The Modern Prometheus, or Frankenstein
The Underworld
Hades’ world is a study in grey.
There are no certainties in a shadowy realm of the dead – even one’s own existence becomes suspect.
The thousands upon thousands of ghosts have amalgamated over the centuries. As their outlines blurred, their spaces slid in one another. Now they are a fine grey mist that infiltrates you ears, eyes, nose. Stroking, caressing, they whisper – give us life, let us live, let us up…
Only the Gods and the great can retain personalities; they are still defined enough in the watery light of Elysian Fields so as to be distinguishable. But even we, the immortal, are not immune to the passing of years. We continue to exist, yes – we shall exist until the end of time – but when our last disciple died, so did we. Now we are as sad echoes, as lamentable portraits of ourselves!
I stand at the side of Zeus; he is sprawled on a divan, mechanically dropping grapes into his mouth with fat-rounded fingers. His eyes are fixated on the rather voluptuous backside of one of his attendants. Some things never change.
Zeus gurgles, and shifts his gargantuan mass without once breaking his gaze. In this umbra, his musculature has suffered, badly. His shape lost in mounds of flesh.
I clear my throat, and he blinks. I clear my throat again, and delicately tap one silvery foot against the floor. With extreme difficulty, Zeus drags his eyes from the nymph and looks at me blankly. I can see his overwhelmed brain trying to account for my presence.
“Aphrodite.” Bravo Zeus, by all means bravo ye king of the Gods – you have put a name to a face.
“Ah yes.” He shifts his elephantine bulk so that he is facing me, sitting upright. “I, um, oh yes, I have a favour to ask you… or… I guess…”
“Well?” My voice chimes out the syllable, but the mist muffles the effect.
“It is a task,” he pauses, “that you have performed once before…”
“And?”
“He knows that you were, um, very…”
“Adept?”
“Adept.” The strain of the conversation is beginning to overwhelm Zeus, and his head is slowly sinking into the many folds of his neck. “He wants you to go up.” He says, appalled at the thought of the exertion.
Up. Up to the world. Up to contrasts. Up to identity.
“Up!”
“Yes.” Zeus begins to turn himself so that he is facing his old object, the nymph. He moves slowly so as to be sure of his great size. “He says you should…you should go see the three...” he drifts off again, attention once more demanded by the inspection of a sensuous set of curves.
I sniff, and regard the two with disdain. The nymph trips over to her master, he giggles appreciatively at the effect.
I am infuriated. I am the essence of beauty, not some tiresome chit. I once radiated loveliness and moved in an aura of my own seduction – to see me was to desire me. I once commanded the greatest power in the universe. The brute could at least pretend to notice me now – I have fared better against time than he.
I turn to leave. From behind I hear a high-pitched squeal, and moments later, a belligerent roar. The nymph collapses, sobbing, stripped of her youth.
I pause, smile to myself, and walk on. I have my pride left still.
I reach the judges’ dais shortly – distance is a concept of little meaning in this world. Aeacus, liver-spotted and white-haired, is the only one of the trio awake; Minos and Rhadamanthys slumber on. All three are dwarfed by huge piles of paper. The occasional white leaf slips, and flutters away in the twilight.
Aeacus moves his chin in and out as he tries to bring my form into focus. His eyes are yellow and bleary with age.
“Aphrodite.” The king inclines his head. I nod, acknowledging the deference, vindicated.
“We are honoured by your presence.” His trembling hand motions to the other two archaic figures. They snooze on, oblivious. “Moros,” he continues, bringing the wizened hand back to rest on the stone table, “has a task for you.”
“I accept.” There would be no point in refusing; to be is to be at the mercy of destiny. And I would be, I would be.
Aeacus dips his ancient head. “Apollo sees that there will be another insurrection against supreme power. A man shall aspire to the divine. This mortal will attempt to create a new race, but he must be broken by his fate. He must be made to feel despair.”
“And what am I to do? I am the Goddess of Love – I bring joy, not unhappiness, Aeacus.”
“Apollo has said you shall defeat him. I know not how. But, ” Aeacus attempts to smile. “This creator, unlike Prometheus, shall be a man, and he shall have all the weaknesses of men. And who knows the greatest weakness of men better than you, lovely Aphrodite.”
