Chronicle of the Vampires

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The Chronicle of the Vampires is a cycle of vampire novels , consisting of eleven works so far, by the American author Anne Rice .

General

Interview with the Vampire (dt. Interview with the Vampire ) wrote Anne Rice in reaction to the death of her five year old daughter Michelle. The novel is based on a short story written by Anne Rice a few years earlier. Following the success of the author expanded the thought of first as a single work history to other volumes under the general title The Vampire Chronicles (dt. The Vampire Chronicles ). The last three volumes so far brought the Chronicle of the Vampires together with characters from Anne Rice's witch saga The Mayfair Witches . According to the author, both series should end in 2003 with Blood Canticle (Eng. Song of Songs ). In March 2014, Anne Rice announced in the media that she had submitted a new manuscript for the vampire chronicles to her publisher. The novel Prince Lestat was published in October 2014.

Figures of the Chronicle

Lestat de Lioncourt is the central protagonist of the chronicle. In the first volume of the series, Anne Rice portrays Lestat as a narcissistic, hedonistic choleric of poor education and of unknown human origin, who finds a fulfillment of his lust-oriented attitude towards life in the vampire existence. In the second volume the author changes the figure and gives it more sympathetic traits. "I was loosened up to make him the intimate, warm-blooded man". In addition, Lestat receives a biography: He comes from an impoverished French noble family from the Auvergne . In 1779 he went to Paris with his friend, the merchant's son Nicolas de Lenfent. There he worked as an actor in a theater on the Boulevard du Temple until he was captured by the vampire Magnus and made a vampire himself. Lestat retains a contradicting character: On the one hand, he always presents himself as a rebel who defies the rules and traditions of the vampires and thus repeatedly gets into conflict. On the other hand, these disputes weigh on him and he names a peaceful, common existence as his ideal. Rice portrays Lestat as a morally torn character who absolutely wants to preserve his human side, but at the same time realizes that he has become a "monster" in the course of his vampire existence and also enjoys the advantages of his existence (immortality, supernatural powers). "Lestat can never return to being a lamb of a mortal again."

Lestat is often a mouthpiece for the concerns and views of the author herself, who fundamentally revised her religious attitude in the course of the creation of the volumes: While he appears as a materialistic atheist at the beginning of the chronicle, at the end of the series he takes a close look at the Christian Faith apart.

Louis de Pointe du Lac is the protagonist in Anne Rice's first vampire novel Interview with the Vampire . The basic conflict established in Louis between one's own claim not to do anything bad, and the need to kill as a vampire for self-preservation, occupies most of the vampire figures in the following volumes and remains a recurring motif in Rice's vampire chronicle. Louis came to Louisiana with his family from France to set up an indigo plantation near New Orleans . Here he is made a vampire by Lestat in 1791 . Due to his rigid moral concepts, he comes into conflict with his needs as a vampire, which is what makes his character so tragic. His Catholic character is sometimes reflected in stereotypical ways of thinking, but Louis is also self-critical and tries to take a differentiated view. His behavior is often passive and Anne Rice describes him as a sensitive melancholic. The author calls him the "most human of all vampires". But in threatened situations, Louis' otherwise repressed vampire nature reveals himself and, like Lestat, he is capable of aggressive actions.

Claudia is a five year old girl whose mother died of the plague and who is turned into a vampire by Louis and Lestat. In the body of a child, Claudia matures into an adult woman and begins to develop feelings of hatred towards her "fathers" who have condemned her to this fate. The character of Claudia, "the child who must not grow up", was inspired by Anne Rice's daughter Michelle, who died of leukemia in 1972 at the age of five.

Armand was abducted from Russia by Tatars as a child and came to the vampire Marius in Venice in the 15th century, who turned 17-year-old Armand into a vampire. Especially through these early experiences he developed a very ambivalent character in that he longs for other vampires, but at the same time strongly manipulates them and exploits them for his interests, which makes his behavior mostly appear cool and calculated.

Marius de Romanus is the son of a Roman patrician and a Celtic slave. He was created at the age of forty by the god of the oak, an old vampire. Due to his age and experience, he takes on a kind of father role in the chronicle, also for Lestat, whereby his actions appear mostly considered and sovereign. Marius is the character who can control her vampire nature the most. This makes it possible for him to live camouflaged as a person among people for a long time and to work as an artist.

David Talbot became a member of the Talamasca through his telekinetic and telepathic abilities, in which he was particularly interested in the vampires. After a body swap, Lestat turns him into a vampire and also becomes a kind of father figure for him. As in his human life, David continues to collect information about the vampires.

