RED INK

Bram Stoker was born in Dublin in 1847 and fifty years later, in May of 1897, the English Publishing Contable Press, publishes a novel, the importance of which will overcome the dreams of the author. Stoker had already published other works in the fantastic field, but the edition of Dracula will mark out a historical moment for the fantastic and horror literature. In fact it will overshadow all the former and the latter work of this Irish man and would engrave in the taste of generations to come, the wish to tell stories about these creatures of the night, of the undead. He establishes with his character an icon which the industrial art called cinematagraphy will adopt without distrust and from which the literature will go on feeding till the present days.

But let�s go step by step, and a possible beginning could be to examine the origin of these creatures. For this we have to go back to the traditions crowded with demons as Lilith, of Babylonian asirian origin, with naked figure of long entangled hair finishing sometimes in the shape of a snake. Lascivious with men, she uses to snatch the newly born from their mothers to drink their blood, eat their flesh and suck the spinal cord of their bones. In the Greek Mythology we find estriges (screech owls). lamia (fabulous monster with the face of a woman and the body of a dragon) and the empusas. In China, the horrible Ch�ing shuh reanimated corspses and ate human flesh. In India, the baital, a reanimated corpse, could shape in bat. But very few have all these infernal zoologies to do with the vampire that have reached our days.�

"All we have to do is to follow the traditions and superstitions...for these things - the tradition and the superstition - are everything."

These wise words belong to the greatest vampire hunter ever existed: Abraham Van Helsing. And he was right, because only in XVIII century the vampire shows up in European scene and this thanks to the superstition, although it is not yet a prominent literature figure nor even romantic or epic. The vampire represented then the metaphor of the epidemic pest. Let�s imagine the following picture: East Europe, The Balkans, desolation caused by the pest, destroying the population, ornamenting the fields with the dead bodies of adults and children, bodies which give off the fetid odors of death; (one century later, Edgar Allan Poe will take revenge against the artistrocratic elites in "The Mask of the Red Death"). As you can see, a picture that has nothing of romantic.

The first reports about vampires will come out from these rural villages, dead rising from their graves that infect others and drink their blood! The main capitals of Europe decide to give a look at them and then pseudo scientific reports about these entities come up. The instructed men discuss about the truth of the presented cases, trying to draw the line between the purest superstition and the necessity to maintain the popular obedience to an omniscient God.

POLIDORI: The First One.

"From the grave I have risen / to look for my promised gift / to find the man loved for me / and to drink the blood from his temple. / When this so happen / I will go from here / to look for other men as well ... ("Corinto�s Bride", J.W. Goethe).

A new scene opens in the XIX century. The dangers of new outbreaks of superstition have been relegated to the rural boundaries and in the cities the vampire will only visit the poets and novelists. The romantics will start an eager search for the weird (that many times will lead them -as in the case of Poe and Maupassant - to self-destruction) the searching for the most obscure sides of the human soul will come out voluptuous and macabre nightmares. They horrifying is now the new category of the taste, the new source of pleasure.

With these ideas in their mind, many of them gifted and fascinated for the evil, this generation of writers will crate startling stories, approaching subjects related to ghosts, vampires and all the sadistic and morbid that can produce the utmost horror. Milton, with "Lost Paradise" will mark the archetype of satanic beauty, fallen angels enjoying the pleasures of an Eden where all the human passions meet; and a poet, Lord Byron, will be the one who embodies, due to his strong personality, the model of transgression carried to an extreme feeling of pain. Flaubert will say about him: "...I didn�t believe in anything but in all the vices, and in a living God that exists only to make real the pleasure of evil...". Under these premises, so close to vampirism, will not be strange that Byron would inspire the first tale of vampires. "The Vampyre. A Tale", is published in 1819. The author, John Polidori, was Byron�s secretary and doctor, sad relationship for both of them mainly for Polidori who was the target of all the sarcasm and disdain of the poet. Polidori will die at the age of twenty-six years old, of overdose. In his tale he introduces the perfidious Lord Ruthven who will be the prototype of the vampire in English Literature: charming with women, precisely the contrary to what his author is.

The vampires are in fashion, but there will be a catalyst book of this prevailing onirism: "Varney, the Vampyre" or "The Feast of Blood", of James M. Rymer, where the vampire Francis Varney has the leading role of an untiring repetition of wet and bloody stories with all the kitsch excess of the gothic novel: cold nights of howling wind, exasperated cries, stabs, shots and endless exclamations of blood and death... Motives that, in time, will become classic and will leave a noticeable mark in "Dracula" of Bram Stoker.

THE COUNT WHO CAME FROM FAR

The Walachian prince Vlad Tepes, known as well as Vlad the Impaler, whose exciting life during the XV century inspired Stoker to create a perturbing novel. The most important values of this novel are in its narrative structure which is build upon different points of view. The whole story is made in a fragmented way, by the sum of the diaries, letters and articles each character makes.

