Solidium: Sacrificing You
The art-horror; horror writing Horror stories The nature of Horror, by Noel Carroll
Abraham "Bram" Stoker (November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.
Leah Kern: The Shortcomings of the Victorian Werewolf
Human beings possess an innate drive to create tension; psychologist
Carl Jung will
argue that this is because the unconscious mind contains animalistic
desires that are socially
unacceptable and must be suppressed. However, these dark cravings of
sexuality and violence
manifest in other, more tolerable, forms, such as literature. For
centuries, authors have projected
their inner wishes into writing, allowing themselves and their audience
to enjoy what is normally
disapproved. Vampire and werewolf topics especially serve as a means to
express sexual and
aggressive urges. Although sex and violence are considered far less
taboo acts in today‟s world,
earlier time periods rely on stories to illustrate what is denied by
society‟s standards, particularly
in the Victorian era. The Victorian period builds upon the Gothic
ideology created during the
Romantic era, so Gothic ideas do not disappear with the passing
decades—its exploitation of
forbidden desires continues to influence Victorian writers, like Bram
Stoker and Clemence
Housman.
During this time, arguably the greatest vampire novel (in terms of its
effect on vampire
culture) emerges when Stoker introduces Dracula to Victorian
England and to the world. While
this signifies a monumental moment for vampire intrigue, werewolf
stories do not collect as
much literary regard until years later. No great werewolf novel is
created for Victorian England;
instead, several short stories develop, such as Housman‟s “The
Werewolf.” Yet even these
stories fail to compare to Dracula. One must ask why this is this
case. Both werewolves and
vampires symbolize the socially unacceptable “other,” where the term,
“other,” represents the
socially deviant outsider who fails to conform (sometimes by choice) to
societal standards. Even
so, Victorian England still identifies more with the vampire
manifestation of this “other.” To
thoroughly examine a vampire versus a werewolf, one finds several
similarities in terms of
violence and physical origins; however, werewolves express a less
humanistic, sexually
repulsive, nature, which causes society to initially reject them.
When studying the origins of vampire and werewolf myths, one discovers
that there are
historical examples for both of these supernatural ideas. Essentially,
true, physical cases of
lycanthropy and vampirism exist, evidence that enhances the fear and
intrigue behind the myths
and behind the stories created with these myths. In her anthology of
short werewolf stories,
Charlotte Otten points out this very concept, noting,
It is dizzying, however, to enter the world of the fictive werewolf. It
is not an isolated,
artificially constructed world. Outside the fictive world of werewolves
there exists a
world in which the actuality of werewolves has been validated…the world
of werewolf
fiction is so unsettling because luring in the culture are documented
instances of
lycanthropy. The distinction between fiction and actual life blurs. The
horror intensifies
(xxxi).
Blood: The last vampire (Director: Hiroyuki Kitakubo)
At the Yokota Air Force base in Japan, a nervous American military is on the brink of the Vietnam War. But a greater threat exists within the walls of the heavily guarded compound: Vampires. A team of top-secret undercover agents dispatches a mysterious young woman to destroy them…she is the last remaining original.
Christopher John Brennan: The shadow of Lilith
The tuberose thickens the air: a swoon
lies close on open’d calyx and slipt sheath
thro’ all the garden bosom-bound beneath
dense night that hangs, her own perturbing moon:
no star: and heaven and earth, seeking their boon,
meet in this troubled blood whereunder seethe
cravings of darkling bliss whose fumes enwreathe
some rose of rare-reveal’d delight: oh, soon! —
Ay, surely near — the hour consents to bless! —
and nearer yet, all ways of night converge
in that delicious dark between her breasts
whom night and bloom and wayward blood confess,
where all the world’s desire is wild to merge
its multitude of single suffering nests.
Cloth’d now with dark alone, O rose and balm,
whence unto world-sear’d youth is healing boon,
what lures the tense dark round thy pulsing calm?
Or does that flood-tide of luxurious noon,
richly distill’d for thy sweet nutriment,
now traitor, hearken to some secret moon.
Eve’s wifely guise, her dower that Eden lent,
now limbeck where the enamour’d alchemist
invokes the rarer rose, phantom descent;
thy dewy essence where the suns persist
is alter’d by occult yet natural rite:
among thy leaves it was the night we kiss’d.
Rare ooze of odour drowns our faint delight,
some spilth of love that languishes unshared,
a rose that bleeds unseen, the heart of night;
whose sweetness holds us, wondering, ensnared:
for cunning she, the outcast, to entice
to wake with her, remembering how she fared
in times before our time, when Paradise
shone once, the dew-gem in her heart, and base
betrayal gave her to the malefice
that all thro’ time afflicts her lonely face,
and all the mournful widowhood of night
closed round her, and the wilderness of space:
O bleeding rose, alone! O heart of night!
This is of Lilith, by her Hebrew name
Lady of Night: she, in the delicate frame
that was of woman after, did unite
herself with Adam in unblest delight;
who, uncapacious of that dreadful love,
begat on her not majesty, as Jove,
but the worm-brood of terrors unconfest
that chose henceforth, as their avoided nest,
the mire-fed writhen thicket of the mind.
She, monsterward from that embrace declined,
could change her to Chimera and inspire
doubt of his garden-state, exciting higher
the arrowy impulse to dim descried
o’erhuman bliss, as after, on the wide
way of his travail, with enticing strain
and hint of nameless things reveal’d, a bane
haunted, the fabled siren, and was seen
later as Lamia and Melusine,
and whatsoe’er of serpent-wives is feign’d,
or malice of the vampire-witch that drain’d
fresh blood of fresh-born babes, a wicked blast:
faces of fear, beheld along the past
and in the folk’s scant fireside lore misread,
of her that is the august and only dread,
close-dwelling, in the house of birth and death,
and closer, in the secrets of our breath –
or love occult, whose smile eludes our sight
in her flung hair that is the starry night.
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