Pantechnicon; Radu Florescu

The machine. Dies down in some crank's the reclining body too and I. Give it some time. It could be hours before we know an eyelid flutters open as the two women talk. It. IS ALIVE AND IT. Is bringing the patchwork creatures forward as its creator Twi used to restrain. Staff. For over one hundred fifty years the monster in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein as front of the world. But the advent of the test tube baby freezing bodies and implanting artificial hearts the Frankenstein myth has become more topical than ever. A magazine on entertainment and the arts brought to you in part to the support of the colonnade hotel a boston. Monster. Using it to

castigate politicians while the advertising world peddled millions of dollars worth of Frankenstein gadgetry. But what is the story behind Mary Shelley's monster drawn on history for her material such as the horror of figure created from the real Count Dracula of Transylvania. We have a descendant of Count Dracula with us tonight. Professor rather for us here from Boston College an expert on Romanian and East European history who has served as a consultant to the US Department of State and has lectured widely on both Dracula and Frankenstein. He's also the author of the recently published book by Little Brown titled in search of Frankenstein. Our guest rather Forrest. It so happened that my uncle was a genealogist and in our family who has been I say in the penumbra of history of Transylvanian history we were not directly descended but Democrats do have many wives you know legitimate and illegitimate in one fluoresce school was in Egypt a midwife of what I do and. Most of my ancestors were impaled by the

ocular because I do work with the friend of the Turks and I was fighting with to explode the forty second ride with a family that is I mean out there with their many collateral branches but anyway the name my father desired my son is that he gets a lot of teasing about it and we've had many members of our family who have played a prominent role in history so we have been connected with this fear with this area and this is the main interest. I forgot because I have a feel for my own country my part my former property was on the river I would switch. If the source of which was castle doctrine is count is the is the castle Dracula still in existence. Still there well remains of it I think American Jewish when they see the cross it is and so you can see. Place where I would not like to spend the night that my son spent the night with lots of garlic in his pocket and yeah like garlic. Well because the person superstitions say that evil spirits not just revamp it

but all the evil spirits are discouraged by God and the good witches and the many good witches and men you know who feel that herbal medicine has made physiological and also a spiritual need and they had a cause which was blessed by the patriarch of Woman Yeah we did you know the will be a national church is a very ritualistic religion and we feel that the Course wards off evil spirits and that in spite of socialist religion is strongly entrenched with the people and I never travel I would never take a plane. Without a icon of St. Nicholas which is my Beatles same thing was with me since birth and you carry this around with you ever I carry I would not leave on a plane without you know it's interesting I was talking with your colleague Rand McNally I guess it was last year about certain rights that that I have near it's really of a wooden stakes being driven through the vampires hearts

as a means of keeping them to the ground. And how these myths carry over into every day life and he said that when he was traveling in the area of the Dracula Castle years that he actually saw funeral going on and that the girl was considered to be a vampire and that a wooden stake was driven through her heart. Yes I think I think with the story to which you're referring. Or we heard from hearsay. Actually you see vampirism it's not quite kosher in a Marxist society and peasants don't usually do these things. And there were punishments for it because it actually means this accreting grave. We've been a little bit under terror by the by well-meaning friends because they say that we have given preservation a bad name and we have implied that Transylvania is the hotbed of vampirism which is of course not true vampirism is an ancient folk superstition which goes much beyond the boundaries of Transylvania which is part of mania.

And where they where they live many nationalities the means of presenting the majority their various Vampire Rights it throughout the Balkans and in the Far East we presume the vampire legend came to to Eastern Europe by way of the hunger of the hundreds perhaps and he dating these this is still very much very nebulous now we have not been the litany or thought to have woken on Ventoux as we were more interested into it retracing the backgrounds of the of the Bram Stoker novel. So yes there is a vampire documentation I don't think anyone it we have seen the documentation and we have interviewed a girl who described her 30 years before father was impaled. But there was no actual impalement witnessed by us and I would not be possible to do so because the persons who simply just are you. Well it may happen but they do it secretly.

