Nachtmahr (novel)

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The novel Nachtmahr (original title: The Tale of the Body Thief ) by the American writer Anne Rice was published in 1992 and is the fourth book from the Chronicle of the Vampires .

At the center of the plot is the perception of human life by the vampire Lestat and the subsequent realization to appreciate his own vampiric nature and powers.

Content of the vampire novel

At the beginning of the novel, Lestat de Lioncourt finds himself in a gloomy mood: He suffers from his existence as a vampire , the recurring nightmares of his deceased "vampire daughter" Claudia and the gradual dissolution of the vampire community after Akasha's death. Only with the aged David Talbot, superior general of the secret organization Talamasca, he still maintains contact, whereby he repeatedly offers to make him a vampire, which David categorically refuses. Driven by loneliness, melancholy and weariness, Lestat goes to the Gobi desert to find out whether he can still die at all. Although the sun has scorched him, Lestat does not die and goes back to David Talbot.

Now an unknown man named Raglan James contacts Lestat directly and offers him to swap his human body, which he had previously stolen, for the vampiric one from Lestat for a week. Despite the objections of other vampires and his friend David, Lestat accepts the trade. Once again in possession of a human body, Lestat explores and enjoys the existence of a human being he had to give up for over two hundred years, and toured the city of Washington, DC during the lengthy winter, developing severe pneumonia . After Raglan James does not show up to swap bodies again as agreed, Lestat, to whom Claudia repeatedly appears, is taken into the care of the nun Gretchen (sister Marguerite), who looks after him during his recovery.

Lestat, deprived of all his vampiric abilities and powers, seeks the help of the other vampires. However, both Marius de Romanus and Louis de Pointe du Lac refuse him any support, which is why he now turns to David. This tells him that the body thief Raglan James was a former member of the Talamasca and that the body provided for the exchange had formerly belonged to a prisoner in a psychiatric institution.

Due to his carelessness and dissolute lifestyle, Lestat and David manage to locate Raglan James on the ship Queen Elizabeth 2 . Lestat uses a trick to return to his body and, due to the rising sun, has to go quickly to his safe hiding place on the ship. However, the next evening both the body thief and David disappeared.

Lestat finds David in Florida and is surprised to learn that his friend wants to turn into a vampire despite earlier protests. While the conversion began, Lestat discovers that James had not returned to the body he had stolen during the body swap on the ship and instead had taken over that of David. Lestat then gives the body thief a fatal blow, making it impossible for David to return to his old body.

Back in New Orleans , Lestat reconciles with Louis and begins renovating her old house on Rue Royale in the French Quarter . At this point he addresses the reader directly and points out who is now happy with this ending should not continue with the following chapter.

Because now Lestat goes to Barbados to forcibly turn David into a vampire in his new body. Thereupon David disappears and, after the search for his pupil was unsuccessful, Lestat returns to the now completed house in New Orleans, where he finds both Louis and David.

After a clarifying conversation between the three of them, plans are made to travel to Rio de Janeiro , and the novel ends with “ The tale is told ”, whereby Rice indirectly announces that the series is closed break up.

Narrative situation and time level

The entire story is portrayed from the first person perspective by Lestat, whereby Rice succeeds in expressing the psychological state of mind as well as the fears and worries of the protagonist and at the same time giving the half-hearted suicide in the Gobi desert and the body swap a real and intentional background.

The novel runs linearly and chronologically on its narrative level, with longer flashbacks such as the missionary work of Gretchen and David's experiences as Candomblé priests being inserted at selected points in the plot .

Motifs

In the novel, Rice makes direct reference to the complex of motifs of the literary Faust and has David and Lestat read and comment on Goethe's work Faust in Amsterdam . Here Lestat suggests a connection between the two stories. Indeed, Rice describes the figure of David in this part of the Chronicle as a person who has withdrawn from his work at the Talamasca and from his life, who appears introverted and desperate, thereby creating a direct parallel to the discontented and restless Heinrich Faust. Lestat takes on - figuratively speaking - the role of Mephisto, who offers David to use vampiric blood to reveal a new world of senses, pleasures and carelessness. However, unlike Faust, David resists temptation and rejects Lestat's offer several times.

There is also a connection between Rice's figure of the nun Gretchen and the figure of the same name in Goethe. Both lead an actually regulated and orderly life according to given expectations and patterns, ask the protagonist the crucial question ("Now tell me, how about religion", line 3415) and indulge in physical love. Rice's Gretchen only maintains this relationship with Lestat, who can be seen in the role of Mephisto. Nevertheless, the connection is destroyed by external circumstances and the nun Gretchen injures herself on the hands in the mission station in the jungle of South America .

Insertion of religious dimensions

For the first time since the beginning of the Chronicle, Rice explicitly addresses religious issues and questions in her work, thereby reflecting on her own rapprochement with Catholicism , to which she returned in 1998. In Lestat's conversations with David and Gretchen, a religious dimension is now inserted, in which theological questions are asked about good and bad, death and immortality, the meaning of life and the divine plan of salvation. With this, and especially with David's report that he saw God and the devil discussing in a Parisian café, with the devil announcing that he would resign from his duties, Rice laid the foundation for the following work, Memnoch the Devil .

Reviews

In the New York Times , the novel is said to act like a pilot for an American vampire sitcom that could be called "I Love Lestat". The staging within the story and its predictability are also criticized.

A similar view can be found in Entertainment Weekly, which continues to refer to the novel as a ridiculous mishmash of clichés with false climaxes.

Text output

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  1. ↑ Stern magazine, issue 37/2007
  2. ^ New York Times, October 18, 1992
  3. ↑ Review of Entertainment Weekly November 6, 1992

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.