The Word

I'm not afraid this era won't be remembered, I'm afraid it will be.

Freedom

There are timeless books. Like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. It's not an easy read - it takes one some time to digest it. There are parts where you have to sleep before you'd continue. Sometimes it's inevitable to have some time to really understand a chain of thoughts.

Among many fantastic ideas and images, there's one thing I was really interested in while reading the book. Freedom. The freedom of will. Throughout the novel it seems, as if there's no choice, he has to do this or he has to say that. But it really isn't true. Raskolnikov always had the chance to stop, to change. I must admit I was profoundly worried as the unread part of the book kept thinning and yet, all the events, conversations and meditations seemed to disprove my belief.

It was until the last scene of Porfiry. He demanded the truth to be seen. He offered a choice, one that's always been present, even before the murder in the beginning of the book, and it was no else than holding on to foolish philosophies or letting go and free-falling into the frightening depths of salvation.

The whole story is an interesting idea. One does not have to commit such an obvious and terrible crime in order to be lost. Because freedom, like Raskolnikov's freedom, is basically just the freedom that a binary choice offers. It's a generally known fact that the world isn't black and white, so how could matters be so easy, as to say they're just the intersection of two ways. But they are. The quintessential of choices is just this question: salvation -- or this?

The 'this' of life is something we all know. It's all of our ideas, our self-made plans, which will be ridiculed sooner than we'd think. We have a grand plan individually designed for each and every one of us. Just as Raskolnikov always had the greatest thing in reach, we, too, have it right there. The most fantastic treasure of our lives, or the possibility of receiving it, is right around us. It's already delivered, we're just too eternally busy with our own thoughts that we began to believe, that we're not free to go for it. We began to believe there are things we have to do in order to-- But it's really just letting go of control and trying to fit into the Heavenly plan. It's always accessible, we're not required to be anywhere or anyone to be given it.

...one day you love them and the next day you want to kill them a thousand times over.

What a mystery, this world…

Well, let it pass; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Sensible Thing”  (via wordsnquotes)

I decided that this blog won't have any pretensious notion, so there you have it, no fake art, just a usual pose ;)

Let me share a secret with you: this is the time of your life. Or there's a very big potential in it. Why? Maybe: how do I know that? Quite simple: It always is. It surely sounds like a common place but let's search through the depths of it.

I'm not trying to express a carpe diem kind of philosophy, for that is most commonly mistaken for the worse. I'm not packing my message into good-sounding witty phrases for those serve little good for the people, who are very quick to scroll down and just consume the easily digestable parts of every post on the site.

Returning to our (maybe it's just "my" but as long as you're reading, we both share this) topic, what is the great deal about today? Or about your life? What grand adventure may await you? We have this concept, that these are the priviliges of exceptional people and maybe it's true. But I'm not asking you to attempt things, that are not meant for you. We are called or more like entitled to be the creators of amazing things. Some of us could be leaders of nations, movie stars, inventors but others bring these incredible things to the world, like being the ever-smiling cashiers or raising well their children. The how is always individually altered and understood, so I really cannot give you specific information. However, none of you need it! Because these ways are spectacular, obvious. Yes, we walk blindly, suffering because of our own ignorance and fear. Be courageous!

I could go on for quite long but I'm gonna stop right here. Because the rest is really up to you. I'm not telling you to find your way, I'm only asking you to look for it.

Frankenstein? You Certainly Have No Idea

A while ago I wrote a similar post about Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where I explored how we’ve gradually departed from the original concept and eventually turned the whole story inside out--the way it’s usually believed to be today.

Horror and genre fiction in general are looked upon as solely entertaining literature. It is best represented by enormous fandoms around horror stories that are really the shallow water of the stream of art--yes, I’m referring to Stephen King.

Although is it not supposed to be more? Shouldn’t horror really be more than a good fright? Obviously I ventured out to write this post because I strongly believe horror can have more profound dimensions and it should. Actually, my opinion is mainly informed by Stoker’s Dracula and Shelley’s Frankenstein (and a good portion is a result of reading Poe extensively in my teen years, as it shows in the post later).

Let me begin by explaining a bit about contemporary horror’s genesis. As a branch of literature it has very little to do with books, it is only an indirect continuation to the tradition. Today’s horror comes from a set of movies, some of which were book adaptations or remotely inspired by them. Actually one name is a recurrent theme here: Bela Lugosi, a.k.a. the king of horror--much more so than anyone would have thought. His version of Dracula has proven more enduring than the written one, so the underlying themes of Stoker’s novel, which even concerned the metaphysical at times, are lost, quite tragically. Also, the popular image of Frankenstein’s monster comes from the 1939 Rowland V. Lee movie Son of Frankenstein. The shape of the creature, its mindlessness, the castle, the assistant--every bit people associate with Frankenstein is a direct result of the movie, hardly any of which actually features in the novel.

