Love for a woman can lead a man to a variety of follies - sometimes cute and harmless, and sometimes completely monstrous. Edward Leedskalnin, for example, created a beautiful Coral Castle for his beloved, while the insane passion of his contemporary Karl Tanzler found its way out in a terrible and ambiguous act. The latter will be discussed in this article.
German immigrant Karl Tanzler, also known as Count Karl von Kosel, arrived with his family in Zephyrhills, Florida, in 1926. However, he soon left his wife and children to work on Key West as a radiologist at the American Maritime Hospital.
There he met a beautiful young girl named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, who was 32 years his junior. Helene was sick with tuberculosis and Tanzler visited her frequently, making unsuccessful attempts to cure her with X-ray equipment and other methods. One fine day, Tanzler confessed his love to the girl, stating that it was her that he had been looking for all his life.
Even as a young boy, Tanzler claimed that he often saw the ghost of the ancestor Countess Anna-Constance von Kosel, who died in 1765. Tanzler said that the countess showed him the image of his true love - a dark-haired woman, in whom he supposedly identified Helen.
Sadly, Helen passed away in 1931. Her funeral was generously sponsored by Tanzler, who built an entire mausoleum for her so that he could visit her resting place every evening and hum her favorite Spanish tunes. Dancer was sure that Helen often spoke to him, persuading him to take her body with him to the house. So he did one of the April days in 1933.
Of course, Helen's body was far from being in the best condition, so Tanzler was thoroughly engaged in giving it the most "aesthetic" look. Using strings and hanger parts, he connected the bones to each other, inserted glass balls into the eye sockets, made a wig from the remnants of her hair, and replaced the decayed skin with a mixture of plaster of paris and silk soaked in wax. To maintain the shape of the body, he stuffed it with a cloth, and the corpse himself dressed up in a dress, stockings and gloves, complementing the result with makeup. To get rid of the smell of decay, he regularly washed his beloved with perfume.
The dancer lived quietly with the corpse of his beloved for seven years, every night going to bed next to her. And it is not known how long this unnatural cohabitation would have continued if Sister Helen had not heard rumors about the literally existing "skeleton in the closet" of the doctor who was mad with love.
And indeed, soon the true whereabouts of Helen's body became known to the public. The corpse was removed, examined, and as if little suffering fell to the lot of Helen's remains, it was also put on public display for three days. During this time, more than six thousand residents of Florida managed to look at it. In the end, the long-suffering ashes were laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
And in 1972, a doctor who took part in the autopsy revealed to the public an even more shocking discovery - a tube was inserted into the perineum of the body, with which Tanzler allegedly had intimate contact with him. However, this fact was not touched upon in the accusation of the necrophile, who was convicted only for desecrating Helen's grave. Believe it or not, many people at the time felt sorry for Tanzler, saying he was just an "eccentric romantic." Maybe they didn't know all the details ...
Soon after his arrest, Tanzler was released due to the statute of limitations, that is, the period by which he could be punished for committing this crime expired. Therefore, Tanzler with a clear conscience again settled in Zephyrhills, where he lived the rest of his life, selling photographs depicting Helen still alive, frightening tourists with his revelations and demonstrating the death wax mask of his beloved.
Finally, in 1952, fate had mercy on the unfortunate lover and Tanzler passed away, probably rushing to his beloved, since the only witness of the death and consolation of his hour of death was a full-size female figure with a death mask of Helene.
Necrophilia is considered the most serious of all taboos in existence. You continue to read further at your own risk. Then do not say that you were not warned.Among the many sexual fetishes and practices, perhaps the most unpleasant and outrageous is necrophilia. For those who do not know what exactly this word means, I will explain: necrophilia is when a person is attracted and, in most cases, performs sexual acts in relation to a dead body, a corpse, in other words. We all want love to last until death and even after, but some people seem to take it literally.
1. Karl Tanzler
Perhaps the most famous and well-documented case of necrophilia is the story of Karl Tanzler, who was accused of a love crime.
