Dark Horse

On the 19th April, 1824 the English poet Lord Byron died. He left an enduring poetic legacy, but also a dark reputation, both historically and culturally. Byron became a legend and a kind of totem for a new and startling epoch. The Romantic age was signified by its individualism, and its cast of unique characters. Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” symbolises this, the narrative and characterisation almost mirrors the life and times of Byron. Byron was the bete noir of the English establishment and in the wake of scandal was exiled to the far fringes of Europe. Byron personified the louche sensibilities of the aristocracy. His behaviour demonstrated all of the worst characteristics associated with the upper echelons. He was libidinous and profligate with money.

He represented amorality, and displayed the kind of behaviour that fuelled widespread resentment, but in particular within the lower echelons of society. While banished to a remote corner of the continent, he attempted to restore his literary reputation. He was accompanied by his personal doctor, John William Polidori. On that stormy weekend Byron devised a test for his friends and fellow literary luminaries; he wanted to discover who could tell the best ghost story.

Dr. Polidori presented an early version of his story “The Vampyre”, the first prose piece of a legend only evinced in poetry. This mythic creature was also unearthly and immortal, and in Polidori’s imagination an alter ego of Byron himself. This was the first example of a “Byronic” figure before this term had even been coined. It is now such a familiar literary trope that we often fail to remember the origin. The Vampire is high born and has an impressive intellect, he is also tremendously alluring and amorous.

In the story, a young man called Aubrey is intrigued by the presence of a strange and enigmatic figure called Lord Ruthven and the unsettling infamy entwined within the character. Ruthven’s powers are legendary but they are also terrifying, which Aubrey encounters when he meets him in Rome. He leaves under a cloud, but Ruthven’s presence continues to haunt him. This story was a formative and important influence on the Irish writer Bram Stoker, who regenerated this theme nearly eighty years later.

“Dracula” is a new European reanimation of Ruthven, transmogrified into a dapper and urbane Count inhabiting a ghostly castle, rumoured to be the seat of Romanian aristocrats. This remnant of a palace is situated amidst the misty Transylvanian mountains. The trope is revived once more. The vampire seeks the vitality of youth and draws blood to remain immortal, and in the process ensures that the host also remains immortal. However this vampire story was simply a clever version of an old folk legend and not particularly shocking nor surprising.

However the world was undoubtedly disturbed and shaken by the unique and unforgettable creature created by Victor Frankenstein. It is a testament to Shelley’s originality and literary brilliance that her work had a much greater and wider cultural influence, and legacy. “Frankenstein” subtitled “The Modern Prometheus” subverted all of the conventions and mores of the age.

All of the characters imagined on that stormy night were Promethean figures. This was an entirely new concept of the Romantic era. They imagined characters imbued with superhuman and supernatural powers, defiantly challenging the natural order with their quest for omnipotence. Romantic literature exposes the flaws of the human ego when it is left unchecked. The romantic poet is a fragile figure, forced to play an unnatural role in a world of artifice. He is a ghostly presence in an arena that demands authenticity and spurns pretension.

Ghost stories themselves are allegories, designed to illustrate transgressive or repressed sexual desires. This theme resonates throughout “Frankenstein”. There is an all pervading sense of sexual repression, a blight upon the age. The notion that an immortal being could be created and then given life by a mad scientist was in itself a shocking concept.

However Frankenstein manufactured an unearthly and ageless being, utilising the tools of science. It was an entirely artificial construction devoid of original sin and in his own godlike vision it was a creature destined to supersede the follies of mortal men and eventually transcend death itself. Frankenstein himself does not feel ashamed that he has meddled with nature. He only feels a sense of enormous personal achievement, as the inventor of an entirely new kind of creature, one that will never die.

His delusions of grandeur render him a secular deity, entirely detached from the historical and clerical foundations of European civilisation. Imagining a creature that is neither dead nor alive in the conventional sense is now a familiar literary trope, but it was an innovative idea for the time. This was a time of political foment on the continent, particularly in France.

In spite of growing alarm in Britain, the antics of the French revolutionaries left a trail of devastation. They were defiantly and belligerently anti-clerical and looted the churches and monasteries. It was a repudiation of the proud legacy of religious women who raised the status of women after the indignities of Pagan Rome. They had chosen to devote their lives to Christ for centuries, until the revolutionaries forced them to relinquish their property and divest themselves of their visibly religious status. In 1794, 16 Carmelite nuns refused to surrender to them and they were arrested and put to death. Each nun approached the guillotine in calm defiance singing a hymn to the Holy Spirit, their voices silenced by the sound of the blade. It was a scene of true courage.

Percy Shelley was another louche scion of the aristocracy. Shelley also had Byronic characteristics. He too, was profligate, promiscuous and almost by default, intensely alluring to women. The young Mary Godwin was just one out of many young women who had fallen under his spell. Their alliance was scandalous, and they too were exiled to Europe. Yet Europe was unfamiliar, strange and detached from civilisation. It was a continent that would be torn apart by the Napoleonic wars. The Faustian spirit that inspired the greatest art and literature also contained the seeds of its own destruction.