I spilt the dew -
But took the morn, -
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers -
Sue - forevermore!
-E. Dickinson

A few days ago, in search of a pause in the face of a reality that does not stop moving forward, I decided to visit the mythical city of Salamanca - ancient, eternal and beautiful. In the city, I fell in love with the Salamanca night, and, in my walks through the labyrinthine streets, I ran into two characters: Virginia Flora and Fausto Daneri. As some readers may know, both have been editors of this magazine, and their articles can be found in previous publications. In the strangeness and happiness of meeting two friends who felt like part of me, we decided to sit down in one of the many bars that never close in that city. This article and the reflections presented are a result of our conversation, as if the article had been written by the three of us.

Frankenstein and the problem of the name

"Frankenstein," Fausto Daneri began, "was never called Frankenstein, truly." This observation was correct. Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Shelley, never reveals the name of the creature. Popularly, it has been named "Frankenstein", when this is actually the surname of its creator: Victor Frankenstein. However, the poor creature does not seem to have a name. "What is Frankenstein's name, then?", we asked ourselves that night in Salamanca.

Throughout the narrative, the creature is never named; however, endless adjectives are used to define it: "beast", "demon" and, of course, "monster". However, the creature was not much of a monster. Over the course of the chapters, we discover that behind its "beastly" surface was hidden an empathetic and highly intelligent being, who had taught himself to read and, in his spare time, took it upon himself to study Goethe. However, despite his highly human characteristics, in the eyes of others the creature remained a "monster". In fact, the etymology of monster, as Virginia Flora reminded us, comes from the Vulgar Latin "monstruum", which in turn comes from the verb "monere", meaning "to warn". The word referred to a warning sent by supernatural forces, which, in turn, was used to designate men whose appearance was deformed and different. In other words, "monster", from its etymology, has always been used to designate the "other", that which is outside the rule, that which we cannot understand.

But if the creature had had a name, what would it have been called?

Reality and language

All this reminded me of the article I had written last week. In it, I posed the question that had long been asked by the ancients: when a tree grows and changes, what is it that survives? This question, like the previous question, seems to be related to change. Similarly, the creature could be named in many ways: "Frankenstein", "beast", "demon". Likewise, the creature, over the course of the narrative, could change; however, what was it that remained in it? How could we come up with a name that designated what the creature was what it was? If we found the answer, that was the true name of the creature that, unjustly, had been reduced to "monster".

Following this line, Virginia Woolf, the writer of the well-known novel Orlando, believed that the reality in which we live was not linear. On the contrary, our history was a knot that we constantly untie so that it can become tangled again. This complex reality had to be named, and for this a new style of language had to be found to name this changing and diverse reality. As he writes in Las Olas:

"What is that thing which is below the semblance of the thing?"

Similarly, the thinker María Zambrano seeks to name this profound and changing reality that, at first glance, escapes our words. Throughout history, attempts have been made to describe man on the basis of reason. Zambrano's thought seeks not only to be a rational thinking, but also a thinking from "the heart", because that heart that intellectually has been considered as vain can also bring us closer to the truth. Thus the term "the sacred" is born. The sacred is that first reality that exists within man, prior to any thought and word. However, to reach "the sacred" one must pass through the "entrails", and these are that part of the human being that has not been able to reconcile: the emotions and passions. Behind our surface, this is what we are: a sacred entity whose entrails must be reconciled. Behind the surface, Frankenstein' s creature is also this, and its true name will be born of this reconciliation.

The descent into hell

"Abandon all hope ye who enter" cried Faustus Daneri quoting the phrase written above the gates of Dante's Inferno . But what if it is that the infernal descent becomes not a loss of hope, but a finding of it? In the descent into hell are the "entrails" mentioned above. These entrails become hell when we repress human feeling instead of discovering a truth from it. Similarly, at the end of Frankenstein, the repressed passions are released, and in the face of an inability to reconcile them with his own life, the creature becomes the monster everyone expected him to be. In this way, the creature itself, seeking revenge against a creator who has abandoned it, seeks to kill all the people Victor once loved. Thus, both will be the same: two abandoned beings alone against the world.

As can be seen, unbalanced entrails lead to madness, just as reason that forgets human feeling represses emotions, harming itself. However, the descent into hell, rather than a hell in itself, is about recognizing that what we have labeled as 'hellish' is part of us and deserves our understanding. Similar to how the creature has been mistakenly labeled as 'monstrous', behind it is a being that we must understand rather than name. Once we get down to the guts, accept the heart for what it is and balance it with reason, we can finally name.

The act of naming

"In the beginning was the word," mentioned Virginia Flora quoting Genesis. Similarly, in the same account, Adam is given the work to name the animals through language. That word by which Adam names the animals is now the word that arises before us when we are confronted with the "entrails", and that "sacred" reality of which Zambrano speaks so much is reached. It is here that a word emerges that seeks to name things for what they are, rather than for what they seem.

Once, a dear person told me: "Use the right words, just as Jesus would have wanted". There is a dimension of reality that, perhaps, as we have seen, is difficult to access accurately through language, because "the sacred," rather than described, can only be experienced. Nevertheless, there is a sacred realm in this our work of naming. It is a matter of observing the "monstrous" beyond the name and accessing a word in which one can speak from "the sacred." This, as we have seen, is achieved by reconciling "the entrails", which, after so much struggle, of "infernal", had only the appearance. The human being is a sum of the reason coming from the intellect, as well as the sacred coming from the heart.

• So, what is the creature's real name? -asked Virginia and Fausto at the same time.
• The creature will know. We are what we know we are when we go down to the entrails, embrace the soul and learn to speak from it," I answered.