Revenant - from Italy

Since Emilio de' Rossignoli published his groundbreaking Io credo nei vampiri back in 1961, a number of books on revenants and vampires have been written in Italy, including Massimo Introvigne's La stirpe di Dracula (1997) and Tommaso Braccini's Prima di Dracula (2011). Recently, young Italian historian Simonluca Renda penned another book on the subject, Revenant: Il retorno dei vampiri, a slim volume (136 pages) published by Hermatena, that draws heavily on Introvigne and other writers.

Renda writes about 18th century vampires, the masticating dead, Greek vampires, the vampire tales recounted by William of Newburgh and Walter Map, related myths from antiquity, and - most notably, I suppose - archaeological finds that may (or may not) be related to beliefs in vampires and revenants. A brief appendix deals with the so-called Highgate Vampire, and a bibliography as well as a handful of maps are included.

As I do not really read Italian, I am, unfortunately, only able to get an idea of the contents based on names and references. Consequently, there may be finer points and details that are not apparent to me from scrutinizing the text based on my knowledge of the subject. No doubt this is a nice read for the Italian reader - considering, however, the brevity of the book, it looks to me as if, at best, it mainly summarizes information and views that are available elsewhere, in particular in the books that Renda himself refers to.

Revenant is available from the publisher at € 15.50 from the publisher.

Dracula era in Triennale

To many, Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula has become quite the epitome of the story of the vampiric Count Dracula. The soundtrack music by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar is ubiquitous, and the film’s blend of history and fiction, of romance and horror, as well as its creative play with cinema itself, seem to suit a vision that many people have of Dracula and vampires, or at least one that appeals to them – that is, of course, prior to the boom of adolescent vampire fiction like Twilight. Perhaps, as it is more than twenty years since Coppola’s film received its premiere, many people have simply grown up with this film and consequently now identify Dracula with Coppola’s Count.

So it is little wonder that the first thing behind the dark curtain leading into the Dracula e il mito dei vampiri exhibition at the Triennale design museum in Milan was a screen showing excerpts from Coppola’s film. In fact, the fusion of historical fact and vampire fiction, of artistic creativity and design, and of Bram Stoker’s novel with its interpretation by artists and cinematographers, permeated the exhibition as a whole.

Not so much an extension or reworking of the Dracula Woiwode und Vampir exhibitions at Innsbruck and Bucharest, Dracula e il mito dei vampiri rather integrated items from that exhibition into something new, not only bringing the fictional vampire into focus, but also, as one would expect af a design museum, stressing Italian art and design.

Having watched Coppola’s vision of the Wallachian warlord turned vampire, the visitor was greeted by the famous portrait of Vlad Tepes from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Fortunately, one was not met by Vlad’s gaze, as he rather looks at something or someone to your left, so one can study his features without fear of having aroused his, er, attention. Similarly, the full-length portrait of Dracula Waida Princeps from Forchtenstein Castle appears to look to one side, but strangely, his eyes have an uncanny look as if a film is layered on top of them, or maybe someone attempted to blur them?

Only a very small selection of items from the earlier Dracula exhibitions were displayed here to provide some context for the life and cruelty of Vlad Tepes: A 17th century map of Transylvania from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the coloured print of the city of Papa from 1617 showing impalements, a copy of Sebastian Münster’s 1598 Cosmographey with its depiction of impalements, and various clothes and weapons used by the Ottomans.

The vampire cases and the ensuing debate of the 18th century were illustrated via a handful of books, including Johann Christoph Harenberg’s 1733 Vernünftige und Christliche Gedancken über die Vampirs oder bluhtsaugende Todten, Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy’s 1751 Traité historique et dogmatique sur les apparitions, les visions & les revelations particulières, and the German translation of van Swieten’s commentaries published in 1768. However, there were no documents, no Calmet, Ranft or Tallar, no bust of van Swieten or portrait of Maria Theresa as in the exhibitions at Innsbruck and Bucharest.

Instead, the exhibition of vampire fiction was enhanced by some remarkable items courtesy of the Bram Stoker Estate and John Moore Collection: Bram Stoker’s so-called lost journal that was published for the first time last year, and Stoker’s autograph copy of the first edition of Dracula ‘to my dear mother’, both definitely some of the chief attractions of the exhibition.