He met the love of his life in a hospital where he worked as a doctor in the 1930s. A local Cuban-American woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos brought her mother for a checkup. Karl immediately recognized her as a woman who had repeatedly visited him in visions. He fell in love with Maria Elena without memory even before he was finally able to see her live.
Maria Elena was subsequently diagnosed with tuberculosis (at the time it was considered a fatal disease). Karl did his best to save his beloved from a terrible illness. All the while the young woman was alive, Karl showered her with gifts and his attention. However, his love was unrequited.
Karl was devastated when Elena died. He told her family that he would gladly take care of all the funeral expenses, and even asked permission to build a ground-based mausoleum for her in Key West Cemetery.
One night in April 1933, Karl made his way to the cemetery and stole the body of Mary-Helena from the mausoleum in order to transport it to his home. There he connected the bones of the deceased with the help of wire hangers, replaced her eyes with artificial ones, and even made for her "new skin" from silk cloth dipped in wax and plaster. Karl made a wig for his dead lover from her own hair. They were presented to him by the mother of Maria Elena after the death of her daughter. He also stuffed her body with rags and constantly sprayed her with perfume and disinfectants to neutralize the foul odor.
Karl happily lived with the body of Mary-Helena, which during this time began to look like a doll, for seven whole years, until the sister of the deceased noticed that he began to behave somehow strangely: he rarely appeared in public, with no one communicated and the like. She decided to pay him a surprise visit.
In October 1940, Karl's eerie secret was revealed. The man was taken into custody for a medical examination. A little later, he was charged with robbing graves, but after a while they were dropped and he was released. Mary-Helena's body was confiscated and buried in an unmarked grave.
2. Karen Greenlee
A resident of Sacramento, California, Karen Greenlee, who worked as an embalmer's assistant at a local morgue, disappeared without a trace in 1979. Her parents were preparing themselves for the worst. However, soon the woman was found. It was subsequently established that Karen disappeared along with the hearse and the corpse of thirty-three-year-old John Murkur, who died a week before her disappearance.
When authorities found Karen's hearse alive and John's body, they carefully examined the crime scene and found a suicide note. The woman tried to commit suicide by swallowing codeine pills, but she failed. The police officers were shocked when they read a note that was found, which said: “I had sex with the corpses of 20-40 men. It is addiction".
Since necrophilia was considered completely legal in California at the time (it was banned only in 2004), Karen was charged with stealing a hearse and delaying a funeral. She spent only eleven days in prison. At this time, the woman was undergoing intensive therapy, which, however, did not help her in any way. In a candid interview with Adam Parfrey, who was at the time working on The Culture of the Apocalypse, Karen admitted that she began to practice necrophilia at a young age; the smell of embalmed corpses just drove her crazy.
After a scandalous interview, she decided to change her last name and leave her hometown.
3. Kenneth Douglas
Salesman Kenneth Douglas was convicted of the murder and rape of Karen Range in 2008. Douglas confessed that it was he who killed Karen, but the man vehemently denied all charges of rape. In the course of a long and thorough investigation, the police found irrefutable evidence of Kenneth Douglas's guilt. The sperm left on Karen's body belonged to him. At the time of the crime, Douglas was working in a morgue.
Investigators also found that he raped three more women. Ultimately, Douglas admitted to having sex with at least one hundred corpses awaiting autopsy. “I just took off my pants and lay on top of them,” he said.
He was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. The families of the victims are still suing him.
4. Nicholas Clough
Nicholas Clos, aka the Parisian Vampire, became famous for practicing Satanism and necrophilia. His passion for death began at an early age. Nicholas grew up an outcast; he often wandered around cemeteries at night and broke into mausoleums. “One day I woke up with a wild desire to dig up a corpse and mock it,” he said.
When Nicholas was twenty-one, he took a job in a morgue, where he was often left alone with corpses. There he began to eat flesh and drink the blood of the dead, adding protein powder and even human ash to it.
Nicholas was arrested in 1994 for the murder of Thierry Bissognière, whom he met on one of the sadomasochistic forums. On meeting, he shot Bissognière with a pistol. He was found guilty of a crime and sentenced to eight years in prison. In 2002 he was released. Now he lives with a girl somewhere in Paris.
