2016.06.15 弗兰肯斯坦》对气候变化的启示

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What 'Frankenstein' Says About Climate Change
The 200-year-old novel is a testament to the innovation that can spring from environmental disaster.

By Michelle Nijhuis and The Last Word On Nothing

Arctic explorers investigate a crater in northern Siberia, in 2014.  (Vladimir Pushkarev / Reuters)
JUNE 15, 2016
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Between 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning on June 16, 1816, during a restless night in a villa on Lake Geneva, 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had a waking dream. As the moon shone through the shutters of her room, she remembered, “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life …”

Over the next 14 months, Godwin—later Mary Shelley—wrote her vision into life. The pale student became Victor Frankenstein, the hideous phantasm became his tortured creature, and Godwin became the author of the novel Frankenstein, published in 1818 and in print ever since.


Famously, Godwin’s inspiration arrived after she and her companions, who had spent most of their Swiss holiday trapped inside by extraordinarily cold, rainy weather, decided to entertain themselves with a ghost story writing contest. Lord Byron—already a noted poet and notorious cad—wrote a fragment about a dying explorer. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Godwin’s lover and future husband, wrote a poem about atheism. Byron’s physician, William Polidori, wrote a poem about a vampire, which he later published under Byron’s name (and which, some argue, birthed the modern sexy-vampire story). The teenaged Mary Godwin outdid them all, creating both the first major work of science fiction and a story that disturbs us still.

Though Frankenstein’s most iconic scene may have come to Godwin in an instant, the story is rooted in her time and experience. When Godwin was 14, writes Richard Holmes in The Age of Wonder, her father took her to hear lectures by the renowned chemist Humphry Davy. Davy envisioned a future when humans would “interrogate Nature with Power,” words later echoed by the fictional Professor Waldman, who tells young Victor Frankenstein that the “modern masters … have acquired new and unlimited Powers: they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadow.” Some of Davy’s experiments with electricity inspired the proponents of Vitalism, who believed in the existence of an invisible life force—one that could, perhaps, be tamed and put to monstrous use by “modern masters.” Both Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley followed the vociferous public debate over Vitalism, and Frankenstein was a direct response to it.


The story of Victor Frankenstein’s doomed attempt to control the forces of nature may have also been inspired by nature itself, which in the summer of 1816 must have seemed malevolently out of control. Frost, droughts, and floods killed crops all over the world, and in the years that followed, millions of people starved. Millions more, weakened by hunger, died of cholera and typhoid fever. Villagers in Vermont subsisted on clover and nettles; veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, unable to feed themselves or their families, rioted throughout Europe. Farmers in Yunnan, China, hungry and desperate for cash, filled their fields with poppies, bloating the global opium trade. While some Vitalists might have dreamed of commanding the thunders of heaven, the thunders of 1816 bowed to no one.

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The crisis, which lasted for nearly three years, was the source of both enormous suffering and great innovation, inspiring advances in agriculture, meteorology, and polar exploration. (The climatic disturbances included a sudden reduction in Arctic sea ice in 1817 and 1818, exciting would-be explorers; while some found success, many were as hapless as Frankenstein’s Captain Walton, who rescues Dr. Frankenstein after he pursues his creature into the Arctic). Historian Gillen D’Arcy Wood argues that the cycle of famines and plagues also led to an expansion of government responsibility for citizens and, in turn, to the modern concept of the state. In the realm of ideas, Wood observes, “sudden environmental dislocations act as an extraordinary stimulant.” Godwin, whose chilly Continental vacation stimulated a classic, might agree.

Not until the Cold War did climate scientists confirm that all these catastrophes—and triumphs—were caused by the April 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history. The cloud of sulfur dioxide released by the eruption shaded the earth, leading to a prolonged period of global cooling that disrupted the planet’s hydrological cycle. It was a natural experiment in geoengineering, and its results were catastrophic.

Two hundred years after Mary Godwin’s nighttime vision, Frankenstein can be read as both a warning of the perils of human hubris and a brilliantly imaginative response to a global disaster. As we enter another era of climate disruption—this time, a monster of our own making—we need both the reminder of the former and the inspiration of the latter.

This post appears courtesy of The Last Word On Nothing.

Michelle Nijhuis is a project editor at The Atlantic and the author of the new book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.



弗兰肯斯坦》对气候变化的启示
这部有200年历史的小说证明了环境灾难可能带来的创新。

Michelle Nijhuis和The Last Word On Nothing报道

2014年，北极探险家在西伯利亚北部调查一个火山口。 (Vladimir Pushkarev / Reuters)
2016年6月15日

1816年6月16日凌晨2点到3点之间，在日内瓦湖畔的一栋别墅里，在一个不安的夜晚，18岁的玛丽-沃斯通克拉夫特-戈德温做了一个醒着的梦。当月亮透过她房间的百叶窗照射进来时，她记得，"我看到那个学习不神圣艺术的苍白学生跪在他组装的东西旁边。我看到一个狰狞的人的幻影伸了出来，然后，在某个强大的引擎的作用下，显示出生命的迹象......"

