An exhibition in Paris on the artist and one in Réunion about esoteric writer Jules Hermann incite the rediscovery of the one-time-Surrealist genius from Mauritius.
by Massimo Introvigne
Paradoxically, I write from Mauritius an article on an extraordinary local figure, Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) whose paintings are now in exhibition (until January 19, 2025) in Paris, at the Halle Saint Pierre. In the nearby island of Réunion there is, however, opened until the end of 2024, another exhibition devoted to an esoteric writer who is very much part of Chazal’s esoteric history, Jules Hermann (1845–1924).
Malcolm de Chazal was born in Vacoas, Mauritius, on September 12, 1902, the 13th child of a lawyer who descended from an aristocratic French family that had moved to Mauritius in the 18th century. Malcolm was related to François de Chazal de la Geneste (1731–1796), who moved to Mauritius from Auvergne. That Malcolm was a direct descendant of François has been cast into doubt, but they were part of the same large family.
The question is of some interest because François was a legendary character for his real or alleged esoteric connections. He was rumored to have been a disciple of the Comte de Saint-Germain (?–1784) and an early Freemason and Rosicrucian, and to have experimented with the “lapis animalis” of the German Golden Rosy Cross, an alchemical technique allegedly capable of turning a stone animal into a living being and vice versa. Malcolm originally dismissed the rumors about his ancestor, before embracing them after having been persuaded through correspondence with French esotericist René Guénon (1886–1951) that they were true.
More well-established is the connection of Malcolm de Chazal with the Swedenborgian Church, which was founded after the death of Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1668–1772) based on his ideas. Edmond de Chazal (1809–1879), Malcolm’s uncle, came into contact with the New Church through an obscure painter called Louis-Émile Michel, who in turn had been converted to Swedenborgianism by George Herbert Poole, a professor of English language. He had joined the New Church in Adelaide, Australia, and taught in Mauritius between 1846 and 1850, making a few converts there. However, it was only when the destitute Michel met the rich Edmond de Chazal that events were set in motion leading to the foundation in 1859 of a Society of New Jerusalem in Mauritius. By 1863, it had 75 members and a dubious fame for its vitriolic attacks against the Catholic Church. A Swedenborgian church was built in Port-Louis, demolished in 2023, followed by one in Curepipe, which still exists and is active today.
The first historian who paid attention to the Mauritius New Jerusalem was Jean-François Mayer (co-founder of CESNUR, the parent organization of “Bitter Winter”) in his doctoral dissertation published in 1984 as “La Nouvelle Église de Lausanne et le mouvement swedenborgien en Suisse romande des origines à 1948” (Zurich: Swedenborg Verlag Zurich). Edmond de Chazal’s children were among the founders of the New Church in Lausanne.
Malcolm was also a member of the New Church but here the story becomes slightly more complicated, although the 2001 work by Christophe Chabbert “Malcolm de Chazal, l’avenir perdu” (Paris: L’Harmattan) brought some clarity. Malcolm was sent by his family to graduate in Sugar Engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge to work in his island’s plantations. He became quickly disappointed when upon his return to Mauritius he discovered that his advanced ideas on how to reform the local economy were not well accepted in the conservative milieu of the island’s planters. Although he remained active in politics, participating in the fights for the island’s independence and even running unsuccessfully for office, he preferred a quiet employment at Mauritius’s telephone company, from which he retired at age 55 in 1957 to devote himself full time to his passion, writing.
From 1940 on, Malcolm wrote several volumes of cryptic and paradoxical aphorisms that created a sensation both in Mauritius and in France. André Breton (1896–1966), the father of Surrealism, hailed him as a great Surrealist writer. Breton also introduced him to leading French writers and artists, including Georges Braque (1882–1963), who recommended that Malcolm would convert his aphorisms into paintings. Thus, despite his lack of artistic education, Malcolm started drawing in 1950, at age 48, and regarded himself as a professional painter since 1958.
In 1947, “Sens Plastique,” a collection of more than 2,000 aphorisms, was hailed in Paris as a Surrealist masterpiece. It was published by the prestigious publishing house Gallimard and heavily promoted by influential Paris intellectual Jean Paulhan (1884–1968).
However, the growing interest in Malcolm led to the “discovery” of his Swedenborgian connections, and his successive Gallimard-published book, “La Vie filtrée” (The Filtered Life) of 1949, revealed even more openly his spiritualist leanings. This eventually produced an “excommunication” by the atheist Breton, who accused Malcom of promoting religion through his books. This was a serious accusation in certain French milieus. Malcolm’s contract with Gallimard was terminated, and for twenty years he will not be published in France.
It is within this context that Malcolm wrote to Paulhan downplaying his religious and esoteric connections. He claimed that he was a Swedenborgian and a member of the New Church only until 1927, and that the ideas of Swedenborg and esotericism did not play any role in his literary and artistic production.
As Chabbert notes, Malcolm was not insincere when he wrote that he no longer belonged to any church. On the other hand, he maintained a strong interest in spiritualist and esoteric themes, and had started in 1947 a correspondence with Guénon. Paulhan and Breton did not believe him. He was effectively excluded from Surrealism and the Paris avant-garde and was able to publish in Mauritius only. In retrospect, this was a liberation, as he could gave free rein to his most esoteric inspiration.
Through the impoverished Mauritius poet Robert Edward Hart (1891–1954), whom he tried to help economically, Malcolm was introduced to the work of Réunion notary public and esoteric author Jules Hermann (1845–1924), to whom a nice exhibition in Réunion is now consecrated. The theory of a lost continent similar to Atlantis who sunk into the Indian Ocean called Lemuria had been proposed in the 19th century by zoologists and accepted by the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891). It became prominent in occult lore since 1926 through the books of British American engineer James Churchward (1851–1936), who called the lost continent “Mu.”
Well before Churchward, and being familiar with Theosophical literature, Hermann wrote around 1900 “Les Révélations du Grand Océan” (The Revelations of the Great Ocean), although the book was published by his family only after his death, in 1927. The book claimed that Réunion and nearby Mauritius were remnants of Lemuria, and their great rocks were remnants of sculptures by Lemurian giants.
Hermann’s theories became known in both Réunion and Mauritius, and in the 1950s Malcolm de Chazal embraced them enthusiastically. Free from French rationalist orthodoxy, he started seeing relics of Lemuria everywhere in Mauritius, particularly around his beloved hometown of Curepipe. He published in 1951 an explicitly esoteric novel on these matters, “Petrusmok.”
A subsequent work, “Le Concile des poètes” (The Council of Poets), is a science fiction theatrical piece set in the future year 2000 and centered on the Theosophical theme of an inaccessible city in Tibet where the “most intelligent men of the universe” are gathered in a “Cosmic Brotherhood.”
Those who did not like his esotericism accused him of gullibility and even of lack of virility, as he had no known children. He answered that he practiced Tantric “erotic continence,” i.e., sacred eroticism without ejaculation, believing the energy would thus flown inward to the head chakra.
Malcolm was a difficult character. At one stage, in 1962, he burned his paintings, fearing commercialization. He rejected several awards, saying he would accept only the Nobel Prize. He deliberately altered data about his life (and esoteric connections), warning that he did not want his biography to be written or remembered. Malcolm de Chazal was a rebel genius—one that probably died, on October 1, 1981, without having completely found his cause.
