Interviews

That not everyone with an interest in the subject of vampires is enthusiastic about the Twilight phenomenon, is a fact clearly stated by Mark Benecke in a recent interview about the 'vampire subculture', where he remarks that: 'Die Leute, die denken sie wären Vampire, die haben «Twilight» nicht gesehen.', The people who think they are vampires haven't seen Twilight.

Personally, I did work my way through the first film, but must admit that I had to press fast forward to get through the next two. But then, I doubt that I belong to the target audience of those books and films...

Well-known vampire expert, Peter Mario Kreuter is being interviewed by Anthony Hogg on his Vampirologist blog. In the first installment Kreuter tells how he first got interested in vampires, a road that curiously begins with an interest in this blogger's native country, Denmark: 'Danish history fascinates me...'

Apropos of Kreuter, he contributed a paper to a book on Theophrastus Paracelsus that was published last year, Paracelsus im Kontext der Wissenschaften seiner Zeit: Kultur- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Annäherungen. The paper (Paracelsus und die deutsche Sprache. Nebst Anmerkungen zur deutsch-lateinischen Mischsprache temporibus Theophrasti et Lutheri) concerns the language of Paracelsus, which is apparently usually critized, but Kreuter has another view on the matter.

The 'first' vampire

Anthony Hogg, in a comment to a recent post, asks: Who was the first vampire? Giure Grando, Peter Plogojowitz, or perhaps the vampires mentioned in Mercure Galant as quoted by Calmet.

As I wrote in an earlier post, there is a museum dedicated to Giure (or: Jure) Grando, commemorating him as the first vampire. As it says here: 'Jure Grando (1656) was the first classical Vampire to be mentioned in documented records.' Still, I would myself refer to Peter Plogojewitz (or however you prefer to spell his name) as the 'first' vampire, because that term is used in Provisor Frombald's report from Kisiljevo.

As for bloodsucking, well, most of these revenants tend to either strangle or by other means affect the living, and blood itself generally first turns up on the corpses that are exhumed, and it is then interpreted as blood drawn from the unfortunate victims of the revenant. But some kind of bloodsucking is actually mentioned in connection with the Mercure Galant article on the Polish Upiertz that Hogg also refers to in his comment. Still, the term 'vampire' is apparently not used, although Calmet claims that the articles 'parlent des oupires, vampires ou revenants'. There appears to be an excerpt from the 1693 issue in question on the web site of this author of a book on vampires, i.e. here, and it actually says that this Demon draws blood from the body of a living person or of cattle.

A Google search, of course, provides a number of other answers like Cain, Lilith, Vlad Tepes, George Bush...

Nosferatu predating Gerard

The 'amateur vampirologist' Anthony Hogg has published an article on the word 'nosferatu' in the newsletter Borgo Post published by the Canadian branch of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula. As far as I know, the newsletter is not available online, but Hogg supplies his readers with a scan of the article. Read more on the subject in his blog post.

The Land Beyond the Forest

'More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire, or nosferatu, in whom every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell.'

Thus according to author Emily Gerard in an article on Transylvanian Superstitions in The Nineteenth Century in 1885. Her later book on her travels in Transylvania, The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania will be republished in two volumes by Cambridge Library Collection this November:

'Novelist Emily Gerard (1849–1905) went with her husband, an officer in the Austrian army, to Transylvania for two years in 1883. Then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today a region of Western Romania, Transylvania was little known to readers back in England. Fascinated by the country, Gerard still found it an isolated and alienating place. In the years following, she wrote this full-length account (first published in 1888) as well as several articles on the region, which Bram Stoker used when researching the setting for Dracula. With humour and compassion she describes her encounters with the different nationalities that made up the Transylvanian people: Romanians, Saxons and gypsies. Full of startling anecdotes and written in a novelistic style, her work combines her personal recollections with a detailed account of the landscape, people, superstitions and customs.'

Anthony Hogg, by the way, has recently written a bit about the word nosferatu on his blog.

Q&A

I have become the first 'victim' of the amateur vampirologist in a new series of interviews with 'vampirologists'.