Listen, Barbara Creed’s work is interesting when it comes to films analysis and feminist theory. I even referenced her own commentary on the archetype of the archaic mother when I worked on the representation of women within Argento’s trilogy, The Three Mothers. That’s how her work should be taken as ; a subjective (and therefore biased, influenced by her own identity as a white Australian woman) commentary on the representation of (white, cis) women and (white, cis) womanhood within the horror genre. That’s what she does ; she’s a films scholar and a horror theorist. She’s not a historian, nor a linguist, and so she’s certainly not a classicist (she’s also not a psychoanalyst, and I have strong opinions on psychoanalytic film theory but that would be opening up a whole new can of worms). The quote above is directly taken from her most famous work ; The monstrous-feminine (1993). She’s citing Barbara G. Walker (who definitely wasn’t a classicist either) :
More specifically, that little “fact” is taken from Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983, careful cause the link is a direct download). However, that book has been heavily critisized for its gross appropriation and misinterpretation of many different myths and deities from various cultures and religions. I’m not going to talk about it at lengths cause there would be too much to be said, but let’s just say I simply don’t condone cultural appropriation by white neopagans. Anyways, here’s what Walker says about the etymology of the word ‘vampire’ in different languages :
In this brief passage, Walker is herself citing a man named Montague Summers (a clergyman and occultist…) and his book, The Vampire, His Kith and Kin (1928). I’m not even going to make any comment on Summers’ legitimacy and work ethic, but here’s what he writes about the word “sarcomenos”:
There is no reference to the moon whatsoever. So, not only did Walker misinterpret his translation, she just straight up lied in order to better serve her own narrative, and even omitted Summers’ latter addition :
The modern Greek word for vampire is indeed βρικόλακας/βρυκόλακας, or vrikolakas/vrykolakas. So, Montague Summers himself gives the word “σαρκωμένος”, and says its use is regional ; it would come from Cyprus. Now, I had a harder time guessing where he found that information since he doesn’t cite him properly, but he does name John Cuthbert Lawson. There is only one work by Lawson in his bibliography ; Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910). Now, here’s what Lawson says about σαρκωμένος :
Firstly, thank Internet for digitalized books, and secondly, I couldn’t find a lot of information on this Lawson, apart from a Wikipedia page in German and a page in French on the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France). I don’t speak German so I had to rely on Google translate ; apparently, he was a British philologist and a lecturer at the Pembroke College, in the University of Cambridge. In his book, Lawson acknowledges that most of his own knowledge on Greek Folklore comes from two other authors (altough he does criticize some aspects of their works, and doesn’t seem to take it at face value) ; Bernhard Schmidt and Professor Polites :
The former is more interesting to me than the latter, since the word σαρκωμένος apparently comes from Schmidt’s research. Once again, I couldn’t find much information about him apart from a German Wikipedia page. He was also a classical philologist from the 19th century, who collected and analyzed Greek tales and legends in his book, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Alterthum (1871) :
Here, Schmidt spells it as “ςαρκωμένος”, which seems incorrect to me since the Greek sigma letter is usually only written as “ς” when it occurs at the end of a word. Now, as I said I don’t speak German, so it’s going to be fun… From what I could understand, Schmidt does in fact tell us that a creature who shares similarities with the vampire and other undead folkloric monsters was called σαρκωμένος in Cyprus. The word σαρκωμένος would come from σαρκώνω, σαρκών in Ancient Greek, and would mean “the fattened” (Gemästete), or “the well-fed” (Wohlgenährte). Schmidt himself cites a passage from the third volume (1862) of a Greek periodical called Φιλίστωρ, or Philistor :
Here, the word σαρκωμένος seems to be synonymous of βουρδολακας, or vourdolakas. Sounds familiar? Well, yes, it does sound similar to the other Greek word βρυκόλακας… Which, as a reminder, means vampire. Now, I’m getting tired of this, and frankly, I already lost my time. So. Creed was lazy and didn’t fact-check anything, Walker was a little liar, Summers just parroted what Lawson had written before him, and Lawson and Schmidt themselves didn’t seem to know exactly where the word truly comes from. I’m too bored to continue this little “investigation”. This is what happens when scholars just repeat the same thing, again and again. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess.
