From Ovid to Fred Vargas

From Ovid to Vargas, the March issue of the French Le Magazine Littéraire minutely traces the metamorphoses of the vampire over more than forty, lavishly illustrated pages of articles by Claude Lecouteux, Jean Marigny, Daniel Sangsue, Jacques Sirgent and a host of other writers and scholars. Mostly concerned with the development of the fictional vampire, there is also room for historical and mythological aspects of the topic. Lecouteux writes about the vampire from Kisiljevo to Sozopol, and Maialen Berasategui outlines the 18th century vampire debate. The issue also contains a theme on Romanian authors and some extracts from Søren Kierkegaard’s recently published journals.

A thorough review of the vampiric contents can be found on vampirisme.com.

The Return of the Dead

In London I found an English translation of Claude Lecouteux' Fantômes et revenans au Moyen Age titled: The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind. It is published by Inner Traditions which should make one a bit cautious, as this publisher tends to publish books on the secrets of the Masons, secret societies, yoga, UFOs, 'forbidden history' and that kind of thing. Still, it is the first translation into English of the book, and the publisher is following it up next year with a translation of Lecouteux' book on vampires: The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes (apparently, books about the 'secret' or 'forbidden' history of something sells).

An initial look at the book and a comparison with the German translation (I, unfortunately, do not own the original French edition) indicates that the English translation is slightly abbreviated and less academical. It does contain the notes, but the quotes in original languages (including my native language, Danish) are omitted. Chapter three in the German edition, Totenbräuche, appears to be missing from the English edition, whereas the afterword by Régis Boyer from the original French edition is retained in the English translation.

All in all, these differences make me a bit cautious in approaching the English translations of Lecouteux' work presented by Inner Traditions. Hopefully, a closer examination will prove my worries unwarranted.

'How the ghost stories of pagan times reveal the seamless union existing between the world of the living and the afterlife. The impermeable border the modern world sees existing between the world of the living and the afterlife was not visible to our ancestors. The dead could - and did - cross back and forth at will. The pagan mind had no fear of death, but some of the dead were definitely to be dreaded: those who failed to go peacefully into the afterlife but remained on this side in order to right a wrong that had befallen them personally or to ensure that the law promoted by the ancestors was being respected. But these dead individuals were a far cry from the amorphous ectoplasm that is featured in modern ghost stories. These earlier visitors from beyond the grave - known as revenants - slept, ate and fought like men, even when, like Klaufi of the Svarfdaela Saga, they carried their heads in their arms. Revenants were part of the ancestor worship prevalent in the pagan world and still practiced in indigenous cultures such as the Fang and Kota of equatorial Africa, among others. The Church, eager to supplant this familial faith with its own, engineered the transformation of the corporeal revenant into the disembodied ghost of modern times, which could then be easily discounted as a figment of the imagination or the work of the devil. The sanctified grounds of the church cemetery replaced the burial mounds on the family farm, where the ancestors remained as an integral part of the living community. This exile to the formal graveyard, ironically enough, has contributed to the great loss of the sacred that characterizes the modern world.'

From Germany to Denmark via Norway

The German translation of Claude Lecouteux' book on the medieval revenants, Geschichte der Gespenster und Wiedergänger im Mittelalter, has unfortunately been hard to get for a while (it was published in 1987). I have been used to using a library copy, but a few months back I finally purchased my own copy. I actually got it from a second hand book store in Norway, and when I received it I was surprised to find that it contains an Ex libris Lutz Röhrich, because Lutz Röhrich actually wrote a foreword to the book. So the copy I now own must have been Röhrich's own copy. Presumably, it was sold after Röhrich's death in 2006, and somehow ended up in Norway before I bought it. So now it's located here in Denmark.

Lutz Röhrich (1922-2006) was a German folklorist who has published a number of books on e.g. fairy and folk tales.

I find that it is a very interesting ex libris. Unfortunately, I have no idea why Röhrich would choose this pessimistic motif. He was a German soldier during WWII and got seriously wounded, so that might have affected his world view. But I really don't know. If anyone does, I would like to hear from you.

I have previously written about another exlibris.

A reality no one doubted

The ever industrious Sorbonne professor Claude Lecouteux has compiled an anthology on lycanthropy in collaboration with a few other people that was published earlier this year, Elle courait le garou : Lycanthropes, hommes-ours, hommes-tigres (José Corti Editions). The book is a companion volume to a similar anthology on revenants published in 2006, Elle mangeait son linceul : Fantômes, revenants, vampires et esprits frappeurs Une anthologie.

'En appendice, des actes de procès des XVIe et XVIIe siècles apportent la preuve que le loup-garou fut autrefois une réalité que nul ne mettait en doute.' I.e. in the appendix the acts of the processes of the 16th and 17th Centuries prove that the werewolf was once a reality that no one doubted.

Forthcoming books

A new edition of the German translation of Claude Lecouteux's book on vampires, Die Geschichte der Vampire: Metamorphose eines Mythos will be published by Patmos Verlag this June.

This fall the University of Chicago Press distributes a title for Reaktion Books that sounds interesting: From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth by Matthew Beresford. The subject should be European history which is why it sounds quite interesting. However, I haven't yet found any information about Beresford or the book apart from the title, price and that kind of information.

Books

Recently, the author of one of the books that I have written about sent me an e-mail. I think, he basically wanted to say that: OK, if you're after more information on the historical aspects of vampirism, then my book probably will be of little use, but I am sure that my book is (to quote his e-mail) 'pretty good for what it set out to do'.

Returning from a few days away, I found a copy of another book on vampires that I had decided to order: Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth by Wayne Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu. Unfortunately, just perusing it for a short while led me to conclude that this too is one of those books that I will gain very little useful from.

Barlett is a management consultant who has worked for some time in Romania and written a number of books on historical topics. Idriceanu is a philologist in Bucharest. Their book is not simply the usual rehash of information on vampires, because they include some chapters on witches and 'the magus', but honestly, I don't get the impression that I will gain much from reading the book. The chapter on 'The Vampire Epidemics' is based on Barber, Frayling, Ronay and a few other well-known authors. In fact, the bibliography is pretty revealing, because it is relatively short and not impressing. It even includes four Harry Potter novels and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings!

No doubt the book is probably a pleasant read for the reader who isn't particularly familiar with the history of vampires, but I feel that my own time is too limited for me to spend a few hours reading this particular book. And I hope that my short posts on books may spare other people from spending time and money on books that may not be worth obtaining if you have an interest in vampires and magia posthuma that is more or less similar to my own.

I did actually find one interesting fact in the bibliography: The book on vampires by Claude Lecouteux has been published in Romania: Vampiri si vampirism. Autopsia unui mit (Bucuresti: Saeculum, 2002).

Lecouteux on poltergeists

I haven't been aware of this recent book by Claude Lecouteux, professor at Sorbonne and author of several books on medieval revenants and one on vampires (Histoire des vampires: Autopsie d'un mythe, 1999, also available in a German translation): La maison hantée: Histoire des Poltergeists. It was published by Editions IMAGO in September last year, and is available from various French bookstores on the internet for € 19. I suppose the format and contents are probably similar to those of the book on vampires. It's a shame that so few of his works are available in English.

There is an interview with Lecouteux (in French) here or in audio.