Why do vampires still thrill?
“Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. “His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.” Mina’s husband, Jonathan, hypnotized by the intruder, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife’s violation.
Joan Acocella studies vampire books and movies.
Additional links:
- Vampires
- Vampire literature
- Vampire films
- Journal of Dracula Studies
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (for free here: book – audio)
- The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice
- Nosferatu, a 1922 German Expressionist vampire horror silent film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok
Related to Tolkien
If you like reading The Lord of the Rings, than I would suggest also:
- Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
- Stephen R. Donaldson: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
- David Eddings: The Belgariad
- Eric Rücker Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros
- William Morris: The Wood Beyond the World
- Mervyn Peake: Gormenghast trilogy
Only a small selection of course. Therefore see also the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library and the Fantasy Masterworks.
Hypothetical Planets
There have been a number of objects that were once thought to exist by astronomers, but which later ‘vanished’. Here are their stories.
Genius and wisdom
A young monkey named Genius picked a green walnut, and bit, through a
bitter rind, down into a hard shell. He then threw the walnut away, saying:
“How stupid people are! They told me walnuts are good to eat.”
His grandmother, whose name was Wisdom, picked up the walnut—peeled
off the rind with her fingers, cracked the shell, and shared the kernel with her
grandson, saying: “Those get on best in life who do not trust to first impressions.”
–cited in Philosophy and Fun of Algebra by Mary Everest Boole, 1909
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’s Taxonomy
In The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (El idioma analítico de John Wilkins), Jorge Luis Borges describes “a certain Chinese encyclopedia,” the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written
(…)animals are divided into:
- those that belong to the Emperor,
- embalmed ones,
- those that are trained,
- suckling pigs,
- mermaids,
- fabulous ones,
- stray dogs,
- those included in the present classification,
- those that tremble as if they were mad,
- innumerable ones,
- those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
- others,
- those that have just broken a flower vase,
- those that from a long way off look like flies.
Borges in fact expresses doubts –in his typical style– about all attempts at a universal classification as Wilkins proposes in An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. Or in Borges view all taxonomies of the universe are arbitrary
Two statisticians
Two statisticians are out hunting when one of them sees a duck. The first takes aim and shoots, but the bullet goes sailing past six inches too high. The second statistician also takes aim and shoots, but this time the bullet goes sailing past six inches too low. The two statisticians then give one another high fives and exclaim, “Got him!”
Jorge Luis Borges
Yesterday I intended to start reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. But I decided (after a visit to the book shop…) to read first some stories by Jorge Luis Borges : Historia Universal de la Infamia (1935), Ficciones (1944) and El Aleph (1949).
Note to myself: write an essay about Borges.
The Book of Beasts
White’s The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts was the first and, for a time, the only English translation of a medieval bestiary. Bestiaries were second only to the Bible in their popularity and wide distribution during the Middle Ages. They were catalogs of animal stories, combining zoological information, myths, and legends. Great attention was given to bizarre, exotic, and monstrous creatures. Much of the content of bestiaries was drawn from much older sources including Aristotle, early English literature, and oral traditions. White provides an excellent appendix that explains how the creatures of the bestiary influenced the development of allegory and symbolism in art and literature.
Ouroboros
The Ouroboros is a greek word, and means “tail swallower”. The ouroboros is usually depicted in the form of a snake swallowing its tail, and is usually circular, although it is sometimes depicted in a lemniscate shape. It originated in Egypt as a symbol of the sun, and represented the travels of the sun disk. In Gnosticism, it was related to the solar God Abraxas, and signified eternity and the soul of the world.
Lucas Jennis’ engraving published on an alchemical emblem-book entitled De Lapide Philisophico (1625):
Quaint Recipes
The following recipes are taken from a work entitled “New Curiosities in Art and Nature, or a collection of the most valuable Secrets in all Arts and Sciences. Composed and Experimented by Sieur Lemery, Apothecary to the French King. London, 1711.”
To Make one Wake or Sleep. You must cut off, dexterously, the head of a toad alive, and at once, and let it dry, observing that one eye be shut and the other open; that which is found open makes one wake, and that shut causes sleep, by carrying it about one.
Preservative against the Plague. Take three or four great toads, seven or eight spiders, and as many scorpions, put them into a pot well stopp’d, and let them lye some time; then add virgin-wax, make a good fire till all become a liquor; then mingle them all with a spatula, and make an ointment, and put it into a silver box well stopp’d, being well assured that while you carry it about you, you will never be infected with the plague.
