There is no ‘super-added’ force such as the soul. Human beings are bone, muscle, tissue, blood, etc., and nothing more.
There was an outcry, of course: No difference between a man and an oyster? Man is nothing more than an orang-utan or an ape, with ‘ample cerebral hemispheres’?
The Times newspaper had this to say: Doctor Lawrence strives with all his powers to prove that men have no souls!
Yet, I said to Shelley, you of all men believe in the soul.
I do, he said; I believe it is each man’s task to awaken his own soul. His soul is that part of him not subject to death and decay; that part of him made alive to truth and beauty. If he has no soul he is a brute.
And where does this soul go, at death? said Byron.
That is unknown, answered Shelley; the becoming of the soul, not its going, should be our concern. The mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.
The rain is on earth also, said Byron, staring out of the window like a helpless god. He wanted to ride his mare and was turning restive.
We shall all be dead soon enough, said Polidori, thus we cannot live as others would wish us to live, but only for our own desires. He looked at me, his hand on his crotch.
Is there not more to life than what we desire? I said. Might we not sacrifice our own desires for some worthier cause?
You may do so if you wish, said Polidori, if that gives you satisfaction. I would rather be a vampyre than a corpse.
To die well is to live well, said Byron.
None finds satisfaction in death, replied Polidori. You imagine it so, but what will you know of it? What will you gain from it?
Reputation, said Byron.
Reputation is gossip, said Polidori. Say well of me, say ill of me – what is that but tittle-tattle?
You are out of sorts today, said Byron.
It is you who is out of sorts, said Polidori.
Shelley put his arms round me and held me to him. I love you. You, dear Mary, you, who is most alive.
I could hear Claire’s needle stabbing into her tapestry.
All alive o! All alive alive o! sang Polidori, beating time on the arm of the divan. Byron scowled and limped to the window, opening it to let in the rain directly onto Claire.
Will you stop it? She jumped up as though she had been stung, shouting at his laughing at her, taking her place on another chair and savagely snipping her yarn.
Death is a counterfeit, said Shelley. Almost, I do not believe in it at all.
You will gladly believe in it when you inherit your father’s estate, said Byron.
I watched him, sardonic, cynical. A great poet, truly, yet unkind. The gifts of our nature seem not to modify the manner of our behaviour.
Shelley has little money and is the most generous of men. Byron is rich, netting £10,000 a year from his estates, yet spends only for his own pleasure. He may live as he pleases. We must take care. That is, I must take care of our accounts. Shelley scarcely seems to know what he can spend and what he cannot. We are forever in debt. Still, if I can sell the story I am writing we shall be more at ease. My mother made a living from her writing. It is my intention to follow her example.
I should like to say more about the soul, said Shelley.
Byron groaned. Polidori coughed. Claire stitched viciously at her cushion cover.
My own mind, though, was elsewhere. Since I had thought of my story I had been preoccupied by it. The looming figure in my mind blotted out other concerns. My mind was in a kind of eclipse. I must return to the monstrous shadow crossing me.
I left them to their bickering and metaphysics and went upstairs to my desk with a jug of wine. Red wine eases the ache of the damp.
For the sake of my story I have my own desire to contemplate what it is about Man that distinguishes us from the rest of biology. And what distinguishes us from machines?
I visited a manufactory in Manchester with my father. I saw that the wretched creatures enslaved to the machines were as repetitive in their movements as machines. They were distinguished only by their unhappiness. The great wealth of the manufactories is not for the workers but for the owners. Humans must live in misery to be the mind of the machines.
My father had me read Hobbes’ Leviathan when I was younger. Now I sit here, pen in hand, and into my mind comes Hobbes and his conjecture. He writes:
For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principall part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch) have an artificiall life?
I ask myself: what is artificial life? Automata have no intelligence; they are but clockwork. Biological life, even the most wretched being, has intelligence enough to milk a cow, speak a name, know when rain will come and when it will not, reflect, perhaps, on its existence. Yet, if automata had intelligence … would that be sufficient to call it alive?
Shelley is improving my Greek and Latin. We lie on the bed, him naked, his hand on my back, the book on the pillow. He kisses my neck as we manage new vocabulary. Often we break off for love. I love his body. Hate it that he is so careless of himself. Truly he imagines that nothing so gross as matter can oppose him. But he is made of blood and warmth. I rest on his narrow chest, listening to his heart.
Together we are reading Ovid: Metamorphoses.
Italy is full of statues of beautiful men. Men who ripple and stand. To kiss one? To bring it to life?
I have touched such statues, their cold marble, their serious stone. And wrapped my arms around one and wondered at the form without the life.
Shelley read out to me from Ovid the story of the sculptor Pygmalion, who fell in love with the statue he had carved himself. So deep in love was he with his creation that women were nothing to him. He prayed to the goddess Athena that he might find a living lover as beautiful as the lifeless form on his bench. That night, he kissed the lips of the youth he had created. Hardly believing what he felt, he felt the youth kiss him in return. The cold stone warmed.
And there was more … Through the good offices of the goddess, the youth took on female form – a double transformation from lifeless to life and from male to female. Pygmalion married her.
It must be, said Shelley, that Shakespeare had such a picture in his mind at the close of The Winter’s Tale, when the statue of Hermione comes to life. She steps down. She embraces her husband, Leontes, the tyrant. Through his crimes, Time itself had turned to stone, and now, in her movement, Time itself flows again. That which is lost is found.
Yes, I said. The second of warmth. To kiss the lips and find them warm.
The lips are warm after death, said Shelley. Who does not lie beside the beloved all night as the body cools? Who does not hold the body in her arms, frantic to bestow heat and reanimate the corpse? Who does not tell himself that this is but winter? In the morning surely
