In “Mary Shelley’s Room”, Timo Fieldhouse tells how a volcanic eruption in Indonesia shook the world
By Michael Wessel
The year 1816 was known as the “Year without a summer”. This year also has a lot to do with the legendary community of Percy Shelley, his future wife Mary, his half sister Claire, the poet Lord Byron and his personal physician John Polidori. The illustrious circle gathers at the Lake of Geneva at Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati. Due to the incessant rain, literature lovers enter a literary contest and agree on a horror story that they must write and eventually read. In terms of literary history, this moment matters: Mary Shelley was created for it Frankenstein And John Polidori laid the foundations for his first, but less famous, story vampirewhere an aristocratic vampire is on the verge of delinquency, decades before Bram Stoker’s appearance in 1897 at his royal court. Dracula This will give the outline.
Timo Fieldhaus tells Mary Shelley’s room. When Earth’s volcanoes went dark in 1816 From this meeting, and much more. Because not only the writer Mary Shelley, but also various other characters who became literary figures, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, Friedrich Ludwig Jan and Napoleon. All combine the real consequences of the devastating eruption of the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
The same catastrophic natural catastrophe occurred in April 1815 and was the starting point for what happened at the Timo Field House“ it’s fiction. With each chapter, the author changes scene. While London (Mary Godwin, later Shelley) and Weimar (Goethe) set the scene in the early chapters, Fieldhouse then focuses on Sumbawa, where Scottish explorer John Crawford travels. The volcano still seemed quiet, but he suspected something was simmering beneath the surface. A few moments later, a large amount of volcanic material rose into the atmosphere: “In the following year it spread all over the world. There the gray clouds blocked the sun. It reflects light in space and the Earth cools. “What sounds like a fairy tale Amazing scientific facts are historical facts. Heavy rains and cooling in the Northern Hemisphere are one of the consequences of volcanic eruptions. For example, Goethe followed the theory that the rise of glaciers marked the beginning of a new ice age.
Fieldhaus creates panoramas from 1815 to 1816 in 38 chapters. And sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, he highlights the global effects of volcanic eruptions, which have engulfed much of the world in times of crisis. Heavy rains and low temperatures caused crop failures, mass unemployment and a mass exodus from rural Europe. With historical characters, who emerge as heroes as in the Fieldhouse novel, the author seeks to capture the zeitgeist of the time: be it the conversation between Percy and Mary, Goethe’s interest in cloud formations or Napoleon’s mind games before of the Battle of Waterloo. The internal monologues, dialogues and meetings are represented in a fantasy setting and presented in short chapters. So the readings are varied, but rarely designed. You want to take a slightly longer walk around Weimar with Goethe or spend some time in Caspar David Friedrich’s studio. Those expecting a non-fiction book will be disappointed. The book’s added value lies in the interaction between factual knowledge, original quotes and fantasy.
I am very happy to see Maryam in her literary creativity Frankenstein To watch your back. Driven by the development of his era, the aspiring writer deals with the mysterious power of electricity. He wondered if this power could bring the dead back to life or even create life. Etta Hoffmann shares the same thoughts, although for her arguments about her with magnetism, for example, she is only slightly referred to as a lawyer. Feldhaus failed to harness the potential of a famous writer, as Hoffmann wrote a literary history of historical significance in 1816 hypnotic dada.
The interior monologues not only of Mary, but also of Goethe or Napoleon enrich and amuse. Yet here and there the narrative voice of the 21st century emerges, almost always present, but still in a disturbing way, so present and at a linguistic level that it disturbs the spirit of the 19th century: “Goethe’s appearance means a lot. She turned back to him as his eyes were close to his reflection in the window before the morning light reflected off the treetops. ”Even comments shaped by climate change today seem out of place:
This coal can ignite an endless fire. The steel and iron fire needed by the new machines was underground. That the magic of hard coal will be responsible for the most powerful climate change in Earth’s atmosphere has begun now, due to carbon dioxide2, It appeared during the combustion, which destructively heated the living space like under a glass dome, no one could have imagined at the time.
Even without this interpolation, it is clear how the industrialization that developed in 1816 would change the climate for the next two hundred years. Sometimes the victims, mentioned explicitly, have a beneficial effect. Fieldhouse could trust readers more of him. But in general Kamar Mary Shelley A book to read, above all, aimed at entertainment that has a lot in common with our times today, in which we are aware of global connections and crises, unlike over two hundred years ago.
Contributions from the editorial staff of the Journal of Contemporary Cultures of the University of Duisburg-Essen
