The Real Vampire Files

Dracula – voievod şi vampir

Later this month I intend to enter the doorway shown above in a photo I have taken the liberty to 'borrow' from an interesting Romanian piece on the current exhibition on Dracula and vampires in Bucharest that I mentioned some time ago.

It will only be a brief visit to Bucharest, so I am not sure if there will be time to go to Snagov or any of the other places that the 'Dracula tourist' would go, but I am looking forward to the exhibition - more so after seeing the photos accompanying the above mentioned web site.

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.

Leptirica

It has been a long time since I last mentioned the Yugoslavian (that was what it was back then) movie Leptirica. But now I would like to refer to an in-depth review of it that another blogger has written recently. As it has yet to see release on DVD in one of the major languages, I can only agree that it is 'an important film begging for a full re-mastered international release'.

Les Mystères de Paris

Spending some time in Paris this summer, I of course tried to take a look at some things that might be of relevance to this blog.

At Versailles there was a small outdoor exhibition of the suits of some professions, including the astrologer's as shown above, and, of course, the busts and statues of some people who have played a role in vampire history. Not least Voltaire (below) who actually visited Senones, but later on attacked Calmet in his oft-quoted:

'Quoi ! C’est dans notre xviiie siècle qu’il y a eu des vampires ! C’est après le règne des Locke, des Shaftesbury, des Trenchard, des Collins ; c’est sous le règne des d’Alembert, des Diderot, des Saint-Lambert, des Duclos qu’on a cru aux vampires, et que le RPD Augustin Calmet, prêtre, bénédictin de la congrégation de Saint-Vannes et de Saint-Hidulphe, abbé de Sénone, abbaye de cent mille livres de rente, voisine de deux autres abbayes du même revenu, a imprimé et réimprimé l’Histoire des Vampires, avec l’approbation de la Sorbonne, signée Marcilli !'

The naturalist Buffon, who was the first to use the word vampire for a bat, can be found in various places (like the statue below) in the Jardin des plantes, even depicted like some kind of Dr. Doolittle who almost can talk to the animals. There is also a plane tree (platanus orientalis) that he planted in that garden in 1785.



The statue of Buffon is facing the Grande Galerie d'evolution, which actually carries the name of the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who before Buffon had been involved in developing the garden. In vampire history, Tournefort is of course known for observing and describing Greek revenant belief in his Relation d'un voyage du Levant.



A curious honouring of the dead can be seen at the Père Lachaise cemetery, cf. the tombs of Jim Morrison and Victor Noir. Currently there is an exhibition of photos of cemeteries from around the world, including one from Highgate Cemetery in London.

The mysterious, but fake tomb below can be found in a private vampire museum run by author Jacques Sirgent. Situated on the border of old Paris, it is easy and fast to go to Le Musée des Vampires by Metro, but entrance is only possible on request. Well, I couldn't go to Paris without trying to see a vampire museum, so I and my wife visited the place and had a pleasant time with Sirgent who talked about his books and his views on vampires, the possible location of Vlad Tepes's corpse etc.

Jacques Sirgent is the author of a number of books, including Le livre des vampires and Erzsebeth Báthory: Le sang des innocentes. One of his books is available in English: Drakula's Tomb.

The influence of Calmet

Apparently Gilles Banderier, known for his edition of Ildefonse Cathelinot's comments on Calmet's Traité, spoke on De saint Benoît à Dom Calmet : permanences de la culture bénédictine last Saturday July 24 at Senones, and was accompanied by Aurélie Gérard who spoke on Les bibliothèques - Senones milieu littéraire au XVIIIe siècle. It was a part of the Festival des Abbayes en Lorraine.

Gerard is the author of a forthcoming book on Calmet and his influence on his contemporaries: Dom Augustin Calmet et l'abbaye de Senones (Vosges): Un milieu littéraire. It is published in October, and more information can be found here:

'Les milieux littéraires fleurissent au siècle des Lumières sous la forme de cafés, de clubs, de salons, ou de façon plus institutionnalisée avec les académies et les sociétés savantes dont le nombre ne cesse de croître, tandis que les célèbres Congrégations de Saint-Vanne et de Saint-Maur exhortent leurs religieux à poursuivre l’oeuvre des illustres académies monastiques mises en place au siècle précédent. Cette dernière mission tient tout particulièrement à coeur à Dom Augustin Calmet, bénédictin lorrain connu dans toute l’Europe pour son oeuvre littéraire monumentale qui aborde à la fois l’exégèse, l’histoire et les curiosités, et pour les dignités qu’il a occupées au sein de la Congrégation de Saint-Vanne.

