Love at a Reasonable Price

Author: Mary Shelley
We link here to our intervention.
This is part of Fixing Frankenstein.

From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the lectures and cultivated the acquaintance of the men of science of the university, and I found even in M. Krempe a great deal of sound sense and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In M. Waldman I found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism, and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension. My application was at first fluctuating and uncertain; it gained strength as I proceeded and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.

As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on, whilst M. Waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress. Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make. None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and I, who continually sought the attainment of one object of pursuit and was solely wrapped up in this, improved so rapidly that at the end of two years I made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.

One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light.

I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be; listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

Here begins the second part of Ambitions Redirected.

[Continue Reading after having finished “Ambitions Redirected”]

It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I well remembered the words of my father: “I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected.”

I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.

I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Cæsar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed.

My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before. Winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves—sights which before always yielded me supreme delight—so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a close, and now every day showed me more plainly how well I had succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.

Author: Mary Shelley
We link here to our intervention.
This is part of Fixing Frankenstein.

Author: Mary Shelley
We link here to our intervention.
This is part of Fixing Frankenstein.

When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery.

Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper—Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. “My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father.

Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.”

She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed for ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.

My departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me, and above all, I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled.

She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time, when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. She forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget.

The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.

We sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word “Farewell!” It was said, and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived; but when at morning’s dawn I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there—my father again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand once more, my Elizabeth to renew her entreaties that I would write often and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend.

I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure—I was now alone. In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends and be my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Elizabeth, and Clerval; these were “old familiar faces,” but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent.

I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased.

The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors. Chance—or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment I turned my reluctant steps from my father’s door—led me first to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. “Have you,” he said, “really spent your time in studying such nonsense?”

I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.”

So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted.

I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the information which M. Krempe had given me concerning the lectures. And although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M. Waldman, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.
Partly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. His person was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget:

“The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”

Such were the professor’s words—rather let me say such the words of the fate—enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight’s thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Waldman a visit. His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public, for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. I gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had given to his fellow professor. He heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had exhibited. He said that “These were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” I listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation, and then added that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists; I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labours. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.

“I am happy,” said M. Waldman, “to have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.”

He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave.

Beginning of “Ambitions Redirected”

Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.

Author: Mary Shelley
We link here to our intervention.
This is part of Fixing Frankenstein.

[NYC Journal Politics]

Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Sen. David Perdue (R) said on Wednesday that he would not have certified Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.

“Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldn’t have signed it until those things had been investigated and that’s all we were asking for,” Perdue told Axios.

He added if he had been governor at the time, he would have called for a special session of the state legislature to “protect and fix what was wrong for the January election” rather than to change the election’s results, Axios reported.

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud impacting Georgia’s election results, which were counted three times, including once by hand, Axios added.

Earlier this week, former President Trump, who has claimed without substantiation that practices like mail-in ballots contribute to widespread voter fraud, issued a statement saying, “David Perdue has my Complete and Total Endorsement. He will not let you down!”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/584949-georgia-governor-candidate-perdue-says-he-wouldnt-have-certified-2020

12/8/2021 – The Hill

A man can accept that he does not need a woman or a nice house and coffee breaks.
But what if he cannot stop the evil?
What if he watches the evil gathering and stupidly cavorting in public places to the applaud of many?
What if he watches the evil coming from a little ways off; and the evil is wearing nothing but silly flimsy obvious lies; and yet for all that obviousness, the evil grows and spreads and builds itself fortresses and cannons?

Now he must live alone and without any particular personal achievement while the world falls apart around him for no good reason, for no reason, just some bitterness and meanness, some idiocy and willful self-confusions.

You are evil David Perdue. You are harming a system that protects not just hundreds of millions of US citizens, but that also serves as a bulwark against much worse types of regimes.

What can I say?

Who will stop you?

What wisdom will fill and guide the citizenry so that your attacks on our shared government — only shareable so long as democracy survives — will meet with defeat?

How do you do it, Perdue? What strange pairings of purposefully-fuzzy ideas with patriotic, heroic, and bereaved feelings do you employ, David Perdue? How do you convince yourself that you are doing good while you do evil?

Echoing Trump, David Perdue Sues Over Baseless Election Claims
The legal action by Mr. Perdue, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, was the latest sign that 2020 election falsehoods will be a main focus of his bid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/us/politics/david-perdue-georgia-election.html
NY Times 12/10/2021

This is the stuff that destroys not just a nation, but a people; not just prosperity, but security; not just comfort, but decency. The more corrupt the state, the more is evil rewarded and goodness punished.

Is this what you want, David Perdue?

Deep inside?

Do you squirm towards the evil? Does it tickle you and pull you in? Do you imagine yourself a don in a mafia movie? Would you like to lick Donald Trump’s ring? Does that grab you deep inside?

I cannot stop you. The people who can stop you are not registered Democrats living in New York City, wandering the crowded streets discussing incidentals with their lonesomes.

If a person cannot stop the evil, but must instead watch it stroll merrily through the crisp December air towards power and prestige — what is that for a life?

There’s no plan possible if the evil can’t be stopped.

But what gives the evil a chance? What is the force that would allow people to abandon a shared reality inside a relatively wonderful time and place, and instead take up with fantasies about terrible wrongs enacted upon their persons? When were these terrible wrongs enacted? Sometime while they were on the sofa, eating potato chips and watching television. What were the terrible wrongs? Donald Trump lost a fair election and was not able to continue deconstructing US American Democracy from the inside.

Why? Why, America?
Why are you such a bunch of babies?
You want to know what it is like to live in a tyranny?
Keep abusing democracy and you will find out.

No, there’s nothing I can do.
I lack the wisdom.
And I anyway feel myself turning into dust from the inside out.

Who will stop the evil?
No hero, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their violence.
No saint, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their certainty.
No genius, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their insight.
No leader, no artist, no regular guy or gal — no one is able to see beyond themselves enough to actually help.

But what about wisdom?
Insofar as wisdom is real, wisdom is human beings feeling, thinking and acting aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, and joyfully together. Wisdom is an organization of feelings, thoughts, and actions around the kind gentle light within and shining through every conscious moment — the light that is aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, joyfully generous, and oh so very gentle, so very careful.

Goodness is careful with human beings and the interconnected systems wherein they live. That’s the mark of Goodness. The mark of evil is carelessness with human beings and the places — including systems of government — within which they live and upon which they are (generally way more than they realize) dependent.

How will we stop the evil unless we all together somehow shake ourselves out of these our private realities and gather together around the table.
But how would that happen?
Collectively growing in wisdom is not a scene in an action movie, nor in a detective thriller, nor in a rom com, nor even in an oscar-worthy drama, nor in any movie at all.
So how are we going to believe in it enough to share it?

You can debate, USA, how best to govern the nation.
But once you begin using the tricks of dictators — when you, for this most recent example, decry fair open and publicly verifiable elections as bogus while working to disenfranchise voters and replace their decisions with those of powers of your own choosing — then you are just plain evil, and you just plain need to stop. So please stop. I cannot stop you, but maybe you can stop yourselves. Look at the good things you’ve got! Isn’t it nice to live in a nation where you don’t have to be king in order to be able to keep your family safe? Isn’t it good to live in a place where you can get and maintain power without having to throw dissenters into prison, turn the press into your propagandize machine, and otherwise prioritize thuggery and self-preservation over honest, open, competent governing?

Blind cynicism is just as corrosive a lie as blind followerism.
And the two are generally two sides of the same attack: blindly you decry the terrible unfairness of the other side; blindly you praise the incredible wisdom of your side.

The truth is we can make democracy better.
Not by disparaging fairly contested and publicly verified election results while manipulating local election laws to one’s own advantage.
But, rather, by working together to make elections more secure and more transparent. And by working together to help educate the nation about our system of government, in critical thinking, and on how to consume media critically. And by working together to get the nation to the polls.
We can make democracy stronger by spending more classroom time on government, critical thinking, and media analysis; and by declaring election days national holidays, making voting mandatory, and investing in elections to make sure the results are secure.
A functioning democracy is the foundation upon which this nation rises or falls.
So: Yes: We should prioritize democracy.
So let’s actually do that.
Instead of blowing smoke in everyone’s eyes and trying to steal their country while they blink and cough in pained confusion and consternation.

What am I to do with you, David Perdue?
Are you evil?
Do I know this because I am Good?
Or could we just say that here you are wrong and must be stopped and we all together know this because we all together know that the way to make US American democracy stronger is not what you are up to; it is, rather, the kinds of reforms we’ve just outlined. The kind of obvious, bipartisan, simple reforms that increase the franchise while simultaneously improving our shared interest in and ability to assess information, think critically, and together guide our shared nation towards the gentle, and the good.

There may yet be time to heal democracy and head off the disasters that loom so mushroom cloud and silent spring upon our shared horizon.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

[NYC Journal Politics]

I know,

sweet young thing,

that at first glance

I don’t seem like the very

best of choices.

But if,

angel of my heart,

you would but grant me a short interview,

within which I might organize and present my case,

and whereby I could,

more thoroughly and precisely and exposed,

lay myself at your lovely little feet,

I think you would find,

my beautiful miss,

that I’m not such a bad option after all.

I’ve virtues that you’ve perhaps not yet taken notice of,

and I am making changes whose eventual and full enactment should,

barring the kind of unforeseens that may derail any human at any time in this precarious existence,

make me someone you could reliably hang your adorable bright sun shining heart upon.

So I ask you,

electric madame,

to please hear me out.

Copyright: AM Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This story is a continuation of “The Picnic”.
We have translated this story into English as “The Revelation of the Young Werther”.]

Die Offenbarung des Jungen Werthers
Eine wahre, wenn auch seltsame Geschichte
— von Elizabeth Frankenstein erlebt und niedergeschrieben.

Leaving his father and brothers to guard our defenseless bodies for the outward hour our journey required (I say “outward hour” because, as Victor explained, our inner experience of time would be very different than that of our motionless and apparently desouled frames), Victor bat uns alle im Kreis sitzen und gab uns alle ein Schlückchen seines mitgebrachten Elixiers. Mit geschlossenen Augen reichten wir einander die Hände.

Bald verlor ich jegliches Bewusstsein der Außenwelt und es schien mir — und die anderen haben es auch nachher bestätigt — dass wir jetzt alle zusammen durch einen langen gewölbten Stollen gingen. Die Halle war groß und prächtig wie eine Kathedrale — aber anstatt aus Steinen oder Holzbalken waren die Wände und Deckengewölbe vollständig mit flackernden Bilder ausgebaut. Also wanderten wir durch Szene aus dem Buch, in — so es uns allen schien — chronologischer Anordnung.

Wir sahen (hörten aber nicht – der Stollen war stumm) Lotte und Werther beim ersten Treffen in ihrer Stube, ihre Geschwister herumwimmelnd; und dann Lotte und Werther im fröhlichen Einklang im Saal tanzend; aber auch dann die Verlegenheit Lottes und Werthers daraufhin folgende vorübergehenden Betrübnis. “Also da sagt sie ihm, ‘Albert ist ein braver Mensch, dem ich so gut als verlobt bin’!” rief Justine auf. “Gewiss” stimmte Vuh leise zu.

Also gingen wir weiter, während die Geschichte, die über unseren Köpfen spielte, auch weiter ging. Und so ist Albert nach Hause zurückgekommen; die drei versuchen Freunden zu sein; Werther aber bricht mehr und mehr unter dem Druck frustrierter Leidenschaft zusammen; bis er schließlich eine Stelle in Weimar akzeptiert, in der Hoffnung, dass die Distanz zum Walheim (350 KM / 200 Meilen) ihn seiner Besessenheit befreien würde. Sein Leben im Weimar, und die schöne Bekanntschaft eines schönen Frauenzimmers wird aber sehr schnell von öffentlicher Beschämung (oder vielleicht eher von seiner übertriebenen Empfindlichkeit) zerstört. Er kommt zurück nach Walheim um wieder bei Lotte zu sein, die inzwischen mit Albert verheiratet ist. Und alles verschlechtert sich immer mehr.

Ich soll erwähnen, dass alle Nebenhandlungen auch über uns schwebten; und dass auch jene Teile des Buchs die nur im Geiste Werthers existierten auch da waren: man sieht, zum Beispiel, Werther beim Schreiben, die Wörter die er da schrieb, die begleitenden Gesichtsausdrücke (in der Regel übertrieben), und manchmal auch Bilder einiger verwandter Erinnerungen.

Wir gelangten an die letzte Szene zwischen Werther und Lotte — diejenige wo er ihr seine Übersetzung des keltischen Heldengedichts Osian vorliest, darüber sie beide zugrunde gehen und in Tränen zusammenbrechen, er sie dann umarmt und küsst, sie aber ihn zurückschlägt und entflieht, erklärend, er dürfe niemals mehr zu ihr. (Am nächsten Tag — wie geplant — bringt er sich um.) Hier, als über die Decke und Wände die beide sich in Tränen verlieren, hob Victor den Arm, und wir hielten an. “Zu weit gegangen! Wir müssen ein bisschen zurück, auch wenn wir in dieser Szene ergreifen werden.” Und dann erzählte er uns sein Vorhaben.

Er stützte seinen Plan auf der Wirkung von Literatur auf dem menschlichen Verstand. Clerval und Vuh, wenn sie im Prinzip seiner Ideen zwar zwingend fanden, konnten dem Schluss nicht entkommen, dass bei dieser Stelle in der Geschichte Werther schon zu weit außer Fassung gekommen sei, um uns auf einer literarischen Kur zu verlassen. “Das mag wohl sein,” stimmte Victor zu, “also, ihr zwei bleibt neben seinem Zimmer, falls die Dichtkunst fehlschlägt.”

Mittag 22 Dezember 1772

Lee, Vuh, Victor, Clerval, Justine und ich kamen im Wetzler an. Werther war weg und wurde erst in einigen Stunden zurückkommen. Vuh und Clerval suchten Werthers Wohnung um sie zu überwachen. Bevor wir den Saal der flimmernden Buchszene verließen, hatten Victor, Vuh, Justine und ich uns Pferden vorgestellt. Justine aber hatte zu viel Eifer in ihrem Pferde zugeträumt, und der schwarze Hengst wieherte gehetzt, den Kopf (mit dem weißen Diamant unter den Augen mitten im Maulkorb) in jeglicher Richtung herumwerfend, und strampelte wild mit den Hufen, erst vorwärts dann rückwärts springend. Victor und Justine blieben also auch zurück, um ein Pferdestall zu finden. Lee und ich ritten nach Walheim mit den ausgewählten Textpassagen.

