The Modern Vampire is Inspired by This Brilliant and Fairly Unknown Work
In the 19th century, English writer John Polidori (Lord Byron’s medic) wrote a story that would be key to the creation of the vampire.
The figure of the literary vampire, as we know it today, is the product of a few works of 19th century European literature ––one of them was The Vampire, by John Polidori, a frustrated writer and none other than Lord Byron’s personal physician.
John William Polidori (1795-1821) was born in London to a cultured family, close to the world of literature. Even if, according to hearsay, he always wanted to be a soldier or a writer, he studied medicine and graduated at the age of 19 with a dissertation about somnambulism —curiously, one of the affectations linked to the victims of vampirism.
In 1816, Polidori began to work as George Gordon, Lord Byron’s personal doctor. Together they traveled to different places in Europe and apparently their relationship was always difficult: Byron had an absorbent, hypnotizing and arrogant personality —similar, perhaps, to that of a vampire count.
That same year, Byron rented a house in Switzerland, Villa Diodati, at the shore of Lake Geneva; the poet was running away from a scandalous divorce and rumors of incest and sodomy. Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (whom would later become his wife, and would be known as Mary Shelley) and Claire Clairmont, Byron’s lover, were invited to this house. One night, the group gathered to tell horror stories —German narrations collected in a French anthology titled Fantasmagoriana—, after which Byron asked each of them to put one of their own making down on paper. As a result of that night, in 1818, Mary Shelly would publish her novel, Frankenstein.
In turn, Polidori wrote The Vampire, a short story that was published two years later and which represents the first work to tell the story of a vampire —Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, would be published almost eighty years later. In the first editions, the text was published under Byron’s name, a rumor that was hard for young Polidori to refute.
After parting ways with Byron, John Polidori died two years later in London, in the midst of a strong depression, and greatly indebted due to gambling. Even if there is proof that the young man died because of cyanide poisoning, a suicide, authorities claimed he died of natural causes.
In The Vampire, Polidori tells the story of Aubrey, a wealthy orphan who meets mysterious Lord Ruthven in an elite party in London. The strange man seems to seduce and scare all the women who cross his path and, curiously, just as Byron convinced Polidori to travel with him, Lord Ruthven convinced Aubrey to travel across Europe beside him. After several adventures, Aubrey ends up splitting from the strange character and he travels to Greece alone, where a young girl he has fallen in love with is murdered; her corpse shows two puncture-like wounds on the neck.
Many experts see this story as an allegory for Byron and Polidori’s relationship. After publishing the story signed by Byron, Goethe would call it the best short story ever written by the acclaimed poet. When young Polidori claimed the authorship of the work, he was accused of plagiarism and of using Byron’s name to become famous. Defeated, the young physician tried to become a monk, but the novel he had previously written impeded his access to the monastery. Afterwards, he attempted to study law, but was soon disappointed and fell directly into gambling. When Byron found out about the young man’s suicide, he only said: “Poor Polidori, it seems that disappointment was the cause of this rash act. He had entertained too sanguine hopes of literary fame.”
It is strange and certainly desolating that the creator of vampire literature had such a tragic and lonely end, but his story is, undoubtedly, yet another expression of how a writer’s personal life resounds in his creation. Polidori lived under Byron’s shadow for enough time to pay the price for his closeness to such an imposing —and vampire-like— figure. Polidori’s short story is also another great example of how a “minor” work, fairly unknown, can generate the birth of a figure that, at the hand of other writers, has become a literary archetype.
Related Articles
When ancient rituals became religion
The emergence of religions irreversibly changed the history of humanity. It’s therefore essential to ask when and how did ancient peoples’ rituals become organized systems of thought, each with their
Seven ancient maps of the Americas
A map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski Maps are never merely maps. They’re human projections, metaphors in which we find both the geographical and the imaginary. The cases of ghost islands
An artist crochets a perfect skeleton and internal organs
Shanell Papp is a skilled textile and crochet artist. She spent four long months crocheting a life-size skeleton in wool. She then filled it in with the organs of the human body in an act as patient
A musical tribute to maps
A sequence of sounds, rhythms, melodies and silences: music is a most primitive art, the most essential, and the most powerful of all languages. Its capacity is not limited to the (hardly trivial)
The enchantment of 17th-century optics
The sense of sight is perhaps one the imagination’s most prolific masters. That is why humankind has been fascinated and bewitched by optics and their possibilities for centuries. Like the heart, the
Would you found your own micro-nation? These eccentric examples show how easy it can be
Founding a country is, in some ways, a simple task. It is enough to manifest its existence and the motives for creating a new political entity. At least that is what has been demonstrated by the
Wondrous crossings: the galaxy caves of New Zealand
Often, the most extraordinary phenomena are “jealous of themselves” ––and they happen where the human eye cannot enjoy them. However, they can be discovered, and when we do find them we experience a
Think you have strange reading habits? Wait until you've seen how Mcluhan reads
We often forget or neglect to think about the infinite circumstances that are condensed in the acts that we consider habitual. Using a fork to eat, for example, or walking down the street and being
The sky is calling us, a love letter to the cosmos (video)
We once dreamt of open sails and Open seas We once dreamt of new frontiers and New lands Are we still a brave people? We must not forget that the very stars we see nowadays are the same stars and
The sister you always wanted (but made into a crystal chandelier)
Lucas Maassen always wanted to have a sister. And after 36 years he finally procured one, except, as strange as it may sound, in the shape of a chandelier. Maassen, a Dutch designer, asked the