Much Ado About Nothing Realistically Important: The Evolution of the Vampire Lore

Very interesting, the evolution of the vampire concept. I profess to having no clue regarding the history of the vampire lore, but I do think that it was Bram Stoker’s Dracula that most effectively spread this tale of the night-crawling blood-drinking creatures. I am more familiar with the modern-day concepts of the vampire made by writers of today such as the legendary Anne Rice, and the blossoming Stephenie Meyer, and also as popularized in anime through Blood Plus and Vampire Knight. It is interesting to note how ‘stories turn into legends, and legends turn into myths’ as they change based on interpretation by the story-teller and the story-receiver. Evidence both of the feebleness of human memory, and the craftiness of the human mind. Ah yes. This is about the human mind in the long run—which is why it so fascinates me like nothing else. Save the immortal and inhumanly beautiful creatures of the night, the Gothic vampires.

So we begin by a brief outlining of the original vampire, Stoker’s brainchild, Count Dracula. I think it was this vampire who could be killed by a stake through the heart followed by a burning of the body in a pyre. He lives also in darkness, as the sun burns him also. I’m not sure (as I have not read the text), but perhaps he also has an aversion to garlic. However, Dracula is quite the ugly version of the vampires we know. The following is an excerpt from the book, cited in Encarta Encyclopedia (the software, a very brilliant and most efficient invention indeed, imagine being able to keep perhaps 30 volumes of the encyclopedia in one tiny fraction of one of my three hard disks):

…“His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine; but seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse—broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.”

Note the mention of ‘massive eyebrows’ and the rank breath. Oh well, perhaps back in those days tweezers and toothbrushes had not yet been invented, but regardless, by my standards, Dracula appears to have been quite literally a monster. No beauty to lure his prey with, no sweet natural scent to muddle the minds of his victims as he drank their blood and they lay willingly in his arms.

And oh yeah. I don’t think he has either shadow or reflection. So in short, the oldest vampire concept is that he is: 1. Deathly pale; 2. Really resembles the blood-sucking bats with his pointed ears; 3. Had claw-like hands thanks to his long fingernails; 4. Had fangs; 5. Wore a disturbing cape with which he concealed his unfortunate victims; 6. Smelled bad; 7. Hid in his castle away from the sun; 8. Could be killed by a stake to the heart; 9. Could fly; 10. Slept in a coffin; 11. Could make vampires too, but I don’t know if it involves giving his own blood. Truly a figment of nightmares. In the early 20^th century, that is.

The advent of avante garde writers of course changed the vampiric image from the somewhat ugly Dracula to the god-/goddess-like creatures whose immortality was both a gift and a curse, largely the latter because they have to live on human blood. I know not of other writers besides Anne Rice who was sensationalized, and righteously so, because she is probably the best author I have ever come across—her words are like poetry and music combined, that while I’m reading her work, it’s like I’m listening to a song. Oh yeah. I’m not trying hard to be poetic here; I’m trying in vain to put into words her indescribable mastery (waaah! Need I say that I’m a fan?!). Anyway, I have not heard mention of influences on her concept of the vampire, but really, her vampires are more serious, morose and serene, and very romantic. They are also superbly beautiful; the most gorgeous actors and actresses could barely do justice to embodying her vampires (but then again our concept of “uber beauty” is limited to these ‘most gorgeous’ people, so they ultimately suffice, i.e. Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. I mean, whaat? These guys, of the Ocean’s Eleven-Thirteen and Mission Impossible Series became vampires. Why? Because they were, at the time the Interview With The Vampire was filmed, the ‘most gorgeous’). I am led to believe that the concept of vampiric beauty being very superb was started by her (note that I was born at a time when she was the sensation; as I said, I am unfamiliar with earlier authors, if any, aside from Bram Stoker), although she expanded the vampire population and made their historical origins (fictional of course) so much more colorful, even entwined with ancient witchcraft (as is revealed I think in Queen of the Damned where the twin sisters—or at least one of them—Maharet and Mekare, summon a blood-sucking demon during the cave times. If my memory serves me well, the twins had lived in a cave, and this gave me the impression that those were cave times. I can no longer remember exactly. It has been 6-7 years since I read that book). But going back to the point, Anne Rice’s vampires are so much more different than Dracula, who appears to me to have been a vampire under the pretense that he was a human Count, and who ‘played’ with humans (i.e. paraded himself in front of human beings at the risk of being pinpointed to be a monster and killed…although I think he did get killed anyway), although some similarities exist/ important vampiric qualities remain. The following are Rice-vampire characteristics:

1. As said a million times, they are very beautiful, usually they were transformed at the prime of their youth so they look youthful for all eternity (David Talbot had the fortune of coming across the Body Thief, thus giving him his new, young, and of course sexy [but most unfortunately impotent], Anglo-Indian body);

2. They have fangs;

3. They have an ‘ancestry’, a colorful history and an actual family tree;

4. Offsprings can be made out of vampire-bite victims, and these die when their ‘makers/creators’ die;

5. They hate garlic, too, but it doesn’t kill them;

6. They die under the sun at the worst, and get burnt at best (i.e. Lestat, after drinking from the ‘Fount’/the mother vampire, wandered into the desert but could not die);

