Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hi, everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again.
[00:00:10] And today, as you can see, I'm doing another one of these episodes where I sit in the corner of my office and read something that I think is beautiful and a piece of literature that is absolutely worthy of our contemplation. And today, it's actually not quite as straightforward. Last time, you remember, we read from St. Augustine's Confessions, and we read that beautiful reflection, that passage about the death of his mother, the final days and then her death. Very, very beautiful stuff. Today, I guess, in light of the fact that Guillermo del Toro has recently released a phenomenal piece of filmmaking, actually his own interpretation of Frankenstein, I thought we'd actually read from the Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the original. And it's a little bit different because I want to actually read three brief passages, so three different passages from different parts of the book that are briefer, but I think. And actually quite different in sort of the insights that they offer. But I think they're quite important.
[00:01:12] And I want to start with this first one, because I think for the cultural moment we're in, it's actually, there's something sort of pertinent here. And certainly for me as a bloke, if I can be a bit vulnerable and a bit honest, this is a passage that every time I.
[00:01:25] It really speaks to me, and I think about my own situation at times in relation to this.
[00:01:31] And then what I want to do is, before we jump into the next passage, I want to read to you, not read to you. I want to give you a little bit of historical insight, important historical insight into the actual writing of Frankenstein, because it's important, I think it sort of relates directly to the second passage that I want to read. And then thirdly, I want to share with you a very short passage which is about an interaction between two characters. But this passage, I think, is just fundamentally essential in understanding some of the philosophical currents, the secular philosophical currents that are really starting to take hold in Western thought around that time, and also why they became so embedded. And this particular idea, I want to talk about its source and why it is still so potent and with us today. So let's start, first of all, and as I put on my glasses and make myself more intelligent than I really am, or look more intelligent than I really am.
[00:02:31] For those who have read the novel, this novel, you'll be familiar with the fact that it opens with.
[00:02:38] It's phenomenally well written by the way, if you haven't read it. But it opens with a series of letters. And so this first one here is from letter number two, this first passage, and it starts like this. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy. And by the way, he's writing here to his sister Margaret in this letter. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil.
[00:03:11] I have no friend, Margaret. When I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in my joy. If I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true, but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind whose tastes are like my own, to approve or to amend my plans.
[00:03:59] How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother? I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic and affectionate enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
[00:04:17] And I think that's like a really beautiful reflection on male friendship, actually. And male friendship in our culture today is like. It's a concept that's really largely been lost and I think it's the hypersexualisation of culture that's done that.
[00:04:32] Now, whenever you see two males presented together because of the sort of ideological imposition on art and literature, and really it's primarily filmmaking and television really for us today. But in those spaces now, two men together in this kind of a context, it would almost certainly have to become ideologically corrupted and be turned into a same sex homosexual thing. It's like they can't sort of countenance or understand the idea of authentic male friendship with like. Males can actually share a deep bond of intimacy together that is not sexualized, but also is masculine still in its like sort of sense of the world. And like you can see here in this passage, the way he's talking about this male friendship, it's not the way that females, generally speaking, would view friendship and would interact in that way. He wants someone to share in his successes and to help keep him accountable as he tries to leave his male legacy in the world. That's a very male idea. And the. The friendship component is absolutely part of that. And I think about this often. I actually hear strands of Aristotle, actually, and his Nicomachean ethics and his work on friendship and the importance of friendship and what it means to have authentic friendship and how fundamentally important that is for our human flourishing. And from a Christian perspective, we would say that what this is alluding to is the fact that inside every one of us is this desire, and not just as a desire, but an actual need for community, because you can have people who experience dysfunction within their desires and their passions, and they actually sort of embrace isolation because they don't realize they actually shouldn't be doing that. It's not good for them. They need, at the very least, one other person to know and receive as a gift and the gift of friendship in their life to give themselves to. So we are made for community because we are made in the image of God, who is community, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so it's this deep need within us, and in this passage in particular, I think, really speaks to that in quite a profound kind of way. Which brings me to the second part of this little podcast, where I want to read to you the second short passage from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And I need to give you a little bit of history, I think, because I think it's important to understand. So Mary shelley, when she's 16, she meets Percy Bysshe Shelley, Percy B. Shelley. And the reason she gets to meet him is because her father, Mary Shelley's father, is actually a famous author at the time in his own right, and he's well connected. And so these various political connections and I guess, you know, elite circles that he moved in, it was not uncommon for important people to be at their house. And this is how she meets Percy Bysshe Shelley. And then she falls in love with him, but her father disapproves of the relationship. But because Percy Bysshe Shelley is not only older than Mary Shelley was, so she's 16 at the time, and he's much older than that, but he's also married.
