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Mouldingdarkshapelesschaosintoexuberantcreation

Mouldingdarkshapelesschaosintoexuberantcreation

byMihaiA.Stroe

Source:RomanianJournalofArtisticCreativity(RomanianJournalofArtisticCreativity),issue:3/2013,pages:203224,onwww.ceeol.com.

203Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity Autumn 2013

Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed [email protected]

MMMMMoulding dark shapeless chaos into exuberant creationMihai A. Stroe

University of Bucharest

Deep pain and exuberant joy are the two facets of MaryShelleys biography and literary output. In order to betterunderstand the connections between trauma (physical orpsychological) and forms of (literary) creativity, and in orderto better answer questions related to the genesis of the stillenigmatic Frankenstein and its remarkable creator, we needto focus on the intricate network of events in this authorslife and on the complexities of her literary works and thought.There is a still unanswered question, unfortunately rarelyposed, as to why the pages describing the crucial days in themonths of June and early July 1816 are missing from bothMary Shelleys and Claire Clairmonts diaries. Was thereindeed a conspiracy of silence between the two sisters,because such might have been thought to prove beneficialfor the success of Mary Shelleys work? Or was the realityso dark and haunting that revealing it might have frightenedthe public away? Further still, and in connection therewith,another question of great significance, yet little, if at all,asked in contemporary Mary Shelley studies, is that regardingMary Shelleys possible visit, in September 1814, to CastleFrankenstein. Knowledge of these pieces of the puzzle makingup Mary Shelleys biography may prove to be of fundamentalimportance in our understanding of how secrecy, alongsidedeep pain and exuberant joy, can play an essential role inthe operations of human creativity.

Keywords: adventure, loss, trauma, natural disaster,Eureka act, creational chaos, experience unbound, CastleFrankenstein, secrecy

Trauma and the fiction-making laboratory

rom the perspective of trauma andliterature-and-science studies (the latteras established in the past two-three

decades mainly), Mary Shelleys biographyemerges as a paramount example of how deeplytraumatic experience and artistic extraordinarycreativity are inextricably linked together in theact of fathering/mothering literary masterpieces.

As Mary Shelley is now indisputably bestknown as the author of Frankenstein; or, The modern

Prometheus, this novel offers us a main frameworkof reference with regard to the relationshipbetween traumatic biography and creativity infiction. In Mary Shelley studies, among others, aquestion of vivid debate remains the nature(existence or lack) of her fictional/literarygenuine creativity, such as debated for instancein Radu Florescus In search of Frankenstein:exploring the myths behind Mary Shelleys monster(1999). For some reason, Mary Shelley felt theneed to redefine the Gothic into her own personalversion of it, by which she transformed thealready classical static Gothic horror-bearer (thehaunted castle, the enchanted forest, etc.) intoan itinerant element, namely the movingDaemon, who has been interpreted, debatably,as playing the role of a doppelgnger or double ofVictor Frankenstein himself. To evaluate thesecomplex matters, we need to survey the presentstate of affairs with regard to how Mary Shelleysmajor works have been decoded. A prominent factwill thus be clearly established: personal pain andsuffering moulded everything Mary Shelleyaccomplished in the area of extraordinarycreativity (the latter in Nancy Andreasensacceptation, 2006): Frankenstein (1818) and TheLast Man (1826) remain world literaturelandmarks, masterpieces of a kind never beforeand never again accomplished by any othernovelist writing in English.

Mary Shelley is in this respect an excellent casein point, since it is well known that in her famousPreface for the 1831 edition of Frankenstein shediscussed the very nature of fictional creationprecisely as not being the work of an unfoldingpure imagination operating ex nihilo, but, on thecontrary, as being the work of a sort of melting

204 Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity Autumn 2013

pot of information and emotion, namely thechaos of experience. Mary Shelleys Frankensteinand The Last Man especially, but also other fictionsby her, represent indeed an excellent example ofa fiction-making laboratory that is bound to createa highly successful work of art, because thislaboratory contains, on the one hand, an updatedsynthesis of the main knowledge and purposiveideals of science and art, at least in the Westerntradition sense of the word, and, on the other,life in its pure form, undisguised, unadulterated,un-beautified, unfolding with its unbounded joysand abysmal pains. Mary Shelleys fiction-makinglaboratory thus uses as a primary fuel life itself,in its genuine form a melting pot of suffering andhappiness out of whose intertwining, at least inthe two novels mentioned above (Frankenstein andThe Last Man), overflows the authenticity of hercreative powers and genius.

It is one of the reasons why so many pages inFrankenstein and The Last Man approach, as hasbeen noted by various scholars, the status of pureart expressing an extraordinary joy andexuberance of expression. What is more, froman aesthetic point of view it is essential to noticethat both Frankenstein and The Last Man set forthin their internal structures an extraordinarycontrast: the trauma/pain of existence and thejoy to write: the two opposites are necessary toeach other in the processes of dynamic creativity as in William Blakes equation , since by theirpresence these opposites shed light on eachothers inner existence and power, to the pointeven of secretly strengthening each other. Hereis how Blake briefly and brilliantly formulatedthis binary/dyadic dynamics:

Without Contraries is no progression. Attractionand Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate,are necessary to Human existence. / From thesecontraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is theactive springing from Energy. / Good is Heaven. Evilis Hell. (cf. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 3; Blake1979: 149)

As in the case of literature and science whichare traditionally considered to form the two[opposite] cultures (C. P. Snows term for anolder conflict, kindled in the 1880s, betweenMatthew Arnold and T. H. Huxley, the firstspeaking of the primacy of the humanities, the

latter of the superior importance of the sciences;see especially Huxley 1991 for details) and which,nevertheless, according to holonic-holistictheories derived from the works of ArthurKoestler (1989) and Ken Wilber (1995) (andothers), form an integrated whole, a gestalt, withpotentially inexhaustible reservoirs of creativity so in the case of trauma and joy of creativity inMary Shelleys case, and in general, the tworealities seem to constitute two necessary poles/pillars of expression, both ontic in nature:traumas in ones biography often lead tosublimated forms of creativity that representforms of defense in front of traumaticexperiences. This kind of creative defense whichis used for instance by persons of depressivetemperament is accomplished, especially whenthe creator is young (as in Mary Shelleys case),by tormented laboriousness leading to creativejewels like a novel, a poem, a painting, a sonata,etc., the very creative process warding offdepression and feelings of helplessness andmisery (cf. Storr 1972: 44-47). Likewise,conversely, high creativity seems to attracttraumatic experiences (see the notion ofdisastrous genius Ghiselin 1985: 14), so thatgreat works of art seem never to emerge wherethere is no pain/ trauma/ suffering/ catastropheexperienced by the artistic/scientific creator. Itwould appear, at one point or other many literaryor scientific great creators have suffered deeply,going through soul troubling experiences; thissuggests that pain, like joy, is a kind of universalof human experience, needed in creativity if thelatter is to be memorable through numberlessgenerations.

Plunging deeper and deeper into pain

ary Shelleys biography is tumultuously intricateand closely linked with the fascinating literaryuniverse she created in her writings often bymetamorphosing true life events into fiction.

Reputedly one of the strangely gifted Englishnovelists, Mary Shelley (ne MaryWollstonecraft) (30 August 1797, London 1February 1851, London) is best known as theauthor of Frankenstein; or, The modern Prometheus(1818, revised 1831), a narrative written whenshe was hardly nineteen years old. This work

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became one of the most famous novels of alltime, one that, via the modern movies, reachedthe status of a universal myth in westernculture, an echoing presence in the psychicunconscious of modernity (Duncker 2009: 97,99), an integral part of our social and culturaliconography (Jansson 1999: VII), the mostpowerful horror story of all times (Florescu1999: 65), while Mary Shelley herself came to beranked as a paradigm of the woman writer, anicon of female creativity, of female inspiration,of the capacity of woman to give birth to myth(Duncker 2009: 97, 99). Besides in the writingof haunting novels, Mary Shelleys creativitymanifested itself in the writing of visionary short-stories, too, as well as in diligent editing, writingreviews and essays.

The first most obvious clue that comes toexplain to a certain extent the nature of MaryShelleys strange creativity related to trauma (thetraumatic element in this sense issuing from thebattle between mans will to gain freedom andmans will to control man) is the unusualcombination of liberalistic worldviews embracedby her parents: her mother was the feministthinker Mary Wollstonecraft (who twiceattempted suicide, cf. Jamison 1994: 231) and herfather was the famous radical anarchistphilosopher and novelist William Godwin, whowas an atheist and rationalist professedlybelieving in human perfectibility and naturaljustice attainable by the cultivation of reason.

Mary Shelleys first ominous traumaticexperience can be said to have come about in thevery first days after she was born: on September10, 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft died of puerperalfever, only eleven days after giving birth to Mary hence later the obsessive idea in Frankensteinrelated to creation in the absence of the mother.According to Storr (1972: 47), the lack of amother will lead to psychological irreversibledamage, such as the incapacity of the offspringto mate or to develop normal social relationships.In Mary Shelleys case, this incapacity to matewas sublimated into Victor Frankensteinsunwillingness to create for the Daemon afeminine counterpart. More precisely, Victor infact is at one point on the verge of creating thisfemale for the Daemon, but he then changes hismind, thinking that the two monsters united

could thus give rise to a whole new race thatmight supplant humanity, or, still worse, thefemale monster could reject the male, enragingthe latter only the more, thus the initial state ofaffairs going from bad to worse. Otherwise,indeed Marys relation with Percy was far frombeing a normal, common one, as we shall soonsee in some detail.

