The vampire has been a common figure in popular culture for a long time, way before Hollywood scared us with the cloaked figure who transformed into a bat - or who sparkled in daylight and won hearts with steamy romance. What is it about the vampire that has stayed with us for so long? As I've done with my History of the Werewolf post, I've researched the history of the vampire to find the likely causes of the myth - and how it influenced our literature too.
The Etymology
The first reference of the word ‘vampire’ in English was in 1732, where newspapers reported vampire ‘epidemics’ in eastern Europe. Before that, in 1721, German readers found out about vampires from a Polish Jesuit priest, Gabriel Rzączyński, writing about the history of his country. This eastern European connection can be traced back to explain the term itself. The Serbian language has the word ‘vampir’, while several neighbouring languages have the word ‘onpyr’, with Old Bulgarian applying the V sound to the front of the word. In most cases, this word translated to ‘tooth’ and ‘drink’, other academics credit the word means ‘to bite with force’. These words and stories can be traced to the nomadic Kipchak-Cuman people who migrated across eastern Europe from Russia.
The History and Likely Causes
Why did the stories about vampires begin in the first place? Such stories can be traced back to ancient Greece, where creatures attacked people in their sleep and drank their blood. The reason is likely linked to the idea that blood held mystical properties, as did all bodily fluids.
Research suggests human ignorance of common diseases a likely explanation of vampire-like behaviour. Porphyria leaves the person sensitive to sunlight. Tuberculosis is a wasting disease which leaves the body gaunt, thin and pale. Rabies, in its latter stages, causes the victim to bite, react badly to light and garlic. Another disease is linked to Europeans returning from America with corn: the disease? Pellagra. If the corn isn’t washed in an alkali solution like limewater, it can trigger the disease, one that leeches niacin and tryptophan from the body. Symptoms, in the latter stages, are similar to those defined by vampirism.
It’s not surprising that such ignorance led to dead bodies being dug up, to be staked or mistreated in other ways. Dead bodies, where tissues receded, made teeth stick out of gums, hair and fingernails to appear longer. The result? People believed that the vampire continued to live after death.
Earlier I mentioned the ‘vampire epidemic’ – dated between 1725 to 1755. In modern-day terminology, the stories surrounding this epidemic went viral. Everyone talked about it. Just like today, theories exploded, with all kinds of causes being blamed – none of them with any credibility. The idea of blood-sucking, undead creatures of the night, fanned the flames of panic across the continent and the vampire as we know it, was born.
The Gothic Influence in Literature
If you’re a writer, searching for fame and a means to earn money, one option is to write something fashionable and current, you sacrifice art for commercialism. The Gothic novel was a reaction to that commercial urge to write a best seller. This movement spread across Europe rapidly and reached its heyday in the 1790s. Why?
The answer to that question lies with Edmund Burke’s 1757 work, ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.’ Burke’s work focused on the Sublime, Terror and Obscurity. The Sublime produced ‘the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling’. It could be evoked by terror, which existed in dark obscurity and mystery. Remember, the 18th century was a time when the ignorance of the Middle Ages was ridiculed, as civilised people searched for knowledge and ‘enlightenment’.
Not surprising then, that the Sublime, Terror and Obscurity would lead to Gothic literature. If you’re a writer, you have a cash cow right there! Who wouldn’t want to write stories that scared people and helped them achieve the Sublime?
The first truly Gothic novel was written in 1764 by the MP for Kings Lynn, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. His premise was unusual; a “translation” from an Italian author of a manuscript found in Naples about a castle with supernatural secrets that lead to deaths and misery. Nowadays, we’d call it melodramatic, a soap opera, but it became hugely successful. It inspired similar stories, The Old English Baron (1778) by Clara Reeves, The Recess (1785) by Sophia Lee and Vathek (1786) by William Beckford. The movement’s superstar author was Ann Radcliffe whose stories were hugely successful, Sir Walter Scott even wrote in praise of the woman. These stories, often plagiarised, appeared in chapbooks, cheap pamphlets that everyone could access, written in easily-read language, rather like tabloid newspapers. The success of the Gothic novel, led to its inevitable demise. Stories became so outlandish and sensationalised, filled with romance, murder and villainy, they lacked credibility. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in 1797 that he’d grown weary of the genre.
