Frankenstein, or the Modern PrometheusÅldersanpassad version

The preface to this story says that the idea behind it was not entirely inconceivable to some scholars of the author's time. Nevertheless, the goal is not to write about ghosts just to scare, but to use a fantastic event to show human emotions more clearly than in everyday life. The author tried to stay close to nature's truth, while at the same time allowing herself to be inspired by old poems and plays about wonder and grandeur.

The idea came during a cold and rainy summer near Geneva in 1816, where a small company read German ghost stories by the fireplace and promised each other to each write their own tale. The weather soon turned fine, the friends went to the mountains and forgot the plans. But one story still came to be: this one.

My name is Robert Walton. I am writing letters to my sister, Margaret, about a journey I have long dreamed of. I have hired a ship and will go north, all the way toward the pole, so that I might perhaps find a new passage between the seas or discover why the compass needle points as it does.

When I walked in St. Petersburg and felt the cold wind on my cheeks, I already felt close to my goal.

To me, the North Pole was not just ice and darkness. In my imagination, it was a land of eternal light and strange sights. I

imagined that the ice might one day give way, and that I could sail forward on still waters and come to places no one had been before. The thought made me happy and brave, and I made plans that would keep my spirits up. I had dreamed of this since I was a child.

I read travel books from Uncle Thomas's library when I was really supposed to be learning many other things. My father forbade me to go to sea, but later I inherited money, and the dream awoke again. To prepare, I joined whalers in the North Sea. I learned to endure cold, hunger, and little sleep, and I studied at night everything that could help me: mathematics, physics, and some medicine.

Twice I was first mate on Greenland fishing vessels. The captain offered me a high position, but I declined. I wanted to go further north. Now I had a ship and was in the process of gathering a crew accustomed to ice and sea spray.

Though I was eager, I lacked something: a friend. I had no one to share the joy or the fear with. Often I wrote to paper instead of to a living person. I dreamed of a companion who was gentle and brave, who could correct me when I was wrong,

and understand my plans without laughing at them. I knew it was unlikely to find such a friend on this cold sea. Yet I met good people.

My lieutenant was daring and laughed at dangers. The skipper was gentle and just. He did not like hunting because he did not want to shed blood.

He had once loved a woman in Russia. She loved a poor young man. The skipper let them marry, gave his rival his fortune so he could buy a farm, and left the country so as not to pressure her father to keep a regretful promise. Such courage and generosity impressed me.

We sailed. At first little happened. Some storms, a broken mast, but nothing dangerous.

Then a strange day came. The ice lay thick around us, and a thick fog made everything gray. When the fog lifted, we saw something we had never expected to see in the middle of this icy waste.

On an ice floe, in a low sled pulled by dogs, a figure sped past. It looked like a human, but was gigantic. We followed it with a telescope, until it disappeared between the ice cliffs. That same night the ice around our ship broke free, and we were released. At dawn the

crew gathered on deck and shouted. A sled, almost like the one we had seen, drifted toward us. Only one dog was alive, and in the sled lay a man. He looked like a European, but his body was so weak and cold he could barely speak. The mate said, "Here is our captain. He will not let you die." The stranger lifted his head a little and asked in English, but with a foreign accent, "Where are you going?" I said we were heading for the North Pole. He nodded, as if the answer gave him peace. Only then did he agree to come aboard. He was in a terrible condition, thin as a skeleton, with blue lips and frozen fingers. We tried to carry him down to the cabin, but he fainted in the warm air. We carried him back on deck, rubbed him with spirits, and got some soup into him. He slowly recovered. Two days later he could walk a few steps. I moved him into my room. His eyes, when still, were soft and kind, but at times they became like steel, full of a pain that almost looked like rage. I kept the crew away from him. He needed rest,

not questions. The lieutenant still managed to ask why he had come so far out on the ice. The man did not answer. But one morning, when the sea was calm and I was alone with him, he told me his name and who he was chasing. I understood that I had found the friend I had wished for, but also that I had found a warning I would never forget. The man's name was Victor Frankenstein. I will let him tell his own story, as he told it to me. I was born in Geneva, into a family that was well known and respected. My father, Alphonse Frankenstein, worked for the city and was just and wise. One of his close friends, Beaufort, had been rich but fell into poverty. He could not bear to be poor in the same city where he had been great, and hid in Lucerne with his daughter. My father searched for him for many months. When he found him, Beaufort was ill with grief. His daughter, Caroline, nursed him tenderly, but in the end the father died in her arms. My father took Caroline to Geneva, provided for her, and two years later they married. My parents loved each other and loved me. I was their first child. When

