Laurie Sheck
Page 41
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“The biographical tradition, full of contradictions, says of Sappho: that she married a merchant of Andros, named Cercolas, and had a daughter Cleis; or, contrariwise, that Cercolas is a fictitious name, and that Cleis was not her daughter.”
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“But it must be stressed that metaphor is not a completely successful or controllable means of communication. We employ inadequate language always.”
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“With only coarse bread to eat, water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow, I feel joy.”
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“Can perplexity be stabilized? There is no simple solution. We must find a way to live with it. Since there can be no escape from perplexity, it must be seen as a starting point and a necessary condition.”
As I read I listen for her breathing. Is that the sound of the river or her breath? Are they mixing with each other? If I could hear her listening, but what does listening sound like? And if she could hear me listening for her breath, listening for the way she hears me … And then I’m not turning pages anymore, though I still hear pages turning. Is she turning them from where I can’t see her? Is she reading to me?
Who’s the reader? Who’s the listener?
(And I who will never belong in the world. And she who is dead.)
The graveyard’s deep in snow, but we’re still reading. Our skin’s on fire and then it’s glass but we’re still reading.
The pages turn. Her hand’s not old, it moves the way it used to. I don’t know who turns the pages but they turn—
SOURCES
THIS WORK IS A FICTION. Although it roughly follows the events and trajectories of Claire Clairmont’s and Mary Shelley’s lives, my intent was not to construct historically accurate portraits. In the Ice Diary and Metropolis/The Ruins at Luna sections, I have nevertheless incorporated phrases, word clusters, and sometimes whole sentences or lists from Claire Clairmont’s and Mary Shelley’s letters and journals, and in Mary’s case, from her fictions and manuscripts as well. In the Metropolis/The Ruins at Luna section, I also used some of Percy Shelley’s writings from his letters, poems, and the facsimile editions of his notebooks and some from Mary Wollstonecraft’s letters, and other writings. Of course all the letters here, except for one of Claire’s noted below, and a few short ones from Mary and Percy about the publication of their work, are fictional creations. In the Metropolis/The Ruins at Luna section, the facsimile edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson, was an invaluable resource.
Throughout the book, I have taken liberties small and large with many of the sources I have used, including the writings of Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Claire’s note to Leigh Hunt after Shelley’s drowning, for example, uses nearly her exact words, but I have greatly shortened the letter and slightly rearranged it. In another case, Claire’s thoughts about the German word for ghost in the Ice Diary section were actually expressed by her brother, Charles Clairmont, in a letter of February 26, 1820, from Vienna, to Claire and Mary in Pisa. And when in these pages Claire writes, “Fanny, I’m not well. My mind always keeps my body in a fever,” this is in fact a sentence from one of Fanny Imlay’s few surviving letters to Mary (written in 1816): “I am not well my mind always keeps my body in a fever. But never mind me—.” Fanny Imlay’s obituary is reproduced here word for word as it appeared in The Cambrian on October 12, 1816.
In the Dream of the Red Chamber section, Clerval’s friend in Aosta is based on a man who is said to have lived there in the eighteenth century. A brief account of his life can be found in The Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps (1858) by Reverend S. W. King. This man subsequently became a character in Xavier de Maistre’s The Leper of the City of Aosta (1811). Henry Clerval, in the Dream of the Red Chamber section, figures in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as Victor Frankenstein’s dear and devoted friend, who is killed by the monster. Of Clerval’s love for things Eastern, and his desire to go East, Mary Shelley wrote, “He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of Oriental languages… he turned his eyes towards the East as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. The Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention.” In A Monster’s Notes, Clerval is not murdered after all; I have sent him East as he wanted, but to China, not Persia, where he translates the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber.
Red Inkstone, the commentator on the Dream of the Red Chamber manuscript, is in fact thought to have existed, though there is much speculation as to who he might actually have been. The majority of his marginal comments in this book, as well as all of Cao Xueqin’s notes, are my invention. The excerpts from the novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, are actual quotes I’ve often slightly adapted. I used Yang Xianyi’s and Gladys Yang’s excellent four-volume unabridged translation, published by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing under the title A Dream of Red Mansions. Although technically Clerval would have used the Wade-Giles system of transliteration in his work as a translator, for the sake of clarity and consistency I have used pinyin, which is now considered standard. It is this form of transliteration that is used in newspapers and in most current literary translation, such as David Hawkes’s relatively recent translation of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone).
Below is a list of main sources consulted for each section and sources for specific quotations the reader might be curious about. I have often used inexact or foreshortened quotations, adapting them as necessary. As the monster is a note-taker, not a scholar, I gave him quite a bit of leeway.
10 “Q. ‘What exactly do people do’”: The interview with Dr. Anne Foerst, adapted and rewritten by me, is from Claudia Dreifus, “Do Androids Dream? M.I.T Is Working on It,” The New York Times, November 7, 2000.