Her mothers tombstone (in St. PancrasCemetery, on the outskirts of London, in OldCamden Town) became for Mary her favouriteretreat, where she usually went to read and write hence later her threshold interest in the deadand in the undefined boundary between the twoworlds, that of the living and that of the departed.The extreme, on-the-verge situation regarding themarriage of Marys parents should also be pointedout: Mary Wollstonecraft had married WilliamGodwin when being already five months pregnantwith Mary (also, she already had a daughter,Fanny Imlay, from an earlier love affair), and themarriage itself was accepted only as a convention,since the two did not believe in this socialinstitution. It should be noted that anothertraumatic event took shape after the death ofMarys mother: William Godwin, her father,became more and more alienated from her anelement later incorporated in Frankenstein: theinability of Victor Frankenstein as a father toaccept his child, the Daemon/Monster.

Mary Shelley was raised in the proximity ofLondon, in Somers Town, and did not receive aformal education. There are reports showing thatshe, too like her mother , suffered, for longperiods, nervous depression and severe moodswings (Jamison 1994: 231). Travelingtemporarily from Scotland to London, she swiftlymet the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (born onAugust 4, 1792) and his wife, Harriet WestbrookShelley, at her schoolroom on the 11th ofNovember 1812, when he paid a visit to herfather, for whom Percy had great admiration. Thereason of Percys visit was to discuss the termsof a loan (in 1805 Godwin had launched hispublishing firm named M. J. Godwin & Co., thatwas to bring to the cultural market some of themost widely read childrens books of the period cf. Fisch, Mellor, Schor 1993: 5 , as well asother works scientific or otherwise in nature, butnow Godwin was in some business debt, and


Percy was willing to pay the entire sum overtime). (M. J. Godwin & Co. published also Marysfirst story, Mounseer Nongtongpaw, in 1808).

Two years after their first fugitive meeting, onthe 5th of May 1814, the two met again. Percywas then already estranged from his wife. AfterMary declared her eternal love for Percy andPercy pledged his eternal love for her at hermothers tombstone, and because Percy camemeanwhile to see her as a child of love and light,the two decided to elope to France, which theydid on the 28th of June 1814. Then Mary wasonly seventeen and already pregnant by him,while Percy was twenty-one, and still marriedsince 1811 to Harriet, who was also pregnant byhim a second time: a daughter had already beenborn to Percy, Ianthe Shelley, and their secondchild was to be Charles Shelley (born in 1814);however, the real father of the latter, it wassuspected by some including Percy, was not Percy,but Harriets lover, Captain Ryan.

Of course, the explosive potential of Marysfirst adventure is very obvious.

The public scandal of Mary and Percy elopingand traveling to Europe was enhanced the moreby their taking with them Marys stepsister, JaneClairmont, later called Claire (the daughter ofMary Jane Clairmont, Marys stepmother from1801, as a consequence of William Godwinshaving remarried that year), who had been theone making possible the secret meetings betweenthe two before their elopement. Later in 1816Claire was going to have an affair with Lord Byron,and, according to Richard Holmes (1974, 1985)and others, possibly even with Percy Shelley. Likethe new couple, Jane Clairmont was just as eagerto get away from home owing to the inherentmaternal caprice, and because she was also fondof romantic adventures and ghost stories.Otherwise, the young Mary and Percy were of theopinion, just like Mary Wollstonecraft andWilliam Godwin, that the ties of the heart werenaturally more important than and supersededthe legal bonds.

Marys life now became extremely agitated andshe traveled quite a lot with almost no time forease. Thus, in Paris the three young adventurersfound un-expensive lodging in Htel de Vienne.At this time they were making future plans for atrip to Switzerland. During July and August 1814

they traveled to France, Germany (here Mary andPercy probably visited Castle Frankenstein, as wewill presently show in more detail), Switzerland,and Holland. In September they returned toEngland, and in the next two months Percy foundlodging in London, avoiding his creditors. InAugust 1815 Mary moved to Bishopsgate,Windsor. In May 1816 Mary, Percy and Clairemoved from England to Geneva, where LordByron was waiting for Claire. In June of the sameyear they all took a trip to Mont Blanc.

The travel to Switzerland was seminal forMarys literary unfolding powers, since duringthis time she wrote (with Percy) her travel bookHistory of a Six Weeks Tour (published in 1817),in which she recounts her experience of themajesty of the Alps and the time spent nearGeneva in the summer of 1816 (the Shelleys hadrented the Villa Chapuis, or Campagne, locatedin the Montalgre part of the hill, in the villageof Cologny; Florescu 1999: 101).

At the now famous Villa Diodati (rented byLord Byron) that year Mary, Percy, Byron and JohnPolidori (Byrons personal physician) decided tohave a literary contest: writing ghost stories.

This is the occasion on which Mary startedcomposing, on June 16, 1816, her major novel,Frankenstein; or, The modern Prometheus completedin 1817, while Polidori wrote the novella entitledThe Vampyre (it would appear by recasting Byronsold notes Florescu 1999: 121 that the latterhad made for writing his own ghost story, whichhe included in Mazeppa, 1819), publishing it inThe New Monthly Magazine (on 1 April 1819) underLord Byrons name for which the latter wasdeeply upset. The irony of it is that by this episodeByron later became the father of all vampiricliterature.

In July 1816, the group visited Chamonix. InSeptember 1816 Mary returned to London, whilePercy and Claire went to Bath.

On 9 October 1816 another dramatic eventtook place: Fanny Imlay, Mary Wollstonecraftsdaughter, committed suicide on finding out thather father was not William Godwin, but MaryWollstonecrafts American paramour.

On 10 December 1816, yet anothermisfortunate event occurred: Harriet WestbrookShelley took her own life by drowning herself inthe Serpentine, Hyde Park, London. Five days


later Percy got wind of the tragic event that pavedthe way for his remarrying in London, only threeweeks later, on 30 December 1816, Mary andPercy got married in St. Mildreds Church,London. The reason for the haste seems to havebeen, however, justified: their hope to thus gaincustody of Percys two children by HarrietWestbrook. Yet the episode remains ominous forwhat was to come later.

In 1817 the Shelleys moved to Marlow, and inMarch they were joined by Claire Clairmont, whohad recently (on 12 January 1817) given birth toa child by Lord Byron, Alba Byron (later AllegraByron). In March 1817, another trying event cameupon the Shelleys: Percy lost custody of hischildren, Ianthe and Charles Shelley.

Marys work on Frankenstein was over on 14May 1817. This was published anonymously on1 January 1818 by Lackington, Hughes, Harding,Mavor, & Jones. As Pamela Clemit (2003: 26)observed, even though in its original versionFrankenstein appeared anonymously, Maryadvertised her primary intellectual allegiance inthe dedication of the first edition, To WilliamGodwin, Author of Political Justice, CalebWilliams, &c.

This led to the following interesting situation:

Reviewers, piqued by the absence of the authorsname, were quick to draw parallels with Godwinswritings, but could not agree on the nature of thoseparallels. Sir Walter Scott, in a long, insightful piecein Blackwoods Magazine, declared that Frankenstein wasa novel on the same plan as Godwins St. Leon: A Taleof the Sixteenth Century (1799) in which the authorsprincipal object [...] is less to produce an effect bymeans of the marvels of the narrations, than to opennew trains and channels of thought [Scott 1818: 614,apud Clemit 2003: 42, n. 1]. He surmised that theauthor was Percy Bysshe Shelley, Godwins son-in-law. (Clemit 2003: 26-27)

(However, in the second slightly revisededition of Frankenstein, published in 1823, MaryShelleys name was revealed to the public as beingthat of the author of this strange work)

In March 1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy (inApril they got to Milan, in June, to Bagni di Lucca,and in September they paid a visit to Lord Byronin Venice). Towards the end of this year, inNovember and December, they went to Rome andthen to Naples. In 1819 they resided in Rome

between March and June. In June 1819 theymoved to Leghorn (Livorno). In August this sameyear Mary started to write Matilda. In October1819 they moved yet again, to Florence this time.

On 26 January 1820 the Shelleys moved to Pisawhere in February Mary finished her work onMatilda. In March she started her work onCastruccio, Prince of Lucca, later renamed byWilliam Godwin to Valperga; and in April and Mayshe wrote the mythological verse dramasProserpine and Midas.

After relocating several times, in October 1820the Shelleys went again to Pisa to be togetherwith Edward and Jane Williams, Lord Byron beingin close proximity.

Between August and December of 1821 Maryfinished Castruccio. This year, 1821, it seems, isthe year when Percy began an affair with JaneWilliams.

In 1822 the Shelleys moved to Casa Magna,close to Lerici.

On 19 April of this year, another painful eventtook place: Allegra Byron died of typhus.

Between 1814 and 1822, the year of Percysdeath, Mary and her husband thus kept onrelocating, spending time mostly in England,France and Italy.

