Classic Literature: Der Vampyr (1835)

I was recently involved in editing a paper by Álvaro García Marín for a future edition of the Journal of Vampire Studies, regarding a remarkable story find. The story that was the focus of the paper is not this one – and I will not undermine Marín’s discovery or paper by elaborating on that story further – however this story was mentioned within the paper in passing and it warrants looking at here for the singular piece of astounding lore it would seem to have introduced into the genre (albeit that the story seems to have vanished into obscurity after publication). First published in 1835 in Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode, and written by Franz Seraph Chrismar, the story has been recently translated into English and published by Christian Nikolaus Opitz and released as a thin volume, with an introduction and the short story itself. Opitz renames the story Vlad the Devil, which indicates why this is so exciting.

The story sees an international group of travellers crossing Wallachia and forced to camp for the night. There is a thunderstorm approaching from the distance and, after food and wine, one of the Wallachians starts to tell a campfire tale. He suggests that, in the immediate area, a vampire is known to be abroad and recounts a visit to a village nearby, which stood beneath a Boyar's manor house, which he happened to approach for shelter on a previous trip. On reaching the village he noticed that the place was up and about as there was to be a wedding between the Boyar’s daughter and a visiting Count. The Wallachian joins the festivities and then falls asleep, only to wake and, leaving the house he is in, sees the manor on fire and the fire had spread to the village, including the house he was in.

The village was burned to the ground and he blames the conflagration on a vampire. This seems underscored by the fact that the Boyar’s daughter is found murdered the next day in a pool of her own blood, the Count nowhere to be found. The conclusion was the Count was a vampire. The Boyar and villagers moved to another estate owned by the Boyar… The story is interrupted by a stranger, who has arrived at the camp, calling it a fairy tale. The storyteller seems shaken by the man’s appearance; “a deadly paleness spread across his cheeks, and his eyes gaped fixedly” suggested to me that he might recognise the stranger. The others note the stranger as invoking an uncanny feeling. The stranger says he is from, “Where the owl dwells, and the bat,” which is the description that the Wallachian gave of the only life that resides in the burned-out village.

With the storyteller silent, the stranger begins a tale and tells them of “the Voivode whom his contemporaries called Vlad the Devil”, and recounts several points of Vlad III’s story, including nailing turbans to heads, the beggars feast and dining beneath impaled victims. There is also a suggestion that he would chop people into slaw. The storm hits, a bolt of lightning hitting close by and then the rains drenching the fire and plunging the frightened travellers into darkness. As they panic (and the Wallachian cries that there is a vampire), the stranger says “‘Vlad the Devil is making game of you!’” Could this imply the ability to control of the weather? Perhaps, though the storm was coming anyway. In the morning, with the storm passed, the stranger is gone but the Wallachian is convinced that he “was Vlad the Devil who, as punishment for his enormous misdeeds, still walked the earth as a vampire, since hell itself must refuse to accept the villain.”

None of the travellers are actually harmed, though the Wallachian discovers they are virtually on the site of the burned-out village. Of course, this is a conflation of Vlad III and vampires long before Stoker borrowed the name Dracula (note that only Vlad is used in this) and it also implies the use of the rank of Count by the Voivode, also. Opitz, in the introduction, does find it unlikely that Stoker would be aware of this obscure Viennese story written and published before his birth, amounting to the one fiction story that Chrismar wrote (he wrote two books best described as travelogues also). I do disagree with the suggestion in the introduction that Stoker combined the strands of Dracula with the figure of Vlad III, it seems very clear to me that Stoker essentially borrowed a name and the tiniest bit of biographical detail and there is little evidence to suggest he was any more aware of Vlad III’s history and folklore. Nor was the connection first pointed out by McNally and Florescu. Ali Riza Seyfi’s reworking of the Dracula novel in 1929, entitled Kaziki Voyvoda, explicitly linked the Count and the Voivode and Bacil F Kirtley suggested a connection in his 1956 volume Dracula, the Monastic Chronicles and Slavic Folklore. However, I do understand how the McNally and Florescu book has pervaded the collective awareness.

I have to thank Opitz for translating this remarkable addition to the 19th Century vampire lore and Marín for making me aware of it within his paper. I will put the Amazon links for the translated story below, but the scan of the original can be found here.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK