my imagination was vivid
Victor's remembrance alters the emphasis of his earlier account, which
contrasted his own interest in facticity with Elizabeth's (and Henry
Clerval's) delight in the imagination (1.1.4). However much he may be inflating
the record here, the reader cannot but be aware of the ambivalence about
the nature of the imagination expressed in these lines. That Victor
once "trod heaven in [his] thoughts" cannot mitigate the hellish misery to
which he has now sunk, nor even at that earlier point in his remembrance
could it guarantee that the outcome of such an introverted elation would
have an essential value. The imagination, in this analysis, might be
necessary for great achievement, but by itself it is by no means
sufficient, being merely an instrument, and, as such, easily capable of
indulging a self-absorbed solipsism.