I know what I'm leading up to is all of the research that you've done now on Frankenstein. Are any of the rights involved with Frankenstein kind over into everyday life. Well Frankenstein is a different story. It began as a kind of joke and some television show I am not going to betray which is where the MCS it was it's a choice to go after dark although there's just one direction in which you can go in there it's Frankenstein and I thought shrug it off and I thought it was rather poor taste and thought it would you know I because the whole thing has been spoofed up a bit you know when Johnny Carson described it as as a direct descendant of Dr. Winston and he has a he has this extraordinary monologue and he's very amusing but I did plead with him to be serious for five minutes and I pleaded with the person very often to be serious and when they have these MY was a picture of Dracula with headlines like wild shit it doesn't taste like tomato juice. Never in history has one man impaled so many you know I think it gets give the scholars very angry and gets me inwardly angry because I'm a scholar although my colleagues don't seem to

believe just about Halloween time rather than about how in time you think that my my my committee my promotion to media always meets on the day I'm on doing something such as a blood drive or opening the haunted castles I didn't don't recall if I would. The Frankenstein Initially I was never I mean I was and I'm like now I'm not a horror movie buff I love our movies. I should confess in fact the only chapter I didn't do in Frankenstein was the was the one I found time for the film Shepard because I don't understand these movies I don't understand the mentality of it that makes people go to these movies I should some day you write a book on the audience. But I didn't cause I had if I had seen the classics I'd see even Boy Scout fire. I had these images of the Edison picture which is before you know it I was somewhat amused by Mel Brooks. I loath the whole movie which I found excessively go in which my my editor simply compelled me to want to watch. But I was intrigued by Mary Shelley. I was intrigued to see I follow the same approach in a sense

that it was McNally who got me into the horror films and but now you got me into the Bram Stoker novel which I think is one of the greatest bestsellers of all times and it's by way of the movie is that. I learned it in two or I descended to the to read this extraordinary book not as well written as as as a story as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and I was intrigued and perplexed at the thought that a young girl 18 years old could have written such a fright and conjure up this monster war. I give a doctor a class A B C and I get a questionnaire to the students and I said I only think Frankenstein was the most is a very sophisticated class with my type which is probably my most popular of course in the night school where they said I've lived long

ago and I've noted a few doors it's not fully fledged history course but I became mostly students confused the monster with his maker. I mean they thought that that the monster was in fact Frankenstein and I advised him to read Mary Shelley which was what most of the class did. And I was intrigued by two things I was intrigued by the name Frankenstein. I read every book I'm sure Mary showed me that I could get. Would which were written the biographies and autobiographies ever explained to me satisfactorily why. Where she got this name and she was not imaginative. She was not a great writer. She actually kind of had a knack for for describing scenery she knew and she was familiar with and she recorded stories that you heard and I think that was really the beginning of searching was by where I was brought up in England. I did my work at docs when I knew the Shirley memorial at

University College a little queen to the chalet. But what the research really had several stages the first stage was England. And I'm a kind of historian who likes to get away from the dusty archives occasionally and I have to do my homework. I'm kind of a local historian I love I think. Houses there are no eels. THE COURT Yes it's funny the whole thing becomes meaningless meaningful and I know you've probably been to London you know seen painters station and just outside there's a little park in the monument which is dedicated to the woman who I am I think the women libbers ought to put a halo around because this was Mary Wollstonecraft who was the first woman lib in history I think one of the great names she wrote a vindication of its women. She lived the life of an immense meated woman. And the tragedy of her life was of course that she died 10 days after she was born and so I spent a good deal of time I'm not morbid but I spent a good deal of time at St. Pancras to

