On Science and the Soul

The event on which this fiction is founded, has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not impossible of occurrence. -Percy Shelley, from his 'Preface' to the original 1818 edition of Frankenstein



Early cover art for Frankenstein.

~*~

 

I'm moving into the final chapters of The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, caught up in that wonderful tension between not being able to put the book down, and not wanting it to end. 

One thing I really enjoy about Holmes' narrative is his constant attention to the interplay between literature, poetry, and science during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While Joseph Banks, William Herschel, Caroline Herschel, Humphry Davy, and their many companions redefined our world through science, the great Romantic authors such as John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron explored the meaning of poetry in an age of increasing rationalism. 

I was fascinated to learn that Mary Shelley's character Frankenstein may have had his roots in real-life contemporary scientists.  There was, for example, in 1803 a certain Giovanni Aldini who tried to revive the body of a convicted murderer with electrical charges, six hours after he had been hanged in London. Aldini's experiments were met with eager publicity on the one hand; and public outcry on the other. By 1805, he was forced to leave the country. 

Mary Shelley

Of course, Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein was not an Italian scientist living in London, but a German physician immersed in a Gothic world of her making.  Holmes speculates that Shelley may have found further inspiration in the German physiologist Johann Wilhelm Ritter, whose galvanic experiments were known to be practiced on animals, and rumored to have been applied to humans.  Ritter did not achieve much success by any definition of the word.  His colleagues were alienated, his students abandoned him, and his family suffered grievously from his neglect as he became increasingly obsessed with his work.  In 1810 he died penniless and insane.

At the heart of these gruesome attempts at reviving the dead was a heated debate over a concept called 'Vitalism'.  This was the belief in the existence of a life force, or 'Vitality', vigorously attacked by some and staunchly defended by others.

'Vitality' was thought of as a substance super-added to the mechanical structures of animals and plants.  A liquid, perhaps, or something akin to electricity.  A number of scientists claimed to have isolated it, though these claims were eventually refuted.  'Vitality' was considered by many a scientific conception of the soul; and since it was super-added, some power outside of humans (God?) must have added it.

Holmes does a wonderful job of showing how this debate was infused into the works of authors and poets of the time, most notably with John Keats narrative poem 'Lamia' and of course, Mary Shelley's immortal Frankenstein. 


Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog,
by Casper David Friedrich



Shelley's novel takes on renewed significance when one considers the historical context, for she is taking the most controversial experiments of her time to their most terrible conclusion, in an even grander experiment of the mind. In the process, she considers the debate of Vitalism. After all, Frankenstein succeeded in giving organic life to his 'monster', but could that monster also be given a soul?

Those who have read Frankenstein know that the doctor and his 'monster' are actually co-protagonists, each given the chance to tell his own story.  The eloquent and introspective nature of the 'monster' is lost in most film renditions; Shelley painted him as a sort of anti-hero, a creature driven to wreak havoc and destruction by the unbearable circumstances of his creation. 

I have said elsewhere (see The Landscape of My Imagination) that I would have felt very much at home among the Romantic authors.  Now in reading Richard Holmes' work, I like to imagine I would have felt even more at home among the scientists who were their contemporaries.  Not so much Aldini, of course.  But I would have liked to have met Joseph Banks, Caroline and William Herschel, and Humphry Davy, among others. 

Certainly I would have loved to experience something of that time, when the tension between enduring mystery and revolutionary knowledge produced a sort of 'vital force' of its own.

Not that this tension has faded, though sometimes we may think it has. Our scientific knowledge has grown exponentially since the start of the 19th century. Yet somehow the universe has kept pace with our capacity to unravel its mysteries.  The more we know, the more it seems there is left to discover.

That makes for a friendly universe, in my mind.  One that is most accommodating to our insatiable sense of curiosity.



I should mention that the "Dr. Darwin" to which Percy Shelley refers in the quote at the beginning of this post is not Charles Darwin (who was only 9 years old when Frankenstein was first published), but his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a well-known natural philosopher and physiologist.

