Rowing with the Wind (1988)

Lizzy McInnerny: Mary Shelley

Quotes 

• Mary Shelley : I am alone. Just as in the pages of my book, I have come to the icy limits of the universe, to meet the horrible creature that my imagination conceived. Where there are no shadows - no monsters can exist. Only the memory will live on... within the limits of the imagination.

• Lord Byron : The rivers, lakes and ocean. The tides were in their grave. The moon their mistress, had expired before. The winds were withered in the stagnant air... why are you limping Polidori?

  John Polidori : I have twisted my ankle, my Lord.

  Lord Byron : Well, congratulations. At last you've managed to be like me. Although, in precisely the way I would least liker to be like Lord Byron. Vanity leads men to imitate other men, and poetry to imitate itself. Do you know what the finest poem would be? It would be the poem that gave life to matter, by force of imagination alone.

  Mary Shelley : It would be horrible!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley : Do you know that the best our scientists can do, is to make a dead worm wriggle in a glass jar.

  Claire Clairmont : And what does our doctor think about all this?

  John Polidori : That the imagination only creates things that are dead, although they may sometimes be beautiful. And that science only discovers new ways of killing.

  Claire Clairmont : Good heavens, my Lord! Where did you find your bedside doctor?

  Lord Byron : Queen of England recommended him to me.

  John Polidori : My dramatic works had a certain curative effect on her, but my medical prescriptions made her vomit.

  [laughing] 

• Claire Clairmont : What are you thinking about Mary?

  Mary Shelley : About Byron and his poem; the one nobody has written yet. Where the imagination could give life to matter, making it into a living poem. Just as fire can revive dead wood.

  Claire Clairmont : How obstinate they are. Why do men try to create life out of death, when women know perfectly well that life can create life?

  Mary Shelley : Love is sufficient for what you speak of, but in order to live; life is not enough.

  Claire Clairmont : It is for me when I'm with him.

  Mary Shelley : And when you are not with him you have no alternative but to write him letters.

  Claire Clairmont : He writes to somebody else.

  Mary Shelley : Byron only writes to himself.

• Lord Byron : Yesterday I said something to Claire, which I would like to say to you personally.

  Mary Shelley : I know, Claire told me. But I would not mind hearing it again.

  Lord Byron : I merely wished to say how much I like you, Mary. And Shelley.

  John Polidori : I was just saying to Mr. Shelley that it would be a good idea to read horror stories during the evenings. Fiction is by far the best vaccine against reality.

  Lord Byron : It is a very good idea, Polidori. But I propose that in honor of Shelley, instead of vaccinating ourselves against reality, we should invent it anew. Mary was just promising me that she is going to write a horror story. Each one of us will write the most horrifying tale that he or she can imagine. And we shall demonstrate that reality is always even more horrifying.

  Claire Clairmont : Letters are the most horrifying for me, and sometimes they can be more appalling than reality.

  John Polidori : Right. When do we start, tomorrow?

  Lord Byron : Tomorrow. Shelley I feel certain that you will want to go to the Castle of Chillon, and there we shall really be able to contemplate the horror of this world.