The Gothic Novel and the Vampire
The “second wave” of the Gothic Novel occurred early in the 18th century with a marked move away from the sensational, to stories which examined the mind, the development of science and invention and the folly of humanity – issues that summed up the entire century.
It could be argued this re-invention began during the unnaturally stormy weather of June 1816, at the Villa Diodati. Lord Byron, escaping London gossip, rented the villa and stayed there with Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife-to-be Mary and Dr John Polidori, Byron’s physician. During a particularly wet and stormy weekend, the group challenged each other to write stories. Mary Godwin (soon to become Mary Shelley) wrote the first draft of Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus. Polidori’s story was called The Vampyre – which Christopher Frayling defines as ‘the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre’. It appeared in The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register in April 1819.
No, Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ was not the first vampire story! That wouldn’t get published until the very end of the century, in 1897. Before that point, the Gothic Novel attracted the likes of Edgar Allen Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839), Robert Louis Stevenson (‘The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886).
Let’s go back to Dracula. For many, it is the defining story of vampirism. Modern culture has based much of its storytelling on its premise. There is a lot of supposition about Stoker’s ideas that sparked the story, including the famous Vlad the Impaler tales. The truth lies, inevitably, in Celtic folklore.
The basic premise of the story comes from the mythology behind a character of a 5th century chieftain called Abhartach, who was supposed to kill people and drink their blood. Like all legends, there are variations of the story. In some this character is a member of the fae-like Tuatha De Danaan, in tales told by Fionn mac Cumhaill. In 1870 Patrick Weston Joyce cited the character as neamh-mairbh – the walking dead. Such creatures, legends stated, had to be buried vertically and upside down, with a heavy stone over the grave, having been killed with a sword made from yew wood.
However, Celtic myth has more to offer on Bram Stoker’s use of Celtic legend. I mentioned how the story of Abhartach has various iterations, in one there is the use of a Celtic term which means ‘tainted blood’. The word is ‘dreach-fhuola’ – can you see how the name Dracula comes from this word? (Use an online Gaelic translator to hear it.) For me, it explains how Stoker relied on Celtic folklore as inspiration for his story.
It's interesting how, even now, belief exists in Stoker using Romanian folklore for his story. It’s true he consulted it, during his time in Britain and having visited Whitby Abbey. However, as any good writer, he harvested ideas from a range of sources. The fact remains, his story defined the vampire. The concepts of a murderous undead creature, linked to the bat, that drinks blood (like certain bat species) have been used in lots of ways ever since. It dominates our perception of the creature.
Final Thoughts
Like my post on the History of the Werewolf, the vampire is a wonderful character in the eyes of a writer. Their animalistic habits avoid moralistic overtones. I’d say there might be something to Edmund Burke’s idea of the Sublime being enhanced by Terror. If we are to be inspired to heightened emotion, what better way than to scare your readers? To explore the dark recesses of the human mind to show us the depths to which people can sink? When it comes to speculative fiction, Grimdark fantasy does just that!
That final part of Burke’s theory – Obscurity – is a major element of Grimdark. The mystery, the supernatural darkness of the landscape, that mirrors the minds and souls of those who inhabit it. These lands are where we like to dump our readers so the characters they follow are forced to confront dangers that leave them reeling, hopeful they will never encounter such horrors.
Like the werewolf, arguably even more so, the vampire is a character that forces us to confront the darkness into which humanity can fall, if we ignore the rules set down by civilisation. That’s what Bram Stoker got his readers doing. It’s a tale of morality that has stayed with us ever since.
Writing as Phil Parker, I've published a number of fantasy novels. Find out more, click the image:
