June 1813: The Giaour, an epic poem
by Lord Byron was published. It contained one of the first mentions of a vampire in the English language
in the Romantic Era. (John Stagg's 1810 Minstrel of the North, which included a poem titled
"The Vampyre," beat Byron by three years.)
George Gordon, the 6th Baron of Byron
(better known as Lord Byron), having begun accumulating both debts and notoriety, went on a
grand tour of The Levant in 1809-11. There, he learned of a common fate that awaited women
accused of adultery: to be sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea (for the record, the Romans did that, too), as well as the idea of vampires.
In Byrons The Giaour, Leila, a harem slave, is thrown into the sea. Her lover, the Giaour (the infidel), kills her master in revenge, and is cursed to become a vampire.
Byron returned to England and his
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) made him an overnight success. To follow up, he published
The Giaour the following year, eventually publishing four poems comprising his "Oriental Tales."
In 1816, during a wet summer in Geneva, Byron,
his personal physician John Polidori and the Shelleys made the famous bet to write tales of horror.
Mary Shelley began her Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Byron wrote
A Fragment of a Novel.A Fragment in turn inspired Polidori to write The Vampyre (1819),
initially attributed to Byron himself.
Byrons A Fragment of a Novel tells of an English
nobleman and his traveling companion who visit Greece and Turkey. There, the nobleman Darvell
begins to waste away and dies after instructing his friend to bury him in a cemetery in Ephesus.
In Polidori's The Vampyre, Englishmen Aubrey
and Lord Ruthven also travel to Greece via Italy. As they travel, Aubrey tires of Lord Ruthven's amorality
and decides to part ways. He falls in love with an innocent Greek girl Ianthe, but she is killed by a vampire.
Lord Ruthven catches up with Aubrey and nurses his traveling companion back to health, only to be
killed by a band of robbers. Before dying, Lord Ruthven makes Aubrey promise that he would not reveal
his death to anybody for one year. When Aubrey returns to England, he is shocked to see Lord Ruthven not only alive, but engaged to his own sister.
The readers of Polidoris The Vampyre recognized
a caricature of Byron in Lord Ruthven (Polidori and Byron had quarrelled): a debauched aristocrat,
ruthless in pursuit of pleasure. Ruthven leaves human ruins in his wake; we see in him Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray, whose portrait records his moral decay, while the model, like a
vampire, does not age.
From The Giaour:
But thou, false Infidel ! shalt writhe
Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe;
And from its torment 'scape alone
To wander round lost Eblis' throne;
And fire unquench'd, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell !
Bur first, on earth as Vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are wither'd on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name --
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame !
Eugène Dracroix, Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha, 1835
Eugène Dracroix, Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha, 1827
Thomas Phillips, Lord Byron in Albanian Dress, c. 1835
The Giaour was published in June 1813.
The poem tells the story of a harem slave drowned
as an adulteress, and her lover, the Giaour ("the infidel"),
who kills her master in revenge. The Giaour is then cursed
to become a vampire for his crime.
Thomas Phillips,
Lady Caroline Lamb (17851828) dressed as one of Byron's "pages"
In The Giaour, Leila disguises herself as "a Georgian page" to meet her lover.
Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky, A Moonlit View of the Bosphorus, 1884
George Frederic Watts, Found Drowned, 1867
Lord Byron commemorative stamp, Greece, 1924
John Stagg's Minstrel of the North, 1810
It included a poem "The Vampyre," probably
the earliest use of the word in English literature of
the Romantic Era.
Ary Scheffer (1795-1868), Le Giaour
Muse de la Vie Romantique, Paris
Eugne Delacroix,
The Death of Hassan, or Turkish Officer Killed in the Mountains, 1825
They reach the grove of pine at last
'Bismillah! now the peril's past
For yonder view the opening plain,
And there we'll prick our steeds amain.
The Chiaus spake, and as he said,
A bullet whistled o'er his head
The foremost Tartar bites the ground!
Scarce had they time to check the rein,
Swift from their steeds the riders bound;
But three shall never mount again
Unseen the foes that gave the wound
The dying ask revenge in vain.
Eugne Delacroix, The Giaour Contemplating the Dead Hassan, c. 1829
Portrait of Lord Byron and locket that once belonged to Lady Caroline Lamb
The styling of Byron as Lord Ruthven was not Polidoris invention. One of Byrons lovers Lady Caroline Lamb first used the name for a thinly disguised caricature of
Byron in her Glenarvon (1816). In Lambs gothic novel, Lord Ruthven is also a corrupting influence on an innocent female (Lamb herself).
Lady Caroline Lamb's locket containing Byron's portrait
Lady Lambs first impression of Byron: mad, bad, and dangerous to know. His response was to pursue her passionately. When Byron tired of her, it was
Lamb who pursued him obsessively, becoming something of a celebrity stalker.
Nike, Ephesus
In Byrons A Fragment of a Novel, English nobleman Darvell and his traveling companion (the narrator) visit Greece and Turkey.
There, Darvell begins to waste away and dies after instructing his friend to bury him in a cemetery in Ephesus.
(image: tripadvisor.com)
John William Polidori, the author of The Vampyre (1819), painted by F.G. Gainsford
In The Vampyre, Englishmen Aubrey and Lord Ruthven travel to Greece via Italy. As they travel, Aubrey
tires of Ruthven's amorality and they part ways. Aubrey falls in love with an innocent Greek girl Ianthe, who is
killed by a vampire. Lord Ruthven catches up with Aubrey and nurses his traveling companion back to health,
only to be shot by a band of robbers. Before dying, Lord Ruthven makes Aubrey promise that he would not
reveal his death to anybody for one year. When Aubrey returns to England, he is shocked to see Lord Ruthven
not only alive, but engaged to his own sister.
The readers of Polidoris The Vampyre recognized a caricature of Byron in Lord Ruthven (Polidori and Byron had
quarrelled): a debauched aristocrat, ruthless in pursuit of pleasure. Ruthven leaves human ruins in his wake; we
see in him Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, whose portrait records his moral decay, while the model, like a vampire,
does not age.
Eugne Delacroix, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826
Leila: "a personification of Greece"?
'T is Greece, but living Greece no more !
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Horace Vernet (1789-1863), Le Glaour Conquerer d'Hassan
Eugne Delacroix, The Giaour over dead Pasha, 1825
Eugne Delacroix, The Confession of the Giaour, 1825-40
Such is my name, and such my tale.
Confessor ! to thy secret ear
I breathe the sorrows I bewail
Lady Charlotte Harley, or "Ianthe" to whom Byron dedicated his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812).
In Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), Ianthe is one of the victims of Lord Ruthven.
Engraving by W. Finden, after drawing by R. Westall
Alexandre-Marie Colin, Byron as Don Juan, with Haidee, 1831
From this, The Giaour The Vampyre continuum, two vampire archetypes emerge: One is the vampire as a
debauched aristocrat, which flows straight into Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Here: Ben
Barnes as Dorian Gray in "Dorian Gray" (2009, Oliver Parker)
Thodore Gricault, The Giaour, c. 1822-23
The second is the vampire as a Byronic hero: Coppola seems to have merged the historical Vlad Tepes and the Giaour in his Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Here the "Turk killer" returns from battle, to find his beloved princess dead. He swears revenge on the Church which refuses to give his wife, a suicide, a Christian burial. He stabs a statue of Christ a symbolic deicide and is cursed to become a vampire.Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, Coppola): Dracula as a Byronic hero
Gustave Wappers, Le Giaour, c. 1830-40
Muse des Beaux-Arts de Pau
Everything You Wanted to Know About The Giaour* (*But Were Afriad to Ask)
