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FRANKENSTEIN |
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Notes 1. (p. 55). two persons of distinguished literary celebrity: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. 2. (p. 58) to speak in Sanchean phrase: i.e. as Sancho Panza speaks in Cervantes' Don Quixote: 'in this matter of government everything depends upon the beginning ...' (Book II, xxxii). Mary and Percy Shelley were both reading Don Quixote during 1816. 3. (p. 58) the story of Columbus and his egg: a famous story, related in Washington Irving's Christopher Columbus (1828). When told by a courtier that others beside himself had the ability to discover the Indies, he challenged those around him to stand an egg o none of its ends: 'Everyone attempted it, but in vain; whereupon he struck it upon the table so as to break the end, and left it standing on the broken part; illustrating in this simple manner, that when he had once shown the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.' 4. (p. 58). Dr. Darwin: Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), physician, poet and free-thinking radical. By his first wife he was grandfather of Charles Darwin, discoverer of 'natural selection', and by his second of Francis Galton, the famous explorer, scientist and psychologist. Percey Shelley was a great admirer of the poet-doctor, who embodied his own theory of evolution into the epic poem The Temple of Nature (1803). The following (Canto IV, II. 397-402) is very suggestive as one of the possible sources for Frankenstein:
5. (p. 58). galvanism: after Luigi Galvani (1737-98), the Italian physiologist and experimenter whose experiments with frogs led him to believe that an 'animal electricity' resided in the nerves and muscles of animals. Observing that the convulsions of a frog placed in a circuit containing a piece of metal were accompanied by motions in its nerve juices, he assumed the convulsions to be the work of a subtle but vital electrical fluid 'animating' the animal's enclosed nerves and muscle fibres. His notion that this fluid was analogous to ordinary electricity may have inspired Mary Shelley's idea that 'perhaps a corpse would be reanimated', no doubt through the agency of an enormous voltaic electricity-producing Galvanic battery (the 'powerful engine' mentioned in her Introduction). 6. (p. 80). syndics: government magistrates of Geneva. 7. (p. 83). schiavi ognor frementi: in context, the phrase refers to the 'trembling' of the Italian population while under Austrian rule during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 8. (p. 85) campagne: a country cottage or house. 9. (p. 87). Natural philosophy: the old term for physical science, especially physics. 10. (p. 87) Cornelius Agrippa: magician and cabbalist (1486-1535). 11. (p. 88) Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus: Paracelsus (1493-1541), real name Theophrastuc Bombastus von Hohenheim, a Swiss alchemist and physician who pioneered the treatment of certain diseases based on empirical observation; he also stated that human beings could be produced without mother and father by alchemical procedures. Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), Dominican theologian and Aristotelian teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas who thought magic essential to the pursuit of knowledge. As a natural scientist he studied plant life and the human brain; the making of a brazen head that could answer questions, probably some kind of automaton, has been ascribed to him. 12. (p. 93). 'old familiar faces': a reference to Charles Lamb's poem 'The Old Familiar Faces' (1798), which begins 'Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?' 13. (p. 97). He said that 'these were men to whose indefatigable zeal ... without any presumption': written by P.B. Shelley in 1817. Before Mary Shelley submitted the Frankenstein manuscript to publishers in May 1817, she adopted a number of Percy's suggested changes to the text. This particular addition reveals the seriousness with which he regarded the achievements of both 'old' and 'new' sciences. 14. (p. 100). I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated: written by P.B. Shelley. It is hard to resist the notion that it is from the Romantic poet himself, or rather the Shelleyan Idea, that this 'dizziness' derives. 15. (p. 100). I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead: from The Thousand and One Nights; Sinbad the Sailor's Fourth Voyage. 16. (p. 108). the Dutch schoolmaster in 'The Vicar of Wakefield': the passage continues: '"and, in short," continued he, "as I don't know Greek, I do not believe there is any good in it'" (Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter 20). 17. (p. 113). The republican institutions of our country ... the dignity of a human being: written by P. B. Shelley. The poet here took the opportunity to 'improve' his wife's text by a mini-celebration of the republican values which he so passionately embraced. 18. (p. 113). the beauty of Angelica: heroine of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516). 19. (p. 121) 'the palaces of nature': from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III, lxii. 20. (p. 127). presumption: Richard Brinsley Peake's Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein was the first stage melodrama based on Mary Shelley's story. She saw the Peake production at the Royal Opera House in 1823. 21. (p. 141). aiguilles: peaks. 22. (p. 143). necessary beings: William Godwin's Doctrine of Necessity maintained that 'In the life of every human being there is a chain of events, generated in the lapse of ages which preceded his birth, and going on in regular procession through the whole period of his existence, in consequence of which it was impossible for him to act in any instance otherwise than he has acted' (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Book IV, Chapter VIII). 23. (pp. 143-4). We rest ... mutability: last part of P. B. Shelley's 'Mutability' (1816). 24. (p. 151). as Pandaemonium appeared to the daemons of hell: cf. Milton, Paradise Lost 1, 11. 670 ff. 25. (p. 159). discovery myself: here meaning 'reveal myself'. 26. (p. 161). the ass and the lap-dog: from La Fontaine's 'L'Ane et le petit chien', in Fables IV, 5. When the ass sees the lap-dog's master petting it as a reward for its friendly fawning, it tries the same thing, but gets beaten for its pains. 27. (p. 164). Volney's 'Ruins of Empires': The Comte de Volney's Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les revolutions des empires (1791) was a popular essay in the philosophy of history which impressed both Mary and Percy Shelley. 28. (p. 173). 'Paradise Lost', a volume of Plutarch's 'Lives', and the 'Sorrows of Werter': John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667 and 1674), Plutarch's Parallel Lives (c. AD 100) and Johann von Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) are considered by Yale scholar Peter Brooks to 'constitute a possible Romantic cyclopedia universalis'. 29. (p. 174). 'The path of my departure was free': cf. 1. 14 in P.B. Shelley's 'Mutability': 'The path of its departure still is free.' 30. (p. 194). siroc: or sirocco, a hot, oppressive wind blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean to parts of southern Europe. 31. (p. 205). the illustrious Hampden: John Hampden (1594-1643), English statesman and prominent amongst the leaders of the Parliamentary opposition to Charles I. 32. (p. 226). maladie du pays: homesickness. 33. (p. 252). manes: shades or spirits of the dead. 34. (p. 262). Evil thenceforth became my good: cf. Milton, Paradise Lost 4, 1. 110, 'Evil, be thou my good.'
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