Trollheart

Title: For the Blood is the Life
Format: Short story
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Nationality: American
Written: 1905
Impact: ?
Synopsis: The story takes place in Calabria, in Italy, and concerns the narration of a tale or legend by one man to his artist friend, concerning a mound he sees on the mountain which he can observe from where they sit, in an old castle. He thinks it is a grave, but if so then the body is outside it, and though his friend tells him he is right, he has to go down and look. While there it seems he is embraced by something called, well, the Thing, and the author notes that when he himself visited the mound previously, he too felt this presence unfolding around him. When his friend returns, a little shaken, though trying not to show it, and swears there was something following him (the author notes he felt the same the time he went down) he is told the story of the mound.

It seems a local miser’s son, Angelo, who lost his inheritance after his father died and his stash was stolen, begins to feel a local girl, Cristina, who was murdered by the two who took the miser’s treasure, is coming to see him. They meet at the mound - he thinks it’s a dream - and he falls asleep, waking drained, tired and pale. Though he knows now what is happening, and tries to resist, he is under the Thing’s spell and cannot help but wander down to the mound every evening after his work is done. He gets weaker and weaker, and paler and paler. Nobody remarks upon his pallor, thinking he is pining away for the girl he was to have married, who dumped him once she realised he was potless. And, you know, Italians aren’t very nice, so says the author.

Then a man called Antonio, who has been away and missed all the events of the miser’s death and robbery looks out and sees Angelo and his undead lover, and goes to the priest the next morning. The priest knows what to do, and the two of them head down to the mound to put this evil thing in Hell once and for all. Coming upon the Thing (it’s never called a vampire, just a Thing) and Angelo, the priest throws holy water on her and then Antonio goes down into the grave, and stakes the creature. After having thrown the holy water the priest is no more use, crying and gibbering while Antonio does all the work.

Comments: The story uses some of Stoker’s tropes and indeed some of the ones from previous stories, though I think this may be the first where holy water - which would later become one of the many weapons used against vampires - is brought into play. I’m not certain if it’s meant to drive the creature back into her grave, or even into her mortal body, where she can be staked, as it doesn’t make that clear. Unlike F.G. Loring above, this guy knows how to build up the tension and make the story seem real, including an ending which hardly satisfies but does seem more authentic, as the two men wonder whether the vampire is dead or not. This also becomes one of an increasing number of female vampires in these stories (almost always written by men) which tends to reinforce the point I made when discussing Carmilla, that it’s kind of a heavy-handed metaphor for the dangers of consorting with the wrong type of woman. Angelo was promised to another girl, who lost interest when she realised he no longer had any money, but Cristina had been after him all along, though he had never noticed. You could say, I guess, that now she takes either her revenge on him for ignoring her, or just satisfies her lusts, which have become a little more than a desire for some slap and tickle.

There are problems with this story. There’s absolutely no reason why Cristina should become a vampire, if we assume that’s what she’s supposed to be, even if it’s never named. She’s murdered, yes, and wants revenge, but how is she turned? Are we to believe that some evil force got hold of her in the grave, allowing her to take her revenge? And should that revenge not have been turned on the people who killed her? Though of course it seems, in somewhat Byronic tradition, that she can’t wander far from, or indeed at all from the mound which is her grave. If she’s drinking Angelo’s blood, are we to take it then that her body has not decayed, or will not, and may in time rise to stalk the village again? Crawford does not make this in any way clear; in fact, much of his story, well-written as it is, asks more questions than it answers, and in that way is quite incomplete.

There’s also that old current of racism/xenophobia running through this that we had in Eliza Linton’s The Fate of Madame Cabanel, with the Italians laughed at by the American author for their superstitious ways. “That sort of thing could not happen anywhere else,” observed Holger, filling his everlasting pipe again. “It is wonderful what a natural charm there is about murder and sudden death in a romantic country like this. Deeds that would be simply brutal and disgusting anywhere else become dramatic and mysterious because this is Italy.”

Given that Holger is Scandinavian, a people with a rich history in folklore and mythology, this seems an odd comment. Were we talking Irish or Spanish I might make the same comment, even a German might understand. But while the unnamed narrator - whom we have to assume is American, as is the author - could be, well, not excused for but understood for his dismissal of the beliefs of these Italians, Holger’s sneer is harder to credit. Either way though, it’s an unnecessary slur on a whole people. Had Holger confined his remarks, perhaps, to the country folk, superstitious villagers, maybe it might not have been so insulting. As it is, it leaves a sour taste.

Unlike Loring’s tale, here there is no scrap of sympathy for the creature. It’s not even said, or perhaps believed, that the human girl is innocent and that Antonio and the priest are releasing her soul; she is simply a monster, to be put down as violently and - again with the rape - phallically as possible. One small note is that there is no guarantee this has worked, and as in Loring’s tale, the vampire might still be abroad, as evidenced in Holger’s feeling a chill and swearing something was behind him as he comes back from the mound.


Title: The House of the Vampire
Format: Novella
Author: George Sylvester Viereck
Nationality: German
Written: 1907
Impact: ?
Famous firsts: First psychic vampire; first one not to drink blood
Before I begin any synopsis, a few words. This is not the first German vampire tale (though it may be the first German vampire novella, I’ll have to look back and check) but it is the first (only?) written by a Nazi. Seems Viereck was a Nazi sympathiser and spy in the Second World War, using his influence as a writer, poet and publisher to get close to Congress members in the USA, where he lived in New York. In fact, in 1916 an actual lynch mob chased him, Benny Hill-like (alright, not Benny Hill-like) from his home and he had to hole up in a hotel. He disseminated Nazi propaganda through sympathetic contacts in Congress, and interviewed both Freud and Hitler. In fact, the number of famous people he interviewed is beyond impressive - Mussolini, Henry Ford, Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Nikola Tesla and others. He was imprisoned in 1942 for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Wait, what? During wartime (America being in the war now at this stage) you could be legally in the States as an enemy agent, once you came clean? Huh? Wow, yeah, seems so. Weird.

Anyway, while I wouldn’t want to give oxygen to Nazi propaganda, I will try to read this if I can and get an idea if it expounds the old master race ideals. Given that it was written long before the outbreak even of World War One, I think we’re probably on relatively safe ground. Maybe. I'll have to come back to it at some point in the future, as I can't find a synopsis. I did download it but god knows when I'll get to read it. I'll get back to you. No, I will. No I have not got my fingers crossed!

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018