Another remarkable aspect, in spite of the different film versions and posterior literary games with the character, is the leading role absence of the count. The novel, being worked over the words of other characters. Every time that Dracula is mentioned it is within the narration of a third peson: Jonathan Harker at the beginning, in Transilvania; Mina, the meeting notes of the group of hunters of the count, in one of his security houses in London, etc. This limitation is a wise movement, as although the appearances of Dracula in a physical way are few, his presence is far strong through the fears and cruelties that he inflicts.

"Dracula" mixes suspense and adventure with weird and fantastic elements, many of them coming from the myths about vampires. For example, the land from where the count comes from, Transilvania, was one century before seized by the pest. Another curiosity over the novel that goes away from his later revisions is that in the horror book there are strong links among the main characters (friendship, marriage, loyalty, that for example will push the others to revenge the death of the unfortunate Lucy). There are also sadistic and sensual situations which wake up hate as well as horror, and the classic topics; stakes, fangs, beautiful women in very suggestive gowns, wolves, fog, prosecutions, graves, cemeteries...blood...

SENSUALITY AND FANGS

Whilst in the first half of XIX century the mortal lover is a man, in the second one, the woman has major presence. Of wild and exotic beauty or angelical, of voluptuous figure and always lascivious, these ladies contaminated by the certain presence of death, will meet in the pen of another Irish man, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, his master piece, considered by many the best story of vampires.

"Carmilla" (1872) focuses its story in the morbid lesbian passion, which insinuates much more than the expressed and discovers how poisonous a passion can be based upon the softer intensities of faintness. The vampire Carmilla will harass her young victim who has given shelter to her in the castle, and as soon as the undead gets enraptured with the life she has decided to take, a seduction game starts for the victim, dangerous and full of weird and tumultuous sensations.

Goethe with "The Bride of Corinto" (1797) and Baudelaire with "The Metamorphosis of the Vampire" (1857), will explore through the poetry the sensuality of the female vampiric soul, so charming and irresistible. The vampiric subject developed in the XIX century encloses endless variations. Besides the classic characters of the Satanic Lord and the femme fatale, we find in the vampire of the folklore, tales about popular and rural legends which re create a primitive horror, enhanced with the regional descriptions, either in a Russian village ("The family of the Vurdalak" of A. Tolstoi) or in Calabria, as the piece of Marion Crawford "For the Blood is the Life", which stands out for its simplicity and its plastic strength. Other good examples could be "Sara�s grave" of Loring, "The Viji" of Gogol, "The Guzl" of Merim�e or "The Mistery of Ken" of Julian Hawthorne, which places the story in Ireland.

Last but not least, there is the invisible force, which is the psychic vampirism, as in "The Parasyte" of Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Horla" of Maupassant or "Transference" of A. Blackwood. Invisible fangs that pierce into the depth of the human soul, contamining and taking his victim to a morbid and uncontrolled paranoia. The lineage of the creatures arisen in the XIX century has reached our days...

VAMPIRES - XX Century

The character of James Woods in "John Carpenter�s Vampires" (1998) says at point-blank range that the vampires "are not those refined and polite beings that the novels picture".

Richard Matheson would have agreed for sure. Nevertheless, this American writer of tough and concise prose wrote one of the best and more originals novels about vampires of XX century: "I am Legend" (1954). The book starts from the premise of a twisted society, where the vampires are hunted by the last survivor of an extinguished race: the human beings. The piece of Matheson has harshness and it is a challenge. But as we can find points of inevitable contact, we can also find remarkable differences, as a frequent subject in the vampiric literature during the XX century, that is to go deeply in the vampire origin itself. It seems to be a constant feature to explain his story and it seems to be a golden rule at the moment to write a novel about vampires. To tell their gifts and their metamorphosis can lead us either to a being which nucleus is a kind of Lovecraftian molluscan or to beings of evil beauty possessed by an evil being long time ago.

Having lost the innocence and the romantic aura, the richness of the literature of this century centers in the search of alternatives of the vampiric subject or starting from the model and the classic history, fill it with actual codes, violence, beauty, sexuality, lesbianism and hosexuality, blood and more blood, always looking to innovate, though the archetype imposed by the satanic lord and femme fatale are still the more used.

The literature of alternative story proposes a meeting with the classic story but torn up and re organized according the new parameters, introducing new characters or using famous ones.

But the english writer and reviewer, Kim Newman goes far beyond, and in 1922 wondered what would have happened if Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker would have failed and the conquest plan of Dracula would have been a success. "The Year of Dracula" has its setting in time in 1888, Van Helsing and Harker are impaled in front of the doors of Buckingham Place, Dracula has became prince consort of Queen Victoria and Great Britain is an island crawling with vampires and mutants, where intrigues are weaven and serial killers of vampires are hunted.

