Creating Frankenstein Jeremy Kessler - The New Atlantis

Creating FRANKENSTEINexternal social or natural world. Thegambit of art is to multiply worldsto such an extent that no singlereality can exert enough force uponus to master us. At the same time,as Hitchcock’s history shows, poeticcreation at its most eccentric isquickly rewoven into the cloth ofconvention. Just like any other creature,an artistic creation does notcontrol its own destiny.Nearly two hundred years after itsfirst publication, Frankenstein servesas an engine for the constant exposureof this process of world-makingand world-conforming. Because thenovel’s subject matter was so ripe forpopular consumption to begin with,showmen have been invested in conformingthe tale to still more conventionalnarratives. The seams in thenarratives show, and by revisitingthese monsters, we remind ourselvesabout the perennial problems of thecreator and the created.Mary Shelley conceived of Frankensteinat a time when science, themodern representative of reason,was moving toward world- makingand away from its traditional worldrepresentingrole. The more powerfulapplied reason became, the morecreative became the rationalists’work. Dr. Frankenstein marks themoment when the work of reasonthreatened itself with success. MaryShelley’s novel stands as a livingcritique of pure reason, in which thevery power of human reason underminesits claim to address a singlereality, unchanged by the manipulationsof individual consciousness.In its Romantic fervor, Frankensteinannounces a new stage in the veryold history of creation, a paradoxicalstage we still stride, where growinganxieties about determinism accompanygrowing suspicions that humansubjectivity, whether exercised bypoet or scientist, is the sole determinantof reality.Jeremy Kessler is a student at YaleLaw School.Summer 2009 ~ 89Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information.