The Sound of Soundlessness
Created | Updated Feb 4, 2018
Don't you just love those hippies from 19…11?
The Sound of Soundlessness
This is what happens when you look up 'peace, love, understanding' on the Internet Archive. You get hippies. From 1911.
Discovering The Soundless Sound by Dr F Homer Curtiss and his wife was one of those moments of delight you sometimes experience in the local 'antique' shops: when you find something you're actually interested in. Dr Curtiss and his wife hailed from stodgy Philadelphia, which was probably not too thrilled with their Theosophy-based Christian mystic movement. The Curtisses also penned books on re-incarnation, 'personal survival', something called The Voice of Isis (she was popular back in the day), and vitamins. Since Curtiss was an MD, that might explain the vitamins.
Finding hippie-dippy stuff from 1911 reminds me of a German instructor I knew back in the early 70s. Gretel was a Berkeley graduate, and lived up to its reputation both in style and content. In order to seem 'relevant' – the catchphrase of the time – the German Department offered courses in Hesse and Kafka, taught by Gretel. Her lecture style could not be faulted, being sort of Timothy Leary-ish: Gretel would take a puff from her cigarette, draw in her breath, and let a German-length sentence out, all in one rushed breath. Then she'd suck in air while making a circle with the hand holding the cigarette. It was hypnotic. Twenty minutes of this, and you were definitely in an altered state.
Students flocked to her course on Hermann Hesse, taught in English for the non-cognoscenti. Would-be flower children were eager to read the words of the tuned-in author of Steppenwolf and Siddhartha. They imagined him as a guru on the order of the Maharishi, complete with love beads. Imagine their disappointment when they saw the photo of a turn-of-the-last-century German intellectual in a tie and vest. Great was our amusement.
Yes, children, there was Free Thought before rock music. They smoked pot and held seances, too. And wrote books like The Soundless Sound. Enjoy this excerpt in its original typeface.