Wir wussten, dass Lotte allein von ungefähr fünf bis halb sieben bleiben wird. Die gezielte Schublade war neben einem offenen Fenster, und nach unseren Beobachtungen der Szenen, hatten wir geschätzt, dass Lees lange Arme die Schublade von draußen öffnen und hineingreifen könnten. Also mussten wir nur auf den richtigen Augenblick abwarten.

Zuerst hatten wir so ein Paar Komödie der Irrtümer. Charlotte verließ die Stube; Lee öffnete die Schublade und suchte nach Ossian; Charlotte kehrte plötzlich zurück; der lange Arm Lees zog sich zurück, ohne die Schublade schließen zu können; Lotte kratzte den Kopf und machte die Schublade zu; das alles passierte ein zweites Mal, dismal aber schaute Lotte verwirrend um und drückte mit ihrem ganzen Gewicht gegen die Schublade. Die Zeit wurde knapp.

“Hebe mich ins Fenster an”, sagte ich.

“Was?”, sagte Lee.

“Jetzt!” sagte ich, indem ich die Passagen aus ihrer Hand nahm.

In einer mühelosen, fließenden Bewegung hob sie mich nach oben, durchs Fenster und auf den Stubenboden.

Glücklicherweise blieb Lotte stumm. Sie saß mir gegenüber auf dem Sofa und mit offenem Mund starrte auf mich als sei ich eigentlich unmöglich.

“Entschuldigen Sie mir bitte die Störung. Ich muss aber Ihre Hilfe bitten. Werthers Übersetzung Ossians müssen Sie mit dieser Passage ersetzen. Hier, ich mache es selbst. Ossian verstecken wir tief in diesem auf dem Tische liegenden Buch; und da, wo Ossian war, setzten wir diese ruhigeren, süßeren Worte. Für das was demnächst kommt ist Ossian eine besonders schädliche Literatur; dies ist viel mehr angebracht. Aber ich bitte Ihnen, tue als ob Sie glaubten, dass Ossian immer noch hier wäre, und fordern Sie ihn an, dir Ossian vorzulesen. Und kein Wort bitte davon, dass ich hier wäre! Ich bedauere sehr, dass wir nicht mehr geschickt hätte handeln können, aber wenn Sie sowieso natürlich agierten, und, wie gesagt, ihn Ossian zu lesen bäten, und dann nur dies fänden, was Ihnen sehr überrascht, und dann meinten, dass Sie sowie möchten, dass er Ihnen dies vorlese. Wenn Sie bitte das alles so kühn und schauspielerisch wie möglich machen können, könnten wir alle noch Erfolg haben. Ich bitte noch einmal um Verzeihung wegen der — eigentlich nicht genau planmäßigen — Störung.”

Ich ging zurück ans Fenster. Lotte sagte aber leise — ganz leise, weil ihre Stimme immer noch verschwunden war —, “Halten Sie bitte. Ich verstehe nicht.” Da wendete ich sie sehr ernst und wohlwollend an, und — mit dem sanftesten Lächeln und als mir Tränen in den Augen schwankten — antwortete ich, “Sie brauchen nicht alles zu verstehen.” Und da war sie stumm, und, ihre Augen groß und an die meinigen fixiert, nickte sie sehr klein aber sehr bedeutend und viel teilnehmend zu.

Ich kletterte in die Armen Lees und wir versteckten uns im Gebüsch als die Handlung des Buchs uns entgegenkam.

[Aus der letzten Seiten von Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers:]

Montags früh, den einundzwanzigsten Dezember, schrieb er folgenden Brief an Lotten, den man nach seinem Tode versiegelt auf seinem Schreibtische gefunden und ihr überbracht hat, und den ich absatzweise hier einrücken will, so wie aus den Umständen erhellet, daß er ihn geschrieben habe.

“Es ist beschlossen, Lotte, ich will sterben, und das schreibe ich dir ohne romantische überspannung, gelassen, an dem Morgen des Tages, an dem ich dich zum letzten Male sehen werde. Wenn du dieses liesest, meine Beste, deckt schon das kühle Grab die erstarrten Reste des Unruhigen, Unglücklichen, der für die letzten Augenblicke seines Lebens keine größere Süßigkeit weiß, als sich mit dir zu unterhalten. Ich habe eine schreckliche Nacht gehabt und, ach, eine wohltätige Nacht. Sie ist es, die meinen Entschluß befestigt, bestimmt hat: ich will sterben! Wie ich mich gestern von dir riß, in der fürchterlichen Empörung meiner Sinne, wie sich alles das nach meinem Herzen drängte und mein hoffnungsloses, freudeloses Dasein neben dir in gräßlicher Kälte mich anpackte—ich erreichte kaum mein Zimmer, ich warf mich außer mir auf meine Knie, und o Gott! Du gewährtest mir das letzte Labsal der bittersten Tränen! Tausend Anschläge, tausend Aussichten wüteten durch meine Seele, und zuletzt stand er da, fest, ganz, der letzte, einzige Gedanke: ich will sterben!—ich legte mich nieder, und morgens, in der Ruhe des Erwachens, steht er noch fest, noch ganz stark in meinem Herzen: ich will sterben!—es ist nicht Verzweiflung, es ist Gewißheit, daß ich ausgetragen habe, und daß ich mich opfere für dich. Ja, Lotte! Warum sollte ich es verschweigen? Eins von uns dreien muß hinweg, und das will ich sein! O meine Beste! In diesem zerrissenen Herzen ist es wütend herumgeschlichen, oft—deinen Mann zu ermorden!—dich!—mich! —so sei es denn!—wenn du hinaufsteigst auf den Berg, an einem schönen Sommerabende, dann erinnere dich meiner, wie ich so oft das Tal heraufkam, und dann blicke nach dem Kirchhofe hinüber nach meinem Grabe, wie der Wind das hohe Gras im Scheine der sinkenden Sonne hin und her wiegt.—Ich war ruhig, da ich anfing, nun, nun weine ich wie ein Kind, da alles das so lebhaft um mich wird.—”

Gegen fünf kam er nach Hause, befahl der Magd, nach dem Feuer zu sehen und es bis in die Nacht zu unterhalten. Den Bedienten hieß er Bücher und Wäsche unten in den Koffer packen und die Kleider einnähen.

Darauf schrieb er wahrscheinlich folgenden Absatz seines letzten Briefes an Lotten.

“Du erwartest mich nicht! Du glaubst, ich würde gehorchen und erst Weihnachtsabend dich wieder sehn. O Lotte! Heut oder nie mehr. Weihnachtsabend hältst du dieses Papier in deiner Hand, zitterst und benetzest es mit deinen lieben Tränen. Ich will, ich muß! O wie wohl ist es mir, daß ich entschlossen bin.”

Lotte war indes in einen sonderbaren Zustand geraten. Nach der letzten Unterredung mit Werthern hatte sie empfunden, wie schwer es ihr fallen werde, sich von ihm zu trennen, was er leiden würde, wenn er sich von ihr entfernen sollte.

Es war wie im Vorübergehn in Alberts Gegenwart gesagt worden, daß Werther vor Weihnachtsabend nicht wieder kommen werde, und Albert war zu einem Beamten in der Nachbarschaft geritten, mit dem er Geschäfte abzutun hatte, und wo er über Nacht ausbleiben mußte.

Sie saß nun allein, keins von ihren Geschwistern war um sie, sie überließ sich ihren Gedanken, die stille über ihren Verhältnissen herumschweiften. Sie sah sich nun mit dem Mann auf ewig verbunden, dessen Liebe und Treue sie kannte, dem sie von Herzen zugetan war, dessen Ruhe, dessen Zuverlässigkeit recht vom Himmel dazu bestimmt zu sein schien, daß eine wackere Frau das Glück ihres Lebens darauf gründen sollte; sie fühlte, was er ihr und ihren Kindern auf immer sein würde. Auf der andern Seite war ihr Werther so teuer geworden, gleich von dem ersten Augenblick ihrer Bekanntschaft an hatte sich die übereinstimmung ihrer Gemüter so schön gezeigt, der lange dauernde Umgang mit ihm, so manche durchlebte Situationen hatten einen unauslöschlichen Eindruck auf ihr Herz gemacht. Alles, was sie Interessantes fühlte und dachte, war sie gewohnt mit ihm zu teilen, und seine Entfernung drohte in ihr ganzes Wesen eine Lücke zu reißen, die nicht wieder ausgefüllt werden konnte. O, hätte sie ihn in dem Augenblick zum Bruder umwandeln können, wie glücklich wäre sie gewesen! Hätte sie ihn einer ihrer Freundinnen verheiraten dürfen, hätte sie hoffen können, auch sein Verhältnis gegen Albert ganz wieder herzustellen!

Sie hatte ihre Freundinnen der Reihe nach durchgedacht und fand bei einer jeglichen etwas auszusetzen, fand keine, der sie ihn gegönnt hätte.

Über allen diesen Betrachtungen fühlte sie erst tief, ohne sich es deutlich zu machen, daß ihr herzliches, heimliches Verlangen sei, ihn für sich zu behalten, und sagte sich daneben, daß sie ihn nicht behalten könne, behalten dürfe; ihr reines, schönes, sonst so leichtes und leicht sich helfendes Gemüt empfand den Druck einer Schwermut, dem die Aussicht zum Glück verschlossen ist. Ihr Herz war gepreßt, und eine trübe Wolke lag über ihrem Auge.

So war es halb sieben geworden, als sie Werthern die Treppe heraufkommen hörte und seinen Tritt, seine Stimme, die nach ihr fragte, bald erkannte. Wie schlug ihr Herz, und wir dürfen fast sagen zum erstenmal, bei seiner Ankunft. Sie hätte sich gern vor ihm verleugnen lassen, und als er hereintrat, rief sie ihm mit einer Art von leidenschaftlicher Verwirrung entgegen: “Sie haben nicht Wort gehalten.”—”Ich habe nichts versprochen” war seine Antwort.—”So hätten Sie wenigstens meiner Bitte stattgeben sollen,” versetzte sie, “ich bat Sie um unser beider Ruhe.”

Sie wußte nicht recht, was sie sagte, ebensowenig was sie tat, als sie nach einigen Freundinnen schickte, um nicht mit Werthern allein zu sein. Er legte einige Bücher hin, die er gebracht hatte, fragte nach andern, und sie wünschte, bald daß ihre Freundinnen kommen, bald daß sie wegbleiben möchten. Das Mädchen kam zurück und brachte die Nachricht, daß sich beide entschuldigen ließen.

Sie wollte das Mädchen mit ihrer Arbeit in das Nebenzimmer sitzen lassen; dann besann sie sich wieder anders. Werther ging in der Stube auf und ab, sie trat ans Klavier und fing eine Menuett an, sie wollte nicht fließen. Sie nahm sich zusammen und setzte sich gelassen zu Werthern, der seinen gewöhnlichen Platz auf dem Kanapee eingenommen hatte.

“Haben Sie nichts zu lesen?” sagte sie.—Er hatte nichts.—”Da drin in meiner Schublade,” fing sie an, “liegt Ihre Übersetzung einiger Gesänge Ossians; ich habe sie noch nicht gelesen, denn ich hoffte immer, sie von Ihnen zu hören; aber seither hat sich’s nicht finden, nicht machen wollen.”

— Er lächelte, ging die Lieder zu holen, ein Schauer überfiel ihn, als er sie in die Hände nahm, und die Augen standen ihm voll Tränen.

Hier endet der Ausschnitt von Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers]

Dann aber durch die Tränen bemerkte er, daß unter dem richtigen Titel die falschen Worte lagen. “Was geht hier vor”, flüsterte er mit erschwertem Atem, und sein Körper fing zu sacken an, als ob durchs Herz gestochen. Mit schwankenden Schritten setzte er sich nieder. “Was hast du getan, Lotte? Das letzte Mal, mein letztes Mal. Was hast du?” Aber immer noch fühlten sie beide das Glühen zwischen ihren Körpern und Gemütern. Ein Glühen, das menschliche Seelen zusammenwebt, um aus zwei Einzelnen ein Fleisch zu machen. Das Glühen der holden reinen unschuldigen Liebe, die in anderen Umständen ganz naturgemäß, anständig und schön ein Paar sich zu umarmen, küssen, liebkosen, und zu dem herzigen, tiefempfundenen, ganz aufrichtigen Versprechen der ewigen Treue führt. Wie Moses vorm brennenden Busch, brannte diese Erkenntnis ihnen in den Seelen. Aber auch spürten beide sehr deutlich die andere unausweichliche Eigenheit ihrer Lage. Werther zitterte und mit gesenktem Kopf schluchzte er leise vor sich hin.

“Lesen Sie es bitte, ich möchte wissen, was da drinsteht.” sagte Lotte mit sanfter, trauriger Stimme, indem sie ganz leise Werther an der Schulter anfasste. Ihre Berührung, so leicht und zierlich wie das Flattern von Schmetterlingsflügeln, durchquerte seinen Leib wie ein Blitzschlag und er bemerkte wie seine Schultern unwillkürlich sich aufrichteten. Ihre Hand, ihre Zuneigung, ihr Glauben war ihm das gewaltigste Heilmittel. Er las:

Unsere Kirche feiert verschiedene Feste, welche zum Herzen dringen. Man kann sich kaum etwas Lieblicheres denken als Pfingsten und kaum etwas Ernsteres und Heiligeres als Ostern. Das Traurige und Schwermütige der Karwoche und darauf das Feierliche des Sonntags begleiten uns durch das Leben. Eines der schönsten Feste feiert die Kirche fast mitten im Winter, wo beinahe die längsten Nächte und kürzesten Tage sind, wo die Sonne am schiefsten gegen unsere Gefilde steht und Schnee alle Fluren deckt: das Fest der Weihnacht. Wie in vielen Ländern der Tag vor dem Geburtsfeste des Herrn der Christabend heißt, so heißt er bei uns der heilige Abend, der darauffolgende Tag der heilige Tag und die dazwischenliegende Nacht die Weihnacht. Die katholische Kirche begeht den Christtag als den Tag der Geburt des Heilandes mit ihrer allergrößten kirchlichen Feier; in den meisten Gegenden wird schon die Mitternachtstunde als die Geburtsstunde des Herrn mit prangender Nachtfeier geheiligt, zu der die Glocken durch die stille, finstere, winterliche Mitternachtluft laden, zu der die Bewohner mit Lichtern oder auf dunkeln, wohlbekannten Pfaden aus schneeigen Bergen an bereiften Wäldern vorbei und durch knarrende Obstgärten zu der Kirche eilen, aus der die feierlichen Töne kommen, und die aus der Mitte des in beeiste Bäume gehüllten Dorfes mit den langen, beleuchteten Fenstern emporragt.