Between 1815 and 1819, years crucial for themaking of Frankenstein, Mary experienced traumasexcruciating for a mother: she lost three of fourchildren:

Her first child was a daughter, bornprematurely on the 22nd of February, 1815. Shedied after twelve days, on March 6, 1815. Somecritics hold that this death is quintessential inunderstanding Frankenstein, given the intensesense of devastation in Mary Shelleys heart(Jansson 1999: VIII; see also Beer 2003: 169, hiscomments on the genesis of the novelFrankenstein). In her journals, Mary wrote on the20th of March 1815 about a dream she had inwhich the child was again alive:

Dreamt that my little baby came to life again;that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed itbefore the fire, and it lived. Awake and find nobaby. (The journals of Mary Shelley, 18141844,Shelley M 1987i: 70; apud Jansson 1999: VIII)


Her second child was a son, William, bornon the 24th of January, 1816. He died of theRoman fever at the age of three, while in Rome,on 7 June 1819. The illness was visible alreadyon 2 June 1819, when the Shelleys were at theBaths of Lucca. The blue-eyed handsome William,nicknamed Willmouse, is immortalized in theportrait of the fictional William, VictorFrankensteins brother, who was killed by theCreature on the field of Plainpalais a fictionalepisode considered by some critics as being aprophetic anticipation. Mary was againdevastated. This time she felt it was the end ofeverything (Florescu 1999: 128).

Her third child was a daughter, Clara Everina,born on 2 September 1817. She died next year(1818) in September while in Venice during avisit of the Shelleys to Lord Byron. The little girlhad fallen ill with an Italian fever at Este.

Her fourth child was a son, Percy Florence.He was born in Florence on 12 November 1819,the only one to survive to adult age.

What is more, at Casa Magni at Lerici, on 16June 1822, Mary had a further miscarriage andnearly died. It was Percy who saved her life byhaving put her in a tub filled with icy water inorder to stop the hemorrhage.

This terrifying list of dramatic experiences inMary Shelleys life was to reach the acme on the8th of July 1822, when Percy Shelley and EdwardWilliams decided to take a trip in the poetssailboat, baptized by Percy The Ariel, butchristened by Lord Byron The Don Juan, in orderto meet Leigh and Marianne Hunt: a stormflooded the boat and the two were drowned inthe Gulf of Spezzia. Percys body and Edwardswere found on the beach off Via Reggio on 16 or17 July, being buried in the sand by peasants, aswas customary in such cases. In his pockets Percywas found carrying a volume of Sophocles andone with Keatss poems.

Mary recounted later that Percy had hadpremonitory nightmarish visions at Casa Magni(his last residence in Italy) just a few days beforehe got drowned:

[I]n the middle of the night I was awoke by hearinghim scream & come rushing into my room; [...] hecontinued to scream [...] What had frightened himwas this He dreamt that lying as he did in bedEdward & Jane (Williams) came into him, they were

in the most horrible condition, their bodies lacerated[...] Edward said Get up, Shelley, the sea is floodingthe house & it is all coming down; S. got up, hethought, & went to the his [sic] window that lookedon the terrace & the sea & thought he saw the searushing in. (Letter to Maria Gisborne, Pisa, dated 15August 1822; cf. Bennet 1980: 245, apud Duncker2009: 109-110)

Relative to Percys funeral the followingshattering episode has become legendary: theheart of the English poet just would not burn.Leigh Hunt seems to have taken away theseearthy remains of Percy Shelley and would notgive them up until Jane Williams harshlyintervened in favour of Mary, who was finallygiven Percys unburned heart that is reported (byLord Byron) to have overflown, in the burningprocess, with an oily substance (MacCarthy 2002:429-430). Mary kept Percys heart with her mostof the time, and it was found in her traveling deskat her death, dried to dust [...] in a copy ofAdonas. (Bennett 1980: 255-256n, apudDuncker 2009: 112)

It is indeed unimaginably painful for MaryShelley to have had this Frankensteinianexperience (Frankensteins monster was made upof bodily parts) in her own real life, maybe evenwithout realizing it, or maybe just the samerealizing it all too well as Patricia Dunckerkeenly observed, it is strange how Mary Shelleysomehow prophetically imagined in 1816 and1817 the fictional monster creating its ownfuneral pyre and burning itself up in a fieryconflagration, for her only a bit later, in 1822, towitness how Percy Shelleys dead body wasdevoured by flames with the heart stubbornlyresisting fire. One may ask therefore whether highart thus attracts disaster on the very lives of high-ranking creators, as is suggested above.

After her husbands death, Mary joined LordByron and Leigh Hunt at Genoa in September 1822.

In February 1823 she published Valperga; or,The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca.This is a historical romance whose setting is Italyof the 14th century, containing gothic elementssuch as a gloomy castle full of secret passageways,a witch, a Wandering Jew character, an albinodwarf (Punter & Byron 2004: 164).

Seeing that Frankenstein is very popular andthat there already appeared a highly successful


three-act opera adapting for the stage the themeof the novel (Richard Brinsley PeakesPresumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, 1823),William Godwin asked Whitaker to print a secondedition of Frankenstein in 1823. This secondedition is almost identical with the 1818 originalversion, but it contains a title-page bearing MaryShelleys name. M. K. Joseph (1998: XV) pointedout the following in this sense:

[This] second edition of 1823 is simply a page-by-page reprint of the first, rearranged in two volumes;its publication was arranged by William Godwin inorder to follow up the success of Presumption, the stageversion of the novel.

This is thus the first (only formal) revision ofFrankenstein. A further revised third edition withan introduction by Mary Shelley was to bepublished in 1831: here the text proper isdifferent from that in the first and secondeditions.

Mary returned to London in August 1823 withher only surviving son, Percy Florence, anddevoted her entire life to his education and tothe publication of Percys works. She was neverto remarry, although American playwright JohnHoward Payne (in June 1825) and possiblyProsper Mrime (in 1828) made marriageproposals. Her rejection came in the context of adisappointment related to the fact that herintimate relationship with Aubery Beauclerk (awidower) did not lead to a wished marriage(Fisch, Mellor, Schor 1993: 6).

In 1824 Mary published The Posthumous Poemsof Percy Bysshe Shelley, but the work was withdrawnfrom the market when Percys father, Sir TimothyShelley, objected to the publication of his sonswork. Since the infuriated Sir Timothy Shelleythreatened to no longer offer Percy Florence hisallowance, Mary was forced to agree not to keepon working on publishing Percys writings,thinking that Percys father (alias the Struldbrug cf. Fisch, Mellor, Schor 1993: 6 as shenicknamed him) would soon die (that, however,happened only twenty years later, in 1844).

During the spring of 1824 Mary started tocompose a further novel, being haunted by theneed to write about Percys life. In January 1826she published it under the title The Last Man,considered her most successful novel (Snodgrass2005: 316), and now sometimes ranked as her

best work and an early prototype of sciencefiction (Bomarito 2006, vol. 3: 320). In thisregard, Richard Garnett (1891: VII-VIII) stressedthe following:

[The Last Man] demands great attention, for it isnot only a work of far higher merit than commonlyadmitted, but of all her works the most characteristicof the authoress, the most representative of MaryShelley in the character of pining widowhood whichit was her destiny to support for the remainder of herlife. It is an idealized version of her sorrows andsufferings, made to contribute a note to the strainwhich celebrates the final dissolution of the world.

The painful experience of widowhood thus ledwith Mary Shelley to a unique masterpiece, bywhich yet another piece of evidence is broughtregarding the fact, emphasized by Ghiselin (1985:2), that [t]he human mind is prepared to wrapthe whole planet in a shroud.

In The Last Man, an apocalyptic fantasy novelset in the 21st century (the action taking placebetween the year 2073 and the last year of theworld, 2100), Mary celebrates her experience ascompanion of Percy and Lord Byron (who haddied at Missolonghi on 19 April 1824, trying tohelp the Greeks in their war for independence),giving an account of the future devastation ofmankind. Thus, in a fantastic display of narrativepower where pain and joy secretly join together,we are presented with the causes of this finaldestruction of man: war, plague, anarchy, naturaldisasters like earthquakes, storms, the arrival ofgiant destroyers, of giant tidal waves flooding theEarth, of mountainous waves requiringcyclopean walls for their repulsion, theemergence of a wall of water springing from theimpact of three mock suns united in one, andplung[ing] into the sea. We are told that grass issprouting thick in the city streets, natureswollowing up the cities. The Northern States ofAmerica are formed and an American invasionof England occurs. A food crisis ensues and thedays of depopulation unfold with irresistibleforce. A black sun (of the size of the Sun) appearsfrom the West. In the context in which at onepoint Mary Shelley mentions the precession ofthe equinoctial points, she speaks of a secondsun seen setting by Lionel Verney as he entersalone Ravenna and the world is already empty ofhuman life this is the climax of the story, when


one man alone remains, Lionel Verney, seeing twosuns setting on the sky (a fact reminding one ofthe much disputed question of the Sumero-Akkadian Nebiru or the Planet of the Crossing,now known as Planet X). Lionel Verneys, i.e.the Last Mans, solitude resembles that of VictorFrankensteins child: the Daemon is a creaturemore alone than the Devil himself (as theDaemon also comes to realize), since the latterfell from heaven not alone, but with three of thetwelve celestial hosts. Mary Shelley contemplatesin this novel her terrifying destiny, namely to beleft by all her best friends, Percy and Byron, aloneon earth so she is metaphorically Lionel Verney.The novel is influenced by Lord Byronsphilosophy regarding the decay of civilization, inturn influenced by Georges Cuviers geologicaltheory known as catastrophism (see details onthis doctrine in Velikovsky 2009: 211ff); as wellas by Thomas Malthuss Essay on the principles ofpopulation (1798; 5th edition by 1817). It is atestimony to the excruciating grief Mary Shelleyexperienced as she lost one by one the peoplemost dear to her (as mentioned, the heaviestblows were the loss of her husband, threechildren, and best friend, Lord Byron). Here area few relevant thoughts expressed through LionelVerney:

