Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

74Mary Shelleydominating these pages, a de personalized, though suffering, observer ofthe wreck Frankenstein is becoming. Little is heard from the daemonizedFrankenstein, in part because his experience of sublime uplift iswordless and in part because this “hurricane” (p. 54) has no time forwords, though for the troubled eye of the storm time is agonizinglyslow. Complicating matters is the superimposition of the narrativepresent on an episode that the fallen Frankenstein can be relied on tomisconstrue, so that the complex web of the account becomes virtuallyimpossible to unweave. Then, we may surmise, a dialectic of thefollowing sort was at work: driving out and driven in, the creative selfis agonistic, aggressively excluding otherness, and hence agonized,defensively immuring itself in resistance to any foreign body that wouldencroach on its sublime solitude; the barrier keeps breaking, however,leading to disabling bouts of self-consciousness, which in turn provokeeven more audacious sublime rushes that threaten to overwhelm theordinary self, that residual under-consciousness which clings ever moredesperately to its bewildered identity. How one interprets the meaningof the entire experience—whether from the point of view of thedaemonic self or from that of the ordinary self—probably tells moreabout the interpreter than about the experience itself, just as the Abyssinianmaid of “Kubla Khan” emerges as the muse of paradise or thevoice of the abyss depending on whether one stands inside or outsidethe magic circle of the conclusion.The breathlessly eager self that is in, or is, the enthusiasm soarsabove the body that is taking shape. Frankenstein’s workshop islocated “in a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house,and separated from all the other apartments” (p. 55). This is a masterfulemblem of the mind that is its own place. 2 The windows are barred, atleast for the enthusiast, whose eyes remain “insensible to the charmsof nature” (p. 55). Those “charms” are an interpolation of Frankensteinthe notetaker or narrator; the creator is an innerness—pure,unconditioned spirit—seeking innerness—the life or light in, but notof, things. Things themselves do not exist for him except as “lifelessmatter” (p. 52) to be animated, the fort to his da (sein), 3 and the morethey are leveled to a deadening continuity the more discontinuous isthe fiery spirit that would stamp its image on a world rendered pliableto its projects and projections.The problem is that if the sublime artist is to “pour a torrent oflight into our dark world” (p. 54) of mortal life, he must take a detour