7. They are less conspicuous, or are not as flamboyant as Dracula had been, receiving a guest into his gloomy castle (now, when you come to think of it, a gloomy castle would have been highly suspicious and obvious);

8. They usually kill the people whose deaths/absences are of no consequence to society as a whole (i.e. prostitutes, suicides, criminals…) and have no desire to be noticed, although Lestat DID become a rockstar…well, that’s Lestat;

9. Mostly go about alone, seldom staying in one place, and at most in three’s (the largest ‘coven’, I believe, was that of Lestat, Louis, and the doomed vampire child, Claudia…The group of Marius, Pandora, Enkil and Akasha don’t count because the latter two were immobile for centuries under Marius’ watch);

10. They can’t have sex, they’re dead people, good-looking, blood-sucking zombies! Though of course they’re not zombies, they’re vampires, duh…their equivalent of sex is drinking each other’s blood;

11. When they do cry, they cry tears of blood;

12. They can all read minds and fly (without wings…so that’s more like levitation), but otherwise have no other power as the transformation is said to obliterate any human supernatural gift, i.e. the 6^th sense;

13. They can sense ‘preternatural changes’, i.e. when a new vampire joins the population/a vampire actually dies (which is quite a very infrequent phenomenon, i.e. the murder of Claudia and the suicide of Armand…and of the Queen of the Damned :D…they’re really hard to kill; Lestat, for one, was made to drink Garlic-infused blood-slash-vampire-poison, was stabbed in the heart I think, and dumped into some marsh…from which he rose up with amused vengeance), although these happenings are said to be like faint ripples, or only slightly palpable “rips in the fabric” of their existence. And they are usually very rich and intelligent, at least the really old ones. They don’t just transform anyone into a vampire. And oh yeah, there’s also this sort of Vampire Council disguised as a theater group, which deals with killing renegade/criminal vampires like poor old Claudia. Okay, I’m not sure about this but they did kill Claudia as punishment for what she did to Lestat. Tsk. 14. And lastly, they also sleep in tombs in the daytime, but it’s not a necessity; the coffin just effectively blocks out the sun.

Oh my. I love Anne Rice. She wove an intricate secret, supernatural world into the fabric of familiar humanity with such seamlessness, it’s utter brilliance, intellect and genius. And the Talamasca. Wow. The bridge between the witches (the Mayfair lineage, wow) and the vampires and other supernatural stuff she did not write about any longer. Stoker or Meyer cannot compete with the realism and complexity of her supernatural creations.

Now on to the New York Times’ best-selling author, Stephenie Meyer. She’s also brilliant, for an amateur writer, although her novels will never parallel Rice’s. The thing about Meyer is that she writes from the perspective of someone who is close to vampires, and not the vampires’ themselves, as opposed to Rice. And the main character is an adolescent, so one can expect the moroseness brought about by adolescent issues, contrary to Rice’s deeper, brooding, more romantic and philosophical ancient vampire issues. I can’t help but compare her to Rice because their vampires are very nearly the same in the sense that they’re really gorgeous, stay away from the sun and can transform humans to vampires by using blood, and her heroine, Bella, has thoughts that are reminiscent of Rice’s sad vampires. The thing about Meyer is her audacity to change traditional concepts about vampires.

1. Her vampires don’t burn under the sun—they glimmer/sparkle like they have diamond skin, which is why they stay away from the sunlight, and live in places where the sun rarely shows up, and I guess that’s Forks, Washington.
2. They feed on animal blood, or at least Carlisle’s coven does, in their attempt to master their more barbaric nature and call it “vegetarianism”. The vampire coven that Meyer focused upon also wanted to live like humans, calling themselves a family, although the parents look awfully young to have adolescents as children. Meyer has created ‘civilized’ vampires, monstrosities that ignore their inner demons, and tame them at best; they have a concept of morality and are human in all aspects except for the fact that they’re technically the walking-dead and have a different diet.
3. Her vampires can enjoy sex, with a human or with themselves, and actually procreate, ooh la la. That is, the male vampiric sperm is still potent and can fertilize a human egg, which is a ‘pleasant surprise’ as one friend put it, so that they bore a vampiric human child—basically a vampire with a heartbeat, that nearly killed the human mother because it apparently fed on her blood or something while in the womb. A vampire mate can also kill his human partner during the act of sexual intercourse; the best that can happen is for her to have bruises. It is unfortunate though, for the female vampire because although she can climax, she can’t have babies. Poor Rosalie.

This idea is the most audacious of all. I mean when you come to think of it, how could a dead male have an erection? A dead woman an orgasm?

