The Passive Vampire by Gherasim Luca

The passive vampire
by Gerasim Luca

The passive vampire marks a turning point in the artistic career of the “greatest extremist of post-war surrealism”, “great poet among the greatest” Deleuze

Written in Bucharest between 1940 and 1941, in a climate of tension and massacres, deportations and earthquakes, this book is among the pinnacle works of the Romanian avant-garde and marks the most fruitful, exuberant, “truculent” and “fascinating” moment in Gherasim Luca’s output, as well as the most sinister and distressing of his biography and of the history of Europe in the first half of the century: “… after two years spent in Paris, where Victor Brauner had introduced him to Breton and his group, Luca wrote his transitional book, pouring into it all the vertigo of this new experience: with surrealism he had found the form that contains and expresses his rage, giving it a raison d’être. Thus, with a certain nostalgia, no doubt, he placed himself in dialogue with the surrealist experiences carried out in France. Separated from his friends, scattered by the war in the south of France or around the world, and with no prospect of joining them, unable to imagine any kind of exchange, Luca turns to Romanian with a fury, violence and despair redoubled by the improbable purpose of his enterprise: no possibility of publishing, no exchange or echo outside the Romanian surrealist group he has just founded with Gellu Naum,” comments Petre Răileanu in his impeccable monograph.

The passive vampire [Vampirul pasiv / Le Vampire passif] It marks a turning point in the artistic career of the “greatest extremist of post-war surrealism”, “a great poet among the greatest” (as Gilles Deleuze defined him in his Dialogues), establishing an unprecedented perspective within his creative evolution.

Originally written clandestinely in Romanian, its first edition would not see the light of day until 1945, in the French version that the author himself subsequently conceived.

Gerasim Luca (literary name of Salman Locker) was born in Bucharest on 23 July 1913, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His father was mobilised and died in 1914, leaving Luca as a war orphan. In 1930, together with Sesto Pals, Paul Păun, Aurel Baranga and Jules Perahim, he founded the avant-garde magazine Alge, where his first writings were published.