I hear his words clearly but I cannot grasp his meaning. I am beauty, I am love – what harm can I inflict? But I reply, “Thank you, Aeacus.” I must not seem weak.
As I quietly pad out of the courtroom, the mists swirl around my feet. Take us with you, let us up, the spirits whimper breathlessly.
On the banks of the Styx, I am surprised to see the familiar misshapen form of my husband, Hephaestus. His unpleasant features are further marred by a frown as he gazes across the sluggish water.
We stand side by side in silence as the boatman, Charon, navigates the current. Time passes, and the minutes, like everything else here, blend into each other.
“I suppose I am not needed this time.” Hephaestus is speaking, looking down now at his hands. Unlike the rest of his deformed body, they are beautiful – long-fingered, graceful, supple – the hands of an artist. He raises mud-coloured eyes to mine, and grins, a benevolent homeliness. I stare back.
“But no one can create as you do.” It is a fact, simply spoken and truer for it. When Zeus in his fury, commissioned man’s punishment, he called upon Hephaestus to mould the body of a woman from water and clay. Zeus then told me to grace the creation with a beauty that would make her irresistible to man. I still do not understand how that beauty could have been punishment, but now I must bring down a transgressor all on my own; the thought is disconcerting.
“Perhaps not.” Hephaestus holds out one of his glorious hands and helps me onto the raft. The mist desperately clings to the folds of my gown.
“Come back to me, Aphrodite.” His parting words travel across the surface of the river, and wrap themselves around my heart.
Earth
“ She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had then been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not long been married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy – one among the schiavi ognor frementi, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its weakness. Whether he had died, or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known. His property confiscated; his child became an orphan and a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among the dark-leaved brambles.” (Shelley 20)
It was by degrees, that I learnt the ignominy that is childhood.
The dependence of the very young is pitiful. My instrument, one Elizabeth Lavenza, was confined to abject poverty. In that odious hovel I waited, by day bound to a mind retarded by infancy, patiently tending to any signs of emerging beauty – it was my only gift to give and I gave it to the child freely. But at night, at night I could roam the wide-open green spaces, drinking in the earthly magnificence – the clarity of form. At dawn, intoxicated at the splendor, I would return to the girl and slip behind her eyelids once more.
“Among these there was one that attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was ample and clear, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the molding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.” (Shelley 20)
Beauty is unconquerable.
As Elizabeth grew I endowed her with such radiance that the sun itself felt envy. Even her ignorance was, in and of itself, a weapon. Her frailty, canonized by a purity of expression and brilliance of feature, made her irresistible. She was sublime. She was my masterpiece.
Her allure proved great. Its first victim was the gentle woman who entered that rude dwelling, for she left with my fair child. Behind Elizabeth’s blue eyes I rejoiced as we were bundled into a carriage. Finally! To be free once more from depravity!
Beauty is glorious.
“Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, “I have a pretty present for Victor – tomorrow he shall have it.” And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine – mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me – more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.” (Shelley 21).
I knew the moment Elizabeth first saw him. Even then, as a young boy, his eyes burned with something I would vain have called insanity. His countenance drank in Elizabeth’s appearance, and I knew that his love towards her would be an all-consuming desire to possess her, and her beauty.
And so the years passed. As Elizabeth grew I shaped her passions to more closely resemble my own. Under my tutelage she came to delight in the picturesque landscape. As one, we found ecstasy in poetic creation, in the peculiarity of the seasons. She grew still lovelier - as the bud that unfolds quivering petals to the sun, so did my Elizabeth ripen. With each spring she basked more fully in her own grandeur.
The boy, Frankenstein, was not insensible to my creation. But yet with a superhuman vigour, he threw himself into study. He bruised himself in the application, already ravenous in his quest for knowledge. And my Elizabeth with her ravishing beauty, my protégée, she could only distract him from his purpose for a few days. When he returned to study, it was with an ever more voracious appetite. He was beyond the tempting charms of my creature; he was a fiend.
“ My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred – an omen, as it were, of my future misery.
Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from tending upon her. She had first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attention triumphed over the malignity of the distemper – Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence would be fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event.” (Shelley 30)
At the announcement of Victor’s imminent departure, I grew acutely alarmed. I had failed to sway the youth from his investigation. Insofar, at least, it had been a theoretical undertaking, but at university, removed from Elizabeth’s softening presence, and surrounded by scientific instrument, who was to say what accident he might accomplish? As Elizabeth’s inferior mind bent to the difficulty of a farewell to a childhood playmate, I occupied myself with the cultivation of a far more tragic event.
Just as it had been when Elizabeth had been a child, her beauty triumphed over Caroline Frankenstein. Blinded by love, the mother soon lay dying, and Frankenstein was tethered to her bedside, departure forgotten.
But I was unsure. I was not one that delights in grief. I was a goddess of pleasure. I was the Goddess of Love.
But he remained, after the funeral, to comfort his devastated, flawless cousin. Hesitation forgotten, I crowed, for it seemed that Frankenstein was finally diverted from his task, finally a victim to my prowess.
And yet he was not stopped– he left. He left devoured by his lust for knowledge. He left, and I lay vanquished, stunned, and my apprehension grew.
Every night, as Elizabeth dreamed senselessly, I watched his toils. I saw him aspire to learn the greatest secret of the feminine – that of creation. He had been so threatened by my thrall in Elizabeth, that he strived now to make her redundant.
To my horror, one night he grasped the art of animation. It was butchery, but his base equipment still yielded forth a spark of life.
By day I was bound to Elizabeth’s psyche, impatient for the day to end, darkness ushering in merciful rest. At the moment of sweet oblivion, I slipped through the cracks of the universe and stood in Frankenstein’s laboratory. Each night revealed more of his being, crudely stitched together by an unpracticed hand. Each night revealed more reason to despair – I had not been powerful enough to stop this rude creator. And there he stood, on the verge of success.
There I stand now, in a miserable room watching the man-child gather his apparatus about him. Features convulsed in anxiety, he steals himself to infuse the spark of life: the final execution of an unhallowed act.
I am in agony. I hurl my ghostly self about the chamber. I send the rain hammering against the windows; I try in vain to extinguish the feeble candlelight. I beat my feet against the splintered floor in outrage. I silently pound my fury.
And yet he will not stop. His features are vilified by their gleam of exultation and I forget myself; I forget my affection and goodness and love, and I hate this Frankenstein. I hate he who dared, with his silly science, to make love obsolete, to remove the necessity of lust. I hate he, who with his impersonal metal instruments, has dared to imagine creating beauty, pure physical truth without my consent. And as the trembling youth watches the spark of life jump between his hands, I open my mouth and I curse that boy. I curse him and his patchwork monster. I scream the greatest penance that my fevered brain can supply. I condemn his creation, his brute, to an existence devoid of beauty, devoid of love.
“ I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.” (Shelley 42)
The creature opens his eyes and my heart swells in vindication – great hideous beast! Magnificent repulsiveness! No human will be able to withstand such abject deformity; their shallow minds cannot bear the scope of disgust. I watch as Frankenstein rushes from the room shuddering in pain. His monster lurches after him, automatically seeking that which shall never be his.
And I dance in that loathsome place, saturated in joy, in divinity, in myself. I am still Aphrodite! No man is above me! I twirl and laugh at the thundering heavens. Still Aphrodite! Still Aphrodite!
The In-between
I am in a different courtroom this time. The figures of Apollo and Artemis tower over me, the two twin robed-justices. Artemis’ expression is tinged with distaste. She and I, as a sworn virgin and the goddess of promiscuity respectively, have never gotten along.
Apollo leans his chin on one hand.
“Well, it seems your charms have brought down yet another, Aphrodite.” He muses.
Vanity makes me imprudent. “Great Apollo – did you really think that even with their science, they would be able to ignore their natures? The necessity of beauty? Of me? And then that they would dare to try to replicate this, that which is mine to give? You would be a fool to think so.”
“Is that so?” Apollo’s eyebrows are raised, Artemis’ openly mocking as she jeers, “What a high opinion you have of yourself, Aphrodite.”
“But it is a high opinion that is very much deserved.” I say. “Would you care to present this non-believer with the proof that man needs beauty, Master Apollo – I should not like to have this perceived blot on my reputation.” I motion to a disgusted Artemis.
