bloodthirsty, hunger and bloodlust
Someone asked why I thought vampires remained so popular and intriguing. My answer: Because the undead make such a fluid metaphor. Consider; when they first entered into the Western literature and art–with John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” For much of the next century, vampires popped up in art and theatre as well as different stories. “Varney …
Burned into the collective memory of our age, it is an image of great power. The vampire looms menacingly, but then the hero reaches up and pulls away the curtains. SUNLIGHT! Like laser beams, the purifying rays of the sun sear the undead creature’s flesh. The foul thing dissolves into the dust it should already …
Polidori was the friend and personal physician of the infamous rogue and poet, Lord Byron. He was also part of the close-knit circle of friends, including Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Byron, and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, and also Byron’s woman of the hour. Polidori was Byron’s personal physician, and traveled with him through Europe. Though …
In fiction of course, the epidemy of vampire literature, would be Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. There were sexual undertones, of course, relaying vampirism to be a sort of sexually transmitted disease. Its themes of blood, death, and sex made it’s way to Victorian Europe, rattled because of the spread of tuberculosis and syphilis. But the vampire …