Franco Mistrali
Il vampiro. Storia vera.

The Vampire. True Story by Franco Mistrali (1833-1880) still has significant historical importance today. In fact, this book anticipated Carmilla by Le Fanu by three years and then nearly 30 years the famous Dracula by Stoker, although it certainly did not achieve the same success as these works and indeed fell into oblivion. It is the first vampire novel written in Italy but also one of the first examples of vampire literature on an international level.

Franco Mistrali at the time was a journalist and author of numerous and appreciated historical novels. But Mistrali was, however, part of the "zeitgeist" of the time despite Italy taking realism from Alessandro Manzoni as a literary model. Nonetheless, the translation, even in our country, of authors like Edgar Allan Poe and E.T.A. Hoffmann had its influence, especially within the Scapigliatura movement and on authors like Igino Ugo Tarchetti. This confirms how our literature was not indifferent to the cultural climate and ferment which, under the impulse of romanticism, led to the Gothic novel and, subsequently, Edgar Allan Poe. It is in this context that Mistrali operates in Italy (we also remember that there was the well-known Carolina Invernizio with The Buried Alive), a character sui generis, a Garibaldian and very polemical with Giosuè Carducci. Due to the failure of the Bank of Romagna, he also remained in jail for 5 years. In 1861, Mistrali finally demonstrated his dark and Gothic side with the collection The Devil’s Tales. Story of Fear (1861), which is heavily influenced by the aforementioned E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe. But it was in 1869 that The Vampire. True Story was finally released. Unfortunately, as mentioned, it did not achieve the expected success. It was Fabio Giovannini who recently discovered Mistrali's book, which he found at the National Library of Rome, publishing an excerpt in 1986 in Vampirismus. Gothic and Fantastic in the Vampire Myth (Alfamedia). The same exact excerpt was reprinted in 1990 within Dracula's... Guest by Bram Stoker by Lucarini Editore. Riccardo Reim attributed himself with the discovery by including the pages that Fabio Giovannini had published 4 years earlier without any notice. In 1996, this edition was reprinted by Armando Editore. Again, Fabio Giovannini mentions it in The Book of Vampires. From the Myth of Dracula to the Daily Presence (1997) by Dedalo Edizioni.

In 2011, it was Keres Edizioni that finally offered this volume to the Italian public, after years of oblivion. It was presented in an edition with more modern punctuation suitable to the tastes of contemporary readers compared to the original. In 2018, the late Gian Filippo Pizzo briefly mentioned the volume in the "Guide to Italian Fantastic Narrators" released in 2018 for Odoya within the section dedicated to "Italian Vampires," which features the photo of the Keres edition. Subsequently, in 2020, it was Arcoiris Edizioni who reintroduced it (edited by Jacopo Corazza and Gianluca Venditti) in the “Lovecraft Library” series, a placement perhaps a bit misleading since Lovecraft could not be further both temporally and thematically. The editorial choice of Arcoiris Edizioni was instead to keep the lexicon, grammar, and punctuation of the original text unchanged. This choice might cause, there’s no hiding it, some issues for readers not accustomed to the prose of the late 19th century. But, once past the initial impact, surely The Vampire. True Story deserves to be read. It should be noted, for vampire lovers, that the novel is not exactly a bloodsucker story, even though the "vampiric" theme is conceived in an original way. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Mistrali, as I have read somewhere, was a hidden master of Bram Stoker, whose sources are well known. In any case, the book is highly recommended to lovers of the 19th-century Gothic novel and Italian fantastica. Indeed, while being close to the detective and conspiratorial genre (there’s a mystery to solve), connections can be found with contemporaneous works by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe. These novels were characterized by the deployment of dark and misty atmospheres where intrigues and horrors could be found, but in the end, were explained rationally. This aspect, in fact, has been, in hindsight, often subject to criticism as can also be read in the well-known essay by H.P. Lovecraft The Supernatural Horror in Literature. Again, as further demonstration that it’s a falsehood that Italy is not a suitable place for fantasy novels, it should be emphasized how the settings for the aforementioned were Italian. In The Vampire. True Story, however, the setting unfolds between the sunny and mild streets and coasts of the Principality of Monaco and the icy lands of Siberia and Lithuania. We can also find the figure of the "villain" represented by the doctor and healer Eliam.

The plot is somewhat complicated: we find conspiracy theories, mysterious sects, tragic deaths, and kidnappings. The whole is somewhat weighed down with lengthy and elaborate historical and political discussions on topics like spiritualism, metempsychosis, and vampirism itself.

Ultimately, it is a work that would have deserved greater fortune: the vampiric theme remains in the background, and certainly its treatment cannot be compared to what we have been accustomed to either with Le Fanu and Stoker or in the epigones of the Nosferatu "topos" even in modern times. However, the development of the vampire theme is, ultimately, unique and original, and there is certainly no lack of esoteric, dark, and mysterious atmospheres. Therefore, I strongly recommend reading The Vampire. True Story to followers of vampire literature but also to fans of 19th-century fantastica. It is a source of pride to have had a forerunner like Franco Mistrali in Italy.