Armand the vampire
The novel Armand the Vampire (original title: The Vampire Armand ) by the American writer Anne Rice was published in 1998 and is the sixth book from the Chronicle of the Vampires .
The focus of the story is the life story of the vampire Armand from the beginning of the Renaissance to the present day of the 20th century.
Content of the vampire novel
Vampires from all over the world gather in New Orleans , where the vampire Lestat de Liouncourt lies lifeless and as if in a coma on the floor of the chapel in St. Elizabeth's Convent. David Talbot takes advantage of the meeting and asks Armand to tell him his life story.
He was born as Andrei in Kiev at the end of the 15th century and became an icon painter in a cave monastery. Of Tatars taken in the steppes of Russia caught, he initially comes as a slave to Konstantin Opel and then to Venice , where it takes the vampire Marius de Romanus, (his name Amadeo loved by God ) gives and in his Palazzo receives. An intimate and sexual relationship develops between the two of them, as does with the wealthy Bianca Solderini. However, Armand, now matured into a young man, is fatally wounded by the Englishman Lord Harlech in a duel with the poisoned blade, whereupon Marius turns him into a vampire. Amadeo and Marius travel together to Kiev, where Amadeo meets his parents again. Shortly afterwards, Marius' palazzo is set on fire by a group of vampires who call themselves Children of Darkness, Marius is badly burned and Amadeo is brought to Rome , where Santino persuades him to join the order and takes the name Armand. In Paris he now builds a new order and lives in the catacombs under the Parisian cemetery Les Innocents until Lestat destroyed the order in the 18th century, whereupon he founded the Théâtre des Vampires. After Lestat returns from his journey with the figure Memnoch in the 20th century and reveals the handkerchief of Veronica , Armand exposes himself to the sun and is badly burned. With the help of the people Benji and Sybelle, Armand is completely healed and takes her to the other vampires.
After Armand has finished his story, he goes to Marius house, where he turned Benji and Sybelle into vampires. When Sybelle plays Beethoven's Appassionata on the piano, Lestat now appears with them.
Narrative situation and time level
Armand tells the story from a first-person perspective, where he becomes the protagonist. In the framework of the plot , the meeting of the vampires in New Orleans, the story of Armand's life and the awakening of Lestat by playing the piano take place.
However, Rice sets the actual focus of the novel on the internal plot, which encompasses the life of Armand from the beginning of the Renaissance to the present day of the 20th century and which makes up the majority of the plot. Here the reader is given the information necessary to understand the external plot, because in Memnoch the Devil Armand appeared to have been killed by his exposure to sunlight and the meaning of the newly introduced characters Benji and Sybelle are explained.
References to the Chronicle
Some aspects of Armand's life have already been hinted at or briefly explained in conversation with a vampire and The Prince of Darkness , which is why the events in Paris in the 18th and 19th centuries, i.e. the dissolution of the order, the establishment of the Théâtre des Vampires and the Murder of Claudias, are greatly reduced. Furthermore, Armand's role in her killing is relativized in the novel and he himself emphasizes that he did not want the death of the vampire child.
In addition, Marius' anger at Santino when he is freed from the snow-covered, collapsed house in The Queen of the Damned by Pandora and himself, becomes apparent, as he was responsible for the destruction of his palace, the killing of the children there and the kidnapping of Amadeo .
The novel also overlaps thematically with the eighth novel in the Chronicle, Blood and Gold , where Marius tells his life story. It becomes clear that the two characters view the events from different perspectives, which is why the events in Venice in particular are not described in the same way in both books. Since the stories are told from two different perspectives, by Marius and Armand, and are therefore subject to subjective and individual consideration, these differences in the narrative can be traced back to a conscious intention and decision by Rice.
Reviews
Entertainment Weekly described Armand's portrayal of Armand's early years in Venice as a grotesquely overloaded report, criticizing the fact that Rice took on too many aspects and storylines from her previous books and plagiarized himself as a result .
The New York Times, on the other hand, judged the novel to be an enjoyable story, but it is partly uneven.
Text output
- Rice, Anne: Armand the Vampire. Fischer 2003, ISBN 3-596-15626-2 .
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Secondary literature
- Katherine Ramsland / Anne Rice. Prism of the Night, A Biography of Anne Rice . New York: Penguin, 1994.
- Gary Hoppenstand / Ray B. Browne. The Gothic World of Anne Rice . Twayne Publishers, 1994.
- Jennifer Smith. Anne Rice - A Critical Companion . Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996.
- George E. Haggerty. "Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture". In: Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32.1, 1998, pp. 5-18.
- Erwin Jänsch. “Softie-Vampire Lestat” in: Das Vampirlexikon , Munich: Knaur, 2000, pp. 232–239.
- Rebecca Cordes. Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" - Myth and History . Osnabrück: Der Andere Verlag, 2004.