Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
'affinities': “Unluckily, such affinities as these are too rare, and the indi-
cations are too slight to be submitted to analysis and observation” (Bal-
zac, n.d., p. 85).
9
The notion of the homunculus was resurrected to provide a useful
symbol of such mechanistic philosophy, no longer as a tiny figure but
expanded to a full-scale person - or even bigger - dangerous in his
power. In a macabre parody of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's
L'Homme
machine
(1747), Shelley's Frankenstein assembles his eight-feet-tall
'child' from the components of corpses and brings it to life with an elec-
trical discharge, a method that would have been regarded by her contem-
poraries as at least feasible, since it mimicked Benjamin Franklin's well-
known experiment with a kite in an electrical storm and popular demon-
strations of the time practiced publicly on the corpses of executed crimi-
nals to show the effect of galvanic action.
10
In E.T.A. Hoffmann's novel
Der Sandmann
(1817) the title character
Dr Coppelius, overtly a lawyer, is also a closet alchemist. As a child, the
protagonist Nathanael had watched in horror as Coppola and his father
attempted to produce an automaton in a setting that is heavily suggestive
of an alchemist's laboratory. Returning years later in the guise of a dealer
in scientific glasses, Coppelius persuades Nathanael to look through his
telescope and see the beautiful girl Olimpia, technically flawless but
lacking emotions and spontaneity. In the descriptions of Olimpia, Hoff-
mann vividly expresses the Romantic abhorrence of mechanism. The in-
fatuated youth Nathanael is perturbed to discover how stiffly she holds
herself and how mechanically she dances. She plays and sings like a
clockwork model, with the emotionless tone of a singing machine, and
when Nathanael bends to kiss her, her lips are ice-cold.
11
Her mechanical
9
This is almost certainly a reference to Goethe's novel
Die Wahlverwandtschaften
(
Elective Affinities
) (1809).
10
Percy Shelley had long been interested in electricity and galvanism. He had con-
structed a large-scale battery and repeated Franklin's experiment (Holmes 1976, pp.
44f.).
11
Hoffmann is believed to have been inspired to write his stories of mechanical inven-
tions after seeing an exhibition of automata in Dresden in 1813 (Warrick 1980, p. 34).
He may also have been inspired by Jean-Paul Richter's novel
The Death of an Angel
.
Hoffmann's
Der Sandmann
in turn inspired Adolphe Adam's
La Poupée de Nurem-
berg
and the ballet
Coppelia
:
or the girl with the enamel eyes
(1810).
