Continuous as the Stars That Shine ...

Osterglocken (SA/2023)

 

"When all at once I saw a crowd / A host, of golden daffodils ..." 

 

I. 

 

Often known by its Latin name - Narcissus [1] - the daffodil was as highly regarded in the ancient world as it is within the modern era: Greek philosopher and floraphile Theophrastus, for example, often mentioned them in his botanical writings; as did the Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder. 

 

However, it was left to the 18th-century Swedish botanist Linnaeus to formally identify them as a genus in his Species Plantarum (1753), at which time there were only six known species, whereas now there are over fifty (although the exact number remains disputed) [2].   

 

And it was left to the British Romantic poets to really establish the cultural and symbolic importance of the narcissus in the modern imagination. For with the exception of the rose and the lily, no flower blossoms more within the pages of English literature than the daffodil; Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats all wrote of the eternal joy that these flowers can bring.  

 

 

II. 

 

But surely everyone - not just William Wordsworth and the Welsh - loves to see daffodils flowering in the spring, don't they? 

 

At any rate, I love them: I love their bright golden colour and the manner in which a trumpet-shaped corona is surrounded by a six-pointed star formed by the tepals; and I love the fact they come up every year, regardless of external conditions, nodding in defiant affirmation of life.    

But my love of daffoldils is also a class thing; the common daffodil growing by the roadside and at the bottom of the garden has none of the ornamental superiority or cultivated pretension of the tulip (a bulb that is in my mind forever associated with the nouveaux riches in 17th-century Europe). 

 

 

III.

 

When I was a child - and neighbours still had front gardens, not driveways - I used to love stealing daffodils every Easter to give to my mother and I was touched that MLG should remember this and placed a single yellow flower in my mother's coffin prior to her funeral; she would have liked that [3]. 

 

And, of course, even without the personal context, such a gesture would have been entirely appropriate. For whilst daffodils often symbolise rebirth and resurrection, so too are they closely associated with death ...

 

The ancient Egyptians, for example, used to make decorative use of narcissi in their tombs, whilst the ancient Greeks considered these flowers sacred to both Persephone and Hades. Indeed, the former was said to be picking daffodils when she was abducted by the latter and taken to the Underworld.

 

The fact is, like many beautiful-looking things, daffodils are highly toxic, containing as they do the alkaloid poison lycorine - mostly in the bulb, but also in the stem and leaves - and if you ingest enough lycorine then death will follow a series of very unpleasant symptoms including acute abdominal pains, vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, convulsions and paralysis.  

 

So do make sure, dear reader, that you know your onions and never confuse these with daffodil bulbs ... 

    

 

Notes

 

[1] According to Greek myth, the beautiful-looking young man of this name - Νάρκισσος - rejected the romantic advances of others, preferring instead to gaze fixedly at his own reflection in a pool of water. After his death, it is said that a flower sprouted in the spot at which he spent his life sitting. 

      Interestingly, although the exact origin of the name is unknown, it is often linked etymologically to the Greek term from which we derive the English word narcotic (Narcissus was essentially intoxicated by his own beauty). 

      As for the word daffodil, this seems to be a corruption of asphodel, a flowering bulb to which the former is often compared.

 

[2] In 2006, the Royal Horticultural Society's International Daffodil Register and Classified List identified 87 species. But according to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families produced in 2014, there are only 52 species (along with at least 60 hybrids). Whatever the correct figure might be, the fact is that many wild species have already become extinct and many others are increasingly under threat due to over-collection and the destruction of natural habitats.

 

[3] When my mother died last month, aged 96, she had been living with dementia for almost a decade and it might be noted in relation to our topic here that daffodils produce a number of alkaloids that have been used in traditional forms of healing and one of which - gelantamine - is exploited in the production of a modern medicinal drug used to treat cognitive decline in those with Alzheimer's.     

 

 

This post is for Maria.

 

 

My Name is Victor Frankenstein

Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein in  

The Curse of Frankenstein, dir. Terence Fisher, 

(Hammer Films, 1957) [1]

 

 

Although I have never read Mary Shelley's famous novel [2], I am of course familiar with the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation [3] and, indeed, have always had an affinity for this noble and unorthodox young scientist - part thanatologist, part alchemist [4] - obsessed with generating new life from dead material.

 

For far from being the prototypical mad scientific genius, as portrayed in numerous cinematic adaptations of the novel, Frankenstein is actually a tragic figure, driven by a beautiful obsession.

