Let There Be Sight
Now we see through a glass
darkly,
then face to face. Saint Paul A sad, wan face stares blankly into space. The stare is now almost a lifelong habit. When the young woman isn’t staring, she often curls up and hides her visual apparatus from the outer world. Her lids flutter a bit and the balls of her eyes turn upward until … her irises are not visible to anyone who might be staring at her. When she eventually returns to the present, those two creamy, white orbs dotted with blue roll back to view and bulge out of their sorry sockets. These pathetic, vacant eyes project from the young woman who has recently passed the seventeen year mark. To the rest of the world, they are her most prominent presence. Fortunately, many other parts of her being reveal her to be bright and charming and talented. But so disturbed and disturbing she seems with those blank bulbs hanging on her face, especially when she becomes pensive and introspective. Or, when caught in a temper and fit, which occur more commonly than her father and mother dare to mention. Maria-Theresia Paradis was not born so. But became that way of a sudden at the age of three and a half. According to her parents, Maria-Theresia had simply “just woken sightless one morning” in early December 1762. Surely there was more to the story, as there always is. But, it was neither easily nor candidly revealed. The scuttle was that the youngster had been terrified out of her wits when the family had been awakened in the middle of the previous night by great alarming shouts: “Fire! Thieves! Murder!” However, the cause of the child’s misfortune was quickly set aside and largely ignored. Her physicians summarily diagnosed, “a black cataract arising from a sudden shock,” and proceeded to a long, wide and deep regimen of futile physical treatments befitting the time. That the girl had suffered a shock surely was all anyone needed to know, said Joseph Anton Paradis, Secretary of Commerce and Court Councillor to Their Majesties Empress Maria-Theresia and her son Emperor Joseph II. Neither the physicians nor the public had any valid concern in the private affairs of the Paradis family. But the doctors were quite aware that the household was subject to frequent turmoil and that Frau Paradis suffered her own attacks which occasionally led to amaurosis. Madame’s spells of blindness passed as quickly as they arose, being attributed to nerves and emotions and stresses of a Secretary’s wife in Hapsburg Vienna in the middle of the 18th century. Frau Paradis was sensitive sometimes to the point of hysterics, but also resilient and ready to stand strong when the moment demanded. Her ills and ails held her back only briefly. She soon returned to the fray. The daughter’s story was much different, as she was plunged deeply and permanently into darkness when little more than a toddler. The medical grandees of the time took charge and literally stuck it to the poor child even as they quite clearly knew little about the eyes, less of the body and absolutely nothing concerning the soul of the fragile Maria-Theresia. Soon, the child was subjected to most of the typical “cures” of the day – and then some. Her treatment began with having her head shaved and plasters applied for two months. Then, there were blisterings and bleedings, purges and cauteries, cataplasms and poultices. To top off her early treatment, her eyes and face became temporary home to scores of leeches. Oh, the sight of leeches hanging from the girl’s eyelids. How hideous! Even more so than a view of her naked, sightless, bulging eyes. Worst of all were the electrical shocks which attacked her eyes. Electricity, discovered and drawn into the medical repertory in the 1770s, had to be tried! And, so it was, as the young woman submitted to hundreds if not thousands of frightening and debilitating jolts of energy. They made her feel, “like picks are hammering into my skull.” All those and more medical efforts were crudely proffered to the youngster and her eyes, “We certainly must try all possible avenues to help the girl.” This despite the fact that the doctors, professors and authorities completely agreed that Maria-Theresia’s optic nerves were intact. Her eyes were neither diseased nor dead. They just stopped working for medically unfathomable reasons and not the slightest sight had been borne through her visual pathways for almost fourteen years. Fraulein Paradis and her amaurosis had long been considered incurable. But, that didn’t stop her doctors from trying one hideous treatment after another. A host of physicians from the Old Vienna School – including Anton von Stoerck and Joseph Barth – and Wentzel (Parisian specialist) concurred. Stoerck had treated the young girl for ten years. Along the way, she responded to her medical torture and inept handling with fits and seizures, torrents of tears and other evidences of deep agony. But, who was there to heed and fathom such things? When all was said and done, Maria-Theresia still could not see a wink and her eyes protruded, twitched and trembled. Sometimes just occasionally and at others incessantly. Little did doctors or parents recognize how profoundly the young woman suffered in mind and soul. But, they certainly had been rigorous in using the medical repertory of the 18th century. Fortunately, consolations did arise. Young Maria-Theresia drew from the storehouse of her soul to unveil some of the several talents for which eyes were needed not. Her gifts for touch and sound appeared in many forms, most especially in lacemaking and in musical skills. She had delicate but strong and nimble hands which seemed to have intelligence of their own. The girl could do many things that so many sighted children and adults couldn’t. The young Paradis even managed to play cards deftly and to join in amateur theatrics.  Her ear was acute and voice pleasing, pitch near perfect and musical memory remarkable. She tuned quite raptly to church music and at an early age was playing the organ and singing soprano at the Church of St. Augustine. Inevitably, the Empress for whom the child was named took notice and placed her in more creative, nurturing and promising hands. Empress Maria-Theresia gave her at age five into the charge of Georg Christoph Wagenseil, personal musical counselor and official composer to the court. Wagenseil attended the Paradis prodigy at the harpsichord. When fully convinced of her talents, he promoted her to the mentorship of Herrs Kotzebuck for piano and Vogler for composition. Antonio Salieri also joined in tutoring the talented Paradis girl. At age eleven, Maria-Theresia performed Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater for the Empress, singing and accompanying herself on the organ. Soon, to the delight of many, most especially her proud parents, their daughter’s gifts were rewarded by her namesake in the form of an annuity. The Empress bequeathed the wonder child an annuity of 200 gold ducats and the small fortune made up for some of Herr Paradis’s several stresses. He managed and used the monies to his liking. His pockets and expenditures demonstrated the power of music and his sad daughter’s talents. By her late teens, young Maria-Theresia’s world had passed beyond much of the pain and torment of her sudden blindness, monstrous medical treatments, and tangled emotional life. This even though her terrorizing electrical therapy had only been discontinued within the previous year. She was recognized as a musical savant, mentored by Vienna’s finest professors, and pampered by the Empress. The Empress was instrumental in drawing her into public performance at Schönbrunn Palace and later promoting her first continental concert tour. Fraulein Paradis made the best of her sightless being. Not just to make lace and music. She also utilized her keen ear to read voices, tell the tenor of admirers and sycophants, and to discriminate between the real and the feigned. Maria-Theresia gradually mobilized the large force of her greater being. Even before adulthood, the Paradis girl was making a name, a life, and an income for herself – and for her parents. But, questions lingered: Why did the lights go out? Where had her vision gone? What was she really missing without the sense of sight? Was there the faintest possibility that Maria-Theresia Paradis could – after more than a dozen years – see again through those dimmed bulbs strung on her pale face? What would her world be like if her peepers peeped again? Mesmer Eyes: Chapter 3 |
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