Drift-Draft

FRAGMENTS OF TEXTS READ FOR THE PERFORMANCE:

To write a text about a monster – a monster that resembles the text – the text as composite, patchwork, stitched, cut-up, composed of dead fragments – Plato affirmed that writing like painting is an imitation of life, of the living, thus the reversed, that is to say death – a tanatography.

Mary Shelley is like Plato according to Nietzsche: he/she who doesn’t write. The main part of her text is oral expression, speech, a voice re-transcribed.

“Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed be the hands that formed you ! You have made me wretched beyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you, or not. Begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested form."

" Thus I relieve thee, my creator," the creature said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, " thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange…”

The hand that covers Frankenstein’s eyes is the hand that blinds. A hand also shows, holds, writes, gives and takes.

The hand is human, having no hands is inhuman. Heidegger says that monkeys have hands but can’t give or take, they only hold.

The monster gives Frankenstein obscurity. It’s a gift. He is human.

Heidegger’s hands show, they are monstrous.

Where are the ashes of the monster?

Is it possible to burn a monster linguistically created?

Does language burn?

At the end of the story the monster burns. He is the proof. What remains are ashes, a text. The text is ashes. The ashes of the monster are ink. Memory is ashes, not cold ashes, but burning ashes. The monster didn’t burn at the end of the text; he is burning forever, showing us his disappearing, and his difference. The monster is the other; the other has often been burn. The monster testifies for he is burning forever, since Mary Shelley didn’t burn him. The monster doesn’t burn. He will ascend his funeral pile. He will burn. But he doesn’t yet. He is a monster; he shows but doesn’t burn and disappear. He burns and remains. Like ashes. Like writing. Like a book.

The monster is the anti-narcissus, a narcissus in reversed proportion.

What is an anti-narcissus, if not echo?

The image burns.

The voice doesn’t. Writing does.

What if death burns. The monster is a living-dead: he burns. Oxymoron burn.

The voice lives unless you record it. It is a ghost.

Anything spectral burns. Ghosts are burning.

Writing is an image. The image of the monster is horrible. It burns. It burns him. He refuses it. He will speak. But before speaking he has to read death. The image, the writing. He will speak because that doesn’t burn, that’s living.

Echo lives. Narcissus dies.

The image burns Echo. Narcissus burns echo. She becomes a voice. So to live. So not to burn.

Where there is an image, there is a monster.

But the voice kills. It kills the other. The monster kills as he speaks. He talks to kill. Murder. Redrum.

Your voice is killing me.

Stop speaking and spare my life.

No don’t. Kill me sweet talker. I love you, you don’t burn.

Narcissus and echo.

Echo and Narcissus.

Video: I see.

Radio: Ray.

The ashes have an interesting property. Ashes are of course traces, but they are traces that remain without remaining. It is neither absent, neither present, it consumes itself, it is a remaining without remains. It witnesses the absence of a witness.

Every trace is an ash, it burns. Writing burns, so the linguistically monster can burn, but not entirely, what remains are ashes, burning, testifying ashes. The voice if not echoed doesn’t burn. The echo is a trace, an ash, a burn.

Thinking is to act. Language is what allows us to think. Language is an act. To act is in German: Handeln. Handeln is to give a hand. Handeln is to speak with hands, it is to write. The Hand on Frankenstein’s eyes commands him to act. The monster learned to speak, so to act. His hand shows this. Hands are monstrous, so are thoughts, and language.

" Thus I relieve thee, my creator," the creature said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence " thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange…

Fuck you, I'm sick of it. I’m selling everything. I'm off. Don't try to find me. As far as I am concerned you’re a ghost.

Critique of blind knowledge: Frankenstein.

Critique of forced ignorance: the monster.

Bachelard says that a fast slithering snail is already something monstrous. Derrida says the hand of Heidegger is monstrous. Deleuze forges a new name: anomalous; he states that to create a monster you amplify the substance while dissolving the form. Foucault reminds us in his discussion of the public performances put on by the inmates of lunatic asylums until the early nineteenth century, a “monster” is something or someone to be shown. In Latin it is monstrare, in French, montrer, in English, to demonstrate. In a world created by a reasonable god, the freak or lunatic must have a purpose: to reveal visibly the results of vice, folly and unreason as a warning to erring humanity. Bram Stocker fantasizes a xeno-vampire and Matthew Lewis a sadistic monk, Shelley dreams of a dead man brought back to life, and Dario Argento’s zombies movies fill our video-stores.

The monster is gender, political, social, psychological or philosophical. It’s everywhere. And that is good. Monsters are good. Artists are creators of monsters and monsters themselves.

