"The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters—with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves."

                                                                 ~ Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mont Blanc, or the White Mountain, is a monolith standing at 15,774 feet above sea level. It is the highest peak of the Alps in Western Europe and is famed for being the 11th most prominent summit in the world. Mont Blanc divides the Ferret and Veny valleys of France and Italy. Interestingly, Mont Blanc is “owned” by both France and Italy under a bilateral agreement and is called Monte Bianco in Italy. At the foot of Mont Blanc is a quaint town known as Chamonix, where the very first winter Olympics were held back in 1924. The first person to ascend this great mountain was Jacques Balmat back in 1786, along with the doctor Michel Paccard. It is a wonderous and terrifying sight to behold, with its jagged rocks and snow-capped peak. It serves as the perfect gothic setting for one of the most famous stories of all time, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Shelley saw the mountain almost as the central boundary between life and the afterlife; a sacred boundary of harsh reality and terrifying beauty, much like her creature; Just as in the poem above, Percy Bysshe Shelley says:

Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears

                                       ~ Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

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