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~new~ VAMPIRE POSTCARDS ~new~ VAMPIRE POETRY ~new~
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Vampires in Fiction
Fact or Fiction?
By Morrigan Brak
What is it about the fictional vampyre that draws our deepest desires to the surface? Is it perhaps their power over their victims? Or possibly the seductive yet evil nature that is portrayed by the media? Or maybe it is just because we all want to be immortal. What ever the reasoning is, Vampyre fever has afflicted the general populace as never before. More and more movies are featuring our favorite fanged friend. The Gothic scene is an explosion...bleeding over into nearly every one of the "normal" small towns of America. You can't even go to a bookstore without being bombarded by works of fiction dedicated to our most beloved "monster". I too have found myself wrapped up in the rapture media has to offer on an entertainment level. I have spent countless hours in a candle lit room reading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicals...or watching every vamp movie I can get my hands on until I know the script word for word. Yet, I can't seem to understand even my own fascination. I know that what I am seeing on the television or reading in a book is only fantasy... Or is it? And on that note, these things I must ask...as many before me have also.... How much of these "fictional" characters are based on truths? Are Vampyres themselves Making these movies? Writing these books? Writing the rules to the role play games? Would that not be the ultimate "Masquerade"? Does our fear of what lurks in the shadows of a moonless night keep us blinded to the reality of things? Do we choose to stay that way because "ignorance is bliss"? Do we embrace Vampyres in a fictional sense that we may sleep better at night? After all, why would you have to protect yourself against a fantasy? Perhaps these questions may never be answered... We most likely already have all the answers already. How many among us are willing to acknowledge what we already know? Art Imitates Life.... think about it.
Vampire Fiction Writers
by Tattunigma
Ah the beauty of vampire fiction! Such rich characters and worlds literally wrenched from the minds of brilliant authors, authors who seem to see more than they admit to. And oddly enough, though diverse in descriptions, many of the accounts bear startling similarities.
PROGRESSION OF THE VAMPIRE IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE
by Jeff Kessler
The beliefs in the vampire of folklore in Germany and the Slavic
countries resulted in a great series of debates in the German universities of
the 1700s. Although the debated ended with the banishment of the vampire from
the rational world, the debate served to evoke a response from the romantic
poets of the generation following. One of the earliest known of this
poetry on the theme of the vampire is Heinrich August Ossenfelder's 1748 poem
"Der Vampir." It was, however, the publication of Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe's "Die Braut von Korinth" (The Bride of Corinth) in 1797 that
gave the weight of this incomparable author to the theme, legitimizing it.
Goethe's work was well known in England, where it inspired such poets as Byron
and Shelley, and inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1801 poem "Christabel,"
which is credited as the first poem about a vampire in the English language.
The next step for the literary vampire occurred in Geneva in 1816,
confined by inclement weather, Claire Clairmont, Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin,
Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori spent an evening composing 'ghost stories' for
one another's amusement. While this evening is most famous because Mary
Godwin developed her story into the novel Frankenstein, that was not the only
notable story of the evening. Polidori found Byron's tale so intriguing
that, several years later, he wrote the first English short story about a
vampire, "The Vampyre." Published under Byron's name, the story
received instant attention, and was well known long before Byron could even deny
his authorship of it. Polidori's vampire, Lord Ruthven, was the first to show
many traits that we have come to expect of vampires in literature. The
most important of these is that Ruthven is not merely a mindless monster.
He moves quite easily in mortal society, and was capable of being quite
charming. Although Dr. Polidori committed suicide at 26, his vampire lived
on after him, appearing in a series of plays in Paris. Ruthven's final
appearance was in the last work of Alexandre Dumas, best known for his The Three
Musketeers.
Polidori's vampire short story, reprinted in 1840, directly
inspired the first vampire novel, James Malcolm Rymer's Varney the Vampire; or A
Feast of Blood: A Romance. It originally appeared in 109 weekly
installments chronicling the unlife of Sir Francis Varney. Heavily
influenced by Polidori's story, Varney shares many traits with Ruthven, adding
very little more than his long, fang-like teeth to the vampire mythology.
