Let's Talk About Vampires

(drawing by Loren Capelli, in NY Times)

Is it anything about vampires we should know and we don't? Well, I've come from Dracula's country, so I dare to say I'm an expert. Two good friends from Baltimore, Ruth and Jerry, will be in Romania for a couple of days, and they will visit Bran Castle and the Snagov Monastery. Though the castle has no real connection with the bloody prince, it would be a good start to flame the imagination. As for the monastery, the legend says the prince was buried there (it seems, however, that the grave is not of him).

There are all kind of vampires: some of them are actually nice, very nice, though they appear as terrible when you first meet them. Some others had encountered sad events in their youth (or they expect sadness in their future); now they come with their tragic stories (or tragic expectancies) and make you cry.

I can tel you that I haven't found a bad vampire ever; anyway I was able to accommodate with any of them. It's true that I am a very understandable person, tolerant and nice, so don't take my words for granted.

Well, you think you know all about vampires. Then what about that?

A plane has landed at JFK and everyone inside is dead. Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, the lead in the Canary Project, the most skilled response team to biological threats, has been called in to investigate. Meanwhile, a local antiques dealer, Abraham Setrakian, sees the story on the news and has a feeling that an old master is at play: in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

Hum, this seems threatening. I have to read the whole story: it's a new novel, The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I found some references on the web:

Pros

• An old-fashioned approach to storytelling with a new history and future for vampirism.
• Del Toro's original idea and Hogan's sharp and rich writing skills make this a compelling read.
• It has the characterization and story arc to stand with any novel beyond the horror genre.

Cons

• This one will keep you up late at night to keep the nightmares at bay.
• Recommended for mature audiences only.

Well, these references could be just formal, so let's better see what the authors have to say. They wrote in today's NY Times an essay about vampires:

Tonight, you or someone you love will likely be visited by a vampire — on cable television or the big screen, or in the bookstore. Our own novel describes a modern-day epidemic that spreads across New York City.

It all started nearly 200 years ago. It was the Year Without a Summer of 1816, when ash from volcanic eruptions lowered temperatures around the globe, giving rise to widespread famine. A few friends gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva and decided to engage in a small competition to see who could come up with the most terrifying tale — and the two great monsters of the modern age were born.

One was created by Mary Godwin, soon to become Mary Shelley, whose Dr. Frankenstein gave life to a desolate creature. The other monster was less created than fused. John William Polidori stitched together folklore, personal resentment and erotic anxieties into The Vampyre, a story that is the basis for vampires as they are understood today.

With The Vampyre, Polidori gave birth to the two main branches of vampiric fiction: the vampire as romantic hero, and the vampire as undead monster. This ambivalence may reflect Polidori’s own, as it is widely accepted that Lord Ruthven, the titular creature, was based upon Lord Byron — literary superstar of the era and another resident of the lakeside villa that fateful summer. Polidori tended to Byron day and night, both as his doctor and most devoted groupie. But Polidori resented him as well: Byron was dashing and brilliant, while the poor doctor had a rather drab talent and unremarkable physique.

But this was just a new twist to a very old idea. The myth, established well before the invention of the word vampire, seems to cross every culture, language and era. The Indian Baital (he's using the Tweeter, by the way - my note here), the Ch’ing Shih in China, and the Romanian Strigoi are but a few of its names. The creature seems to be as old as Babylonia and Sumer. Or even older.

Strigoi

The vampire may originate from a repressed memory we had as primates. Perhaps at some point we were — out of necessity — cannibalistic. As soon as we became sedentary, agricultural tribes with social boundaries, one seminal myth might have featured our ancestors as primitive beasts who slept in the cold loam of the earth and fed off the salty blood of the living.

Monsters, like angels, are invoked by our individual and collective needs. Today, much as during that gloomy summer in 1816, we feel the need to seek their cold embrace.

Herein lies an important clue: in contrast to timeless creatures like the dragon, the vampire does not seek to obliterate us, but instead offers a peculiar brand of blood alchemy. For as his contagion bestows its nocturnal gift, the vampire transforms our vile, mortal selves into the gold of eternal youth, and instills in us something that every social construct seeks to quash: primal lust. If youth is desire married with unending possibility, then vampire lust creates within us a delicious void, one we long to fulfill.

In other words, whereas other monsters emphasize what is mortal in us, the vampire emphasizes the eternal in us. Through the panacea of its blood it turns the lead of our toxic flesh into golden matter.

In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new blockbuster must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure. As a seductive figure, the vampire is as flexible and polyvalent as ever. Witness its slow mutation from the pansexual, decadent Anne Rice creatures to the current permutations — promising anything from chaste eternal love to wild nocturnal escapades — and there you will find the true essence of immortality: adaptability.

Vampires find their niche and mutate at an accelerated rate now — in the past one would see, for decades, the same variety of fiend, repeated in multiple storylines. Now, vampires simultaneously occur in all forms and tap into our every need: soap opera storylines, sexual liberation, noir detective fiction, etc. The myth seems to be twittering promiscuously to serve all avenues of life, from cereal boxes to romantic fiction. The fast pace of technology accelerates its viral dispersion in our culture.

But if Polidori remains the roots in the genealogy of our creature, the most widely known vampire was birthed by Bram Stoker in 1897.

Part of the reason for the great success of his Dracula is generally acknowledged to be its appearance at a time of great technological revolution. The narrative is full of new gadgets (telegraphs, typing machines), various forms of communication (diaries, ship logs), and cutting-edge science (blood transfusions) — a mash-up of ancient myth in conflict with the world of the present.

Today as well, we stand at the rich uncertain dawn of a new level of scientific innovation. The wireless technology we carry in our pockets today was the stuff of the science fiction in our youth. Our technological arrogance mirrors more and more the Wellsian dystopia of dissatisfaction, while allowing us to feel safe and connected at all times. We can call, see or hear almost anything and anyone no matter where we are. For most people then, the only remote place remains within. Know thyself we do not.

Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that Dracula allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane reality show lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying.

Forever.

(A Life in Books)