 

And if, when things don't quite turn out as planned and he inadvertently endangers his own life and those of his family and friends, he comes to bitterly regret his unnatural experiments, nevertheless one has to admire him for challenging the judgement of God in the manner of a modern Prometheus.

 

But the primary reason I identify with Frankenstein - apart from his intelligence, curiosity about the world, and refusal to be bound by laws and conventions, is because I essentially use his technique as a writer. 

 

That is to say, I cut up dead bodies of text and stitch stolen ideas together in a diabolical manner. My creativity lies - if anywhere - in then being able to provide the electric spark or lightning flash of inspiration which makes the assembled piece of intertextual fiction-theory breathe with new life [5].

 

This might not make me an original [6] talent - any more than Frankenstein's work made him a god - but it does produce some interesting results, does require a certain degree of skill and hard work, and does make me, in a sense, both an artist and alchemist. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be interested to know that Frankenstein's first appearance on screen was in a silent short film released in 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley, and starring Augustus Phillips as the good doctor and Charles Ogle as the Monster. 

      This was followed in 1931 by the famous Universal version of the tale, dir. James Whale, starring Colin Clive in the role of Frankenstein, opposite Boris Karloff as the Monster. Both actors reprised their roles in the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (also dir. by James Whale).

      As much as I love Clive's portrayal, I have a particular soft spot for Peter Cushing's performance in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), opposite Christopher Lee as the Creature, which is why I've used his image here. Cushing went on to star as Frankenstein in five more films for Hammer, subtly revealing different aspects of the character in each.

 

[2] I'm referring of course to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), written by Mary Shelley (whilst only eighteen years of age). 

 

[3] For those who aren't familiar with Shelley's figure of Victor Frankenstein, here's a brief character description and story outline:

 

According to the 1831 edition, Victor was born in Naples, but he describes his distinguished ancestry as Genevese.

      As a youth, he was intrigued by the works of famous alchemists such as Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus and longed to discover the so-called philosopher's stone; a mythical substance that could transmute base metals, such as lead, into gold and which was also an elixir of life, promising physical rejuvenation and immortality. 

      Later, however, Victor abandons alchemy for mathematics, which, he thinks, provides a more secure foundation upon which to base an understanding of the world. However, whilst at University in Bavaria, Frankenstein rediscovers his love for chemistry - this time in its modern form - and he makes a number of significant scientific discoveries; including discoveries about the bio-chemical nature of life, which enable him to animate non-living material. This research culminates in his creation of a being resembling man, but whom he comes to regard as a mixture of creature and demon.

     Rejecting the responsibility to care for his creation, the monster decides to seek revenge upon his maker; he murders Frankenstein's youngest brother, his best friend, and strangles Victor's bride, Elizabeth, on their wedding night. 

      Feeling that he has nothing left to live for, Frankenstein vows to destroy the creature and pursues the latter all the way to the North Pole, where he, Victor, eventully dies. Somewhat surprisingly, the monster is so overcome with sorrow and guilt, that he decides to commit suicide, before then disappearing into the frozen Arctic night.    

 

[4] One is tempted to also think of Victor Frankenstein as a Romatic poet, particularly as Mary's lover at the time of writing - and soon to be husband - Percy Shelley, inspired the character; for not only did the latter sometimes use the pen name of Victor, but, whilst a student at Eton, Shelley had conducted chemical experiments involving electricity. His rooms at Oxford were also filled with strange scientific equipment.  

 

 [5] It's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Frankenstein's monster as pieced together from body parts taken from numerous stolen corpses and reanimated by the use of electricity, owes more to the movies than Shelley's novel. In the latter, apparently, Frankenstein discovers the secret principle of life and it's this that allows him to painstakingly develop a method to vitalise inanimate matter, though the actual process is left rather vague. Neverthless, Frankenstein does assemble body parts, so I think my comparison stands and there's no need to split hairs, Maria.        

 

[6] Along with authenticity, originality is one of the concepts I despise the most: I don't care if my posts on Torpedo the Ark lack originality. And besides, as the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith once wrote in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), we can "pardon the want of originality, in consideration of the exquisite talent with which the borrowed materials are wrought up into the new form". 

      Or, as Roland Barthes would argue, the post-as-text is not expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every new post is therefore, in some sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

      To put that another way, if, as I do, you accept the idea of intertextualité, then questions of authorship and originality go out of the window and Síomón Solomon is right to claim in his brilliant study, Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2020), that every piece of writing is already a translation at some level and the author, whilst masquerading as a unified subject, is actually a multiple assemblage - like Frankenstein's monster - who speaks with many tongues (some of which are forked).