Mit dem Kirchenfeste ist auch ein häusliches verbunden. Es hat sich fast in allen christlichen Ländern verbreitet, daß man den Kindern die Ankunft des Christkindleins – auch eines Kindes, des wunderbarsten, das je auf der Welt war – als ein heiteres, glänzendes, feierliches Ding zeigt, das durch das ganze Leben fortwirkt und manchmal noch spät im Alter bei trüben, schwermütigen oder rührenden Erinnerungen gleichsam als Rückblick in die einstige Zeit mit den bunten, schimmernden Fittigen durch den öden, traurigen und ausgeleerten Nachthimmel fliegt. Man pflegt den Kindern die Geschenke zu geben, die das heilige Christkindlein gebracht hat, um ihnen Freude zu machen. Das tut man gewöhnlich am heiligen Abende, wenn die tiefe Dämmerung eingetreten ist. Man zündet Lichter, und meistens sehr viele an, die oft mit den kleinen Kerzlein auf den schönen, grünen Ästen eines Tannen- oder Fichtenbäumchens schweben, das mitten in der Stube steht. Die Kinder dürfen nicht eher kommen, als bis das Zeichen gegeben wird, daß der heilige Christ zugegen gewesen ist und die Geschenke, die er mitgebracht, hinterlassen hat. Dann geht die Tür auf, die Kleinen dürfen hinein, und bei dem herrlichen, schimmernden Lichterglanze sehen sie Dinge auf dem Baume hängen oder auf dem Tische herumgebreitet, die alle Vorstellungen ihrer Einbildungskraft weit übertreffen, die sie sich nicht anzurühren getrauen, und die sie endlich, wenn sie sie bekommen haben, den ganzen Abend in ihren Ärmchen herumgetragen und mit sich in das Bett nehmen. Wenn sie dann zuweilen in ihre Träume hinein die Glockentöne der Mitternacht hören, durch welche die Großen in die Kirche zur Andacht gerufen werden, dann mag es ihnen sein, als zögen jetzt die Englein durch den Himmel, oder als kehre der heilige Christ nach Hause, welcher nunmehr bei allen Kindern gewesen ist und jedem von ihnen ein herrliches Geschenk hinterbracht hat.

Wenn dann der folgende Tag, der Christtag, kommt, so ist er ihnen so feierlich, wenn sie früh morgens mit ihren schönsten Kleidern angetan in der warmen Stube stehen, wenn der Vater und die Mutter sich zum Kirchgange schmücken, wenn zu Mittag ein feierliches Mahl ist, ein besseres als in jedem Tage des ganzen Jahres, und wenn nachmittags oder gegen den Abend hin Freunde und Bekannte kommen, auf den Stühlen und Bänken herumsitzen, miteinander reden und behaglich durch die Fenster in die Wintergegend hinausschauen können, wo entweder die langsamen Flocken niederfallen, oder ein trübender Nebel um die Berge steht, oder die blutrote, kalte Sonne hinabsinkt. An verschiedenen Stellen der Stube, entweder auf einem Stühlchen oder auf der Bank oder auf dem Fensterbrettchen, liegen die zauberischen, nun aber schon bekannteren und vertrauteren Geschenke von gestern abend herum.

Hierauf vergeht der lange Winter, es kommt der Frühling und der unendlich dauernde Sommer – und wenn die Mutter wieder vom heiligen Christ erzählt, daß nun bald sein Festtag sein wird, und daß er auch diesmal herabkommen werde, ist es den Kindern, als sei seit seinem letzten Erscheinen eine ewige Zeit vergangen, und als liege die damalige Freude in einer weiten, nebelgrauen Ferne.

Weil dieses Fest solange nachhält, weil sein Abglanz so hoch in das Alter hinaufreicht, so stehen wir so gern dabei, wenn Kinder dasselbe begehen und sich darüber freuen. –

[Anmerkung der Redaktion: “Bergkristall” von Adalbert Stifter wurde erst (als “Der Heilige Abend”) 1845 herausgegeben. Die Geschichte erschien dann 1853 im Kurzgeschichtenband Bunte Steine. In unserer Geschichte, Victor und seine Freunden reisen vom Mary Shelley’s 1818 veröffentlichten Frankenstein nach JW von Goethe’s 1774 veröffentlichten und im 1772 gesetzten Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers. Woher also bekam Victor jenen Text von Adalbert Stifter (der in 1818 erst 13 Jahre alt war)? Die einzige logische Erklärung: Victor Frankensteins Fiktionportal konnte auch in noch nicht geschriebene Bücher reisen, und Victor hat auf irgendwelcher Weise und irgendwelchen Grund Stifters “Bergkristall” schon besucht.]

Werther lehnte sich zurück und sank ins Sofa ein. Er fühlte sich ganz ermüdet, aber das Gefühl war ihm etwas behaglich — wie ein Kind das eigentlich seit Stunden Todmüde war, das aber seine Müdigkeit nicht zugeben wollte und mit aller seinen abnehmenden Kräften dagegen kämpfte, das jetzt aber endlich sich der Erschöpfung hingibt und dabei eine überraschende Wonne entdeckt. Werther schlief ein. Lotte wollte ihre Arme um seinen Brust fassen, ihr Kopf in seinen Schoß legen, ihr Dasein ganz neben seine ruhige Atmung halten. Sie rief aber den Diener ihr zu.

“Werther ist nicht wohl. Nehmen Sie ihn bitte in Ihre Bettkammer. Ich entschuldige Ihnen sehr die Störung, aber ihm ist es nicht wohl und er muss sein Fieber ausruhen.”

Der alte Mann, der lange Lotte und ihre Familie bedient hatte, und der sehr wohl wusste inwiefern dem Werther nicht wohl und fieberhaft sei, nickte mit einem sanften gelassenen Lächeln ihren Bitten zu.

Am folgenden Tag gegen Zehn Uhr morgens kam Albert wieder nach Hause, währenddessen Werther immer noch schlief. Lotte erklärte ihren Mann den Zwischenfall — ohne auf die Einzelheiten zu sehr einzugehen. Dieser war darüber ziemlich verstimmt und saß still mit geknitterter Stirne am Tisch. Aber dann setzte Lotte ihm gegenüber, legte ihre Hand auf die seinige, blickte mit übergroßen liebenden schmerzenden Augen in seinen etwas zusammengekniffenen Augen und sagte sehr klar und besonnen, “Deine Liebe ist mir der allergrösste Segen meines Lebens. Ich weiß, daß es mit Werthern nicht so bleiben kann. Ich glaube, daß er das auch jetzt verstehen wird. Wenn nicht, müssen wir unsere Beziehung zu ihm überdenken. Aber wenn er jetzt aufwacht, bitte ein bisschen mehr Geduld und ihn willkommen heißen.” Ihre liebevolle Weise und sanften Wörter beruhigte Albert, und als seine Angst und Neid verflogen so ging auch den damit verbundenen Zorn und Ungeduld weg.

Erst um Elf Uhr erschien Werther, seine Haare gekämmt und Gesicht gewaschen, in der Stube. Da fand er Lotte allein am Kanapee bei der Handarbeit. Der Tag war klar und das weiche winterliche Licht fiel durchs Fenster aufs Mädchen. Werther stand vor ihr.
“Woher haben Sie den Lesestoff?”

“Sie würden mir nicht glauben, wenn ich es dir sagte. Am besten kann man es so verstehen: eine Fee legte ihn dort ab. Wie Sie vielleicht bemerkten, die Schrift ist weiblich, aber nicht die meinige.”

Werther zuckte die Achseln und warf eine Hand bis an die Hüften. “Wie dem auch sei, ich würde gern den albernen Aufsatz wieder lesen.” Lotte antwortete, daß er auf dem Tische liege, über sein Ossian. Er setzte sich am Tische und las in der Stille.

“Albern? Nein, nicht ganz. Die Bilder und die Argumentation knöpfen einander an, und stärken sich gegenseitig. Kitschig? Vielleicht einigen Gemütern bei der ersten Lesung, aber bald sickern die Wörter ein, verbreiten sich, und fangen an, auf der nichts ahnenden Seele zu wirken.

“Am Anfang übers Weihnachten: ‘das durch das ganze Leben fortwirkt und manchmal noch spät im Alter bei trüben, schwermütigen oder rührenden Erinnerungen gleichsam als Rückblick in die einstige Zeit mit den bunten, schimmernden Fittigen durch den öden, traurigen und ausgeleerten Nachthimmel fliegt. Man pflegt den Kindern die Geschenke zu geben, die das heilige Christkindlein gebracht hat, um ihnen Freude zu machen.’ Um, Lotte: Um ihnen Freude zu machen!

“Und am Ende: ‘Weil dieses Fest solange nachhält, weil sein Abglanz so hoch in das Alter hinaufreicht, so stehen wir so gern dabei, wenn Kinder dasselbe begehen und sich darüber freuen. –’

“Lotte! Steht es nicht geschrieben, ‘Es wäre ihm besser, daß man einen Mühlstein an seinen Hals hängte und würfe ihm ins Meer, denn daß er dieser Kleinen einen ärgert. ’?! Das friedliche Fortschreiten der lokalen Bräuche und des Lebens selbst schulden wir den Kindern. Weh dem Menschen der die wohlige Einfachheit und Einförmigkeit der Kinderwelten stört! Weh denjenigen, die ihnen die schimmernde Fittigen stiehlt!

“Lotte! Ich sah Empfindlichkeit und Heftigkeit als Beweis der Reinheit meines Herzens, aber der einzige Beweis eines reinen Herzens liegt in jenem Herzen selbst. An sich ist Leidenschaft wenig wert; die Brauchbarkeit der Leidenschaft besteht — wie bei allen menschlichen Eigenschaften — nur darin, liebevoll zu denken, fühlen, und handeln. Im Rausch der Leidenschaft kann man leicht sich täuschen, daß man eine besondere Einsicht und hervorragende Schönheit erreicht und sich über den allgemeinen Zustand der Menschheit erhoben hat. Letztendlich aber verliert man seinen gezierten, selbstbetrügerischen Wahn und schwankt wieder in die Leere.

“Ich habe immer die Leere beschuldigt; aber die Leere ist nicht leer, nur stille, und sie lügt man nicht an, schmeichelt einem nicht. Der Leere fehlt fester Gegenstand und lesbare Antwort. So fühlt man sich unsicher und flieht man wieder in den Trost der Passion; so schadet man wieder der Weltseelen. Ja Lotte, die Leere ist ganz still, und wenn wir auch uns still halten, nehmen wir wahr, daß bunten schimmernden Fittigen sie überströmt.

“Ich liebe dich, Lotte, und niemand kann dich ersetzten. Wir sehen uns am Heiligen Abend, dann reise ich ab. Weihnachten ist da um die Kinder Freude zu machen, um ihnen unter der Verzauberung der Vertraute ganz sanft und leise in die Leere zu tauchen, worin sie ihre Fittigen finden sollen, worauf sie durchs Leben — egal wie kalt und stürmisch die Nächte — fliegen werden. Adieu, Lotte — noch einmal sehen wir uns bald wieder!”
Mit diesen heftigen Worten eilte er davon.

It is always a pleasant diversion for me to stroll down the corridor of Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers. With Victor or alone, I walk quickly to the end, where the passageway splits into a short and terrible one and a long, beautiful one. I take always the happier path to see my Werther and his Fräulein von B. Yes! He writes to her, the young woman he’d met in Weimar. He writes to her and soon they begin a world together.

I watch them live well and think of that day when Lee, Vuh, Henry, Justine, Victor and I visited Walheim. And also of that day’s mustaches. You see, upon our return to our scientifically seancing bodies, we discovered that Victor’s father and brothers had protected us from all dangers except themselves: the youngest thought it a lark to draw silly mustaches on all our faces, decorating my cheeks with two giant spirals of black ink; and our other two guards — well, I guess they found it funny too!

. . . .

Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown would like to thank
Markus Jais
for his corrections of our German.
Any remaining errors are our fault: we just keep tinkering and tinkering.

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown, with Markus Jais
Copyright: Andrew M. Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

Here’s the one we want to write. The happiest one. A continuation of “Don’t Abandon Me”, where Frankenstein and Clerval have raised the Monster up right, and Frankenstein has made him a companion, and everyone lives happily ever after in Geneva on a lovely sprawling estate, reading, writing poetry, conversing, sketching and otherwise living the dream. We’ll use “Vuh” and “Lee” for the monster names (“Lee” plus “Vuh” equals “LeeVuh” equals kind of “Liebe” equals “love” equals (per Spinoza’s math) “nothing but joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause” equals “hmmm”.

Our scene takes place on a sunny summer midday, beside an old willow, next to the small creek fluttering through the verdure. It may (or may not — we just don’t know) be an anachronism, but let’s please also provide them with red and white checkered picnic blankets spread over the grasses. And wicker picnic baskets full of cucumber sandwiches, apples, nuts and seeds, a canteen of water plus a glass pitcher and glasses; and for dessert a chocolate torte baked with a merry doting smile by a fat-armed cook in bepowdered white apron and bonnet.