Son élection à l’abbatiat de la riche et influente abbaye de Senones, dans les Vosges, le 9 juillet 1728, lui permet de concrétiser toutes ses ambitions. Le monastère, déjà ouvert sur le monde des Lettres par ses prédécesseurs, notamment Dom Mathieu Petitdidier, accueille l’érudit qui va développer dans ce foyer de spiritualité toutes les activités propres à un milieu littéraire : écriture, copie de textes, échange et commerce de livres, gestion de la bibliothèque, critique littéraire, liens avec l’édition. Qui mieux est, ces activités littéraires participent à l’ouverture de l’abbaye sur le monde qui l’entoure déjà favorisée par sa situation géographique et politique. Les correspondances de Dom Calmet et de son neveu et coadjuteur, Dom Fangé, témoignent du rayonnement de l’abbé de Senones auprès de ses contemporains religieux ou laïques, en Lorraine, en France et en Europe, et de ses relations avec les Grands et avec les académies. L’influence de Dom Calmet sur les philosophes des Lumières, notamment Voltaire, et son intérêt porté aux principales controverses de son siècle sur la Bible, le surnaturel et l’histoire, transforment ce milieu « littéraire » en un milieu éclairé digne de son temps.'

Enchanted Europe

This recently published study looks like an interesting book: Enchanted Europe. Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750 by Euan Cameron, member of the departments of Religion and History at Columbia University and author of The European Reformation. According to the publisher, Oxford University Press, this new book 'charts the rise and fall of superstition in European history - from magical healing, spells, and divination, to the widespread belief in fairies and demons', 'explores the debate over folklore from medieval times, through to the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Enlightenment', and 'sets shifting nature of 'superstition' in historical context - from threat to 'true religion' to 'harmless' ethnic heritage':

'Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called "superstitious" by educated elites.

For centuries religious believers used "superstition" as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith "wrongly." From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what 'superstition' was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make 'rational' sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons.

Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving 'superstitious' customs as folklore and ethnic heritage.

Enchanted Europe offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular 'superstition' in the European mind.'

I found a review of the book which sums up her reading of it this way:

'The picture that emerges from his analysis is not as simple as one might believe. Although many think of the journey towards Enlightenment as one of, literally, ‘disenchantment’ – a slow erosion of faith in magic in favour of scientific rationalism - Cameron shows how clerics and religious thinkers on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide long maintained a belief in the supernatural. However, whereas clerics of all denominations were determined to divide the universe into sharply polarised realms of good or evil according to their own particular dogma, the lay population inhabited a far more morally ambivalent world based upon more practical needs. As Cameron explains, ‘ordinary poor people [...] feared the loss of health or property and sought whatever remedies might work’ – whether approved by ecclesiastical authority or derived from forbidden folk remedies and rituals.

Although this is hardly an anecdotal work, some interesting stories emerge along the way. In the earliest days of Christianity, St Augustine mounted a vigorous offensive against the fading Roman pantheon by literally ‘demonising’ the gods. The original meaning of the Greek word daimon (daemon), in terms of a tutelary spirit, was gradually overlaid with negative connotations, reaching its zenith in medieval hysteria relating to demonic possession. (Interestingly, the original definition of the word was only to be widely rediscovered and rehabilitated in our own age via the novels of Philip Pullman).

Perhaps the overall lesson of Cameron’s book is that any attempt to impose a rigid external order on human culture and imagination will have only limited success. As he points out in the final chapter, by the 18th century, Europe’s intellectuals had ‘lost their fear’ of witchcraft, demons and superstitions and therefore expended much less energy in keeping them at bay. In the centuries that followed, post-Enlightenment thinkers actually began to embrace what they had previously sought to explain away and acknowledged the power of superstitious belief as part of a rich cultural tapestry of ethnic heritage. He suggests that the Romantic era, renewed Victorian interest in spiritualism and occultism and more recent New Age thinking have much in common in this regard, aided and abetted by nation states’ lack of interest in enforcing religious discipline on their subjects, at least in the West.'

Debunking the Dracula myth

I noticed this AFP news story on the exhibition in Bucharest:

'An exhibition opened Friday in Bucharest that aims to debunk the myths surrounding Walachian prince Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), who inspired Bram Stoker's bloodsucking character Dracula.

