Editor: Álvaro García Marín
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
The blurb: Vampires are usually associated in the popular imagination with Transylvania and other Eastern European locales. But in this new collection, editor Álvaro García Marín has uncovered the earliest appearances of vampires in English literature, revealing their surprising origin in Greece. This volume includes two seminal classic texts, Lord Byron's "Fragment of a Novel" and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre", together with five other rare and never-before-reprinted vampire tales from the early 19th century, including the important and inexplicably neglected "The Vampire of Vourla". Also featured is a scholarly introduction by Prof. Marín, delving into this forgotten field of vampire literary history and situating it within the larger Romantic era and 19th-century English attitudes toward Greece.
The Review: With the thesis that Greece was perhaps more important to the vampire myth than other parts of the Balkans, and the further thesis that an idea of an idealized image of Greece in Western Europe (as a cradle of philosophy, science and arts) meant a need to distance Greece from such folklore, which in turn impacted the depiction of Greece within early vampire literature, Álvaro García Marín introduces us to the representation of Grecian vampires in the early 19th Century.
The first two stories are likely known to you, being Byron’s Fragment of a story and Polidori’s seminal the Vampyre. Also included is the title story, The Vampire of Vourla, as Marín suggests, the crown jewel of the volume and the earliest known story to feature a vampire transforming into a bat. Of the other stories there is much to interest the vampire scholar though some of them are rather bloodless affairs (which fits with the distancing Greece from superstition) – especially something like The Vampire Knight and the Cloud Steed (1837) by an Anonymous author in which the vampires are ruses designed to trick Turks. There is some interesting lore along the way; Vroucolacas are dead bodies possessed in Vroucolacas: a Tale (1846) by James K Paulding, and sunlight exposure actually causes the corpse to turn in Vampires (1839) by John Bowring.
Probably my favourite of the newly discovered tales was from a travelogue by James Emerson Tennent, though I agree with Marín that it feels more like creative writing than a story picked up on travels. The Story of Demetrio Gkikas, the Vampire of Santorini (1829) sees a lovelorn revenant – or so Gkikas eventually becomes after misfortune and misadventure – haunting the grave of his lost love but othewrwise harming no-one. This sympathetic vampire is not the earliest such character, but he is pretty darn early. I also liked the idea that becoming a vampire proved he had, in his heart, stayed true to the Orthodox Church.
The volume is slender, in honesty, but with five early 19th Century stories never published in modern collections it is essential. 8 out of 10.
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6 comments:
Excellent, thank you—ordered immediately!
There are several German-language vampire stories written between the years 1820 and 1835 by now-forgotten (and I'm guessing mostly not-yet-translated) authors Gottfried Peter Rauschnik, Ernst Raupach, J. E. H., Isidor, Hirsch und Wieser, and Franz Seraph Chrismar in the volume Die Totenbraut: Deutsche Vampirgeschichten des 19. Jahrhunderts, Edition Spielberg, Vienna, 2016. According to the introduction to the volume, J. E. H. is unknown except by those initials; Isidor is the pseudonym of a "woman from Mauritius" (!) whose given name is unknown; and Hirsch und Wieser are a duo likewise unknown except for several entertaining short stories that appeared in the 1830s. Their contribution to the volume, "Der Vampyr" of 1835, sounded particularly interesting in that it refers to an actual opera, Peter Joseph von Lindpaintner's Der Vampyr of 1828 (an opera ultimately derived from Polidori's "The Vampyre"), the premise of the short story being that its protagonists attend a performance of the opera, and find themselves wondering if the lead singer who plays the vampire isn't perhaps able to interpret his role a bit too convincingly! (Could that plot conceivably have played an as-yet unknown part in influencing Murnau's Nosferatu nearly 90 years later?) I have yet to dig into those stories, having read so far only the last story in the volume, Karl Adolf von Wachsmann's "Der Fremde" (1843), the source of "The Mysterious Stranger" that I alluded to at length in an earlier post (https://tinyurl.com/27ve6bdj).
Hi Donald, thanks for stopping by and you are, of course, more than welcome.
I am sure there is much currently still hidden in the 19th Century's range of stories. Marín has found several here and those were in English language publications, the treasure trove in other languages might be largely untapped, certainly within the English speaking world.
Lindpaintner's Der Vampyr sounds fascinating and whether it influenced Murnau or not it certainly pre-empts the main conceit in Shadow of the Vampire by 172 years!
In this post you said there are earlier examples of the sympathetic vampire than 'The Story of Demetrio Gkikas', can you name them? I've been cataloging early vampire literature and the best examples I can find of a sympathetic vampire before 1829 are: The Black Prince from 'The Black Vampire' (1819), Bertha Kurtel from 'The Skeleton Count' (1828), and Alinska from 'La Vampire, or, The Virgin Vampire' (1825). Are there any others I'm missing?
Hi Matthew, I was specifically thinking of Alinska but the Black Prince, as you identified, is also sympathetic (though complexly so).
A caution around the Skeletal Count. there is some thought that it might be a hoax. I mention it in my blog post on the story and direct to a page that reasons it is: https://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2014/08/interesting-shorts-skeleton-count-or.html
Is it a hoax? I don't know but neither have I seen a facsimile of an original publication.
By hoax, do you mean 'The Skeleton Count' is a modern day invention by Peter Haining, or is it still a 19th century vampire tale, but not by Elizabeth Caroline Grey?
One odd thing I noticed about 'The Skeleton Count' is that the 3rd person narration tells of Bertha the vampire going into a village alone looking for victims. In early vampire literature, I almost never see the vampire's point of view in either 1st or 3rd person narration (one issue of Varney being an exception). The vampire only makes an appearance when the protagonists or victims of the story are present. It's rare to see what the vampire is doing or thinking when other characters are not present. The only other time I've seen this happen is in 'The Black Vampire' when Mr. Personne and Euphemia become vampires, and the narration follows them. If 'The Skeleton Count' is not a hoax, it's another early example of showing the point of view of a vampire albeit briefly in 3rd person.
I forgot to mention in my first post that I went out and bought 'The Vampire of Vourla' on Amazon after reading your review. I really enjoyed the book and the introduction by Alvaro Garcia Marin was brilliant.
Hi Matthew. The accusation I linked to was that the only source for the story was Haining and it can't be found and the Grey wrote very different stories. The author concluded that Haining created the story himself.
I cannot say one way or the other, which is why I still featured the story but with a connection to the accusation so folks can make their own minds up. And you're absolutely right that, if genuine, shows that pov and a sympathetic vampire.
Glad you enjoyed the book and pleased I could introduce you to it :)
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