Saturday 21 July 2007

Illustrating Keyworth

There are two figures in the Keyworth paper on the uniqueness of the 18th century vampire. Both are contributions from Rob Brautigam, but I think there are a couple of errors in the captions. Anyway, one of the figures is by Albert Decaris and is called Le Vampire transfixé according to the French web site L'universe du gothique. The caption describes the illustration as: 'Soldiers destroying a vampire'. Now, I can't remember the details of every vampire case, but I find it hard to believe that e.g. Austrian soldiers of the 18th century would be very keen on actually staking a corpse. The illustration is probably from a fictional vampire tale, and it is truly a remarkable depiction of the staking of a vampire, but from my point of view the act seems apocryphal.

Update: Rob Brautigam has kindly told me that the captions got interchanged at the editors. He also mentions that the Albert Decaris etching has no title or caption in the book where it was originally printed, Jean Mistler's novel Le Vampire (Editions du Rocher, 1944). The other illustration is from L'Echo des Feuilletons (ca. 1866-7).

1 comment:

Anthony Hogg said...

That same illustration appears in Charles Grivel's Dracula: De la Mort à la vie (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, 1997).

The citation (p. 252) for the image is: "20. Albert Decaris. Gravure illustrant Le Vampire, de Jean Mistler (cliché Bernard Eche)."

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