林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

兩百年來罕見的文學預言才女

accessed July 31, 2020

■1816年16歲的瑪麗˙雪萊創造了《科學怪人》。寓言是未來科技可能摧毀了創造它的人類，就像科學怪人最後摧毀了發明它的人。正是今日人類面臨核子大戰威脅的寫照。

■1826年26歲的她又創作了另一本小說《最後一個人》。內容描述瘟疫將席捲全球人類只剩一位生存者。也正是今日世界陷入冠狀病毒災難的惡夢。

請看下面兩篇

1. 妙齡女創造科學怪人

聯合報 20180829 A15

2. Mary Shelley Created ‘Frankenstein,’ and Then a Pandemic

Her novel ‘The Last Man’ predicted the political causes of and collective solutions for global plague.

By Eileen Hunt Botting

• New York Times March 13, 2020

●一八一六是歐洲歷史上「無夏日之年」。六月中某晚，在陰雨綿綿的瑞士日內瓦湖畔，一座考究的別墅內，五位英國俊男美女，應景當時詭異的氣氛，比賽講恐怖故事。

妙齡女創造科學怪人

聯合報 20180829 A15

二○一八是小說《科學怪人》(Frankenstein)問世兩百周年。

故事：一位科學家在實驗室中意外的創造出聰明、醜陋的巨人。科學家在親人一一為怪物殺害後也步上被毀滅的後塵。

這本小說從未絕版過，而且它版本之多為所有小說之冠。一三年英國《衛報》 (Guardian)列它為世界一百本最佳小說中第八名。改編成無數舞台劇之外，至今它已拍成五十六部電影，下一部明年將上映。它反映出每一個世代人們對科技創新的不安和期望。

它的魅力跨越時間，以及空間。二○一四年，在戰火摧殘的敘利亞，居然出現得獎的阿拉伯文小說《巴格達的科學怪人》(Frankenstein in Bagdad)。

今年年初，紀念《科學怪人》兩世紀的生日，已有四本專書出版，研究它文學、心理、哲學、社會的意義。

它被譽為現代科幻小說之鼻祖，其影響力甚至跨入科學。今年美國National Science Foundation特地資助印行為科學家、工程師、和所有創新者所編的版本(Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds)。科學期刊Science也在今年一月出版特刊及專文(The Long Shadow of Frankenstein)討論此書至今為何仍為科學家所必讀。無情冰冷的科學如何和有情熱血的人類共處？人類的科學發明又如何不會毀滅人類？這些議題隨了人工生命、基因改造、機器人等的出現愈形重要。

小說《科學怪人》如何誕生？

一八一六是歐洲歷史上「無夏日之年」。那是一七九○至一八三○年「道爾頓小冰河期」(Dalton Minimum)寒冷的極致。剛好又碰上印尼火山(Tambora Mount)爆發，火山灰長期遮蔽太陽，各地長久不見天日。六月中某晚，在陰雨綿綿的瑞士日內瓦湖畔，一座考究的別墅內，五位英國俊男美女，應景當時詭異的氣氛，比賽講恐怖故事。

出題目的是廿八歲的主人拜倫男爵，浪漫派大詩人，當時已經享譽歐陸。

在座的另一位是拜倫好友廿四歲的雪萊，浪漫派名詩人和作家。

第三位是廿歲的醫生，拜倫仰慕者(John Polidori)。

第四位是十八歲的瑪麗˙高德溫。她文雅秀麗，思想前瞻，十六歲已與雪萊私奔巴黎，一八一六年底將成為雪萊妻子。

第五位是瑪麗的繼妹Clare Claremont。

這比賽產生了兩本傳世的小說：Polidori醫生的《吸血鬼》(The Vampire) 和瑪麗˙雪萊的《科學怪人》。後者當時贏得比賽。

瑪麗的父親是新潮哲學家William Godwin。母親是女權運動先驅Mary Wollstonecraft，曾憧憬法國大革命，前往巴黎目睹恐怖的暴民，失望而歸。家庭環境自幼薰陶，妙齡瑪麗的智慧早已超越了一般的想像。母親生下瑪麗後，染病而亡，種下瑪麗心靈上的陰影。創造她的母親因她而死，有如創造怪人的科學家毀於怪人之手。巴黎街頭的叛亂和仇恨，由瑪麗的筆注入怪人的性格。

「我本善良，因醜而受苦，淪為惡魔。請設法使我快樂，我會回歸純潔。」怪人告訴科學家。後天環境決定我們的善惡，這才是作者的深意。

《科學怪人》最初用筆名發表。一八三一年第三版才用真名，竟然引起評論家駁斥說此傑作不可能為女性所寫！

那時，離日內瓦湖畔講恐怖故事之夜已十六寒暑。對瑪麗而言，世事全非。拜倫七年前赴希臘參戰而病死。雪萊已辭世九年。她將守寡一生直至一八五一，享年五十四。

作者為前華府喬治大學外交學院講座教授，曾任國防部副部長

Mary Shelley Created ‘Frankenstein,’ and Then a Pandemic

Her novel ‘The Last Man’ predicted the political causes of and collective solutions for global plague.

By Eileen Hunt Botting

Ms. Botting is a professor of political science at Notre Dame.