Apollo glances at his sister then closes his eyes. When he speaks again in it not in his usual honeyed tone. His voice booms, omnipotent and terrible.
“Frankenstein shall abandon his creation. Alone, the creature shall leave the town and wander through a great wood. His journey shall be punishing, undertaken without companionship or understanding.
“He shall seek out human habitation, allured by the promise of warmth and shelter. But the villagers will condemn his presence. Bewildered and pained, he shall retreat once more into the forest.
“He shall take refuge in a hovel, where he shall become infatuated with its inhabitants. Their benevolence shall be manna to him. He shall think of making his existence known unto them.
“He shall glimpse himself in the surface of a pool, and feel disbelief, misery and shame. But he shall still not understand his curse. Not then. Not yet.
“He shall enter that rough abode, and receive the attention of the blind old man. And with the ensuing conversation, he shall dream of affection and infectious hope, shall spread to his heart.
“And so when the younger inhabitants regard him for the first time, their reaction will be an even greater betrayal, for they shall drive this monster from their father and beat the creature with a stick. And Frankenstein’s being shall be consumed by anguish, and wander forever tasting the bitterness of that rejection.
“Frankenstein’s being shall stumble on; now all joy will be as a mockery to him. He shall destroy what is hateful to him, and an innocent babe and virtuous maiden shall be his first victims. But this monster is not yet unfeeling. He shall offer his god a choice – to create another of his kind, or the maker shall feel the creature’s unrelenting hatred.
“Frankenstein will be unable to create another creature as lewd as his first, and the monster shall renew his savagery. First the shining youth, the bright Henry, shall fall at the being’s feet, and then he shall rob Frankenstein of his refuge of sweetness and gentility; the monster shall destroy Elizabeth. Her beauty shall condemn her, and she shall die.”
I am stricken, but Apollo continues. His words come quicker now, as he recites the future, unseeing.
“Frankenstein shall promise a great revenge. He shall pursue the devil. The two shall spend their lives tied together by a mutual chord of hate. They shall cross the known world, until at last they shall reach a landscape of ice and snow.
“There they shall fulfill their fate, bound as god and his creation, as together, they shall die.”
Apollo opens his eyes. The courtroom is silent and oppressive.
“Hag!” Two spots of rage have appeared on Artemis’ icy cheeks. “Harlot! Heartless freak!”
“Artemis!” Apollo is shocked.
“How dare you! How dare you! To punish the master is condonable, but to torture his creation! To condemn the innocent! What have you done, Aphrodite? What have you done?”
The Underworld
Once, in another lifetime, I brought joy to a man.
His name was Pygmalion. He was a sculptor who lived in the town of Amathus on the Island of Cyprus. He lived in his art and scorned all female society.
But this silly man loved me, he loved me, and I, flattered at his attentions, rewarded him. For when he created a woman of stone of such beauty that he fell in love with her, I gave him a miracle; I gave the statue life, and two beings found great happiness.
I cannot help but think on this now that I am back in the world of grey. Beauty is less certain, here, as it once was to me. It is truth. It is hate. It is dreadful and miraculous. Here I can accept that. On earth I could not. On earth I blinded myself.
Zeus has found himself a new nymph; one that is even more curvaceous if such a thing is possible. He has swum in the merciful river of Lethe and his glory seems as a memory of a dream.
I went back to Hephaestus. We live still on the Elysian field. He creates in fire and I think of it.
The other day I met Homer while wandering through a field of grey poppies. He was his ever-genial self, and fondly patted the space beside him on the ground.
“Sit down, most lovely Aphrodite. And if you would care to, pour your heavenly words into these foolish old ears. And by all means, let us be civilized, let us have sustenance!” He declared, seizing upon a decanter of wine.
I told him then, of Frankenstein, of his monster, of Elizabeth. And he listened then, and nodded occasionally as I spoke.
“Oh, Aphrodite!” He exclaimed. “You are great but you are not always wise, my dear. You are not to blame in this affair.”
“But I am!” I said, “I am. I am. I am.”
“No, you are not. Hear what I say to you now: autôn gar spheterêsin atasthaliêsin olonto, nêpioi. So it has been, so it shall be.”
For their own follies they perished, the fools.
Perhaps it was so; who is to say?