I was four years old, my father's sister died in Italy. Her husband, a nobleman, wrote that he would remarry and asked if my father could take care of the girl they had together. "Raise her as your daughter," he begged. My father left immediately to fetch her. Her name was Elisabeth Lavenza. I do not remember the first time I saw her, but in my heart she was from the start my play-sister and my dearest friend. Later, as my mother wished, she also became the one I would share my life with. Elisabeth was bright and gentle, lively as a butterfly, but with deep feelings. She saw beauty in everything, and when she smiled, everyone around her became calmer. We were different. I wanted to understand the world and find causes. She experienced the world with her heart first. I loved her for that, and she loved me for my seriousness. I also had a friend my own age, Henry Clerval, son of a merchant. He made up stories about knights and heroes, and was brave and imaginative. We ran in the forest, we learned a little Latin and English, we worked without feeling it was work, because our goal was to please those we loved. When I was thirteen,

we went to the baths at Thonon. It rained, and I had to stay indoors. There I found a book by Cornelius Agrippa. It opened to me like a treasure. It spoke of invisible forces, of changing metals, of elixirs that could give life. I ran to my father to tell him. He looked at the title and only said, "My dear Victor, do not waste your time on that. It is old and useless." He did not say why. Had he explained, I might have put it aside. But as it was, I only became more curious. I read Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus as if I had discovered a secret door only I could enter. I dreamed of curing disease and perhaps driving death away. Later, at home in Belrive, I saw one night lightning strike a large oak tree. In the morning the tree was completely shattered. I asked my father about it, and he explained a little about electricity. He made a small machine and performed experiments. I did not understand everything, but something in me awakened. The old books I read faded a bit. I began to sense that there was a new path, one that was not dreams but real discoveries. Yet I did not know where to

begin. I waited. Then came my first great sorrow. Elisabeth had had scarlet fever but recovered. My mother, who could not help going in to her to show affection, became infected herself. The fever turned malignant. We stood by her bed crying. She put Elisabeth's and my hands together and said, "My children, I see your future together. You must make each other happy. Take care of each other when I am gone." She died peacefully, with a gentle face, but left a void in us that was like a hole in the heart. My journey to the university at Ingolstadt was postponed. Elisabeth bore her sorrow with strength, and she looked after my father and my brothers with a firmness that made her even more beautiful in my eyes. When I finally left, we all cried, but I knew they wanted me to learn and grow. At the university I met Professor Krempe, a small, stern man. He asked what I had read. When I mentioned Agrippa and Paracelsus, he laughed at me. "All wasted!" he said. I felt humiliated. Then I heard Professor Waldman. He was gentle, with warm eyes. He gave a lecture on the history of science: the old masters promised too much

and achieved little, but the new scholars had discovered the circulation of blood, analyzed the air, brought lightning into the laboratory. "The moderns promise little, but they perform miracles," he said. He did not laugh at my curiosity. He said that the old dreamers too had shown courage, and that their enthusiasm had helped those who came after. He advised me to study all branches of natural philosophy, and showed me his laboratory. I was captivated. From that day on, I lived almost only to learn. Two years passed. I was in the library, in lectures, in the laboratory. I learned to build instruments and use them. I worked so intensely that day and night became one. I rarely thought of Geneva. I wrote home less often than I should. I was praised by my teachers and envied by some students. I was proud. I believed I was about to see something no one had seen. One thought took more and more space in my mind: What is the principle of life? Where does that life come from, which makes a heart beat and a brain think? The question seemed too great. But I could not let it go. To find the answer, I had to study death. I learned anatomy. I went to mortuaries

and watched decay. I stood in dark cellars and counted the minutes as I examined how beauty turns to dust. It was disgusting, but I could not help it.

