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Appendix: Translations from Mérimée's La Guzla

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Appendix: Translations from Mérimée's La Guzla Appendix: Translations from Mérimée’s La Guzla On vampirism In Illyria, in Poland, In Hungary, in Turkey and part of Germany, one would risk being reproached for irreligion and immorality if one denied publicly the existence of vampires. Vampire (vukodlak in Illyrian) is the name for a dead man who leaves his tomb, normally at night, and who torments the living. Often he sucks their necks; other times he squeezes their throats to the point of suffocating them. Those who die in such a way by the act of a vampire become vampires themselves after their deaths. It would appear that all feelings of natural affection have been destroyed within vampires; for, it has been noted that they would torment their friends and parents rather than strangers. Some believe that a man becomes a vampire through divine punishment; others that he has been propelled towards this by a peculiar sort of fate. The most vouched-for opinion is that schismatics buried in holy ground, unable to find any rest therein, and the excommunicated are avenging themselves upon the living for the agonies which they endure. The signs of vampirism are as follows: a corpse remaining preserved after a time when other bodies have begun to putrefy, the fluidity of blood, the suppleness of limbs etc. It is also said that vampires have their eyes open in their graves and that their nails and hair grow like those of the living. Some of them are recognisable by the noise that they make in their tombs while chewing quite about everything that surrounds them, often their very skin. The apparitions of these phantoms cease when, after being exhumed, their heads are cut off and their bodies burnt. The most normal remedy against a first attack by a vampire is to rub the whole of one’s body, and above all the part that he has sucked, with the blood contained in his veins, mixed with the earth of his tomb. The wounds that are found on the sickly appear as a little bluish or red stain, like the little scar left by a leech. Here follow some histories of vampires reported by dom Calmet in his Treaty on the apparition of spirits and on vampires, etc. At the beginning of september there died in the village of Kisilova, at three leagues from Gradisch, an old man aged sixty-two years, etc. Three days after being buried, he appeared in the night to his son, and demanded that he should have something to eat; once the latter had served him, he ate and then disappeared. The next day the son told his neighbours what had happened. That night the father did not appear; but the following night he turned up and demanded to eat. It is not known whether the son gave him anything or not, but the next day this son was found dead in his bed. The same day, five or six people suddenly fell ill in the village, and died one after the other in a few days. 175 176 Appendix The officer or bailiff of the place, informed of what had happened, sent a report of this to the court at Belgrade, which sent two of its officers with an executioner into the village to examine this matter. The imperial officer, from whom this account derives, went to Gradisch, in order to witness an event of which he had so often heard talk. The tombs of all those who had been dead for six weeks were opened: when they came to that of the old man, it was found that the eyes were open, the body red and breathing naturally, although motionless like a dead man; from this it was concluded that he was evidently a vampire. The executioner plunged a stake into the heart. A pyre was made and the corpse reduced to ashes. There was no sign of vampirism found either in the corpse of the son or in those of the others. About five years ago a certain Haiduk, an inhabitant of Medreiga named Arnold Paul, was crushed by the collapse of a haywain. Thirty days after his death four people died suddenly and in the manner by which according to the tradition of the country, those who are harassed by vampires die. It was then recalled that this Arnold Paul had often told of how he had been tormented by a Turkish vampire in the region of Cassova and on the frontiers of Turkish Serbia (because they also believe that those who have been passive vampires during their lives become active ones after their deaths, which is to say that those who have been sucked also suck in their turn); but that he had found a means of curing himself by eating the earth from the vampire’s sepulchre and by rubbing himself with its blood; a precaution which did not prevent him, however, from becoming one after his death, since he was exhumed forty days after his burial, and was found to have all the signs of an archvampire upon his corpse. His body was crimson, his hair, his nails, his beard had all been growing freshly, and his veins were all replete with fluid blood and flowing from all parts of his body onto the shroud in which he was wrapped. The had- nagi or bailiff of the place, in whose presence the exhumation was done, and who was an expert in vampirism, caused there to be plunged, in accordance with custom, a very sharp stake into the heart of Arnold Paul, with which stake they crossed his body from side to side. Having accomplished this action, they cut off his head and burnt him completely. After that, the same action was performed on the corpses of the other four people who had died as a result of vampirism, lest they in their turn should cause others to die. All these measures still could not prevent the fresh outbreak of these griev- ous events and deaths towards the end of last year, that is to say at the at the end of five years, with several inhabitants of the same village perishing miser- ably. In the space of three months, seventeen people of different sexes and dif- ferent ages died of vampirism, some without being ill, and others after two or three days of languishing. Amongst others there is the account of how one named Stanoska, daughter of the Haiduk Jotuïlzo, who went to bed in perfect health, got up shaking in the middle of the night while making horrendous cries and saying that the son of Haiduk Millo, dead for nine weeks, had all but strangled her during her sleep. From this moment she began to do nothing but languish, and at the end of three days she died. What this girl had said about the son of Millo was what first got him recognised for being a vampire: he was exhumed and found to be such. The leaders of the place, the doctors, the surgeons examined how it was that vampirism had been able to be reborn after the precautions taken some years before. Appendix 177 It was finally discovered, after long research, that the deceased Arnold Paul had killed not only the four people of whom we have talked, but also several beasts of which the new vampires had partaken, the son of Millo being one of them. From these signs the resolution was taken to exhume all those who had been dead for a certain period, etc. From among about forty, seventeen were found with all the most evident signs of vampirism: they likewise were pierced through the heart and decapitated, and afterwards burnt with their ashes then thrown into the river. ‘All the reports and actions of which we have just spoken were performed in accordance with the law, properly, and attested to by several officers who are garrisoned in the country, by the surgeon-majors of the regiments and by the most important inhabitants of the place. The statement for this was sent towards the end of last January to the imperial council of war at Vienna, which had estab- lished a military commission for examining the truth of all these happenings’ (D. Calmet, t. II.). I will finish by recounting an event of the same sort of which I myself have been witness and which I leave to my readers’ contemplation. In 1816, I had undertaken a journey by foot in the Vorgoraz, and I was lodged in the little village of Varboska. My host was a Morlack, rich by the standards of the country, a very jolly man, a bit of a drunkard, and named Vuck Poglonovich. His wife was young and still beautiful, and his sixteen year old daughter was charming. I wanted to stay some days in the house in order to draw some ancient relics in the neighbourhood, but it was impossible for me to rent a room by offer of money; I had to maintain one through his own hospitality. This made it obligatory for me to endure an insufferable acquaintanceship, in that I was constrained to keep up with my friend Poglonovich as long as it pleased him to stay at the table. Whoever has dined with a Morlack will understand the difficulty of the thing. One evening, the two women had left us an hour before and, in order to avoid drinking, I was singing certain songs of my country to my host when we were interrupted by the ghastly screams emanating from the bedroom. There is nor- mally only one in the house, and it serves for everybody.
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