Mary Shelley: The Birth of Frankenstein. Prod. and dir. Mary Downes. Written by David Nokes, presented by Robert Winston. Cast: David Schofield, Lucy Davenport, Raphaella Pester, Clive Merrison, Harriet Walter, Oliver Chris, Amy Phillips, Stephen Mangan, Ronan Vibert, Simon Lacey. (BBC Education and Training). Co-prod. BBC / Opus Arte. UK: BBC, 2003.*
Notas (tomadas en 2007) sobre el prólogo del editor y la introducción de la autora de Frankenstein. Edición usada:
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein. Ed. M. K. Joseph. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969. (World's Classics ed., 1980).
Introduction (by M. K. Joseph).
The Prometheus myth is a basic clue to the meaning of Frankenstein. 2 myths: Prometheus pyrphoros and Prometheus plasticator, mixed since late Antiquity. The theme was being worked on by Byron and Shelley at the time Mary Shelley wrote the novel. Theories of galvanism, Erasmus Darwin, H. Davy, Volta... and Shaftesbury's Characteristicks, on the possibility of creating a human being, use of Prometheus myth.
3 concentric layer structure. (En realidad 4 capas concéntricas, pues el prefacio de Mary Shelley se ha vuelto parte de la novela (véase por ej. la versión de Gonzalo Suárez, Remando al viento), y las extrañas conexiones críticas con el libro desarrolladas tanto por la misma M. Shelley como por los comentadores, que la suelen mostrar como la que roba el fuego de la inspiración de los poetas).
Parallelism between Walton and Frankenstein: Faustian hybris in both. Cautionary tale vs. the science which takes men away from normal society. Echo of The Ancient Mariner. Parallelism Mer de Glace (Alps) / the North Pole. The Monster's narrative: a Godwinian Genesis.
Improbabilities and contrivances: the cottage, Safie, the journal. Paradise Lost offers a double parallel (Adam/Satan) for the Monster. He demands his Eve; "we are drawn to complete the equation for ourselves: as the monster is to Frankenstein, so perhaps is Frankenstein to whatever power created man. The clue to the monster's predicament—benevolence corrupted—may also be the clue to Frankenstein's" (xi).
The Monster becomes a doppelgänger or a Mr Hyde. Only at end the story is proved not to be an hallucination. "Yet the monster is, in a literal sense, a projection of Frankenstein's mind, and an embodiment of his guilt in withdrawing from his kind and pursuing knowledge which, though not forbidden, is still dangerous." (xi). The epigraph applies to both. (Y a Mary Shelley también). Frankenstein's sin vs. Godwinian social benevolence, influenced by Perby Bysshe Shelley's Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.
Writing at the start of scientific revolution: Prometheanism is applied by Mary Shelley to science, not art —a great move. The novel creates a lasting symbol of the perils of scientific Prometheanism, it has become independent myth, giving rise to films, etc., "It is ironic but entirely appropriate that, in the process, the nameless monster seems to have usurped the name of his creator" (xiii).
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Epigraph from Paradise Lost. (Y sigue inmediatamente la dedicatoria a William Godwin, su padre; hay pues dos "makers"; "to mould Me man", irónico en una mujer autora, ¿clave genérica para la novela como travestismo?)
Introduction (de Mary Shelley, en retrospección, escrita en 1831).
(Se oye una voz nueva, nueva relación del autor con la invención y la imaginación. Lo presenta como parte de su vida interior, sólo con dificultad y límites transmitible al papel. Escribe desde niña, pero le gusta fantasear:)
"my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.' Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following of trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents" (5) Dreams are free and original, writings are derivative, because they are going to be read by others, "but my dreams were all my own" (5).
"I did not make myself the heroine of my tales" (6) (pero sugiere un elemento de proyección que además se realiza: "I could not figure myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my lot; but I was not confined to my own identity, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesing to me at that age, than my own sensations" (6). Nota: to people, creations.
Luego se presenta a sí misma como discípula e hija intelectual de Percy Bysshe Shelley. Historia de la estancia en Suiza, historias de fantasmas alemanas que lee prefiguran temas en Frankenstein: el retorno de lo reprimido, el creador que acaba con su raza. Byron propone escribir cada uno una ghost story, pero Mary insinúa que ni la prosa ni la narración se les dan bien: "The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task" (8) (—detecto un tono de burla?).