Varney was also the first vampire to be destroyed at the end of his story,
killing himself by leaping into a volcano.
"Carmilla" by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, was
originally published in 1872 as part of the collection In A Glass Darkly.
The title character, Carmilla, properly known as Mircalla the Countess Karnstein,
is far closer to the cumulative concept of the vampire than her predecessors.
Although not damaged by the sun, Carmilla appeared almost exclusively at night.
She transformed herself into the shape of an animal, and attacked her victims
with two long teeth, described as looking like the teeth of a fish. Fully
in the modern tradition, the loved ones of her wasting victim hunted her to her
crypt, where she was found in her coffin. They drove a stake through her
heart, then decapitated and burned her, all elements that would become staples
of vampire fiction.
One of the many people who read "Carmilla" was Abraham
"Bram" Stoker, a man who had already possessed an interest in folklore
and the supernatural. Awaking one night from a nightmare of a vampire, he began
work on a novel of his own. Stoker used "Carmilla" as one of his
sources for his 1897 novel, Dracula, as well as superstitions he learned from
Emily Gerard's book The Land Beyond the Forest, (which, of course, is a literal
translation of the name 'Transylvania'.) Easily the most well known
vampire novel, Dracula is an overwhelming step towards the modern idea of the
vampire. Dracula has great strength and extended canine teeth.
He has long fingernails, as well, which he uses to draw his own blood for Mina
Murray to drink, attempting to turn her into a vampire. He controls
animals, and can turn himself into them as well, including now the bat.
Dracula shows no reflection in a mirror - a touch that had never before appeared
in any vampire literature or folklore. Dracula sleeps not in
coffins, but in wooden crates, and their purpose is not to keep him out of the
sunlight - in which he walks freely - but rather to contain his native soil,
which he is required to sleep in. Dracula is repelled by garlic and the
crucifix, and the wooden stake is mentioned several times as a manner of
dispatching a vampire. Lucy Westenra and several other vampires are indeed
destroyed by the stake, although Dracula himself is killed by being stabbed with
a bowie knife, and decapitated.
The vampire found his next lair in the pulp fiction magazines of
the 1920s - 1950s. Successor to the Victorian penny dreadful, the pulp
magazines published huge quantities of escapist literature. While many of
these stories have well-known authors, such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton
Smith and Robert E. Howard, none of them individually made much impact on the
evolving vampire myth. Collectively, however, they began to show the
vampire as a romantic figure. Where Stoker's Dracula was concerned only
with the blood, not the gender, of his victim, in the pulps one found
overwhelmingly populated with male vampires who seduce younger female victims.
Although the vampire made few notable returns to the printed page
during the early days of film, the late 1970s were a renaissance of vampire
literature. Nineteen Seventy-five saw publication of Stephen King's Salem's Lot,
1976 the first of Anne Rice's immensely popular Vampire Chronicles series,
Interview with the Vampire, and 1978 the first of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St.
Germain books, Hotel Transylvania.
While the authors of vampire fiction before film built heavily off
each other, these modern works often put themselves in opposition to what has
gone before. Rice claims that she never was able to actually finish Stoker's
Dracula, but that from what she read, she learned she wanted to take a very
different viewpoint. Instead of seeing the vampire as an animal, hers
would be "angels going in the other direction." Rice stripped
away most of the religious aspects of the vampire myth, permitting her vampires
to be unaffected by such items as crucifixes, although she retained most of
their supernatural abilities, with the exception of transformation. Yarbro
even further demythologized the vampire legend with her St. Germain, who, aside
from being 3,000 years old, was largely devoid of supernatural powers.
Even more than
Rice's Lestat de Lioncourt, Yarbro's Count de St. Germain was a sensual
figure, and much is written about his love affairs with mortal women over the
centuries. Subsequent works have further emphasized the erotic qualities
of the vampire, to the point where most of his supernatural abilities become
merely sidenotes. Poppy Z. Brite describes her 1992 novel, Lost Souls, as
a "homoerotic, Southern Gothic rock 'n' roll vampire tale" defining
what may be the appeal of the vampire in his most recent resurrection "he
laughs in the
face of safe sex, and he lives forever."
