By Suzanne Carré

The vampire as we know it originated in the Balkans but Western Europe had already known a form of demon with fangs, and drinking blood to live. From witchcraft, the entity acquired numerous supernatural powers. With the development of demonology to create an all-powerful Devil, the vampire became the lord of the underworld. The perfect unholy marriage of this magical creature with the cursed undead was consummated in the minds of writers and thinkers amidst the turmoil of the late 17th  and early 18th centuries. For the vampire it meant moving into the dark, damp and often putrid realm of the grave.

Grave Dwellers

This is when the vampire of modern Europe becomes ugly—extremely revolting. The Slavic folklore of the vampire limits the recently deceased to preying on and haunting the living, much like a ghost. Decay of the human body causes the flesh to bloat and bleed before it rots. This half-recognizable state illustrated the vampire in physical form but the demon within still had all the forces of nature at its command.

In the period known as the Age of Enlightenment, witch burnings continued in France and Germany. Interestingly, these regions were still rife with internal conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. The fires would finally go out completely in Germany and it is in this country where the vampire of the grave begins its literary fame.

As the undead, the vampire represented the personal horrors of dying. As an entity controlling nature by supernatural powers, the vampire exemplified the extravagant and dictatorial monarchies dominating the political landscape of Europe. The Medieval world was in rapid decay, just like the vampire, but ugliness is only skin deep. War on the battlefield was the blood sacrifice to the vampire of power. But a conflict of identity raised its ugly head for the first time—that of a unified Europe—so the concept of a Euro State is over 250 years old. Not a bad age for a modern vampire.

So where does the sexiness come into this? Power is a sexy beast and total power irresistible. This is certainly over-analyzing the concept. The uncertainty that kept men awake in their beds, afraid of the night demon, may have been a form of inspiration, much like Mary Shelley writing of the foreboding Industrial Revolution in her novel Frankenstein. But I think it is the notion of “humanity,” in the philosophy of the time, which manifests the vampire into a creature representing the dead past that rises each night to seduce and feed on the sleeper.

Death and Sex

By the mid 1700′s, the view of death changed. The human body, whether lifeless or even mutilated, became the subject of high art. This is the period called the Romantic era. The art started with the exoticism of the East, but quickly the almost obsessive focus to the human condition, through suffering, directed the topics for painters. It is also the time celebrating the birth of the novel structure. Now the death of mortality, depicted in heroic form on the canvas, becomes almost erotic in text. Vampires were the “in thing” so it was natural for them to emerge in poetry and narrative as a tantalizing form of death.

We cannot forget the history of the vampire to this stage. Once the Devil, the vampire symbolized anti-church (especially anti-Catholic Church in Protestant regions of Germany). So the vampire took on a challenging role, offering an alternative to death by sin. And if you’re paying the debt of sin, you are almost certainly committing a carnal sin of sexual pleasure. Erotic dreams and masturbation are among the fears of the population now coming to grips with their newly formed relationship between God and the factional Churches. Puritanism becomes dominate in America, influencing European thinking on sexuality, so sex is now equal to death, and all things of the grave, perverse erotica.

Sleeping in their Coffins

Vampires in their coffins, a restful abode to escape the sun, represented much more by the turn of the 18th century than they do today. The idea of the dead sleeping until the resurrection takes on a more literal sense at this time, and female vampires in particular regain their succubus form, at least for the initial seduction of their intended victims. These female vampires stalked both men and women, so no sooner is the vampire sexy again and she is also partial to lesbianism (see Carmilla).

But the vampire didn’t rest in peace. The tales of vampires stalking the living as told in Eastern Europe had sparked a vampire craze in the beginning of the 1700′s. To anyone who complains that recently there are too many vampire stories out there, I am sorry to say this is only a continuation of the insatiable curiosity we’ve had with the vampire for nearly 300 years. This vampire mania of the 18th century not only popularized the idea of a modern vampire, but assisted in the development of a sexy beast tempting our souls.

In Hungry, the myth developed more in line with the Slavic folklore. But the interest in the vampire was particularly chilling because of the historical reality of the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathori. According to legend, she took to the habit of bathing in blood of young girls, some accounts say she also indulged in  drinking blood to perpetuate her youth. Using her power and noble birth, she conducted a reign of terror, abducting her victims in the dead of night. Her henchmen then tortured and drained the girls of their blood. When her brutality was eventually detected, investigations found her guilty of murdering at least 60 girls (some accounts claim ten times this number). What started as heightened curiosity in the West sparked  hysteria and publicized vampirism in Hungry.

Vampirism

Today the definition of vampirism is the belief in or practices of vampires. Originally this was not so. The practice of digging up supposed vampires, and mutilating the corpse was an act of vampirism performed by the human seeking to destroy the vampire. The name of “vampire” then transfers to the living person who has so defiled the corpse. The term also applied once to any violation of the dead. Particularly necrophilia is an act of vampirism, the sexual act conducted by a human, in this case, called a vampire.

The hysteria over being a victim of the undead lead to the first scientific studies of the so-called vampire. Proving that vampires of folklore do not stalk the living involved detailed research into the myths. These fictional and non-fiction accounts of the vampire have provided valuable resources for writers right to the present.

But the vampire was to change, if only subtly, during the 19th century. In this time, the blood lust of the vampire not only terrorized but aroused the senses with its sexual potential. One trait it seemed the vampire acquired in the Victorian period is the capacity to spread disease, both of pestilence and of a spiritual nature. I’ll discuss the way vampires became so in the next article.

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