"I busied myself to think of a story" desea mostrar miedos misteriosos ocultos en nuestra naturaleza y asustar al lector, pero writer's block: "that blank capability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations" (—¿invocar a lo oculto?).
Mary aprende de Byron y Shelley como el monstruo aprende de Paradise Lost: "Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener" (8). Experimentos científicos discutidos, posibilidad de crear vida, electricidad, fabricación de partes corporales "brought together, and endued with vital warmth" (9) —cf. el sueño de su hija muerta, acercado al fuego y calentado a la vida.
La noche de la conversación, "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" (9). "Ve" la imagen central de la novela, el monstruo animado "on the working of some powerful engine" (9). "Frightful it must be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" (9). Cf. la oposición entre la auténtica vida y creación de la poesía de Byron y Shelley, por una parte, y el "mecanismo" de la prosa por otra, que ellos no consiguen crear pero Mary sí, efecto de una "Uneasy, half vital motion" quizá.
Es crucial en el prefacio el tema de Frankenstein durmiendo, paralelismo con M. Shelley: esperando a que se disuelva la fantasía, "that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter" (9). Paralelismo monstruo / historia: Frankenstein libro, creador y monstruo son todo uno.
Pasa al presente histórico: el libro como proyección y conciencia autónoma, nos mira (como el monstruo) con "yellow, watery, but speculative eyes" (9). Enlace narrativo: "I opened mine in terror".
Pasamos al pasado verbal; busca la autora librarse de la idea, pero sólo lo puede hacer aceptándola, creando el monstruo. "I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me" (10).
Parece chocante que hasta entonces no hubiese relacionado ese monstruo con la historia, y entonces percibe la relación. Además, anuncia orgullosamente Mary Shelley que lo que la aterroriza a ella aterrorizará a otros, y se libra de su complejo de inferioridad ante los grandes poetas: "I announced that I had thought of a story". Shelley la anima a desarrollarlo, etc.
"And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart" (10). Sugiere que para ella la novela tiene asociaciones personales con aquella época, pero no para el lector. —¡Tela! Lo importante es la semiconsciencia o deliberación con la que establece el paralelismo entre la creación del monstruo y la de la novela.
—oOo—
Un artículo no exactamente sobre este tema en The Conversation:
Míguez Barciela, Aída. (Area of Philosophy, U de Zaragoza). "Frankenstein y los traumas de la ciencia." The Conversation 27 Nov. 2022.*
https://theconversation.com/frankenstein-y-los-traumas-de-la-ciencia-193891
2022
Y mi comentario:
Un par de vídeos al respecto:
Lukacs de Pereny, Miklos. "El Gran Reinicio: una revisión crítica / The Great Reset: a critical review." Video. YouTube (Miklos Lukacs) 23 Nov. 2020.* (Technology, Human nature; Post-humanism, globalism, progress, Cyborgs, control, genetics; Soros; Gates; philanthropy; World Economic Forum, WHO, UN, NGOs, superheroes, ideology, Christianity).
2020
Morás, Nicolás. "💣 🚫 PROHIBIDO en Televisión 📺 🔥 ¿Qué pasará en 2022 y en los próximos años?" Video. YouTube (Los Liberales) 2021.* (Roberto Lamadrid; globalism; Social engineering; Post-humanism, Big Tech, plandemics, utopianism, control, data, censorship, elites, magnates, capitalism, ideology, totalitarianism, alarmism, climatology, fear, manipulation).
2021
_____. "🟡 Harari: El Pensador de Elite que busca el fin de la Humanidad🔓 – Historia de la Filosofía." Video. YouTube (Los Liberales) 9 Oct. 2022.* (Posthumanism, Data, Google, Schwab, WEF; Technology, Elites, Social engineering; Control; Depopulation).
2022
What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I—I am also subject to the same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of the creation, wielders of the elements, masters of life and death, and we allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the individual is destroyed, man continues for ever.
Thus, losing our identity, that of which we are chiefly conscious, we glory in the continuity of our species, and learn to regard death without terror. But when any whole nation becomes the victim of the destructive powers of exterior agents, then indeed man shrinks into insignificance, he feels his tenure of life insecure, his inheritance on earth cut off.