在接下来的14个月里，戈德温--后来的玛丽-雪莱--将她的设想写成了现实。那个脸色苍白的学生变成了维克多-弗兰肯斯坦，那个可怕的幻影变成了他的受折磨的生物，戈德温成为小说《弗兰肯斯坦》的作者，该书于1818年出版并一直在印刷。


著名的是，戈德温的灵感来自于她和她的同伴们，他们在瑞士的假期中大部分时间都被异常寒冷的雨天困在室内，他们决定用鬼故事写作比赛来娱乐自己。拜伦勋爵（Lord Byron）已经是一位著名的诗人和臭名昭著的恶棍，他写了一个关于垂死的探险家的片段。诗人珀西-比希-雪莱，戈德温的情人和未来的丈夫，写了一首关于无神论的诗。拜伦的医生威廉-波利多写了一首关于吸血鬼的诗，后来他以拜伦的名义发表了这首诗（有人认为，这首诗孕育了现代性感的吸血鬼故事）。十几岁的玛丽-戈德温超越了他们所有人，创造了第一部重要的科幻作品和一个至今仍令我们不安的故事。

尽管《弗兰肯斯坦》中最具代表性的一幕可能是在瞬间出现在戈德温的脑海中，但这个故事却植根于她的时代和经历。理查德-霍姆斯在《神奇时代》中写道，戈德温14岁时，她的父亲带她去听著名化学家汉弗莱-戴维的讲座。戴维设想了一个人类将 "用力量审问自然 "的未来，这句话后来被虚构的瓦尔德曼教授所呼应，他告诉年轻的维克多-弗兰肯斯坦，"现代的主人......已经获得了新的和无限的力量：他们可以指挥天上的雷鸣，模仿地震，甚至用自己的影子嘲笑看不见的世界。" 戴维的一些电力实验启发了活力主义的支持者，他们相信存在一种无形的生命力--也许这种生命力可以被 "现代大师 "驯服，并被他们用来做怪。玛丽-戈德温和珀西-雪莱都关注着关于生命力论的激烈的公开辩论，而《弗兰肯斯坦》就是对它的直接回应。


维克多-弗兰肯斯坦试图控制自然力量的失败故事可能也受到了自然界本身的启发，在1816年的夏天，自然界一定看起来很邪恶地失去了控制。霜冻、干旱和洪水使世界各地的农作物死亡，在随后的几年里，数百万人挨饿。还有数百万人因饥饿而变得虚弱，死于霍乱和伤寒症。佛蒙特州的村民以苜蓿和荨麻为生；拿破仑战争的退伍军人无法养活自己和家人，在整个欧洲进行暴动。中国云南的农民，由于饥饿和对现金的绝望，在田里种满了罂粟，使全球的鸦片贸易膨胀。虽然一些维塔斯主义者可能梦想着指挥天堂的雷声，但1816年的雷声却不向任何人低头。

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这场危机持续了近三年，既带来了巨大的痛苦，也带来了巨大的创新，激发了农业、气象学和极地探险方面的进步。(气候扰动包括1817年和1818年北极海冰的突然减少，使有意探险的人兴奋不已；虽然有些人获得了成功，但许多人就像弗兰肯斯坦的沃尔顿船长一样无能为力，他在弗兰肯斯坦博士追赶他的生物到北极后救了他）。历史学家吉伦-达西-伍德认为，饥荒和瘟疫的循环也导致了政府对公民责任的扩大，并反过来导致了现代国家的概念。伍德指出，在思想领域，"突如其来的环境混乱起到了非同寻常的刺激作用"。戈德温，其寒冷的大陆假期激发了一部经典作品，可能会同意。

直到冷战时期，气候科学家才确认，所有这些灾难和胜利都是由1815年4月印度尼西亚坦博拉火山的爆发引起的，这是历史上最大的火山爆发之一。爆发所释放的二氧化硫云层遮蔽了地球，导致了一段长时间的全球冷却，破坏了地球的水文循环。这是一个地球工程的自然实验，其结果是灾难性的。

在玛丽-戈德温的夜间愿景200年后，《弗兰肯斯坦》既可以被解读为对人类傲慢的危险的警告，也可以被解读为对一场全球灾难的出色想象力的回应。当我们进入另一个气候破坏的时代--这次是我们自己制造的怪物--我们既需要前者的提醒，也需要后者的启发。

这篇文章是由The Last Word On Nothing提供的。

Michelle Nijhuis是《大西洋》杂志的项目编辑，也是新书《被爱的野兽》的作者。在一个灭绝的时代为生命而战。