Friday, 31 July 2009
Hungarian roots
An interest in vampires can be hard to suppress, at least for some of us. In the foreword to a masters thesis on the Hungarian roots of Nosferatu, Csaba Ljendel traces his interest back to 1996 when as a freshman studying medicine in Vienna he got interested in illnesses that might be connected with the subject of vampires. After some time he stopped studying medicine and got a job in the Austrian police, which allowed him to later on go back to the university to study Hungarology - and vampires! This year he then submitted his thesis (Magisterarbeit), which can be found on the internet via the above link.
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I wish I knew German so that I could read Mr. Ljendel's thesis. But speaking of illnesses related to vampires - according to an op-ed piece published in yesterday's New York Times (see link below), the director of Pan's Labyrinth (a wonderfully, exuberantly imaginative soul if ever there was one) views us as being in the midst of a vampire pandemic! I like his conclusion, too, that the silver lining may be that if there are demons in our midst, then surely there are angels too. I find myself increasingly open to that very possibility. Now that might be an interesting subject for scholarly inquiry - are there historical accounts of angelic activity somewhere? Hmmmm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Vampire pandemic? Perhaps not a bad description, as there are Twilight books, DVDs, calendars and more in various shops, as well as a lot of other vampire novels and paranormal romances.
Another comment on this 'pandemic' can be found here, courtesy of this blog.
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