By Rebecka Jones, Staff Writer
From Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.”
“You propose,” replied I, “to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile ? You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot consent.”
“How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighbourhood of man and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker.”
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. I tried to stifle these sensations ; I thought that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.
“You swear,” I said, “to be harmless; but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge?”
“How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded.”
I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise…
About Erasure Poetry
In erasure poetry, poets practice the art of subtraction of an existing document. The Poetry Foundation describes the method, writing, “Poet Erin Dorney identified six styles of erasure poetry: blackout; crossout, crossing out words to create a new poem; computer, using computer software to add or remove lines; cut out, using a knife to cut words out of paper; covered up, covering up the original text with another material (paper, sand, rice, etc.); and retyped, retyping the original text to make it look like a conventional, traditional poem, leaving space where the original text used to be. Important examples of the form include Tracy K. Smith’s “Declaration” and M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!” To read more erasure poetry, visit the Poetry Foundation’s website.
