On several occasions, particularly on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, dead people were suspected of being revenants or vampires, and consequently dug up and destroyed. Some contemporary authors named this phenomenon Magia Posthuma. This blog is dedicated to understanding what happened and why.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Season's greetings!
My best wishes to everybody. I hope you will all have a merry christmas!
After a busy December I wish that I will find more time to post here on Magia Posthuma.
Let me first say, this is an absolutely wonderful blog, with surprisingly accurate information and none of the usual theatrics associated with vampire "research." Flattery out of the way, I would like to ask a favor of you. I am working on a screenplay loosely based on G. van Swieten, and I wanted to use a selection of his Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster. And through your lovely blog, I was able to find a German edition online! Unfortunately, while you appear to be fluent in German, I am not, and ten years ago I might have been able to slog my way through it, but now can hardly get past the old-fashioned type. I was wondering if you might have knowledge of an English translation? My position is complicated by the fact that I currently reside in Japan, and thus I do most of my research online. I am really looking only for a small selection of van Swieten's most interesting criticisms of vampire beliefs. My thanks for putting together such a great blog and for any help you might be able to give me.
An excerpt from van Swieten's remarks on vampirism has been translated into English in Jean Marigny's Vampires: The World of the Undead (Thames and Hudson, 1994). This excerpt was recently reprinted in Elizabeth Miller's Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Documentary Journey into Vampire Country and the Dracula Phenomenon. If you are unable to locate these books or need to know more, please let me know by e-mail (available on my profile).
Merry Christmas to you, too. I hope that 2010 will bring more motives for you to keep running this blog extraordinaire (and spare time for it!), which is a paradigm, not only of an academic view of its genre, but all blogs in general. Uunlike mine, which publishes almost about everything, yours is specialized on a very interesting topic, but with witty, humor and knowledge. Congrats again!
3 comments:
Let me first say, this is an absolutely wonderful blog, with surprisingly accurate information and none of the usual theatrics associated with vampire "research." Flattery out of the way, I would like to ask a favor of you. I am working on a screenplay loosely based on G. van Swieten, and I wanted to use a selection of his Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster. And through your lovely blog, I was able to find a German edition online! Unfortunately, while you appear to be fluent in German, I am not, and ten years ago I might have been able to slog my way through it, but now can hardly get past the old-fashioned type. I was wondering if you might have knowledge of an English translation? My position is complicated by the fact that I currently reside in Japan, and thus I do most of my research online. I am really looking only for a small selection of van Swieten's most interesting criticisms of vampire beliefs. My thanks for putting together such a great blog and for any help you might be able to give me.
Thank you for your kind words.
An excerpt from van Swieten's remarks on vampirism has been translated into English in Jean Marigny's Vampires: The World of the Undead (Thames and Hudson, 1994). This excerpt was recently reprinted in Elizabeth Miller's Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Documentary Journey into Vampire Country and the Dracula Phenomenon. If you are unable to locate these books or need to know more, please let me know by e-mail (available on my profile).
Merry Christmas to you, too. I hope that 2010 will bring more motives for you to keep running this blog extraordinaire (and spare time for it!), which is a paradigm, not only of an academic view of its genre, but all blogs in general. Uunlike mine, which publishes almost about everything, yours is specialized on a very interesting topic, but with witty, humor and knowledge. Congrats again!
Post a Comment