and after finishing the
fecole Saint-Stanislas in Toulouse he had taught for some time at various Jesuit
colleges in the south of France. He developed a keen interest in mathematics
and physics, and some of his writings on these subjects were read in Paris by
Fontenelle, then secretary of the Academic Royale des Sciences, and by
Tournemine, editor of the Memoires pour I'Hisloire des Sciences el des Beaux
Arts, which was meant as a Jesuit counterpart to the Gallican Journal des
Sqavans. Its title was universally abbreviated to Memoires de Trevoux or Journal
de Trevoux, because it was published in Trevoux, capital of the formally
independent principality of Dombes, near Lyon, to avoid the royal monopoly on
journals. Both Fontenelle and Tournemine persuaded the general of the Jesuit
Order to have Castel sent to Paris, where he became a teacher at the Coll6ge
Louis-le-Grand in a wide range of subjects, including mathematics, mechanics,
optics, pyrotechnics, "I'horlogerie" and civil and military architecture. In addition,
he took place in the team of editors of the Memoires de Trevoux, where he
remained the sole expert in mathematics and physics from 1720 until his
resignation in 1746, when the journal was ordered to embark on a more
Von Erhardt-Siebold, "Synasthesien," p. 51.
'/bid., p. 44.
Most facts about Castel's early career come from his eloge in the Memoires dc Trh'oiix,
reprinted in Esprits, saillies et singularites, pp. v-xxxii. I"or Ostel's life in general, see Schier, Castel.