Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Lord Byron’s physician Dr. John Polidori sat around one rainy summer night in 1816- they were neighbors in Switzerland – I mean, damn, I want to be at one of THOSE barbecues! – but anyway, one summer in 1816 – on a rainy night – after a series of rainy days when they were housebound – Byron (who was working on Childe Harold at the time) came up with a suggestion for a way to amuse themselves as a group. Each person was to write a ghost story (there was an old volume of ghost stories in one of their vacation homes – and that was the inspiration for this little party game. Yeah, you know, a party game with two of the most influential poets of their day and a woman who was about to write a classic novel, Frankenstein
Here is Mary Shelley describing this. It is a perfect and personal description of the artistic process. Anyone who has ever tried to create something … or wanted to create something and just felt they needed to have an idea … will recognize themselves in Mary Shelley’s words.
Watch how she works it out. Lets her subconscious lead her. She doesn’t ask too many questions. She gets her idea, and she GOES. (Rather akin to Dr. Frankenstein’s own journey with his monster. There are so many levels here.)
But I just love that she has given us such a detailed essay about how she wrote this book. Goosebumps.
“We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language than to invent the machinery of a story, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole – what to see I forget: something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her and was obliged to dispatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task.
I busied myself to think of a story – a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror – one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered – vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull. Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. “Have you thought of a story?” I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.
Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.
Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated. They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin (I speak not of what the doctor really did or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him), who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.
Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Craetor of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade, that this thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.
I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still: the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story – my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! Oh! If I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frighttened that night!
Swiftly as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.” On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story.
Sheila — That is so amazing. I’m chilled just reading parts of her description of HOW she wrote it. I’ve always been kind of scared — really — to read this book and now I’m certain I WILL be.
Oh, I love this. I thought it was hilarious:
/Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole …/
Like, “Uhm, okay, I don’t have an idea, but HIS totally sucked.”
Also:
/I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull. Nothing replies to our anxious invocations./
I love how honest she is about her desperation to find an idea. She so WANTS to rise to the challenge and yet there’s nothing … I can’t tell you how much I appreciate her honesty here, talking about being “a devout but nearly silent listener.” That kills me … like she thinks she has nothing to contribute.
Then when the idea hits, she’s so CHEERED by it. It’s totally horrifying, but it cheers her up:
/Swiftly as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me./
I mean, I get that, but I had to laugh, too.
//Like, “Uhm, okay, I don’t have an idea, but HIS totally sucked.”//
hahahahahahahahaha Totally!! And then how he has no idea how to end his story so he just dispatches randomly to a tomb. hahahahaha
I love her honesty, too – it is such a wonderful description of how an idea is formed. Not out of nothing, but out of various random stimuli – ghost stories, a conversation about reanimation of dead things … and then she daydreams, and sees the man-made monster staring down at his creator.
Terrifying!!!!!
The book is fantastic. And the moment when the monster awakes … I literally gasped. Even though I know the story!!
The book is about SO MUCH, tracey … I need to think more about it and maybe write more on it – it really made me think. She was quite ahead of her time, in so many ways.
Also that she was still a teenager when she wrote it.
It is truly difficult to comprehend.
I know, she was 19?? I was painstakingly writing entries for “tracey’s busy calendar” when I was 19.
Okay. I MUST read this book.
So it really was a dark and stormy night…
tracey – you have to read it!
Read it, and then let’s discuss it.
Bingley – hahahahaha Yes, it was!
Heheheheh. Poor Polidori. But geez, the guy was only 20 himself when they shipped out to Switzerland. Who the heck were these guys anyway? When my friends and I were 20 we were idiots.
I love how honest she was about having no ideas – and how much it was just killing her. Gotta keep up with the other geniuses…
Nightfly – ha – I know. “Oh boy … ghost story? Okay … uhm … there’s a skeletor lady … she peeps thru a keyhole … and … uhm … I have no idea what happens next …”
This is my favorite paragraph:
//Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.//
I am struggling with this very thing right now – and it was so good for me to read.
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”
I’ve copied this wonderful quote to put in my commonplace book (which I started due to you, Red). It is genius. I keep hearing New Agers talk about creating out of the void, but it doesn’t make sense. Mary is right. Everything arises from chaos – not nothingness. Beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing this.
Chai-rista –
Madeleine L’Engle writes so beautifully on “inspiration” and where it comes from. It’s almost like – those who sit and wait for the bolt from the blue have no understanding of the actual mechanics of artistic work.
Madeleine L’Engle says she sits down at her desk and writes. Every day. She will throw out 80% of what she writes. But only by doing that, only through the structure of practicing her art (whether or not it will be good, or read by anybody other than herself) … can inspiration come.
It’s like priming the pump. Creating a space where inspiration CAN show up.
Oh and I am so glad to have passed on the whole commonplace book idea.
Thanks, Thomas Jefferson! :)
Commonplacing??! I have always done this, but I didn’t know it was a “thing.”
Learning something new = a good day. This is why I read your blog, Sheila. It gives me lots of good days!
Thank you. Hope you are enjoying your summer. ;)
Just discovered this on Pinterest:
http://www.betweenthelinens.com/5-reasons-start-commonplace/
Dated a couple of months ago. This is a current trend — still! I had no idea.
Happiness.
A friend of mine is a librarian and she runs a journaling club for high schoolers and she has them all keep commonplace books. The tradition continues!!
Madeleine L’Engle says she sits down at her desk and writes. Every day. She will throw out 80% of what she writes. But only by doing that, only through the structure of practicing her art (whether or not it will be good, or read by anybody other than herself) … can inspiration come.
Heh. I do that too. It’s called blogging. =)