Concerning the Victor Frankenstein name   [kitchen door menu]
The origin of the Vitebsk story, which contains the three names for
the person on whom the character Victor Frankenstein is supposed
to have been based, is found on this site at Vitebsk story origin .
As it is an oral tradition, and a rather obscure one at that, it cannot
be documented, except as a possibility. Count Philippe - Paul de Segur's
Napoleon's Russian Campaign translated by J. David Townsend, 1958
Time-Life Books, paperback, does describe the period during which the
letters are said to have been translated and burned. Segur, however, other
than Napoleon's state of mind, never mentions any part of the discovery
of the letters or Napoleon's interest and then abhorrence of them. Much
can be found in Shelley's novel, however, that suggests there is room
for consideration of the story as either something she had heard about or
had invented herself. A veteran of the Russian campaign looked her up
in Venice soon after Frankenstein was published, which can be found
in Richard Holmes' Shelley, The Pursuit, 1976. Perhaps it was this fellow
who started the story of the Vitebsk letters.
The character in Frankenstein and the person the Vitebsk story suggests
inspired his creation do resemble one another, and the stories complement
each other. In the latter the Frankenthaler is so called because he does not
reveal his name, but does reveal a connection to the Montgolfier brothers,
who developed balloons, which is the town of Frankenthal, not all that far
from Frankenstein geographically or lingually. Sieger is the form of address
in the Vitebsk story that the Frankenthaler's enemy uses when the two
begin to reconcile. It is clearly not a name, but rather an acknowledgement
of the Frankenthaler's merit in the eyes of his former friend and enemy.
Their trouble had to do with an agreement between them to help one another.
Jondo, the name given to the Frankenthaler's enemy, assisted in returning to
the Frankenthaler's family a relic that had been entrusted to an ancestor and
then stolen from the family. This is where the name Canteleu comes in. Central
to the Vitebsk story is a story of how the Shroud of Turin came into being.
It is very different from the accepted one. However, the year in which the
Vitebsk story of the creation of the Shroud is said to have occurred does
fit the results of testing done at three labs in recent years. A search for
dating of the Shroud should provide details. I have a copy of an article
from a periodical, which I will dig out later. What is important to see
is that, at the time the story of how the Shroud was created in the 13th
century is supposed to have been told, it was not possible to provide any
clear evidence that it was factual. Nothing could then have been done to establish
a date for the cloth. Further, the story is not flattering to established Christian views.
If Shelley had heard of this story, she could not have published it. The
name Canteleu in the Vitebsk story points to the circumstances that
are said to have surrounded the creation of the Shroud, the persucution
of Jews under Louis IX in 1239. Chronicles of the Crusades, 1963, Dorset
Press includes the name Canteleu as one of Louis' men.
Although there really isn't anything that can be produced that demonstrates
that the Vitebsk letters really existed, or that Shelley new of the story
they are said to have told, Shelley's novel from beginning to end, in
a number of ways suggests that there is a story that is not being told,
one that would be shocking.
As for the connections with stein en and frank, in ancient writings, such as
Every Good Man is Free, and Genesis, Philo of Alexandria, and the Greek Bible's
suggestion that the stones will cry out, and the discrepancies in letters
to Trajan concerning knowledge of Christians, and Roman admission
of having provoked the Hebrew uprising, Shelley may have developed
a view of history that explains the discrepancies that have had to have
been ignored by historians for doctrinal reasons. Her father's expectation
that the truth would reappear with "double lustre" and her employment of
his observations regarding misguided good intentions should not be
discounted. A search for the reasons for the name of Victor Frankenstein,
though they may never result in pinning down specifics, can be of great
benefit to the progress her father had in mind. He did say that it was the
best book he had read by so young an author. This is more understandable
when we look for the ways in which she demonstrates the validity of so
much of what he proposed.                  [kitchen door menu]