Information condensed from the stories mentioned in the text and:
American Vampires: Fans, Victims, Practitioners, by Norine Dresser
Love in Vein: Twenty Original Tales of Vampiric Erotica, edited by Poppy Z.
Brite
Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, edited by Allen Ryan
The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, by J. Gordon Melton
The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles,
by Katherine Ramsland
Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead, by Manuela Dunn Mascetti
Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps,
edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg.
A BRIEF TIMELINE OF VAMPIRE LITERATURE
This is a list taken from The Cabinet of Dr. Casey and The Penguin Book of
Vampire Stories edited by Allen Ryan
1800- 'Wake Not the Dead' by Johann Ludwig Tiek (first known English vampire
story)
1816- 'Fragment of a Novel' by Lord Byron
1819- 'The Vampyre' by Dr. Polidori
1845- 'Varney the Vampyre' by James Malcolm Ryner
1872- 'Carmilla' by Sheridan Le Fanu
1897- Dracula by Abraham Stoker
1897- 'Dracula's Guest' by Abraham Stoker
1911- 'For the Blood is the Life' by F. Marion Crawford
1933- 'Revelations in Black' by Carl Jacobi
1951- 'Drink My Blood' by Richard Matheson
1967- 'The Living Dead' by Robert Bloch
1975- 'Salem's Lot' by Stephen King
1976- 'Interview with a Vampire' by Ann Rice
1984- 'The Vampire LeStat' by Ann Rice
PORTRAYAL OF THE VAMPIRE IN FILM
by Graham Simmons, Alexandra Gilbert and Max Sudnovsky
When people are asked to imagine the quintessential vampire, they
often respond using descriptions involving fangs, coffins, and fear of sunlight.
But how and why do they think of these things? In today’s society, an
overwhelming majority of the cumulative concept of the vampire has been formed
using stereotypes derived from Hollywood films, as well as foreign pictures.
The formation of this cumulative concept of the vampire has taken
place over the span of nearly eight decades, as well as almost 130 films.
Although there may be conflicting opinions, most people agree that this
cumulative concept was started with the silent-film Eine Symphonie des Grauens,
better known as Nosferatu, in 1922. Nosferatu was a black and white silent film
that came out of Germany in 1922 that starred actor, Max Schreck. The premise of
the movie was that an evil being that feasted on the blood of the living,
descended upon a city to spread the plague of the undead. In this movie, we see
for the first time the vampire’s fear of sunlight, as well as the necessity of
coffins. Before this film, vampires were supposedly able to roam during daylight
hours, but only with limited strength. Another aspect of the film that helped to
define the quintessential vampire was the use of shadows in unnatural ways
around the vampire (an attribute that is used even in modern vampire movies).
With this establishment of vampires in film, the 1931 movie Dracula furthered
the cumulative concept of vampires in film with Bela Lugosi’s Hollywood
portrayal of Bram Stoker’s antagonist. The movie Dracula came out in
1931 from Universal Pictures, and was directed by Tod Browning. In
the actual novel by Stoker, the Count Dracula was described as being an older
man having pointed ears and fingernails, as well as a moustache. In the
Hollywood version, Bela Lugosi portrayed the Count as a very suave European
type. The Count Dracula spoke with a distinctive Romanian accent, and had
slick black hair that was always combed back. Dracula would also always
dress in a white tie and tails with an upturned collar along with an opera cape.
This film also helped establish that vampires can shift shapes, by turning into
mist, or bats.
The movie Dracula was probably the most influential film on the
cumulative concept of the vampire in movies, because many films that depicted
vampires in the same manner followed it. Such films as The Horror of
Dracula (1958) Mark of the Vampire (1935), and even comedies like Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein (1946) all depicted vampires in a sleek European
fashion. As far as the repellents of vampires; garlic, sunlight,
crucifixes, and stakes were also accepted thanks to the films Dracula and
Nosferatu.
