Part 4 - Victor’s tale
Victor Frankenstein began telling his life’s story to Robert Walton, and he talked first about his childhood:
“My mother’s tender caresses and my father’s smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me, are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me … while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.”
Perhaps this was Mary’s idea of how to correctly raise children (as she had just recently given birth to her and Percy’s son, William), and so it seemed to be with Victor’s parents, who would also adopt a young orphan girl from a poor guardian family: Elizabeth. And Victor recalls that:
“She [Elizabeth] busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home … she found ample scope for admiration and delight.
And Victor talks of how the two of them were different, that:
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.”
[Note: The curious fact that this story occurs at Geneva may simply be that it’s where Mary and Percy were living at the time, when Mary wrote ‘Frankenstein’. Although it may also remind us of other stories of Geneva - of intrigue and skullduggery from that infamous oligarchic city-state, so similar to Venice.]
Later at school, Victor was ‘indifferent’ to the other students, except for Henry:
“I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure …
Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species …
Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she [Elizabeth] not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition.”
Despite this poetic influence of his step-sister upon his friend, Victor would however become different.
“… neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn … Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate …”
[It should reminds me of some of today’s education systems, where the emphasis is too heavily placed on math and computers, while too little is placed on art, music and poetry.]
But then, Victor recounted the point in his life that fundamentally changed his outlook:
“When I was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, ‘Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.’
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.
When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself … I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple … Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life …”
Who were these alchemists and occultists that Victor began to study:
Albertus Magnus (1200 – 1280) was a Dominican friar, and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. He was also an alchemist and astrologer and wrote ‘Speculum Astronomiae’ in defense of astrology.
However, since the Dominicans were placed, in order to lead in the prosecution of the Inquisition, why did a Dominican lead in the study of alchemy and astrology? Shouldn’t Albertus have been a victim of the Inquisition for this astrology work? Apparently not?!?
Cornelius Agrippa (1486 – 1535) a mercenary and ‘knight’ of the Holy Roman Emperor and a skeptic, wrote ‘Three Books of Occult Philosophy’, that magic could resolve the problems of skepticism.
Paracelsus, the pen name of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hehenheim (1493 – 1541), whose father was a commander of the Knights Hospitaller, was another alchemist like Albertus, and he wrote ‘Astronomia Magna’ on astrology, divination and demonology.
Victor immersed himself in the study of astrology, alchemy, magic and demonology!!!
In more modern times, Carl Jung also studied Paracelsus, and he wrote two essays on Paracelsus, delivering one of them in 1921 - in the actual house in which Paracelsus was born, and the second one in 1941 - to mark the 400th anniversary of Paracelsus’s death.
[To learn more about Carl Jung and his followers, please read Cynthia Chung’s ‘The Origins of the Counterculture Movement: A Gathering of Anarchists, Occultists and Psychoanalysts for a New Age’ and also the seven part series of ‘The Shaping of a World Religion’ at cynthiachung.substack.com]
It would seem that Mary and Percy Shelley was fighting against the same Jung-sters and occultists that we are having to fight against today.