After a long interval, I am again impelled by therestless spirit within me to continue my narration;[...]. The details contained in the foregoing pages,apparently trivial, yet each slightest one weighing likelead in the depressed scale of human afflictions; thistedious dwelling on the sorrows of others, while myown were only in apprehension; this slowly layingbare of my souls wounds: this journal of death; thislong drawn and tortuous path, leading to the oceanof countless tears, awakens me again to keen grief. Ihad used this history as an opiate; while it describedmy beloved friends, fresh with life and glowing withhope, active assistants on the scene, I was soothed;there will be a more melancholy pleasure in paintingthe end of all. (The Last Man, vol 2, chap 8; Shelley M2004: 212)

The novel is thus a journal of death, whichis written as a means to resurrect the past andthereby the narrative becomes a way to defendthe soul against existential despair triggered bythe gigantic calamity (disease, desertion,famine in the novel; human loss, in MaryShelleys life) that visited mankind (and the

writer of the novel herself) with such fiercenessas to render death a comforter. Verney (to beunderstood as an alias of Mary Shelleys talkingof her own drama) comments:

The vast annihilation that has swallowed all things the voiceless solitude of the once busy earth thelonely state of singleness which hems me in, hasdeprived even such details [of the disaster] of theirstinging reality, and mellowing the lurid tints of pastanguish with poetic hues, I am able to escape fromthe mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving andreflecting back the grouping and combined colouringof the past. (The Last Man, vol 2, chap 8; Shelley M2004: 213)

In such passages, the narrative becomes adeeply confessional report on Mary Shelleysinner life. Poetry thus acts here as an opiate,writing itself mellows the fierce grief, affordingan escape into a realm of the imagination, wherethe shadows of the past become vivid presences.Also, Verney reaches a holistic perspective:

Time and experience have placed me on an heightfrom which I can comprehend the past as a whole;and in this way I must describe it, bringing forwardthe leading incidents, and disposing light and shadeso as to form a picture in whose very darkness therewill be harmony. (The Last Man, vol 2, chap 8; ShelleyM 2004: 212)

Further still, in a context in which he seemsto embrace Georges Cuviers theory ofcatastrophism (the novel is about sudden naturalcataclysms, and the geological fossil records ofthe Earth speak in favour of the existence of suchphenomena in the distant and more recent past:everywhere on the planet there exist, scatteredin various forms such as erratic boulders,undeniable pieces of evidence showing that theplanet suffered not just once sudden violentchanges, paroxysms of nature; cf. Velikovsky2009: 219ff), Verney explains the effect of keensuffering, whereby an hour can be drawn into aneternity:

The experience of immemorial time had taught usformerly to count our enjoyments by years, and extendour prospect of life through a lengthened period ofprogression and decay; the long road threaded a vastlabyrinth, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, inwhich it terminated, was hid by intervening objects.But an earthquake had changed the scene under ourvery feet the earth yawned deep and precipitous the


gulf below opened to receive us, while the hourscharioted us towards the chasm. But it was winternow, and months must elapse before we are hurledfrom our security. We became ephemera, to whomthe interval between the rising and setting sun wasas a long drawn year of common time. (The Last Man,vol 2, chap 8; Shelley M 2004: 218)

The idea is resumed later, when Verneymeditates on the human ephemeral condition,reminding us of P. B. Shelleys and Lord Byronsphilosophies on that topic:

I did not fear for myself, but it was misery to thinkthat we could not even save this remnant. That thoseI loved might in a few days be as clay-cold as Idris inher antique tomb; nor could strength of body orenergy of mind ward off the blow. A sense ofdegradation came over me. Did God create man,merely in the end to become dead earth in the midstof healthful vegetating nature? Was he of no moreaccount to his Maker, than a field of corn blighted inthe ear? Were our proud dreams thus to fade? Ourname was written a little lower than the angels;[Psalm 8: 5] and, behold, we were no better thanephemera. We had called ourselves the paragon ofanimals, and, lo! we were a quintessence of dust.[Hamlet, 2, 2, 307-308] We repined that the pyramidshad outlasted the embalmed body of their builder.Alas! the mere shepherds hut of straw we passed onthe road, contained in its structure the principle ofgreater longevity than the whole race of man. Howreconcile this sad change to our past aspirations, toour apparent powers! (The Last Man, vol 3, chap 6;Shelley M 2004: 318)

In a passage remarkable for its brilliance andconnections with catastrophist theorieschallenging the doctrine of uniformity (the latteras expounded by James Hutton and Charles Lyell,whose works became later the foundation ofCharles Darwins concept of natural selection,underlying which was the idea of very slowevolution; see Velikovsky 2009: 211ff), Lionelgives the following answer to the questionsabove:

We must all die! The species of man must perish;his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrousmechanism of his senses; the noble proportion of hisgodlike limbs; his mind, the throned king of these;must perish. Will the earth still keep her place amongthe planets; will she still journey with unmarkedregularity round the sun; will the seasons change, thetrees adorn themselves with leaves, and flowers shedtheir fragrance, in solitude? Will the mountains

remain unmoved, and streams still keep a downwardcourse towards the vast abyss; will the tides rise andfall, and the winds fan universal nature; will beastspasture, birds fly, and fishes swim, when man, thelord, possessor, perceiver, and recorder of all thesethings, has passed away, as though he had never been?O, what mockery is this! Surely death is not death,and humanity is not extinct; but merely passed intoother shapes, unsubjected to our perceptions. Deathis a vast portal, an high road to life: let us hasten topass; let us exist no more in this living death, but diethat we may live! (The Last Man, vol 3, chap 7; ShelleyM 2004: 329-330)

Such a passage may be taken to representliterary evidence that, being overwhelmed withgrief, Mary Shelley may have thought aboutsuicide, but resisted nonetheless for reasons thatmight be linked to her mission as a writer. Thus,in the middle of destruction, suffering anddespair, paradoxically the joyful seed of creation Lionel Verney tells us germinates, as if thrivingon the rushing waters of tears, and surely buildingfortresses of resistance against despondentgestures such as suicide (artistic creation is thusclearly asserted as a means of defense against self-inflicted extinction):

Sights of woe now became familiar to me, and wereI to tell all of anguish and pain that I witnessed, ofthe despairing moans of age, and the more terriblesmiles of infancy in the bosom of horror, my reader,his limbs quivering and his hair on end, would wonderhow I did not, seized with sudden frenzy, dash myselffrom some precipice, and so close my eyes for ever onthe sad end of the world. But the powers of love,poetry, and creative fancy will dwell even beside thesick of the plague, with the squalid, and with thedying. A feeling of devotion, of duty, of a high andsteady purpose, elevated me; a strange joy filled myheart. In the midst of saddest grief I seemed to treadair, while the spirit of good shed round me anambrosial atmosphere, which blunted the sting ofsympathy, and purified the air of sighs. If my weariedsoul flagged in its career, I thought of my loved home,of the casket that contained my treasures, of the kissof love and the filial caress, while my eyes weremoistened by purest dew, and my heart was at oncesoftened and refreshed by thrilling tenderness. (TheLast Man, vol 2, chap 8; Shelley M 2004: 219)

That Mary Shelley considered, but resisted,suicide seems evident also from the following tworelevant passages, in which a description is givenof how man is capable of enduring the fiercest of


pains calmly, under the most extreme conditions,finally abandoning himself to its reality, nay,becoming the overly skilled apostle of suffering:

We have a power given us in any worst extremity,which props the else feeble mind of man, and enablesus to endure the most savage tortures with a stillnessof soul which in hours of happiness we could not haveimagined. A calm, more dreadful in truth than thetempest, allayed the wild beatings of my heart acalm like that of the gamester, the suicide, and themurderer, when the last die is on the point of beingcast while the poisoned cup is at the lips, as thedeath-blow is about to be given. (The Last Man, vol 3,chap 9; Shelley M 2004: 353)

Until now, agonizing retrospect, and drearyprospects for the future, had stung me when awake,and cradled me to my repose. Many times I haddelivered myself up to the tyranny of anguish manytimes I resolved a speedy end to my woes; and deathby my own hands was a remedy, whose practicabilitywas even cheering to me. What could I fear in theother world? If there were an hell, and I were doomedto it, I should come an adept to the sufferance of itstortures the act were easy, the speedy and certainend of my deplorable tragedy. But now these thoughtsfaded before the new born expectation. I went on myway, not as before, feeling each hour, each minute, tobe an age instinct with incalculable pain. (The LastMan, vol 3, chap 10; Shelley M 2004: 364)

A veritable ode to suffering is thus offered,pointing to the fact that the entire book is notonly a journal of death, but also a hymn to allwho grieve, pain being the secret light hidingthrough all things, illuminating them fromwithin, intertwining itself inextricably with alljoys of creation:

The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain setin at sunset. Even the eternal skies weep, I thought;is there any shame then, that mortal man should spendhimself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, inwhich human beings are described as dissolving awaythrough weeping into ever-gushing fountains. Ah!that so it were; and then my destiny would be in somesort akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara.Oh! grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which totrace the history of its woe from every form and changearound; it incorporates itself with all living nature; itfinds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills allthings, and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.(The Last Man, vol 3, chap 9; Shelley M 2004: 355-356)

The root of all suffering is identified insolitude, a condition that in Frankenstein was

primarily the monsters condition. Here, in TheLast Man, it is man who becomes the prodigy,crying to God, his maker, why He has forsakenhim:

