I felt the quiet absence of her hand. Even though she shifted back and forth in time, or, rather, my sightings of her shifted, a quietness seemed to seep ever deeper through her skin, like the knowledge of my leaving, or the grayness of her mother’s grave.
and I think now this grief would destroy me broken up
borne away on the tide of
I loved Italy best but Italy is a murderer
I write but double sorrow comes th when I feel that Shelley no longer
reads what I write—
and the shadow of and condemned to the power and presence of his voice—
Her hand returned to the pages she’d worked on with Shelley, tired fingers lightly tracing.
would restore my tranquillity
Here he’d penned an X beside her words.
Which Lord Chancellor Bacon^the discoverer of gunpowder
Beside that he’d written in her margin—this in the draft of Chapter 11
—no sweet Pecksie-’twas friar Bacon the discoverer of gunpowder
She found this in his hand:
the bitterness of recollection.
Paused a long time at those words.
Then lingering in her margin (did she remember when he wrote it?):
Imagination supposed the safety of
This in Chapter 10.
As she stumbled on those words, I thought I saw her hand grow grayer—whatever she’d once let herself imagine, none of it had kept him safe.
I wonder what she’d think of this Golden Lion Frankenstein edition (Lion Book No. 146, New York, 1953; the price on the cover 25¢) I found in the trash the other day.
THE GREATEST HORROR STORY OF THEM ALL it says above the title, and beneath, a man with huge bloodied hands stands at the bedside of a murdered young woman. BETTER BOOKS FOR EVERYBODY along the bottom of the title page, and then: “And so was born the monster Frankenstein, the freak who murdered and pillaged, who thrust naked terror into the lives of half the people in the world.” Those words she never wrote. Instead, she’d given her creature/monster/being books to wander in and learn from, had let him think about the things she and Shelley talked of— slavery, oppression, loneliness, friendship, faithfulness, freedom.
On the back there’s an ad for another Lion book:
ROOMING HOUSE
by Berton Roueché
“It was a house of sin, and the people in it were a neurotic girl and her mousy husband… a refugee and his mistress… and a flighty little man who only wanted to mind his own business. And they were all prey to the grotesque whims of the bulgy-eyed landlady who surrounded herself with potted plants and pornography and lavished mournful affection on the memory of a husband she never had…”
“A FREUDIAN SHOCKER …”
— The New York Times
Would she laugh out loud at that? (All those times in the graveyard I never heard her laugh.)
Claire,
I felt some relief writing my essays on Eminent Men of Italy for Dionysius Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli—those lives so far from mine, from Lerici, glass skin and burning skin, the graveyard, and “the boat was flawed in its design and never should have sailed.“Far from “his voice, a peculiar one, engraved in my memory,“and “joy would destroy me.“My task was to make a life become a kind of story, not to dwell in its intricate unsolvable mysteries. To build a life like an equation but not quite—even with those far-off lives I knew there could be no definitive summary or angle. I pared away so much, ignored so many shadows (had little access to those shadows). I was an outsider, there was much I couldn’t know, wouldn’t even know I didn’t know, didn’t sense (unlike the way I’d sensed in the one from the graveyard things for which I had no words). I knew I was writing a kind of lie, that to sum up a life at all is always in some sense a lie. But I liked the straightforward, practical feel of it, the steady task. Godwin said I did it well—had a gift—could do it better than he. And of course it brought in money. So I could write the most straightforward facts, and take pleasure in those facts: “When Petrarch was eight years of age, his parents moved to Pisa.” Or “At the age of fifteen Petrarch was sent to study at the university of Montpellier.” I could write, “Niccolo Machavelli was born in Florence on the 3d of May, 1469” and not worry I was wrong. Those spare facts comforted me, stood like massive walls but even more so, stronger and more stable than anything I’d known. When I quoted from Machiavelli’s letter recounting how the duke, no longer needing his cruel underling Ramiro “caused him one morning to be placed on a scaffold in the marketplace of Cesena, his body divided in two, with a wooden block and bloody knife at his side,” I barely felt the horror. It seemed distant, unreal, though I knew it was more fact than much of what went on