DOCSLIB.ORG

Frankenstein

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Frankenstein Peter Harrington london presents FRANKENSTEIN private preview 25 september 2012 blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered—vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative. … Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated. … Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth. Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, —I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw [SHELLEY, Mary.] Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Presentation for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818 Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human First edition, presentation copy to Lord Byron, with the author’s endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His copy of the autograph inscription to the front flyleaf: “To Lord Byron from the Author”. An success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, unsurpassable association copy of the best known fiction of the Romantic era, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect first edition of perhaps the most evocative presentation copy conceivable in all nineteenth- animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief Frankenstein, century literature. that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the The story of the genesis of Frankenstein is well known. The stormy night in hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he June 1816 at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, during which a is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, inscribed ghost-story writing contest between Byron, the Shelleys, and Byron’s physician opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. Polidori led to the composition of Mary Shelley’s novel, has entered literary I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran in Mary history. According to Mary’s recollection in the preface to the third edition of through me … I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted Frankenstein, the contest itself was Byron’s idea: me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story, my tiresome Shelley’s unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbours of Lord as I myself had been frightened that night! Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on its shores; hand to Lord and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively Byron to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him. But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. … I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday. “We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady … The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished the uncongenial task. I busied myself to think of a story, —a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the temperament and intelligence, but he and her husband Shelley became good “I have found it! What terrified friends in Geneva. They toured the lake visiting places associated with Rousseau in La nouvelle Héloïse, and spent much time together writing and talking. me will terrify others” Legends have accrued around almost every aspect of the Byron-Shelley circle that summer. The Villa Diodati itself, overlooking Lake Geneva, was properly Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found the Villa Belrive; it was renamed by Byron after the family who then owned it. it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre Byron had been drawn to it as a literary tourist: John Milton (whose language which had haunted my midnight pillow.” On the morrow I announced that I had echoes throughout Frankenstein from the title page on) was supposed to have thought of a story. visited it on his trip to Italy, although the building itself was not constructed Mary Shelley’s recollection of events that had taken place fourteen years earlier until long after Milton’s death. The “wet, ungenial summer”, as Mary calls it, can be compared with the account given in Polidori’s contemporaneous diary, was an extraordinary weather event caused, unbeknownst to Europeans, by where he records that a conversation took place on the evening of 15 June 1816 the vast eruption of the volcano of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, between himself and Percy Bysshe Shelley “about principles,—whether man Indonesia, in April 1815, which had thrown a pall of volcanic ash around the was to be thought merely an instrument”. Polidori’s diary records that he, world, causing a “Year Without a Summer”. Byron, and the entire Shelley entourage dined and slept at Villa Diodati on 16 The other literary products of that ghost-story session were Byron’s fragment of June (this is assumed to be the night of the agreement to write ghost stories), a vampire novel, published as an appendix to Mazeppa, and Polidori’s The Vampyre, and that on 17 June “the ghost-stories are begun by all but me.” published at first under Byron’s name. Shelley finished nothing dating directly According to one of her recent biographers: from that evening. The fevered Gothic atmosphere of the story of the novel’s genesis is heightened by the retrospective knowledge that by 1824 all three young By lengthening the lapse of time between Byron’s proposal and her dream- invention of a plot for her ghost story from a few hours to several days, Mary men would be dead: first Polidori by his own hand, next Shelley by drowning, and Shelley inadvertently revealed the extreme anxiety she felt lest she not be able to lastly Byron of marsh fever while fighting for Greek independence. meet Byron’s expectations. (Anne K. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her The Geneva summer was ended when Mary, Percy Bysshe, and Claire left Monsters, Routledge 1988, p. 54) Switzerland in September 1816 to return to England. After taking Claire to As she mentions elsewhere in her Preface, Mary was “the daughter of two Bath to have Byron’s baby in secret, they moved to Marlow. Completed by May persons of distinguished literary celebrity”: the philosopher William Godwin 1817, the book was placed with the downwardly-mobile firm of Lackington and his equally radical wife, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who had died & Co., who published it on 1 January 1818 in an edition of only 500 copies. of postnatal complications resulting from Mary’s birth. In some senses, Mary Lackington’s handwritten account of expenses for printing and publishing Wollstonecraft Godwin was a literary celebrity from the moment of her birth. Frankenstein indicate that six copies were given to the author. By the time of her scandalous elopement and marriage, Mary Shelley knew that On 11 March 1818 the Shelley entourage, including Claire Clairmont and her great things were expected of her: illegitimate daughter by Byron, Clara Allegra, left England again, this time for My husband … was from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of Italy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Revolutions in the Arts
    4 Revolutions in the Arts MAIN IDEA WHY IT MATTERS NOW TERMS & NAMES CULTURAL INTERACTION Romanticism and realism are •romanticism •impressionism Artistic and intellectual still found in novels, dramas, • realism movements both reflected and and films produced today. fueled changes in Europe during the 1800s. SETTING THE STAGE During the first half of the 1800s, artists focused on ideas of freedom, the rights of individuals, and an idealistic view of history. After the great revolutions of 1848, political focus shifted to leaders who practiced realpolitik. Similarly, intellectuals and artists expressed a “realistic” view of the world. In this view, the rich pursued their selfish interests while ordinary people struggled and suffered. Newly invented photography became both a way to detail this struggle and a tool for scientific investigation. TAKING NOTES The Romantic Movement Outlining Organize ideas and details about At the end of the 18th century, the Enlightenment idea of reason gradually gave movements in the arts. way to another major movement in art and ideas: romanticism. This movement reflected deep interest both in nature and in the thoughts and feelings of the indi- 1. The Romantic vidual. In many ways, romantic thinkers and writers reacted against the ideals of Movement the Enlightenment. They turned from reason to emotion, from society to nature. A. B. Romantics rejected the rigidly ordered world of the middle class. Nationalism II. The Shift to also fired the romantic imagination. For example, George Gordon, Lord Byron, ▼ Romantic Realism in the Arts one of the leading romantic poets of the time, fought for Greece’s freedom.
    [Show full text]
  • BYRON COURTS ANNABELLA MILBANKE, AUGUST 1813-DECEMBER 1814 Edited by Peter Cochran
    BYRON COURTS ANNABELLA MILBANKE, AUGUST 1813-DECEMBER 1814 Edited by Peter Cochran If anyone doubts that some people, at least, have a programmed-in tendency to self-destruction, this correspondence should convince them. ———————— Few things are more disturbing (or funnier) than hearing someone being ironical, while pretending to themselves that they aren’t being ironical. The best or worst example is Macbeth, speaking of the witches: Infected be the air whereon they ride, And damned all those that trust them! … seeming unconscious of the fact that he trusts them, and is about to embark, encouraged by their words, on a further career of murder that will end in his death. “When I find ambiguities in your expression,” writes Annabella to Byron on August 6th 1814, “I am certain that they are created by myself, since you evidently desire at all times to be simple and perspicuous”. Annabella (born 1792) is vain, naïve, inexperienced, and “romantic”, but she’s also highly intelligent, and it’s impossible not to suspect that she knows his “ambiguities” are not “created by” herself, and that she recognizes in him someone who is the least “perspicuous” and most given to “ambiguities” who ever lived. The frequency with which both she and she quote Macbeth casually to one another (as well as, in Byron’s letters to Lady Melbourne, Richard III ) seems a subconscious way of signalling that they both know that nothing they’re about will come to good. “ … never yet was such extraordinary behaviour as her’s” is Lady Melbourne’s way of describing Annabella on April 30th 1814: I imagine she’d say the same about Byron.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Shelley: Teaching and Learning Through Frankenstein Theresa M
    Forum on Public Policy Mary Shelley: Teaching and Learning through Frankenstein Theresa M. Girard, Adjunct Professor, Central Michigan University Abstract In the writing of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was able to change the course of women’s learning, forever. Her life started from an elite standpoint as the child of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. As such, she was destined to grow to be a major influence in the world. Mary Shelley’s formative years were spent with her father and his many learned friends. Her adult years were spent with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their literary friends. It was on the occasion of the Shelleys’ visit to Lord Byron at his summer home that Mary Shelley was to begin her novel which changed the course of women’s ideas about safety and the home. No longer were women to view staying in the home as a means to staying safe and secure. While women always knew that men could be unreliable, Mary Shelley openly acknowledged that fact and provided a forum from which it could be discussed. Furthermore, women learned that they were vulnerable and that, in order to insure their own safety, they could not entirely depend upon men to rescue them; in fact, in some cases, women needed to save themselves from the men in their lives, often with no one to turn to except themselves and other women. There are many instances where this is shown throughout Frankenstein, such as: Justine’s prosecution and execution and Elizabeth’s murder. Mary Shelley educated women in the most fundamental of ways and continues to do so through every reading of Frankenstein.