"The exhibition is based on historical studies showing that the legends related to Vlad Dracula were aimed at presenting eastern Europe as a primitive land and a source of evil," Austrian curator Margot Rauch told AFP.

Entitled "Dracula - Voivode and Vampire", the exhibit for the first time puts on display in Romania portraits of Vlad Tepes (who reigned twice, between 1456-1462 and then in 1476) borrowed from the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna and the Schloss Ambras museum in Innsbruck.

Manuscripts and engravings depicting him as a "blood-thirsty tyrant" are also on display.

"Vlad Dracula was doubtlessly cruel, but not more so than other princes of his time," Rauch said.

"In fact he was a victim of bad propaganda" from his western European peers.

One of the engravings, dating back to 1500, shows Tepes having a meal under the eyes of a dozen empaled men, while others have their limbs chopped and their heads boiled in cauldrons.

A large part of the exhibition is devoted to vampirism, several alleged cases of which were reported in the early 18th century, especially in southeastern Europe.

Several treaties on this "phenomenon" as well as essays on whether "vampires are active during daytime" are also exhibited, such as an edict issued in 1755 by empress Maria Theresa "banning superstitions".

Rauch however stressed that Vlad Tepes owes his reputation as a vampire to Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", published in 1897.

The character has since been a source of inspiration for many movies, but Rauch said: "It's time to see Vlad Dracula in another light than that given by Hollywood."'

Dracula in Bucharest!

Surfing the internet for some information, I was surprised to find a news story on this Spanish vampire web site on a Dracula exhibition at The National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest!

As far as I gather, also from the information available in Romanian, this should be the Austrian exhibition that I wrote about in an earlier post which makes it very interesting news - and tempting to go on a trip to Bucharest!

The exhibition is on until October 10, so there is still a chance to see it if you are able to go there.

Are the dead happier than the living?

I have recently added a list of noteworthy texts on the right hand side of the blog. Most are books from the 17th and 18th centuries and most are in German, French or Latin. The majority are digitally scanned editions from various libraries and other providers, as these are most reliable (although the scans supplied by Google Books unfortunately often vary in quality from readable to unreadable). Also, most of the titles have been mentioned on this blog over the years, but I would like to draw attention to one exception: De miraculis mortuorum by Heinrich Kornmann published in 1610.

Beginning with the blood of Abel and other stories from the Old Testament, Kornmann collects a great number of tales and examples from the Bible and other literature on death, as well as beliefs and customs surrounding death. He also poses a few questions like e.g. 'Mortui an viventes feliciores?' in part 8, chapter 52): whether the dead are happier than the living?

Christian Friedrich Garmann who in 1670 published a book with the same title, accused Kornmann of indulging in nonsense ('quod varia admiscet exotica & incongrua, in recensendis fabulis & miraculis ab otiosis & nugacibus monachis excogitatis luxuriat nimiopere'). Still Garmann himself refers to Kornmann in his own writings on the masticating dead, as Kornmann e.g. writes about a woman who in death ate herself (De muliere mortua seipsam devorante, part 7, chapter 64).

Although Garmann was more sceptical than Kornmann, the verdict on Garmann himself was hard. Here according to Philippe Ariès in The Hour of Our Death:

(Garmann's ambigious approach to the question of the sensibility of the dead body) 'explains why Garmann was dismissed by the authors of medical biographies of the late eighteenth century - men almost modern in their thinking - as a credulous writer who believed the most absurd stories. It is true that he hesitates, not daring to make up his mind. Belief in the sensibility of the cadaver has the support of the people, and what we would call folklore, but scientists distrust the popular penchant for superstition. Garmann notes that there are a great many reliable observations in favor of this opinion, but he is cautious. When he tells an extraordinary story, he immediately adds a skeptical and rational commentary, but his reservations do not prevent him from giving all the details. This kind of prudence was a standard device for advancing controversial ideas while taking a minimum of risks.' (p. 356)

Back to Kornmann: He was, apparently, fascinated by miracula, so he also wrote a book about the wonders of the living: De miraculis vivorum, published in 1614 in Frankfurt. This book is fortunately also available online, if anyone should be interested. Here are lycanthropes, giants and various mythical beasts as well as many other wonders from the Bible and various other books.

Having Kornmann's collection of miracles of the dead at hand makes it easier to follow the thread to Garmann, Rohr, Ranft and so forth.