them usually at nights and I then decided I decided that the most food moments in her early life was where the six nocturnal expeditions to see this tombstone. I don't think she doubted vampirism or anything morbid. I think she was simply ventilating a mother and she feared her because she had a guilt complex about the fact that her mother was in the full blossoming of a literary career had ended her life prematurely because she was born because she was born. And you see this gave the idea I think she was she became obsessed with the idea of life. And perhaps the idea of immortalizing or herself immortalizing herself in the know for more than writing some great words which at some point would make a world known. I think the original story then of course is this marvelous relationship was surely a Percy British poet at that time had just been expelled from Oxford for 43 years he had married and happily a young

young girl who did not understand his genius he just read Green and silly poems and he met Mary Shelley and fell in love with her but the wooing took place at the two so they spend the night time very both ventilating the mother because she had an equal. When a nation hit it with an erection for God which is a political scientist but he I think he greatly worshiped Mary Wollstonecraft and I think I was born in the idea of elopement. The writer wasn't there. Right there Baron's Frankenstein in history. Yes but that if that's that takes me to the most important aspect of this book which I think is a new aspect where I have attempted to develop a new theory concerning the ocean I will see the lope to got to do for us. This was the 1840 influence of France which was devastated by war the stories I use their diaries as my old materials the diary of Mary Shelley it's fascinating it's been published the diary of her half sister Claire and with this diary in hand they went

on foot I went by I was very tempted to go by bicycle. It's gotten out of it and I just follow them from village to village and state I try to stay at the inns where they stayed and it's very it's very entertaining way of doing it like a Frankenstein tour home which I think the Germans have approached me already said Well you've done black like tours why don't Frankenstein tours. If you take photographs also. Oh yes the book is very heavily illustrated. My son was the photographer. He did most of photography for dye color and then they ran out of money and they decide to go back to England. The quickest way or the cheapest way which is by withdrawing and so I took my car and I went from Reinfeld bars lock in. I stopped with a start and I bought Midway. There's a place called Gang shine where they needed refueling I need food in the dock they canoe on a little island which I which I spotted everything was exactly as they describe it and then as I glanced East on a on a on a hill on a mountain very forested I saw these two

towers which are on the cover of my book the book I mean the car was a little excessively. Morbid you know with black and white. But this was Castle Frankenstein. And then immediately said Well Mary Cherie stops here. She spent the night and I went to the car so I went up the car so there's a motorway leading all the way up to Frankenstein and the mayor of the village knew to be about which is down below I said well you know there's an ancient tradition of village that Mary Shelley Shelley and perhaps Claire came to this castle and were told of the fascinating stories associated with it. It began with a fairly well-known German family. Ben's Frankenstein and I had been correspondence with a past present Baron who wishes he doesn't have had that name he said well you know I've been a nuisance for him as it's whether Frankenstein's ever if you remember the family in America today but he made a point of saying we have soul that comes along when they have in fact sold it during the Reformation period but and then it was semi

abandoned it was the property of the of the Dukes of her city but it was abandoned between and it was in the early seventeenth century that there was born in that castle and there was a way a way of all this story and put it in the book. And our chemist called Conrad digital. And I discovered his Ph.D. dissertation at the interest of peace and which was a little further up. And he signed himself Frankenstein. You know owner of the castle she was born and this man as I read I thought I read the life of this man which was really not very well known. He's known as a philosopher Philo should also have their chemist he was obsessed I mean his career and that of Victor Frankenstein marries Victor Frankenstein the hero fell almost parallel lines I mean these were the great geniuses who started out to be listed by chance was not because of smugness. They then began to scour these books is not particularly relevant. He was then toying with the idea of making gold which was Mary discarded in a novel and then he became fascinated with

the idea of creating life and we have the image of this Diplo Frankenstein who was digging up and digging up graveyards putting bones together concocting all he created out upon Maida. The star of which we called it was over which was supposed to be a panacea for longevity and cured it wasn't where I gather it was quite well-known medical science in and he himself forecasts that he would live. Oh I don't know you're 100 years old. And eventually that he discovered the secret of life 100 she was life. How do you choose a spirit into a body. His writings are of the alchemy was he switched on side it was not trained in science but I think it was was keenly aware not only of the name but of the man and she put this in there as in your fervor of her memory at some point. And she noted these things down now. Strange thing is she never mentioned it in the U.S. and I suspect she did she did so our purpose because she wanted to she didn't want to be accused of plagiarism and basically she wanted to