ICE DIARY
Main sources for this section include: The Clairmont Correspondence, edited by Marion Kingston Stocking (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995) and The Journals of Claire Clairmont 1814-1827, edited by Marion Kingston (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968). Other main sources I used for details of Claire Clairmont’s life include: R. Glynn Griylls, Claire Clairmont (London: John Murray, 1939) and Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).
Throughout this section, information on the Northern explorers is from Arctic Explorations and Discoveries, edited by Samuel M. Smucker (New York: Orton & Co., 1857); Pierre Berton, The Arctic Grail (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988); J. Douglas Hoare, Arctic Exploration (New York: Reaktion Books, 2005); Tragedy and Triumph: The Journals of Captain R. F. Scott’s Last Polar Expedition (New York: Konecky Publishers, 1993); The North Pole: A Narrative History, edited by Anthony Brandt (Washington: National Geographic Classics, 2005); Valerian Albanov, In the Land of the White Death, edited by David Roberts, Introduction by Jon Krakauer (New York: Modern Library 2001). Details and quotes from all of these books are often adapted and altered by me. I have also invented some of the quotes attributed to Albanov and others. For information on Percy Shelley’s writings, see the Metropolis/The Ruins at Luna section.
21 “Hear how it glows”: St. Augustine, Confessions.
28 Shen Kuo information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_Kuo.
29 “Waves of light drive violently”: Payer’s description of northern lights is from Julius von Payer, The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1869 to 1874 (Vienna, 1876), rewritten by me.
34 On this map I’ve found: This map is from Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1897).
37 I wonder who left this copy: Index from Nansen, Farthest North.
44 “What we call monsters are not so”: Montaigne, Essays.
45 If, as Plato said: Plato, Laws, trans. Benjamin Jowett, Books 7–12.
46 I would call a Difference Engine: The “Difference Engine” was actually invented by Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter.
48 A melancholy discovery was made:
Fanny Imlay’s obituary, Oct. 12, 1816. This can be found in Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley (New York: Grove Press, 2000).
57 “Cold burns the eyes”: Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), as quoted by Peter Davidson in The Idea of North (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005).
72 “Extreme disturbance possesses our whole mind”: John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690.
77 “I’ve finally reached home”: These are Nansen’s dreams as rewritten by me.
79 “It was fear first in the world made gods”: This is an inexact quote from Ben Jonson’s Sejanus: His Fall, 1603.
79 “O Monster! Mixed of insolence & fear”: From Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad.
85 “a weariness of heart”: This and other northern quotations here were altered by me, from Samuel Smucker and A. M. Miller, Arctic Explorations and Discoveries (New York: Orton, 1857).
92 “From half past nine till half past two”: William Parry, from his Journal of a Voyage to Discover the Northwest Passage, 1821, adapted by me.
95 “I brought with me Spurr’s Geology” and other quotations in this list: From Arctic Explorations and Discoveries, 1857, altered by me.
95 “Loveliest of what I leave behind”: Fragment 1, Praxilla of Sicyon (c. 450 B.C.), translated by Richmond Lattimore, Greek Lyrics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949).
95 “I am a flood”: From “Song of Amergin” (ancient Celtic poem), translated by Robert Graves, in Robert Graves, The White Goddess (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966).
96 “To speak is pain but silence too is pain”: From Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus as translated by Edith Hamilton, Three Greek Plays (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958).
100 “A disorder of the nerves”: Information on Albanov’s nervous disorder is from David Roberts’s Epilogue to Albanov’s In the Land of White Death (New York: Modern Library, 2001). The other Albanov quotes on this page were altered or invented by me.
107 “From this comes our Ghost”: Comments on the German word for ghost are adapted from a letter by Charles Clairmont in Marion Kingston Stocking, ed., The Clairmont Correspondence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995).
111 Yuan Mei wrote of the “impenetrable north”: Yuan Mei was a Qing Dynasty poet and scholar (1716–1797).
115 When the Goddess of Consolation came to Boethius: The description of her robe is from Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, translated, with an introduction and notes, by Joel C. Relihan, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2001).
115 Ibid., adapted by me.
122 “Lips covered with foam”: The Archilochos fragments here are from Guy Davenport’s Seven Greeks (New York: New Directions, 1995).
146 On Parry’s second Artic voyage: The information is from Parry’s journal, published in 1821.
154 “I walk each day”: The journal entries found in a metal box have been adapted from Richard E. Byrd, Alone (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938).
164 “I decided I needed strategies”: The quotes are adapted from In the Ghost Country, a memoir by Peter Hillary with John Elder (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).
173 Socrates, that “self-stinging stingray”: This notion of Socrates is from Gareth B. Matthews, Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
176 Dr. Joseph Vacanti directs: Information on Dr. Vacanti can be found at http://www.hsci.harvard.edu/pri-fac-profile/285 , and on Dr. Langer at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Langer .
179 In 1298, in a prison in Genoa: Much of the information on Marco Polo is from John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999), and from The Travels of Marco Polo, introduction by F. W. Mote (New York: Dell, 1961).