in my own mind. I could write, “The great doubt that clouds Machiavelli’s character regards the spirit in which he wrote the ‘Prince’—whether he sincerely recommended the detestable principles of government for which he appears to advocate, or used the weapons of irony and sarcasm to denounce a system of tyranny which then oppressed his native country.” But I didn’t have to worry much about it, didn’t have to hear the stirrings and nuances of his voice, whatever tinge of pleasure, dread or hatred might have been there, or a mixture of all three. I didn’t have to know. And absences didn’t haunt me. I quoted a letter from Machiavelli’s son written after his father’s sudden death (some wondered if he died by suicide, a deliberate overdose of pills, but I don’t think so): “Our father has left us in the greatest poverty, as you know. When you return here, I will tell you many things by word of mouth.” Whatever was said “by word of mouth” had long been lost, no more than air in air. I found that freeing. There was so much I didn’t need to know with Petrarch too. His copy of Virgil for instance: on parchment hidden and glued beneath the cover a note by him was discovered with writing so faded it was nearly effaced. It held dates recording the loss then recovery of the book, the death dates of various friends mingled with expressions of regret and sorrow, his feelings of increasing isolation. But if that leaf hadn’t begun to peel (in 1795, in the Ambrosian Library in Milan) no one would have thought to look or found the ghost-note underneath. I didn’t feel responsible for such mysteries, such chance discoveries, the absences and presences, we call a life, call knowledge. I could write, “This is a brief and imperfect sketch of Petrarch’s Life,” and not worry. Could write, “This letter of Machiavelli’s is lost; and we are thus deprived of a most interesting link in the correspondence, and an insight into Machiavelli’s feelings.” And I’d still sleep well that night. I accepted my distance from those “eminent Italian men.” Didn’t harden myself against them or feel their voices mingling and stirring on my skin or how they were like nets to those who knew them.
William, I say “my voice”—I’m used to thinking “my voice” as if it were a thing I owned, my great possession—I’ve gotten used to the sound of it, this sound I think of as my being, my knowing, my property—But I realize now there are other ways to see it—If there were parts of me that were utterly separate and alone, never spoken into air, that stayed always unknowing and unknown, maybe that’s not so important after all—Can’t not-saying be a voice, just different and more mute from what we’d thought?—Eyes a voice, even hands, unmoving, a voice—Hesitation, swerve, pulling back, refusing, a voice—I used to think the withheld parts of myself were a wound, but now I don’t think so— that’s just one piece of who I was, no more or less important than the others—not something that needed to be healed—Your hand nearby, opaque and full of questions, soundless spot on which my eye alights for a moment then moves on—
but I am not confined to my own identity yet I am still here, still thinking, still existing
When she didn’t come I read to calm myself:
“An author, therefore, is a human being whose thoughts do not satisfy his mind.”
∼ ∼ ∼
“So far as is known, Epictetus left no philosophical writings. The Discourse
s (or Diatribes) is a transcription of some of his lectures made by his pupil, Arrian. In one, he addresses the slave owner: ‘Will you not bear with your own brother? Will you not remember who you are, and whom you rule, that they are kinsmen from the same seeds, brethren by nature, that they also are the offspring of Zeus? To be just you must use the right words. Does a man bathe quickly? Do not say he bathes badly, but that he bathes quickly. The right name puts the right thing in the right light. Use the right word for your relation to your brother and your treatment of him. Right names disclose true relations.’”
∼ ∼ ∼
“If one is doubting, one exists.”
∼ ∼ ∼
“Diderot believed there are no true and meaningful divisions within the animal kingdom: ‘Imagine the fingers of a hand bound together and the material of the nails increased to envelop the whole: in place of a man’s hand you would have a horse’s hoof’”
(I stopped to think how Shelley would have liked this.)
∼ ∼ ∼
“The English word ‘utopia’ is derived from the Greek term for ‘nowhere.’ It suggests nonexistence. The English inventor of this term, Thomas More, applied it to a mythical community, using his account as a means of criticizing certain social and political practices.”
