But can we please talk about Armand’s
(actually Andrei’s) Monastery of the Caves because it’s a real place!Kiev Pechersk Lavra also
known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, is a historic Orthodox Christian monastery which gave its name to one of the city districts where it is located in Kiev. It was created in the early 11th century by an Orthodox monk named Anthony. He chose a cave at the Berestov Mount that
overlooked the Dnieper River. The Kiev Pechersk Lavra caverns are a very
complex system of narrow underground corridors (about 1-1½ metres wide and 2-2½ metres high), along with
numerous living quarters and underground chapels.Even
found a small interview with one of the actual modern monks, who said “The monk is actually a person who,
ideally, should not face the world for he is constantly talking to God. Therefore, he goes underground, he buries himself
alive by digging his own grave – that is, his cell. And when the real death comes, the
cave takes his body for perpetual storage. Therefore,
every cave monastery is a kind of an underground necropolis”.I honestly have no idea how I’ve never researched this, but I finally have a visual and detailed reference and I’m SO happy.
My hat is off to you. This post is a brilliant, evocative piece of fandom research. The funny thing is that when I came to my dash and saw the photos I was thinking, OMG, SOMEONE FOUND SEVRAINE’S CAVES OF GOLD! and then… well, I’m floored!
It shows something that I hadn’t understood when I read Armand’s story: how the caves could seem safe, reassuring, even. How they could echo the womb in some way to one’s lizard brain, particularly for a kid who’s torn between two different ways of life and is told that this place will mean peace of a kind, rightness with God. Somehow I doubt there would’ve been so many candles back then, but any candlelight at all on walls of stone… I’d forgotten how it looks and feels, and somehow I’d always visualised the caves as having earthen walls, which of course makes no sense because they wouldn’t have stayed up!
Tag Archives: vampire chronicles
poets the VC vampires read
Lestat: He cannot stand Shelley because he was dishonest in his romanticism, but Byron, who never pretended to be anything other than what he was both in his verse and in his life he adores. Keats was akin to Apollo reborn into innocence; and he reads all the French Symbolists except for Baudelaire. He enjoys Italian sonnets, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spencer, Skelton, and Heine.
Louis: loves Baudelaire. Pope is a favorite of his (“pray tell, Sir, whose dog are you?”), he enjoys the Graveyard Poets and their imagery of humans in terror of the dead and ghosts, its a feeling that he can’t experience anymore by vicariously. He doesn’t miss the fears of mortality though so he doesn’t have much patience with Poe, save for a handful of French translations of his work. Also enjoys Elliot’s sense of ennui.
Marius: Dante was popular drivel according him during the Roman days, but the longer time passes from the ancient days he grows to admire newer, but well structured verses, ones that focus more on creating a sensation than a narrative. He does have a taste for Rilke, however, and once gifted Armand with a copy of “Letters to a Young Poet”
Armand: Daniel introduced him to the beat poets, whom he has cultivated a great fondness for. Sapho, he reads out of a joy that he is the only one privileged with a copy of her full poems, not just fragments, that he stole from Marius’s library centuries ago, as just one of the rare documents he keeps for his private amusement with refusal to share with the world. He fancies his Theatre of Vampires to be similar to the poem “The Conqueror Worm.”
Daniel: He found a trunk of poems from the 50’s in his dad’s junk after he died and he was helping his mother clean the house out so she could downsize. Really, it them that convinced him to hit the road as a writer. One day he swears to himself that he’ll also make it through Erza Pound’s “Cantos” and gives with a grim laugh the remark that “at least thanks to Armand, I’ll have all the time in eternity to finish it”
i-want-my-iwtv your blog is the reason I started reading the vampire chronicles. The fact that you just followed me made my day.
Awww! #ANOTHER CONVERSION #ANOTHER SOUL CLAIMED IN THE NAME OF OUR FANDOM. #I love these kind of stories. Bwahahahaaaa…
Post your thoughts as you go. As much as we love this series, one can never recapture the things we felt/thought the first time thru, the feel of something new. Hopefully we haven’t spoiled you too badly.
Your URL implies that the spoilage is already deep… well. What is a “slut” but a sensualist? Someone with a lust for life! That’s our Lestat alright.
I was bored and feeling nostalgic so I made a thing
And the Vampire Chronicles fandom arises to give us this gold nugget
Armand to Louis post-Theatre des Vampires: Lestat is dead!
Lestat [offscreen]: Quit telling people I’m dead!
Armand: Sometimes I can still hear his voice
What kind of poetry do the VC vampires like? Vampires like Lestat, Armand, Louis, and Marius. Or any other vampires you want to add. Which poet are they fans of?
[text from here] [devilsfool helped me w/ this answer]
I am actually a terrible resource for this question bc I… *gasp* do not really ‘get’ a lot of poetry! I only really like a few poets… like Shel Silverstein (he can be very adult and subversive, btw), Dr. Seuss (who tucked the richness of political/other messages into his works), and other “children’s” authors
yes don’t even think of mocking me on that ok i like what i like, and tbh I headcanon that Lestat has a passion for these, too, since he never got bedtime stories with illustrations as a child (and it’s why he read bedtime stories/poetry to Claudia well beyond the time when she could read to herself bc he loved impressing her with acting out the voices).
- HOWEVER. I do love me some Shakespeare, and I think that counts as poetry, and Lestat loves him some Shakespeare, too. That’s canon. He mentions Keats in TOBT as he’s refurbishing the Rue Royale “Ah, wasn’t it the ode by Keats which had inspired that long-ago purchase? Where had the urn gone?” He also mentions Milton in that book. IDK if he read them but he came into possession of a collection of poetry by Wynken de Wilde in MtD.
- Book-IWTV!Lestat is not wild about books of poetry, ditching Louis one night with a cruel little snap: “Read your damn poems, then! Rot!”
- Lestat also considers music lyrics to “count” as poetry and might get all excited about a new track by Kanye West, Eminem or Macklemore. I think he’d be especially drawn to freestyle rap battles.
- Louis quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, so I would assume he liked (at least at that time) that kind of story/poetry: macabre, dealing with religion v. nature undertones.
- I see Marius as liking the quirky poetry in the New Yorker, and Stan Rice’s free-form style, as he likes to study emerging trends in thoughts.
- David Talbot likes Blake, the Tyger features in his… trajectory, shall we say.
…The rest I leave up to annabellioncourt,
devilsfool, fyeahgothicromance, gothiccharmschool, and duendology, who are probably better resources on this topic. Oh, and of course, anyone else who sees this and has an opinion please feel free to reblog/comment ;D
Little vladrodriguez VC fanart appreciation. Isn’t he amazing?!
Dear godmother of VC fandom, me and my other half love to read your blog together, we adore it so much. I gotta say it even gives us some kinky ideas. Please keep giving us some more awesome stuff, specially with Louis and Lestat. ;3
Awwww that is totes adorable I am so honored! You’re not the first couple I’ve heard a similar thing from, and it warms my heart immensely
♥u♥ i kinda hope i will meet my other half thru fandom, it has happened for ppl before…
Kinky ideas, hmmmm? Wellll… I will have to start a new tag for that then! #Kinky Ideas. Starting with this post. If you can manage it, reenact the ^gif above or this fanart by DrKav, (it is one of my all-time faves) and send me a pic! Neither are significantly kinky so you don’t need to be in cosplay ;]
This fanart by anaryawe is more kinky, but you’d have to own a corset to reenact it… It’s Lestat and a lady, but Louis might be happy to substitute.
I-want-my-IWTV 