[00:07:43] And so, as you can imagine, her father disapproves of this relationship. And what they do is they flee to France as a result of this. So she goes to France with Percy. And who is it?
[00:07:58] It's Clara, I think, isn't it? Clara, whose stepsister goes with. So the three of them go to France while she's there. And this is early 1800s, I think. I want to say 1815, somewhere around there. Please don't shoot me if I'm wrong. You can Google and find out for yourself. But in the winter of 1815, I think it's 1850, early 1800s, and it's wintertime, she has her first baby, and her baby is born premature, and the baby dies two weeks later. And I think that's really important because what I'm going to read to you next is a profoundly beautiful, in my humble opinion, passage from this particular novel.
[00:08:38] And it's about death and grief and suffering and loss.
[00:08:43] And when you know that important part of her backstory, it really makes sense of why she could write so potently about such profound issues.
[00:08:56] She's very young when this is written. So what happens from there is it's about six months or so later. It's summertime now, and they head up the coast and they. Well, they head across. Is it up the coast and around.
[00:09:10] I'm not so astute on my European geography, how they get there. They end up in Geneva anyway, but. But on the journey anyway, they.
[00:09:18] They pass by the Frankenstein castle, and obviously that's part of the origins, the lore, the inspiration for what would become her Frankenstein story.
[00:09:33] And in this castle, there had been an owner of the castle who had participated in alchemy experiments. And that will be important in just a second when we read the third passage as well, by the way. And so these are the sort of influences that are all shaping sort of this journey, which will eventually end a few months later when they. They go to hang out with Lord Byron, of all people, because Lord Byron, the reason they're hanging out with him is because Lord Byron is. Is it Clara or Claire? I can't remember which it is, but it's. He's her stepsister's lover. So now, Percy, Mary.
[00:10:10] I want to say Clara, or it could be Claire. Apologies if I'm getting her stepsister's name wrong off the top of my head. And Lord Byron and others, they're all together there in this castle. But for summertime, the weather actually turns to custard, and so it's more like winter weather. And they're stuck inside. And so when they're stuck inside, they enter into a bit of a challenge. And they. A group of them, including Byron and Mary Shelley's part of this, they. They agree that what they'll do is they will go away and they will write the best ghost story, what they think is the best original ghost story, and then they will agree who they think the winner is. And this is where Frankenstein is born. This is the story of Frankenstein and Frankenstein. All of them agree that. Absolutely. That was the best story that was created by anybody in the group. And she's only 18 years of age when Frankenstein is created, so she's still quite young when she's writing about these issues, but almost certain that if you are that young age, I think maybe she's 16 or 17 when she had her first child and lost her baby, born prematurely just a couple of weeks later. The grief of that clearly has shaped and enables her to write so potently. Frankenstein would be published as a novel after that. And I think, if I'm remembering correctly, the first edition was published posthumously. No, this one's posthumously. No, she was still alive. Sorry. It was published under a pseudonym, so it didn't have her name on it, but the second edition was published under her name. And so I think it's important to know that as we read this next passage, because this next part, as I take a sip of my water, like the professional podcaster that I am, and I've just spilt it on my lap and everything.
[00:11:58] The rule in radio, by the way, is never have dead air. And I just did that to your apologies. But this passage is about Victor Frankenstein and the death of his mother, which impacts him profoundly. And this, I think, in my mind, is one of the most. There are others, but this is one of the most beautiful descriptions, I think, and most poignant descriptions in literature of the impact of death, losing a loved one and then dealing with grief. It's not just the death, I guess, in my mind, I guess writing about the death of someone you love would be relatively straightforward, but it's about the grief and what it means to move forward after that. And I can clearly hear in this writing, her drawing back on and strains of the death of her baby that was born prematurely, the death of her daughter.
