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Captain Walton's Divine Wanderer andThe Dream of ScipioBarbara Witucki aa Utica CollegePublished online: 07 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Barbara Witucki (2009) Captain Walton's Divine Wanderer and The Dreamof Scipio , ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 22:2, 24-30, DOI:10.3200/ANQQ.22.2.24-30

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Captain Walton’s Divine Wanderer and The Dream of Scipio

Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase, and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. (Shelley, Introduction 23)

As frequently noted, the structure of Frankenstein consists of concentric circles of narrative. Marc A. Rubenstein described this structure in detail:

The novel’s unusual narrative structure [. . .] is a series of concentric rings of nar-ration, each enclosing the next. Three of these rings, or narrative frames, are easily recognized as the voices of the novel’s three narrators: Walton, whose account of his encounter with Frankenstein near the North Pole opens and closes the novel; Frankenstein, who tells his tale to Walton; and the monster, whose story is within Frankenstein’s. In fact, a good many more such “frames” can be discerned. (172)

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More recently, Gregory O’Dea has used a discussion of the three main nar-rative frames of Frankenstein to anchor an investigation into the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost on the novel, both internally and externally. This article argues that Mary Shelley’s reading of Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis [The Dream of Scipio]1 influenced her use of concentric narrative frames in Frankenstein, which bear an uncanny resemblance to the structure of the universe as Cicero describes it.2

During the years 1815–17, Shelley read many classical works.3 She notes reading Somnium Scipionis on January 9, 1817, and again on January 22, and she finished it on January 23 (Journals 1: 154–55). It is possible, however, that she had already read this work in late 1816 under the heading of Opuscula.4 The Dream of Scipio suggests a parallel between Shelley’s concentric circles of narrative and the concentric orbits of the heavenly bodies as described by Cicero. Further parallels are suggested between Shelley’s description of the genesis of her story (in her 1831 introduction) and that which Scipio Africanus the Younger gives, as well as between the relationship of Walton and Frankenstein and the relationship between Scipio Africanus the Younger and Scipio Africanus the Elder.

The Dream of Scipio begins with Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Younger (c. 185–129 BCE) going to bed later than usual. He and King Masinissa of Africa, whom he is visiting, “continu[e their] conversation far into the night, the aged king talking of nothing but Africanus [the Elder], and recollecting all his sayings as well as his deeds” (6.10). When Africanus the Younger retires, he has a dream, or vision, of Africanus the Elder, “prompted,” as he puts it, by the conversation just concluded with King Masinissa. He sees Africanus the Elder standing before him in the shape familiar to him from a bust of the man (6.10). Shelley describes her experiences in the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein in a similar manner. She had once stayed up late listening to Percy Shelley and Byron discussing the principles of life and whether “a corpse would be re-animated [. . .] perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth” (23). After she retired, she writes, “I saw with shut eyes, but with acute mental vision, —[. . .] the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man [. . .] show signs of life [. . .]” (24). Both Africanus the Younger and Shelley claim to see through either a dream or a vision, respectively, what had been the topic of a previous conversation that had lasted far into the night. Both react to their vision in fear. When Africanus the Elder stands before him, the Younger “shudder[s] in terror” (6.10); Shelley opens her eyes “in terror [. . .] and a thrill of fear r[uns] through” her after she sees the ghastly image imbued with life (24).

Africanus’s dream also bears an uncanny resemblance to a description in Frankenstein. Africanus the Elder, an inhabitant of the Milky Way, takes Africanus the Younger up into the stars to look down upon the Earth

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from the heavens. The latter marvels at the beauties of the universe. To him, “all [. . .] appeared wonderfully beautiful. There were stars which we never see from earth, and they were all larger than we have ever imagined [. . .] the starry spheres were much larger than earth [. . .]” (6.16). Robert Walton, in turn, describes Victor Frankenstein in similarly heavenly terms. He calls Frankenstein a “celestial spirit, that has a halo around him” and a “divine wanderer” (39). Frankenstein and Walton, too, meet far beyond the confines of the familiar world. Walton is exploring the North Pole, and his ship has “already reached a very high latitude” (34) when he and his men find Frankenstein nearby. When Walton describes the setting, he mentions the “beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wondrous regions” (38).

Africanus the Elder has a didactic purpose in his nocturnal visit: to encourage Africanus the Younger to fulfill his duties as a statesman above all else. He stands by as Paulus, who has joined them,5 admonishes his son: “Love justice and duty, which are indeed strictly due to parents and kinsmen, but most of all to the fatherland” (6.16). Africanus the Elder resumes speak-ing and exhorts the Younger not to act for the sake of mortal fame: “For what fame can you gain from the speech of men, or what glory that is worth seek-ing?” (6.19). Instead, he tells the Younger to act in a such a manner that he can return to his eternal home, “where eminent and excellent men find their true reward,” and he adds, “[O]f how little value, indeed, is your fame among men, which can hardly endure for the small part of a single year” (6.23).

