Mathilda (18 page)

Your heart I fear, replied Diotima, was broken by your sufferings--but if you had struggled--if when you found all hope of earthly happiness wither within you while desire of it scorched your soul--if you had near you a friend to have raised you to the contemplation of beauty & the search of knowledge you would have found perhaps not new hopes spring within you but a new life distinct from that of passion by which you had before existed[99]--relate to me what this misery was that thus engroses you--tell me what were the vicissitudes of feeling that you endured on earth--after death our actions & worldly interest fade as nothing before us but the traces of our feelings exist & the memories of those are what furnish us here with eternal subject of meditation.

A blush spread over the cheek of the lovely girl--Alas, replied she what a tale must I relate what dark & phre[n]zied passions must I unfold--When you Diotima lived on earth your soul seemed to mingle in love only with its own essence & to be unknowing of the various tortures which that heart endures who if it has not sympathized with has been witness of the dreadful struggles of a soul enchained by dark deep passions which were its hell & yet from which it could not escape--Are there in the peaceful language used by the inhabitants of these regions--words burning enough to paint the tortures of the human heart--Can you understand them? or can you in any way sympathize with them--alas though dead I do and my tears flow as when I lived when my memory recalls the dreadful images of the past--

--As the lovely girl spoke my own eyes filled with bitter drops--the spirit of Fantasia seemed to fade from within me and when after placing my hand before my swimming eyes I withdrew it again I found myself under the trees on the banks of the Tiber--The sun was just setting & tinging with crimson the clouds that floated over St. Peters--all was still no human voice was heard--the very air was quiet I rose--& bewildered with the grief that I felt within me the recollection of what I had heard--I hastened to the city that I might see human beings not that I might forget my wandering recollections but that I might impress on my mind what was reality & what was either dream--or at least not of this earth--The Corso of Rome was filled with carriages and as I walked up the Trinita dei' Montes I became disgusted with the crowd that I saw about me & the vacancy & want of beauty not to say deformity of the many beings who meaninglessly buzzed about me--I hastened to my room which overlooked the whole city which as night came on became tranquil--Silent lovely Rome I now gaze on thee--thy domes are illuminated by the moon--and the ghosts of lovely memories float with the night breeze among thy ruins-- contemplating thy loveliness which half soothes my miserable heart I record what I have seen--Tomorrow I will again woo Fantasia to lead me to the same walks & invite her to visit me with her visions which I before neglected--Oh let me learn this lesson while yet it may be useful to me that to a mind hopeless & unhappy as mine--a moment of forgetfullness a moment [in] which it can pass out of itself is worth a life of painful recollection.

CHAP. 2

The next morning while sitting on the steps of the temple of Aesculapius in the Borghese gardens Fantasia again visited me & smilingly beckoned to me to follow her--My flight was at first heavy but the breezes commanded by the spirit to convoy me grew stronger as I advanced--a pleasing languour seized my senses & when I recovered I found my self by the Elysian fountain near Diotima--The beautiful female who[m] I had left on the point of narrating her earthly history seemed to have waited for my return and as soon as I appeared she spoke thus--[100]

NOTES TO
THE FIELDS OF FANCY

[88] Here is printed the opening of
F of F--A
, which contains the fanciful framework abandoned in
Mathilda
. It has some intrinsic interest, as it shows that Mary as well as Shelley had been reading Plato, and especially as it reveals the close connection of the writing of
Mathilda
with Mary's own grief and depression. The first chapter is a fairly good rough draft. Punctuation, to be sure, consists largely of dashes or is non-existent, and there are some corrections. But there are not as many changes as there are in the remainder of this MS or in
F of F--B
.

[89] It was in Rome that Mary's oldest child, William, died on June 7, 1819.

[90] Cf. two entries in Mary Shelley's journal. An unpublished entry for October 27, 1822, reads: "Before when I wrote Mathilda, miserable as I was, the inspiration was sufficient to quell my wretchedness temporarily." Another entry, that for December 2, 1834, is quoted in abbreviated and somewhat garbled form by R. Glynn Grylls in
Mary Shelley
(London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 194, and reprinted by Professor Jones (
Journal
, p. 203). The full passage follows: "Little harm has my imagination done to me & how much good!--My poor heart pierced through & through has found balm from it--it has been the aegis to my sensibility--Sometimes there have been periods when Misery has pushed it aside--& those indeed were periods I shudder to remember--but the fairy only stept aside, she watched her time--& at the first opportunity her ... beaming face peeped in, & the weight of deadly woe was lightened."

[91] An obvious reference to
Frankenstein
.

[92] With the words of Fantasia (and those of Diotima), cf. the association of wisdom and virtue in Plato's
Phaedo
, the myth of Er in the
Republic
, and the doctrine of love and beauty in the
Symposium
.

[93] See Plato's
Symposium
. According to Mary's note in her edition of Shelley's
Essays, Letters from Abroad, etc
. (1840), Shelley planned to use the name for the instructress of the Stranger in his unfinished prose tale,
The Coliseum
, which was written before
Mathilda
, in the winter of 1818-1819. Probably at this same time Mary was writing an unfinished (and unpublished) tale about Valerius, an ancient Roman brought back to life in modern Rome. Valerius, like Shelley's Stranger, was instructed by a woman whom he met in the Coliseum. Mary's story is indebted to Shelley's in other ways as well.

[94] Mathilda.

[95] I cannot find a prototype for this young man, though in some ways he resembles Shelley.

[96] Following this paragraph is an incomplete one which is scored out in the MS. The comment on the intricacy of modern life is interesting. Mary wrote: "The world you have just quitted she said is one of doubt & perplexity often of pain & misery--The modes of suffering seem to me to be much multiplied there since I made one of the throng & modern feelings seem to have acquired an intracacy then unknown but now the veil is torn aside--the events that you felt deeply on earth have passed away & you see them in their nakedness all but your knowledge & affections have passed away as a dream you now wonder at the effect trifles had on you and that the events of so passing a scene should have interested you so deeply--You complain, my friends of the"

[97] The word is blotted and virtually illegible.

[98] With Diotima's conclusion here cf. her words in the
Symposium
: "When any one ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labour. For such as discipline themselves upon this system, or are conducted by another beginning to ascend through these transitory objects which are beautiful, towards that which is beauty itself, proceeding as on steps from the love of one form to that of two, and from that of two, to that of all forms which are beautiful; and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and from institutions to beautiful doctrines; until, from the meditation of many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and contemplation of which at length they repose." (Shelley's translation) Love, beauty, and self-knowledge are keywords not only in Plato but in Shelley's thought and poetry, and he was much concerned with the problem of the presence of good and evil. Some of these themes are discussed by Woodville in
Mathilda
. The repetition may have been one reason why Mary discarded the framework.

[99] Mathilda did have such a friend, but, as she admits, she profited little from his teachings.

[100] In
F of F--B
there is another, longer version (three and a half pages) of this incident, scored out, recounting the author's return to the Elysian gardens, Diotima's consolation of Mathilda, and her request for Mathilda's story. After wandering through the alleys and woods adjacent to the gardens, the author came upon Diotima seated beside Mathilda. "It is true indeed she said our affections outlive our earthly forms and I can well sympathize in your disappointment that you do not find what you loved in the life now ended to welcome you here[.] But one day you will all meet how soon entirely depends upon yourself--It is by the acquirement of wisdom and the loss of the selfishness that is now attached to the sole feeling that possesses you that you will at last mingle in that universal world of which we all now make a divided part." Diotima urges Mathilda to tell her story, and she, hoping that by doing so she will break the bonds that weigh heavily upon her, proceeds to "tell this history of strange woe."

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