[00:12:53] And so. Yeah, that's right. So the daughter was called Clara. That's right. So Claire is the stepsister, Clara is the daughter. Sorry, so her daughter Clara, who dies.
[00:13:04] And you can definitely hear this. So let me read to you. This is from immediately after.
[00:13:10] She describes the moment, the sort of final moments of Victor Frankenstein's mother's death. And then this is in the voice of Victor Frankenstein. Obviously, she died calmly and her countenance expressed affection. Even in death, I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul. And the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. I mean, how can you not hear her own grief at the loss of her premature baby? In that it is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed forever.
[00:14:00] That the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard.
[00:14:12] These are the reflections of the first days.
[00:14:16] But when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences.
[00:14:24] Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection?
[00:14:29] And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt and must feel?
[00:14:35] The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity. And the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
[00:14:48] My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform.
[00:14:54] We must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate. Whilst one remains whom the spoiler had not seized.
[00:15:05] And that is such a beautiful, poignant and profoundly true and poetic description of death and grief. And I really love that line.
[00:15:16] Whilst one remains whom the spoiler which is death, has not seized. So, in other words, those of us who go on must actually learn to live again. And you can't help but hear, I don't think in this, her own grief of losing her daughter just months earlier.
[00:15:32] And it's profound, like. And you get that sense that she's still grappling with that sort of guilt of as time begins to pass and. And the sadness of the moment, the loss of that person never leaves you, but the sadness does. The noise of the sadness begins to decrease and, you know, the sort of simple joys of life begin to manifest again. And the way she describes the idea of like, a smile that plays upon the lips as being an indulgence and like something that, you know, lingers longer because it's not banished and it's. It's, you know, deemed to be a sacrilege almost because they. Like she's speaking to that sort of notion that we often have a sense that we should. Like, we feel guilt for not staying in the grief and the sadness of someone who has died. And we feel that we owe that to them in their death. And often we feel a bit guilty when we experience the joys of life. And maybe we feel that's too premature. I think this is really, really profound. I absolutely Love this description. And it's. I mean, she's writing here for her main character, Frankenstein, and this guy who's tormented by all sorts of issues going on and his creation of the monster and his, you know, his Promethean urges. But, man, she really nails this in a big way. And the third and final passage that I want to read to you from this book, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is, I think, a profoundly important one again, and it's a different type of profound importance than the previous two. The previous two really are about the human experience and about these fundamental aspects of living the human experience and human life and, you know, the things that we go through, the desire for friendship and the impact and profound importance of friendship and community, and then obviously, grief and death and suffering. But this one is a little bit different. This is about philosophy and ideology.
[00:17:28] And what's happening here is Frankenstein has met a scientist who is a bit of a fellow traveler, and he's talking to him about chemistry. And he starts by talking about alchemy.
[00:17:38] And so this idea of the alchemist who. Who.
[00:17:42] Who is able to produce, you know, occultic dark art reactions, you know, that they're able to create gold out of nothing, they're able to reanimate life, that kind of a thing. So it's not science. This is sort of science and mysticism all embroiled together in a sense. Like, that's. I think that's the best way to think of alchemy. And so, of course, you know, she's. This is part of the inspiration for the story when she visited the actual Frankenstein castle. But also this is sort of being cast aside in this moment. So the scientist is saying, look, you know, because Frankenstein initially is intrigued by and is interested in alchemy, he thinks this is a pathway for him to achieve his momentous desire to, you know, to. To build his legacy is the man who, you know, who creates life, basically who plays God. And the scientist is saying to him, no, no, forget about that. That's. That's all nonsense.