1. They’re like the X-men, each with a unique gift, some extraordinary human quality amplified by the vampiric transformation, i.e. Alice and her gift to see the future, which in her human state had her accused of being mad, I guess, and also dear Edward’s ability to read minds except his beloved Bella’s, who turns out to have the power of “shielding”.
2. The uncivilized vampires (that is, the rest of the vampire population excluding Carlisle’s little “family”) are nomadic.
3. There appears to be a very special and most dangerous sort of vampire, a “tracker”, which by means such as memorizing a subject’s scent can track you down anywhere. Unless you get on a plane before he/she finds you.
4. They have this Volturi, which is a group of highly-gifted vampires led by three uber ancient vampires, Aro, Caius and Marcus, and which “ensures peace all over the vampire world”. They’re like the global police, killing vampires that cause a ruckus and make themselves noticeable to the human population, or create child vampires. These are two main reasons for them to wage a war against you. Kind of reminds me of the Parisian vampire coven in Rice’s novel (Theatres something or other), although that coven doesn’t intervene globally. Just probably when you happen to be in Paris.
5. They can’t sleep, poor things. But at least they have no need for coffins. Or even beds. Carlisle’s home appliances and whatnot were all a pretense.
6. Actually, everything human that they did was a pretense—breathing, eye-lash batting (or blinking), sitting down, shifting positions every now and then…you know, if it weren’t for Carlisle’s human principles they could’ve made do with simply standing in wait for the next prey.
7. The vampires are multi-cultural, but very few. They don’t always make vampires because “newborns” are unstable and utterly wild. On the contrary, Rice’s newborns are just weak in comparison to the ancient ones. The newborns of Meyer’s creation are actually stronger than the older vampires at most for a year.
8. The vampires die only if they are hacked into infinite pieces and each one burnt. They won’t die with a stake to the heart, with the sun, with garlic, with the simple hacking into infinite pieces. They must thereafter be burnt.
9. Of course they’re gorgeous, beautiful in an otherworldly sense. But take this: THEY HAVE NO FANGS. Oooh yeah. Vampires with no fangs, to think that these fangs are the vampire-lore trademark. Tsk. Meyer’e audacity, dismissing this important vampire characteristic as myth. In this I think she’s a fool, but a courageous and crafty one at least.

Yes. Stories turn into legends and legends into myths. I would not be surprised if I read about vampires in flying saucers.

On the one hand, Meyer’s ideas, no matter how revolutionary, almost renegade (NO FANGS?!), have been well-received by the general public. Even me. Though I got bored with her style—her books tend to climax near the end, or not at all, like Breaking Dawn. I think that was a failure. She did well with the third, I guess. I can’t really be sure, but I had the impression that she was growing with the books, becoming a mature writer with each novel. That is, until Breaking Dawn. Tsk. That was one big failure for me, in spite the fact that everyone lived happily after. It was like she wrote it so it would appeal to the taste of the less intellectual public, those who simply read for more insight into the Edward-Bella love team, and not the whole vampire thing. They might as well have been humans with extraordinary gifts like the X-men. It also gave me the impression that she was writing it as though seeing a movie in her head. Yes, a movie in the making, what with the Mercedes Guardian. THAT was really FAR-REACHING. Tsk. However, I remain fond of the idea of Edward and the idea of Alice, as most Twilight fans would admit to. They were fantastic characters. The perfect man and the perfect sister-in-law.

Well, all those musings are beside the point. Ultimately, the point is that evolution occurs: in the decades separating Stoker, Rice and Meyer, the vampire lore has been romanticized, and then humanized. Even Matsuri Hino’s vampires, the members of the Night Class in Cross Academy are into living with blood tablets instead of human blood, as though in a peace treaty. Matsuri’s vampires, however, are a hybrid of Rice’s and Meyer’s—the offspring die when their makers do; they cannot sleep; they have special abilities unique to the individual; they can mate, but only with their fellow “purebloods”, ultimately their kin. So the vampires are incestuous. They also have a Volturi equivalent, one which looks after the welfare of the purebloods. Really interesting stuff.

In Blood Plus, there are two “mother vampires”, from whose blood the chevaliers and their other offspring could be created from humans. However, the vampires’ true forms are those of gigantic monsters with snouts and fangs in bad need of braces. Truly ugly and gruesome. The chevaliers, though, are supposed to be good-looking, although I found only Solomon and Haji attractive (the chevaliers, as the name implies, are protectors of the “queen”, and mates of the opposite…you know…Saya’s chevaliers are Diva’s grooms, although Diva’s chevaliers except dear Solomon had the intention of getting wedded to her, not Saya). And oh yeah, the “mother vampires” are literally toxic to each other: one can kill the other with her blood, which is what happened at the end. Hence it also follows that the blood of one can kill the chevaliers of the others. Apparently, vampires are extinct creatures brought back to life by one John Goldsmith, a scientist who discovered Saya’s and Diva’s mother in the 1800s, with the two offspring preserved in her mummified womb. Really, really interesting stuff, yeah.

Anyway, the fate of such mythical creatures do lie in the hands of the writers who take on the arduous and most dangerous task of creating new worlds within that which we know of, or at least think so (thanks to the brilliant writers of The Matrix what we know may not actually be reality but a simulation of its past…waaa).

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