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2020 seems to conspire in favor of The Vampire. A new story , the essay by the historian Nick Groom that will arrive in bookstores on July 1 with the Desperta Ferro label. In six months we have had Netflix series on Transylvania, vampiric exhibitions at the Fundación La Caixa, novels of the genre set in Caracas and, above all, a pandemic nightmare that has led thousands of readers to search for books on plagues and dystopias. What is The Vampire ? In short, it is an inquiry into the millennial history of the undead and other extravagant and sinister characters that led to the coining of the vampire myth in romantic Europe. Later, the book becomes an explanation, half historical, half psychoanalytic, of its success.

The first interesting idea in The Vampire is that the move from the vulgar bloodsucker to the sophisticated vampire takes place and at a very specific time: the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the 1720s. Not by chance. "The Habsburgs were very interested in strange phenomena. At that time they investigated unicorns, for example, " explains Groom. "And they did it very seriously. There were teams of military doctors and officers who were sent to the Balkans. They produced very formal reports, which were later published in Vienna and spread throughout Europe. The focus of vampirism was on regions that had been transferred from the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian, they were the limits of the Christian world and were governed by martial laws . Its inhabitants suffered collective traumas for that violence and expressed them in fear of the living dead "

"The undead has been prowling for many centuries throughout every culture in the world, probably," continues Groom. "Ghosts, zombies, spirits, devilish creatures ... Many of them sucked blood, from ancient Rome to Norse mythology . The myth of the vampire is formed when the culture of the Enlightenment makes contact with the folklore of Eastern Europe and begin to receive alarming news. The word vampire then emerges and adds a nuance of medical, philosophical and theological debate about the phenomenon. "

There are funny details in that story: the use of opiates as anesthetics spread throughout Europe at that time. Did its use have to do with vampiric psychosis? In The Vampire it is also explained that the Protestant church considered the phenomenon as a sample of the anachronism of Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. Therefore, England was a very propitious place for the literature of the genre .

What would we think of the matter if we were more or less educated Catholic priests from 1800? "One of the most important books on vampirism was written by a Benedictine monk in 1746 and opened a long theological debate that led the Pope to issue an edict that vampires do not exist. For rationalist Catholics, the vampire was proof of the life after death , even if it was a demonic expression. The problem was practical. Did vampires return to their graves at night? That seemed fiction to them, collective hallucination. "

At that time, vampires were far from entering their romantic phase. They were not handsome or bohemian, nor were they sexualized like the hero of Francis Ford Coppola . This is why Groom's book refers to the erotic legend of the vampire as a recent misunderstanding. "There are elements of sexualization in very early vampire books like that of John William Polidori. His vampire is more of a seducer than a predator ... Sexual significance also had to do with the perception of women. Most vampires of the 19th century they are vampires. But it was one more aspect of the myth, not its core. The vampire also had a scientific, political and above all economic sense. Karl Marx refers to him ... Actually, I think the approach is wrong. Today, we think that almost everything is a representation of sex. But in the 19th century, the opposite happened, sex was the metaphor that represented another theme: capitalism, "explains Groom.

And he continues: "Sexualization comes from psychoanalysis and became popular with the cinema of the 60s and 70s, which was saturated with insinuations. Today, it is impossible not to perceive what is erotic in the vampire, but in the past they were more figures complex, they were valuable concepts to think about what is and what is not a human being "

So how about the vampire's success as a pop thing ? "I love it! I love aesthetics (always seen in black and that's because I have not found a darker color ), I love music and I love Gothic culture ... There are recent movies and TV series that seem like variations very interesting myths. Vampires are all over pop culture, in design, in comics, everywhere. And they're not going to go away. "

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