    [Show full text]
  • Network Map of Knowledge And
    Humphry Davy George Grosz Patrick Galvin August Wilhelm von Hofmann Mervyn Gotsman Peter Blake Willa Cather Norman Vincent Peale Hans Holbein the Elder David Bomberg Hans Lewy Mark Ryden Juan Gris Ian Stevenson Charles Coleman (English painter) Mauritz de Haas David Drake Donald E. Westlake John Morton Blum Yehuda Amichai Stephen Smale Bernd and Hilla Becher Vitsentzos Kornaros Maxfield Parrish L. Sprague de Camp Derek Jarman Baron Carl von Rokitansky John LaFarge Richard Francis Burton Jamie Hewlett George Sterling Sergei Winogradsky Federico Halbherr Jean-Léon Gérôme William M. Bass Roy Lichtenstein Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael Tony Cliff Julia Margaret Cameron Arnold Sommerfeld Adrian Willaert Olga Arsenievna Oleinik LeMoine Fitzgerald Christian Krohg Wilfred Thesiger Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant Eva Hesse `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas Him Mark Lai Clark Ashton Smith Clint Eastwood Therkel Mathiassen Bettie Page Frank DuMond Peter Whittle Salvador Espriu Gaetano Fichera William Cubley Jean Tinguely Amado Nervo Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Ferdinand Hodler Françoise Sagan Dave Meltzer Anton Julius Carlson Bela Cikoš Sesija John Cleese Kan Nyunt Charlotte Lamb Benjamin Silliman Howard Hendricks Jim Russell (cartoonist) Kate Chopin Gary Becker Harvey Kurtzman Michel Tapié John C. Maxwell Stan Pitt Henry Lawson Gustave Boulanger Wayne Shorter Irshad Kamil Joseph Greenberg Dungeons & Dragons Serbian epic poetry Adrian Ludwig Richter Eliseu Visconti Albert Maignan Syed Nazeer Husain Hakushu Kitahara Lim Cheng Hoe David Brin Bernard Ogilvie Dodge Star Wars Karel Capek Hudson River School Alfred Hitchcock Vladimir Colin Robert Kroetsch Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai Stephen Sondheim Robert Ludlum Frank Frazetta Walter Tevis Sax Rohmer Rafael Sabatini Ralph Nader Manon Gropius Aristide Maillol Ed Roth Jonathan Dordick Abdur Razzaq (Professor) John W.
    [Show full text]
  • The Last Man"
    W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2016 Renegotiating the Apocalypse: Mary Shelley’s "The Last Man" Kathryn Joan Darling College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Darling, Kathryn Joan, "Renegotiating the Apocalypse: Mary Shelley’s "The Last Man"" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 908. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/908 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 The apocalypse has been written about as many times as it hasn’t taken place, and imagined ever since creation mythologies logically mandated destructive counterparts. Interest in the apocalypse never seems to fade, but what does change is what form that apocalypse is thought to take, and the ever-keen question of what comes after. The most classic Western version of the apocalypse, the millennial Judgement Day based on Revelation – an absolute event encompassing all of humankind – has given way in recent decades to speculation about political dystopias following catastrophic war or ecological disaster, and how the remnants of mankind claw tooth-and-nail for survival in the aftermath. Desolate landscapes populated by cannibals or supernatural creatures produce the awe that sublime imagery, like in the paintings of John Martin, once inspired. The Byronic hero reincarnates in an extreme version as the apocalyptic wanderer trapped in and traversing a ruined world, searching for some solace in the dust.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Byron: Six Poems of Separation
    1 Byron: Six Poems of Separation edited by Peter Cochran If one’s marriage were to collapse in humiliating, semi-public circumstances, and if one were in part to blame for its collapse, one’s reaction would probably be to maintain a discreet and (one would hope) a dignified silence, and to hope that the thing might blow over in a year or so. Byron’s reaction was write, and publish, poetry about it while it was still collapsing. The first two of these poems were written in London – the first is to his wife, and the next about and to her friend and confidante Mrs Clermont – before he left England, on Thursday April 25th 1816. The next three were written in Switzerland after his departure, and are addressed to his half-sister Augusta. The last one is again to his wife. They show violent contrasts in style and tone (the Epistle to Augusta is Byron’s first poem in ottava rima), and strange, contrasting aspects of Byron’s nature. That he should wish them published at all is perhaps worrying. The urge to confess without necessarily repenting was, however, deep within him. Fare Thee Well! with its elaborate air of injured innocence, and its implication that Annabella’s reasons for leaving him remain incomprehensible, sorts ill with what we know of his behaviour during the disintegration of their marriage in the latter months of 1815. John Gibson Lockhart was moved, five years later, to protest: … why, then, did you, who are both a gentleman and a nobleman, act upon this the most delicate occasion, in all probability, your life was ever to present, as if you had been neither a nobleman nor a gentleman, but some mere overweeningly conceited poet? 1 Of A Sketch from Private Life , William Gifford, Byron’s “Literary Father”, wrote to Murray: It is a dreadful picture – Caravagio outdone in his own way.