A couple of Goya’s Caprichos, a first edition copy of Polidori’s The Vampyre as well as posters for performances of Marschner’s opera Der Vampyr and a programme for a 1927 performance of Deane and Balderston’s stage adaptation all led the way into a room where quotes from Stoker’s novel were displayed in Italian on a wall. Here you could also enter the house of a vampire as envisioned by Milanese architect and designer Italo Rota. A rather creepy tableau of a ‘living room’ with earth strayed across the table and a selection of ritual tools, remedies, books and art, all of which, according to Rota, should reflect the mentality and everyday ‘life’ of a vampire. Suffice it to say, that I would not spend my time in that place…

Entering the world of vampire cinema, one could peep through holes like a voyeur to observe a variety of ‘vampire kisses’ from a number of vampire films, while more analytically, over the door to the next room, a brief genealogy and philosophy of cinematic vampirism was outlined. Nosferatu from 1922 accordingly reflected the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung, whereas Dracula from 1931 showed the vampire in the modern major city, and might be interpreted in terms of Georg Simmel or Walter Benjamin.

Then, for some reason the vampires of Hammer and many other filmmakers from the 1950’s to 1980’s were not included in the genealogy, so we jumped right to the era of post-structuralism (Jacques Lacan) and postmodernism (Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze) with Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1992 and Interview with the Vampire from 1994, respectively. Finally, in a 'liquid' society where 'solid' concepts like work and marriage are, in the words of Zygmunt Bauman, 'like zombies, such concepts are today simultaneously dead and alive',  Edward Cullen and the other vampires of Twilight could be perceived as 'post-vampires', indistinguishable from mortal humans.

Clips from a variety of vampire films, including Mario Bava’s Italian La maschera del demonio from 1960, were shown on three transparent screens in a separate room, their soundtrack having been replaced by popular pieces like Orff’s O Fortuna and Delibes’s Flower Duet, all played at high volume.

Among the clips were, of course, Coppola’s Dracula film, and not only its screenplay and parts of its storyboards were exhibited, Dracula e il mito dei vampiri also paid homage to the film's costume designer, Ishioka Eiko, by displaying the blood red armour she created for Dracula, and showing a documentary about her work on the film. The  tribute to Eiko was followed up by a a tableau of impressive female stage costumes from various operas and ballets like Aida, Die Zauberflöte, and Turandot. Very fitting for an exhibition in the hometown of Italian fashion and the famous opera house, La Scala. A wall of photos from catwalks rounded this section off with fashion for men designed by Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada and others, all illustrating the crossover of the vampire from fiction to fashion, no doubt with a good deal of help from Goth subculture.

Finally, a room not intended for children, exhibited pages from Guido Crepax’ comic book adaptation of Dracula as well as a hitherto unknown sequence in which his heroine Valentina meets Count Dracula.

Personally, I must say that the exhibition whet my appetite for more, as it is fairly easy to imagine how an exhibition like Dracula e il mito dei vampiri could be expanded in order to go into more detail with Vlad Tepes, with the struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe, with vampires and revenant beliefs, and with the rise of the fictional vampire, Count Dracula and the vampire of modern popular culture. I am, however, well aware of the painstaking work that is no doubt required to assemble the number of paintings, books, documents and artefacts that would fit in with the themes, and at the same time I am not sure how much the average visitor is in fact able to digest. With regards to Vlad Tepes and vampires, the exhibitions in Innsbruck and Bucharest are so far the most comprehensive exhibitions I am aware of, and it will probably be hard to surpass hem. But hopefully there is more to come in the future.

In connection with the exhibition, Skira has published a 131 page catalogue, which includes a number of articles and a selection of the items exhibited. Margot Rauch has contributed the historical part of the catalogue, Dracula: voivoda e vampire, which is in fact a translation of what she wrote for the Innsbruck and Bucharest exhibition catalogues, as well as an inventory of some of the books and artefacts exhibited. The article on the costumes of female vampires (and vamps) include a number of photos of stars like Dietrich, Garbo, Bernhardt, Swanson and Bara that were not on display, while Italo Rota’s vampiric living room is only documented on a youtube video that can be accessed with a QR code.

Source: Alef

Whether Dracula e il mito dei vampiri will be exhibited elsewhere in the future – in the same or some other form – I do not know, but the photo to right was posted on facebook by the company that organized the exhibition,with the accompanying message:

‘Dracula ha fatoo le valigie ed è pronto a ripartire alle conquista di nuove città!’:

Dracula has packed and is ready to conquer new cities!

Voyage to Transylvania

Allessandra Bisceglia's Dracula: Viaggio in Transilvania (Giunti, 2008) is a colourful companion to the Italian TV series Voyager presented by Roberto Giacobbo. The book is no doubt meant for a relatively young audience who are presented with the history of Vlad Tepes, vampires, the fictional Dracula and his cinematic incarnations. A number of photos from Romania from the making of the Voyager documentary on the subject are included.

