FRANKENSTEIN

“Frankenstein” was born from Mary Shelley's Romantic genius. Her story was first published in 1818, her “monster” was inspired by Doctor James Lind's (1736-1812) experiments. The writer's husband, Percy Shelley, made friendship with him while both being at Eton. From long  she had been trying to study a story where to put all her personal emotions and where to make her dreams be true. As a matter of fact the writer was always attracted by the idea of making a dead corpse live again and a night she dreamt of her second son reviving even before he was died (he would have died after short time). We read in her diary: “I've dreamt of the child coming to life again, he had caught only cold. We massaged him by the fire until he came to life again”. She had a sad life although marked by unique and fascinating events according to a typically Romantic vision of life. They sometimes were also sad. She met her future husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was only 15. He was already married. So troubles begun. In 1814 they run away together. Always in her diary we read: “The first time I made love to Percy, it was on my mother's grave”.

From that moment on she started frequenting Romantic meetings where there were the greatest artist of her time such as the famous poet Lord Byron and John Polidori who would have written his story about the “vampire” in a short becoming very famous as well. Mary gave birth to two children but both of them would have had short life. Just after these events she got the idea of writing a story that would have also testify her mourn and her wish to have her beloved back. Can death be overcome? On 21st June 1816 Mary listened to a conversation between Percy and Byron about an article written by Madame De Stael about afterlife and the possibility of reviving a dead body by galvanizing it. The following night was a real nightmare:

“I saw a pale student kneeling behind the thing he had built. I saw the horrible ghost of a man who was stretching while some powerful machinery was moving. Suddenly the thing gave living signs and the scared student fled while that thing already had opened his eyes and managed to stand up and walk with its own legs”. So was born her “Frankenstein” that talks about a doctor, Viktor Frankenstein who manages to enlive an already dead body. Her dream became reality even if only on paper. So is the prefaction of her book: “I worked a lot by thinking a story... that could talk about myserious fears buried inside our nature and could awake the shudders of terror”.
So was it.

Translated by Harika