" By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes, produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick; and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connexion with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; I learned and applied the words, fire, milk, bread, and wood. I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only one, which wasfather. The girl was called sister, or Agatha; and the youth Felix, brother, or son. I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds, and was able to pronounce them. I distinguished several other words, without being able as yet to understand or apply them ; such as good, dearest, unhappy.”

The monster is political. There are a few evidences very easy to demonstrate, through inter-textual evidences. Shelley’s philosophical views on Reform are one strong example. Written in 1820 it is I believe Percy Shelley’s most coherent and deep analyses of the French Revolution. The tone is gloomy. Many writers adopt that tone. You will see that the political analyze results and ends in the gothic genre, a dead-end.

On Revenge: the tyrants were as usual the aggressors. The oppressed, having been rendered brutal, ignorant, servile and bloody by slavery, having had their intellectual thirst, excited in them by the progress of civilization, satiated by fountains of literature poisoned by the spirit and the form of monarchy, arose to take a dreadful revenge on their oppressors. Their desire to wreak revenge, to this extent, in itself, a mistake, a crime, a calamity, arose from the same sourse as their other miseries and errors, and affords an additional proof of the necessity of the long delayed change which it accompanied and disgraced.

The Violence of the revolution is that of vengeance. The Mob is not mean; it’s pushed too close to the edge. So is Mary Shelley’s monster.

On Malthus: A writer of the present day (a priest of course, for his doctrines are those of an eunuch and of a tyrant) has stated that the evils of the poor arise from an excess of population, and after they have been stripped naked by the tax-gatherer and reduced to bread and tea and fourteen hours of hard labor by their masters, and after the frost has bitten their defenseless limbs, and the cramp has run like a disease within their bones, and hunger and the suppressed revenge of hunger has stamped the ferocity of want like the mark of Cain upon their countenance, that the last with which nature holds them to the benignant earth whose plenty is garnered up in the strongholds of their tyrants, is to be divided; that the single alleviation of their suffering and their scorns, the one thing that made it impossible to degrade them below the beasts, which amid all their crimes and miseries yet separated a cynical and unmanly contamination, an anti-social cruelty, from all the soothing, elevating and harmonious gentleness of the sexual intercourse and the humanizing charities of domestic life which are its appendages - that is to be obliterated. They are required to abstain from marrying under penalty of starvation.

We can hear behind this eloquent speech, the monster’s rage pointed at Victor Frankenstein, here a Malthusian tyrant, who denies him the right to a woman, to procreation, to happiness. Victor, just like Malthus is playing with the fire of the revolution.

The tone is gloomy. Many writers adopt that tone. The political analyze results and ends in the gothic genre, a dead-end.

He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs.

But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest.

His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred.

As time passed away I became more calm: misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them.

Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak; and I often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding.

You will repay me entirely, if you do not discompose yourself, but get well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I may speak to you on one subject, may I not ?

I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak.

I neither spoke, nor looked at any one, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.

My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken.

Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.

The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man ! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands."

But the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance.

At length he opened his eyes ; he breathed with difficulty, and was unable to speak.

His voice became fainter as he spoke; and at length, exhausted by his effort, he sunk into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips.

I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion : " Your repentance' I said, " is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of remorse, before yon had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived."

The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration, that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends. Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors.

They utter the words good spirit, wonderful; but I did not then understand the signification of these terms.

I soon perceived, that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds, and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by, nor herself understood, the cottagers. They made many signs which I did not comprehend.

This reading had puzzled me extremely at first; but, by degrees, I discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read, as when he talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend these also; but how was that possible, when I did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however, sensibly in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of conversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavour: for I easily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become master of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure; for with this also the contrast perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted.

A last thing on writing and fiction:

Someone looks at his clock and writes it is 12 o’clock. A couple of minutes later he watches again and realizes it is 5 past twelve. What he wrote is an error. Language because it persists transforms truth in error. With mankind, with language, errors live long lives: we call it fictions. Hegel said that only human errors persists because it is transmitted by language and that animals don’t have that tendency because they don’t have a language to petrify things.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

What I tell you three times is true.”

Lewis Caroll, The Hunting of the Snark

It is in human discourse that monsters survive and propagate.

But the history of man has also the property to turn errors into truths. A poet in the middle ages wrote: “a man flies over the ocean”. Medieval untruth, or trivial banality of the airplane: fiction became truth.

And Shelley’s book is a fiction, of course, it is not only repetition of previous texts, it is an error that lasts and as well a virtual truth projected on the future. Its inter-textuality finds a path in both ways, it anticipates as much as it repeats. There lies its mythical power and eternal charm: it anticiapes on human history.