Using Stoker�s characters (the ones that have survived of course, as Mina and Arthur have been turned into vampires), he mingled them with other famous characters of literature and movies. Newman shows us a Mme. Stoker as hostess of parties whereas her husband (the writer Dom Bram) has been confined to a concentration camp together with Sherlock Holmes; or the Baron Orlok, the Nosferatu of Murnau, who is the warden of the London Tower, place which has turned into a prison where the torture is a common thing. Dr. Jekill with Dr. Mureau (Wells�creation) and a descendant of Carmilla helps a British agent in the intrigue against the regime imposed by the Impaler.

"The year of Dracula" will have an upshot placed during the First World War: "The sanguinary Red Baron" which narrates the way Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire rise against the rest of Europe. As original as the first one, it mixes politics and science fiction with a satire of war. Edgar A. Poe, who is hired to write the story of a very particular assault group which leader is the famous Red Baron.

Another case of alternative story is with the walachian prince in the middle, it is the piece of Brian Stablefore "The Empire of Fear", where Draulya will confront another notorious character now turned into a vampire: Richard Lion�s Heart.

KING, RICE AND OTHER MODERN BLOODSUCKERS

Salem�s Lot is a quiet town where nothing spectacular nor weird happens. But, nothing happened. One day two facts will turn that quietness into a nightmare: a well known writer (as usual...) decides to settle down in the town in order to write a novel about a house and its misteries. That house, more a mansion (placed in a hill of course) is bought by some strange characters. Imagine the rest...

The effective and professional pen of Mr. Stephen King turns this typical formula small town/huge hell to what he gets us used to, into a creepy novel, where the horror of violence and death is taking hold slowly of the inhabitants of Salem�s Lot...and of the reader. A town infected of vampirism, a direct prose and lovely characters that will fade in the vampire�s hug, that is "Salem�s Lot". Its beginning is among the best ever written, because that which is suggested results accurate than what is shown.

The exuberant and violent imagination of Brian Lumley along his "Necromantic Chronic", five volumes till date, give birth to a universe where necroscopies and necromancers, spies, dead rising from their graves, cohabit with vampires which existential nucleus is formed by amorphous and stinking creatures in the Lovecraft�s way. Paranormal Russian and English spies groups and Wamphyris (vampires) confront along the saga, being without doubt the first of the books - "The one who talks to the dead" - a piece full of horror and talent. In this book we will know the story of Harry Keogh, a young necroscopy (the one who can communicate with the dead and worshiped by them).

If "Carmilla" of Le Fanu is a glorification to beauty and greedy passions playing with lesbianism, the contemporary literature has embellished even more the blood suckers demons that wander eternal night. Following this pattern and taking the passions of the homosexual insinuation (and the brutal horror is justified by the tormented souls of their chracters), "The Vampire Chronicles" of Anne Rice is turning step by step into an epic saga, as if talking about a family.

"Interview with the Vampire" opens the saga in 1976. The two pillars of the stories to come, Louis and Lestat, being the latter, from the second volume, "Lestat the Vampire", the true main character of the chronicles. The main merit of the piece of Rice is having found an equilibrium between the horror novel with romantic gothic elements and to go deeply into the troubled minds of their characters, kind of semi bloody gods which have enough beauty and problems.

The story is introducing slowly other characters, some vampires, others in their way to be vampires, and the vampiric delirium reaches its highest point in "The Queen of the Damned", till ending in the apocalyptic "Memnoch The Devil", where Lestat will have a hard time when he meets and confronts God and the Devil. Without hiding her melodramatic touches, Rice has achieved to build around the classic figure of the seductive vampire a story with roots in time, giving a historic background to each character and reaching the very essence of the vampires, its origin: a demon who posses two young girls in the pharaonic age. With the recent edition of "Pandora the Vampire", Rice starts a new series of stories of vampires linked all of them by David Talbot, an investigator of paranormal phenomenon, now turned into a vampire by Lestat in "The Tale of the Body Thief", who is determined to be the historian of his mates of fate.

The list is long and full of characters. The vampiric literature rises along the centureis with vigorosity in crativity and quantity. The sensuality that blood awakens in the human soul, the i mmortality of flesh, the sophistication of the evil or just the horror of old myths, keep on seducing the fatidic and untiring human beings who walk their days searching dark stories in the patches of their inconceivable and repressed dreams.

Voluptuous stories that travel the centuries hungry of being told since the man walked the Earth, and tasted the flesh and the pleasure of blood, till the Redeemer dared to tell that the blood must not melt with flesh because it is a sin.

And the sin has been far beyond more interesting...