have an original idea. But Mary she developed the concept of the artificial man Dutchy in her writing. You know the basic plot for those who do not know it don't say that few people would measure compared to the numbers we've seen amongst the grand stage of the male works. The concept of the novel is the scientist Victor Frankenstein age uneven who goes to university. He goes you know starving or stuck in the area and soon becomes completely enthralled with this idea of creating human life and abandoning him to his professors here retirees in the outskirts of his town and on his own by a process which may never explains why she assumes in the introduction she implies that he uses the power of Christianity and she pays lip service to Erasmus Darwin and every day even a few others but there's nothing scientific in and suddenly he's created.

I mean he goes to the to the to the to the cemeteries and digs up the remains of corpses. But certainly he does not explain there's no science in the sense of explaining how much everything means to the circulation of blood or anything but human anatomy and down and then this this marvelous man was supposed to be a kind of god a god like figure. Recovery is a monster and so he just abandoned seem to his own and the poor monster who is left. To his own devices and he frightens driven villages and everyone runs out of his way. He learns. To speak the hard way by simply. Living a little hovel in an isolated spot and prying upon to a fairly educated people. And eventually he wants to Frankenstein it's gone back to wishing to wipe away all memories of this monster. But the monster comes back all the way tracks him back from Geneva from form a community from

the university to Geneva and the confrontation finally takes place on the outskirts of Geneva and there the monster reproaches Frankenstein for having abandoned him and in a very touching chapter which I think is a crucial chapter in the book. They meet at the mall brought the me out a glass you know this lovely spot just up above from Chamonix and this chapter is entirely taken from a travelogue I mean we're almost word for word because she went to all these places. The monster described how he kills his first victim if you will the monster is evil the monster monster trying to cover his evil the monster is a child of nature who becomes evil because men are evil to him. He's initially good I mean he said he said. He I think it portrays the concept of the goodness of man but he's going to end it you know by by the anti-social attitudes of all those he encounters and so you find he seeks for friendship and companionship and sympathy but he he so everyone saw it

repulses him and he becomes evil and then he extracts at them or blow a promise from Frankenstein to create a meeting. And Frankenstein abides by that primaries traditionally leave you up and go to South America. So they're trying to send it actually promise to create a mate and David was on the point of fulfilling its promise the way he goes all the way to Scotland and then he suddenly abandons their claim because he thinks all the world will be populated by monster and he reproaches himself. And it is because he did not abide by his contract that the monster goes on the rampage and kills everyone inside and this is the point where the monster kills Frankenstein's bride. But her whole thing is mount with me in geographically settings you know what happens is that the end of the story. No because there's a story within the stories throwing a stone usually is found in the North Pole and the captain. He eventually the story ends with Frankenstein pursuing the monster and Franks thing dying on the way.

We never know whether the month the month that claimed he was going to kill himself burned himself but we know now that we never know is always point of suspension has been revived on the screen so many times I suppose the monster will never die. Of the of. The evening and. In the. The story itself does not capture you. It's dated and it's not written quite as well I think shall we improve the story tremendously but what I what intrigued me was the geographic setting that all the places she mentions do exist the planet our lair where the monster makes its first crime which is a big field just outside of Geneva. The hotel where Byron and Mary Shelley and Shelley stayed home that exists the Swiss. I was amazed you know this we seem to not to care about the monster particularly because all of the mentors associated with him I thought were simply forgotten I mean

I know it took me three days to find the hotel which I finally did. Did fine. It took me a great deal of working to find Mary Shelley's from Carthage which is called Shop which lies at the for the lake so you feel that Frankenstein isn't a much more of an impact on American culture than perhaps any other culture. Yes I think the monster theme is an English or should we see an Anglo-Saxon theme book In Search of dark will I which has sold quite a million copies in America. It sold quite well in England as a paperback and covered in France. They're hard core core enthuse Yes most especially in the graphic novel but it hasn't reached nowhere near the level or even judging the populations taking population to translate and so on which is now the publishers had great hopes for Japanese edition with the Japanese edition of ocular cooler years which has just come out but the Frankenstein theme I think is better known in Europe the middle market.