    [Show full text]
  • GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: a Literary-Biographical-Critical
    1 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: A literary-biographical-critical database 2: by year CODE: From National Library in Taiwan UDD: unpublished doctoral dissertation Books and Articles Referring to Byron, by year 1813-1824: Anon. A Sermon on the Death of Byron, by a Layman —— Lines on the departure of a great poet from this country, 1816 —— An Address to the Rt. Hon. Lord Byron, with an opinion on some of his writings, 1817 —— The radical triumvirate, or, infidel Paine, Lord Byron, and Surgeon Lawrenge … A Letter to John Bull, from a Oxonian resident in London, 1820 —— A letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord Byron, protesting against the immolation of Gray, Cowper and Campbell, at the shrine of Pope, The Pamphleteer Vol 8, 1821 —— Lord Byron’s Plagiarisms, Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1821; Lord Byron Defended from a Charge of Plagiarism, ibid —— Plagiarisms of Lord Byron Detected, Monthly Magazine, August 1821, September 1821 —— A letter of expostulation to Lord Byron, on his present pursuits; with animadversions on his writings and absence from his country in the hour of danger, 1822 —— Uriel, a poetical address to Lord Byron, written on the continent, 1822 —— Lord Byron’s Residence in Greece, Westminster Review July 1824 —— Full Particulars of the much lamented Death of Lord Byron, with a Sketch of his Life, Character and Manners, London 1824 —— Robert Burns and Lord Byron, London Magazine X, August 1824 —— A sermon on the death of Lord Byron, by a Layman, 1824 Barker, Miss. Lines addressed to a noble lord; – his Lordship will know why, – by one of the small fry of the Lakes 1815 Belloc, Louise Swanton.
    [Show full text]
  • BYRON, SHELLEY and KEATS
    THE ROMANTIC AGE THE SECOND GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS: BYRON, SHELLEY and KEATS - they all left England, visited Italy and died young - return to complex forms of versification and richer language - interest in the world of ancient Greece - more interest in Politics (especially Byron) - different view of Nature (less idealistic) George Gordon Byron 1. Life (1788 – 1824) • In 1809 he set out on a tour of Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece and the Middle East. • After his return to England in 1812, he published the first ‘two cantos’ of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. • He became a literary and social celebrity, but then he left England in 1816, never to return. • He lived in Geneva, where he became a friend of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. • He moved to Venice, where he began his masterpiece, the mock-epic Don Juan. • In 1819 he moved to Milan where he became involved H. Meyer, Lord Byron, 1816, Victoria in the patriotic plots against Austrian rule. and Albert Museum, London • He committed himself to the Greek struggle of independence from Turkey. • His heart is buried in Greece, his body is interred in England. Performer - Culture & Literature George Gordon Byron 2. Main works • Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818). • The Giaour (1813), The Corsair, and Lara (1814): a series of verse narratives. • Manfred, a tragedy (1817). • Don Juan (1819-24). Jonny Lee Miller is Byron, in the BBC drama Byron. Performer - Culture & Literature George Gordon Byron 4. The Byronic hero • A moody, restless and mysterious romantic rebel. • Hides some sin or secret in his past.
