Frankenstein owes his life to Italian doctors: here’s how the experiments of Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini inspired Mary Shelley
Who created “Frankenstein”, the literary work that started the science fiction genre? Where did the idea of one of the most famous monsters in world literature come from? From Mary Shelley, you’ll all say. And you are right, the original and brilliant idea of the scientist who wants to overcome human limits and of creation that escapes his control certainly came to life from the pen of that brilliant nineteen-year-old writer. Yet, it will probably surprise you to know that thea source of inspiration for the character of Viktor Frankenstein it is purely Italian. In fact it derives from a doctor from Bologna who hung dead frogs in his gardento test the reaction of their muscles to the electricity of lightning.
Meanwhile, on November 7, Guillermo del Toro’s new film «Frankenstein» has been released on Netflixand the National Library of Scotland appears poised to reveal previously unpublished documents about Mary Shelley. If we have intrigued you (as we hope), we will satisfy your curiosity by delving into the genesis of the novel.
The night that changed literature
We are at Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva, in June 1816. «It was a dark and stormy night», as all self-respecting horror novels would begin. But in this case it is not a figure of speech: the storm was truly raging outside, one of those endless ones that marked “the year without summer”, when the Tambora volcano had darkened the skies of the world. And perhaps it was also that storm that inspired the novel. The fact is that inside the villa, a group of young intellectuals had launched a challenge: to write the most terrifying work inspired by the afterlife.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin – who would soon become Mary Shelley – was just nineteen. Around her, her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, the famous Lord Byron, her half-sister Claire Clairmont and the doctor John Polidori. None of them could have imagined that that bet would generate not only the Gothic masterpiece, but also the first science fiction novel in history, which would have had an enormous influence on subsequent generations.
The Italian shadow behind the creature
And here we come to the key point: where does the spark that animated the creature really come from? It wasn’t an invention out of nowhere, no. In his novel there is all the science of the time, that whirlwind enlightenment that was revolutionizing Europe. And at the center of that scientific revolution there was an Italian: Luigi Galvani.
The Bolognese doctor had discovered something prodigious. Hanging dead frogs in his garden during thunderstorms, he had observed that their muscles contracted when struck by lightning. Electricity could give – or restore – movement to helpless bodies. He could, perhaps, give life back to the dead.
Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, had taken those experiments even furtherin directions that today would make one shudder. And Mary Shelley knew about those experiments. She had studied them, fed on them, transformed them into literature.
When the finger moved
In the novel there is a scene that actually closely resembles Aldini’s experiments. He describes it like this Katryn Harkup in his essay The birth of Frankenstein (2025, Utet editore): «Every muscle was shaken by powerful convulsions, as if the body was trembling from the cold. After some adjustments, the machine was connected a second time. Then a complete and labored breathing started. The abdomen distended, the chest rose and fell. With the last electric shock, the fingers of the right hand began to twitch, as if pressing the strings of a violin. Then a finger stretched out and seemed to point at something.”
It is impossible not to feel, in this description, theecho of the Italian experiments. That finger that stretches out, which seems to point to something, even reminds us of the finger of God in Michelangelo’s Creation, in the Sistine Chapel. A rather complex game of references: from Italian art to Italian science, up to English literature which founds a new genre.
Did Victor Frankenstein speak Italian?
Let’s take the discussion to the next level. Therefore, if Mary Shelley was inspired by Galvani and Aldini, it should perhaps be recognized that Victor Frankenstein – the scientist – did he have something Italian in his blood? Or at least that his discovery, the one that led him to challenge God and nature, had its roots in the land where Galvani hung his frogs? Probably yes.
This is obviously not a question of nationality, but rather of the genealogy of the imagination. Modern science fiction, which today gives us films like Guillermo del Toro’s, was born from that dark and stormy night. A night that could be defined as «illuminated by the flickering light of the Bolognese experiments with frogs and lightning».
The legacy of a tragedy
Mary Shelley lived a life marked by continuous tragedies: the mother who died in childbirth, a sister who committed suicide, two children lost as children. And then the companions of that magical night: Byron who died young in Missolunghi, fighting for Greek independence; her husband Percy drowned in the Ligurian Sea, off the coast of Portovenere, in the gulf which has since borne the name of the Gulf of Poets. Perhaps it is precisely from the pain, from the unbearable loss, that Frankenstein’s impossible dream is born: bringing back to life those we loved.
As we leaf through the pages of the novel or watch the film on Netflix, we must also remember this: that one of the most famous works of world literature owes something to Italy. To the frogs of Bologna, to the lightning on the corpses, to those “mad” scientists who dared to question nature about the secret of life. And maybe, deep down, that’s right. Why great literature always arises from the intersection of different pathsfrom a stormy night on Lake Geneva where Italy and England, poetry and science, life and death mixed together.