Why could I not forget myself like one of thoseanimals, and no longer suffer the wild tumult ofmisery that I endure? Yet, ah! what a deadly breachyawns between their state and mine! Have not theycompanions? Have not they each their mate theircherished young, their home, which, thoughunexpressed to us, is, I doubt not, endeared andenriched, even in their eyes, by the society which kindnature has created for them? It is I only that am alone I, on this little hill top, gazing on plain and mountainrecess on sky, and its starry population, listening toevery sound of earth, and air, and murmuring wave, I only cannot express to any companion my manythoughts, nor lay my throbbing head on any lovedbosom, nor drink from meeting eyes an intoxicatingdew, that transcends the fabulous nectar of the gods.Shall I not then complain? Shall I not curse themurderous engine which has mowed down thechildren of men, my brethren? Shall I not bestow amalediction on every other of natures offspring, whichdares live and enjoy, while I live and suffer? (The LastMan, vol 3, chap 10; Shelley M 2004: 365-366)

The iconic image of Lionel Verney on thislittle hill top, gazing on plain and mountainrecess indeed reminds us of Caspar DavidFriedrichs atmospheric landscape paintingentitled Wanderer watching a sea of fog (circa 1817-1818), with its sublime view (derived from the18th century vedute or views style, cf. Wolf2007: 50) of the romantic (dressed with medievalGerman clothes) who, scanning all alone the vastworld from the top of a steep rocky mountainand standing firm and proud with his back to thebeholder, reflects most probably on the miracleof existence and on mans helplessness in frontof such awe-inspiring giant powers as displayedby the boundless craggy horizon on sight. It is agood representation in painting of Friedrichstheory that art is infinite, while all artistsknowledge and ability are finite (apud Wolf2007: 50).

All of the above fragments from The Last Manare indeed priceless documents that can beregarded as a kind of intimate diary of MaryShelleys, who, while writing the novel, wasdealing as best she could with her own personaldrama, persistently wondering in philosophical,


but also in religious terms about the reasonsfor her dire misfortunes.

Further on Mary continued to publish fiction:The Adventures of Perkin Warbeck in 1830 (a historicalnovel); Lodore in 1835 (a domestic romance,which became the most popular of her novelssince the publication of Frankenstein); and Falknerin 1837 (also a domestic romance) (this one aftershe lost her father, William Godwin, in 1836).

Between 1835 and 1840 she wrotebiographical essays for Rev. Dionysius LardnersThe Cabinet Cyclopaedia (Lives of the most eminentliterary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal biography, 3 volumes, published in 1835, 1836and 1837; Lives of the most eminent literary andscientific men of France biography, 2 volumes,published in 1838 and 1839).

Having been grudgingly allowed by SirTimothy Shelley to do so, Mary edited PercyShelleys Poetical works in 4 volumes in 1839, withnumerous notes; and in one volume in 1840. Alsoin 1840 she edited a two-volume edition of PercyShelleys Essays, letters from abroad, translations andfragments. In 1839, after finishing her editorialwork on Shelleys manuscripts, she contracted amajor nervous illness: in an entry for March1839, her Journal reads as follows:

Illness did ensuewhat an illnessdriving me tothe verge of insanityOften I felt the cord snap and Ishould no longer be able to rule my though[t]s withfearful strugglesmiserable relapsesAfter longrepose, I became somewhat better. (The journals of MaryShelley, 18141844, Shelley M 1987ii: 563, apudJamison 1994: 231)

Her physician recommended opium; she tookit, and that strengthened [her] head, which hadgone far astray, but left her with a sort ofunspeakable sensation of wildness and irritation,as she reported in a Letter to Leigh Hunt, dated20 July 1839 (The letters, Shelley M 1983: 318;apud Jamison 1994: 231).

The final publication during her life wasRambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843(1844), a travel book similar to her firstpublication, History of a Six Weeks Tour (1817).This last work is considered by some critics to beone of her best works it most certainly endedthe circle of her creativity in a grandiose manner.

Mary Shelley was finally diagnosed with braintumor in December 1850 the weakening

symptoms of which had appeared a little earlier:in October 1848 she complained of headaches.By that time the nervous illness she hadcontracted in 1839 developed into a more or lesschronic depression, on which she had reportedthe following in one of the last entries (for 26February 1841) in her Journal:

My mind slumbers & my heart is dullIs life quiteover? Have the storms and wrecks of the last yearsdestroyed my intellect, my imagination, my capacityof inventionWhat am I become? (The journals of MaryShelley, 18141844, Shelley M 1987ii: 572, apudJamison 1994: 231)

She died in London on the 1st of February,1851, thus no longer being able to complete herproject of writing William Godwins Memoirs (asnoted above, her father had died in 1836). Shewas buried in St. Peters, Bournemouth.

In the final period of her life she traveled toItaly twice with her son, Percy Florence, whomshe had the joy of seeing graduate fromCambridge University.

Posthumously, in 1959, Mary Shelleys Matildawas published, a novella that she had completedin 1819 and which has a taboo theme: a fathersincestuous relationship with his daughter (thistext had been suppressed by William Godwin,and so it remained unpublished for 140 years).Mary Shelleys casual writings were alsopublished well into the 20the century:

Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvertedited The journals of Mary Shelley, 18141844 in1987, in 2 volumes.

Richard Rothwell, Mary Shelley (1840)


Betty T. Bennett edited The letters of MaryWollstonecraft Shelley in 3 volumes, published,respectively, in 1980, 1983, and 1988, as well asSelected letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, publishedin 1995. Therewith came to light hundreds ofletters that had never before seen the light ofprint, and thus new insights are possible into thevery core of Mary Shelleys universe, both thebiographical and the fictional-artistic.

Mary Shelleys short stories, on the otherhand, have long been neglected, having been forthe first time collected only in 1891 by RichardGarnet: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Tales andStories, now first collected with an Introductionby Richard Garnett, London: William Paterson& Co. Only 55 copies of this volume were printedback in 1891, and several reprints wereundertaken, e.g. by Folcroft Library Editions,Folcroft, Pa., in 1976; Norwood Editions,Norwood, Pa., 1977; R. West, Philadelphia, 1978;and Nabu Press, 2010. Now this significant partof Mary Shelleys works attracts more and morecritical attention due primarily to its connectionswith Frankenstein by which more light is shed onthe enigma of the latter, but also because in theshort prose Mary Shelley reworks the Gothic in apersonal way, just as she had done it before inFrankenstein, where she relocated the usuallystatic centers of horror (which were traditionallypresent in castles or enchanted forests, etc., ashas been mentioned), removing them from thesetting to the body of the Monster itself. Theresult was in Frankenstein the creation of a fictionalportable horror in the person of the Creature,an itinerant center of horror. This fundamentalshift by relocation is considered by some criticsto be Mary Shelleys major contribution to theGothic (Snodgrass 2005: 316).

Johanna Russ wrote an introduction to a newedition (published in 1975) of Mary WollstonecraftShelley, Tales and Stories, Boston: Gregg Press.Seven of the tales have been reprinted in 1990,in Betty T. Bennett, Charles E. Robinson, eds.,The Mary Shelley reader: containing Frankenstein,Mathilda, Tales and Stories, Essays and Reviews, andLetters, New York: Oxford University Press. Thisis the best anthology of Mary Shelleys worksavailable, which contains, besides the seven shortstories, the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, thenovella Mathilda (1959), eight essays and reviews

(never before republished since their initialpublication), and eleven letters.

The way to Frankenstein

o understand how the tales are deeplyconnected with Frankenstein, a short lookat a few representative will suffice.

In the short story Roger Dodsworth: The Re-animated Englishman (1826), which originatedfrom a popular hoax about a would-beresuscitation back to life, Mary Shelley tells thehistory of a man who was found in a glacier andwas brought back to life. In the fragmentaryValerius; the Reanimated Roman, she elaborates onthe story of a body that was reborn without itssoul. In The Mourner (1830) she explores thequestion of monstrosity, the doppelgnger motif(which, some critics believe, is a major motif inFrankenstein, the Creature-Monster-Daemon beingnothing but Victors double, an example of thedoppelgnger archetype; cf. Bomarito 2006, vol.3: 321), and the complex of family relations. Inthe Gothic fairy tale Transformation (1831) sherelates the story of an ill-shapen Satanic dwarfwho exchanges identities with a vengefuldissipated young man, while in the tale The MortalImmortal (1833) she recounts the story of analchemists disciple struggling to understandimmortality (Punter & Byron 2004: 165) and theconsequences arising from its being (maybeimperfectly) conquered by human mortals.

In Roger Dodsworth: The Re-animated Englishman,Mary Shelley is thus interested in the questionof reanimation, as in Frankenstein, while inValerius; the Reanimated Roman she alludes to thequestion if life is possible (at least in a primitiveform) in the absence of a soul, in the subtext thequestion being whether the FrankensteinianCreature had in fact a soul. In Transformation sheanalyzes the possibility that the soul travels froma body to another, yet again possibly in order toanswer the question where the soul, if he hadany, of the Frankensteinian Daemon came from maybe from a Satanic source just as Hamletasked himself about the nature of his deadfathers Ghost.

In The Mortal Immortal, Mary Shelley extendsher Frankensteinian vision with a hero who justreaches the age of 323. In the subtext the question


lingers: a scientifically remorseless VictorFrankenstein, who had been looking forimmortality in scientific terms, imperfectlyreaching immortality or only prolonging his ownlife could be catastrophic: in this case he couldhave had so much more time to change his mindto create or not to create more Frankensteinianchildren, males and females, themselvespotentially immortal.

Ironically, an ominous example had beenprovided by Konrad Dippel from CastleFrankenstein who had worried his readers whenhe announced in 1733 that he had discovered aformula for extending his own life until 1801 when he were to have reached the age of 135 years, only to be found dead (probably by beingpoisoned, since part of his face had a bluecoloration) in 1734, within a year of his startlingannouncement (Florescu 1999: 86).