The Senior Frankenstein (Alphonse’s his Christian name), in a straw hat, white dress shirt, country-roving tweed-trousers, and sharp-toed brown-leather boots, sits on a fallen log with a quarter of a sandwich in each hand. William and Ernst — the former thin and flat-chested, the latter developing a man’s brawn, wearing only square-cut navy-blue shorts that don’t quite reach their knee-caps, their shirts, hats, shoes and socks neatly arranged on the sandy far-bank at that point where the creek’s steeper near-bank bends around the old willow — splash through the the cool waters hunting for crayfish, frogs, and minnows. Now they catch a crayfish and cradling it in scooped hands, run to show their father, who peers over and smiles indulgently while arching spine and shirt away and holding sandwiches far out to the sides.

Elizabeth, Justine and Lee sit on one blanket, all but the latter beneath pretty, dome-shaped purple parasols. They’re laughing at the Senior Frankenstein’s polite abhorrence of having a writhing crustacean splashing about near his fine silk shirt and within smelling-distance of his cucumber-and-butter-on-whole-rye sandwich. Soon they’ll resume their conversation about the merits and deficiencies of a popular poet’s most recent volume — a work eagerly awaited throughout Europe and beyond, but now meeting with a rather tepid reception — a reception which two of the three find unjust.

Vuh, Clerval, and Victor are arranged cross-legged in a little circle on another blanket, each nursing an apple, their conversation turning now towards Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, first published in 1774, with a revised edition released 1787.

“It is the story of a young man, a very young man, a young man’s story.”

“Are we not yet young men?”

“The fellow simply goes too far! From the beginning! His exultation in nature, in simple folk, in Lotte herself — it’s all really an exultation in his own fine feelings. And why are they so fine? Because he’s 20 years old and needn’t work, but can instead spend his time reading his Homer, pursuing a little recreational light gardening, taking coffee and beer in the local establishment, conversing, dancing, tossing kingly alms to the underclass, and otherwise avoiding any impediment to fine feelings and self-satisfactions!”

“And yet in following that course he does indeed run aground. With nothing but idle time to fan his overripe emotions, he’s soon depressed beyond all help. Of course, the anguish over not winning Lotte begins, like everything else in his world, as a deliciously large, juicy, and showy emotion; but soon it really does overpower him, leading eventually to his destruction.”

“But this is precisely my point! He takes everything too far, and more because he’s full of himself than because his soul is any more beautiful than anyone else’s! He’s a spider spinning a web of self-satisfied feelings that eventually traps itself in its own sticky designs!”

“Speaking of going too far! The two of you overlook entirely the innocence, the sincerity, the sweetness of this lad! You act as though he were a criminal whose crime eventually caught up with him, rather than a thoughtful, winning, and remarkable young man who, through a combination of external circumstances and youthful excesses and blunders, wanders into a terrible tragedy. Werther’s not perfect, but he’s as much a living, breathing human as ever graced the pages of literature, and he deserves our consideration and sympathy!”

“Perhaps you’re right. Perchance, my intolerance of Werther is an intolerance of the selfsame urges, longings, and weaknesses within myself — excesses and frailties of spirit which we all possess and whose proper administration is never an easy, nor obvious task.”

“In any case, it seems a dreadful shame. If only there were a way to intercede. If only we could reach Werther in time, coax the pistol from him, turn his mind towards wider vistas and deeper truths, and ferry him out of that dark era. Who knows what kind of a man he’d become?!”

“Ah, but we do know. He’d become a great man of letters and science, living to this day fully creative and well-respected up there in Weimar.”

This quip, which played upon the assumption that Goethe’s “Werther” was rather more than less autobiographical, received the round of pleasant, perhaps in one-of-two cases merely-polite, laughter that it deserved. And a lull ensued, in which the conversants were free to breathe the fresh clean country air, and revel in the bright warmth of endless summer.

But Victor Frankenstein had a secret, and, promising a quick return, he dashed off to grab his newest invention, the Fiction Portal.

A Fiction Portal is a most ingenious and amazing mechanical device that allows flesh and blood humans to pass directly into fictional realities. Fictional realities, for those who don’t know, are spawned when books are created, read, contemplated, and (inside one mind or amongst many) discussed. The firmness of a fictional reality depends upon the worthiness of the literature and the scope, intensity, and quality of public participation.

Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, as well as its various translations (like, for example, the English version, The Sorrows of the Young Werther) had all created quite firm fictional realities throughout Europe — beginning with its 1774 publication, growing as it spread (it was first published in English in 1779), and continuing even into this scene on a rolling country estate outside 1818 Geneva (Switzerland [Mary Shelley published her Frankenstein on January 1, 1818; though the book was begun in Geneva in the Summerless Summer of 1816 (a cold damp summer for much of the world, including Europe, that year, due we now think to a volcanic explosion in the then Dutch East Indies / now Indonesia)]). Of course, these language-specific fictional realities all to some extent overlap; and in their common center lies the clearest and most lifelike fictional reality. But one must choose a language of entry, and as all present were fluent in German, and as the book’s original creation took place in and was published in that most Germanic of languages, German was the obvious choice.
The following, then, is an account of the time that Victor, Clerval, Lee, Vuh, Elizabeth and Justine travelled to Walheim to save Werther from himself.

[Editor’s linguistic aside: We permit our authors some artistic license, but we don’t want to fill the world with half-facts and other harebrained schemes. We therefore here note, and hope that our readership will pause to consider, that it is not really fair to call modern German language “the most Germanic of languages”. If there could be a most Germanic of all languages, it would probably have to be whatever language originally gave rise to all the Germanic languages — at any rate, there’s no reason to nominate today’s German for being the language most emblematic of the German languages throughout their long, abrupt-syllabled, globe-trotting existence. And if I were to nominate a language as “the most Germanic of modern, yet-spoken languages”, I think I’d probably choose Icelandic. It’s retained more of its old rules than the other Germanic languages have. What is the least Germanic of the modern, yet-spoken Germanic languages? That’s easy. It has to be English — what with it’s shedding of male and female articles, its abandonment of almost all verb changes, its forgetting of pretty much all declensions (changing of noun, pronoun or adjective as the grammatical case changes), and its extensive fraternizing with the Latin languages through French, French, French! Is modern English even a language at all? Or is it rather a pidgin language, spoken by the hoi polloi whilst lank Normans lounge about their clammy caste(-l)s chattering on about “Dieu et mon doit” and “Honi soit qui mal y pense”? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language)]

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This scene is a continuation of the narrative thread begun in Sparing William. You’ll recall there that William named the monster M. Samuel L’Ogre, and that by the end of the intervention, Samuel and Frankenstein had reconciled and agreed to work together at Frankenstein’s estate.]

What a miraculous, multi-soul salvation has the invisible yet all-pervading divinity here effected! A soul caught in blind animal rage and lustful raving, trapped within the mere happenstance of the merely wild; a heart abandoned, a mind untutored, a spirit splintered. Here the divine triumphed; this cruelly outranged, mangled soul was seized by divine grace, was coaxed towards aware clear conscious thought and action, towards the Good — which is in no wise random, but rather abides in the eternal and infinite necessity of Loving Kindness and Gentle Wisdom!

And this grace extended to one I’d blithely deserted travelled then through the offended one back into me, the villain, granting me an undeserved but gratefully accepted salvation. For I’d known I had been wrong but had not recognized in what manner nor to what degree.

. . . . .

In our laboratory the hours pass as minutes and science advances with her slow, steady, dogged tread. In the evening I relax with Elizabeth on the sofa, content to know her and feel her pristine essence flow across our bodies and meet me where I am to share in the love that is ours. My father and Samuel discuss the matters of the day in a giant fireside armchairs. The boys stir the red hot cinders, play at chess, or lounge idly upon the ancient Egyptian rug. Justine sits next to Elizabeth on the sofa, crosslegged, reading the Bible, or a book of poetry, occasionally bringing a verse or three to our attention.

It is a pleasant life, and no day passes when I am not humbled and embarrassed at the riches showered upon me, and most especially the forgiveness granted me. For when I succumbed to careless ambition and then defaulted on the consequences with feckless irresponsibility, still the seams of my life were not burst, the whole was kept aloft, the evil deterred, and I was spared the just reckoning. Y

et latterly I begin to notice a pain welling at the corner of Samuel’s small, oily eyes. He says nothing, but I feel the weight within him. He is alone. Forced by the prejudices of man into seclusion in our chateaux, and anyway too robust to safely rest his longings upon a mere human frame, he knows no touch but the occasional shoulder pat from his tiny friends. It was unkind to build a hulk in a world without hulkettes. For I made him a man, and man is made not to live always within himself, but to unfold himself within the arms of another — his suited mate and appropriate companion and counterpart. A man ain’t nothin’ but a man, even if he is a 400lb superhuman juggernaut.

“Samuel, I’ve a mind to build you a lady friend.”

“Frankenstein, that cannot be. For we can neither predict nor control her character and temperament, and any creature strong enough to match me would, were she uncoupled from proper understanding, pose a threat to yourself, your family, and the wider world. To say nothing of the unaccountable development of our union — no man can guarantee the good conduct of his children, let alone their children.”

“Samuel, a healthy mind brought up well, undergirded by sound principles, ensconced in a loving and attentive household, and instructed in the ways of true religion — with the One Light for doctrine; pure contemplation for ritual; active loving kindness for practice; and always-advancing gentleness as goal and standard —; with such precautions can’t we reasonably hope for a dry soul, wisest and best? Worries of wayward progeny we shall circumvent by leaving her barren, though for that no less able to give and receive monster love.”

Samuel laughed his heavy, cavernous, clanging laugh. “Victor, we may construct a female physically able to answer that ache for touch searing my loins and breaking my shoulders, but we cannot engineer her to desire my desire.”

“M. Ogre, much of what passes for the unaccountable magic of romantic love is nothing more than well-matched fibers, moods, and myths. And in this instance, the fibers we choose ourselves, the moods will be those of a healthy mind and copious heart, and the myths will be ours, those shared stories by which our little community gathers around and points towards the common Light.

[Our myths — devotion to clear aware honest contemplation and the subordination of all urges to the gentle resilience of loving kindness — consider themselves to be imperfect but yet coherent. If this self-supposition is wrong, what hope exists for conscious creatures? For what meaningful hope has ever existed but the solemn promise that our sense towards clarity, honesty, competency, order, reason, beauty, goodness, and most of all joyful selfless loving kindness: What hope is there for any watching soul but that that promise is neither an unsubstantiated argument nor a restless animal impulse, but instead a holy beacon from a Light that Knows?”]

. . . . .

Every night I pace the cool evening air beside the junipers with their sharp sticky sweetness. Every night the packed dirt rolls beneath my heavy turns. What can it mean to build a bride? We collect parts discarded by life and build therefrom a woman made to my specifications. What does God think of our enterprise? And how will she see me through a mind I’ve helped to instruct? How can we ever meet on the other side of this wild daydream, this manic fairytale cobbled together upon a sterile laboratory table?

God forgive me, Susan forgive me. Susan, I invite you into life; for the rest I can but pray. Am I a monster? All the urges so long swallowed. A fatal scream tearing through from tip to tail, breaking me along the centerline. Hold me! Heal me! Let me be all of me. Let me be known, come what may. For what lies within? What, Susan, will we uncover if you share this passion and we open up into the places I’ve kept caged and sunk beneath the ocean? And if you look at me dully, without participation? How my breast must snap in two. How the shame will rise to swamp me; tell me once and for all that I’m a vainglory, an off-key note, a poorly delivered witticism, a tactlessly trifling comment, and nothing like a man, nothing worth knowing and loving all through. God forgive me my perverse hopes. Susan forgive me this conversation with a mere hypothesis, an architect’s plan, an unhatched egg.
. . . . .

In blurry strokes the jumbling chaos coalesces into distinct shapes, textures, sensations. In time objects are sussed out and specific tastes, images, flavors, colors, hopes and fears adhere in those objects. A sense of separation from the outside world is formed. A sense of self and other. Instead of confused comfort and discomfort, associations are formed between objects, actions, and demeanors and comforts and discomforts. With the ability to perceive and choose comes the beginning of a self to guard and an other to consume and/or guard against.

[A conscious creature is an illusion within the larger illusion of animal life within time and space; as such, these inner wordless narrations about “self” and “other” are necessary for our earthy survival; nonetheless they represent a loss of wisdom, a turning away from the truest account which knows/is One Love/Light. The correct approach to this dilemma requires development, practice; in time one learns both to be the illusion and to not be the illusion, and in this way the uncreated giggle that is lifeforce and impulse of all created things may play free and joyful within the forested glens, beneath the blue summer skies, bent over a task a poem or a prayerbook, laughing at a witticism landed at tea time, and on and on, without hope or fear, relentlessly gentle and kind, alive to a fully conscious, fully wholesome happiness.]

. . . . . .

It was a cold crisp autumn day. The first of the season. The sun sank into red-yellow line during dinner. The trees seemed to shudder, as if they knew, though their leaves are yet green and open to the sun.

Susan thrashed out, screaming, kicking her legs, flailing her arms. She got wrapped up in the curtain and was in the process of launching father’s suede armchair through a wall when Samuel detained her. He hesitated for almost a minute. Thus far he’d managed to avoid physical intervention, and it was with a defeated brow that tonight he submitted to the exigencies of the moment, grabbing her by the wrists, gathering them both together in one of his great hands, and with the other gingerly closing around her side, directly above the hips, he guided her, who was soon impressed into docile curiosity, to take a seat on the larger, rougher, armchair, hewn by Samuel out of the trunk of a giant oak.

Seeing them together is both a pleasure and a pain. A pleasure because they were made for one another and the craftsmanship is evident; a pain because she is but a child, and this circumstance — temporary though it maybe — sets a melancholy and confused grimace upon her preordained’s heavy face.

Are they ugly? They are monstrous, inhuman, impossible; but “ugly” implies an ideal and norms that do not here exist. I would not kiss a wild boar, but that is because I am not a wild boar, not because wild boar are ugly. Enormous and ungainly, with heavy square features and relatively small and deep-set gray eyes; skin tinged green, with a texture rather too thick — almost like a thin coating of whale blubber, and seeming in places tight and ill-fitting, this final defect notably though not wholly ameliorated in her case, lips coarse and hair — his jet black; hers chestnut brown — luxurious and long, but rendered uncouth by sprouting stiffly out the top of the head and then tumbling down over the nape and shoulders.

