- Using the excerpt from page 155 as a sample, does Shelley incorporate all the provided dictionary definitions of death? Does he add any definitions?
“The father of him, who, by my arts committed suicide by six days ago in La Contessa di Laurentini’s mansion, took advantage of a moment of weakness, and disgraced her who bore me. He swore with the most sacred oaths to marry her – but he was false.
“My mother soon brought me into the world – the seducer married another; and, when the destitute Olivia begged a pittance to keep her from starving, her proud betrayer spurned her from his door, and tauntingly bade her exercise her profession. – the crime I committed with thee, perjured one! exclaimed my mother, as she left his door, shall be my last! – and, by heavens! she acted nobly. A victim to falsehood, she sank early to the tomb, and ere her thirtieth year, she died – her spotless soul fled to eternal happiness. – Never shall I forget, though by fourteen when she died – never shall I forget her last commands. – My son, said she, my Pietrino, revenge my wrongs – revenge them on the perjured Verezzi – revenge them on his progeny for ever.
“And, by heaven! I think I have revenged them. Ere I was twenty-four, the false villain, though surrounded by seemingly impenetrable grandeur; though forgetful of the offence to punish which this arm was nerved, sank beneath my dagger. But I destroyed his body alone,” added Zastrozzi, with a terrible look of insatiated vengeance: “time has taught me better: his son’s soul is hell-doomed to all eternity: he destroyed himself; but my machinations, though unseen, effected his destruction” (155).
Shelley, Percy B. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt.
