Zastrozzi’s soul is dead to everything but revenge; he says that “revenge has swallowed up every other feeling of [his] soul – [he is] alive to nothing but revenge”; “his soul, deadened by crime, could only entertain confused ideas of immortal happiness” (102).
Matilda questions Zastrozzi about the future of the soul; she wonders if “the soul decays with the body,” and if “it wastes its fervent energies in tasteless apathy, or lingering moments” while still encased in the body, on earth (103).
Zastrozzi says that while still inside the body, while still “in the chains of mortality” the soul can, “by daring boldly, by striving to verge from the beaten path […] gain superior advantages in a future state” (103).
Matilda is “alive to no idea but Verezzi,” and this new life “calmed her soul, […] and the passions which so lately had battled fiercely in her bosom were calmed” (104).
Verezzi views Julia’s death only as a physical death; he says that just “because [his] Julia’s spirit is no longer enshrined in its earthly form, [he is not] less devotedly, […] less irrevocably hers.” He declares that “to all eternity [he] shall be hers: and when [his] soul, divested of mortality, departs into another world […] it will seek the unspotted spirit of [his] idolised Julia.” Although Matilda is able to take Julia’s body from this earth, she is unable to remove her spirit from Verezzi (107).
Shelley, Percy B. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt.
