Hearts

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
On this day of edible hearts made of chocolate, I think I will refer once again to the delightful book on 'heart-eaters' and related subjects by Christa Tuczay that I wrote a bit about here. The heart itself of course has its own history, see e.g. here, and in modern vampire fiction staking is no longer about fastening the corpse to the ground so that it cannot return, but rather about piercing the heart.

Another kind of heart eater

'Step into the world of your grandparents,' a Danish travel agency promises when advertising trips to Romania. Eating the heart of a dead man probably wasn't practised in the days of my grandparents, but that's another example of heart eating mentioned by Christa Tuczay in her book. I have actually posted about the incident she refers to, because it's the case of a suspected vampire in Marotinu de Sus in late 2003, but in my post I wrote that 'they cut up the corpse and removed the heart which they burnt at the cross roads.'

A later report on the incident was published in The Independent in October 2007, when Dr. Timothy Taylor recounted what happened when he visited the village and talked to an elderly villager who claimed to have witnessed the exhumation of other presumed vampires (strigoi). He told Taylor that 'The men took the heart, spiked aloft, to the crossroads outside the village. There they roasted it over a brazier and, as far as I could understand, stuffed glowing coals into the ventricles. Held up in the night sky, the heart shed charred flakes that were caught in a tea towel. These were taken to the niece's house [supposedly a victim of the vampire], ground up and mixed in a glass of water. "The niece drank it," Fifor [an anthropologist] confirmed, "and in the morning she said she felt better... in this way she was cured."'

Tuczay comments that according to Fifor the eating of the heart of a vampire is neither a well-known nor old Romanian remedy against strigoi.

Taylor, unfortunately, seems to subscribe to the improbable theory of Juan Gomez-Alonso that the vampire cases of the 17th and 18th centuries might have been caused by rabies. To quote Peter Mario Kreuter: 'Doch alle diese Versuche erwiesen sich als Fehlschläge, denn die Mediziner bedienten sich des Vampirglaubens als eine Art Steinbruch und pickten sich nur diejenigen Elemente des Volkglaubens heraus, die ihre Theorie zu stützen schienen, wobei sie oft noch nicht einmal zwischen Elementen des Volksglaubens und erfundenen Details der Belletristik sauber unterscheiden konnten.' (Der Vampirglaube in Südosteuropa, p. 12-13)

Below is the last part of the True Blood episode about vampires including footage from Marotinu de Sus as found on youtube. As mentioned in my old post, the series is available on DVD.

Heart-Eaters

Last year I mentioned a book by Christa A. Tuczay about demonic crimes in the Donau Monarchy: Die Herzesser: Dämonische Verbrechen in der Donaumonarchie (Seifert Verlag, 2007). I bought a copy of it when I was in Vienna, and from the parts that I have read I can say that it is a nice and informative book about subjects like cannibals, werewolves, murderers and vampires from the countries that have been part of the Donau monarchy!

There are about a dozen pages about vampires that provide an overview of some of the 18th century vampire cases, including Georg Tallar's examinations of victims of vampires. Gilles de Rais, Elisabeth Báthory, Vlad Tepes and a few other well-known characters are also briefly described, slightly ironically, as Tuczay says in her afterword: 'obwohl sie sicherlich meist nicht zum Lachen reizen, sich aber mit einer Prise Humor leichter ertragen lassen.'

The 'heart eaters' mentioned in the title refer to various tales of literal and symbolic eaters and stealers of hearts, including Le Livre du cuer d'amours espris by René d'Anjou, which exists in an illuminated manuscript in Vienna (see the above illustration which is shown in black and white in the book). In this poem the poet is in love and dreams that Amor takes out his heart and gives it to Desire, cf. the illustration. In other tales, the heart of a lover is served as food by the cuckolded husband to his wife.

The foreword is by Mark Benecke, and there are useful notes specifying sources and further reading. All in all 160 illustrated pages at €19.90, and once again: it is in German...

Addendum: I notice that Tuczay is also one of the editors of a new anthology entitled Faszination des Okkulten: Diskurse zum Übersinnlichen published by Francke Verlag that also published the Poetische Wiedergänger anthology on vampires.

Kakanien Revisited

The Kakanien Revisited web site referred to in my previous post contains some excellent articles and a bibliography (which I have previously linked to). All of them are in German, so I can only suggest that those of you who are interested in the subject and are unable to understand this language, should consider studying the language :-)

Sexualität Macht Tod: Prolegomena zu einer Literaturgeschichte des Vampirismus by Clemens Ruthner, 'sketches, how the vampire has turned from a blood-sucking ghost of (South-)Easteuropean folklore into a popular myth especially in Westeuropean literature/s and culture/s. Since there is only little scholarly work done about the vampire in German literature, this article will focus especially on texts in this language which played an important role as a "transmitter" in the cultural transfer of vampirism from the (South-)East to the West.'

It says that this paper is 'meant as the outline of an exhaustive monograph on vampirism in German literature the author is working on,' but unfortunately I can't remember having seen any mention of this promising monograph so far.

The other contributions, Der Vampir, ein Fremder? Ethnische Minderheiten im Vampirglauben Südosteuropas by Peter Mario Kreuter, "Trag mich nach Südamerika". Schauplätze der osteuropäischen Vampirliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihre Konnotationen by Christoph Augustynowicz, and Süd/Osteuropäer als Vampire: Draculas Karriere vom blutrünstigen Tyrannen zum mythischen Blutsauger. Prolegomena zu einer Literaturgeschichte des Vampirismus II by Clemens Ruthner focus on e.g. the fictional aspects of the topic.

Finally, Forschungsliteratur: Vampirismus. Kommentierte interdisziplinäre Auswahlbibliografie is a comprehensive and annotated bibliography on the subject. This bibliography was updated for the anthology Poetische Wiedergänger edited by Julia Bertschik and Christa Agnes Tuczay.

"Heart-Eaters"

I just happened to notice that Christa Tuczay, who has previously written about medieval magic, vampires and related subjects, is publishing a book this month that might interest some.

The subject is "Demonic Crimes in the Donau Monarchy", but as the publisher actually has a web page in English describing the book, I will refer you to that for a description of this - at least at first sight - rather outlandish subject. One example of a "demonic criminal" seems to be the infamous "blood countess", Elisabeth Bathory, who is frequently dealt with in books on vampires and Dracula, although she has nothing particularly to do with revenants.

According to the web site of the Vienna University, Tuczay is lecturing on 'Der Dichter als Aufklärer. Kritische Stimmen zum Aberglauben' this fall, and has previously lectured on 'Unheimliche Begegnungen: Geister, Vampire und Dämonen in der mhd. Literatur'.