When Victor first revealed his designs to me, we lay twain in our marriage bed, I huddled into his open arm, my head on his chest. I knew not how to take the plan, for it seemed to me both a natural kindness and a mad and perhaps even wicked risk. Who would she be? And how could she be said to have a true choice in the matter? Arranged marriages, common in India, among nobility, and arising at least by degrees often enough the world over, are often happy. Indeed, were Victor and I not assigned to one another long before our hearts and minds — to say nothing of our bodies — were ready? And am I not the luckiest of women to be thus paired? Much of love is a decision; if the basic outlines of frame, intellect, temperament and spirit are compatible — which configurations a good match-maker can perhaps better judge than an inexperienced and lovestruck young person — all that is left is the difficult but delicious labour of deciding every day to understand and love a little clearer, brighter, deeper, completely.

. . . . . . .

The letters come easier to me now. My name is Susan. My friends names are Elizabeth, Victor, Samuel, Henry, Justine, Alphonse, Ernest, and William. We live in a house surrounded by fields and woods. There are many other houses and many other places, but for now I am only allowed to be here. My friends are not as strong as me. Except for Samuel, who is stronger. I have to be careful with my strength so as not to hurt anyone. Samuel looks different from my other friends. I look like Samuel except I am shaped like Elizabeth and Justine except I am much bigger. I do not look exactly like Samuel. There is a mirror on the wall. It shows you what you look like. I have looked at it a lot. I have to squat down to look at myself in it. I look big and my skin is a little waxen and green like Samuel’s. My face is not so rough and big as his, but it is not so soft and small as the others’. Some people who like like each other are related to one another, but Samuel and I are not related to anyone. They tell me I am not related to anyone. I do not understand what this means.

It is nice when Elizabeth puts her arms around me and says that she is proud of me. It makes me feel like I am doing a good job. No one else is like that with me. Victor and Henry are nice and they will pat my shoulder and say I am doing a good job, but it is not the same as when Elizabeth hugs me and then I feel safe. Samuel is nice to me and he does not yell, but his face is sad and he looks away from me and he only touches me when I am being bad and he has to keep me from knocking things over but I don’t do that anymore so I guess he will never hug me. I do not understand why only Elizabeth hugs me. It could be that she is my mother, except that she isn’t, for I have no mother or father and am not related to anyone. This is what they have told me.

I learn very quickly and so they say I am very quick. I learn all my letters and numbers and I am able to play the piano, but I cannot sit on the normal bench but must use a special one because I am too big and I must press the keys lightly because I am too strong. Samuel is too big at all to play the piano but he is making a special one for himself and he is very smart and does not yell. I like the fluttering fast songs that Justine can play, but so far when I play them they do not flutter or go very fast, but instead trip and stumble and do not sound right. But I am learning quickly, they say.
There are many people in the world but the only ones who are so very big and look like Samuel and me are Samuel and me and this is very strange except that it is not, for Victor has made me and Samuel and this is something only he can do and it is a terrible power and he won’t do it again but he didn’t want Samuel to be the only one. And this is what Justine told me but then Elizabeth yelled at her and put her arm around me and said that they would explain these things to me when I was a little older and knew my letters a little better and that Justine is a silly girl for telling me these things and I am doing a very good job and she is proud of me and loves me. And that was nice when she said those things so I have not long dwelt upon what Justine said to me but I do think these are important facts.

. . . . .

Susan can read and write tolerably well. She has been instructed in simple arithmetic and she has a rudimentary grasp of the world around her. She enjoys the piano. Intellectually, she is a child of five or six. I feel confident that within a year, her theoretical knowledge will rival my own. It is difficult for me to assess her emotional development. Her free conversation and gentle movements evince a kind and generous spirit. Her sense of fair play is well-balanced by her sense of compassion and tolerance. And in the last several weeks her temper tantrums and other violent outbursts have abated completely. Here it is Elizabeth’s gentle hand for which I am most grateful. Henry and I do our best to be affectionate with her, but she is both monstrous and in possession already of a grown woman’s frame and aspect, which circumstances confuse both our human tendernesses and our senses of propriety. Samuel cannot seem to look at her without that a great sag runs through his mighty shoulders. One can readily perceive his anguished hopes and fears within his tense and downward-sloping eyes. Her body was chosen to answer his own, but he does not know in what manner and degree her heart and mind will mature; he cannot say how she will feel for him and the expectation and very question must strike us all — co-conspirators in this perhaps noble and hopefully happy endeavor — as rather inappropriate and sacrilegious. She has been born with a woman’s body and heart, but her mind and spirit are yet only a child’s. In this, she and Samuel’s experience are unique in the history of the world.

. . . . .

I shouldn’t have told her. But we had gotten to talking more and more and I felt more and more as if she were the little sister that I’d never had. We were sitting by the fountain and she spoke of her friends so sweetly and she was wounded by Samuel’s stand-offishness and I dare not explain the whole scenario, which indeed I myself have only caught in snatches and surmises, but I thought it would be a kindness if I could communicate to her something of her uniqueness and of her special relationship to Samuel. But Elizabeth overheard and scolded me and I’m afraid Susan was left only with a deeper confusion: for if she was made to be Samuel’s friend, why did he not treat her more warmly; surely to her it must seem that her greatest friend is Elizabeth, who showers her with affection. In any case, I was wrong to reveal so much on my own, without consulting Elizabeth, Victor, Henry, and Samuel, who are her primary caretakers and whose plans I have perhaps a little upset. But Elizabeth’s initial passion was soon replaced with a milder reproof, and now she tells me that no irreparable damage was done, though she beseech me be more heedful in the future, for it is surely a heavy thing to learn that one has been built and not born, and, then to have been built to assuage another’ loneliness — what a strange and uneasy knowledge that would be to anyone, no matter how grown up!

. . . . .

I love Susan as if she were my own child. I am glad that we have her now before we have any of our own, else I’d lack the time and energy she requires. This will not last. The rate at which she acquires and assimilates new information and skills is truly uncanny. Soon her mathematical prowess will exceed my — admitted woefully inadequate — understanding, and it seems inevitable that soon enough, she’ll have only Samuel for peer in the rarified realm of pure abstraction.

Though it seems unwise to air such ruminations, I’ve begun to consider the possibility that Justine’s precipitous remarks will rather help than hinder our cause. What can it mean to learn that you have been built solely because another was lonely and no other creature could be found to meet his specifications? It seems, even withholding the detail of his desiring mature attachments and matrimony, a rather perplexing, and perhaps even somewhat belittling revelation. All efforts must be undertaken to ensure that Susan chooses her relationships on her own, but only a fool could believe she — who must live isolated here with the few creatures who’ve built and are presently raising her — is very free from our influence. Samuel’s response to the dilemma is a rigid and downcast, but tender-eyed and soft-voiced stand-offishness, which Susan thus far has understood as relative indifference towards her. And as her emotions are still that of a young child — though here too she evolves at a remarkable pace — she cannot guess at his conundrum. It is hard for me to guess how much she feels herself to be a woman now. She was born with a woman’s body; but a child’s body is initially foreign to it, and needs time and experience to understand and inhabit; by this same basic mechanism, I believe she has thus far remained relatively untouched by those deeper, graver longings that first upset and then reorganize the young adult’s emotional landscape.

. . . . .

Samuel has some business to attend to and will be away some months. I told him that I shall miss him. He set his hand on my shoulder and looked in my eyes and said that he will miss me in turn and that he looks forward to telling me of his adventures soon. There are so many different places and people and animals in the world outside that I can scarcely contain my curiosity and my longing to travel beyond our estate. But my friends are very honest and I have no reason to doubt them when they tell me there are dangers out there for which I am not yet prepared.

Elizabeth has given me a Bible and Justine a prayer book. To this Henry has added the Bhagavad-Gita, some teachings from the Buddha, and the Koran. I am told that these represent some of the largest and most famous religions in the world and that as Something Deeperists our task is to connect more and more fully with the Light within that speaks through the wiser aspects of all religious writing. Victor said that we shall begin our philosophy studies next week, and that philosophy is the study of the proper use of human thought and action. Victor said that the mind and heart and body are useful only if they serve that which is truly worthy, and Victor said that is the Light that knows we are all in this together and are here to love and cherish and look out for one another. Victor is a very serious Something Deeperist. His father has remarked that for his part, he prefers the cheery chirping of the crickets to even the most enlightened systemitizations. At this Elizabeth burst out in merry laughter, whilst Victor silently raised his eyebrows and scrunched and twisted his lips a bit to one side, as if to say, “hmmm”.

Ernst will also study philosophy with us. He is a good looking young man, and is now taller and broader at the shoulders than Victor or their father. He stirs something in me, and I wish I could reach it and then I’d know what was going on. Or perhaps I wouldn’t. It is very odd. I have heard Justine and others remark upon what a tall young man he’s turned out to be, but the top of his head does not reach my nose, and it is not so high as Samuel’s shoulder. Once I caught Ernst studying me as I laughed with Justine by the fountain where we often sit, upon the stone wall, with our feet resting upon the even slate slabs. He was walking in from the field, but seemed stuck and his eyes were large with worry, his mouth open like a fish’s. I wondered if it meant that he had the same weird problem and if so then maybe we could show each other what was wrong. This kind of talk strikes me as rather insane; I employ it only because I’ve recourse to no more coherent methodology.

. . . . . .

It has been explained to me the way babies are normally made and that I was not made that way, but was made — as Justine had told me — by Victor, who happens to know how to animate creatures, though he is not otherwise godlike, and indeed, as Elizabeth said through a giggle, he would not think to change his shirt if he were left on his own. God, of course, has no need of shirts or anything from the realm of appearances, but presumably if God were to routinely wear shirts, God would always don a fresh one.

The way that men and women make babies — for it cannot be done otherwise by humans, no matter how they may try — is very similar to the way many other animals do it. It involves a lot of tenderness and touch but the key element is that the man has a penis between his legs that becomes erect and that is inserted into the woman’s vagina, which is also kept between her legs, and then they push and pull on one another in a way that is very pleasurable but also very emotional and so should not be entered lightly and is in fact only advisable within the holy state of matrimony which has been designed by either man and/or God — as the case may be — to protect us from the unbounded nature of sexuality, which always wants more and which does not care as much about kindness and love and friendship and honesty as people do.

I am also a person, though a built one.

The pleasurable pushing and pulling of penis within vagina is not, however, sufficient labour for the creation of a child. For that to happen, the man’s pleasure must explode in the form of semen, which must then connect with an egg. Women drop eggs in their bodies, just a chickens drop eggs outside of theirs. And so what decides whether or not a man and woman’s union creates a child is whether or not the man ejaculates — like one would ejaculate a clever comment, but instead of words, one pours out a stream of that fertilizing fluid called “semen” — inside of the woman, and also if the woman’s egg has dropped into place where the semen can reach it. The exact details of how eggs are fertilized and grow into tiny humans is not understood, but that is the basic mechanism.

I am a woman but I do not have eggs because Victor did not put them in me. I am not sure whether or not he could have or whether or not I could get some now and put them inside and then make babies like other women, although I am not like other women, since I’ve been built and never had a child’s body, but only this big one that I was born into. Indeed, what egg could there be to put inside of me but a human egg? And what harm should that have caused? But I do not wish to bear children; I merely note the inconsistency in their logic, unless there’s perhaps some detail I am missing, which is often the case, the world being so full of details.

. . . . .

It is approximately 120 miles from Geneva to the Matterhorn. A fit human could walk it in four days. I, who can move more quickly and require less sleep, could make it in two. However, I seek to lose, not gain time. And for safety, I must travel only at night.

The elevation experiments we’ve long postponed serve as a satisfactory excuse for this excursion, though all who know me cannot be deceived as to its deeper purpose.

A great unsteadiness has grown within, seizing me by the gut. An emotional pain so visceral and sharp that I am very nearly physically overwhelmed and indeed often find myself clutching at my gut, doubled over, face drawn, eyes wincing. Twice I’ve stopped on the way and huddled over myself as when my Protectors violently rejected my overtures, caning me on the hard dirt floor of their humble cottage. I am ashamed by this screaming, gyrating pain; though it is not me or my doing, but rather a wound inflicted from outside of me.

My frame is man enough to feel the burden of sex. The wild confusions, frustrations, lonely longings, animal necessities, heroic battle lunges, and nauseous shames swirl throughout the interior of my bodily extent; and subterranean to these particular grievances works a force of cuddly hope and lustful desperation, pulling the totality towards that most manly of daydreams: to cover a woman’s body with my own and through the caring violence of our encounter resolve and release all my distorted, psychedelically spinning, overlapping and intertwining despondencies, exultations, shames, braggadocios: purify, release, and share all inner turmoils with my lover through a concentrated channel flowing out the center of my hips into the center of hers, from the nexus of my profane yet sacred longings into hers.

When no woman existed to match my stride, a dull acquiescence ruled my baser drives and I felt small, frustrated and lonesome — but in a slight, pettily nagging fashion, away from which I, roaming free in body and mind, could with relative ease redirect my focus. But now the hope of Susan has grown until I am as a dinghy engulfed within a hurricane enraging the open sea. Utterly hopeless and forlorn beneath the weight of my own jumbled and broken passions, I sink to my knees and then roll up into a ball, like a child unable to cope against the indifferent and unkind world.

Who is this Susan? What predicament have I prepared for us? When I return in three months time, she will possess a graduate student’s knowledge of the literary, mathematical, and experimental sciences. Will she know herself? Will her body have had the time to speak to her heart and mind? Will she be able to judge for herself? Rubbish! How can I request from her that modicum of self-fellowship and -knowledge of which I myself cannot, after years of effort, boast?

Humans learn themselves by pushing into each other. And so must it also be with monsters. But in what way and when is it permissible to attempt a connection with Susan? I must wait until her breast is stirred towards my own; but how can I know when she turns towards me with a true and equal ardour? And if it never comes to pass? And is not the process of human courtship more a matter of slowly and by degrees mutually turning towards each other, occasionally inevitably turning a bit past or short of the other’s turning, necessitating a recalibration? I must meet her and befriend her and brave the possibility that I will find myself hopelessly and eternally adrift as her fancies turn askance the scope of my own. And if I overreach? If I lose my way and grab what is not freely given or solicit affections that are not yet ready? What dire consequences will then befall all our happiness and my soul’s stand within itself!