From The queer, the quaint, the quizzical; a cabinet for the curious .. (1882), Stauffer, Francis Henry.
Document 12-571-3570
Document 12-571-3570 (also entitled NASA No. 12 571-3570) is a fictional document contrived by astronomer and scientific writer Pierre Kohler about the sex experiments in space attributed to NASA. An urban legend of course. Unlike the Mile High Club thou, which actually does exist. (ref)
Fictional Places
Countries from stories, myths, legends, that some people have believed to actually exist, make an interesting read.
Atlantis is probably the best example to start off with. The city of Atlantis first occurs in Plato’s two dialogues the “Timaeus” and the “Critias.” In Plato’s account, Atlantis, lying “beyond the pillars of Heracles”, was a naval power that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa, over 9,000 years before Plato’s own time, or approximately 9400 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”.
Another well-known example is El Dorado, a legend that began with the story of a South American tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and would dive into a lake of pure mountain water. As the story was told and re-told, El Dorado came to be viewed as a city containing immense wealth, a legend that inspired many explorers from the 1500s on. Meanwhile, the name of El Dorado came to be used metaphorically of any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired. In literature, frequent allusion is made to the legend, perhaps the best-known references being those in Milton’s Paradise Lost (Book XI (…) and yet unspoiled Guiana, whose great city Geryon’s sons call El Dorado(…)) and in Voltaire’s Candide (Ch. 18 (…)Les Espagnols ont eu une connaissance confuse de ce pays, ils l’ont appelé Eldorado;(…)). “Eldorado” was also the title and subject of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe :
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o’er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
“Shadow,” said he,
“Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?”“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied-
“If you seek for Eldorado!”
As is evident in Poe’s poem “El Dorado”, El Dorado may also refer to something much sought after that may not even exist, or at least may not ever be found. In this sense it bears similarity to other myths such as the Fountain of Youth, a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. and Shangri-la. Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, “Shangri-La” is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia—a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. The story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Other fictional countries include Aztlán, the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica, Ophir, a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth.
Mu is the name of a hypothetical vanished continent. It is thought to have been located in the Pacific Ocean but is now (like Atlantis and Lemuria, with which it is sometimes identified) believed to have sunk beneath the waters.
There is the occasional phantom island, and lots of mythological places, like Agartha, a legendary city that supposedly resides in the Earth’s core, or Avalon, a legendary island famous for its beautiful apples in the British Isles, which is believed by some to be the final resting place of King Arthur.
And not only on earth we have stories about fictional or mythological places. Phaeton e.g. is a hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter that was suggested by Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers. He supposed that the planet’s destruction formed the Asteroid Belt.
The list is endless. More in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places or at the online extension.
(Source – mostly Wikipedia or follow the links)
Bern Physiologus
Physiologus
The Physiologus was written in Greek, probably in Alexandria, in about the fourth century. It consisted of 48 or 49 chapters about beasts, birds and stones used as a vehicle for explaining Christian dogma. Its stories come from very ancient sources: Indian, Hebrew and Egyptian animal lore and various classical natural philosophers like Aristotle and Pliny. A moralising Christian gloss was added to these stories by a person presumably known as Physiologus.
The book was translated into Latin in about 400, and later many European and Middle-Eastern languages, and many illuminated manuscript copies such as the Bern Physiologus survive. It retained its influence over people’s minds in Europe for over a thousand years. It was a predecessor of the bestiaries (books of beasts).
A Bestiary is a collection of short descriptions about all sorts of animals, real and imaginary, birds and even rocks, accompanied by a moralising explanation. Although it deals with the natural world it was never meant to be a scientific text and should not be read as such. Some observations may be quite accurate but they are given the same weight as totally fabulous accounts. The Bestiary appeared in its present form in England in the twelfth century, as a compilation of many earlier sources, principally the Physiologus.
Bern Physiologus
The Bern Physiologus (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex Bongarsianus 318) is a 9th century illuminated copy of the Latin translation of the Physiologus. It was probably produced at Reims about 825-850. Some sample pages of this copy (source wikipedia):
The Eloi And The Morlocks
The hero of the novel The Time Machine, which a young writer Herbert George Wells published in I895, travels on a mechanical device into an unfathomable future. There he finds that mankind has split into two species: the Eloi, who are frail and defenseless aristocrats living in idle gardens and feeding on the fruits of the trees; and the Morlocks, a race of underground proletarians who, after ages of laboring in darkness, have gone blind, but driven by the force of the past, go on working at their rusted intricate machinery that produces nothing. Shafts with winding staircases unite the two worlds. On moonless nights, the Morlocks climb up out of their caverns and feed on the Eloi. The nameless hero, pursued by Morlocks, escapes back into the present. He brings with him as a solitary token of his adventure an unknown flower that falls into dust and that will not blossom on earth until thousands and thousands of years.