Frankenstein, too, has a didactic purpose in talking to Walton. When Walton writes his first letter to his sister, he says that he “prefer[s] glory to every enticement that wealth place[s] in [his] path” (29). When he describes the purpose of his explorations to Frankenstein, Walton confesses:

How gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. (38)

Frankenstein chastises him and promises to tell his own tale to turn Walton away from the quest for earthly fame and reward. After he has finished, Frankenstein gives the injunction: “Learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own” (179). He warns Walton, “Seek happiness in tranquil-lity, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries” (185).

Frankenstein looks forward to death as a release from his suffering, yet he states: “If I were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow creatures, then I could live to fulfill it” (181). He has acquired a sense of duty to his fellow men, an ethical concern that he had previously lacked. On Walton’s ship, locked in the ice, Fran-kenstein initially responds to the crew’s purported mutiny and request for Walton to turn back if the ice should break up with an exhortation to sail

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on: “Are you thus so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? [. . .] Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe” (182–83). However, his dying words negate this sentiment. At his death, Frankenstein places his duty to the fellowship of mankind before any other. He reflects on the monster he brought to life:

I created a rational creature and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty; but there was another still paramount to that. My duties to my fellow creatures had a greater claim to my attention, because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. (184)

This realization leads to his acceptance of Walton’s duty to his fellow men: “I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends” (185).

In both Frankenstein and The Dream of Scipio, an individual is urged not to seek personal glory and reward, but to fulfill duties to kinsman and country. Walton gives up his dreams of glory and fulfills his duty to his fellow men by turning back. In doing so, he reaffirms his duty to them and to his sister, the sole remaining member of his family. When he writes of his decision to turn back, he says, “I am returning to England, [. . .] I am wafted towards England, and towards you [my dear sister]” (183). Walton and his crew, his “family of the sea” (Poovey 133), rejoin their kinsmen and homeland. Africanus the Younger, too, concerns himself foremost with his duty to his homeland.

As discussed earlier, the concentric circles of narrative in Frankenstein suggest an allusion to the structure of the universe as explained in The Dream of Scipio. As they stand on the outer perimeter of the universe, Africanus the Elder exhorts the Younger to look away from the Earth and toward the “temples” into which he has come. They stand on the outermost of nine con-centric orbits that compose the universe, as Africanus the Elder explains:

These are the nine circles, or rather spheres, by which the whole is joined. One of them, the outermost, is that of heaven; it contains all the rest, and is itself the supreme god, holding and embracing within itself all the other spheres; in it are fixed the eternal revolving courses of the stars. Beneath it are seven other spheres [Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon] which revolve in the opposite direction to that of heaven. But below the Moon there is nothing except what is mortal and doomed to decay. [. . .] For the ninth and central sphere, which is the earth, is immovable and the lowest of all. (6.17)

The eight moving spheres produce a loud and pleasing noise of proportionate high and low tones (6.18).6 Africanus the Elder repeatedly urges the Younger to draw his attention away from the unmoving Earth in consideration of the larger whole. Frankenstein, a celestial wanderer, similarly exhorts Walton as they look down on the story of Frankenstein’s terrestrial life, calling Walton’s attention away from his ship, which stands unmoving in the midst of ice, and urging him to consider a pattern of life larger than his own.

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Just as each of the eight spheres encompassed by heaven encircles the next, so do the narratives of each character in Frankenstein. Walton’s letters, which detail his journey, encircle the narrative of Frankenstein’s life. That narrative, in turn, encircles the narrative of the creature, which encircles that of the De Lacey family and Safie. The virtue of circularity is also manifested in the novel: Joseph W. Lew notes that London is Walton’s ultimate goal and that his voyage is circular, as he hopes to return to London by circumnavigating the globe (260). Thus, Walton’s voyage is a movement away from individual endeavor and glory toward homeland, family, and benefit to the larger number of people. Further, Walton cannot operate alone, but only with the cooperation of the men on his ship. Unlike Frankenstein’s, his is not an individual endeavor, but that of a community. Though he is not successful in his larger endeavor, by turning back, he acknowledges his duty to his men, the representatives of England, and their families before all else. According to Cicero, one’s first duty is to one’s homeland and its citizens. Walton tells Frankenstein, “I cannot lead them [the sailors] unwillingly to danger” (184). Walton acts in accordance with the precepts Scipio Africanus the Elder gave to the Younger.

