1895 The Vampire by Paul De Kock review

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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?

Vampires ... and Birthdays?

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What do vampires say to each other on their birthdays? Happy birthday seems so utterly human?

Options seem to include:

Happy UnBirthday? But then I have the Mad Hatter's song from Alice in Wonderland running through my head where it is firmly mind-wormed. This sort of destroys and counters the whole idea of a vampire not aging after their human-death.

Happy Undeath-day?  While this does not make the Mad Hatter's song run through my head, it doesn't really answer either. I am, still, thoroughly human,  and thus each day I celebrate not having yet endured death.

Happy Turn-day? I have seen this used in various author created mythos, and in many ways it does meet the criteria,celebrating the day one turns from human to vampire through whatever process is necessary for that change to occur. And yet being a creative and odd sort of person, I hear my mother telling me that if I did something or other, my father would be rolling over (turning over) in his grave. I do not think that this is quite what my mother referenced (darn it!), but nonetheless, not quite what a celebration of another year of not meeting the sun, or meeting a stake, deserves.

So if any of you ghosts in the internet machine have better suggestions, I am open to discussion. What does one say to a vampire on his rebirth day?

Metaphoric Reality

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Sucking blood from a stone?

Over the past several years I have been musing upon the usage of metaphors. They inundate our daily life: rain = sorrow, a rose = love, a wedding ring = eternal love, and yes, I could continue for a very long time; I possess a (economically useless) Masters in English Literature. The question for the day is if the constant, longstanding use of a metaphor -- such as that of a blood-sucking vampire -- as a stand-in for a regular Jane/Joe human behaving in a way which denudes the impacted "victim"-- somehow waters down the original word / idea / entity.

The secondary question would be, if the word "vampire" as metaphor does indeed water down the idea/word/entity, why would it matter? Science tells us, empirically, that real undead, revivified, returned to life vampires do not exist.

Certainly a wide field of literature and media play with this willful assumption of disbelief. Most notably (if my memory serves), Bram Stoker had Helsing argue in Dracula that the most effective way to hide ones existence was to make people believe you are fiction. I do not think he took it the concept far enough. Far to say one is hiding ones existence is still to posit that one exists.

 I have thought, for a fair length of time as I've worked on the idea of vampire as a metaphor, that the best way to hide ones existence it to water it down, to make the very idea of ones existence so used as an everyday noun/verb that it no longer refers to anything specific. The noun "vampire" becomes synonymous with any person sucking the life -- economically, physically, or emotionally -- from another person. 

They are behaving "vampirically" (adverb describing a verb). And if any Joe/Jane can be a metaphoric vampire; pouf goes any concept whatsoever that these fictional beings might actually share the earth with us for we are all, at one time or another, vampires ourselves.

I will pause to reassure anyone who happens upon this post -- I am not positing the existence of the real creature. Nor do I discount it. I am just noting that one function of a cliche is to water down the power of the idea being cliched. Let's look at an almost useless, but very societally meaningful, cliche: The dark and stormy night. Does the rendering of the concept into an overused, almost meaningless cliche actually water down, make less valid -- less real -- the torrential downpour pushed by high winds that the cliche represents?I do suggest that the overuse of the metaphor is rendering it a cliche with a check-list attached, and that the overuse of the metaphor waters down the original in our collective consciousness. We humanize our concept of the vampire, taming them in our minds, and then use it as a pejorative name for each other.

What do you think? Does overuse of a metaphor water down the reality of the vampire?