I remember, after having witnessed the destructive effects of a fire, I could not even behold a small one in a stove, without a sensation of fear. The mounting flames had curled around the building, as it fell, and was destroyed. They insinuated themselves into the substances about them, and the impediments to their progress yielded at their touch. Could we take integral parts of this power, and not be subject to its operation? Could we domesticate a cub of this wild beast, and not fear its growth and maturity?
Thus we began to feel, with regard to many-visaged death let loose on the chosen districts of our fair habitation, and above all, with regard to the plague. We feared the coming summer. Nations, bordering on the already infected countries, began to enter upon serious plans for the better keeping out of the enemy. We, a commercial people, were obliged to bring such schemes under consideration; and the question of contagion became matter of earnest disquisition.
That the plague was not what is commonly called contagious, like the scarlet fever, or extinct small-pox, was proved. It was called an epidemic. But the grand question was still unsettled of how this epidemic was generated and increased. If infection depended upon the air, the air was subject to infection. As for instance, a typhus fever has been brought by ships to one sea-port town; yet the very people who brought it there, were incapable of communicating it in a town more fortunately situated. But how are we to judge of airs, and pronounce—in such a city plague will die unproductive; in such another, nature has provided for it a plentiful harvest? In the same way, individuals may escape ninety-nine times, and receive the death-blow at the hundredth; because bodies are sometimes in a state to reject the infection of malady, and at others, thirsty to imbibe it. These reflections made our legislators pause, before they could decide on the laws to be put in force. The evil was so wide-spreading, so violent and immedicable, that no care, no prevention could be judged superfluous, which even added a chance to our escape.
These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate necessity for an earnest caution. England was still secure, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and the plague. Our vessels truly wre the sports of winds and waves, even as Tulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but we on our stable abode could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature. We could not fear—we did not. Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Nature, our mother, and our friend had turned on us a brow of menace. She shewed us plainly, that, though she permitted us to assign her laws and subdue her apparent powers, yet, if she put forth but a finger, we must quake. She could take our globe, fringed with mountains, girded by the atmosphere, containing the condition of our being, and all that man's mind could invent or his force achieve; she could take the ball in her hand, and cast it into space, where life would be drunk up, and man and all his efforts for ever annihilated.
These speculations were rife among us; yet not the less we proceeded in our daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplishment demanded the lapse of many years. No voice was heard telling us to hold! When foreign distresses came to be felt by us through the channels of commerce, we set ourselves to apply remedies. Subscriptions were made for the emigrants, and merchants bankrupt by the failure of trade. The English spirit awoke to its full activity, and, as it had ever done, set itself to resist the evil, and to stand in the breach which diseased nature had suffered chaos and death to make in the bounds and banks which had hitherto kept them out.
At the commencement of summer, we began to feel, that the mischief which had taken place in distant countries was greater than we had at first suspected. Quito was destroyed by an earthquake. Mexico laid waste by the united effects of storm, pestilence and famine. Crowds of emigrants inundated the west of Europe; and our island had become the refuge of thousands. In the mean time Ryland had been chosen Protector. He had sought this office with eagerness, under the idea of turning his whole forces to the suppression of the privileged orders of our community. His measures were thwarted, and his schemes interrupted by this new state of things. Many of the foreigners were utterly destitute; and their increasing numbers at length forbade a recourse to the usual modes of relief. Trade was stopped by the failure of the interchange of cargoes usual between us, and America, India, Egypt and Greece. A sudden break was made in the routine of our lives. In vain our Protector and his partizans sought to conceal this truth; in vain, day after day, he appointed a period for the discussion of the new laws concerning hereditary rank and privilege; in vain he endeavoured to represent the evil as partial and temporary. These disasters came home to so many bosoms, and, though the various channels of commerce, were carried so entirely into every calss and division of the community, that of necessity they became the first question in the state, the chief subjects to which we must turn our attention. Can it be true, each asked the other with wonder and dismay, that whole countries are laid waste, whole nations annihilated, by these disorders in nature? The vast cities of America, the fertile plains of Hindostan, the crowded abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with utter ruin. Where late the busy multitudes assembled for pleasure or profit, now only the sound of wailing and misery is heard. The air is empoisoned, and each human being inhales death, even while in youth and health, their hopes are in the flower. We called to mind the plague of 1348, when it was calculated that a third of mankind had been destroyed. As yet western Europe was uninfected; would it always be so?