• New York Times March 13, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/mary-shelley-sc-fi-pandemic-novel.html accessed July 31, 2020

The world teeters in collective anxiety in the midst of a pandemic. A novel and lethal plague spreads its tentacles around the earth. It ravages human populations and simultaneously undermines their interconnected economic and political systems. An elite group of political leaders gathers to ask, What should be done in the face of a worldwide public health crisis?

This story line should sound familiar. But I am not summarizing the news headlines about Covid-19. I am recalling the plot of a great work of literature. It is Mary Shelley’s futuristic novel about a global plague, “The Last Man” (1826).

Shelley saw that the disaster of a pandemic would be driven by politics. This politics would be deeply personal yet international in scope. The spiraling health crisis would be caused by what people and their leaders had done and failed to do on the international stage — in trade, war and the interpersonal bargains, pacts and conflicts that precede them.

As we heed scientists’ warnings that we are entering “the age of pandemics,” we can benefit from reading “The Last Man” as the first major post-apocalyptic novel. In her second great work of science fiction after “Frankenstein” (1818), Shelley — the child of two philosophers — gave her readers an existential mind-set for collectively dealing with the threat of a global man-made disaster.

“The Last Man” is set in the year 2100. The novel’s driving conflict is a highly contagious disease. Like the coronavirus, the novel’s plague spreads by a combination of airborne particles and contact with carriers. In both cases, it has been incubated, exacerbated and left unchecked by destructive human behavior.

“The Last Man” has been so influential that you are already familiar with its basic plot even if you have not read it yet. It presents the history of the ostensible sole survivor of a global plague. Much like “Frankenstein,” “The Last Man” has repeatedly been remade in the science fiction and horror genres — from the works of Edgar Allan Poe to countless zombie apocalypse movies inspired by the 1964 film “The Last Man on Earth.” The latter starred none other than the king of horror, Vincent Price. He played the last human left alive on the globe after a virulent contagion turned other people into vampires.

In Shelley’s novel, it is a man named Lionel Verney who finds himself in this extreme and precarious position. In her allegorical reworking of biblical narratives of the fall and rebirth of humankind, Verney is a humble shepherd boy who marries into the royal family at Windsor Castle. He quickly ascends to the top of the leadership ranks. He serves as a trusted adviser to lords, ministers and legislators as the plague breaks out in Constantinople then creeps toward London.

After Verney leads a failed expedition of plague survivors from the crumbled republic of England to the vacant coast of Italy, he is left alone in Rome to contemplate the future. He climbs to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and carves the year — 2100 — in the stone. From that sublime vantage, he surveys the remains of human civilization. He summons the hope that there must be other survivors somewhere on the planet. In the final frame, Verney departs on an epic sea journey to discover them. For companions, he brings some signs of his humanity: his mutt, and the works of Homer and Shakespeare. Although Verney is not certain that he will find fellow humans, he discerns a deeper obligation to himself and the whole planet to act upon that hope.

In other words, Verney realizes that even if he is the last man on Earth, he must live as though he is not. He must sustain humanity by acting upon his profound sense of the interconnectedness of his fate with other forms of life — human or not.

Shelley completed “The Last Man” when she was a 28-year-old widow. She was grieving the loss of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and three of their children. Her first baby girl was born prematurely and survived less than two weeks, the next daughter died of a fever, and her firstborn son died of malaria. Then her young husband drowned in a sailing accident at the peak of his career. Writing “The Last Man” was her attempt to reconcile herself to the tragedies of life without losing hope in humanity itself.

Shelley located the human roots of her fictional plague in a centuries-long war between Greece and Turkey. Scientists think that the spread of the new coronavirus grew from a toxic mix of economic, political and environmental factors surrounding the largely unregulated market for wild animal meat in China and beyond. It has since percolated into an irresponsible game of blame among nations, whose leaders spread rumors that the coronavirus is a foreign bioweapon or even deny the seriousness of the public health crisis within their own borders. As with the coronavirus outbreak, travelers in “The Last Man” disperse the deadly disease across continents, infecting their own families and communities.

Much like Shelley’s first novel, “Frankenstein,” “The Last Man” proves to be a work of political science fiction. “Frankenstein” shows how a scientist’s abandonment of his artificially made creature brings ripple effects of suffering to them and the community. The teenage Shelley may have identified with Victor Frankenstein’s so-called monster, for her birth had killed her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, via a surgically transmitted infection.

Similarly, “The Last Man” originates in the author’s experience of devastating personal loss. After Shelley suffered a mental crisis about whether she could live after the loss of almost everyone she loved, she wrote a cosmopolitan answer to this existential question. The unexpectedly hopeful ending of “The Last Man” suggests that all disasters — however threatening to particular individuals or countries — are ultimately about humanity’s responsibility to the world as a whole.

Wise beyond her years, Shelley reminds us through the heroic voice of Verney that we should always act upon hope for retaining what makes us loving, humane and connected to others, even in the face of total catastrophe.

Reading the story lines about the escalating coronavirus outbreaks around the world, we feel worry — even fear — especially for ourselves and our loved ones. But like Shelley and her avatar Verney, we should summon the strength to look beyond that fear with an attitude of hope and collective problem-solving. Only then might we humanely work together to fight the spread of Covid-19, instead of contributing to yet another international epidemiological disaster.

Eileen Hunt Botting (@BottingHunt) is a political theorist whose latest book, “Artificial Life After Frankenstein," is forthcoming from Penn Press in late 2020.