[00:18:38] This is what he says, though, in this passage, and I'll explain it in just a second, because it is profoundly important for us in this moment, too. The ancient teachers of this science said he promised impossibilities and performed nothing. So that's the alchemists he's talking about there, the modern masters, and he's talking here about chemistry in particular. The modern masters promise very little. They know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens. They have discovered how the blood circulates and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers. They can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.
[00:19:50] And this beautiful passage here speaks profoundly about an idea that is really starting to come to prominence during this period. And this is.
[00:20:00] I mean, it could almost be word for word. It's not quite obviously, but it really is like a transliteration, a repackaging, a representation of Francis Bacon's philosophy.
[00:20:14] And Francis Bacon's idea of knowledge is power.
[00:20:19] In his great work, he talks about the idea of the triumph of art over nature.
[00:20:26] In other words, we will, using this new empirical methodology of science, we will basically be, first of all, freed from the enslavement of nature.
[00:20:38] You know, we will no longer be bound by diseases or limited by darkness at night. We will create new technologies. We will travel further and faster, all those kind of things that we can overcome. And there's a certain truth to that. And there will be a triumph over nature in the sense that she will reveal her secrets to us. We will use these, this natural method to discover more and more truths. And that will give us more and more. More power. And of course, the problem here is that what you're setting up is you are setting up a vision of reality. This, by the way, is the beginning of the myth of progress, where humanity tries to recover its redemption, its salvation through science and technology instead of Christian hope and faith and hope in God.
[00:21:24] You know, we are given this profound gift of stewardship by God. We abuse that gift. We are expelled from the garden. And there is a woundedness and a brokenness in that relationship, including our relationship with the natural order as well. And so where do we seek redemption? The only place you can find it is through Christian hope, through faith, and through trust in God. But this is an attempt to find our redemption, to sort of force our way back into Milton's Paradise Lost. Basically, we'll force our way back into the garden. The kingdom of man will save us, and the kingdom of man will save us through science and technology.
[00:22:02] And that's what this is really all about. And what it's doing, though, is it's setting up a relationship between humanity and creation, where creation and the created order, where nature is our enslaver that needs to be overcome.
[00:22:14] And this raises some obvious problems and some, you know, some big questions, like is there ever a limit to how far we should go in freeing ourselves from this enslavement?
[00:22:25] Like, should technology be limited in any way by morality? Or should we just use technology and wield it however we like? Because in that Nietzschean kind of way, Friedrich Nietzsche, you know, God is dead, we have killed him. We are the new gods now. We will self create meaning for ourselves in the world. Should we just do whatever we desire to do because we have the power to do it? Or as the Christian vision of reality would say, should we actually recognize the danger in power? And this is exactly what is being talked about here. This is an idea, by the way, that is very influential in some of the thought of C.S. lewis, who talks about science as being like the magician's twin. This is very similar. And I, I don't know the full backstory, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually got this aspect of his philosophy from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, because what he says he compares like, it's like alchemy. So this guy here is comparing alchemy with actual science. C.S. lewis compares a magician with a scientist and he says that a magician promises you power, but it's not real. It's all an illusion.
[00:23:32] The rabbit does not actually disappear in the hat. They don't make a bird appear out of their sleeve from nothing. They don't have power. It's all a trap. Whereas on the other hand, he warns that science, which he calls the magicians twin, can actually produce real results. Therefore it is real power. And that makes it very dangerous because power, unrestrained results in very bad outcomes. Like Lewis talks about this idea of every new power that we discover over nature because we're part of this created order as well. We tend to think of nature and we think our animals, plants, minerals, atoms, molecules, things outside of ourselves. And we fail to recognize that in actual fact, nature includes us. The natural order includes. Includes us. And so Lewis is keenly aware of this and he talks about this fact that every new power that we discover over nature will also be a power that is used by men over other men. He's very aware of the dangers here. And so Lewis, who's not at all anti science, but absolutely proposes that what we need is science that is moderated by moral truth, by virtue. And, and in fact, this is what, like this philosophy is part of his cosmic trilogy, this trilogy of books that he Wrote primarily for an older audience.
