Byron’s The Giaour delivers one of the most spooky portraits of the Vampier – Sensual, Feminating and Deep Human, writes William Bove
The Giaour is a poem by Lord Byron, first published in 1813, and remarkable because of its early reference to vampires.
It follows John Staag’s The Vampyre from 1810. I will not look at the poem in its entirety – only my favorite section. This passage not only stands out in the Giaour, but also in the work of Byron.
Although I don’t really love Byron as a person, I have always loved this piece. It continues to excite and inspire me and deliver joy with every revision.
This excerpt is the last entry in my British Gothic Horror Poets series. I could not be happier – or more excited – to close with not one, but two vampire poems.
‘But first sent on earth as a vampire,
Your Corse will be rented from his grave:
Then you follow your native place,
And suck the blood of all your race;
There from your daughter, sister, woman,
Turn the flow of life at midnight;
Yet the banquet hates that perforce
Must feed your lively living Corse;
Your victims, but they still expire
Will know the demon for their father,
If you cuddle, cursed,
Your flowers are withered on the stem. ‘
For me, this passage catches the majesty of the Ondoden.
It enjoys the obstinacy of horror and the hypnotic passion that vampires have. This darkness of darkness dominates the imagination. Their hunger is frightening – but we are attracted to it.
There is something irresistible about them.
Their methods are brutal, yet intimate. With blood steeped, yes-but always peppered with passion. These qualities always pull us in their world.
We are mesmerized by their horror, their beauty and their tragic romance. We can’t help but follow them. We give them up, dreams of them, they write. Our imagination craves them.
The first lines of this fragment are particularly powerful. The vampire is not aberration. It is an inevitability. A creature just as essential for life and death as a breath itself. It keeps Dominion about the mortal world, an old hunger that is carved into our blood.
There is electricity in this stanza. The trek is magnetic. His presence, unmistakable.
This remains one of the most lively images of a vampire I have ever read. It would easily be in my top three- if not for John Staag’s The Vampyre, who remains a master class of description and theme.
Byron’s Passage is short, but so effective. It builds up quickly and hits the rhythm of a heartbeat. It runs like a predator in the dark. Every line steals forward, until the vampire is on us – and it is our blood that he desires.
And in our deepest, most primary self, we understand.
So sure if the moon pulls us to heaven and the night generates our desire, we know that these horrors live among us. We are looking for them. We want to see them. And despite ourselves we want to admit to them.
And if we do that, we find at home.
The embrace of gothic horror and gothic romance shows us the way. The atmosphere, the themes and the strange, cold comfort remind us of it all: we have always heard here.
Fun fact: Loons, skeletons and cemetery helped to build the base of Gothic horror and Gothic romance. These themes were lovingly employed by the poets of the cemetery and can also be found in the novels of Daniel Defoe, which often contain dark humorous scenes – Pest carts, corpse posts and such. Gothic horror always has happy with the Macabre, and in combination with dark humor the result is wonderfully rotated.
What did you think of this fragment from the Giaour? Do you have a favorite vampire poem or Gothic passage? Share it with us in the comments!
