SPOILERS
| Added | Wed, 06/09/2017 |
| Release date | 01-04-1819
|
| Original title | The Vampyre
|
| Феномены | |
| References |
The story "The Vampire" (Eng. The Vampyre) is considered the first work in the history of fiction describing a vampire. The author is John Polidori.
The history of the creation of this work is interesting. In 1816, John Polidori became Lord Byron's personal physician and traveled with him to Europe. Byron rented the villa Diodati on Lake Geneva for the summer, here Byron and Polidori were joined by friends of the lord - poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (the future Mary Shelley) and Mary's half-sister (at that time — Byron's lover) Claire Clermont. The summer that year turned out to be incredibly cold and rainy, 1816 generally went down in history as the "year without summer". The reason was the huge amount of volcanic dust that dispersed in the upper atmosphere after the terrible eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in April 1815. Because of the disgusting weather, the friends spent most of their time at the villa and were desperately bored. Somehow they got their hands on a collection of German legends about ghosts. The impression of what he read turned out to be so strong that Byron offered his friends a competition: "Let everyone write their own scary story." Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote four chapters of the novel "Assassins", but soon abandoned this work, Byron himself also limited himself to a small passage. Polidori and Mary Godwin took the matter more seriously: Mary began writing her famous novel Frankenstein, and Polidori reworked Byron's idea into a story "The Vampire", which was published in an English magazine in 1819, and initially, by mistake, by the authorship of Lord Byron.
For the first time, the Russian translation of The Vampire was made in 1828 by P.V. Kireevsky.
The story marked the beginning of a whole trend in mystical literature and to this day is one of the most famous works of English Gothic.
The story "The Vampire" (Eng. The Vampyre, 1819, by John Polidori) is considered the first work in the history of fiction describing a vampire.
The story "The Vampire" (Eng. The Vampyre, 1819, by John Polidori) he initiated a whole trend in mystical literature and to this day is one of the most famous works of English Gothic.
A young and rich orphan Aubrey draws attention to a certain Lord Ruthven who appeared in high society in London, who amazed everyone with his eccentricity. Aubrey, having learned that Ruthven is going on a trip to Europe, joins him. On the journey, the lord seduces a young girl, but is not going to marry her. This leads to a rift between Aubrey and Lord. The young man goes to Greece, where he meets a young Greek woman, Ianthe, who believes in vampires and tells Aubrey terrible stories about terrible deaths at the hands of these monsters. Aubrey notices similarities in her descriptions with the features of Lord Ruthven, which makes him uneasy. One night there is an attack. Aubrey finds out that the vampire sucked the blood out of Ianthe and she died. Aubrey begins to have a fever, Lord Ruthven comes to him, who nurses the young man. Later, after recovering, they go on a trip to the Greek peninsula, but they are attacked by robbers on one of the mountain roads. They wound Ruthven, and he soon dies. Before he dies, he asks Aubrey to swear that no one in London will know about his death for a year and a day. The young man agrees. After that, Aubrey returns to London and begins to live as before, but after some time Lord Ruthven is found quite alive in the city, who reminds the young man of the oath, and in the meantime begins to seduce his sister under the name of a certain Marsden. Unable to break his word, Aubrey gets a nervous breakdown. They put him in a room with the servants, mistaking him for a mentally ill person, and do not let him go anywhere. A year has passed since the oath to Lord Ruthven. The day before the wedding, he writes a letter to his sister with a warning and a request to delay the ceremony for at least a few hours, but the doctor reads the letter and, taking it for nonsense, does not pass it to her. "Marsden" and Aubrey's sister get engaged, and the next morning she is found drained of blood, while Lord Ruthven disappears somewhere.
Phenomena in artwork: A vampire
The vampire in this work are the Lord Ruthven (Lord Ruthven).
On the first pages of the story the author gives a description of the Lord:
Te who asusal this awe, could not explain its origin: some have referred to look gray and dead eyes that, by staying on the face of the interlocutor, as if it had not penetrated into the soul and learned the secret impulses of his heart, but fell on her cheek a lead beam, and, unable to overcome the barrier, pushed her intolerable burden.
[...]
Despite the ash-pale skin tone - no blush of shame, no game passions had no power to revive it, although the features and contour of the face was distinguished by perfection of form
Further description of vampires is found only in the stories Ianti. In addition Ianta described vampire features similar to those features of the Lord, she was talking about vampires in the following way:
... spends a lot of years surrounded by friends and loved ones, forced every year to feast upon the beautiful life of the virgin, to extend their own for the coming months. ...Vampires going into the woods on the night of the Orgy, and that the most terrible misfortune fall on the head who dare stand in the way y of monsters.
The vampires in the novel are twofold. Young people like Aubrey, are stories about them with some irony and sarcasm. At least in public. The older generation present in the story, for example, parents Yanti, experiencing awe before the mystery and monsters:
Ianta appealed to the authority of parents, and both they, and several of those present immediately neighbors confirmed the existence of monsters, turning pale from terror when one o them is mentioned.
To tell but little mention is typical for modern ideas the traits of vampires. Here they are just undead who drink blood and look like dead with pale grey bloodless face.
Translated by «Yandex.Translator»
Log in or register to post comments
