SPOILERS
| Added | Mon, 04/12/2017 |
| Release date | 1773
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| Original title | Lenore
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| Феномены | |
| References |
The ballad of Gottfried Burger, written by him in 1773, was published in the magazine "Göttinger Musenalmanach" in 1774. In Russian, the ballad was printed for the first time in V. A. Zhukovsky's Ballads and Stories in 1831. Despite the fact that vampires are not mentioned directly in this poem, it greatly influenced the stories about vampires in subsequent literary works and finds responses in our time. So, one of his plots "Denn die Todten reiten schnell" ("For the dead move fast") was quoted in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
"Lenore" is a story about a dead man returning from the grave to visit his beloved and bring her death. In fact, this is a classic story about the return of dead spouses from the other world, often found even in modern epics and eyewitness accounts. The plot formed the basis of the ballads of V.A. Zhukovsky "Svetlana" (1811) and "Lyudmila" (1808). In them, their dead grooms also appear to the heroines and take them to the afterlife.
The young girl Lenora is waiting for her beloved William, but she does not meet him among the returnees. Heartbroken, she curses God and her miserable life. However, at midnight, a rider drives up to her porch and calls the girl. The night visitor turns out to be William and asks Lenora to go with him that night. The girl, of course, agrees and sits down with the young man on a horse. The couple goes very fast. The girl asks in perplexity how they can fly so fast, to which William replies: "The road to the dead is smooth" (or "the dead move fast"). The girl wonders why her lover mentions the dead. Along the way, a joyful William invites a coffin procession to his wedding, and even a swarm of flies over the gallows. Finally, at dawn, they arrive at the gate to the cemetery. The horse flies over the tombstones, William suddenly crumbles into dust, and only a skeleton remains of him. The marital bed that her lover promised turns out to be a grave. And Lenora suddenly finds herself in it, and shadows, dead people and skeletons are swirling from above.
Phenomena in artwork: A vampire
This piece belongs to a vampire theme, though no mention of classic vampires in it there is: no drinking blood, no mention of fangs or transformations. However, some connection with the phenomenon of vampirism you can still see, since the work is salonom the dead, according to Slavic beliefs, it died an unnatural death of a person who has not received sedation after death returns to the world of the living and continues to exist on earth as a mythical creature. And Zaloznykh of the dead, in turn, often associated with vampires – the undead who drink blood.
The impure force shows a classic description of the fear of cock-crowing:
My horse, my horse, cocks;
My horse, ride faster...
There is also a transformation (conversion) is immediate decomposition outwardly normal to the skeleton:
About fear!...in an instant
A piece of clothing by piece
Flew with him as decay;
And no skin on the bones;
Eyeless skull on the shoulders;
No helmet, no jacket;
It is in the hands of the skeleton.
And of course the very recognition of the living corpse, about which we wrote above: "Smooth road to the dead!" It is even conceivable that this phrase indicates that while traveling Lenora also was already dead.
Translated by «Yandex.Translator»
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