This if this was just a laugh for the French publishers told me how long did it take you to research the Frankenstein book Frankenstein took two years to end the current of the year was research in the archives should widen and Washington and the summers. Frankenstein Castle Frankenstein once somewhere in Geneva the other summer or so and the rest of the balance was just putting it together. I was surprised to learn that Frankenstein was on stage at one point. Yes I know that. Well Mary Shelley you see had when after she wrote the book and I think we were some of 1816 is really quite quite fascinating too because he's into relations I mean we were the hippie community there were smoking hashish the sexual relationship very complex but they were the two top dogs by Anne and Shirley who were who everyone else was we overhauled with and may share was terribly jealous of losing her since you and Shirley Polidori die about as Doctor was was terribly sensitive about losing his ascendancy over Byron and I think there was maybe an homosexual

heterosexual relationship I think they're marginally of marginal interest but the fact is that Mary Shelley needed more information for the writing of the book read on the scientific side and that that information was supplied by Paul and also I mean assisted in the underdogs Marion probably dory. Well Brian and Sherry made the tour the lark and they went there and you know they they wrote they were doing to Sheol and the whole of the Ode to the mall blow and childcare and all the great works but Frankenstein in the first vampire story came. About as a result of it some it was while Mary was writing Frankenstein Polidori was writing first vampire stories and then they were presented for publishing in America great difficulty getting a broad vision and finally after having turned down so many times a third rate publisher in 1880 published Frankenstein which was published with the subtitle of the modern Palmer theory which I think is very misleading because it implies that there's something to do with divinity and how monster has no that is not a creature of

divinity and probably Doria wrote the vampire which was the predecessor of Bram Stoker's and wanted it gone strange and then I mean almost immediately I was in the middle 1820s Frankenstein was on stage. It's titled presumption and the actor who played Frankenstein was so totally overwhelming. A man called Coke and we have a picture of him in the book that the scientist was so sort of diminished in stars in the audience I may Sherri it's really interesting when you actually saw that play this was an immense success he stayed at the English Opera House it went to trade in the province trade Paris while probably the example I was in place so that the first these two first our things went went hand-in-hand and they've been going hand in hand ever since. And Mary at that time of course this meant the success of the book and buy it into the one she had signed her own name in the book from that point onwards became a bestseller. But they they they the

company between these two plays went on and on and you can sort of trace a logical extension from the early 20s to the to the silent days when I was regard to and the picture made and then better Lugosi stars in our Boy Scout of stars and Frankenstein the girl she was off of the Frankenstein movies you know and he refused and then you have a temporary out sort of the universal thing I think we become somewhat Where's the Bride of Frankenstein was was a first rate movie in a sense closer to the original. 40 is not as good and then the Hammer Studios to bring up again Christopher Frankenstein. We will reach the stage when you know we have it right I said we have the spoofs you see because we want to be in amused at the same time. Well you know different in different because the first we got you cook and sister books is frank and stitch which was hilariously funny meeting 20

singing with Frank in stage for the stage. So you see that and I could make we also now have an sort of Frankenstein. Your book. Yes we have in search of Frankenstein which is great friends a lot of fun. It was it proves that that history and research can be fun. I have a certain special approach to these books. I do my homework on the spot. Perhaps as a pretext because it's like when you have a marvelous time doing it. Thank you very much. Thank you for being with us tonight. We've been talking with you about his latest research a book titled In Search of Frankenstein. We hope you'll join us weeknights at 6:30 p.m.. And next let me learn about gypsy like today as told by the author of Stop a cow. Our engineer for this broadcast was Chris Eaton with material prepared by that park. I'm Eleanor start and have a good evening. This is the eastern Public Radio Network.