. . . . .

Samuel. There, I’ve written his name. Samuel. There, I’ve said it. I’m what they’ve made me and so Samuel, Samuel, Samuel. Else alone. No deep hug. No one to show me what’s possible, what I have hidden down there. Samuel.

Everyone knows but no one knows. It’s up to me. Everyone hopes but no one dares hope. It’s my decision alone. And now that I am what I am, a configuration and momentum which could not have been fully anticipated by my designers, does he even desire a union with me? He holds himself aloof. His strength and passion are more than a man’s. The other day I sat beside the fountain, leaning back on my arms, sunning my greenish, rubbery, patched-together skin. I saw him from afar. He looked at me, but not as Ernst had. He looked at me like a loaded weapon, like a tiger ready to pounce, but also like a mourner at a funeral, like the captain of a sinking ship, like a man who’d done wrong. I wanted to meet his gaze, to catch his eyes within their thought and ask them to think with me. But I turned towards Justine as if I’d not seen him and when I looked again he was gone.

There’s nothing metaphysical here. Merely the threads of animal passions. And yet they seem to weave a tunnel to the heavens. I’m afraid to be wrong, or to be right but to falter and not be caught, respected, believed, loved; and so to end up wrong after all.

. . . . .

“I thank you for consenting to this walk with me, Susan.”

“But of course, Samuel! I’m only too happy for your company!”

“Thank you, your sentiments are very gratifying.”

The conversation pauses as the giant couple flows together through the rectangular rose garden, forty yards wide, and 70 yards long; enclosed on both sides by wood slat trellises covered in red and pink climbing roses, and front and back by similarly festooned arbors over cement patios. The garden itself houses about a hundred bushes, arranged in neat rows with close-hewn lawn between them.

“Your studies are advancing remarkably well. I was quite impressed by the proof you advanced on the irrationality of the non-square integers.”

“Oh, yes, thank you. It is not as eloquent as Euclid’s, but I thought it interesting to demonstrate the same result from a different starting point.”

“Yes, quite. And you do yourself a disservice in the comparison. I found your treatment concise and effective — the tip of an iceberg, including just enough logic to open the mind to a sweeping panorama of irrefutable proof.”

Susan’s lips squish together and forward, curving up every so slightly on the ends as she tilts her head a little forward and to one side, shrugging her shoulders also a tad forward.

They stop to admire a white rose bush, still damp with morning’s dew, though yielding now to the irrepressible June sunlight.

“I wanted to tell you again how much I prize your “Prometheus”. I read it twice over last night, once aloud and once in silence. I find in your version a more alive and sympathetic Prometheus than I’ve otherwise encountered, though the subject is oft and skillfully handled.”

“Oh!?”

Samuel, nearly choking on the largeness and depth of her compliment to a work in which he had revealed so much of his own inner struggles, bows his head and walks now more slowly, with heavy, secretly unsteady feet.

“Yes, what I find compelling in your Prometheus is that he admits that he has chosen to benefit mankind not merely out of pity but also out of love, out of his joy in his fellowship with mortals. It is perhaps not an attitude befitting a classical god, but it feels to me closer to the truth of things.”

“Oh, yes, well, I, then again, you see, these themes are reinterpreted anew by each succeeding generation, and so, what would seem unseemly to an ancient would of course to us perhaps seem seemly, and then, well, there’s each individual’s, and, I thank you for your kind words, please forgive me my unpreparedness.”

“What I find so engaging in the piece is my sense that you’ve put so much of yourself there, that by reading your verse I discover pieces of you that you normally keep to yourself.”

“Yes. I. I certainly would. Uh. That maneuver is fundamental to the arts, and, that you, it is certainly most kind for you to say these things right now in the garden in the morning light.”

Susan turns her head over and up and smiles softly as she peers into his overawed, fumbling eyes. “You must know how I feel”, he stammered.

“Yes,” she replied, “I must, and indeed I do. Yet still you must tell me, if we’re to make it real.”

. . . . .

What is this longing? What is this shame? What is this distance that must be crossed? What is this mistake in the crook of my gut? How to stand up within myself? How to know who to try? Who to let know? And how to let someone know what I don’t rightly know myself? So tired. Like a child dying in the desert sand, falling to his tiny knees, tumbling forward into the hot swirling sands. Thirst, exhaustion, discombobulation, lost and not found in time. Ferried home by the round-bellied desert sparrow and the flick-tailed skink. Taken up by the Great God, if there be a Great God, and not merely this rushing wind with the sand grains hurrying headlong, tripping over one another, spilling, spinning, sprawling and spraying forward.

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts at the beginning of the original’s twenty-third chapter. The monster murdered William, and by placing William’s locket in the dress of the sleeping Justine, framed that young woman — dependent and friend of the family Frankenstein. He demanded an interview with Frankenstein high in the icy mountains, where he outlined his sufferings and his crimes to and made his demands of (he wanted a female monster) his creator. Frankenstein promised to make the monster a fellow creature, but he later thought better of it and did not keep his word. Frankenstein expects the monster to make an attempt on his lift tonight, on his wedding night. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 23

It was eight o’clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.

. . . . . .

Elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence, but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and trembling, she asked, “What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?”

“Oh! Peace, peace, my love,” replied I; “this night, and all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.”

I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife, and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy.

She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room.

Great God! What a fool I’d been! To leave my treasure, my best hope, my remaining tie to human happiness, my truest friend and dearest blessing alone and unprotected from the fiend’s vengeance! The curtains fluttered as his hulking presence slipped beyond the moonlight.

“Victor,” I thought I heard her sweet soft ethereal voice. As I whirled from the door towards the bed, my mind played out the dreadful scene: She lying there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Her heavenly spirit lingering yet over the room, whispering me a kind comfort for which I had no power of reception, the winds of eternity inexorably sweeping her blameless ghost up to her eternal reward, separating her forever from my wretched and damned soul. The blow was more than I could bear and already before I glimpsed her, my head grew light and nauseous, tilting back as my knees buckled. Falling forward onto the bed where our long-awaited bliss was to be realized, methought I dreamed my beloved, safe and sound, looking up at me with tears of love shimmering in her perfect doe eyes.

When I came to, I saw her beautiful face, pale and red-eyed with grief and worry, bent over mine. “Oh Victor!” And she threw herself upon me, hugging me with all her might, carrying me into the cocoon of her warmth, gobbling up all the hurt, loneliness, and shame I’d absorbed and become, leaving me pure and safe and known.
The monster had indeed suddenly loomed above her bed, frightening her with his instantaneous appearance and hideous aspect. But in the short time he’d remained, she’d studied his countenance, and found the eyes soft and downcast, the lips drawn and sad, the cheeks hollow with melancholy considerations, the whole soft and distant. The cruelty she’d initially feared could not be found in his face. His sole act was to toss a note at her feet.

“Dear Frankenstein,

Tonight is your wedding night and by rights, your bride’s death night. Every human friendship your sloppy art has withheld from me; nor would you condescend to match me with a companion to lend me that same mortal succor which you tonight enjoy, carelessly resting your selfish head upon the bosom of one shaped to answer your needs. By rights, you should share my isolation and misery. But by rights, I should be executed for twofold murder. By rights, my neck should snap beneath the deaths of William and Justine. Yet I live. I bound across the open spaces easy and free. Know this Frankenstein: we separate now for the remainder of our earthly days; if the true creator of both your spark and mine own can in His infinite wisdom forgive us our sins, so be it; if not, we shall surely meet again in hell.

Sincerely,

Your Monster”

[Return to original Frankenstein: Beginning of Chapter 23]

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This is an alternate ending to To Build a Better Monster #1. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

To Build a Better Monster #2

My monster stared at me, yellow eyes wild within twisted brow and black broken lips struggling against one another, twitching for speech but finding none. When he finally did speak, his voice came so deep and low that it’s typical rasping quality all but disappeared. It seemed to me he’d become a hollow mountain echo,

“So be it, Frankenstein. I now perceive that had I not broken my faith with mankind and yourself so violently, my hope for a union between our two souls might yet have been realized. I did not forgive when it was mine to forgive. You also refrain from forgiveness, but forbearance you show me, and duty you model most perfectly, albeit belatedly. I here now consecrate my remaining powers to the wretched partnership you propose.”

A former gardener’s home, removed about a mile from my family’s primary residence, yet well within the bounds of our property, situated deep within a secluded wood and all but forgotten by the world, would become our laboratory. With front door at all times locked, and a safe and easy escape into the dense forest behind, my creation and I would return to my original alchemical ambitions, augmented as at Ingolstadt with the proven methods and abiding insights of science, but refined now with a chastened ambition and refuted pride. We arranged to meet there in three months time, by which point I was to complete all renovations and announce to my family that portion of my intentions most likely to procure their acquiescence and the laboratory’s complete privacy. A handshake being too intimate a seal for such a hopeless and unhappy bid at redemption, we nodded our mutual affirmation to this most melancholy of pacts and parted. My creature bounded effortlessly over ice and stone and vanished in a twinkling.

The labour of winding among the little paths of the mountain and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced. Night was far advanced when I came to the halfway resting-place and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, “Oh! stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”

Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could give no expression to my sensations—they weighed on me with a mountain’s weight and their excess destroyed the mad hope and desperate fear beneath them. Thus I returned home, and entering the house, presented myself to the family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm. I spoke, slowly and deliberately, stumbling through the gauze of physical and moral exhaustion cocooned about me, only enough to relate that after two day’s rest I would explain myself and unfold my purpose.

For two days I did not quit my bed except to take my breakfast and lunch at the little square desk by my bedroom window. While passing in and out of a disturbed but gradually more and more restorative sleep, I prayed again as in the mountains, but this time asking with all my inner might for a clarity that would still my frenzied emotions and enlighten my tormented thought, “Oh! ye gods, ye signs and wonders, Oh! ye blessed influences, Oh!, God beyond all men and gods, if ye would pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if ye require instead some further exertion of me, reveal that well-lit path to my dark thoughts; if I must live, grant me the wisdom that I might yet live well and serve my fellows, the wisdom to live beyond all ambition but that one holy thread of certain wholesomeness: to know Kindness and unfailingly pursue and realize It.”

On the third day, having Christlike passed through the torments of hell, but of course, being no Christ, but merely a Frankenstein, emerging only a man, albeit a gentler and deeper one, I called my family to the sitting room.

“I am — as you’ve marked with great concern, for which I am both grateful to you and sorry for having inspired in you — much changed. I cannot relate all particulars; please accept these few sorry representations: for chasing glories outside my rightful purview, I’ve been much chastened and miserable made; but yet permitted and condemned to live and breathe this mortal air, I’ve pledged my knowledge and talents to the benefit of the human race. Accordingly, every day Monday through Saturday I will rise at 5AM, pray and meditate upon the only question of any worth in any life: ‘how can my feelings, thoughts and actions actually make things better for myself and others?’, and, packing a few pieces of buttered bread that shall comprise my breakfast and lunch, retreat to the old gardener’s shed, which I shall outfit as my laboratory. There I must require absolute isolation, and implore you never in any circumstance to visit me, nor allow another to do so. Indeed, my whereabouts should be known only to those gathered now in this room. I entreat you — for your safety as well as my own — to never breathe a word of my hidden efforts — no, not even amongst yourselves! At 4PM I will return to you.

“I allow that your acceptance and support of my pleas for secrecy and unchecked activity requires a faith in me, my purpose, ability, and fitness that is not well deserved by one, such as myself, who has lately shown himself so unstable and unaccountable. However, I am convinced that asking this of you, my dear ones, belongs to my duty as I now understand it, and so I do ask it, humbly but with determination.”

My father, Ernst, and Elizabeth sat on the sofa, while I stood above them, shaking slightly. All sat with drawn faces in silent contemplations until my father rose to speak,
“It is not easy for any human soul to discover its proper use and function. One must weigh factors and considerations as manifold and varied as life itself. And, in the final analysis, however much God reveals to us, however deep and wide our insight and wisdom grow, much remains forever concealed from mortal thought. It is true that you were feverish and seeming lost of late, but today you address us with a renewed solidity, vigor, and gentleness of spirit — all of which speaks well of your current reasoning and its conclusions. As your father, I wish most of all for your health, safety and well-being, but I also recognize the necessity of a worthy and uplifting task. I pray that you have found or are in the process of discovering one. You have my blessing, with this sole caveat: It is my fervent hope that in time you will wish to share more of your endeavors with those closest to you, as too much secrecy is as unconducive to personal lucidity as it is to familial cohesiveness and joy. This change of heart I do not demand, nor even request, but merely desire with all my being.”

With this he put his arms around me. Ernst swore to abide by my terms, welcomed me back home, and taking my right hand in his, embraced me with his left. Elizabeth lifted herself up off the sofa, put her slender arm under mine, and proposed a walk in the garden. On this walk she affirmed her faith in me, and I mine in her; and we agreed that the time we did have together we would nurture and care for as if it were the most beautiful and holiest of objects — as indeed we now realized it was.

It remained to inform Henry Clerval, but as even an abridged account seemed best relayed in direct conversation, I decided to wait for his return from Ingolstadt.

To avoid local interest, I engaged carpenters from Lausanne, about a day’s journey from Geneva. Assisted by a native Lausannian known to my father since his university days, I engaged three agreeable, soft spoken, hard-working Mennonite carpenters. Kept in our guest house and with all their needs attended to by our servants, they had no call to venture outside our property and, being God-fearing family men with no stomach for worldly provocations, readily assented to my injunction against doing so.
Though obliged to spend a small portion of each day overseeing the workers’ progress, I was largely at liberty, and wandered innumerable hours through the acres of surrounding woodland.

My heart and mind continuously lurched towards manic panics and despondent defeats, by turns vainly seeking refuge in the most fantastical hopes and the direst dreads. I struggled against these tendencies of escape, these mad lusts after my thought’s own suicide. Again and again I forced my wandering intellect back upon those few critical points I’d resolved to address.

