The Myth of the Vampire in the Modern and Contemporary Slavic World: a Literery Overview

The present paper examines the fantastic-folkloristic literature declined in the Russian variant of Gothic "Vampire literature" from its origins up to present. The objects of our investigation are both the etymological reconstruction of the lemma and the reconstruction of the features that make the "vampire" an unmistakable character. By drawing the attention to the examination of the different names and their characterizations in the literary works of the Slavic area, the focus then shifts to the novels of Russian literature of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Firstly, the study examines folk literature in Russia, which sees the supernatural characters of the Slavic pantheon as its protagonists, develops through the golden age and reaches the present day with the representation of the fantastic in contemporary Russian literature where vampires are human and are far from the vurdalaks and upyrs typical of folk literature. For instance, Lukyanenko depicts a radically new world that differs from the old small villages where vampires used to wander around far from the steppes. He sets his stories in contemporary Moscow, which looks like a charming and enchanted city as well as a terrifying and dangerous place inhabited by vampires, wizards and lycanthropes wandering through the streets and the houses. Pelevin also lingers in the specific characterization of vampires, which become extremely seductive and have a great deal of eroticism; the peculiar elegance of their silhouettes is accompanied by a refined language which is very often encrypted and yet losing that aura of "sacredness fearsome" which characterizes the traditional image of the vampire.