A well-illustrated history of a modern myth

When in Paris a couple of months ago, I picked up a number of books at the Musée d'Orsay, including Jean Marigny's Vampires de la legende au mythe moderne published in 2011 by Éditions de La Martinière.

Large format, nicely bound with blood red edges, and fully illustrated in colour, it also includes three special booklets containing cover art, posters and stills from vampire novels and films. There are, in fact, a number of illustrations that you will probably not find elsewhere. The text, however, follows relatively traditional lines: 'Vampires' from various periods and regions across the globe, as well as listing Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais as persons who inspired the vampire myth, and the main portion of the book traces the fictional vampire from John Polidori's Lord Ruthven to True Blood and manga.

Essentially, this is a colourful introduction to the subject, but those interested in vampires from a more historical or folkloric point of view, should rather seek out Marigny's Sang pour sang: Le réveil des vampires (translated into English as Vampires: The World of the Undead) or the volume Colloque de Cerisy: Les Vampires.

'Aujord'hui, le vampire est omniprésent sur nos écrans, dans nos libraires et dans le multiples manifestations. Cette vitalité exubérante est sans doute un signe de santé mais elle peut aussi mener rapidement à seuil de saturation. La mode actuelle des vampires a-t-elle des chances de durer? Nul ne peut le dire. On peut raisonnablement supposer que le vampire, devenu trop banal, connaîtra dans les années à venir une nouvelle période de récession - mais on sait aussi qu'il est immortel ...' (from Marigny's conclusion).

The Nightmare in Paris

They are coming...

The Schwarze Romantik exhibition that I mentioned in an earlier post, is opening at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris on March 5 under the title L'ange du bizarre. Le romantisme noir de Goya à Max Ernst. I myself plan to go and see the exhibition before it ends in early June.

The catalogue, previously available only in German and English, is now also available in French with Carlos Schwabe's painting of Death and the graveyard digger on the cover.

Guided tours will explore the literary roots of dark romanticism from Shakespare to Shelley, Poe and Le Fanu. Three talks are planned in March: Guillaume Faroult from the Louvre will talk about Les sources obscures de la peinture anglaise : Shakespeare, Burke, Füssli, Von Holst..., Julie Ramos from the Institut National de l'Histoire de l'Art about Religion, mélancolie et paysage chez Caspar David Friedrich, and Emmanuel Reibel from the Université Paris X about Sorcières et fantômes dans la musique de Berlioz à Wagner. In April and May the museum will celebrate the works of three Scandinavian film directors: Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller and Benjamin Christensen.

C'era una Volta

Those of us who got interested in books on vampires in the Seventies or Eighties will probably have memories of the name Ornella Volta, as she was the author of an influential book titled Le Vampire: La mort, le sang, la peur, published as volume 8 in the French Bibliotheque internationale d'erotologie by Jean-Jacques Pauvert in 1962, highlighting various erotic aspects more or less related to the vampire theme, and not least including a lot of interesting illustrations. With Valerio Riva she was also the editor of an Italian anthology of both non fictional and fictional vampire texts, published in French as Histoires de Vampires in 1961, and popularly attributed to Roger Vadim, who at the time had just directed his vampire opus Et mourir de plaisir (hard to find on DVD, but currently available on youtube) inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.

While collecting a bit of information on various editions of her vampire book some time ago, I noticed on the internet that she moved on to become an expert on the French composer and pianist Érik Satie, and that she is today running the Satie museum at 6 Rue Cortot in Mortmartre, Paris.

I had almost forgotten about this, until I recently decided to supplement what I had of Satie's compositions for solo piano with a 5 cd collection of his complete solo piano music performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet and noticed that the liner notes were written by - Ornella Volta!

Thibaudet, by the way, has also recorded the complete works for solo piano of another French composer, Maurice Ravel, including Gaspard de la nuit. The second movement of this composition should be familiar to vampire film enthusiasts, as it was featured in Tony Scott's The Hunger starring Bowie, Deneuve and Sarandon.

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.