[00:24:49] The third book is called that Hideous Strength. You could read it as a solo work if you wanted to. It's part of the trilogy. But that Hideous Strength is about a future England that is governed by a technocratic sort of scientific utopian organisation called nice, the National Institute for Cool Coordinated Experiments. And basically, they are scientific planners. They are, in fact, what Bacon writes about. He had an unfinished utopia called the New Atlantis, and he imagines a future society governed by scientific planners, because obviously in his mind, that would be the best way. And so what you see in that Hideous Strength is that idea repeated. And the main protagonist, when he finally breaks into the headquarters of Nice and discovers who really has been leading them, it's actually the reanimated head of Francis Bacon that they've got, who's issuing forth commands to this group. And it's a very clever metaphor for, you know, Bacon's philosophy still being alive and with us today and absolutely driving things like eugenics and other evils and other abuses of technology, where the human person, where technology is put, not put, put at the service of the human person and human flourishing, but is used as a form of power over other human beings. And so clearly, this idea is absolutely present here. And this idea is still with us today. And it's a major issue. It begins the myth of progress, where we seek our salvation and our redemption in the kingdom of man, no longer in the kingdom of heaven. We try and force our way back into the garden and it's had all sorts of disastrous results.
[00:26:23] There's really too many to actually list and talk about here. Maybe that's another episode, but there's just so many disastrous results that this has had. And just to finish with this is why, like people often ask me, I regularly give public presentations on understanding the typical secular anthropology. Anthropology is our understanding of what it is to be human. And so what is it that shapes the current and very typical modern secular anthropology? And it's not one thing, it's actually a whole series of philosophies and ideologies. And I sort of unpack and give people a sort of a tour of those different things to help them understand how these ideas, where they came from and how they play out in our culture and how they impact us. A lot of people today wander around thinking that they are objective just because they're not religious. I think this is absolutely part of the myth of progress. You know, I'm a scientific man, not a religious man, so therefore I'm objective, unlike those biased religious Believers, no, everybody is biased. So the question is not, do you have some bias? When we come to discussing or exploring or creating policy for a major, you know, whatever the issue of the day might be that is being discussed in the public square, the question is not, do you have bias? But instead the question is, is your bias good, true and beautiful? Because everybody has bias. That's the question we're not asking. And so, yeah, people often ask me, though, how did these ideas, like, okay, Bacon had an idea, Nietzsche had an idea, Freud had an idea. How do these ideas, though, end up so deeply ingrained in the cultural consciousness? Like, there have been other bad ideas in the past, in ancient history, and they didn't seem to have legs like this. Why is this? And there are several factors at play. One of them is the fact that you have now mass media really beginning, and it's the printing of printed materials and literature in particular that is starting to become more widespread and quickly available. And you all have the elite who are producing these works that people consume and these ideas that are sort of filtering through key areas of society.
[00:28:22] These people are very enamored by these ideas, and they are captured by these various ideologies and philosophies, and they put them into their art, and it's powerful.
[00:28:32] It's not just that they're being easily and quickly disseminated. Like previously, when the church deals with a heresy, she usually has a bit of time to sort of get her ducks in a row and then respond.
[00:28:42] But when the heresy is able to spread like wildfire very quickly, it's a lot harder to sort of marshal the troops and respond. And then also secondly, when you put an idea like that, a philosophy, into literature, it is absolutely potent in a new kind of way.
[00:28:58] You're bypassing the intellect, basically. You're going straight for the passions, and you are going straight, effectively, you're going for the jugular. And you are, you know, pulling people into the world of their passions.
[00:29:11] And as you, you know, when you read a piece of literature like this, you should really be profoundly impacted. That level by. It shouldn't be dry and rational and boring. That's not what this should be at all. But what that means is that the bad ideas, I think, have an extra potency. The errors, if you like, have an extra potency because they embed themselves profoundly, you know, at the seat of our passions, and it's a lot harder to get them out, and they tend to spread a lot easier. And, yeah, it's kind of what we're really seeing. Here. And ironically, that's really what this book is about. It's a repeat of the fall of humanity, pride, and this desire to be just like God. And that's exactly what this book is about. So, yeah, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Hopefully you enjoyed those passages. And as I always say, don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatches.
