Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Bride of WIlderstein


Lord Byron: The crudest, savage exhibition of Nature at her worst without, and we three, we elegant three within. I should like to think that an irate Jehovah was pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the unbowed head of George Gordon Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner. But I cannot flatter myself to that extent. Possibly those thunders are for dear Shelley - heaven's applause for England's greatest poet.
Shelley: What of my Mary?
Lord Byron: She is an angel.
Mary: You think so?
Lord Byron: Do you hear? Come, Mary. Come and watch the storm.
Mary: You know how lightning alarms me. Shelley darling, will you please light these candles for me?
Shelley: [laughing] Mary, darling.
Lord Byron: Astonishing creature.
Mary: I, Lord Byron?
Lord Byron: Frightened of thunder, fearful of the dark. And yet you have written a tale that sent my blood into icy creeps.
[Mary laughs]
Lord Byron: Look at her Shelley. Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a Monster created from cadavers out of rifled graves? Isn't it astonishing?
Mary: I don't know why you should think so. What do you expect? Such an audience needs something stronger than a pretty little love story. So why shouldn't I write of monsters?
Lord Byron: No wonder Murray's refused to publish the book. He says his reading public would be too shocked.
Mary: It will be published, I think.
Shelley: Then, darling, you will have much to answer for.
Mary: The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson. The punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.
Lord Byron: Well, whatever your purpose may have been, my dear, I take great relish in savoring each separate horror. I roll them over on my tongue.
Mary: Don't, Lord Byron. Don't remind me of it tonight.
Lord Byron: What a setting in that churchyard to begin with. The sobbing women, the first plod of earth on the coffin. That was a pretty chill. Frankenstein and the dwarf stealing the body out of its new-made grave, cutting the hanged man down from the gallows where he swung creaking in the wind. The cunning of Frankenstein in his mountain laboratory, picking dead men apart and building up a human Monster, so fearful - so horrible that only a half-crazed brain could have devised. And then the murder! The little child drowned. Henry Frankenstein himself thrown from the top of the burning mill by the very Monster he had created. And it was these fragile white fingers that penned the nightmare.
Shelley: I do think it a shame, Mary, to end your story quite so suddenly.
Mary: That wasn't the end at all. Would you like to hear what happened after that? I feel like telling it. It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.
Lord Byron: I'm all ears. While heaven blasts the night without, open up your pits of hell.
Mary: Well then, imagine yourselves standing by the wreckage of the mill. The fire is dying down. Soon, the bare skeleton of the building will be dissolved. The gaunt rafters against the sky.
Lord Byron: Perhaps a red carpet?
Mary: No milord. That would be Cthulhu's domain. That horror is beyond my ablities to describe.
(The Bride of Wilderstein, 1935)

7 comments:

chickelit said...

It's Alive! It's alive, it's alive!

chickelit said...

Mary conceived her Frankenstein in 1816. She was a virgin author but was coached and encouraged by her older male consorts to write a novel which mocked creation. Like many in the arts even today, she was also inspired by science -- namely galvanism -- although she was was 15 years or so behind the dates of discovery.

Chip Ahoy said...

That's actually one of her better photos. Most kind of you.

Do you ever see the surgery fix doctors on t.v.? The people that come in are something else. Scary.

Edmond made me laugh. He said he believes plastic surgery should be approached much like voting, a little here and there, and often.

He was very interested in having me examine the precise work but I couldn't tell anything. I couldn't see anything. No scar, no work done, no effect that it had. No matter how much hair he pulled back or pointed directly to the places of incision. I couldn't see anything. But it was a big f'n deal.

Ed is the guy who from his house in Bonnie Brae bought another house in San Francisco as one orders a pizza with specific toppings. I was there when he was on the phone. I never overheard anyone buy a house like that before. But he did. And that was just the beginning of his years-long project.

Anyway, the whole time I've known Ed I've assumed he is the good and kind and wonderful twin, turns out he's the dominant asshole of the two. He's really quite rude to his brother who I was just beginning to know. Doug, the twin without surgery looks better than my friend Ed with the elective surgery. It did not help him. Dough looks better than Ed. Don't tell ED I said that. He gets around a lot, you very well may have the chance to bust me.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

That woman's face is all over the interwebs. she must be very beautiful.

ricpic said...

Hillary in front of that committee is an example of superb craftsmanship by the plastic surgeon who worked on her. Mainly on her cheeks. Probably several small adjustments over the last two or three years.

deborah said...

Can't blame a girl for trying.

deborah said...

Ooops, I was referring to the Zoe pic, but same applies for Clinton lol