Virtually every film since the 1930s has used the same cumulative
concept of the vampire, some using their own interpretations and variances. In
1958 a new version of Bram Stoker's Dracula was released by Hammer Films.
Like the earlier 1931 version from Universal Pictures, this film was very
significant to the evolution of the vampire on the big screen. Hammer's Dracula
was somewhat of an extension of Lugosi's mysterious, debonair portrayal of the
Count. Now, due to the casting of actor Christopher Lee as the leading role, the
characteristics of a vampire would also include tall and virile. This
introduction of the suave and sophisticated Dracula was also accompanied by new
victims who were now voluptuous, insatiable females awaiting his nightly visit
in bed, breathless and fervent. One example would be the 1979 film Salem’s Lot
where only the head vampire sleeps in a coffin, and the vampires always needed a
human agent, who would set them up in different towns and attend to them during
the day. Another exception would be the 1994 film Interview with the
Vampire, where vampires are not able to shift shapes, and Christian symbols such
as crucifixes don’t harm them.
As you can see, the majority of the cumulative concept of the
vampire has been established by Hollywood and other foreign films, and has been
enjoyed almost since the invention of moving pictures.
This page was based upon information from the above-mentioned movies, as well
as:
Silver, Alain and James Ursine. The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Bram
Stoker's Dracula. (New York : Limelight Editions, June 1994).
as well as,
The Webworld of Bela Lugosi & Pathways To Darkness
Vampire Evolution
(Author
Unknown)
The modern idea of the vampire is open to many different possibilities. What
defines a vampire? And where did these traits come from?
Certain ideas about the vampire are now fixed. Sie almost always survives by
drinking blood. Sie has died, and come back to life. Almost always, sie is
unable to be active during the daylight hours. Often, sie fears holy objects
such as crucifixes and blessed wafers, and is also allergic to garlic. Sie can
be killed by means of a stake through the heart, or, sometimes, by burning.
But the vampires of Eastern Europe, whence some of the oldest traditions
regarding the 'vrolock' can be traced, were not blood drinkers at all. They were
reanimated corpses who killed their victims out of pure malice rather than any
need to survive, and their usual means of murder was suffocation by pressing on
the chest, which later developed into biting the chest. Unless appropriately
treated, anyone who died in this way would go on to become a vampire.
These days, vampirism is usually considered to be contagious only when an
exchange of blood occurs, when the victim consumes some of the vampire's blood.
In Anne Rice's tales, almost all the blood in the body must be thus exchanged
before any change can take effect. In Bram Stoker's time, it was enough for the
victim merely to have tasted their attacker's blood; however, they would not
necessarily die when bitten, and would not be transformed until their death
occurred, often years later. If the vampire who bit them died before they did,
they would be saved.
In older mythology, as Montague Summers concluded in his research on the
subject, anyone who faces damnation, has been excommunicated or has traded in
hir lifetime with the powers of darkness, faces the danger of turning into a
vampire after the point of death. Summers warns that such creatures are wholly
the possessions of the Devil, and have no real free will of their own, so that
this is a foolish way for a sorcerer to attempt to prolong hir own life.
The idea of the damnation of the victim was perhaps the most terrible aspect
of the curse of vampirism in past ages, and implied the connivance of the victim
in the damning act. This is notably parallel to developing cultures' attitudes
to rape. In primitive times, women who had been raped were often excommunicated
or killed for having behaved imorrally. It was believed that the moral nature of
the victim could be altered and condemned by forces wholly outside hir ability
to control.
Various things could be done, in old Eastern Europe, to prevent the
transformation of a corpse into a vampire occurring, and so to save the soul of
the unfortunate individual. As sie was damned, the victim could not be buried in
consecrated ground, but the planting of a thorn bush on top of the grave might
prevent hir from rising again. After several nights had passed, a white gelding
might be led into the graveyard, where it would indicate the location of a
vampire's grave. The vampire could then be killed in the appropriate way.