One night, in the midst of this shadowy world, it came to me like a light. I cannot explain it in detail, and I will not.

But I felt that I understood what happens when life begins. After many nights and days of work, I discovered a way to call life forth into something that was lifeless before.

The joy and intoxication that filled me, I cannot describe. But instead of stopping and rejoicing in the knowledge, I wanted to use it.

Should I give life to a simple plant? An animal? My heart was too excited to choose a small test.

I wanted to create a human. I thought about a body. Every nerve, every muscle had to be right. Small parts were harder to assemble. Therefore I decided that the being I would make should be very large, about eight feet tall and powerfully built.

I gathered materials. I did not steal from living people, but everything I did was still ugly. I went to places where the dead were kept. I obtained what I needed

from dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses. I carried everything up into a secluded garret under the roof. There I locked myself in and worked without pause.

I forgot seasons, friends, and letters. When the moon shone, I worked at night. By day I did not see the sun.

I grew thin and pale, with dark circles under my eyes. Every nerve in me was stretched to breaking point, but I did not heed the warnings coming from my own body.

I felt as if I stood before a gate and could see through the crack into an unknown garden. I wanted to open it with all my strength.

What I denied myself in love, rest, and joy, I promised myself in fame. I dreamed that a new race of happy beings would call me their father.

One night in November I completed what I had begun. Rain pounded against the window. My light flickered. At my feet lay the body I had assembled, long, with black curls and teeth white as ivory.

I arranged the instruments that would give it a spark of life. The clock struck one. I did what I had to.

The yellow, dull eye opened. The chest began to rise. The limbs twitched.

I had imagined a large and beautiful being. Now I saw something that

was alive, but the face, the eyes, the skin, the lips, everything was so indescribably ugly that I felt nausea like a wave. I had spent years of my life and all my strength to achieve this. The moment I succeeded, I hated what I had created. I ran out of the room. I wandered around, beside myself, until I collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. My dream was equally horrible. I dreamed that I embraced Elisabeth in the streets of Ingolstadt, but when I kissed her, she turned pale and icy cold. Her features changed. I stood with my mother's corpse in my arms, with worms in the shroud. I woke with a scream. There, in the moonlight, stood the being I had created. It held the curtain. Its mouth opened and tried to form words. Its hand reached out toward me. I rushed out of the room and took refuge in the courtyard. I stayed there until morning, trembling and sick. When day came, I walked aimlessly through the city streets. I was soaked through with rain. I felt my pulse hammer. I barely dared to lift my eyes, afraid of seeing that same hideous face thrust at me from every corner. At a coach station, a diligence stopped. The door opened. A familiar voice called my name.

It was Henry Clerval. He had gotten permission from his father to study, after struggling for it a long time. He fell on my neck with joy. I tried to smile, but my body was like a string wound too long. When we came to my room, it was fortunately empty. The monster was gone. I tried to hide my distress. But I laughed too loudly at nothing, jumped up and down, clapped my hands. Henry realized something was terribly wrong. "Victor," he said, "for God's sake, what is the matter with you?" I could not answer sensibly. I cried that I was lost, that I must be saved, that something was pursuing me. Then I collapsed. I lay ill for months with a severe nervous fever. Only Henry nursed me. He wrote home for me so as not to worry my father and Elisabeth too much. In my fever I babbled about a monster, about night and hot instruments. Henry listened, grew frightened, but watched over me day and night. Then spring came. I opened my eyes and saw bright leaves on the trees. The grief lifted a little. Joy in small things returned. Henry was with me, and when strength came back, he took me out. I began to hate

everything that reminded me of what I had done. Henry noticed. He removed every machine, every glass, and every book that smelled of the laboratory. He suggested we study languages together. He loved stories from the East, and we read Persian and Arabic tales. My heart followed the soft rhythms of the poems. Thus he filled the void in me with other tones. The plan was that I would go home at the end of autumn. But winter came early and closed the roads. We waited. Spring came more beautiful than ever. We took walks in the areas around Ingolstadt. I felt the strength in my body. Henry made me what I had been before I let myself be consumed. We watched peasants dance, we listened to bells in the Sunday sun. When we came home one such afternoon, a letter from my father lay there. Guillaume, my youngest brother, was dead. A child with curly hair and black eyelashes. He had been strangled. Finger marks on his throat. It happened one evening when they were at Plinpalais, a garden near the city. He had been playing hide and seek with Ernest. Everyone searched. They found him in the morning, cold and still in the grass. Elisabeth had fastened a small portrait of my mother around his neck that same evening. It was