A written genre originating from a visual one is encased in the limitations of both--what could not be visually understood won’t appear, and the same applies to the written part. It is an almost unimaginable thing but originally these horror stories barely ever showed the horror. “Why, we have that today,” the ignorant reader might say but the horror of old times was not filled with the today commonplace suspense and disgust elements.

In this post I focus on the method of Shelley in Frankenstein: Her approach was what we would today call the purist. Her novel embodies horror--the dictionary’s definition of it actually. She only ever tells as much about the monster that it exists, reluctantly adding that it’s too hideous to behold and once dropping that its hand resembles that of a mummy. The main instrument of this story is a very long line of deaths but only in the purist spirit, as well.

A prolonged prologue commences with establishing the members of an extended family. They are talented, intelligent, wealthy, charitable people, who are just the dream of the era. After individually stating about every relation how enviable and admirable they are, the monster is briefly introduced. No lightning is involved here, only the statement that Victor Frankenstein, the visionary, somehow figures out how to bestow life upon things and then, once the monster is created, he instantly regrets it and falls into a state of mental breakdown over the realization of how unhallowed his work is. The monster then lives alone for a while, gradually comprehends that he is frightening to humans and feels that he is forced into a perpetual state of solitude, which he loathes more than anything--so much so that he will burn down the entire world if necessary to get himself a companion. And that’s about it. The monster asks Frankenstein to create him a mate but as he refuses he decides to avenge him as the creator of his desperation through killing everyone he holds dear. Enter the death of all characters...

The horror is how Frankenstein watches everyone he loves being killed at the unstoppable hands of his own creation. His guilt and reflections at it are horror. He is horrified. Horrified. He--along with the invested reader--is not exactly startled, nor disgusted, but profoundly horrified.

But there’s more to this story than just being the original horror. I explored that dimension only because of the framework of today’s horrible, genre-redefining novels.

As contemporary horror tries to grasp what visually equates horror, all content is lost. Shelley operates with what Poe designated as the horror-writer’s most powerful instrument: “The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” In human relations the most extreme loss is that of one’s child but the loss of someone one loves tenderly comes in as a spectacular second, with a much more elevated pathos.

The reason this is preferred by Poe and a myriad of authors is that a parent-descendant relationship is a natural one, where choice has roughly no role, whereas in a romantic relationship, while having a powerful natural component, active choice is central. This is why a parent losing a child usually goes with the line: “A parent should not live to see their child die,” when a lover’s loss comes with: “They were taken from me.” So, while the first kind of death evokes the more profound pain, the second one is the more aesthetic. It is a better case of antagonism: what one actively binds themselves to, pledges to unite their identity to, is actively deprived from them by a second actor, thus their willing choice for whom they would value most highly in life is irrevocably undone.

The peak is then the death of a beautiful woman but it can only be a real peak if the beauty of that woman is fully realized. 

An interesting juxtaposition can be made here between the book’s model and the contemporary one. The book emphasizes multiple faculties, such as intelligence, a charitable nature, intuition and nobility of character, whereas today’s model is derived from the passions of the flesh. Contemporary theories favor a simplifying approach, which marks the core of all traits the sexual of a person. However, Frankenstein is a great example of how it used to be a valid action to discrete the sexual, the intellectual and the emotional. Today it would be called repression of the true motives (the sexual), since all the faculties associated with beauty are just expressions of the deeper, truer core of identity. Feminists of the past would have pointed out that the death of the beautiful woman symbolizes Shelley’s vision of the intelligent, competent woman’s fate, as she is determined to die, even by the principles of literature (or Poe). Today’s most progressive feminists, though, would confine this story to the literal body of women, however, not only a story but women, and all people, are much larger than bodies.

But Frankenstein is not the perfect novel. Whereas it succeeds at many things and has its outstanding merits, it does fail at anticipating what the reader can guess, as Frankenstein misinterprets a supposedly enigmatic line and prepares for his own death, when his soon-to-be wife is threatened. Sadly the target is so obvious that it’s impossible to believe what the protagonist believes to come next but, as I have stated before, this is a completely marginal element of the story and perhaps even Shelley didn’t want to make it a really elaborate twist...

All in all Frankenstein is the beacon of the lost genre of horror. But beside its literary quality it might also be a reminder to the readers that there used to be a way of thinking that thought it possible to abstract from the material.

Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald

[X]