The Landscape of My Imagination

I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when I was in high school, as part of my English class. To this day (and it’s been a long time since then), the cover art of my high school edition of Frankenstein remains vivid in my mind: A man in 19th century dress, his back to the viewer, his figure small but distinctive in a vast landscape of ragged mountains and hidden valleys.


It was wonderful surprise – while I was refreshing my memory of Shelley, Frankenstein, and Romanticism – to come across this same image on Wikipedia. It didn’t take much; just one click on “Romantic” from Wikipedia’s Frankenstein page. The artwork, entitled Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, is by Casper David Friedrich, a painter of the Romantic period.

I also remember our classroom discussion of Frankenstein, where our teacher talked about the importance of wilderness for the Romantic movement. Shelley is a prime example of this.  In her timeless novel, she devotes ample attention to the untamed landscape in which her characters live. Were she alive and writing today, I suspect Shelley would find herself embroiled in some vigorous debates with fellow authors, who now live in a world where generous attention to landscape is often seen as an impediment to a story rather than an integral part of it.

My own writing is heavy on description and landscape. I believe a reader cannot fully understand the characters of a story unless he or she also experiences the setting in which they live -- this because the landscape with which we interact shapes who we are.  I would have been a happy camper (literally and figuratively) had I written during the Romantic period. As it is, I am constantly challenged by my readers and fellow authors to strike a balance between my own convictions regarding the importance of landscape and more contemporary lines of thought, which often insist setting is not only unimportant, but actually in the way of the 'real story'.

Why shun landscape in our stories?

This question has come back to me often during these last few years, as I’ve engaged with different perspectives regarding what makes good writing. It has resurfaced again these past few weeks, as I reflect on my experience as writer-in-residence at Andrews Experimental Forest and the short story inspired by it – a story that in its current draft is, perhaps even by my own standards, ‘too heavy’ on description.

But what is ‘too heavy’? What determines the point where we stop looking out the window, because we just don’t want to see anymore? Why is that cutoff in a different place now than it was some 200 years ago, when Shelley wrote her immortal tale?

The biologist and philosopher inside me can’t help but wonder whether rejection of landscape is simply about ‘good technique’ in writing.  Perhaps it's more than that.  Perhaps it is also a reflection of the context in which so many of us now live: a world where wilderness has been fragmented and pushed to distant corners of the earth; where we have no point of reference for the organic nature of our surroundings, living as we do in climate controlled spaces, attached to our ipods and cell phones, purchasing pre-packaged boneless meats, avoiding fresh fruits and vegetables because they must be peeled, treating our next door neighbors as somehow less ‘real’ than the person we just met on Facebook.

Not that the modern lifestyle is bad perse; just that we lose something, I think, if we let ourselves become too absorbed by it. There’s a larger world out there; larger even than the internet. Filled with sensory experience -- sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. A world that would speak to us, if we let it; just as the forests of Moisehén speak to the Magas and Mages of Eolyn's world.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Romantics like Shelley, I have read contemporary fiction that takes place entirely inside the mind of the main character. While I appreciate the artistry behind this approach to storytelling, it has little appeal to me as a reader. A disembodied mind in an organic world seems not so much a reflection of real life as a precursor to madness. I cannot engage with someone who is so removed from their surroundings; indeed from their own flesh and blood.

I suppose for me as a writer, the landscape and its components – forests, plains, valleys, rivers, cultivated fields, mountains, plants, animals, rocks, weather patterns, and so forth – will always be characters in their own right, and deserve to be treated as such. My protagonists interact in intimate ways with the environment in which they live; so, then, should my readers. 

And even though I tend to cull descriptive passages as I move toward the final draft, I'm rarely fully convinced that by doing so I'm creating a better story. Indeed, it often seems like I'm deforesting the landscape of my imagination, just as we have deforested the landscapes of our planet. 


This post is part of a series of reflections inspired by my week as a Writer-in-Residence at Andrews Experimental Forest.  To learn more about my week at Andrews, visit the links in the box entitled "Spring 2011 Residency at Andrews Forest" on the right hand bar.