    [Show full text]
  • Predator Or Prey? Truth and Fiction About the Women in Lord Byron’S Life and Work, with Particular Reference to Don Juan
    Corso di Laurea magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Tesi di Laurea Predator or Prey? Truth and Fiction about the Women in Lord Byron’s Life and Work, with particular reference to Don Juan Relatore Co-relatore Prof. Enrico Palandri Prof. Gregory Dowling Laureanda Caterina Pan Matricola 818923 Anno Accademico 2011 / 2012 To my family Contents Introduction 9 1. The Discovery of Europe through the Grand Tour 12 2. English women 18 2.1. Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron 18 2.2. Annabella Milbanke 22 2.3. Catherine Gordon Byron and Augusta Leigh 29 2.4. Aristocratic ladies – Lady Oxford, Lady Melbourne and Caroline Lamb 38 2.5. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys 46 3. Libertinism in the eighteenth century 52 3.1. Marriage and Libertinism between England, Italy and Europe 52 3.2. The case of Byron 57 4. Italian women 61 4.1. Venice 61 4.2. Comparing Italian and English women 64 4.3. Marianna Segati 69 4.4. Margherita Cogni – La Fornarina 73 4.5. Teresa Gamba, Countess Guiccioli 77 5. Byron’s life and women in Don Juan – the ‘truth in masquerade’ 84 5.1. A comedy, mock-heroic epic and moral autobiographic poem 84 5.2. Venice – Muse and Mask 88 5.3. Truth and Fiction 93 5.4. A “new” Don Juan 97 5.5. Literary tradition VS autobiography – The journey of narrator and protagonist 101 5.6. Literary tradition VS autobiography – The “weaker” sex 106 5.7. Byron’s translation of the women around him in Don Juan 111 5.8.
    [Show full text]
  • Discussion Questions for Frankenstein Written by Hailey Toporcer, Hiram College Class of 2019 Edited by Prof
    Discussion Questions for Frankenstein Written by Hailey Toporcer, Hiram College Class of 2019 Edited by Prof. Kirsten Parkinson As you read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, either on your own or with a group, we invite you to use these questions to add layers to your discussion or thinking about the novel. The first section includes questions for each chapter of the novel; you will find questions reflecting on the book as a whole at the end. We have not included specific pages numbers as various editions have different page numbers, but the quotations are based on the 1831 edition of the novel. Discussion Questions for Each Chapter Letters I through IV 1. Frankenstein begins and ends with letters written by Robert Walton. Why do you think that Mary Shelley chose to have him frame the novel? How would your opinions of Victor Frankenstein and his creation differ if their story was told directly by Victor Frankenstein himself? What if the story was told solely by the creation? 2. Walton yearns for a friend, much like Victor Frankenstein’s creature does. What does this tell you about human nature? Is it in our nature to want companionship, someone to confide in, and someone to care for? 3. In Letter IV, Walton writes, “Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined at one time that the memory of these evils should die with me, but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
    [Show full text]
  • Manfred Lord Byron (1788–1824)
    Manfred Lord Byron (1788–1824) Dramatis Personæ MANFRED CHAMOIS HUNTER ABBOT OF ST. MAURICE MANUEL HERMAN WITCH OF THE ALPS ARIMANES NEMESIS THE DESTINIES SPIRITS, ETC. The scene of the Drama is amongst the Higher Alps—partly in the Castle of Manfred, and partly in the Mountains. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Act I Scene I MANFRED alone.—Scene, a Gothic Gallery. Time, Midnight. Manfred THE LAMP must be replenish’d, but even then It will not burn so long as I must watch. My slumbers—if I slumber—are not sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought, 5 Which then I can resist not: in my heart There is a vigil, and these eyes but close To look within; and yet I live, and bear The aspect and the form of breathing men. But grief should be the instructor of the wise; 10 Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. Philosophy and science, and the springs Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world, 15 I have essay’d, and in my mind there is A power to make these subject to itself— But they avail not: I have done men good, And I have met with good even among men— But this avail’d not: I have had my foes, 20 And none have baffled, many fallen before me— But this avail’d not:—Good, or evil, life, Powers, passions, all I see in other beings, Have been to me as rain unto the sands, Since that all—nameless hour.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Shelley
    Mary Shelley Early Life Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, the daughter of two prominent radical thinkers of the Enlightenment. Her mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, best known for An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice. Unfortunately, Wollstonecraft died just ten days after her daughter’s birth. Mary was raised by her father and stepmother Mary Jane Clairmont. When she was 16 years old, Mary fell in love with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who visited her father’s house frequently. They eloped to France, as Shelley was already married. They eventually married after two years when Shelley’s wife Harriet committed suicide. The Writing of Frankenstein In the summer of 1816, the Shelleys rented a villa close to that of Lord Byron in Switzerland. The weather was bad (Mary Shelley described it as “wet, ungenial” in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein), due to a 1815 eruption of a volcano in Indonesia that disrupted weather patterns around the world. Stuck inside much of the time, the company, including Byron, the Shelleys, Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s personal physician John Polidori, entertained themselves with reading stories from Fantasmagoriana, a collection of German ghost stories. Inspired by the stories, the group challenged themselves to write their own ghost stories. The only two to complete their stories were Polidori, who published The Vampyre in 1819, and Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein went on to become one of the most popular Gothic tales of all time.
    [Show full text]