Gabrielle de Lioncourt is the mother of Lestat and was made a vampire by him shortly before her death. After her transformation, she is freed from socially imposed constraints and her gender role for the first time in her life and can live autonomously. Gabrielle is a very proud and emotionally cold person who, as a human, often hid her emotions. In Anne Rice's Chronicle, she is one of the few vampires who completely reject her human side. Gabrielle mostly lives in the wilderness and avoids the presence of humans and other vampires.

Akasha and Enkil are a couple of pharaohs. Akasha becomes the first vampire through the spirit Amel, who entered her body through bleeding wounds. She turns her husband Enkil and the steward Khayman into vampires. As a human, Akasha was a power-hungry and unscrupulous ruler. As the "Queen of the Damned" in Volume 3 of the Chronicle she pursues a bizarre plan to "save humanity": She wants to kill almost all men and raise herself to be a goddess.

Maharet and Mekare are twin sisters and lived in the caves of Mount Carmel until they were abducted to Egypt. There Akasha wants to force the two women to serve her. As punishment for their refusal, Akasha has Maharet and Mekare rape by their steward, Khayman. Maharet has Khayman's daughter. Later, both women’s eyes and tongues are removed. Khayman turns Mekare into a vampire, who then transforms her sister. After Akasha's destruction and the incorporation of the spirit Amel, Mekare becomes the "mother of the vampires", although Maharet rules on behalf of her dumb sister. Maharet also takes care of her descendants, the "big family", whose female members were mostly witches.

Tarquin "Quinn" Blackwood is a young man from a wealthy New Orleans family and distantly related to the Mayfairs in Anne Rice's witch chronicle. From childhood Quinn has been haunted by a being he calls a goblin. Quinn falls in love with Mona Mayfair, but is involuntarily turned into a vampire by Petronia, a hermaphrodite. As a vampire, Quinn asks Lestat for help in destroying Goblin, who is becoming increasingly aggressive.

Other figures in the Chronicle are Pandora, Khayman, Jessica Miriam Reeves, Mael, Santino, Daniel Molloy, Merrick Mayfair, Memnoch, Mona Mayfair, Santiago, Nicolas de Lenfent, Magnus and Madeleine .

Family tables of the three main vampire branches that emerge from the chronicle:

  • Family tree based on the Amel spirit

  • Family tree based on the "prisoner vampire"

  • Family tree based on the "god of oak"

Features of the vampire chronicle

Properties of the vampires

In contrast to classic vampire novels , which are mostly based on Bram Stoker's Dracula , Anne Rice's vampires can not be killed using traditional means such as garlic , crosses or stings in the heart. They can only be harmed by fire with the scattering of their ashes and sunlight.

The otherwise typical characteristics of vampires, which can be largely traced back to Stoker, such as the ability to transform (into a bat or a wolf) and the lack of a mirror image, are not present in this series of novels. Anne Rice alludes to these differences in some volumes. (Example: After Lestat turned his mother Gabrielle into a vampire, she was amazed to see herself in the mirror.)

Anne Rice's vampires acquire more and stronger skills with increasing age, whereby this development is described as individual and dependent on one's own will to power. Some older and powerful vampires have the ability to fly, see through human eyes, and set other vampires ablaze.

Furthermore, the connection between vampires and sexual aspects is taken up, but steered in an abstractly sensual and orally erotic direction, since genital sexual stimulation is not possible with vampires. In Anne Rice's work, sensuality and eroticism are often shifted to a same-sex level, in the novels there are more purely male than male-female pairings. On the other hand, the relationship to people or to the victims is erotically motivated, as with Stoker, because drinking blood is usually described as ecstasy.

Despite the properties newly developed by Rice, the vampires, especially in appearance and behavior, correspond to current ideas. They have vampire teeth, light skin, sleep in a coffin and cannot age. However, they do not necessarily always feed on humans, but can also drink the blood of animals and get along without food for some time.

The idea of ​​the noble or aristocratic vampires (Lestat, Akasha, Enkil) is taken up as well as their material wealth, which they have been able to accumulate over the centuries (Magnus, Marius, Armand).

Vampire morale

Since the figure of the vampire from popular belief and superstition found its way into literature in the 19th century (see History of the Vampire Novel ), it has been continuously anthropomorphized. Anne Rice drove this development of her chronicle further by giving the vampires moral and ethical ideas and ideals.

