Skip to main content

Polidori's Vampyre

As usually happens, I can't get through three pages of literature without being taken by the need to discuss it for the remainder of my lunch.

I have finally got "The Vampyre" by Polidori, which is only 167 pages on my Treo, and so can't possibly be more than 30 in fact. This story was written on that sojourn in Italy of the Shelleys and their friends, when they had a gothic story-writing competition. Mary Shelley won, without question, but also written was The Vampyre, the earliest fiction of its kind I know, by John Polidori.

Cameos thus far have included the "magnificent" Byron and Shelley, which amuses me muchly since they were both of the party-- reminds me of writing stories with my friends and including one another in them. That is so much, and imagining that story-writing party in Italy with this added amusement is so pleasant.

It is hard for me to imagine that they existed in the same world I do.

Popular posts from this blog

Where does it lie

I look out onto the yellow and brown vegetation beneath my window, at the castle-like buildings far away and wonder where do I lie in all of this? There was a time when I was unfettered. This was a time before I entered the working world, before I was independent. My heart was free as a bird when I was in college. I did not know what happiness I experienced in my creativity because I had never known different. In other aspects of my life I knew pain but my stories, sprung up lately from a gothic mist into an immersing Pre-Raphaelite painting, were a richness and the most beautiful thing I had ever known. That the most beautiful thing I knew to exist happened inside of me made me very happy, even though I didn't know it. Now I know the sun is setting, even though I can't see it, because the bank of brown, twisted trees and shrubs is lit gold, like a reflection from a golden chalice. Slowly, slowly it will fade until everything is a homogenous, uncertain gray. This is the nightma...
more &

Cassandra stood poised at her vanity mirror. Her long hair, which spilled past her waist, was twisted in one hand, and in the other was a pair of jeweled scissors.

As she lifted the scissors to cut, a larger hand wrapped around hers. Cassandra withdrew with a cry. "Kell! I didn't see you come in." He took the scissors away. "I take it you got the job." "I did," she said crisply. "Return my scissors to me." "Not if you intend to cut off your hair. What do you mean by this nonsense?" "I can't have long hair in the laboratory. It might catch fire or something." "Look there." He guided her to the window. Below them lay the scattered remains of a centuries-old city park. The benches were near invisible due to growth, while the pond had extended far beyond its original boundaries. Ducks floated serenely on its surface. "We played as children. Do you remember how you prized your hair?" Cassandra laughed a little drily. "Of course. I insisted all my powers as princess lay in my hair. I was haughty. unworthy of the friendship of you and your sister." ...
more &

Snow White and the Prince

I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...
more &