Frankenstein’s successive journeys, however—much like the orbits of the seven internal spheres in Cicero—are a movement in the opposite direction, a movement away from community. He departs from his family and native city, Geneva; he withdraws from student life; and, finally, he removes himself from all human bonds through the gradual destruction of his family and friends. His creature’s narrative is one of being driven from home, insofar as the creator represents home. The De Laceys’ story is one of exile from home and country, and a further exile from the cottage, their second home. Safie, too, travels away from family and country. All are in transit away from a community. The trajectory of Walton’s journey, which runs counter to those of all of the other characters, and its placement as the outer frame of the novel parallel the counterrevolution of the outer orbit of the universe to the inner orbits in The Dream of Scipio.

Although the structure and themes of Frankenstein may not wholly parallel those of The Dream of Scipio, the distinctive use of concentric narrative circles suggests that Shelley’s reading of Cicero colored the con-struction of her novel, and the character of Frankenstein as the older and more experienced voice warning a younger and less tempered man echoes the relationship between Africanus the Elder and Africanus the Younger. In her introduction, Shelley says that nothing comes from nothing. The Dream of Scipio is one of many elements that influenced her as she shaped her masterpiece.

BARBARA WITUCKIUtica College

Copyright © 2009 Heldref Publications

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NOTES

1. All citations from The Dream of Scipio refer to book 6 of Cicero’s De Re publica [On the Republic]. The Dream of Scipio was the only part of the larger work known until 1820 when the Vatican palimpsest, which contains large fragments of the entire Republic, was discovered. The citations refer to paragraphs in book 6.2. Cicero’s structure is, in turn, dependent on Plato’s similar description in the

Myth of Er, book 10 of the Republic. Both describe the universe as possessing a natural harmony in which man is a participant. Anne Mellor observes: “Mary Shelley envisions nature as a sacred life-force in which human beings ought to participate in conscious harmony” (124).3. See the annual reading lists in her Journals.4. Her journal entries state that she read Cicero’s Opuscula on December 7, 8, and

9 and de Senectute from December 10 through 14, when she finished it (1: 150). The collection that she refers to seems to be M. Tullii Ciceronis opuscula [The Little Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero], which contains Cato the Elder, or Concern-ing Old Age; Laelius, or Concerning Friendship; The Paradoxes; and The Dream of Scipio. Given this collection, Shelley could have been reading On Friendship, The Paradoxes, or the Dream of Scipio in December 1816. The Dream of Scipio is the shortest and thus the easiest to finish in three days. The annual reading lists for both Mary and Percy Shelley included in the Journals give ample evidence of the tendency of both Shelleys to reread texts. A volume of Cicero containing The Dream of Scipio is noted in the Journal as far back as 1814 when Percy, in one of his occasional entries in Mary Shelley’s Journals, notes on October 14: “In the eve-ning read Cicero de Senectute & the Paradoxa. [. . .] Begin Julius Florus and finish the little Vol of Cicero” (Journals 1: 36). In Latin, “the little [volume] of Cicero” is opuscula, the work noted above that also contains The Dream of Scipio.5. Like Africanus the Elder, Paulus has passed through an earthly death and is now

alive in the realm of the stars (6.14).6. Shelley includes this idea of natural harmony in Walton’s description of Franken-

stein’s voice, “a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music” (39).

WORKS CITED

Cicero. “The Dream of Scipio.” de Re Publica. de Legibus. Cicero in Twenty-Eight Volumes. Vol. 16. Book 6. Trans. Clinton Walker Keyes. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1927. Loeb Classical Lib.

———. M. Tullii Ciceronis opuscula: hoc est, Cato Major, seu de senectute, Lae-lius, seu, De amicitia, Paradoxa, Somnium Scipionis, Praefigitur ejjusdem M. T. Ciceronis vita Literaria [The Little Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Cato the Elder, or Concerning Old Age; Laelius, or Concerning Friendship; the Para-doxa; and The Dream of Scipio. A literary life of the same M. T. Cicero is added in front]. Eton: 1768 and 1778.

Lew, Joseph W. “The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism 30 (1991): 248–60.

Mellor, Anne. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. London:Methuen, 1988.

O’Dea, Gregory. “Framing the Frame: Embedded Narrative, Enabling Texts, and Frankenstein.” Romanticism on the Net 31 (2003): par. 1–19. 27 Sept. 2007 <http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/008697ar>.

Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.

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Rubenstein, Marc A. “‘My Accursed Origin’: The Search for the Mother in Fran-kenstein.” Studies in Romanticism 15 (1976): 165–94.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

———. Introduction. Shelley, Frankenstein 19–25.———. The Journals of Mary Shelley 1814–1844. 2 vols. Ed. Paula R. Feldman

and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.

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