184 At Lille the leper carried: Information on leprosy is from Peter Richards, The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs (London: D. S. Brewer, Rowman, and Littlefield, 1977); Saul Nathaniel Brody, The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2001); Tony Gould, Don’t Fence Me In: Leprosy in Modern Times (London: Bloomsbury, 2005); and from Internet sources.
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER
The primary translation I used of Cao Xueqin and Gao E’s Dream of the Red Chamber was Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s translation for the Foreign Languages Press (Beijing, 1986), published under the title A Dream of Red Mansions (4 vols.). Other translations referred to are David Hawkes, editor and translator, The Story of the Stone or the Dream of the Red Chamber, vols. 1-3 (New York: Penguin, 1974-15)81), with subsequent vols. 4-5 (1982-15)86) translated and edited by John Minford. Their textual notes also inform Clerval’s and Cao Xueqin’s notes in this text. A valuable source for passages on Red Ink-stone was Shih-ch’ang Wu’s On the Red Chamber Dream (London: Clarendon Press, 15)61). Other works consulted include: “Excerpts from the Red Inkstone Commentary” at www.geocities.com/littlebuddhatw/commentaryenglish.html ; The Dream of the Red Chamber, abstract and translation by Henry Giles, in Chinese Literature (London: Appleton, 15)05)), edited and with footnotes by Richard Hooker, 15)5)6, at www.wsu.edu/∼dee/CHINESEDREAM.HTM ; and David L. Steelman, “Introduction to Editions of the Red Chamber,” The Scholar (June 15)81), at http://etext.virginia.edu/chinese/HLM/hlmitre2.htm.
Information on nineteenth-century China is mostly from Constance Gordon-Cumming’s Wanderings in China (London: Chatto & Windus, 1886). Medical details (adapted by me) on leprosy were taken primarily from R. G. Cochrane’s Practical Textbook of Leprosy (London: Oxford Medical Publications, 15)47). Other leprosy details are from Peter Richards, The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs (London: D. S. Brewer, Rowman, and Littlefield, 15)77); Gerald Lee, Leper Hospitals in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Court Press, 15)5)6); and Rotha Mary Clay, The Medieval Hospitals in England (London: Methuen, 15)05)). Much of the information on Aosta is derived from S. W. King’s The Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps (London: John Murray, 1858).
192 Ever since that strange man, Morrison: Information on Robert Morrison (1782-1834) can be found at www.babelstone.co.uk/Morrison.Biography.html .
192 Lady Su Hui’s Xuan Ji Tu Shi: Information on Lady Su Hui came from www.metmuseum.org ; Poems in Pictures, www.cityu.edu.hk/ccs/Newsletter/newsletter5/Poems.htm ; and David Hinton (conversation).
203 There’s something called the “Mass of Separation”: The text of the Mass of Separation can be found in Peter Richards’s The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs.
218 “Confuse the musical scales”: The Zhuangzi quote is from Herbert Giles, Chuang Tsu, 1889, 2nd edition, 1923. Other sources consulted for Zhuangzi elsewhere in this section are: Burton Watson, translator, Basic Writings (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1996) and Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1982).
221 “eyelids pierced and sewn with iron wires”: Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, translated by John Ciardi (New York: Penguin, 1961).
241 the frescoes at Issogne: Reproductions can be found in Sandra Barberi, Il Castello di Issogne in Valle d’Aosta (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & Co., 1999).
251 It’s a simple piece of Attic pottery: This description of lekythoi is indebted to Maia Sian Peck’s “Dining with Death: An Analysis of Attic White-Ground Lekythoi and Athenian Notions of the Afterlife in Classical Greece,” Brown Classical Journal, vol. 19, 2007.
259 your question about the Confucian temples: Information on Chinese architecture, temples, gardens, etc., are from the following sources: Zhu Junzhen, The Art of Chinese Pavilions (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2002); Ronald G. Knapp, The Chinese House (Hong Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990); Joseph Cho Wang The Chinese Garden (Hong Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998); Young-Tsu Wong, A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Tuan (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2001); Edwin T Morris, The Gardens of China (New York: Scribners, 1983).
287 the Athenians tattooing: Some of the thoughts on skin are informed by Steve Connor in The Book of Skin (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2004), including the de
tail of the Samian prisoners and the manacles being thrown into the water; Nina G. Jablonski, Skin: A Natural History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2006); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964).
289 Some of the thoughts about blinking are indebted to Samuel Beckett.
331 From the early 1960s until her death: The information in these notes is mostly from the 2005 Drawing Center catalogue on Martin’s work, 3 x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, and Agnes Martin and from Agnes Martin: Writings, edited by Dieter Schwartz (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2005). Her quotes are at times adapted by me.
334 He believed there’s no such thing as silence: John Cage, Silence (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1973). I have slightly altered some of Cage’s quotes.
337 The Nuremberg code states: The code can be found online at www.csu.edu.au/learning/ncgr/gpi/odyssey/privacy/NurCode.html . Information on John Moore vs. Regents of the University of California can be found at www.richmond.edu/∼wolf.moore.htm .
341 His body was his exhibition space: Information on Stelarc can be found on his Web site. His words have been adapted by me.