(That sense of nowhere was so palpable every time I glimpsed her hand, though it didn’t seem like nonexistence, but a pane of glass retaining every shadow that passed through it.)
yet cannot forgo the hope of loving & being loved
these hauntings of the mind this bewilderment this chaos
I long for some circumstance that may assure me that I am not
utterly disjointed from my species
I feel a strong need to close the shutters
Your Affectionate Companion Vostra Affina Amica
Yours tenderly Your own attached friend, Mary Shelley
Claire,
If I could accept that Machiavelli’s approach was “enigmatic,” that one could never fully discern whether he was satirizing the Prince’s harshness or genuinely recommending those harsh ways (the text provided evidence for both)—then why couldn’t I accept this lack of clarity with the one in the graveyard, hold the various possibilities in my mind, realize doubt is as much a part of our natural lives as anything? Isn’t ambiguity in itself a kind of truth? Unknowing a kind of truth? Confusion and ambivalence, both truths? My laboratory was gone, and that hard table I’d strapped him to (though sometimes I felt it hovering just as fierce and cold as before) … I was the mother of dead children and one living child. We’d moved to Harrow for his schooling. Shelley had lived on the water but now I almost never went near water. The mind wants justice, mistakes knowledge for justice. Thinks they’re the same thing. Thinks certainty, balance, calm are justice. But they’re not. Even with us, we remain in darkness to each other, don’t talk anymore, and still I write to you as though this weren’t the case. The two of us the only ones left. All those years I never told you … We’re such strange, contradictory creatures. Look at Godwin—he starts out an anarchist and ends up a government employee. Is solitude desolation? I’ve been writing to Mr. Murray, hoping he’ll decide to let me author books for his Family Library. I need to make money. I’ve proposed a life of Mahomet, and a life of Madame de Stael. Also the conquest of Peru and Mexico, and a volume on the history of the Earth before written history begins—such speculations excite me. So far he’s said no to everything. Something’s rigid in me. maybe the greatest wisdom is in suppression, maybe and this bitterness and the world designed by a blind watchmaker. Sometimes I wonder if we could see into our cells would we see them changed by what we think and feel, by what and who we’ve known? Would my cells look like his now, even if years ago in the graveyard he hated me for my warm bed, my family, my smooth skin? Why do I keep thinking I was hated? … Sometimes when I’m writing I look down and think it’s Shelley’s hand that’s moving or even the other one’s … “What am I then in this world” …it writes, or, “No one can console me,” or “I plan to sail back tomorrow with the first good wind.” All these living faces around me, and still the laboratory in my mind, that hard table in my mind. I said it was gone but it’s not. My scalpel, my surgeon’s mask over my mouth, always that white mask over my mouth. My hands building, dissecting. How does a mind find its freedoms?
But all my many pages future wastepaper surely I am a fool I will bury myself alive among flowers
outlives our feelings
in the evening S goes out to take a walk and loses—himself—
I am dear Sir Yours truly in a most painful degree
We see an immense hawk rid sailing in the air for prey—
imagine di questa angelica donna ci sedvava,
the laws of nature my life as it passed
William, When I was learning the alphabet the world became more precise, but more obscure at the same time. More focused, less hidden, but in another way more hidden and less free—So I’d lie awake at night wondering whether to let it in—Why did I think I had a choice?—Now I see an index, but of what?—My name’s entered under Prostitution—Why would they put my name there, whoever they are, why would they do such a thing what could they be thinking—I see … Brown, Browning, Brunel, Bulwer-Lytton, I see this list of names, this index but from what? See: Geneva, Genoa, Germany, Girondists … attempted drowning, and melancholy, influence on Godwin—French Revolution, reputation and influence, Williams, Winckelmann, Windsor, Winter’s Wreath—I had motives, scars, cruel and barren places, intricate and fearful places—Places northing away from you, places smoldering, burning—When I lay awake those nights wondering if I should let the letters in I didn’t know if they would comfort or hurt me—Remember how we used to read to each other at night—You’re turning pages even now when I can’t see you and yet I somehow see you—They’re blank and burning— You still turn them and I’m listening— What does their burning sound like, what are they saying now that they’ve been stripped of words—
Online for hours, I come across Contagious Magazine, “We identify ideas, trends and innovations behind the world’s most revolutionary marketing strategies.”
