Pages from gibeci re vol 2 issue 1 by Conjuring Arts Research Center

G ··· i b e c i è r e Journal of The Conjuring Arts Research Center > ?

V T CVM QVE NEW YORK MMVII

The Conjuring Arts Research Center Board of Directors William Kalush Dr. David Singmaster Steve Cuiffo Philip Varricchio David Blaine

Contents Pocket Notes—Stephen Minch 7 The Educated Swan—Volker Huber 11 An Investigation into Magic in Japan After the Opening of the Country, Part II—Mitsunobu Matsuyama 45 Notes on Pietro Aretino’s Le Carte Parlanti— Aurelio Paviato 85 Abraham Bamberg: The Augmentation of a Dynasty— Peter Bräuning 119 Contributors 159

Winter 2007 \ Gibecière

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Pocket Notes

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This issue furthers our desire for the international exploration of the history of magic, featuring four articles by scholars in Germany, Italy and Japan. An article by Volker Huber opened our premier issue. We repeat this happy practice four pages on, with a second in-depth study by Mr. Huber of a centuries-old trick, the Educated Swan. His history follows the evolution and diverse forms of this magnetic wonder, from its simple roots, recorded in 1550, to several ingenious elaborations over the intervening years, and weaves into the tale contributions by authors and performers including Porta, Cardanus, Breslaw, Guyot, Decremps and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the previous issue we began a series by Mitsunobu Matsuyama, which is built on his research into the history of Japanese magic, in and outside of Japan, during the period following the opening of his country to the rest of the world. In the first installment, among other things Mr. Matsuyama traced the history of the Japanese Butterfly Trick, along with that of several of its most famous performers, most notably the first Itchosai Yanagawa and one of his successors, Asakichi. The Itchosai lineage has long been one muddled by confusion and controversy. In Part II of his series, Matsuyama presents his new findings about this family, introducing us to its members and their considerable attainments, while he tries to ascertain who really was who. For non-Japanese readers, following this engrossing story can be challenging, as the performers in the Winter 2007 \ Gibecière

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Itchosai family have more names than the characters in a Russian novel, and change them frequently. To aid the reader in navigating this nominal labyrinth, Mr. Matsuyama has created a helpful reference chart. (See pp. 50–51. We are also including a bookmark with this issue, which reproduces the chart for your convenience.) The story he weaves, despite this minor difficulty, is fascinating, as it introduces to western readers a very important family of magicians, sort of a Bambergs of Japan, and gives a view of the world of nineteenth-century Japanese magicians, and how they operated within it. In 1543, Pietro Aretino published Dialogo di Pietro Aretino, nel qvale si parla del givoco con moralita piacevole. A few editions later it was more simply and memorably retitled Le carte parlanti. This book preserved for us some of the earliest records of methods used by card cheats, along with descriptions of feats by an unnamed Italian card-conjurer and by Dalmao, a Spanish magician famous throughout Europe for his wonders with playing cards. The importance of this book by Aretino has been recognized before in Gibecière (vol. 1, no. 1), by Vanni Bossi in his article “On the Prearrangement and Mnemonic Use of a Deck of Cards.” In the present issue, one of Italy’s finest full-time professional magicians, Aurelio Paviato, examines each mention of card cheating and magic in Le carte parlanti, and wrestles their meanings from the difficult sixteenth-century slang and argot Aretino used. The result is an absorbing peep into sixteenthcentury techniques used for deceit with playing cards. The mention of the Bamberg family of magicians, two paragraphs earlier, introduces the topic of the final article in this issue. Peter Bräuning, one of Europe’s top scholars of early circus history, has made a genuinely exciting discovery. He has Gibecière / Vol. 2, No. 1

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documented what almost certainly must be a previously unrecognized professional magician in the long Bamberg line. While no birth, marriage or death records have been found to verify the relationship of Abraham Leendert Bamberg to the famous Bamberg family, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Mr. Bräuning has mined from old legal records a fascinating glimpse into the life and travails of A. L. Bamberg, an itinerant Jewish magician who struggled to survive in the profoundly anti-Semitic Europe of the early 1800s. All four articles in this issue open windows onto past centuries, to give us rare and revealing views into the lives, problems, magic and practices of magicians and card sharps in Europe and Japan. We are grateful to authors Huber, Matsuyama, Paviato and Bräuning for sharing their resolute labors and hard-won findings in these pages. I would also like to express my gratitude to Andrew Pinard, who expertly spotted a number of graceless compositions of both phrase and type in this issue. Stephen Minch editor

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Winter 2007 \ Gibecière

The

Educated Swan G

“The Fortunetelling Ships,” or “The Oracle,” oil on canvas, 37 × 52 cm., ascribed to Johann Eleazar Zeissig (“Schenau”)

THE EDUCATED SWAN

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Volker Huber An elegantly dressed young lady sits at a table and gazes intently at a basin filled with water, in which float three nutshells, each adorned with a burning candle. Leaning against the table is a young man, whose intent gaze is reserved exclusively for the young lady. The third person in the group, a little girl, dreamily observes the miniature floating ships. This oil painting was done in the second half of the eighteenth century by Johann Eleazar Zeissig, called Schenau (1737–1806). In the 1949 exhibition “Goethe and His Time,” held in Berlin’s Schloss Charlottenburg, this picture was interpreted as “Lotte with Werther, as they both try the fortunetelling game with candles on floating walnut-shells, in a desire for prophetical revelation of the future.” Is everything as straightforward as it seems here? Or was some kind of a trick used? The young man obviously already knew the results of the oracle and could therefore concentrate eagerly on the reaction of his adored one. What if he had secretly made use of a technique that was hundreds of years old to cause his little ship, which was heading for the young lady, to draw near and finally float alongside her? Did he, without being noticed, contrive the seeming oracle out of a magic trick? Many magic tricks are older than we imagine today. One of these, the Educated Swan, is described in detail in magic literature of the second half of the eighteenth century, but its roots go further back. For, two hundred years earlier, Cardanus and Winter 2007 \ Gibecière

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