LITERARY REVIEW 17
THE FOUNDER October 2021
The Vampyre by John Polidori
Source: Igam Ogam – Unsplash.com
LIAM ELVISH | LITERARY REVIEWS EDITOR
J
ohn Polidori’s short story, The Vampyre, It tells the story of Lord Ruthven, a dashing and sinister English first published in 1819 in the New Monthly aristocrat with ‘a reputation for a winning tongue’, whose Magazine, was just one product of the famous shrewd womanising attracts the attention of Aubrey, a wealthy ‘meeting’ of English writers (including Romantic and honourable young gentleman involving himself in high society circles. Aubrey, upon witnessing the death of Ruthven poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley) at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Switzerland in during their travels in rural Europe, subsequently sees the Lord 1816, the literary significance of which cannot reappear in London, assuming a new identity and engaged to his own sister. Ultimately unable to prevent the marriage from be overstated. A ghost-story competition was occurring, the tale ends in tragic and horrific circumstances, announced, and each participant set about composing a horror-fuelled tale to impress the standing as a prototype for future fictional works within the genre. entourage. Building upon the Gothic romance prevalent in Horace From this symposium came Mary Shelley’s Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and the novels of Ann Frankenstein, her novel of a scientifically Radcliffe, Polidori (a medical practitioner by training) created monster becoming a beacon for lovers of fuses an underlying subtext of lustful intrigue with an the horror and science fiction genres. Polidori’s analytical narrative which would later be adopted by writers work has become lesser-known, but no-less such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. invaluable.
Uncanny happenings in Haruki Murakami’s After Dark REBECCA WEIGLER | CONTENT WRITER
H
aruki Murakami is no stranger to the world of supernatural writing and is certainly a master of his craft. Taking on an eerie and Gothic tone, Murakami draws readers into a text where the omniscient narrator continuously uses ‘we’ and ‘our’, inviting us to experience the real-time events as if we are present in the very room. What occurs in the cleverly constructed chapters of After Dark is nothing short of a blurring of the line between reality and mysticism. The novel opens with Mari Asai, one of the novel’s protagonists, reading and smoking in a Denny’s diner setting, perhaps a symbol of the calm before the storm. She encounters both Takahashi Tetsuya, a trombone-playing teenager who seems to recognise her after attempting to initiate a relationship with her sister Eri, and Kaoru, a manager of a love-hotel.
Kaoru requires Mari’s help in assisting with a situation at the hotel, where a young Chinese woman has been beaten by a client and the Japanese staff are unable to communicate with her. Using her ability to speak both Japanese and Chinese, Mari agrees to help break down the events of the night and track down the perpetrator. The question of what is actually occurring in After Dark rings throughout the novel. Uncanny happenings bleed throughout the chapters, such as a long-term, yet not fatal, state of sleep for Eri Asai, sister of the conscious and active protagonist. In addition to this, the space in which Eri Asai is sleeping in is home to a room with a mysterious male figure, who appears when an evidently unplugged television set suddenly whirs to life. It is implied that there is another world beyond the one in which the events are unfolding, and as the novel proceeds, other strange happenings secure this truth.
Yet it is the central antagonist who warrants the focus of the reader. Polidori, as travelling companion to Byron in 1816, was undoubtedly influenced by his friend’s persona in the creation of his vampiric character; indeed, the figure of Ruthven has often been described by literary scholars as exhibiting ‘Byronic’ traits, the suave demeanour, sexual intensity, and adventurous daring so encompassing of the poet that we can perhaps forgive the original publishers in 1819 for initially, and erroneously, attributing the work to Byron, before rectifying this mistake in reprints. Written some eighty years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Polidori’s work can rightly lay claim to being the very first vampire story, ushering in a fictional craze which continues well into the Twenty First century with the emergence of The Vampire Chronicles and Twilight, to True Blood and beyond. The Oxford World’s Classics edition includes ‘Other Tales of the Macabre’ from the late Romantic and early Victorian periods, which are of considerable literary merit.
Each chapter in After Dark begins by noting the time in which the event is taking place and subsequently detailing the surroundings, starting with short introductory sentences. There is acknowledgement of sound, interior details, and character movements, all allowing us to picture the scene before the chapter commences. The narrator communicates with the reader about what ‘we’ collectively see within the room, often through a hypothetical and mysterious moving camera lens. It is this captivating narrative style which makes the novel simultaneously sinister and brilliant. While the language is certainly not convoluted, as supported by the real-time structure and intricate descriptions, the events are often puzzling and leave readers trying to connect the dots of one fateful Tokyo night.
