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?

Alcoholism as a Vampire: "The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man" 1858

The Traitor's Gate, London.

When I was in London summer of 2013, I was able to spend a fair amount of time reading in the British Library (one of the most magical places on Earth). Given my interest in early usages of the term "Vampire" for a human who metaphorically sucks the life from its victim, the 1858 anonymous booklet, The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man,was a wonderful read.

In short, the author uses the metaphor of the vampire to describe the drunken life -- it is about temperance and the abstainer's pledge and the lure of drink which proves more alluring than keeping ones word. (At this time, temperance referred to abstinence from drinking.)

"She" (the anonymous author states) "Listen to me, whilst I describe to you some of the horrors of a drunkard's home, and some of the privations of the drunkard's wife and children"(2). 

She then goes on to tell the story of a young man, the son of a drunkard father who cannot stand the fact that his son, "Herbert" will not join him in his sodden ways. In spite of his father's beatings and declaration that he will cut his son out of his inheritance, Herbert takes the "Abstainer's Pledge." Not a drop of liquor is to pass his lips. He makes a fair attempt to keep his pledge and to be as good as his word, but his choice of bad companions undercuts his willpower.

At first Herbert is able to disguise the fact that he has broken his pledge from his poor, long-suffering mother, and his  increasingly pushy father, but not for long. Soon his personality changes and he becomes as abusive to his mother and the house-staff as his father has been to himself.

The young man enjoys accompanying his companions to "Mrs. Grasp-the-Air's shop, The Vampyre Inn, where Tommy, the husband serves an increasing amount of liquor to the weak-willed Herbert. Tommy and Mrs. Grasp-the-Air quite enjoy their roles in this story as devil's advocate since it brings their business increased income.

Eventually, Herbert kills one of the "friends" who attempts to talk him into changing his ways, and he is taken to the gallows while his poor mother weeps.

Like any good morality tale, the story ends, "Drink, Strong Drink! had it not, like a vampyre sucked the blood out of his father and grandfather! and finally, expinguish[ed] life itself?"

I will leave it to my reader to question if indeed the giving in to one of the many temptations of life and allowing it to have control over ones thought and deeds is indeed allowing a vampire to entirely suck life out of one.

Works Cited
"The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man." London: A W Bennett, 1858. Print.

Vampire Metaphor: A Rose by Any Other Name

Does a rose by any name smell as sweet? Does saying someone is a vampire mean he is a bloodsucking parasite, or that he sparkles romantically? Arguably this is the problem with any metaphor; it is a shoddy method to communicate meaning since the reader has no idea which is meant by the context in which the metaphor is placed.It is amorphous.

Darkness falls and the banker strolls from the office where he has labored since sunrise. His car lies deep in the underground garage along with the cars of all his office-mates. He is elated from his busy day of trading futures, having made lots of money. His predatory urges have been wakened, and instead of going home, he turns his car towards the clubs where he can find a desperate woman for who will fall for his line of patter. He can get off and walk off.

The apartment complex was, shall we say euphemistically, a fixer-upper complex with some terrace fences clearly needing replacing, and a roof with odd patches of darkness where the moss seemed to have taken over and grown unhealthy under overhanging tree branches. Walking into the unit the woman could smell odd aromas underlying the fresh paint smell and the smell of the newly laid, inappropriately tannish, carpet. Even with all the lights turned on, and there were damned few of them, the place was dim; as though the apartment was attempting to hid its issues from the casual viewer. The woman knew that if she was no longer a casual viewer the issues would become all to clear, and she would have to live with them. But her credit wasn't stellar and the rent, though high, was about standard for the area, and this owner didn't require the expensive background checks or high deposit so many others did.

She was a knock-out. She was an eleven on the scale of one-to-ten. Her little black dress lived up to its name as it clung to her curves, displaying them quite clearly even while saying, "understated." And she, quite clearly, was out of place in this run-down, workingman's pub.
     The men sitting at the bar looked, hell, they gaped and slavered, but they gave her a wide space. The men and women sitting at the tables in their jean and flannels, 'nice' outfits and chinos, whispered among themselves as they kept glancing at her, asking each other, in quite tones, "What is THAT doing HERE?" or some variant thereof. But again, for all their looking and whispering, they just looked and whispered.
     The bartender who had mixed her gin fizz made casual conversation with the men at the bar, watching attentively for her beaconing gesture while giving an appearance of drying the already dry glasses with his bar rag. "She paid with a fifty, and gave me a twenty tip!" he whispered importantly, understand that, for a change, he was the most important person in the bar; he was the only person in the bar she'd spoken to.
      There was a collective intake of breath when the woman swung her bar-stool so that she could look at her audience -- for they had become her audience in all the ways that matter. Many had only seen her figure since her face was turned toward the bar, and she was two stools over from where the bar's back-mirror would have given her reflection. They moved her up to twelve status. Every man, and a few of the women, wondered even more if she were blond all over, since blue eyes indicated her blond hair was natural.  
     She sipped her drink and then smiled. Her very white teeth reflected in the dim light.

The waif stood in the shadows looking very waif-like; small gamine face with a few smudges and huge eyes, jeans and oversize open button-down shirt. Yet her huge eyes had a hint of the predator within them if one looked very closely; she was used to fending for herself. Some kind man or woman would soon come along and want to 'save' her.

Although Josh tried hard to vary his routine, travel to school by a different route every day, and make damn certain they were random; the last leg of the trip required walking down the main street to the only open door of the building, and every few days Trevor would waylay him.
    
Metaphor. Vampire. Predators. Prey.

Leslie Ormandy

Kicking Ass! Kipling's "The Vampire"

While perusing really really old material today so that you, beloved readers, wouldn't need to do it, I ran into three responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." Then I ran into several more. Then I dug deeper yet and discovered there are more than 2200 extant and readable recountings and responses to Kipling's "The Vampire." And I searched only from 1897 to 1940.

The reactions run from story to play to poem and range from vampire as economic metaphor to vampire political statements to vampiric gendered roles to vampire at work. I've rarely seen such a widespread use of vampire.

The version I'll sharing this time is by William Rex, called -- you guessed it! -- "The Vampire!"
It is from a magazine called The painter and decorator, Volume 23 -- 1909

The Vampire (Laborer’s Version.)

(With Apologies to Kipling)

A fool there was and he toiled away

(Even as you and I).
For a cage and crumb, with nothing to say --
(Some call it worse than death grim and gray) —
But the fool he called it his full day's pay—

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the life we waste and the strife we taste—
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to this world, which does not know—

(And now we know that it never can know)
And does not understand.

A fool there was and he lived a slave—

(Even as you and I.)
To a master who drove him remorseless to grave—
(And the master did not heed the wounds he gave)—

But the fool never dreamt that his life he could save

(Even as you and I).

Oh, the miseries he lived for the crumbs he received –

And the kicks which a dog would abhor:

He took from the man who cared not to know why –

(And now we know he never cared why)

And did not understand.

The fool was stripped of his bloodsucked hide –

(Even as you and I).

Which he might have saved if he only had tried –

But a fool is a fool, though wise men he may chide)

So some of him lived, but the best of him dies

(Even as you and I).

And it isn’t the blow, or the red-blood flow,

That stings like a white-hot brand –

It’s coming to know that he never did try

To conquer his lord and make him know why –

And force him to understand.

(Sweet Goth here. Doesn't a poem kick ass when it can be re-purposed so endlessly yet still have relevance in its new incarnation?)