The few pages concerning vampires are cursory and go into very little detail, although it may be worth noting that the author favours the possible translation of the word nosferatu - which in my opinion Emily Gerard hardly heard, but simply read while researching her book on Transylvania - as "non-spirato": 'il non-morto'...

Dracula e il mito dei vampiri

A copy of Johann Christoph Harenberg's Vernünftige und Christliche Gedanken über die Vampirs oder Bluhtsaugende Todten (1733) on display in Milan

This is a selection of videos from the current exhibition on Dracula and the vampire myth at the Triennale di Milano in Italy. The exhibition combines items from the exhibition that was originally on display at the Schloss Ambras in Austria, and that I myself saw when exhibited in Bucharest in Romania, with new items from e.g. vampire films like Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Austrian and Romanian catalogues for the original Dracula exhibition

Jaw bones and carousing

I picked up the current issue (no 1 from 2012) of the Danish popular history magazine, Illustreret Videnskab Historie, because it contains an article on Danish funerary customs from the 16th to the 18th century. Like many similar magazines, this one tries to cater for readers seeking the unusual, sensational, and macabre.

One news story concerns an Italian archaeological find last autumn. In September 2011, the Daily Mail reported that during archaeological diggings in an ancient cemetery in Piombino in Tuscany, an 800 years old female skeleton was found with seven nails found driven through her jaw bone. Archaeologist Alfonso Forgione, from L'Aquila University, who led the dig said at the time:

'It's a very unusual discovery and at the same time fascinating. I have never seen anything like this before. I'm convinced because of the nails found in the jaw and around the skeleton the woman was a witch. She was buried in bare earth, not in a coffin and she had no shroud around her either, intriguingly other nails were hammered around her to pin down her clothes. This indicates to me that it was an attempt to make sure the woman even though she was dead did not rise from the dead and unnerve the locals who were no doubt convinced she was a witch with evil powers.'

As usual it is quite difficult to be certain what to make of the find, cf. my recent post on archaeological 'evidence' of vampire and revenant beliefs. News stories tend to be unreliable in these cases, so one should look out for what Forgione publishes on the matter.

An Italian actually plays a role in the aforementioned article on Danish funerary practices. This Italian visited Denmark in the 1620's and noted that when someone dies, the Danes do not grieve, they laugh, eat, drink and dance around the corpse. Apparently, when Denmark adopted the Lutheran faith, funerary practices changed, and people bid the deceased farewell by gathering socially for days. At times, they even gathered before the dying person had actually deceased.

When he or she had in fact died, the church bells chime to scare evil forces away. While the bells were chiming, the relations of the deceased notified the animals belonging to the deceased person of his or her death, so they would not accompany the deceased in death. News of the death were whispered into the ears of every animal, even the bees were informed as people gently knocked on the beehive.

Then the corpse was washed, dressed properly and put in a coffin. The feet, however, were kept without shoes to avoid the deceased from walking about, and as an extra precaution, the feet were tied together.

Over the next days, relatives and neighbours stopped by to participate in the wake. People sang, ate, played cards, drank beer and brandy, and danced until early morning.

In 1607, King Christian IV tried to prohibit the partying, but without success. A century later, pietist priests finally suppressed the carousing, promoting a more puritanical approach to death, so by the end of the 18th century all the partying was over. Nowadays, Danes usually participate in a service in a church or chapel followed by a sombre and relatively sober gathering, although named after the beer that is customarily imbibed: gravøl = grav (grave) + øl (beer).

The Danish history magazine is published by Bonnier Publications, and national versions are also published in the other Scandinavian countries, in Estonia, Latvia and in the Netherlands.

Mastication in Italian

Initially written in Latin, then translated into German and expanded by the author, and some 250 years later translated into French, and published in a modern German edition, Michael Ranft's De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis was published in Italian earlier this year by LibriPerduti as Diceria del Vampiro. It is accompanied by texts by Gabriele Ferrero and Dario Spada.

Before Dracula: Vampire Archaeology

An Italian reader has kindly informed me of a new book on vampires: Prima di Dracula: Archeologia  del vampiro (Before Dracula: Vampire Archaeology) by Tommaso Braccini, who 'has earned a doctorate in Anthropology of the Ancient World and works at the University of Siena's Interdepartmental Centre for Anthropology of the Ancient World'. The publisher introduces the book this way:

'As the Middle Ages drew to a close, in the Balkans and in the increasingly distressed territories of the dying Byzantine Empire, there was a widespread fear of restless dead people who would abandon their tombs in order to hound the living. Drawing upon wide-ranging original research, this book examines the development of beliefs in vampires in the Byzantine and Slavic Middle Ages, explores their origins in ancient times, and follows their evolution and relationships with heresy and the history of the Church up to the modern era. Anthropological analysis of ancient sources reveals unexpected facets of the vampire myth; the ensuing "archaeology" shows that reality truly can be stranger than fiction.'

