“Vampyr” (1871)

I should start by noting that Jan Neruda’s very short story (also known as “Vampire” and “The Vampire”) is not the basis for Danish filmmaker Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 film of that name. That honor goes to Sheridan Le Fanu. Neruda is on Wikipedia as an important figure in Czech realism and a member of the May School, although I don’t know what those things mean exactly. But probably this story is a one-off of some kind. It features a small Polish family touring the Greek islands, with a daughter who is sick. This being a vampire story, I was instantly suspicious of the family members, especially the daughter’s new husband. That’s how vampire stories can tend to go. But the vampire in the story, eventually identified as “The Vampire,” is a Greek man, a traveling young artist renowned (or notorious) for making sketches of the corpses of people recently passed. But he does them ahead of time, before their deaths. The daughter who is ailing appears to be merely ailing, but it's possible the Greek man is doing a vampire thing on her too, that is, sucking her blood or energy somehow. The story is not really clear about the matter, nor even about who the vampire is, though eventually it is spelled out more or less. The Greek artist guy shows up after the family has been settled into a hotel and begins to sketch the daughter. He does so discreetly, with his back turned so no one can see his work. He’s less like a vampire and more like a social misfit with uncanny intuition. (I will note also that daylight does not seem to bother him, nor do we know whether the daughter has puncture wounds on her neck.) That’s basically all the story is giving us. I didn’t think it was very effective or interesting and also it seems to be out of step with Neruda’s main currents and larger career. I think vampire stories by definition are not realism of any kind, not even magical realism. So possibly this was written for the money? The story is quite readable for something in translation from the 19th century, but I would have to say it’s fatally slight.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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