Cologne

Cologne appears only as a fleeting landmark in Victor Frankenstein's narrative, yet its mention marks a significant phase in his journey away from Geneva and toward the remote Orkney Islands where he will attempt to fulfill his monstrous promise. The city is one of several beautiful towns the two travelers see while descending the Rhine by boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, a voyage that takes them through Mannheim and Mainz before reaching Cologne. For Henry Clerval, this stretch of the river represents the pinnacle of scenic wonder; he later declares that the banks of the Rhine possess a charm surpassing even the majestic mountains of Switzerland. For Victor, however, the passage through Cologne and the surrounding countryside offers only a temporary and fragile respite from the obsessive dread that governs his existence.

Place in the Journey

Victor and Clerval agree to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, from where they will take shipping for London. They stay a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth day from their departure from Strasbourg they arrive at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque, with the river descending rapidly and winding between steep hills of beautiful forms. Ruined castles stand on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine presents a singularly variegated landscape: rugged hills and ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices with the dark Rhine rushing beneath, then on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. Cologne is one of these towns, though Victor does not describe it in any detail; the city is simply a name in the itinerary, a place passed through rather than explored.

Contrast Between the Two Travelers

The journey through Cologne and the Rhine valley crystallizes the fundamental difference between Victor and Clerval. They travel at the time of the vintage and hear the song of the labourers as they glide down the stream. Even Victor, depressed in mind and his spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, admits he was pleased; he lies at the bottom of the boat, gazing on the cloudless blue sky, and seems to drink in a tranquillity to which he has long been a stranger. But Clerval's response is far more intense: he feels as if he has been transported to fairy-land and enjoys a happiness seldom tasted by man. Clerval specifically contrasts the Rhine's charm with the mountains of Switzerland, which he finds more majestic and strange, but the banks of this divine river please him more than all those wonders. Victor, recording Clerval's words with evident affection, notes that his friend was a being formed in the "very poetry of nature," whose wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. The passage through Cologne thus becomes a moment of sharp emotional contrast: Clerval's capacity for joy is at its peak, while Victor's is at best a pale and temporary imitation of happiness.

Narrative Significance

Cologne itself has no plot function; it is not the site of any event, encounter, or revelation. Its significance lies in what it represents within the larger structure of Victor's journey. The Rhine voyage, including the stop at Cologne, is the last period of relative peace Victor experiences before the horror of his task reasserts itself. After this journey, Victor and Clerval proceed to Rotterdam and then by sea to England, where Victor begins collecting materials for the creation of the female monster. The memory of Cologne and the Rhine valley becomes, in retrospect, a lost idyll: Victor later recalls Clerval's words with sorrow, asking where that gentle and lovely being now exists, and mourning that a mind so replete with ideas has perished. Cologne, as part of that vanished happiness, is a place name that marks the boundary between the last days of companionship and the descent into isolation and destruction.