“The media landscape has fragmented. Across all product categories, the way in which people’s purchasing decisions are influenced has changed beyond all recognition.”
“From design to marketing to retail, Contagious analyzes the strategies behind the brands that work.”
My dear Sir, I received your letter of November 17, explaining that the sale, in every instance, of Mr. Shelley’s work has been very confined. Will you have the kindness to deliver to me any copies of the works as you still retain: 4 Hellas (sewed), 18 Proposal for Reform (stitched), 41 Adonais (quires), 15 Revolt of Islam. I hope that Mrs. Ollier and yourself are in good health. Your obedient servant Mary W. Shelley
They will print only 500 copies of my Frankenstein. It is a small amount, the offer is not handsome.
My dear Sir, You brought me two propositions from Mr. Colburn concerning my book—I am no woman of business. I would not know how to divide the profits as you suggest and so accept your second offer of £150. With many excuses for the trouble I give you—I am Yours Obliged MaryShelley
Sir, A poem entitled Queen Mab was written by me at the age of eighteen, I daresay in a sufficiently intemperate spirit. I doubt not that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition … I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom. I have directed my solicitor to apply to Chancery for an injunction to restrain its sale … I am your obliged and obedient servant, Percy B. Shelley.
Claire,
My head aches, I’m tired all the time and clumsy. My right hand’s not working right, I drop things for no reason. I’ve been wanting to write my book about Shelley and my one on Godwin, but each time I try I feel ill. I don’t know what this is … and fearless quiet and a storm across the … XXX … in my mind this odd mixture of… and Lerici… the doctor says I�
�m just worn down, need rest… But I feel it’s something else … I don’t even feel I’m writing to you anymore …If my cells have come to resemble his, if I could look into my body and see inside myself his cells, if the cells in my right hand and brain are closer now to his than anyone’s, chained or carried forward (into what?) like his … marred, dirtied, silenced, corrupted, or purified like his … but I don’t know why I say this. If he and I are strapped down on our tables … and it seems there should be more freedom overall but as it is there’s little freedom … Memory is a form of investigation, Aristotle said, but I feel torn by it, feel pieces of ripped things in me, detritus, scraps. and cast down from the precipice I want to travel, go back to Paris (nothing seemed to frighten me there, my smallpox-badge shining), and to Germany, Switzerland, Italy … then move back to London, maybe to Park Street or Half Moon Street—I always liked that name. I want to say my faults injure each other, but I’m not sure what that means. I sit here and Shelley’s hand sometimes visits: “the shattered masses of precipitous ruins,” or “despair itself is mild,” or “Tasso’s handwriting starts out large and free but then his letters constrict into a smaller compass toward the ending of each word as if admonished to pull back by the chill waters of oblivion.” Sometimes I’m in Lerici, the sea loud in my ears, I’m reading Hunt’s letter: “Shelley mio, Pray let us know how you got home the other day with Williams, for I hear you must have been out in the bad weather, & we are anxious—.” Or I take out Amelia Curran’s portrait, the one everyone likes so much, but I think it looks more like anybody else in the world than Shelley. The mouth’s all wrong, for one thing. Sometimes his hand’s so feverish I feel I should calm it but then I think it doesn’t even know I’m here it’s so lost in itself so busy crossing things out: “[build?] homes, warm homes, I feared that they exist & being free a slave whose garnered cells, the waxen hive. words words.” Does there exist an unalterable gentleness even so? If I could restore my health … but something’s erased in me, something’s … inside each word a mutilation … I don’t know if I believe that. The light’s so bright it’s hurting my eyes, and the
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