gone. She thought she had tempted a thief and blamed herself. My father asked me to come home. Not with revenge in my heart, but with gentleness, to comfort. I left at once. Henry ordered horses. On the way home everything grew heavy. The landscapes I had loved felt both familiar and strange. When I neared Geneva, the gates were closed for the night. I walked out along the lake under a storm that was building. Lightning danced over Mont Blanc. I wanted to see the place where Guillaume had died. Rain lashed. Thunder roared between the Jura mountains and the Alps. I walked with my head bowed, filled with grief and a fear that reminded me of an old nightmare. When lightning suddenly lit up, I saw a figure in the bushes. It was enormous, with long limbs. Lightning flashed again. I recognized it. The creature I had given life was climbing the steep sides of Mont Salève like a spider on a wall. In a few moments it was at the top and disappeared. Then I understood who had killed Guillaume. Who else could do something so cruel and vanish like that? I froze in a place deeper than cold can reach. I thought of everything I had done in secret. Of how what I called forth from

death now destroyed everything dear to me. It was like a dark being let loose from the grave, my own creation that had become my vampire.

When dawn came, I entered the city. I wanted to cry out the truth. But who would believe me if I said that I had assembled a giant from human remains, who now leapt in the mountains at night?

I remembered how I had been sick and incoherent after the creature awoke. They would think I was mad. Even if they believed me, how could they catch a being that could climb where no human could follow? I kept silent. It was a silence that would cost dearly.

At home I was received by Ernest, my younger brother. He cried and embraced me. "You should have been here earlier," he said, "before everything turned dark."

He told me that Elisabeth blamed herself less than before, for now many believed the murderer had been found. I shook my head. "No one can know," I said. "It is like trying to stop the wind."

He looked at me seriously. "They say it is Justine Moritz." Justine! She had grown up with us for many years, a mixture of friend and servant. When her mother, who had been harsh to

her, died, she came back to us. She was gentle, hardworking, and kind.

I denied it at once. "It is impossible."

Ernest explained that the portrait of my mother had been found in the pocket of the dress Justine had worn that evening. A servant had seen it, told another, and before anyone knew it, the magistrate had been alerted. Justine had been sick, had acted confused, had been seen near the place where the body was found. Everything was interpreted as signs of guilt.

I cried that everyone was wrong. But I could not explain why I knew it.

My father came in. Grief had furrowed his face, but he tried to smile when he saw me. He comforted us as best he could.

He did not want to talk about the murder more than necessary, but when Ernest said that I claimed to know the murderer, my father fell silent. "We know who is arrested," he said quietly. "It pains me more than if it had been a stranger. But let the court speak."

Elisabeth also came. She had become a woman. She looked at me with the same warm eyes I remembered from childhood, but now there were shadows under them. "Your arrival gives me hope,"

she said. "Perhaps you can find something to clear Justine."

She told how Justine had nursed my mother with love when she was ill, and later her own mother in the same way. "She is innocent," Elisabeth said firmly. "I know it as I know I live."

The trial began at eleven o'clock. We went together.

The hall was full. Justine was pale but calm. When she saw us, she gathered her courage. The lawyer presented everything against her.

Witnesses testified that she had been seen near the place that night. They repeated that she had answered questions confusedly, and that she had come home late and asked wildly after the child. Then the locket, the portrait of my mother, was displayed. It was said that a servant had found it in the pocket of her dress. A wall of whispers, shock, and condemnation rose in the room.

Justine was asked to defend herself. She explained calmly that she had been at her aunt's in Chênes that evening with Elisabeth's permission. On the way home, a man had told her that a child was missing. She had searched, and the city gate had been closed. She had spent part of the night in a barn, so as not to wake sleeping people.

She could not explain how the locket had ended up in her pocket. "I believe no one hates me," she said, "and I cannot think the murderer would plant it on me without reason." She lifted her eyes to the judges. "I beg you to judge justly. God knows I am innocent."

