Blood and gold
The novel Blood and Gold (original title: Blood and Gold ) by the American writer Anne Rice was published in 2001 and is the eighth book from the Chronicle of the Vampires .
The story focuses on the life of the two-thousand-year-old vampire Marius de Romanus from the time of Augustus to the present day of the 21st century.
Content of the vampire novel
An old vampire named Thorne leaves his hiding place in Northern Europe after hundreds of years and meets the vampire Marius de Romanus, who tells him his life story.
As a young Roman patrician , he was kidnapped by druids in Massilia at the time of Augustus to replace the druid "god of the oak", a vampire. This also turns Marius into a vampire, whereupon he can escape. At the behest of the god of the oak he goes to Egypt , from where he brings Akasha and Enkil, the parents of all vampires, to Rome for their protection. Marius has always been the protector of those who must be preserved . Together with Pandora, whom he turns into a vampire, he is drawn to Antioch , where they are attacked by the children of darkness.
After an argument with Pandora, Marius returns to Rome alone and meets the vampires Mael and Avicus. Mael was one of the druids who kidnapped him and was turned into a vampire by another druid god in Britain, Avicus, whereupon they both fled.
After the destruction of Rome in late antiquity , Marius, Mael and Avicus go to Constantinople. Here the three meet the powerful vampire woman Eudoxia, the one who has to be preserved . After a series of violent clashes, Marius takes her to their shrine, whereupon Akasha now kills Eudoxia.
Marius went back to Italy, where he slept for years before waking up again during the Renaissance and after a few trips, where he met the vampire Santino in Rome, settled in Venice to - inspired by the painter Botticelli - as an amateur painter to be active and to enable young boys to get an education. For this he also buys the young Amadeo, who was supposed to work in a brothel , free and an intimate relationship develops between the two. However, Amadeo, 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.
Shortly afterwards, Marius' palazzo is set on fire by a group of vampires who call themselves Children of Darkness and act on behalf of Santino, with Marius being badly burned and Amadeo being kidnapped.
With the help of Bianca Solderini, who turns Marius into a vampire, he gradually regains his powers. Both go to the Alps , where Marius hid those who need to be preserved , and stay there for more than a century.
Marius learns that Pandora lives and travels across Europe, with Dresden being the center of her travels. Here Marius buys a house and after a while meets Pandora, who refuses to live with him and Bianca. As a result, Bianca now leaves Marius and Marius goes with those who must be saved to an island in the Aegean Sea , where he later discovers a letter from Pandora.
In the jungles of South America, Marius, Thorne, Amadeo (who is now called Armand), Santino, Maharet, Mekare and Pandora meet, where Marius demands justice for Santino's deeds, which Maharet refuses. Then Thorne kills the weaker Santino and has to give his eyes to the blind Maharet as a penance.
Narrative situation and time level
The narrative structure of the novel was designed in two parts by Rice: The framework , which includes the awakening of Torne, his meeting with Marius and the murder of Santino, is taken over by an authorial narrator who - as the first paragraph of the novel shows - is omniscient and who Introduces the reader to the all-encompassing nature of the plot.
The internal plot , i.e. Marius' story of life and suffering, represents the actual focus of the narrative and is portrayed by himself from the first-person perspective. This itself in turn includes numerous flashbacks of other people (such as Mael, Eudoxia, Pandora) who depict aspects of their lives in longer passages.
References to the Chronicle
Some aspects of Marius' life were already hinted at or briefly explained in The Prince of Darkness and Armand the Vampire , which is why the events in Egypt and in the Venetian palazzo are greatly reduced. Especially with the latter work, the sixth novel in the Chronicle, there are overlaps and partial inconsistencies in the presentation (time and intention for Marius' decision to transform Amadeo into a vampire). However, 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.
Historical references
Marius, who was born in the Roman Empire before the Common Era, initially describes the historical development of the empire and especially that of the city of Rome since the time of Augustus. The expansion, theological disputes and the victory of Christianity are portrayed from the point of view of an ancient Roman and traditionally shaped Roman. The decline of Rome, caused by the migration of peoples and the changing structure of the territorial borders, as well as the cultural and political rise of Constantinople are incorporated into the narrative.
In addition to these ancient historical references, Marius also reports on the pan-European plague in the Middle Ages and the modern era that followed . Here u. a. the invention of the printing press , the Renaissance with its rediscovered classical ideas and the development of painting. Another event that shaped Europe, the Reformation , was rated negatively by the Catholic Rice by the monk in the Alps.
Text output
- Rice, Anne: Blood and Gold. Goldmann 2006, ISBN 3-442-45999-0 .
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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.