Innovations in the early-modern vampire
Just finished John William Polidori’s The Vampyre. Most people aren’t aware of Polidori.
Many people did watch The Bride of Frankenstein, though. The framing mechanism for that movie is a stormy night with Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. This night actually occurred during the year without a summer, where ghost stories were shared. Polidori was there too, and it was Polidori who created the modern aristocratic vampire that night.
Note also that Polidori’s The Vampyre predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by roughly eight decades.
The book is also quite short and available to the public, so I’ll spare you the summary. It’s more important that I talk about how the “vampire” folktale changed forever after Polidori’s treatment.
The vampire before Polidori
There are a ton of historical foundations for the vampire across different cultures, but they usually tend to relate to the dead, witches, and the animal-like.
Much of vampire fiction, before and after the 19th century centers around Romania. Specifically, the main mythological foundation are the strigoi.
The strigon of Romania are traditionally commoners who haunt towns, seeking revenge and causing death.
The vampire after Polidori
It seems that the key element of the vampire in Polidori’s work is the sense of detachment. Lord Ruthven doesn’t look at something: he gazes upon it through dead grey eyes. He doesn’t win people over with his personality: he charms people with his “serpent’s art.” His smiles, when flashed, are only of “malicious exultation.” Effectively, you can never reach the lord on a personal level, which enhances the inhuman feeling about him.
The detachment neatly fits into Polidori’s background as a physician and professional fixation on somnambulism and trance states. Polidori believed that the sleepwalker only recognizes their immediate sensations. For a horror treatment on somnambulism that approaches vampirism without the bloodsucking, see 1920’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. You’ll notice quite immediately how closely the somnambulist and the courtly vampire feel conceptually related.
Ruthven was also a pillar of generosity to the poor, but only to the profligate who wanted to indulge in their vices. His generosity is always a curse. His nobility is a cudgel to polite society. The protagonist of the story is unable to save his sister simply because he made a promise with Ruthven. This would not and could not be an element of a story of the lower classes, which ignore the noblesse and grandeur of the aristocracy.
This is what makes the early modern vampire so unique: they’re something in the shape of a human that reflect human artifices, yet they’re something entirely foreign. I think this is why the Eastern European nobility trope is so effective… it’s a sense of detachment at two levels, economic and social. And the pallid tone of his skin reflects a literal bloodlessness, or lack of humanity. He’s a lone virus, a smooth killer, that’s stealthily invaded a new host, and not even the white blood cells have noticed. We know what the virus looks like, but our bodies have failed to see that it’s already working its way in.
The vampire waaaaay after Polidori
It’s also why I think urban vampire fiction ultimately loses a lot. That newer genre reflects some of the trappings of the concept, but gives too much away freely. The whole “vampire romance” angle removes the larger social danger in favor a personal danger. The situation is no longer “how can is society so blind to the danger that’s lulling it with its charms,” it becomes “how can this vampire resist his/her natural urges.” It’s a valid personal topic to explore, but it’s also substantially less interesting one from a global perspective.
The vampire is strongest as a charming danger. A modern vampire should be somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Batman – wealthy, detached, reflecting the artifices of polite aristocratic society, while hiding mysterious darkness. It could even be a mysterious venture capitalist that’s just come out of nowhere, only to utterly charm society with a calculated smile.
And there’s always Vampire Hunter D.
Side note: I noticed a reference to the Otranto, the Italian coastal town, in the text. I wonder if it’s a reference to Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto — the book that originated the genre that The Vampyre operates within.
