Gender ambiguity and the vampire as creator in Gautier's "Clarimonde"

Theophile Gautier, "Clarimonde"

With elbow buried in the downy pillow,

I've lain and read,

All through the night, a volume strangely written

In tongues long dead.

For at my bedside lie no dainty slippers;

And, save my own,

Under the paling lamp I hear no breathing;

I am alone!

But there are yellow bruises on my body

And violet stains;

Though no white vampire come with lips blood-crimsoned

To suck my veins!

Now I bethink me of a sweet weird story,

That in the dark

Our dead loves thus with seal of chilly kisses

Our bodies mark.

Gliding beneath the coverings of our couches

They share our rest,

And with their dead lips sign their loving visit

On arm and breast.

Darksome and cold the bed where now she slumbers,

I loved in vain,

With her sweet eyelids closed, to be reopened

Never again.

Dead sweetheart, can it be that thou hast lifted

With thy frail hand

Thy coffin-lid, to come to me again

From shadowland?

Thou who, one joyous night, didst, pale and speechless,

Pass from us all,

Dropping thy silken mask and gift of flowers

Amidst the ball?

Oh, fondest of my loves, from that far heaven

Where thou must be,

Hast thou returned to pay the debt of kisses

Thou owest me?

Who is “Clarimonde”? The short poem by Theophile Gautier bearing this name involves two characters, neither of which is directly named and only one of which – the dead love – is ever gendered. The narrator is only ever given an “I” to designate. Presumably “Clarimonde” is the dead love – the narrator, also presumably, being a man. However, this is never directly specified, and, for a reader in search of such essentialized categories, the text itself renders only ambiguity.

To be sure, the opening stanza sets up a “masculine” framework for the narrative: the speaker is pursuing scholarly research long into the night, reading an arcane volume in an obscure language – certainly, traditionally, a “masculine” activity. However, this is taking place “with elbow buried in downy pillow,” which use of language already asserts an atmosphere and setting already contradictorily “feminine” to the activity being pursued. We are given, therefore, the portrait of either an effeminate “male” or a masculine “female,” either one of which raises questions as to just what, exactly, it means for a person to be “male” or “female.”

The former love is shown first of all in death, which is the epitome of passivity. Furthermore, such words surround her as “dainty,” “pale” and “speechless,” and she is described as “dropping” her mask and flowers – all of these, again, denote passivity, which is traditionally associated with the feminine/femininity. Here, too, though, there is ambiguity: in the person of the vampire, the dead lover is – while still gendered female – the only active character in the narrative. She opens her coffin-lid, pays her “debt of kisses,” and, while (femininely) “speechless,” enacts her own writing, a form of signification so present and physical that it manifests as “yellow bruises” and “violet stains” on the body of the narrator.

Passivity, as Helene Cixous says, is partly bound up with death: “But there is a nonclosure that is not submission but confidence and comprehension; that is not an opportunity for destruction but for wonderful expansion” (95). In life, the former love is described as passive, even to the point of death. In her form as vampire, though, she has moved beyond the death-passivity and into this state of nonclosure, becoming, indeed, the character who transforms the world while the narrator lies in idle contemplation.

She is frail, still, to be sure – her coffin-lid is lifted with “frail hand.” However, frailty, like passivity, taken to extremes, subverted, transcended, also provides avenues for actual expression. Once again, to quote Cixous: men or women, “beings who are complex, mobile, open,” who have accepted “the other sex as a component” are made “much richer, more various, stronger, and – to the extent that they are mobile – very fragile” (92). In order to create, to assert a creative, inventing self, there must be “an abundance of the other, of variety” (92), which we see in “Clarimonde” in the figure of the vampire: the vampire, who takes into herself attributes both masculine and feminine and is thus able to transcend the binaries of activity and passivity, of strength and frailty. In stepping outside of these binaries, however, and exercising her will-to-creation, the vampire necessarily remains “fragile,” as she is no longer representable by a binary, social, power-driven language. She renders herself, essentially, invisible.

The narrator, finally, continues to desire the dead lover – even in death, and even, further, as vampire. She remains the “sweetheart,” the “fondest of my loves,” and repayment of the “debt of kisses” is still looked-for. The affirmation of the vampire is the affirmation of an affirmation – an abundant, overflowing “yes” - and, once more to quote Cixous, “what is feminine [...] affirms” (94). The narrator – ambiguously gendered at best – affirms the vampire in the dead love, and in contemplation of her resurrection gives the affirmation manifest on his body its own manifestation in writing, in the form of the poem itself. The figure of the vampire, then, is the figure of the author of creation.

Works Cited

Cixous, Helene. “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays.” The Feminist Reader. Ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore.2nd Ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1997. 91-103.