People who had known her long testified for her. But the people's fear and the judges' gravity pressed all voices down.

Elisabeth rose. She was pale but firm. She said she had grown up in the same house as the murdered boy, that she knew Justine better than anyone. "She has been the most gentle and reliable person I have ever known," she said. "During my aunt's last illness, Justine nursed her with the greatest love. Later she nursed her own mother in the same way. She was like a mother to Guillaume. I would gladly have given her the locket if she had wished it. I believe she is innocent, despite all the circumstances."

It was quiet for a while. Then the whispering began again. But now it was Elisabeth they murmured about as noble, and some turned their anger against Justine with even greater force, as if her supposed guilt was worse because such a good person spoke for her. I

sat in the hall with my heart on fire. I knew who was guilty. Yet I said nothing. I had no evidence that people would believe. I felt the weight of every word not spoken. It was too heavy for me. When the faces of the judges darkened and the people's looks turned to stone, I left. I could not bear to hear the verdict. The next morning I crept into the courthouse. An official saw me, and in his face I read the answer before he opened his mouth. "Justine is condemned," he said. "Her confession made the outcome inevitable." I felt the ground give way beneath me. "Confession?" I whispered. He explained that she had confessed under pressure. It was a relief to them, he said, for then they could judge without doubting whether they were doing right. When I came home, Elisabeth looked at me with wide eyes. "What was the result?" I could barely say it. She took my hand, let it fall, and looked as if she would never smile again. Soon after, a messenger came. Justine wished to see us. My father was against it, but let Elisabeth choose. "I must go," she said. "Victor, follow me. I cannot go alone." The prison was dark and

damp. Justine sat in a corner, chained, with her head on her knees. When she saw us, she rose and threw herself at Elisabeth's feet. "Forgive me," she sobbed.

"No," said Elisabeth, "stand up. I am not one of those who condemn you. But they say you have confessed. Say it is not true."

Justine dried her eyes. "I have confessed," she said quietly. "But it was a lie. My confessor visited me again and again. He said that if I denied, I would be excommunicated and lost, not only in this world, but in the next.

Everyone looked at me with hatred. No one was on my side. I became afraid. I said what they wanted me to say. Now I regret the lie more than anything else.

There is a peace I can find in heaven, I believe, but what I said has sullied my heart here." She looked at us with wet eyes but tried to smile. "Tell everyone that I did not do it. It will help me."

Elisabeth burst into tears. "I knew you were innocent," she whispered. "I will tell everyone. I will shout it from every door. I will force them to listen." Justine took

her hand. "Do not cry for me. Help me lift my eyes. Speak to me of a better life. Of peace. Not of what is empty and unjust here." She turned to me. "Victor," she said softly, "thank you for coming. I hope you do not believe I am guilty." I could barely meet her eyes. "No," I whispered. The words were too small to carry what I bore. I was heavy with a guilt that had no outlet. We stayed with her a long time. Before we left, she embraced Elisabeth. "May heaven bless you and keep you," she said choked. "Let this be the last misfortune you experience. Live and make others happy." When we came out, Elisabeth said that the only comfort she now had was that she had not been wrong about Justine. "Had she been guilty," she said, "I would have lost faith in everything good." I heard her, but my heart did not answer. I was trapped in my own fire. The child I loved was dead. The innocent who had nursed my mother and smiled kindly at us all would now die for a crime she had not committed. And in the middle of this stood I, who had

put something into the world I did not understand and could not control. I had created a being without thinking about what it needed, without giving it a purpose or a heart to lean on. I had fled from my own action and let it loose upon the world alone in the cold. Now the consequences fell on everyone around me.

I tell you this, Walton, not so that you will say you pity me, but so that you will understand the danger I warn you against. You seek honor and new lands, and your dream is beautiful. But I beg you, as one who has seen the bottom of his own courage to cross boundaries: Be careful.

The love you owe to those who sit at home waiting is not small. Knowledge is good, but it is not everything. If a passion, even if it seems great, steals your heart from those you love, if it devours peace, joy, and faith in simple things, it can lead you into a desert of emptiness.

