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

'A thoroughly modern being'

'While it is probably safe to say that humans have been haunted by the hungry undead ever since they got a whiff of their own mortality, the vampire itself is, for Butler, a site- and time-specific thing, rather than the universally recognizable figure that Christopher Frayling has called “as old as the world”. Butler is not convinced that the vampire was “ever a cultural figure to be found the world over”, and Luckhurst would seem to agree, describing it as a “thoroughly modern being”.'

Butler is the author of Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film, which has been mentioned on this blog before, and Luckhurst is the editor of a recent edition of Stoker's Dracula published by Oxford University Press. And the quote is from a recent article in The Sunday Times: The long life of the vampire by Toby Lichtig. The article also deals with a recent anthology titled Dracula's Guest: A connoisseur’s collection of Victorian vampire stories edited by Michael Sims, which, incidentally, has just been translated into Danish as Draculas Gæst: 22 af de bedste victorianske vampyrhistorier (Rosenkilde & Bahnhof). This to my knowledge is the first time a lengthy part of a text on vampires by Augustin Calmet has been translated into Danish. The part on Magia Posthuma is abbreviated, but the author and the title is mentioned. Unfortunately, the Danish translator has translated revenants in a way that, I think, does not make much sense in Danish. Still, I suppose it works alright as a (very brief) introduction to the subject.

The vampire in French romantic literature

The french blog Vampirisme.com that posts reviews of various vampire books, just reviewed a new book on the 18th century literary vampire in France: Le vampire dans la littérature romantique française 1820-1868 by Florent Montaclair. It looks like an interesting study for those interested in the subject and it includes key texts by Polidori, Bérard, Nodier, Scribe, Dumas, Gautier, and Mérimée:

Apparu en Europe centrale, le vampire est une figure de l'imaginaire née au XVIIe siècle de la confrontation de l'Occident avec le monde ottoman.L'auteur présente la naissance de ce thème en Europe centrale, puis, comment il a existé un mythe du vampire, comment ce mythe, en perdant sa dimension explicative du réel, est devenu, dans la France du XVIIIe siècle, un objet de l'imaginaire, et enfin, comment, les auteurs romantiques en ont fait un motif littéraire, un jeu sur les formes et les normes.

Gender and crime

Criminal women is the theme of a book published last year: Murderesses in German Writing, 1720-1860: Heroines of Horror by Susanne Kord from the Department of German at University College London. The book contains a chapter on vampires, including a history of how 'Serbian vampires come to life in Germany (Leipzig and Vienna, 1732-1755)', but probably mostly concentrating on Elizabeth Bathory and 'female vampires in literature from Goethe to the Grimms (1797-1823)'. Published by Cambridge University Press, it is available for around £50.

The cover reproduces Philip Burne-Jones's famous painting The Vampire.

Dracula's Vettern

In an earlier post I stated my doubts concerning the uniqueness of the vampire. Peter Kremer’s book Draculas Vettern: Deutschlands vergessene Vampire (Dracula’s cousins: The forgotten vampires of Germany; PeKaDe-Verlag, 2006, 14.99 €) is very much concerned with this question: Is the vampire a Slavic concept which influenced the folklore of other parts of Europe, or is the Slavic vampire only one manifestation of the concept of a revenant or living corpse that has been known throughout Europe?

Peter Kremer convincingly documents that the latter is the correct answer, and that folkloric entities known in e.g. Western parts of Germany share all the basic characteristics of the Slavic vampire. This may surprise those who have not been able to study the material available on revenants of various sorts throughout Europe, but Kremer certainly has done his home work and is familiar with not only the usual literature on vampires, but also the literature on other types of revenants, as well as folklore in general, witchcraft cases, werewolves, anthropology and more.

His reading of various authors and sources is both critical and analytical. He appropriately critisises Montage Summers and the great number of authors and ‘vampirologists’ whose works are more or less derivative of Summers, but he also presents a very interesting analysis of the background of German folklore research, which sheds light on its leanings towards finding or constructing a Germanic origin and in its extreme: national socialist ideological ideas. To some scholars the belief in revenants and vampires was so primitive that it had to be seen as non-Germanic, and consequently they had reason to insist on the South East European Slavic roots of the belief.

Kremer expertly reviews the literature and details the various German kinds of revenants, including the masticating dead, and explains the ideas behind these beliefs. He even goes back into prehistory to explore the origins of the fear of the dead and the apotropaic means to defend oneself against the harm of revenants.

He shows how many popular myths stem from fiction and have very little to do with the original folkloric vampires and revenants, and administers what ought to be the final rites to various ‘scientific’ explanations of vampires (porphyria and rabies to name the most popular), showing that they are more based in fiction than in fact.

He is even able to propose hypotheses on how the various revenants can be seen as various evolutionary stages of revenant beliefs, incorporating the role of the Christian churches in the evolution of the corporeal revenant into the 'ethereal' spectre of later ghost stories.

There are 733 footnotes in this 205 page book, and they are a very rich source of information, both concerning the source material and the richness and care of Kremer’s research. Many hours of further reading and consideration can be based on the footnotes alone.

The title’s reference to Dracula seems a bit too popular, considering that this book will probably not appeal to the casual reader. He or she may actually find that their own concepts of vampirism will shatter upon realising that there is nothing desirable about becoming a vampire, no “eternal life” in the company of other vampires, only the state of a living corpse that brings harm to its kith and kin.

Peter Kremer’s Draculas Vettern is a miracle of a contribution to the field and should be read and studied by anyone seriously interested in understanding the origin and nature of vampires and Magia posthuma.

PeKaDe-Verlag can be contacted at pekade3@aol.com.