The vampires of the chronicle act according to their intentions and are no longer controlled purely by instinct. Moral values ​​are particularly emphasized in the first novel Conversation with a Vampire through the character of Louis, whose human principles are contrasted by Lestat's rather instinctual behavior. Louis lived exclusively on animals for four years because he could not overcome his respect for people and for life. In later volumes Lestat and Marius attempt to counter the moral dilemma by choosing victims from the criminal milieu.

Anne Rice's vampires are almost all in a fundamental moral conflict, which becomes particularly clear in the conversation between Louis and Armand at the Théâtre des Vampires . The vampires have fallen out of the earthly norm and therefore have to cope with their longings and their craving for blood as well as with the acceptance of their nature in a mostly long process.

This process of self-awareness can be interpreted as a metaphor for learning to accept one's own personality and the given circumstances.

Vampire characters

Anne Rice presents the recipient with the motifs and motivations of her protagonists in a coherent and consistent manner, whereby the representation of the figure is lifted from a stereotypical level of observation and shows realistic features. People act individually based on their experience and different character traits. Louis' respect for life and his initial inhibitions about attacking a person stem from the sudden death of his brother, who had shown him the value of human life and its preservation. The reasons for Lestat's anti-authoritarian attitude and his need for love and acceptance can also be found in his childhood, when his strict father and older brothers bullied him and he rarely received his mother's affection.

Origin of the vampires

Since the first part of the chronicle, in addition to the question of their place in the world, the vampires have been concerned with their origins and their formation. This is first briefly discussed in The Prince of Darkness only through the elder, who had exposed those who must be preserved to sunlight, and only finally clarified in The Queen of the Damned .

The ghost Amel, who had followed the sisters Maharet and Mekare to Egypt, stayed there to punish the court master Khayman for his crime against the two witches and raged in his house. The Egyptian king Enkil and his wife Akasha try to talk to the spirit, because they fear a revolt of the people, who blame both for the disaster. In the house, they are attacked by insurgent servants and seriously injured. Amel penetrates the queen's wounds, revives her almost dead body and makes her the first vampire. To save her husband, she lets him drink her blood, creating a second vampire.

Narrative situation

Most of the Chronicle's books are written from the perspective of a first-person narrator , whose role is particularly taken on by Louis and Lestat at the beginning of the series. Through this narrative situation, readers identify themselves directly with the narrator, as he allows them to participate directly in the action and gives the plot a subjective character. However, the narrator describes what happened from a temporal distance and therefore more mature and experienced than his "experiencing self". This becomes particularly clear in the different way Lestat is represented in the first and second books, as the first-person narrator changes from Louis' to Lestat's point of view. Since The Prince of Darkness , insertions from the point of view of other characters appear in longer passages in the description of the actual first-person narrator, which causes a change in perspective.

In secondary literature, the dialogue style is typical of Anne Rice's novels: as the title Interview with the Vampire suggests, the very first film consists of a conversation between the protagonist and a reporter. In the following volumes, parts of the plot, often flashbacks, are presented in conversation form. Outstanding individual examples in addition to the debut novel, in which the author makes particularly strong use of this stylistic device, are the novels Memnoch the Devil (Lestat in conversation with Memnoch) and Blackwood Farm (Lestat in conversation with Quinn Blackwood).

In The Queen of the Damned , Rice inserts a personal narrative situation for the first time. This makes it possible to relate events that were further back in chronological terms (the legend of the twins, flashbacks to the second volume) to later experiences with Akasha. Through this change of perspective, the action is removed from the subjective level and takes on a comprehensive character.

Time level

Here, too, it is striking how much the conversation with a vampire differs from the later novels, because only here is the story told in a chronologically linear sequence. In contrast, u. a. the second novel in which there are several flashbacks ( analepsis ) within the narrative, such as the story of Marius and that of Armand.

Books of the Chronicle

Chronicle of the Vampires (The Vampire Chronicles)

Novels in the context of the vampire chronicle

  • New Tales of the Vampires
    • Pandora , 1998 ( Pandora , 2001, Lady of the Shadow Realm , 2008)
    • Vittorio the Vampire , 1999 ( Vittorio , 2002, The Demoness's Kiss , 2008)

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  1. ^ The Guardian, March 11, 2014: "Anne Rice revives much loved vampire"
  2. ↑ Prism Of The Night, p. 245
  3. ^ Anne Rice - A Critical Companion, p. 92
  4. ↑ Prism Of The Night, p. 154
  5. ↑ See on this aspect: George E. Haggerty. "Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture". In: Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32.1, 1998, pp. 5-18.
  6. ↑ Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" - Myth and History, Chapter 3.2: Anthropomorphization, pp. 33-43
  7. ^ Prism Of The Night, p. 357

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.

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