Clarimonde

The dead in love (La Morte amoureuse), also translated as Clarimonde, is a fantastic story by Théophile Gautier published in 1836 in the Chronique de Paris, a magazine founded by Balzac with which the author began to collaborate in June of the same year. The dead woman in love then entered the Une larme du diable collection (1839) and later in the Nouvelles (1845). The story, which was much appreciated by Baudelaire, is clearly inspired by Hoffmann's fantastic fiction; Gautier made it characteristic, however, by means of a closer adherence of the style to the treated theme. The death after a long illness of Gautier's lover, Cidalise, which occurred precisely in 1836, had a large influence on the composition of this tale. With Polidori's The Vampire (1819) and Hoffmann's Vampirism (1828), The Dead in Love is one of the first examples of author's fiction on the theme of vampires. Plot On the day of his priestly ordination, the young Romualdo sees a beautiful woman in the church, who he later discovers to be the courtesan Clarimonde. Sent to her parish, Romualdo is tormented by the irresistible desire to see the woman again, until one night he is called to assist her spiritually on the verge of death. When she arrives Clarimonde is already dead: the priest, left alone with her, cannot refrain from kissing her cold lips. The gesture of love makes Clarimonde rise again and from that moment Romualdo's personality is doubled: he thus begins a life as a lover of the courtesan, during which he dreams of being a young parish priest, and another as a priest who dreams of meet Clarimonde in Venice. The only one who realizes this double existence is the abbot Serapione, who warns Romualdo of the serious threat represented by the beautiful Clarimonde. The young man, however, cannot stop loving the woman, not even when he discovers that she feeds on her blood while he is asleep. Only when Serapion shows him Clarimonde's unmade body in the tomb will Romualdo realize that he is on the verge of perdition.