Afterwards, the body could be reconsecrated and reinterred in consecrated
ground, whereby the soul could escape the clutches of hell, if the person had,
in life, been appropriately good.
Anne Rice has conjectured that the mindlessness of these early vampires
might well be due to their burial in the earth, and their lack of awareness of
their state, so that when they came around - effectively buried alive - they
would go insane with terror, like the Haitian zombies drugged into a temporary
seemingness of death. Certainly, as the vampire legend developed, vampires
became more intelligent, and have in modern times often been held to be of
superior intelligence to the average mortals around them
Perhaps the most significant contribution to this developing evolution was
Dr. John Polidori's eighteenth century novel The Vampire. The protagonist of
this novel is suave, sophisticated and able to seduce almost anyone he chooses.
He is charming and intelligent, but fickle in his affections, and absolutely
cold hearted. Polidori wrote the piece as a satire, intending to insult Lord
Byron, whom he had adored and who had recently discarded him. However, much to
his horror, the public bestowed equal adoration on the Vampire figure himself,
and, as Polidori drifted into obscurity, many attributed the authorship of this
astounding book to Byron himself.
It was with this novel that the concept of the aristocratic vampire really
took off, and a whole wave of similar tales precipitated over the following
century. Sheridan LeFanu's famous Carmilla used the vampire myth to explore
forbidden aspects of sexuality, and in so doing created an interesting heroine
who, despite her nature, attempted to resist harming the girl whom she loved.
The vampire and the human had at last become directly entwined.
Thus the vampire finally completed its progress from mindless, terrifying
monster to sometime sympathetic, tragically cursed hero.
Among all these famous vampires there is one, of course, who truly stands
out, and whose name will always be remembered: Dracula. Vlad 'Tepes' Dracula
(the impaler) lived between 1430 and 1476, when he was reportedly killed in war.
At this time, a whole variety of supernatural insults were hurled at him to
emphasise the horror of his cruel treatment of prisoners - he not only impaled
his victims, but also blinded, skinned, castrated, dismembered, boiled them
alive and gave them to savage animals in order that he might watch them be torn
apart. However, he made no pretense of immortality, and was quite definitely and
finally killed - slain in battle, his head was later presented as a trophy to
the Sultan of Constantinople.
It was only among the peasant folk that any real supernatural traditions
regarding the Wallachian warrior persisted, and it was not until the publication
of Bram Stoker's novel, centuries later, that an incarnation of Vlad Tepes was
thoroughly portrayed as a blood-drinking, damned vampire.
Older stories of the actual powers and abilities of vampires differ more
widely than is genuinely understood. Not all of them fear the daylight. Count
Dracula could go about in the light quite safely, though his other powers would
be weakened by it. In desert countries, and in some of the Ancient Egyptian
traditions, vampires were active not by night, but by day. In the desert, it is
the daylight hours when mortal man might rightly fear to wander. In the desert,
it is the daylight hours during which people die.
Many vampires of the last three centuries were considered to have hypnotic
powers over their victims, particularly if they managed to make eye contact
(their eyes are often described as reddened or glowing red, though in keeping
with the modern tradition, female vampires enjoy an unmarred beauty). Older
tales of vampires place a great deal of emphasis on their capacity to
shape-shift (most commonly into 'devillish creatures' such as bats, crows or
wolves), but the modern vampire tends to lack these traits. Likewise, it is
uncommon for a modern vampire to require to rest on the soil of hir own homeland
during daylight, or to suffer from the old eldritch traditions of being unable
to pass a threshold unless invited to do so, and unable to cross running water
except at the flow or the ebb of the tide.
The ancient vampires of eastern Europe and of the desert cultures were
uniformly described as ugly - they were little more than half-rotted corpses,
and would be perpetually filthy from the grave where they must rest each day. In
modern times, however, the image of the vampire has often been adored. Though
Murnau's classic Nosferatu gave us the image of a shrivelled, impish fiend worn
by the ages, more popular are the tall, dashing men and voluptuous women,
usually pale skinned and dark haired, with the giveaway pointed fangs so
noteably absent from their earlier incarnations.
With the decline of popular religion over the last century, less and less
influence has been placed on the significance of the vampire's damnation, and it
is rarely any longer considered that items such as crucifixes and holy water
might be used against these creatures. Also the subject of modern hilarity are
the old herbal remedies, garlic and dogroses and rowan, with which a person or a
house might be protected.
In ancient times the vampire could be killed in a variety of ways, such as
staking, burning, decapitating, or even striking with a blessed knife or sword.
Sometimes, the evil spirit posessing what was really just a corpse could be
driven out by means of excommunication. In modern mythology, only a wooden stake
through the heart tends to be effective; if the head is cut off, garlic should
be placed between it and the neck, and the liberal application of blessed
crucifixes is desirable.
Neither does the modern vampire always feed on blood. Throughout the ages,
there have been various stories relating alternative forms of parasitism on the
living by the dead. In Iceland, the tradition holds that one must never put a
baby to sleep in a room with an old person, because even without intending to
the old person will be drawing life out of the infant and into hirself.
Increasinly, vampirism is used as a metaphor used to refer to many such
conditions. As some eighteenth century authors had intended, the figure of the
aristocratic vampire has begun to be perceived as a satirical one; the rich man
is drawing life out of the beleagured working classes.
Some modern vampires feed off the personality, or draw a kind of psychic
energy out of their victim; or a sheer, unadulterated life-force. In The Girl
with the Hungry Eyes, an icon is built out of society's idealised woman, a
figure who always wants more, always wants you; but the horror of it is that her
need for the absolute nature of her worshippers can destroy them utterly, and
condemn them to the emptiness of a modern damnation.
The powers of the vampire from fiction and legend.
By
Lord NightWalker
In folklore, Legend, and fiction the vampire displays wondrous skills and
abilities that it uses to prolong it’s preternatural nocturnal existence.
These powers, which it uses to ensure it’s survival, Are often similar in
description, yet vary as to the why and how so that the similarity lies solely
in the purpose of the actions taken.
Are the powers of the vampire mystical in nature? Are they magical or psionic?
Or are they a curious blending of all three? There has been very little said of
the basis of their power.
In fiction the sky is the limit. The author may embellish the attributes and
aspects of the vampire, omitting and enhancing, or inventing whatever
capabilities they see fit.
In folklore, the abilities of the vampire are often of a spiritual nature,
although often of a wicked inspiration. In addition, the vampire possesses a
cruel and powerful magic, which it wields upon their native locale, despoiling
the land and delivering the plague. Often, in a savage irony, it’s the
wellspring of hearth knowledge that influences the powers that assail them.
Indeed, It’s nigh impossible to discern the source of the vampires’ power.
The vampire’s life hinges on fundamental mysteries of life, primordial to
existence itself. Between the physical, the spiritual, the magical and the
philosophical. This is a subject long in debate and most likely to remain that
way even though we keep looking for answers and grasping at stars.
Some common powers attributed to the vampire are:
The ability to create more of it’s kind, continuing the species.
Resurrection, and regeneration.
Immortality and near invulnerability.
Superior mental faculties and processing of knowledge.
Enhanced sensory perception.
Super human physical conditioning, such as strength, agility, endurance and
speed.
Can survive and thrive in adverse climate conditions.
Eternal youth.
Shape shifting and transformation into near limitless forms.
Telekinesis and psionics.
Hypnosis, hypnotic suggestion and mind control.
Impervious to poison, disease, and the ill affects of time.
Animal manipulation, and understanding.
Flight, levitation.
Sorceries and necromantic arts.
Change in size and dimension.
Can scale the sheerest of surfaces.
Manipulate biological processes and functions.
Manipulate energy fields.
Causing plagues, draughts and epidemics.
Drain life force and pranic energy.