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| This heart is a piece of wall art at the Victoria and Albert House | , | Portland, OR |
Introducing The Vampire: A Story of Love and Passion,
by Paul De Kock (1895)
A year ago I had the privilege of spending time in the British Library where they have one of the most fantastic collections of material in the world (in my opinion, mind you). While there I was allowed to read a variety of vampire themed material which is not yet readily available online, including those I've already posted about, and: The Vampire: A Story of Love and Passion, by Paul De Kock. Since one of my interests is in the use of the term vampire as a metaphor for people who suck the metaphoric life from others, reading this was ... cool.
It is indeed the story of "love and passion" as the author states, but in this case the passion of the lovers are closer to obsession, which allows for truly co-dependent, vampiric relationships.
The story begins with an illicit relationship between a male composer and his mistress. Now the mistress part was just fine back in those times, no one looked askance at the man having a mistress, in fact he stayed with her quite happily for many years. It was a relationship which didn't impede his musical output or his career. He had quiet evenings at home with her and all of his friends were quite fond of her as well. Then, enter the vampire.
The vampire took his time and attention away from his musical career which was a very bad thing as far as his friends were concerned. Eventually, the scorned long-term mistress came to his friends and asked for their aid in rescuing her lover from the evil clutches of the vampire.
After much roundaboutation, the mistress decided that she was bored with the composer -- and he was running short of funds to keep her in style anyway. She moved on to another man and the composer went back to his mistress a broken man.
Was she a real vampire?
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