A sketch after a photo of the eccentric writer Raymond Roussel, taken in Jerusalem, which makes him to appear as if he rises from his grave. Which in turn reminds of his novel Locus Solus, arguably one of the first zombie stories ever written. Or at least, it has some kind of zombies in it, among many other eyebrow-rising weird scenes.
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I think about zombies he inspired himself from britain stories/tales, i mean french britany. I've a book in french about death in traditionnal britain by Anatole Le Braz. Don't know if this does exist in english.
but the really first should be Lucien de Samosate, and then medieval illumination
Interesting. Tell me more!
well, Anatole Le Braz collected popular stories from Britain in a book called "La légende de la mort" published at the end of XIXth c. There's in this book a few chapters about living dead.
Usual acceptance of zombies comes from Lazarus, then Lucian of Samosata mention them in "Dialogue des morts" (speech of the dead). I love this writer who's considered as first noveller. His stories was very fantastic with moon travelling and lot of adventures which have been used by XVIIIth c alchemists and probably fantastic novellers from XIXth c including Jules Verne. But can't find good words in english, here's a study in french, sorry http://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/file/index/docid/490461/filename/2008-2009_Michael_Lanaud_master_1.pdf
There was a large amount of zombies in XIXth c novels, including Clovis Détranchant, Léopold Chappe, "Story of the returned (revenants)" by Dr L. Hamon in 1864... there's a huge bibliography from XVI to XVIII about vampires and others returned dead, I do have a copy of this "Treatise about ghosts, vampires and returned of Hungary, etc" 1751 : http://gallica.bnf.fr/services/engine/search/sru?operation=searchRetrieve&version=1.2&collapsing=disabled&query=%28gallica%20all%20%22revenants%22%29%20and%20dc.relation%20all%20%22cb301873550%22
Thanks. I'll look into it.
What's interesting in Locus Solus is that the undead repeat a crucial scene from their existence when they were alive, as if in some theatre play, not unlike automatons. It's an idea theat resonates in Romero's Dawn of the Dead (the suppermarket), but hardly anywhere else (as far as i know).
yep, seen also in a recent movie, can't remind which one, where zombies still doing what they did before being dead.... like damned in hell... i guess best XXth c (Romero?) addition to the myth is "eating brains" - that's the real point which makes these guys popular scary icons
There is one scene in Dante's Inferno where a damned soul has had his skull opened and he's snacking on his own brains as punished - an idea that was "borrowed" for one of the Hannibal Lecter movies.
many ideas comes from medieval, some of them won't enter a movie nowadays, even for horror one ^^
Roussel is one of my favourite writers, huge influence on the surrealists, besides Locus Solus and Impressions D'Afrique, "Comment j' ai écrit certains de mes livres" (How i wrote certain books of mine" *) is a fascinant explanation of his writing process, wich is almost as nuttier as the text themselves.
*Forget if is a clumsy translation, i actually read RR in spanish translations, i wish i knew french!
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