Three ways to levitate a magic carpet
It sounds like a science fiction joke, but it isn’t. What do you get when you turn an invisibility cloak on its side? A mini flying carpet.
So say physicists who believe the same exotic materials used to make cloaking devices could also be used to levitate tiny objects. In a further breakthrough, two other research groups have come a step closer to cracking the mysteries of levitation.
Via New Scientist
If however you prefer the fairy tale version of the flying carpet, read The Book of One Thousand and One Nights or read Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, or the comic Asterix and the Magic Carpet.
In 1880, the rich industrialist Savva Mamontov commissioned Viktor Vasnetsov to illustrate a folk talk about Ivan and the Firebird. The painting represents Ivan returning home after capturing the Firebird, which he keeps in a cage. Ivan is riding the flying carpet in the early morning mist.
The Raven
“The Raven” is a narrative poem by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. It was published for the first time on January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror. Noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere, it tells of the mysterious visit of a talking raven to a distraught lover, tracing the lover’s slow descent into madness.
See also The Raven illustrated by Gustave Doré (including an analysis of the poem), and another version illustrated by Édouard Manet (including a French translation), both available at Project Gutenberg.
The full text:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘T is some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.”Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow:—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“‘T is some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is, and nothing more.”Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there, and nothing more.Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this and nothing more.Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
‘T is the wind and nothing more!”Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore,—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above, us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Example of a Doré illustration which I mentioned before here and here (yes, I’m a fan of his work !):
Les Cités Obscures
Via I came across Les Cités Obscures (English translation Cities of the Fantastic), an imaginary parallel world (a Counter-Earth), created by the Belgian comics artist François Schuiten and his friend, writer Benoît Peeters. Official site. Obskür, the magazine about the Obscure Cities. Seems like something I might like.
Hell is Not a Place
A talk with Catholic exorcist Pedro Barrajon about demons, the nature of evil and exorcism today. An article I found reading signandsight dated dec 2005, but it keeps on amazing me how people can believe this.
According to Barajon “Hell is not a place, it’s a state” (that’s a relief – no fires and so). Also, “The church demands from a priest who is undertaking such an “expulsion” the moral certainty that it is indeed a case of possession.” (read : if you believe in Santa Claus, you will receive gifts).
Father Pedro Barrajon is a professor (can an exorcist be a professor nowadays ?) of theological anthropology at the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome, and member of the Catholic formation Legionaries of Christ, dedicated to studying and spreading the teachings of the Pope.
And I taught creationists were n*ts… Nothing against people who believe in some devine entity, but there are limits.
Book of Imaginary Beings
Jorge Luis Borges wrote and edited the Book of Imaginary Beings in 1957 as the original Spanish Manual de zoologia fantastica, or Handbook of Fantastic Zoology, expanding it in 1967 and 1969 to the final El libro de los seres imaginarios. The English edition, created in collaboration with translator Norman Thomas de Giovanni, contains descriptions of 120 mythical beasts from folklore and literature. In the preface, Borges states that the book is to be read ‘as with all miscellanies…not…straight through…rather we would like the reader to dip into the pages at random, just as one plays with the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope’; and that ‘legends of men taking the shapes of animals’ have been omitted.
Few readers will want, or be able to resist this modern bestiary. Here, you will find the familiar – Gryphons, Minotaurs and Unicorns – as well as the Monkey of the inkpot and other undeniably curious beasts. Borges’ cunning and humourous commentary is sheer delight.
Why Are There No Unicorns?
Why are there no unicorns? Perhaps horses develop in a way that cannot be easily modified to produce a unicorn, so such creatures have never arisen. Or maybe unicorn-like animals have been born in the past but because there is no advantage for a horse to have a horn, such creatures did not thrive and were weeded out by natural selection. More here.
All about unicorns, Unicorns in Medieval Bestiary, The Cryptid Zoo: Unicorns in Cryptozoology, Elasmotherium – a giant rhinoceros which stood two meters high and six meters (20 feet) long, with a single two-meter-long (7 feet) horn in the forehead, entry at Occultopedia, and Sir Thomas Browne about unicorns horns in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and of course (?) wikipedia has an entry as well on the subject.
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