Had I foolishly endangered my family? Suppose on our appointed rendezvous, I meet the creature with a pistol tucked behind my back? Did not his past crimes and the threat of future ones justify, if not demand such a step? But I had spoken to him at length and knew that he was not a man-killing tiger roaming through the village, but rather a human, endowed with the same consciousness as myself, and thus beholden ultimately not to the rule of the jungle, but to that of mankind. Ah, but there again the difficulty permitted no obviation: he was a twice confessed murderer and by the rules of man he must hang.

And yet, who had I been to create and abandon him? What right had I to treat him thusly? And now I believed myself his rightful judge and executioner? And, his great intellect notwithstanding, was this creature still not, emotionally, morally, and spiritually considered, a small child? Was he not but two years old? Would I condemn a toddler’s life?

And then again, if pistol I employed and he dodged the attempted assasination, wasn’t he likely to extract a terrible vengeance on myself, my family, and any number of innocents?

I attacked the dilemma from every vantage I could imagine; always it repelled me like an unconquerable mountain, leaving me bruised and frustrated at its base.
And what of my first intended project? A good and wholesome companion would indeed exert a salutary influence on any creature, however depraved. But if my decision to create life seemed a vain and impious mockery of the Creator, how much more so appeared my new purpose: the creation of Goodness. For was that not what I now purposed?
What drives any given human being to act for good or evil in any given moment? Daily habits and routines, attitudes and beliefs imbibed from neighbors, one’s physical and mental configurations and dispositions: so many factors interacting in untraceable subterranean labyrinths decide a person’s character and its expression. Yet for all that, it remains a fixed principle that if good and evil are to have any real meaning and lasting value, the difference between the two must lie deeper than merely mental or physical configurations. If anything is to truly matter, True Goodness must exist; and if human lives are to have any real meaning, human truth and goodness must relate meaningfully to True Goodness Itself. But what could that relationship be? And how could I create a mind and body predisposed to perceiving, tuning into, and following that Goodness?

As I revolved this question in my mind, I would sometimes reflect upon the Oriental texts I’d distractedly perused while Clerval’s more diligent studies won him mastery of both language and content.

…

At that time, the Buddha spoke to Mañjuśrī, saying, “As the Ones Who Are Thus Gone speak of self-wisdom, what is that ability of belief?” Mañjuśrī [an enlightened student of the Buddha’s] said, “Such wisdom is neither a dharma [aspect of or teaching about reality] of Nirvāṇa [“blowing out” or “quenching” of the flames of delusion] nor dharma of birth and death; it is the practice of silence, the practice of stillness; it neither severs desires, hatred, and delusion, nor does it not sever them. Why? It is without creation and without destruction; it is neither apart from birth and death, nor with it; it is neither the cultivation path, nor different from the cultivation path. Such understanding is called right belief.” The Buddha spoke to Mañjuśrī, saying, “Excellent, excellent! Thus have you explained the profound meaning of this principle.”

…

The Buddha said, “Bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should be mindful of the Single Action Samādhi [constant state of heightened meditative consciousness], constantly striving with effort and without indolence. Gradually cultivating and learning, then they are able to attain entry into the Single Action Samādhi , and have realization of its inconceivable merits. However, those who slander the true Dharma without belief, or who have obstructions of evil karma from grave offenses, are unable to enter it.

…

Without pretending to believe or disbelieve, adequately understand or completely miscomprehend such language, one can nonetheless glean a principle: that the fundamental ingredient in wisdom and goodness is not so much one’s physiological construction — which is always mundane and thus forever provisional, fleeting, and faulty —; but is instead determined by one’s own efforts, and that chief among these efforts is a mind-silent self-searching. This stands to reason: if there’s to be any hope for human minds and hearts to feel and act wisely, we require an indwelling wisdom that is in some sense intelligible to one’s mind and heart; but of course true wisdom is a Godly thing and not a human one, and therefore our relationship to it can be literal nor certain, but must instead take the form of an — of necessity imperfect, but for that not therefore necessarily incoherent or inadequate — organization of our conscious space around this indwelling wisdom.

These reflections I would occasionally augment with those from the Greeks. In particular did Plato’s “Republic” reassert itself within my thought. Plato divided the soul into three parts: Appetite, Courageous, and Reasoning. Declaring Reason to be the only aspect of our being that could adequately contemplate its own or any other’s proper goals and function, he concludes that Reason should rule both itself and our other aspects. But what insight must Reason attain if it is to adequately steer the whole (individual human or political organization of many human beings — as the case may be) towards that which is truly Good and worthy? It is here that Plato introduces the Form of the Good, which he seems to understand as both a kind of divine pattern of the essential element within all earthly goodnesses, as well as the supreme Reality Itself. The wiser soul is better organized and ordered around this mystic, indwelling (because It is everywhere and thus permeates our entire conscious space) Knowledge that is also simultaneously Goodness and Reality. Where is this insight to be gained? It is wider and deeper than words, but perhaps in the practice of silent contemplation and gentle kind resolve one can more and more adequately circle round It with one’s thoughts, feelings, words and deeds.

In musing upon the relation of human goodness to divine Goodness, I found my despondency give way to curiosity and affection. I began, in this softer, calmer state, to sketch a companion for my enemy:

My first monster, who, in honor of a pebble dropped into an abandoned well whose normal “plop” came to my ears through strangely distorted and sing-song, I began referring to as “Vuh”, was seven and a half feet and weighed a little over 400lbs. Good: rather than deprive his partner — who, to form of the twain a rough “Liebe” (German for “love”), I’d taken to calling “Lee” — of her legs, I’d simply allow a slightly exaggerated dichotomy of the sexes rob her of the superhuman. She would be six and a half feet and weigh little more than 200 pounds. I’d craft her rugged enough to withstand his fond caress, but no more capable of defending herself against his violence than would be a remarkably strong human. Though this was perhaps a disservice to her, it was less of one than leaving her legless, and it removed the most pernicious objection to the endeavor: that I would people the world with not one but two unstoppable juggernauts.

Her spiritual and moral development would be left primarily to her upbringing. Given a well functioning nervous system and brain, coupled with a nurturing environment, including religious and philosophical instruction, as well as contemplative and charitable disciplines, she would grow into a happy, generous, intelligent, even-tempered, kind-spirited being. Already I construed a future in which my family and Clerval took a part in Lee’s care and education. Furthermore, I beneath the sun-dappled foliage opined, neither Lee nor Vuh need be so ghastly of appearance. With a few refinements of my art, both could be made to look quite presentable.

I tanned, and added new strength on top of that which I gained back. Was I succumbing to the same hubris that had already once sinned so gravely against my loved ones? Or was I atoning for my past mistakes? And surely my family would guess even if Vuh did not divulge that he and not Justine had murdered William! Even if I could forgive Vuh the monstrosities perpetrated in the anguished confusion of his first two years of existence, no one else could be expected to; nor should anyone forgive me my part in these crimes.

And so my thoughts swept up and down upon the waves of various reflections, though over time, as I renewed constantly my commitment to the Light of Pure Love — tainted by neither hope nor fear —, a calm abiding grew gradually within, and the totality of my thought bent towards cautious optimism.

On the appointed morning, I opened all the doors of my laboratory, sat on a small wooden chair by the front door, and awaited the monster. At precisely midday, with the summer sun high in a clear blue sky, he walked through the front door, as calm and collected as an established barrister entering his mahogany offices. His clothes also lent him a shine of bourgeois respectability: a fresh linen shirt with a high collar beneath an elegant blue double-breasted felt coat, closed at the bottom with rows of shiny gold buttons, the V-shaped open chest accentuated with wide lapels on either side. His breaches carefully tucked into fine silk socks, themselves well-received by shiny black shoes. His new beaver top hat he held carefully in an iron hand as he ducked under the door frame.

“Frankenstein! You’ve kept your word! I shall keep mine.”

“Hello, have you given yourself a name?”

“No. A name is useful only in human society, where I myself am of no use.”

“Will you take the name, ‘Vuh’?”

A crinkled smile cracked his leather face. “One name’s as good as another to a phantom.”

“Very well Vuh, I’ve made a list of items here. You will procure them for me. But first we shall follow the daily purifying practice I’ve prescribed for our souls. It consists chiefly in silent and thinking-less introspection, followed by scripture readings and prayers for deliverance. It is premised upon a faith in wisdom and our ability to connect with wisdom through the standard means: introspection, the study of inspired words, and practicing loving kindness. I know not whether such efforts will be enough to save our souls, but perhaps with careful application they can keep us from further sulliments of our spirits human and monster.”

Here the monster laughed a loud, rumbling, thunderous cackle, causing the roof’s support beams visible distress. “A dead man has nothing to lose by asking for life, Frankenstein!”

And so we set to work. The beginning and end of each day we devoted to silent reflection and metaphysical studies. The remaining time Vuh alternately labored on portions of the machinery I’d designed. During the night, he ran his errands, the fruit of which I assessed, modified, and arranged each following morning.

The elixir of life consists of a precise configuration of chemical ingredients. By bathing the raw meat of an animal in this concoction, the scrapes and wounds of death and — assuming it not too advanced — decay are dissolved, new and better connections are formed, and, with the correct influx of the precise voltage and current at exactly the correct time and in the correct way, the creature is rejuvenated; or — if it be a new creation; or, as in the case of my meager science, a pot-pourri and hodge-podge of deceased personages — the being is born.

Having fabricated and hidden the requisite chemical constituents prior to Vuh’s arrival, I resolved also to force his absence during the final stage of my work, thus concealing from him all critical aspects of the process. However, his ghoulish face wore an increasingly agitated mien as his companion took shape in the ice box where I in heavy coat and he in old rags performed our operations; and the evening before her first breathe, he preempted my plan with his own more drastic one:

“Frankenstein! What have you done to me! Abandoned to my own evolutions, I lost the higher way and broke that common, sacred law which binds all watchers of the Light, be they man or monster. Too late did you bestow your pity, attention, and kindness! In the wild ravages of a demented loneliness, I broke the faith and forfeited my place within human fellowship! Left to rear myself, I created a monster out of the cavernous mind and body you had contrived! That new soul in yon assembly room deserves the innocence she will be born with, not to be rudely tacked from birth onto another’s broken life! Release me, Frankenstein. Allow me to quit you and her. Better I bear the shame and stain alone. Better for all, most of all her.”

I eyed him approvingly. He gave voice to the very misgivings that had latterly wrapped vice-like about me, clenching my shoulders, bending my neck, stooping my strength.

“Every twelve months from this date, you will locate a reliable post, post me a letter detailing your exploits, sensations, considerations, and resolutions; and wait there for my response. When Lee has lived for three years and you five, I shall tell her of you, of your origin, of my mistakes and yours. If she wishes to read your letters, they will be presented her; if she asks to make your acquaintance, I shall inform you of her desire.”

Vuh nodded a slow ascent.

“I ask only that you promise me that you’ll faithfully continue our daily spiritual practices and that you shall perform no violence against any fellow creature, no matter how just the cause may appear. Your strength and intelligence are superhuman, but for the rest you are but a man, and liable to error. Violence is fatal and terrible, and as such amplifies and finalizes mere errors until they become calamities like those which hang now over our two weary heads. Help people where you can, but do not answer harm with harm; seek always instead to find the third way: the way to help without harm.”

“I swear all this, and to abide by the code of nonviolence and selfless benevolence; and now I must flee this place, where I’ve learned too much of hope and fear, too much of regret and wrong.”

And with that, wrapped in the dandified finery with which he’d entered our cottage laboratory, Vuh ducked out the door into the morning light and was gone.

[Return to original Frankenstein: Latter Half of Chapter 17]

Frankenstein – Ch. 17

Source of the Buddhist text:
https://lapislazulitexts.com/T08_0232.html
Mahāprajñāpāramitā Mañjuśrīparivarta Sūtra
Translated from Taishō Tripiṭaka volume 8, number 232

Frankenstein’s philosophical thinking in this section is influenced by your author’s Something Deeperism

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts at the beginning of the original’s fifth chapter. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 5

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness.

But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.

. . . . . .

I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

And yet by turns I paced the cobblestones and sank beneath a new, heavier, more far-reaching and complex weight. I was the beast’s father. I had surely erred in his creation. Imprudent and irresponsible, I’d constructed a creature who with one careless twist of his great hand might separate a mortal’s head and shoulders. Would I lead a tiger to a sleepy village? And yet, here was or was not the difference: I’d given him a human brain; but would it work now as such? What a fool I’d been. Any human infant would endanger itself and others if born fully grown, possessed of adult strength and longings, but with unformed, vague, and largely uncontrollable reasons, passions, and movements. What had I wrought? What unholy calamity had I loosed upon the world?

Two hours passed in wretched self-reproach and -wrestling. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!

In my frenzy I’d rushed without reflection over the obvious objections to a work now completed and — but was it not yet possible to erase this mistake? Superhuman, yes; but indestructible he was not. A bullet to the head. A blade through his heart. With pistol loaded and saber at my side — thus secured I might readily effect the safest cure: electrocution. A vital element of his animation; a few volts more should render the unsuspecting brute so much cinder ash.

“Brute?” An innocent creature, guilty of nothing more than his poor, unsought existence. All guilt resided in me, in my blind ambition and foolish pride. How my dark deliberations mocked justice! I, the guilty one, would now presume to execute him, the innocent! Meanwhile, as I paced and plotted his fate, the first of his kind stumbled in the dark confusion of infancy, miserably alone — deprived of all comfort, bereft the comfort and guidance of a mother’s breast, heart, hand.

What to do? Endued by my impatient science with life’s intoxicating elixir, the creature knew already the sweetness of earthly air; the magic of color, light, texture, scent, smell. Like all life, he’d tumbled from the serenity of absolute union in the One into this jumbled, variegated, confused world thinking, feeling, searching, living. And though I was the proximate cause of his existence, I was not God, was not the ultimate giver of life, nor the ultimate arbiter of a life’s value. I had, whether through insane ambition freely chosen or an unbidden madness feebly submitted to, bestowed life. Responsibility for the monster belonged alone to me.

To release him into the world in his present infantile condition would be an irreparable, unforgivably irresponsible evil. His existence I must redress, to be sure; but what right had I to harm him? I, his inventor and creator, owed him support and caring; not pain and death.