Grief settled like a lid over our house when Justine was executed. I wanted to scream and tear everything apart. Instead, I let others see my silent compliance.

I went out into nature and sought comfort in the mountains that had made me happy as a boy. But wherever I turned, I saw the shadow of a face with empty eyes. Every beautiful thing became a reminder of what I had betrayed: gentle voices by the fire, dancing in the yard, the sound of church bells on Sunday, doughnuts that smelled of cinnamon, and Elisabeth's hand resting on mine. Over all this lay something black that could not be swept away.

Walton, in your letters you have complained that you lack a friend who can see you and lift you. In me you have found one who both wishes and can do that, but my friendship is also a warning. I know what isolation and secrets do to a person. I see in your words the same light that shone in me, and I fear for you if it becomes too strong.

If you turn back in time, you will not lose anything that truly matters. If you continue, I hope you do so in the name of love and not empty glory. Listen to your heart when it calls the names of those who love you, as much as you listen to the call of the ice out there. Only then

will your goal not become a grave for those you carry in your thoughts. I do not know if I can ever find peace. I have not told everything, and my story is not finished.

But at this point in my tale, after Justine had bid farewell to the world and the light in our house had grown dim, I stood at the edge of something I did not yet know what was. I had created a being and fled from my responsibility. Now I had to meet it face to face.

I did not know where, I did not know when. But I knew I could not hide forever.

Tonight, on this cold ship, I see how the sea outside and the darkness inside me resemble each other. You helped me aboard because I asked where you were going, and your answer was the ice edge and the pole. That is where my story also leads. Perhaps you will find here what you asked God for: a friend who speaks the truth, even when it tears.

I wish someone had spoken to me like that when I was nineteen and let curiosity draw me into graves and fumble in the dark for secrets that did not belong to me alone. I look at you and at

your men, at their trust in you, at your own strength. I also see your loneliness. Let me be your companion through this night. Let my heavy story become a fire you can warm yourself by, not a flame that burns your sails.

For even now, after everything, I know the world is also full of goodness. I have seen it in a young woman's steady voice when she stands before a court and speaks for an innocent friend. I have seen it in a friend who holds a sick man's hand night after night without complaint. I have seen it in a father who hides his own pain to give his children a last smile.

That goodness is stronger than my sins. It is a rope you can tie your ship to, even when the storm screams from all sides. And yet, when I close my eyes, I still see the first glance from my creature. I hear its first gasping breath. I recognize every sound of that night when I crossed a boundary that does not only belong in books, but in the heart.

If I could turn back time, I would choose differently. But no one can. I can only go on now,

and tell you how everything came to be, in the hope that my path can become a bridge for you over the most dangerous place on your journey. The next day in our house was silent. Elisabeth walked from room to room whispering the names of the two we had lost. My father sat long by the window looking out at the lake without seeing. Ernest tried to be brave. I went out. The desire to speak was gone. I carried a thought as my only company: I had to find the being. I had to hear it. I had to understand what I had done, not only with my head, but with all my senses. For this was where my responsibility began. Not when I assembled the skeleton and laid the yellow skin over the nerves. Not when I reached my hand toward the switch and called the lightning down. But when the eyes opened and met mine. If I am ever to sleep again, I must find a way to meet that gaze without fleeing. I do not know how. But I know I can no longer pretend it was not I who spoke the first word. That word has produced an echo that carries far. It carried all the way here, to

the ice and the night. It carried to you, Walton. That is why I speak now. And before the night is over, I will continue my story.

For after Justine's death, the evil was not finished. It had only just begun to breathe. I would go into the mountains, up among ice and rock, where I as a boy had once run with light steps. There I would see something that would change everything again.

But all in due time. Let us rest a moment here, on this edge, with the sound of ice grinding against the ship's side. Let the silence sink in. When it has lifted us a little, I will tell on, and you will know more about what happens when a person turns his back on what he has set into the world and lets fear rule instead of love.

For that is what my story is really about. Not just about making a body that can breathe, but about what it takes for a heart to feel seen. And about what happens when one fails the first duty everyone has, whether they are scholars, sailors, parents, or friends: to stand by one's own work, one's own person, and say, with calm and courage, "I am here."