Robert Romanyshyn on Frankenstein and Fire: Reading from the Margins

Prof. Robert Romanyshyn is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and an author of eight books including Victor Frankenstein, the Monster and the Shadows of Technology: The Frankenstein Prophecies (Frankenstein Prophecies). Romanyshyn’s special area of concern is the psychology of technology, especially in terms of the climate crisis and impact of digital media on our social structures.
Much of his life’s work has been devoted to understanding Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a gothic horror tale that, as he points out, has been prophetic in many ways. In his book Frankenstein Prophecies, he asks eight questions that uncover how Shelley’s classic work haunts our world. Combining Jungian theory, literary criticism, and mythology, he seeks answers to the query at the heart of this book: who is the monster?
In keeping with the theme of fire in this podcast season, we spoke of the symbolism of fire-both ambiguous and double-edged. In Greek myth in particular, the symbolism of fire is bound up with the myth of Prometheus, one of many stories which explains how humankind came into possession of fire.
We zoomed in on the fire related metaphors in Frankenstein (exemplified in the subtitle ‘The Modern Prometheus’, alluding to the Greek fire myth), and how many of these speak to our present ecological crises. There’s fire as lightning that struck down a tree early in the book; the use of electricity and galvanism; the digging up of the dead in cemeteries and charnel houses as analogous to the mining of fossil fuels; solar light versus moonlight; and the Monster running away to the Arctic north, promising to burn in a pyre after Victor Frankenstein’s death.
We also discuss a different kind of fire, which is not just a burning down or a melting away or extraction of fossil fuels, but a counter-fire. Counter-fire as in the hope left in Pandora’s jar. In speaking of this fire, Romanyshyn also speaks of splendour of the simple, the extraordinary in the ordinary, the miracle in the mundane, fire as living spirit, and Natura Naturans, the Anima Mundi.
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