Ruthweniana

One of a set of 50 trading cards published by
Acid Rain Studios in 1992 titled: Vampires
Throughout History (from Giovannini's book)

'IT happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon a London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman, more remarkable for his singularities, than for his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention.'

Lord Ruthven certainly attracted the intention of not only polite society, but the public in general in the 19th century. Initially no doubt aided by the attribution of the tale to the notorious Lord Byron, the vampiric Lord and his effect on particularly women eventually took on a strange life of its own: in print, on the stage and set to music.

Much has been written about Polidori's tale, the sensation that it created and its role in developing the aristocratic vampire into Count Dracula, but I cannot recall seeing a work solely created to the subject of Lord Ruthven, until I picked up Fabio Giovannini's Lord Ruthwen il Vampiro in Italy. Ruthwen, and not Ruthven, it says, because the major part of the book consists of a translation of Charles Nodier's Lord Ruthwen ou Les Vampires published in 1820 and attributed to 'C.B.' (Cyprien Bérard). Giovannini has, however, also included a translation of Polidori's original tale, but what attracted to me the book was the 'Ruthweniana': the information about Lord Ruthwen/Ruthven's adventures in various guises and media, not only in 19th century, but also in films and comics of more recent years. And I certainly was unaware of the 'true' Lord Ruthvens: Patrick Ruthven (c. 1520-1566) and William Ruthven (d. 1541-1584), cf. also Clan Ruthven.

Giavonnini also includes bibliographic information about Polidori's The Vampyre and a colourful series of portraits of thirty of Lord Ruthwen's descendants from Sir Francis Varney and Count Dracula to Edward Cullen and Count Domingo Vrolok. Lord Ruthwen il Vampiro then no doubt will appeal both to those seeking vampire thrills and for the afficionados of the genre. Required, of course, that one can fully understand and enjoy the Italian tongue.

For Nodier's novel in French, check Google books or Florent Montaclair's Le vampire dans la littérature romantique francaise 1820-1868: Textes et documents (2010). English translations of Nodier and other relevant texts should be available in Frank J. Morlock's Lord Ruthven the Vampire (2004).

From Ovid to Fred Vargas

From Ovid to Vargas, the March issue of the French Le Magazine Littéraire minutely traces the metamorphoses of the vampire over more than forty, lavishly illustrated pages of articles by Claude Lecouteux, Jean Marigny, Daniel Sangsue, Jacques Sirgent and a host of other writers and scholars. Mostly concerned with the development of the fictional vampire, there is also room for historical and mythological aspects of the topic. Lecouteux writes about the vampire from Kisiljevo to Sozopol, and Maialen Berasategui outlines the 18th century vampire debate. The issue also contains a theme on Romanian authors and some extracts from Søren Kierkegaard’s recently published journals.

A thorough review of the vampiric contents can be found on vampirisme.com.

The Nightmare in Paris

L'ange du bizarre

New and longer version of the video for the exhibition at Musée d'Orsay.

Austria or Serbia?

Roxanne Hellman and Derek Hall's Vampire Legends and Myths published in a series of books about the supernatural in 2012 by Rosen Publishing is a very attractive book about vampires aimed at adolescent readers. It is attractive because of a variety of colour illustrations from a broad range of places and sources, a selection that reflects an unusual variety of topics, which however are somewhat marred by a lack of precision. E.g. Kisiljevo or Kisilova is described as 'an Austrian village' and the text is accompanied by a nice photo of what looks precisely like that: a village in Austria instead of a village in Serbia. At the same time, Peter Plogojowitz is clearly characterized as 'a Serbian peasant'. It is, however, still a joy to flick through the pages of this book to study a great number of photos from Romania and other places around the world.

Kisilova: 'an Austrian village'

The Morava river, and Kosovo, 'in the vicinity of which Arnold Paole was seemingly troubled by a vampire'

Voltaire and Empress Maria Theresa

'Gerard van Swieten, whose investigations put an end to vampire hysteria in Austria' (sic)

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

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.

Waking the German Undead

The development of the literary vampire from John William Polidori’s The Vampyre over Varney the Vampire and Carmilla to Bram Stoker’s Dracula is well-known. This development highlights the vampire as an English language phenomenon, but this is, perhaps, due to lack of knowledge of the German language vampire fiction of the nineteenth century. According to Oliver Kotowski, this view probably stems from both Stefan Hock and Montague Summers, the latter claiming that ‘in Germany sensational fiction was long largely influenced by Polidori’, but it is a view that underestimates the number of vampire stories actually written during the nineteenth century.

Kotowski collects a dozen of these stories in his recent anthology Lasst die Toten ruhen: Deutsche Vampirgeschichten aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (Atlantis Verlag, 368 pages, paperback and hardcover at 14.90 € and 19.90 € respectively). Spanning the whole century, the stories are stylistically different, and Kotowski also includes two stories from parts of Eastern Europe that were available in German at the time.

Some texts are relatively well-known, e.g. Hoffmann’s Cyprians Erzählung, while others see their first modern reprint in this volume. Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach’s Lasst die Toten ruhen is among the latter, although it has been frequently reprinted in English as Wake Not The Dead where it is usually attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck. An appendix reprints another story that is popular in English, The Mysterious Stranger, but as the original in German is so far unknown, Kotowski here has translated it from the English short story.

Each story is accompanied by biographical and bibliographical information as well as an afterword on the story and its use of the vampire motif. At the end of the book is a short summary of tendences in the German vampire literature of the nineteenth century and a bibliography.

The value of books...

The value of printed books unfortunately deteriorates as one has to wade through a flood of cheaply made print on demand reprints, and now this: a book on Peter Plogojowitz apparently consisting of material from Wikipedia, but still sold for no less a price than € 34!

Considering that the original Wikipedia entries will be updated over time, what is the point in printing and selling them in the first place?

The living and the dead

'One would not easily believe that corpses come out of their graves and wander around to terrorize the living, were there not so many cases supported by ample testimony.'

This BBC documentary from the series Inside the Medieval Mind spends some time on the relationship between the living and the dead in medieval Britain. Narrator Robert Bartlett of St Andrew's University recounts some of the 'ghost stories' told by William of Newburgh and others. Many of these stories are compiled by Andrew Joynes in Medieval Ghost Stories (The Boydell Press, 2001).

Bartlett is author of several books including The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

From the fifth book of William of Newburgh's Chronica rerum anglicarum as paraphrased by Robert Bartlett in the quote above.