See the bottom of today’s ‘stack for some news and updates, and also for some summary comments on my “reader survey” of two weeks ago. “Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in?” —Juliet 1. Western Europeans and Americans visiting Romania for the first time will often be told that any association of the place with vampires is really an unfair imposition, having mostly to do with Bram Stoker’s more or less ex-nihilo invention of a Transylvanian setting for his 1897 novel,
Good morning, this article gave me the final nudge to overcome my internal resistance to using Apple Pay to send you a subscription. Then came the next hurdle: my bank wanted me to do some digital acrobatics that I wasn’t able comprehend or perform to verify my card for Apple Pay. After the Xth time trying to break through this digital blockade by sheer irrational force (and I nearly thought I would end up like the young lady you described, fingerless behind the sepulchral wall), my blind finger hit upon a concealed digital “spring” (like in a good vampire library) that suddenly offered me the possibility to pay directly with my credit card! That was literally a deus ex machina and now I am exploring all the older archival materials here this morning.
Thank you for bringing this delectable morsel of very-much-alive storytelling to Substack. I remember the original article vividly from your website (which I browsed earlier this year), and it’s a joy this time to read along by eye whilst listening to you by ear. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever come across on vampires and vampire lit anywhere (except, perhaps, for the wild stories of my Hanseatic husband who lived as DAAD lecturer for German lit in Romania for 5 years, pre-Berlin wall).
Thank you for posting, I’ll be on the look-out for your mercenary offspring. A good pen is a good pen, and this sounds like a fun artifact that would have interested bibliophiles like Prof. Bergeret.
In the meantime, I’m re-starting Proust (1919 copy from Gallimard) to read alongside your genealogy of race concepts in early modern philosophy. You reminded me to start reading Proust again before my noon fades. I find it exquisitely touching that the pages of this beautiful multi-volume edition bound in century-old leather should almost disintegrate as I turn the pages, a reading against time, like for so many books printed on wood-based paper of this period. I’m not sure digitalization will be the answer to hold off decadence. I will enjoy and cherish the materiality, so long as it lasts. Maybe digitalization is a sort of undead for books?
Really quite a lovely essay. To pivot from discussions of the undead to an examination of the author as unreliable narrator – as the saying goes, I did not see that coming.
As to the place in the British imagination of the swarthy Southeasterner… On the one hand it rings true. On the other I wonder if this take isn’t a product of a too zealous anti-colonialism. After all, the English feel that way about the Welsh. And if you consider Tom Jones, I’m not sure you can blame them.
Thank you for this history. I have of late become an avid devotee of the the 1966-1971 daytime soap opera Dark Shadows, and I think actor Jonathan Frid does a fine job of exploring the character of "a being that knows it is dead, and feels infinite sadness about its plight." At the time, it was considered novel for an actor to play a vampire in a sympathetic way. The character Barnabas Collins is typical however in as much as he is aristocratic - the Collins family is of New England Brahman stock.... I have reasons to believe that the family is a stand-in for the Astors, but it is too much to get into here.
I take note that Bram Stoker is largely responsible for introducing a "class consciousness" as it were into the legend, a metaphor perhaps for how Medieval lords would suck the life force out of their serfs? The Mark Fisher essay -which I am now in the middle of reading for the first time- is nicely demonstrating how this sucking action is propagated on the contemporary scene!
One more thing, I don't know if it was intentional on your part, but are you aware that the newly crowned King Charles III has something of an attachment to Transylvania and, given his descent from Vlad the Impaler, has joked that he feels he "has a stake in the country" of Romania?!
A great read. Two observations: "drac" in Romanian is not "dragon" but "devil" (articulated "dracul", "the devil").
Hermannstadt is not Brasov, but Sibiu, much further East. The Bran castle is indeed close to Brasov, whose German name is Kronstadt.
Good morning, this article gave me the final nudge to overcome my internal resistance to using Apple Pay to send you a subscription. Then came the next hurdle: my bank wanted me to do some digital acrobatics that I wasn’t able comprehend or perform to verify my card for Apple Pay. After the Xth time trying to break through this digital blockade by sheer irrational force (and I nearly thought I would end up like the young lady you described, fingerless behind the sepulchral wall), my blind finger hit upon a concealed digital “spring” (like in a good vampire library) that suddenly offered me the possibility to pay directly with my credit card! That was literally a deus ex machina and now I am exploring all the older archival materials here this morning.
Thank you for bringing this delectable morsel of very-much-alive storytelling to Substack. I remember the original article vividly from your website (which I browsed earlier this year), and it’s a joy this time to read along by eye whilst listening to you by ear. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever come across on vampires and vampire lit anywhere (except, perhaps, for the wild stories of my Hanseatic husband who lived as DAAD lecturer for German lit in Romania for 5 years, pre-Berlin wall).
Thank you for posting, I’ll be on the look-out for your mercenary offspring. A good pen is a good pen, and this sounds like a fun artifact that would have interested bibliophiles like Prof. Bergeret.
In the meantime, I’m re-starting Proust (1919 copy from Gallimard) to read alongside your genealogy of race concepts in early modern philosophy. You reminded me to start reading Proust again before my noon fades. I find it exquisitely touching that the pages of this beautiful multi-volume edition bound in century-old leather should almost disintegrate as I turn the pages, a reading against time, like for so many books printed on wood-based paper of this period. I’m not sure digitalization will be the answer to hold off decadence. I will enjoy and cherish the materiality, so long as it lasts. Maybe digitalization is a sort of undead for books?
All the best,
Marianne
Really quite a lovely essay. To pivot from discussions of the undead to an examination of the author as unreliable narrator – as the saying goes, I did not see that coming.
As to the place in the British imagination of the swarthy Southeasterner… On the one hand it rings true. On the other I wonder if this take isn’t a product of a too zealous anti-colonialism. After all, the English feel that way about the Welsh. And if you consider Tom Jones, I’m not sure you can blame them.
A brilliant essay. This is why I suscribe to Hinternet.
Bram Stoker was Irish, not English.
a very interesting article. This piece, like others you have written, has a richness, not only in historical detail but ideas.
Robert Newcastle NSW Australia
Thrilled to discover that Librebook.eu stocks ‘Vampires’. Or claims to stock.
Thank you for this history. I have of late become an avid devotee of the the 1966-1971 daytime soap opera Dark Shadows, and I think actor Jonathan Frid does a fine job of exploring the character of "a being that knows it is dead, and feels infinite sadness about its plight." At the time, it was considered novel for an actor to play a vampire in a sympathetic way. The character Barnabas Collins is typical however in as much as he is aristocratic - the Collins family is of New England Brahman stock.... I have reasons to believe that the family is a stand-in for the Astors, but it is too much to get into here.
I take note that Bram Stoker is largely responsible for introducing a "class consciousness" as it were into the legend, a metaphor perhaps for how Medieval lords would suck the life force out of their serfs? The Mark Fisher essay -which I am now in the middle of reading for the first time- is nicely demonstrating how this sucking action is propagated on the contemporary scene!
One more thing, I don't know if it was intentional on your part, but are you aware that the newly crowned King Charles III has something of an attachment to Transylvania and, given his descent from Vlad the Impaler, has joked that he feels he "has a stake in the country" of Romania?!