Mary Shelleys Mortal Immortal is anambiguous demi-godly / demi-human figure (ahalf dust, half deity hero, as Lord Byron createdin Manfred), who seems to have reached animperfect kind of immortality, since he discovereda gray hair on his 323rd anniversary, that might,however, have been lying there concealed for thepast three centuries a mark of decay. He meditates:

To have drained half the Elixir of Immortality isbut to be half immortalmy For-ever is thus truncatedand null. / But again, who shall number the years ofthe half of eternity? I often try to imagine by whatrule the infinite may be divided. Sometimes I fancyage advancing upon me. One gray hair I have found.(Shelley M 2012: 22)

More than that, the Mortal Immortal found away to test his deathless nature:

[A]n expedition, which mortal frame can neversurvive, even endued with the youth and strength thatinhabits mine. Thus I shall put my immortality to thetest, and rest for everor return, the wonder andbenefactor of the human species. (Shelley M 2012: 22)

This is, again, a Frankensteinian dream: theinitial purpose of Victor to become a benefactorof mankind by discovering the principle of eternallife in the physical frame. The Mortal Immortalthus explains why he wrote down his story forthe future generations before embarking on hisadventure that should, among others, lead himto the Poles (as is the case also in Frankenstein):

Before I go, a miserable vanity has caused me topen these pages. I would not die, and leave no namebehind. Three centuries have passed since I quaffedthe fatal beverage: another year shall not elapse before,encountering gigantic dangerswarring with thepowers of frost in their homebeset by famine, toil,and tempestI yield this body, too tenacious a cagefor a soul which thirsts for freedom, to the destructiveelements of air and water or, if I survive, my nameshall be recorded as one of the most famous amongthe sons of men; and, my task achieved. I shall adoptmore resolute means, and, by scattering andannihilating the atoms that compose my frame, set atliberty the life imprisoned within, and so cruellyprevented from soaring from this dim earth to a spheremore congenial to its immortal essence. (Shelley M2012: 22-23)

Mary Shelleys best-known book, Frankenstein;or, The modern Prometheus (1818), is aphilosophical-prophetic Gothic-romantic novel inthe line of works such as Faust, PrometheusUnbound, The Brothers Karamazov, and Middlemarch(Fisch, Mellor, Schor 1993: 3), but also such asParadise Lost, The Tempest, King Richard III, Alastor.[Richard Garnett (1891: VI-VII) pointed to twoliterary antecedents of Frankensteins daemon:Caliban in William Shakespeares The Tempest,although Caliban is seen as having been too self-sufficing in his valour and his villainy to be deeplypitied; and Richard III, in Shakespeares KingRichard III, although this hero is considered ashaving been too senseless and brutal. Likewise,Garnett (1891: VII) sees most of Victor Hugoswork as a conscious or unconscious variation onthe original theme of Frankenstein]

Frankenstein is also regarded as an inauguralscience fiction novel (Bloom 2007: 7), publishedearlier even than the at least sixteen textscontributed to the genre by Edgar Allan Poe, ofwhich Eureka is the most prominent (see HaroldBeavers memorable edition of 1976). In thiswork, the early influences in Mary Shelleysintellectual education are visible: her familiaritywith Scottish myths and legends populated byvarious creatures (of which monstroushumanoids caught her attention vividly); herinterest in the mysterious and supernaturalaspects of Scottish culture, which includedphenomena like raising spirits of departed people;her interest in occult knowledge; her preferencefor Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton,


Wordsworth (the latter visited the Godwinresidence, and so did Humphrey Davy, thefamous English chemist), Coleridge, Southey,Byron and the myth of Prometheus (inherited viaher fathers inclinations towards Greek and Latinclassic culture and towards history in general);her love of Percy (whose portrait as the poet ofPrometheus Unbound, according to Harold Bloom,may be traced in some measure in Henry Clerval),in whom Mary saw the impersonation of herparents radical views; etc.

Harold Bloom places the importance of thenovel in its being at the intersection between theRomantic and the Gothic:

What makes Frankenstein an important book [...] isthat it contains one of the most vivid versions we haveof the Romantic mythology of the self, one thatresembles Blakes Book of Urizen, Shelleys PrometheusUnbound, and Byrons Manfred among others. (Bloom1965: 215; see also Bloom 1965b: 611-618; apudWilliams 1995: 176-177)

Frankenstein recounts the horrible consequencesof a radical scientific action by which man, tryingto substitute God, artificially creates anotherhuman being, a new Adam. Through it, as Bloom(2007: 7) insightfully observed, Mary Shelleygave a powerful, implicit critique of theRomantic Prometheanism of her husband and theradical rationalism of her parents, the Daemonin the story having a tragic splendor, whileVictor Frankenstein, although representing agreat Hermetic scientist, is the true monsterof the novel, at most a figure of pathos. (Bloom2007: 9)

Let the legend begin: Castle Frankensteinand beyond

he origin of this important cultural iconand archetype is traced back by HaroldBloom (2007: 18) thus:

Mary Shelleys Frankenstein was born of a wakingnightmare she had on June 16, 1816. It was a visionso intense that it produced one of the most powerfulhorror stories in Western literature, a story thatassumed mythic dimensions as it addressed profoundimplications concerning mans understanding of hisplace in the world and the consequences oftransgressing against God and Nature. At the timeFrankenstein was first conceived, Mary and Percy

Bysshe Shelley were living outside Geneva at theMaison Chapuis, a cottage on the water at Cologny,and were visitors at the nearby Villa Diodati whereLord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and Byrons physician,John Polidori, were living at the time. During thecourse of several days in June, the group was keptindoors by incessant rainfall. One evening, while theywere sitting around reading some ghost stories, theyeach agreed to write their own horror tale. For severaldays, Mary tried to imagine such a story, but failed tocome up with one. However, following a discussionbetween Shelley and Byron concerning galvanism andErasmus Darwin, Mary fell into a reverie in whichshe saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneelingbeside the thing he had put together, namely, ahideous corpse that he had reanimated with a sparkof life. She finally had her ghost story.

Blooms reference to the pale student ofunhallowed arts is a quotation from MaryShelleys Introduction to the 1831 edition ofFrankenstein. This memorable passage deserves tobe quoted fully:

I saw with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneelingbeside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideousphantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on theworking of some powerful engine, show signs of life,and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightfulmust it be; for supremely frightful would be the effectof any human endeavour to mock the stupendousmechanism of the Creator of the world. His successwould terrify the artist; he would rush away from hisodious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hopethat, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he hadcommunicated would fade; that this thing, which hadreceived such imperfect animation, would subside intodead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that thesilence of the grave would quench for ever thetransient existence of the hideous corpse which hehad looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; buthe is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horridthing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, andlooking on him with yellow, watery, but speculativeeyes. / I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessedmy mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and Iwished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy forthe realities around. I see them still; the very room,the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with themoonlight struggling through, and the sense I hadthat the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond.I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom;still it haunted me. I must try to think of somethingelse. I recurred to my ghost story, my tiresomeunlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one


which would frighten my reader as I myself had beenfrightened that night! (Shelley M 1831: X-XI. See alsoMorrison & Stone 2003: 157)

The discussion between Lord Byron and PercyShelley mentioned above was mainly on theprinciple of life, as Mary Shelley confessed in herIntroduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein:

Many and long were the conversations betweenLord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout butnearly silent listener. During one of these, variousphilosophical doctrines were discussed, and amongothers the nature of the principle of life, and whetherthere was any probability of its ever being discoveredand communicated. They talked of the experimentsof Dr. Darwin, (I speak not of what the Doctor reallydid, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose,of what was then spoken of as having been done byhim,) who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glasscase, till by some extraordinary means it began tomove with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, wouldlife be given. Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated;galvanism had given token of such things: perhapsthe component parts of a creature might bemanufactured, brought together, and endued withvital warmth. (Shelley M 1831: IX-X)

Mary described the state of her mind whenthe idea of Frankenstein came to her as a totallyoverwhelming event, a veritable Eureka act, inArthur Koestlers terms:

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guidedme, gifting the successive images that arose in mymind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds ofreverie. [...] Swift as light and as cheering was theidea that broke in upon me. I have found it! Whatterrified me will terrify others; and I need onlydescribe the spectre which had haunted my midnightpillow. On the morrow I announced that I had thoughtof a story. I began that day with the words, It was on adreary night of November, making only a transcript ofthe grim terrors of my waking dream. (Shelley M 1831:X-XI)

Creativity thus conceived of entails deepauthenticity: whatever thrills the writer will thrillalso his readers, but if this effect of emotionalignition does not take place in the very act ofartistic creation (writing the story in this case),then in vain would any creator expect from hisaudience to feel such when reading a work thatin its making did not emotionally overpower itscreator with awe, dread, horror, joy, exuberance,or any other intense human feelings. In short,

with Mary Shelley artistic creation is aboutigniting ones psyche into experience unbound.

The ghost stories referred to that constitutedan initial influence for Mary and for the othersinvolved in the literary contest were from aGerman collection of tales translated into Frenchby J. B. B. Eyris under the title Fantasmagoriana(1812), and published a year later in Englandunder the title Tales of the Dead (1813) (Botting1996: 66). In her Introduction to the 1831 editionof Frankenstein, Mary pointed to Fantasmagoriana,explaining that this collection triggered in LordByron the idea that the group (Mary, Byron, Percy,and Polidori) should have a literary contest:

We will each write a ghost story, said Lord Byron.(Shelley M 1998: 7)

As mentioned, Lord Byron wrote a story thatwas published at the end of his volume entitledMazeppa, in 1819 (this story bears the title AFragment, it is dated June 17, 1816, and it iseleven pages long; Byron 1819: 59-69); Polidoriwrote The Vampyre (1819) (basing his story onByrons A Fragment from Mazeppa); and Percybegan a poem grounded in his early life (Morrison& Stone 2003: 157). Radu Florescu (1999: 115)underlines that in fact Percy did write his Fragmentof a Ghost Story, in which a grandmother sees aghost made up of ashes.

The name of her hero and the general themeof the novel, however, might have sprung inMarys imagination in fact as an elaborateconsequence of a trip by boat she and Percy hadundertaken in the direction of a medieval fortressknown as Castle Frankenstein, located on theRhine, in 1814 (they covered the portion of theriver between Mannheim and Mainz; cf. Florescu1999: 15-16). Some critics see in VictorFrankenstein Marys version of the Byronic hero,essentially characterized, among others, byundeterred ambition, which can be distorted intoobsession, and by destructive passion andunresolvable guilt (Morrison & Stone 2003: 157).

It appears that Castle Frankenstein was inruins at the time of Mary and Percys visit, andformerly it had been the birthplace of a certainKonrad Dippel (16731734), a physician, naturalphilosopher, alchemist, chemist, necromancerand theologian (author of some 70 books), whowas famous for experiments with corpses (Kamm


1997: 495). Local folklore (conveyed also byimportant people of the region such as the mayorof Nieder-Beerbach in the 1970s, Eric Naut; cf.Florescu 1999: 65) has it in fact that a youngEnglish lady and a man visited the castle and itssurroundings at the beginning of the 19thcentury, and as a consequence the two,presumably Mary and Percy Shelley, became quitefamiliar with Johann Konrad Dippels legendarystory according to which he had discovered thesecret of how to convert metals into gold and thesecret of immortality, the principle of life,experiments having been carried out surely in thescientific laboratories created in the castle itselfand possibly also at a vast mansion (which hadbeen owned by Dippels brother, Heinrich Adam,also a physician), now known as Dippelshof orDippels inn (also possibly visited by theShelleys), located in the village of Traisa, very nearto the small village called Nieder-Beerbach, at thefoot of Castle Frankenstein (Florescu 1999: 17).(Allegedly, Dippels conversion of metals intogold happened in 1701, when he mixed 50 partsof silver and mercury with the philosophers stonethus obtaining pure gold. However, the legendgoes, because Dippel used the gold for himselfto buy his own large estate thus breaking a ruleof alchemists never to use the gold for themselves he was to be punished: the jar containing theformula he had been working hard for years tocreate was broken, and the philosophers stonewas irretrievably lost; cf. Florescu 1999: 80).

Martin Garrett (2002: 13-14) mentioned (inthe entry for September, 1814) this possible(seemingly unplanned) visit:

On the morning of 2 (Fri) they reach Mannheim.Unfavourable wind forces their boat to moor overnightat Gernsheim. [Mary] and [Percy] walk for three hours.Conceivably they see Castle Frankenstein in thedistance and hear some of the legends associated withKonrad Dippel, who was interested in the reanimationof corpses.

In another rare reference to this mysteriouscastle, offered in Snodgrass (2005: 128) theentry for Frankensteins laboratory we readthe following:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sets the work sessionsof Frankenstein (1818) in a laboratory in Ingolstadt,Germany, a spot she may have adapted from BurgFrankenstein, a castle built in 1250 near Darmstadt,

Germany, and the home of Johann Konrad Dippel, alegendary early 18th-century alchemist and bodysnatcher. The writing took place before dissection andsurgery gained respectability, the absence of whichforces Victor Frankenstein to conceal his endeavors.Against advice to stick to pure science, he labors fortwo years to discover a method of passing the sparkof life into a shape assembled from oddments culledfrom numerous corpses. He describes his solitary workstation as a cell, at the top of the house, and separatedfrom all the other apartments by a gallery andstaircase. Applying Gothic forebodings to the story,Shelley emphasizes the severe isolation by whichVictor pursues his hellish inquiry and the increasingagitation that drives him to create life.

It is still a matter of debate how much MaryShelley knew about the legendary German feudalbarons Frankenstein, who are believed to haveinhabited, in the early Middle Ages (ca. the 13thcentury, 1250), Castle Frankenstein, located ontop of Magnet Mountain (Germ. Magnetberg)in the close vicinity of Darmstadt, the state ofHesse, Germany. Radu Florescu explored thequestion regarding whether Mary Shelley heardin fact during her visit in the region about thecurse that destroyed three brothers in theFrankenstein family in the 16th century, andabout the fact that Castle Frankenstein (whichin Florescus eyes looked, in 1973, when hevisited the place, very much like Draculasnotorious fortress; Florescu 1999: 16-17) was theplace where the ill-famed alchemist KonradDippel had been born and where he was to carryout his demonic chemical transmutations, theentire history of the castle being wrapped up inthe local legends that disclose a general beliefthe place and its surroundings had been centers ofalchemy and necromancy (Florescu 1999: 16-17).

Furthermore, Radu Florescu observed that noclues exist in Marys Letters and Journal or ClaireClairmonts Journal to reveal their visit to thelegndary Castle Frankenstein and their familiaritywith its historical horizon steeped in mystery. Thetwo stepsisters seem to have been keeping secretswhen this was necessary for them. In this sense,there is a baffling enigma: practically all theentries for the entire crucial period of thesummertime of 1816 (June and early July) havevanished not only from Marys Journal, but alsofrom Claires Journal as stressed above in orderto underline the possible conspiracy of silence


established between the two sisters as Florescusuggested. The possible visit to CastleFrankenstein on the 2nd (Friday) and/or 3rd(Saturday) of September 1814 is not mentionedin either of the diaries kept by Mary and Claire(Florescu 1999: 18, 59), in the context in whichthe two chief towers of Castle Frankenstein aredominating the hillside, being even today visiblewith the naked eye from the outskirts ofGernsheim, which the Shelley group without adoubt visited in 1814 (Claire mentioned in herJournal the town of Gernsheum, where she wentshopping with Percy on the 2nd of September)(Florescu 1999: 59-61). As evidence in this sensetwo elements are singled out:

1) A highly relevant passage in Frankensteinwhere Victor says the following:

We travelled at the time of the vintage [i.e.September], and heard the song of the labourers aswe glided down the stream. (apud Florescu 1999: 62)

Given Mary Shelleys fiction out of chaosnarrative theory, this might be anautobiographical indication that Mary and Percyindeed heard songs telling of the legends relatedto the Frankensteins.

2) An entry in John Polidoris Diary, where herelates the passage from Mannheim to Mainz:

Arrived at Mayence at 6. Saw along the Rhinemany fine old castles. (cf. Rossetti 1911: 87; apudFlorescu 1999: 96)

More than that, Dippels entire career as analchemist, chemist and physician resembles thecareer of Marys Genevese pale student ofunhallowed arts (see Florescu 1999: 77-78). Inthis sense, for instance, it is documented that atone point Dippel claimed to have found anArcanum chymicum, a chemical secret, and hewas willing to sell it to the Landgrave of Hessein exchange for the very domains of CastleFrankenstein, which had been sold to the houseof Hesse-Darmstadt. Even if the deal did notmaterialize in the end, this whole affair provedthat Dippel was deeply steeped in occult,unhallowed arts, and was willing to gainmaterial wealth by them, maybe in order toachieve the title of Lord of Frankenstein(Florescu 1999: 85). Also, just as Dippel neverdisclosed his formula in the end, so Mary doesnot tell us anything about the formula used by

Victor to create his artificial man (see Florescu1999: 92 for more parallels between the twoheroess lives).

Otherwise, the Shelleys are most likely to havecome across the name of Castle Frankensteinbecause they read the Edinburgh Review, in whichoftentimes stories were related about theDarmstadt circle, whose notorious members andvisitors (like the princess Louisa of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the future queen of Prussia; and Goethe)spent weekends at Castle Frankenstein. Florescu(1999: 90-91) stressed out in this sense that avolume often read by the Darmstadt group wasprecisely Goethes Sorrows of Young Werther, whichis mentioned in Frankenstein as a book essentialfor the Daemons education.

On the other hand, another source for Marysinitial inspiration to write the Frankenstein sagawas one of Erasmus Darwins specialexperiments, in which he is believed to haveanimated a piece of vermicelli: the experiment ismentioned by Mary herself in her 1831Introduction, as mentioned above. Also, Marymay have become familiar with a tale about aKnight Georg von Frankenstein who killed adragon-monster at Castle Frankenstein that theBrothers Grimm published in 1816 (Florescu1999: 34; 271-273).

Percy goaded Mary Shelley to expand her storyinto a novel and to extend her studies in thedirection required by the future novel. Being bothinterested in radical science, Percy and Mary wenttogether to lectures on this subject in London.Further on, Mary began extending her literaryefforts, using as sources for Frankenstein workssuch as the following (see also Morrison & Stone2003: 157-158):

1) J. J. Rousseaus mile (1762).2) Sir Humphrey Davys Elements of chemical

philosophy (1812). (For details on Davys toomercurial temperament and personality, whichso fascinated Lord Byron who engaged inanimated dinner conversations with him aboutvolcanoes and gases , but also P. B. Shelley andMary Shelley, who consulted the work mentionedabove at the time she was in the process of writingFrankenstein, see Jamison 2004: 231ff)

3) John Miltons Paradise Lost.4) John Lockes works.5) William Shakespeares plays.