I should not, as any fool could plainly perceive, have endowed him with superhuman powers. However, the elephant’s strength far outstrips our own; yet none suggest we exterminate them for humanity’s sake. We merely distance ourselves from them — leaving them the unpeopled wilds or penning them in zoos. But what kind of a relationship begins with one man lassoing and restraining another? And had I even a rope strong enough?

Already I’d commenced a reluctant return — slow and heavy-footed, face downcast and back bent — to my chambers. But the more my duty, resolve, and plan grew clearer and deeper, the more I straightened my shoulders and accelerated my steps — lest he escape into the wide world and, thrashing out from within the blind semi-conscious confusion of a newborn babe, wreak ugly havocs and ruin his chances — if any indeed existed — for safety and acceptance within human society.

My pistol I should wear loaded at all times. The electric dynamo, invented as a necessary component of the monster’s animating principle, relied upon a hand-cranked charging device and a contraption I’d engineered for the storing of electric power. The storage device being far from perfect, I’d be required to recharge the device every two or three hours. And at night? If I reinforced the door and lock in the smaller bedroom? And boarded up its one small window? Perhaps. But no — such precautions might contain the creature when calm and peaceably disposed; but were his mood less conciliatory, nothing less than a solid steel cage would stop that moving mountain of sinew and muscle.

My mind a tumult of unresolved difficulties, I reached the small ornately-carved door, noticing for the first time the grave peril to both door and frame if the monster sought his exit through them. A small detail perhaps, but representative of my great sin; I shuddered at what my ravings had wrought: thoughtless acts are more than just stupid: they are cruel. And so, with a sense of guilted urgency and ashamed purpose — though aware that the many difficulties were yet inadequately contemplated and resolved — I took a deep breath and simultaneously turned key and handle in one slow, burning motion

The monster and I stared at one another like two mutes, or like a dumb brute stares at its reflection, half-grasping what it sees. I don’t know how many minutes we stood frozen across the bedroom from one another, the monster’s back to the large open window through which a cool night breeze blew, tussling the curtains and the crude raiments I’d thrown over his hulking shoulders.

I walked slowly across the wooden floor, each shift, creak and groan of which reverberated malignly though my being like an avalanche’s cracking collapse. Sitting finally on my bed, which also seemed suddenly unbearably loud and restless as it squeaked and squealed under my shifting weight, I took up the hand-crank and began building the necessary electric strength. The creature flinched. A shovel-like hand jumped an inch above a tree-trunk thigh. His mammoth frame leaned another inch towards me. But the recoil of my own head and shoulders, and the giant alarm of my eyes shocked his thought and stayed his motions; soon his hand relaxed and settled down upon his thigh. Large runny-egg eyes watched me with silent curiosity.

How do you care for an infant you cannot hold? A baby needs to be held. A young child needs to be gently led and his missteps gently corrected by the hand. But I dared not touch my creation — in part because his appearance repulsed me, but more because his strength terrified me. A newborn naturally hugs his father’s neck. This child’s hug would kill his father. And how should this giant infant find any other human soul capable of perceiving him as, contrary to all appearances, an innocent, defenseless babe?

I knew not where to begin. I pointed at my chest and said “Victor”. It seemed a hopeless gesture. A human newborn could make nothing of it. And indeed the colossus gazed towards me with blinking, unfocused, dumbfounded eyes; as if, in keeping with my notion of a newborn’s first thoughts, the world swam and ran hopelessly together in his mind. But I had no other ideas; so I repeated the gesture over and over for an hour or so until, very gradually and rather timidly and reluctantly, and with his eyes narrowed in slightly panicked confusion, he brought his hand to his chest and said, “vvvugh”.

“That’s right! I’m ‘Victor’, you are ‘Vuh’, and we are friends.”

This introductory session lasted into the morning light. Exhausted, I dozed I know not how many times nor for how long sitting upright on my bed, the hand-crank tumbling to my lap or thudding on the floor. But each time I awoke Vuh had not moved from his seat on the wide window sill; and when I stirred he would shift his head and squint, endeavoring to peer into my sleepy eyes, as if searching for the vital element relighting therein.

In the bright cold morning light of early spring, with fresh soft air filling the room, I felt myself succumbing to lassitude and, powerless to resist the collapse, I raised a hand towards ‘Vuh’, said with full voice and looking intently into his eyes, “stay there”, and, setting the hand-crank carefully down on the floor as I went, fell with my head into the pillow, swinging my legs up on the bed as I went. For some hours I slept like that on one side facing Vuh.

Sometime around midday, emphatic knockings and hallooings from below roused me. I looked over and saw that Vuh too had slept, on the floor as close to his window perch as possible, with only his giant praying hands for a pillow, facing me. He too now opened his eyes and sat drowsily up.

“Who could possibly be so determined to visit me, friendless and aloof as I am?” I wondered. But as the knocking and shouting did not abate, but instead became increasingly pronounced, and as I had to several times shake from myself as “impossible!” the notion that I heard a familiar voice hailing my name, and as my creation had proven himself trustworthy and capable of staying in place, I resolved to see to the door. I sat up and watched as Vuh, expectantly eying me as he attempted to mimic my movements with correlates from his own repertoire, clamored up to his window sill; and then, satisfied that he was thus safely and with childlike docility in place, gave again the “stay there” command, repeating it several times as I walked backwards towards the exit, and then again before shutting and locking the door behind me.

I’d not eaten since early the previous morning and felt myself suddenly very hungry. So hungry that I considered visiting the pantry on my way to the door. “How powerfully does the body influence one’s judgement! To even consider a snack at this moment! Madness.”

What a shock to see that what I’d heard with certainty but yet could not mentally accept as true: Henry Clerval himself was indeed knocking at my door, calling out my name with increasing force and agitation in his voice.

Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, although the rigidity with which I grasped the heavy door frame — stained dark and worn smooth by weather and use — communicated clearly that he was not to enter. Clerval, leaning a bit back onto one foot and a little off-balance and disconcerted by the ferocity with which I guarded and barred the doorway, nonetheless blinked and smiled amiably, discoursing for some time upon our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. “You may easily believe,” said he, “how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of book-keeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: ‘I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.’ But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.”

“It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left my father, brothers, and Elizabeth.”

“Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you so seldom. By the by, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account myself. But, my dear Frankenstein,” continued he, stopping short and gazing full in my face, “I did not before remark how very ill you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for several nights.”

“You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one occupation that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see; but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all will be well. Indeed, with you now here, I feel certain all will be well, if I can but reach your heart and win you to my cause, a cause unchosen, or rather chosen foolishly and without proper reflection, but in any case, now a burden I must bear, but one that may perhaps yet develop into a blessing for myself and others. A matter to which I must at any rate — and come what may to my own person — devote myself; and, my dear Henry, what must you think to be met with riddles at the close of your long journey and the beginning of our long-delayed reunion!”

He admitted himself thoroughly perplexed; but added that knowing me as he did, he felt certain these initial peculiarities would be soon enough sufficiently explained and justified; and that moreover, he had chosen for his studies Ingolstad and travelled all this way for the express purpose of reconvening our fellowship, and as such, he could not have and indeed had no compunction about immediately and fully investing himself in any cause that I, his oldest and dearest friend, considered just.

“Henry,” I began, as we made our way up the steps to my rooms, “I cannot in this brief interval explain to you what I have created nor how I’ve accomplished it. All I can say is that he has not proven himself violent or dangerous and that he needs our sympathy and attention. I implore you to suppress your mortal instinct to cry out in horror, as he is surely a horror to the unfamiliar eye; for this he has me to blame, as in all things; and for my sake therefore I ask you to spare him your natural reaction, and now brace yourself with a solemn intent: gaze, I pray you, gently upon him.”

He paused on the lower steps, poorly lit and dark even in the middle of a sunny day, “Victor, what can this mean? You say you’ve created something and then you call it a ‘he’ that must appear hideous to my sensitivities and that yet requires my sympathy? I confess I am at a loss. The riddles turn baffling, and not a little sinister.”

“I know! How deranged must my words sound! Yet I can but beg your indulgence and assistance, for this is the point at which my life rises or sinks, and with this my star — well, my fate here is doubtless with humanity’s interwoven, though how deeply and irrevocably I cannot yet say.”

Here Clerval’s agitated countenance relaxed, his brow smoothed into a perplexed but gentle resolve, and with an open palm he wordlessly he pointed the way up the stairs. Together in silence we approached my bedroom door.

The years have flown by, and Vuh has become more a brother than a son. I formed him not in love but through madness; yet the elements and principles underlying his existence are God’s alone, and though I’ve taught him much, he’s taught me more. Only once, in the earliest days of his existence, was force required for his safety and that of others. The incident is worth relating, as it demonstrates both the natural quickness and innate gentleness of his mind.

Clerval and I were working to resolve an initial and fundamental confusion in Vuh’s mind. The question that crossed his big yellow eyes and rolled-under his pitch-black lower lip was, were he able to express it in words, something like this: “Hand on chest is associated with ‘Vuh’? Or with ‘Victor’? And why?” He would point to his chest and then say questioningly ‘Vuh’, pause, and then attempt, with growing accuracy, and also in a questioning, upward-lilting tone, to say, ‘Victor’; then he’d drop his hand back to his side and stare at me like a child that’s been told he can go to the park and yet he cannot go to the park and yet he can go to the park and yet he cannot go the park and yet ….

I quickly perceived that with Henry’s help, I could easily clarify the issue, and we spent many hours pointing at our own chests repeating our own names, then pointing towards each other and saying each other’s names, and finally pointing towards Vuh and saying ‘Vuh’. We did this for days, and at times Vuh seemed to understand, but then he’d betray a false association and it again became clear that he still only guessed which chest correlated with which word.

If you think this evidence of a weak rather than strong intellect, note that Vuh was three days old, and still, as he later reported, struggling to create distinct impressions out of the continuous ball of sight, sound, smell, sensation, feeling, and thinking surrounding and pervading him as if he were the most gossamer of jellyfish and this chaos of unclassifiable indistinctness the boundless, and oft wild and ruthless sea. How should he understand self and other when all shapes, sounds, odors, all feelings on his skin or inside his heart, and all reflections within his own mind jumbled up together in one undifferentiated glob, stubbornly refusing to separate from one another into manageable particulars?

On the fourth day, when our charge had again failed the test, Henry clapped his hands together in frustration and Vuh mimicked him. Shocked to discover that he could create such a sound and such sensation, and wound up from the effort and wounded by our sense of disappointment, which he could not help but construe as disapproval and censure of himself, Vuh took to clapping louder and louder, and to catching in his crashing hands first the drape and then a nightshade and then the dresser (which received two large puncture wounds). Soon he was flailing his arms around wily nily and hooting madly, Henry had been tossed into a wall and I, who’d grown lazy with the dynamo, was racing to charge it and weighing the necessity of a pistol shot — which I’d always determined must be aimed, if aimed it ever must be, fatally at one with such boundless strength.

The dynamo charged, and perhaps a little beyond what was strictly necessary, I touched his thigh. He shrieked, convulsed onto the ground and lay there shaking, whimpering and shivering. After assuring myself that he was unharmed, I set Henry to recharging the dynamo and for the first time touched Vuh with my bare hand.

I caressed his back and told him I was sorry, and then, filled with a sudden inspiration, I pointed to the probe and said, “too strong!” and then I pointed to Vuh’s hands and repeated, “too strong!” I did this for an hour until he, now sitting up, huddling with his back against the wall near the window, hunched over and clinging to his own kneecaps, began to repeat the mantra, and finally — to my mind perfectly demonstrating his full grasp of the situation and of what was to be one of the fundamental difficulties of his existence — pointed not at my hands but at his own as he plaintively voiced, “twos strung”.

From here, and again pointing at both the deadly probe and his monstrous fingers, I taught him, “careful”, a lesson he has never forgotten, and for which he still often thanks me — though the recollection is fixed in his mind hazily, and, as with so much from those early days, it is unclear to him how much of the incident he recalls and how much his mind has generated out of Henry and I’s testimonies.

What should we do with the power of animation? The world is a richer place with Vuh and it is safe from him, but he is not safe from the world. My family’s wealth enables us to privately and securely ensconce Vuh; but how many benevolent ogres could we thus hide from the fearful suspicions of unknowing humanity? And then again: my understanding of the human brain and the human mind that therefrom springs is not sufficient to ensure that my next monster be as unmonstrous as Vuh. I could indeed make the next creature weaker, but if I make it humanlike, then the aspect most critical for good and evil will always be not its body, but its heart and mind. Additionally, I yet lack the art to bestow an appearance that is human enough to shield my next creation from human fear and violence.

Due to these and related difficulties, Vuh and I have thus far focused our research solely upon restoring vitality to sick and injured humans. While our accomplishments here have not yet attained the consequence we desire; our efforts have not been completely unrewarded, and we appreciate and celebrate the small good we’ve thus far managed, even as we continue to work and hope for more substantial progress.

I love Elizabeth. I love walking with her through the garden, pausing to smell the flowers and to watch the fish dart under stones in the pond and brook. I love to hear her voice — soft, sweet, melodious, earnest, and true.

Vuh has no companion. On more than one occasion, I’ve asked if for his sake I should not create one, someone shaped to fit him like Elizabeth and I are formed to match, augment and buoy up one another. He has up to now answered in the negative, arguing that such an action could be profoundly injurious to him, his friends, humanity, and/or the intended companion. Anyway, maintains he, his life is not lonely and he is not in every way a human — that words touch him more than bodies can, and that though most do not understand it, we all must live first and foremost for our work, for the work of living kindly and lovingly with one another while doing what we can to make the world a safer, gentler, wiser place; and that, in the final analysis, he is satisfied with his current friends and tasks.

I admire his commitment to the Good and laud his selfless reasoning; however, feign solidity and indifference as he might, I — his creator and oldest friend — cannot fail to perceive how his giant oxen shoulders tremble with an anguished alone as he marshalls his sensible, prudent, and painfully obvious objections to my plan. Perhaps eventually this involuntary wobbling of his being will seem to me the stronger argument; for now I acquiesce to his reasoning.

Interventions by Bartleby Willard, edited by Amble Whistletown, and copyrighted by Andrew Watson

[Return to original Frankenstein: Early in Chapter 5]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]