According to my informant, 'The author quotes extensively dozens of sources in Latin, Ancient and modern Greek and other European languages, and I must confess that many of them are not even quoted by Summers, Barber, Lecouteux, Keyworth or other renowned vampire history experts. His bibliography seems also very up-to-date. It is very specific about Byzantine and Greek vampires, but it delves also on the magia posthuma question.'

The book is available from Italian Amazon at a price of €15.30.

The Vampyre in Rome

This summer I spent a few days in hot and sunny Rome. Perhaps not a place with so many connections to the subject of this blog apart from more general subjects like the way the ancient Romans treated their dead etc. This blogger, however, endeavoured to seek out a few places to report about.

Pope Benedict XIV (Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini), was interested in the significance of post mortem signs of saints, and consequently commented on vampires in his De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et de Beatorum Canonizatione (1743) and the later addition De vanitate Vampyrorum (1752). His statue can be seen in Saint Peter's basilica, cf. the photos above and below. His name can be found in various places in Rome, e.g. at the Musei Capitolini because he purchased a number of works which are exhibited there.

Just next to the Spanish steps you can find an 1819 copy of John William Polidori's The Vampyre! It is on display along with a well-known portrait of Polidori in a room on Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley in The Keats-Shelley House, where John Keats spent the last months of his life in a room facing the famous steps. Suffering from tuberculosis he arrived in November 1820 and died on 23rd February 1821. His grave can be seen in the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome. On display in the Keats-Shelly house is also a first edition of his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems which had been published in July 1820. Lamia, of course, plays a role in the history of vampire fiction, cf. e.g. Twitchell's The Living Dead.


The Keats-Shelley House is seen in the photo above to the left and in the photo below to the right and it is easily recognizable because of the plaque on the facade facing the steps. Shelley actually never visited the house, but the founders of the museum wished to recognise the importance of Italy in Shelley's life and work. On display is also a portrait of Mary Shelley, and there is a bit of information on the 'haunted summer' at Villa Diodati and Frankenstein as well. There is even a portrait of Matthew 'Monk' Lewis. You can also see a library of thousands of volumes by and on Keats, Byron, Shelley and other English Romantics.
Apropos of Romantics and Gothic fiction, I once wrote about the popularity of Fuseli's nightmare paintings on e.g. book covers, and below you can see another example seen at the bookshop at the Colloseum: an Italian translation of Artemidorus' 2nd century book on dream interpretation, Oneirocritica.
Finally, speaking of dreams and nightmares, fans of director Dario Argento's movies will go to the Profondo Rosso store and spend all their money on DVDs, books, Goblin CDs and souvenirs. The shop puslishes a few books, including one (in Italian) on Dracula and vampire movies which looked very traditional, so I refrained from buying it. I found one on Mario Bava in English, which I bought. Curiously, it is relatively easy to find Argento's movies on DVD in Rome, whereas Bava's works (which I personally find more interesting than Argento's) are hard to come by, even in the Profondo Rosso store. When I asked, I was shown but a handful of titles.

Vampire fiction is as popular in Rome as everywhere else. Stacks of Italian translations of the Twilight books, as well as dozens of other paranormal romances and vampire novels can be found in every bookshop. Non-fictional books about vampires, however, was nowhere to be found, at least I could not find any.

The Vampire Bites Back?

Leon has pointed to some news in archaeology that is supposed to relate to a belief in vampires.

The original work was presented by Emilio Nuzzolese and Matteo Borrini at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in February as a poster in the field of odontology entitled The Vampire Bites Back in Odontology and Anthropology: Case Report of Skeletal Remains on Nuovo Lazzaretto Island, Venice.

The find is the skeleton of a female buried in a mass grave in Venice in 1576 with a brick forced into her mouth, and the theory seems to be that this must have been done to avoid her from e.g. eating her shroud enabling her to harm the living. If that should indeed be the case, it is a belief that is related to various sorts of revenants including vampires, but of course, vampires as they came to be known in the 18th century were not known in Venice in the late 16th century.

I find it hard to be really sure what to think of it from just the news stories available on the internet, so hopefully more exact information will be available.