Fragment uit The Hollow van Arthur Hovenkamp (2025)
Voor het vak Geschiedenis van de filosofie 6: wereldwijde hermeneutiek, gegeven door Andrea Sangiacomo naar zijn boek The Tragedy of the Self: Lectures on Global Hermeneutics (2023), heb ik een kort verhaal geschreven. Dit korte verhaal wou ik al veel langer schrijven, maar binnen het kader van het vak, de analyse van wat de “zelf” is en vraagstukken daaromheen, was het voor de creatieve opdracht die we ervoor moesten doen vooral interessant. Voor de opdracht heb ik 3 bladzijden ingeleverd, ergens in het midden van het 14 bladzijde lange verhaal, waar ik me voor deze post ook tot beperk. Enige context is belangrijk. De hoofdpersoon heet Lord Allister, een jongeman uit Londen van het fin de siècle (1880-1914) die een kerk in de Italiaanse provincie Romagne besluit te kopen. Zijn vader had tijdens zijn Grand Tour door Europa de kerk al gezien en merkte er iets vreemds aan, wat hij toeschreef aan zijn esthetische intuïtie. Deze intuïtie bracht hem tot waanzin en uiteindelijk tot zijn dood. Lord Allister merkt dat hij in het dorp, waar het anarchisme van Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) wordt aangehangen, als Britse Lord niet bepaald welkom is. Het fragment is de climax: Lord Allister vlucht naar de kerk toe en ontdekt de oorsprong van zijn vader’s esthetische intuïtie.
Lord Allister’s Notebook - Fragment from The Hollow (2025) by Arthur Hovenkamp
Exploring the Church – I have fled into the church, no one saw me enter. The tombs have been opened up and appear to have been raided by the workmen. The skeletal remains are dressed in a more Germanic than Roman attire, while most of the fabrics have withered away, and clear signs such as maniples or fibulas have been removed, pieces of leather bands and cuirasses remain. Some of them appear to have been priests, others noblemen, most likely of Lombardic, if not Vandalic, Gothic, Frankish or even Saxon, descent. Most of them appear to have died a violent death, perhaps by decapitation, as eerily enough some of their skulls have been placed on their chests and with stones put between their jaws. Not to talk of the myths and legends of deviant burials for now, but this very much reminds me of them. There might be more interesting items to find in the tombs as the raiders appear to have been quite superstitious in disturbing the deceased.
Right now I am sat in front of an ancient reinforced door, which was behind the wall the workmen had removed for me. They have tried to pry it open, yet unsuccessfully, as is apparent from the broken pickaxe still stuck between its hinges. I feel drawn to the door in the very same way I have felt drawn to the church I am standing in as to the key I am holding tightly in my left hand. I will open the door, for whatever is to be found beyond must be worth the trouble I went through and am still finding myself in. A sensation overwhelms me in such as way the source of it cannot be determined anymore. It is the sensation of the overwhelming sense that there is nothing else to be done. Indeed, I will open the door with the key, which will work, for there are not other locks left to be found. But what will happen next? May God have my soul.
I am in state of divine limerence! I opened the door, a gust of dust surprised me, I was jumped at, pinned to the floor, and, looking at my assailer, of beauty beyond the apotheosis of the Greeks, I beheld Him: a Vampire! Not like the wretched creatures of gore and bile known in the North of Europe, like the revenants in the tombs below, nor like the plague ridden nosferatu or bestial strigoi of the East, but of the beauty and ecstasy of the Byronic Romanticism of the South! He was about to give me the Kiss, for me to be His chalice, to be His communion, yet He recoiled, roaring in His splendid Latin: “Stulte! Don’t you know how much I have suffered? How much I have endured? Let me recall you my history! Let my presence and demeanour instil you with dread rather than with extasy!”. I kneeled before him, as I began to write down His hagiography.
Narrative of the Vampire – “I was born as a mortal in a land and time far beyond. There and then I was chosen to be blessed, or rather accursed, by the goddess. I drank her blood and it changed me into a creature of beauty and of the dark, of hunger and of lust, of timelessness and of bloodshed. From then on, for millennia, I was at the centre of the world. Worshipped as a god in her temple, with the only witnesses of my statuesque demeanour being her chosen priestesses, who offered me the blood of sacrifices done in her honour. I was a conduit of power, as my presence was a boon to the land and to the people. Millennia passed just as such, until the land grew arid, unable to supply the people with sustenance. I grew restless, moving out of the temple at night to still my hunger with the blood of the unwilling. This changed when the fires came, when the followers of Zoroaster expelled me as a demon rather then to revere me as a god. I fled to the lands of the Greeks, whose power was waning after a grand victory over the Trojans, but who were willing to worship me for the god I was. As their power was rising again my devotees increased by tenfold. While my cult kept to be one of mystery. To follow me was to live life as one does during the day, but to worship me when the sun went down. Granting, to those who were loyal, gifts beyond their wildest dreams. The unwilling, of which there were many, those betrayers’ blood I would consume. For years this worship continued, moving to the verges of Magna Graecia. Eventually, when the region of my residence was incorporated into the Res publica Romana and later the Imperium Romanum, my cult continued. The Romans marvelled at the Greeks and their mysteries, such as the nightly, lustily, bloody mysteries whom were mine to share. Yet, there were subjects of the Empire who would not agree with the mysteries I had shared. In the far east, in the lands of the Levant, the Judaic cults deemed me like a demon very much akin to how the Zoroastrians deemed me as such. However, one of these cults, following the god who lived to die, would change things for me. Oh how much I would have revelled to drink the blood of Jesus Christ directly from his still breathing throat, for in the wake of his passing my godhood would come crashing down. His cult spread across the empire like a plague, festering from the shambling cadaver of the Son of Man. First, as a nuisance to the Empire, yet later as far more than a mere