Welcome back to day 2! You can find today’s poem here
This is the first of this month’s vampire texts. The Bride of Corinth (original – Die Braut Von Korinth) was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1797. It’s one of the many pieces of poetry, drama and ‘horrid’ writing that made it’s way to Britain to influence both the early Gothic and Romanticism. There are numerous translations of it so do look around. I always recommend reading translating poetry in a few version. Poetic translation (arguably more than any other) is an interpretation, trying to capture not only meaning but essence, rhythm and feel (unscientific, I know!)
To put the poem in perspective in relation to British literature, this was written at about the same time Samuel Taylor Coleridge was writing the first part of ‘Christabel’ (although this wasn’t published till much later). It predates other important early examples of the vampire in British poetry, like the vampiric Oneiza in Robert Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), John Stagg’s ‘The Vampyre’ (1810) or Byron’s vampiric curse in The Giaour (1813). English Gothic and Romantic writing was strongly influenced by earlier German genres like the ‘sturm-und-drang’ school. The influence of German writing, and specifically ‘The Bride of Corinth’, on the literary vampire more broadly is notable. The first vampire poem was ‘Der Vampir’ (1748) of Heinrich August Ossenfelder. ‘The Bride of Corinth’ gives us the truly sympathetic vampire – as much victim as villain.
What I’ve always found fascinating about ‘The Bride of Corinth’ is that it flips the standard theological script around the vampire. I’ve talked about this elsewhere so if you’re interested, there’s a lot more detail here but the standard concept of the vampire is of a cursed mortal immortal. Broadly speaking, most Christian denominations make a separation between body and soul. As ‘the wages of sin are death’ and death entered the world with Adam, part of us has to die. The soul, the immortal part, an element and reflection of the Divine is set free on death. Vampires superstitions and stories abound with a concept of the vampire who has been cursed in some way. Unable to die (bodily), they are condemned to a doomed bodily undeath, their soul trapped and caged in a corrupt mortal immortal body. For examples of early accounts of vampirism from the 17th and 18th centuries which highlight these ideas, check out the ‘Primary Resources‘ section of this website. One belief was specifically that vampirism was a result of excommunication, a case of belonging to the wrong church or being outside the pale. ‘The Bride of Corinth’ takes the opposite approach. The heroine’s vampirism is a result of Christianity, of a familiar turning away from old Gods, a breaking of troths. It is, or I read it as, a critique of religious bigotry. It’s a fun early twist on some standard ideas around the vampire.
What stuck out to you in this early poem?
Romancing the Gothic 