6) Edward Gibbons The history of the declineand fall of the Roman Empire (17761788).

7) William Godwins An enquiry concerningpolitical justice, and its influence on general virtue andhappiness (1793): what influenced Mary mostfrom this political treatise is the demonstrationthat character is generated by circumstance(Punter & Byron 2004: 120), a view that laterthe romantic John Keats was to incorporate intohis theory about how souls are created uniqueby gaining their identity through a uniquesequence of imprints that the initial atoms ofperception, or intellectual sparks orintelligences, receive via the agency of personalexperience this individual experience isfundamentally determined by a unique set ofconditions surrounding it, that is to say, in Keatsianterms, by a unique world of Circumstances (cf.John Keatss famous Vale of Soul-Making; fordetails, see Stroe 2011: 365-366).

8) William Godwins The Adventures of CalebWilliams (1794): a gothic novel with darkatmosphere, where Godwin contended that manis the direst enemy of man.

9) William Godwins St. Leon: A Tale of theSixteenth Century (1799): an even more genuinegothic novel, where Godwin imagines analchemist-hero. Like Victor Frankenstein, he isof a Promethean line of descent and, in his questfor the philosophers stone, he travels toTransylvania as was to be the case later alsowith Bram Stokers legendary hero (Florescu1999: 31-32) and is subsequently sent to prisonby the Inquisition. He gains the philosophersstone from a Wandering Jew character: to benoted that the Monster in Frankenstein becomesa pariah like the Wandering Jew (Snodgrass2005: 126). St. Leon then kills his own servantand is bound in an underground vault, after whichhe realizes that he longs for the domestic affairsof the normal world he had initially rejected (cf.Punter & Byron 2004: 121).

In addition, Mary read also the Gothicbluebooks of Harriet and Sophia Lee, MaryRobinson, and Charlotte Smith, and met for thefirst time a Gothic classic in Ann Radcliffes TheMysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Charles BrockdenBrowns Wieland (Snodgrass 2005: 315).

In his Discourse (1802), Humphry Davy, afriend of William Godwins, was of the opinion

that the power of chemistry rests in its being theunderlying principle of all life. The chemist inthis view was able to alter the natural world,being a master, active with his own instruments.(cf. Mellor 1989: 93, apud Jansson 1999: IX, n. 5)

Erasmus Darwin, on the other hand, inZoonomia (1793) and Phytologia (1800) wasinterested in the natural processes of creation andregeneration, and not in Humphry Davysinterventionist language of control (cf. Jansson1999: IX), which in the last analysis is related toFrancis Bacons idea that man is supposed to tamenature and submit it to his will like an alchemistof sorts, who can better nature by perfecting morequickly what nature does in so very long periodsof time (for instance, the long gestation of metalsin the womb of the Earth is sped up by alchemistswith a view to obtaining the alchemical gold, theperfect metal, quite swiftly). The whole novelFrankenstein thus embraces Erasmus Darwinsnon-interventionist philosophy, by pointing outthe catastrophe which is imminent if manembraces the idea that science must be a master,such as Davys chemical view implies, and suchas postulated by the Baconian paradigm.

The most evident impact on the birth ofFrankenstein seems thus to have come from LuigiGalvanis experiments with reanimating deadtissue undertaken in 1791: Galvani used animalelectricity generated from the brain andtransmitted through nerves to the muscles andthe other internal organs. These details constituteevidence for the fact that Frankenstein was bornin a veritable melting pot of literature-and-science, and from authentic scientific knowledgeof the time, as observed by Mellor (1989: 90;apud Jansson 1999: IX).

However, as the subtitle suggests, the mythof Prometheus was also a major impetus, in bothits versions:

Prometheus plasticator (present in OvidsMetamorphoses), who tries to animate a man of clay.

Prometheus pyrphorus (present inAeschyluss Prometheus Bound), who stole thesecret of fire from the gods, for which he waspunished. (Jansson 1999: XVII, n. 16)

The earlier text of Frankenstein (the first editionof 1818) is moreover much connected with theLuddite disturbances having taken place between1811 and 1817 (when English mechanicals crashed


machines because these threatened to deprivethem of their jobs involving manual work) andthe Pentridge uprising of 1817 (Paul OFlinn, cf.Botting 1995, apud Jansson 1999: XVIIIXIX, n.21). A possible relation of Frankenstein with the1832 Reform Bill and the 1832 Anatomy Act mayalso exist, the latter having afforded physiciansthe right to use the dead bodies of the poor, ifunclaimed by any relative, for scientific purposesin experiments; this soon became a reason forvast anxieties and psychological traumas andfears that the poor were being made into victimsof scientific progress (Tim Marshall 1995; apudJansson 1999: XIXXX).

That Mary Shelley used so many sources forcreating her memorable story is consistent withher theory on the matter of invention and discovery:

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does notconsist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; thematerials must, in the first place, be afforded: it cangive form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannotbring into being the substance itself. In all matters ofdiscovery and invention, even of those that appertainto the imagination, we are continually reminded ofthe story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consistsin the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of asubject, and in the power of moulding and fashioningideas suggested to it. (Shelley M 1831: IX)

In other words, Mary Shelley embraced afiction out of chaos narrative theory in a contextwhere literature and science were metaphoricallymolten in an alchemical, transformative meltingpot bound to lead to masterpieces in the handsof creators who embraced in their lives fully bothpain/trauma, but also the zest of life in its daringquest for freedom unbound. Most of MaryShelleys essential biographical elements presentedhere point in this direction: that in her early yearsshe was a fervent quester for unlimited freedomand adventure, for experience unbound, regardlesshow reckless and dangerous this quest really wasin the eyes of conventionalized society. Her life wasthus stirred by both extreme pain and a howlingdesire to live, to create, to love freely and infinitely,to the point of melting down her own feminineexistence into the very ethereal ungraspable bodyof freedom and its companion joy.

In this sense, Ghiselin (1985: 4) speaks aboutthe necessity of chaos/disorder in creativity, atleast in the early stages of creation:

Even to the creator himself, the earliest effort mayseem to involve a commerce with disorder. For thecreative order, which is an extension of life, is not anelaboration of the established, but a movement beyondthe established, or at least a reorganization of it [...].The first need is therefore to transcend the old order.Before any new order can be defined, the absolutepower of the established [...] must be broken. Newlife comes always from outside our world [...]. This isthe reason why, in order to invent, one must yield tothe indeterminate within him, or, more precisely, tocertain ill-defined impulses which seem to be of thevery texture of the ungoverned fullness which JohnLivingston Lowes calls the surging chaos of theunexpressed. [...] Creation begins with a vague, evena confused excitement [...].

However, whereas Ghiselin (1985: 4) refers tothis chaos/disorder/confusion as being an almostinappropriate term for the indeterminatefullness and activity of the inner life, MaryShelley refers to it as being the endless abundanceof infinitesimal details (history, culture,civilization, art, science, language, music, etc.)in all human experience, which rush intoexistence claiming, as it were, our attention andso influencing and even determining ourperceptions of the world. In other words, Ghiselinrefers to the discrete mechanisms in the interiorof the individual (the psyche, as one sector ofWilbers quaternary, the latter comprising also theexterior of the individual, the interior of thecollective and the exterior of the collective, andthus defining the whole of reality), manifestingphysically in the cerebral activity in the brain(Wilbers exterior of the individual) which isenhanced in creativity as keenly described byAndreasen (2006: 77-78):

It is as if the multiple association cortices arecommunicating back and forth, not in order tointegrate associations with sensory or motor input asis often the case, but simply in response to oneanother. The associations are occurring freely. Theyare running unchecked, not subject to any of the realityprinciples that normally govern them. Initially theseassociations may seem meaningless or unconnected.I would hypothesize that during the creative processthe brain begins by disorganizing, making links betweenshadowy forms of objects or symbols or words orremembered experiences that have not previouslybeen linked. Out of this disorganization, self-organization eventually emerges and takes over in thebrain. The result is a completely new and original thing:a mathematical function, a symphony, or a poem.


Describing thus extraordinary creativity,Nancy Andreasen coincidentally probed deep alsointo the mechanisms at the heart of MaryShelleys narrative theory: a melting pot ofshadowy forms of objects, symbols, words,and remembered experiences all taken fromreality constitutes the platform on which herliterary laboratory is set in such a way as tobecome a deep incentive towards exuberance. Thelatter is reached only if the thrill of existentialand experiential mystery is felt by the creatorherself/himself, the thrill itself illuminating theencounter between the creator and that mystery,the result being a sort of transcendentalchanneled perception of the yet unborn creation.In such an awesome process of encountering thefuture, Mary Shelley came to see, as through aterror-inspiring veil of vision or prophecy, thepale student of unhallowed arts kneeling besidethe thing he had put together. Because theencounter was so haunting, her realization wassudden and definitive: I have found it! Whatterrified me will terrify others.

In this same direction of a poetics/narrativetheory of confusion/disorder, Lowes (1927)spoke of the teeming chaos of [Coleridges] NoteBook [that] gives us [...] the charged and electricalatmospheric background of a poets mind (apudGhiselin 1985: 13). Indeed such teeming chaosof historical, scientific, literary, poetic and artisticideas seems to have surrounded Mary Shelley likea haunting aura affording her the rough substanceneeded in the act of extraordinary creation. Herown life, as that of her husband, had been sohectic and chaotic in her youth (Jamison 1994:181 speaks in this sense of the chaos of Lord

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