nuisance to me. The Roman Emperor decreed Christendom to be the religion of state, which meant the prosecution of my followers. They were hunted, converted or killed, until I was hunted myself, and had to become the hunter. For centuries I prowled Italy, drinking the blood of many as they would kneel in the hopes of divine intervention or would come charging at me on horseback with a couched lance. It mattered not to me, all who I encountered in my prowling dealings perished. I had no choice but to become a predator, fleeing to the north or south would have meant to flee into the lands of barbarians. As of then the Empire was about to fall, like many before it, partially due to the invasions of barbarians. Perhaps my fate was to be one of reverence once again. I encountered a band of such barbarians whom had left their own homeland, the warriors welcomed me and I quickly became acquainted with them. They talked of a goddess they had served very much like the one that created me, yet also of how they had abandoned her in favour of the teachings of Christ. They wisely deemed him but a man, as they were part of the Arian Heresy, hunted by the Romans just as me. In a sense I could recognize myself in the figure of Christ, as they described him in a way with an eery likeness to myself. For some despicable reason I trusted this band of Langobardi. Perhaps they would one day see me as the arisen Christ, as he is said to one day return. They led me to their settlement: a fortified church, very much reminiscent of the temple cities of my ancient past. But, when I looked out of the window of what I thought would become my home for the ages to come, they ambushed me, splashed me with holy water, holding up crosses and stakes, yet unsuccessfully detaining me, for wood and water are not weapons to defeat gods nor demons. I killed some of them, wounded even more, but in the end they got the better of me. They put me in iron shackles and chained me to the wall. They left me there, here in the room we are right now, as I heard the ones that were wounded in my fury being beheaded, put to rest in the tombs you have had opened yourself. They kept visiting me, calling me Antichrist. At one point an eruption of violence came and the Arian rites were switched for those of the Niceans and later the Roman Catholics. The Empire of Christendom had come to rule. As the rituals of drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ ensued I was left to hunger, chained as a beast to the wall, with Sanguis et Corpus Christi echoing from the altar through the stonework into my skull over and over and over again. Having forgotten the purpose of the door they hid it behind a wall, the wall you have had teared down. I became merely a sensation one had when going to church, a sensation one knew to be of Satan, as I heard from the confessionary a thousand times. Eventually the iron shackles rusted away, as the church was left standing. However, one day a fragile foreign aristocrat and his companions were crossing the churchyard, looking me directly in the eye, but leaving immediately due to the interference of a group of brigands. Another decade passed, it seemed that during this time, as all Empires before it, Christendom had come to fall. The church was not merely abandoned, but in an eruption of revolutionary zeal desecrated by the ones whose ancestors had gone there for a thousand years. The last institution that deemed me to be, if not god then demon, came to fall. Shortly after the iconoclasm you came, clearly brought here by the frail man that saw me in the eye, as I see the likeness in your physique. You came, to commit yet one last iconoclasm, to reap the oh so rightful earnings of your father’s legacy. Yet all is but your despair, you were brought here by deception, by mine and others’. Desperation which I shall bring to an end. To me you are sustenance, to keep my demeanour from turning from statuesque to statue, a means to an end to once again bless, or rather accurse, the world with my infernal, wrathful and eternal presence.”
Notes of the Narrative – As the narrative unfolds I cannot help but muse. He boasts many upon many of names, names I do not have the wording for. He calls Himself a creature, either god or demon, of “[…] beauty and of the dark, of hunger and of lust, of timelessness and of bloodshed.”. Yet, what is more beautiful than the dark? When the deep blue of the night sky is perturbed by the moon and stars. Yet, what is a greater hunger than lust? When the will of the mind and of the body intertwine to long for the mind and body of another. Yet, what is more timeless than bloodshed? As the only constant of mankind is that of mortality and the will for it to be overcome. No, the fate of such a creature, a mirror of not only myself but of all of mankind, that I cannot dread.
He speaks of the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, at last names I possess the wording for. He was cast from godhood into demonhood, akin to the likeness of Prometheus. Him mirroring all of mankind indeed. He found a suitable home in the lands of the Greeks, long before they fought the Persians at Thermopylae, Marathon, Salamis and Plataea, long before great thinkers such as Herakleitos, Sokrates, Plato and Aristoteles, long before statesmen such as Perikles, Alkibiades, Philippos and Alexandros. He outlived and outweighed them all. The fate of such a titan is not to be dreaded, having been demonized by the failures of history while having been venerated by its victors.
As mysteries surrounded Him into me He is making them known. They are the sublime mysteries of Dionysos rather than the divine clarities of Apollo. They are the secrets of Lucifer rather than the revelations of the Gospels. He, as Prometheus, as Dionysos, as Lucifer, is far more of a Son of Man than Jesus Christ himself. Christ as the true antipode of the Son of Man, he as the Antichrist, as a negation of humanity. No, not even his millennial imprisonment can make me dread his fate. I must receive the Kiss, for me to be like Him, for Me to be His mirror. Oh, how powerful would the two of Us as one be! The unstoppable and the unmoving as one!
The Vampire has completed His narrative, which was meant to instil me with dread rather than extasy, while failing to achieve either. He and I are what humanity needs, what is needed to make an end to iron shackles and gilded cages. As if being able to sense my inclination, not deeming Him to be a god or a demon, but as an equal, the Vampire weeps a final tear of blood.