O, yes, it would—Countrymen, fear not! in the still uncultivated wilds of America, what wonder that among its other giant destroyers, Plague should be numbered! It is of old a native of the East, sister of the tornado, the earthquake, and the simoom. Child of the sun, and nursling of the tropics, it would expire in these climes. It drinks the dark blood of the inhabitant of the south, but it never feasts on the pale-faced Celt. If perchance some stricken Asiatic come among us, plague dies with him, uncommunicated and innoxious. Let us weep for our brethren, though we can never experience their reverse. Let us lament over and assist the children of the garden of the earth. Late we envied their abodes, their spicy groves, fertile plains, and abundant loveliness. But in this morta life extremes are always matched; the thorn grows with the rose, the poison tree and the cinnamon mingle their boughs. Persia, with its cloth of gold, marble halls, and infinite wealth, is now a tomb. The tent of the Arab is fallen on the sands, and his horse spurns the ground unbridled and unsaddled. The voice of lamentation fills the valley of Cashmere; its dells and woods, its cool fountains, and gardens of roses, are polluted by the dead; in Circassia and Georgia the spirit of beauty weeps over the ruin of its favourite temple—the form of woman.
Our own distresses, though they were occasioned by the fictitious reciprocity of commerce, encreased in due proportion. Bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, whose trade depended on exports and interchange of wealth, became bankrupt. Such things, when they happen singly, affect only the immediate parties; but the prosperity of the nation was now shaken by frequent and extensive losses. Families, bred in opulence and luxury, were reduced to beggary. The very state of peace in which we gloried was injurious; there were no means of employing the idel, or of sending any overplus of population out of the country. Even the source of colonies was dried up, for in New Holland, Van Diemen's Land, and the Cape of Good Hope, plague raged. O, for some medicinal vial to purge unwholesome nature, and bring back the earth to its accustomed health!
Ryland was a man of strong intellects and quick and sound decision in the usual course of things, but he stood aghast at the multitude of evils that gathered round us. Must he tax the landed interest to assist our commercial population? To do this, he must gain the favour of the chief land-holders, the nobility of the country; and these were his vowed enemies—he must conciliate them by abandoning his favourite scheme of equalization; he must confirm them in their manorial rights; he must aim no more at the dear object of his ambition; throwing his arms aside, he must for present ends give up the ultimate object of his endavours. He came to Windsor to consult with us. Every day added to his difficulties; the arrival of fresh vessels with emigrants, the total cessation of commerce, the starving multitude that thronged around the palace of the Protectorate, were circumstances not to be tampered with. The blow was struck; the aristocracy obtained all they wished, and they subscribed to a twelvemonths' bill, which levied twenty percent on all the rent-rolls of the country.
Calm was now restored to the metropolis, and to the populous cieties, before driven to desperation; and we returned to the consideration of distant calamities, wondering if the future would bring any alleviation to their excess. It was August; so there could be small hope of relief during the heats. On the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while starvation did its accustomed work. Thousands died unlamented; for beside the yet warm corpse the mourner was stretched, made mute by death.
On the eighteenth of this month news arrived in London that the plague was in France and Italy. These tidings were at first whispered about town; but no one dared express aloud the soul-quailing intelligence. When any one met a friend in the street, he only cried as he hurried on, 'You know!'—while the other, with an ejaculation of fear and horror, would answer, —'What will become of us?' At lenght it was mentioned in the newspapers. The paragraph was inserted in and obscure part: 'We regret to state that there can be no longer a doubt of the plague having been introduced at Leghorn, Genoa, and Marseilles.' No word of comment followed; each reader made his own fearful one. We were as a man who hears that his house is burning, and yet hurries through the streets, borne along by a lurking hope of a mistake, till he turns the corner, and sees his sheltering roof enveloped in a flame. Before it had been a rumour; but now in words uneraseable, in definite and undeniable print, the knowledge went forth. Its obscurity of situation rendered it the more conspicuous: the diminutive letters grew gigantic to the bewildered eye of fear: they seemed graven with a pen of iron, impressed by fire, woven in the clouds, stamped on the very front of the universe.
Una pequeña introducción a su vida y obra. Y aquí mi comentario sobre Mary as the Monster.
—oOo—
