Gustav Meyrink and the Evolution of the Literary Vampire: From Feared Bloodsucker to Esoteric Phenomenon

Abstract

When the satirist, fantasist, and occultist Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932) began publishing in the early twentieth century, the figure of the vampire was already well-established as a literary motif in German literature. During this period numerous works appeared that depicted vampires based upon the model of Bram Stoker. While commonly conceived as a fearsome, bloodsucking, and seductive creature, short stories by Gustav Meyrink challenged this conventional representation of the vampire. The following study introduces Meyrink’s vampire tales and highlights how the author employs and comments on the traditional features of this motif, in the process of which he radically reshapes the motif itself. The result is that Meyrink offers his readers descriptions of vampiric phenomena informed by esoteric thought and turn-of-the-century occultist trends. If vampires and their monstrous kin are indeed carriers of culture, as Jeffrey Cohen, a leading critic of monster theory, contends, then Meyrink’s creation of an esoteric vampire gives voice to the significant role of the occult movement at the turn of the century and its place within the crisis of modernity.