John William Polidori • 15 juni 1816

• John William Polidori (1795-1821) was een Engelse schrijver en arts, en initiator van het vampiergenre in de literatuur. Onderstaand fragment gaat onder meer over een gesprek dat hij had met Shelley, dat Mary Shelley op het idee bracht voor haar boek Frankenstein. Afkomstig uit: The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori (1816).

June 15. — Up late ; began my letters. Went to Shelley's. After dinner, jumping a wall my foot slipped and I strained my left ankle. Shelley etc. came in the evening ; talked of my play etc., which all agreed was worth nothing. Afterwards Shelley and I had a conversation about principles, — whether man was to be thought merely an instrument. [The accident to Polidori's ankle was related thus by Byron in a letter addressed from Ouchy to John Murray. " Dr. Polidori is not here, but at Diodati ; left behind in hospital with a sprained ankle, acquired in tumbling from a wall — he can't jump." Thomas Moore, in his Life of Byron supplies some details. " Mrs. Shelley was, after a shower of rain, walking up the hill to Diodati ; when Byron, who saw her from his balcony where he was standing with Polidori, said to the latter: ' Now you who wish to be gallant ought to jump down this small height, and offer your arm.* Polidori tried to do so ; but, the ground being wet, his foot slipped and he sprained his ankle. Byron helped to carry him in, and, after he was laid on the sofa, went up-stairs to fetch a pillow for him. * Well, I did not believe you had so much feeling,' was Polidori's ungracious remark."
The play written by Polidori, which received so little commendation, was, I suppose, the Cajetan which is mentioned at an early point in the Journal. There was another named Boadicea, in prose ; very poor stuff, and I suppose written at an early date. A different drama named Ximenes was afterwards published : certainly its merit — whether as a drama or as a specimen of poetic writing — is slender. The con- versation between Shelley and Polidori about " principles " and " whether man was to be thought merely an instrument " appears to have some considerable analogy with a conversation to which Mary Shelley and Professor Dowden refer, and which raised in her mind a train of thought conducing to her invention of Frankenstein and his Man-monster. Mary, however, speaks of Byron (not Polidori) as the person who conversed with Shelley on that occasion. Professor Dowden, paraphrasing some remarks made by Mary, says : " One night she sat listening to a conversation between the two poets at Diodati. What was the nature, they questioned, of the principle of life ? Would it ever be discovered, and the power of communicating life be acquired ? Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated ; galvanism had given token of such things. That night Mary lay sleepless," etc.] 

 June 16. — Laid up. Shelley came, and dined and slept here, with Mrs. S[helley] and Miss Clare Clairmont. Wrote another letter. 

June 17. — Went into the town ; dined with Shelley etc. here. Went after dinner to a ball at Madame Odier's; where I was introduced to Princess Something and Countess Potocka, Poles, and had with them a long confab. Attempted to dance, but felt such horrid pain was forced to stop. The ghost-stories are begun by all but me. [This date serves to rectify a small point in literary history. We all know that the party at Cologny — consisting of Byron and Polidori on the one hand, and of Shelley and Mrs. Shelley and Miss Clairmont on the other — undertook to write each of them an independent ghost-story, or story of the supernatural ; the result being Byron's fragment of The Vampyre, Polidori's complete story of The Vampyre, and Mrs. Shelley's renowned Frankenstein. Shelley and Miss Clairmont proved defaulters (...)].