5. Serial killers
Serial killers Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy and Henry Lee Lucas
Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy, and Henry Lee Lucas are some of the most famous serial killers in United States history. Each of them has committed many serious crimes, and it is not surprising that necrophilia is also on their list. Jerry Brudos, who was known as the "Lustful Killer" and "Shoe Fetish Killer", killed four women between 1968 and 1969. He had sex with the corpses of his victims. On two of them, he amputated the chest and left foot, which he used to maintain the shape of the stolen shoes.
Ted Bundy, a charming and eloquent guy, lured women to his home and killed them. After that, he had sex with the corpses of his victims. He cut off the heads of some of them in order to later use them for fellatio. Bundy mocked the corpses of his victims until they began to rot.
Henry Lee Lucas killed eleven people. It is known that he began to have sex life at the age of thirteen. Lucas' first sexual partner was his older half-brother, who introduced him to bestiality and animal abuse. Years later, he met the depraved vagabond Ottis Toole, and together they terrified the United States for seven years. Besides necrophilia, they also engaged in cannibalism.
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A similar complex of motives - attachment, fear of loneliness, fear of being ridiculed (for example, due to impotence), social inability, desire for complete power over a partner - is found in the overwhelming majority of "corpse lovers". Many necrophiliacs are characterized by fixation on the image of a deceased mother or lover. Sometimes sexual intercourse with corpses is accompanied by cannibalism (which can be viewed as a desire to connect even more closely with the corpse - not only to penetrate it, but also to include it in its own body). In some cases, but not always, necrophilia is associated with occult ideas. As for the mental state, some necrophilia were later declared insane, others mentally healthy.
Here are a few more real cases of necrophilia in brief.
Albert Hamilton Fish is a vagabond, child killer and cannibal who killed and ate four-year-old Billy Gaffney in 1927, and eleven-year-old Grace Buddha a year later. In 1930 he was arrested for vagrancy and for sending "obscene letters." In one such letter to Mrs. Buddha, Fish described in detail how he killed and ate her daughter. He enjoyed remembering his crime and fantasizing about others. Perhaps, however, he wanted to console his mother with his last phrase: "I did not rape her, although I could if I wanted to. She died a virgin." (He later admitted to a psychiatrist that this was not true.) In another letter, he detailed how he prepared Billy Gaffney's body. He did not look like a madman, although few psychiatrists believed that this person was normal - a person who ate human flesh and excrement, drank human urine and blood, stuck twenty-seven needles in his genitals at the same time, set fire to cotton wool soaked in gasoline in his anus, to experience an orgasm, constantly praying and repeating endlessly: "I am Jesus! I am Jesus!" Fish was executed in 1936 at Sing Sing Prison at the age of 66.
Fifty-year-old clerk John Reginald Halliday Christie confessed to the murder of his wife, a housemate, as well as several random women, whose bodies were found under the floor of his former apartment and in the garden near the house. He said he killed women with inhalation cans into which he pumped household gas. When women died, he raped their bodies. As the newspaper report said: "This disgusting lecher, who collected old tobacco cans, could not copulate with living women." Executed in 1957.
Ed Gin, a meek farmer from Plainfield, Wisconsin, is perhaps the most famous necrophiliac of the 20th century. Although he killed at least two women (both outwardly resembled his deceased mother), in general he belongs rather to the category of "quiet" necrophilia, since he usually dug up female corpses in the cemetery. Gin was born in 1907 and lived on a farm with his mother and brother. His brother Henry died in 1944 (according to one version, Ed himself shot him), and his mother died a year later. Ed was very emotionally attached to his mother, despite the fact that she endlessly tyrannized and, being an ardent Puritan, instilled that sex is filth and sin. Ed was left with a huge house, which he soon turned into the "House of Horrors". While receiving federal benefits, Ed had the leisure time to do what he was most interested in. And he was primarily interested in the anatomy of the female body, especially its intimate parts. At first, he satisfied his interest by studying medical encyclopedias and textbooks on anatomy. Another source of his knowledge was cheap horror novels and pornographic magazines. In addition to anatomy, he was keenly interested in the atrocities of the Nazis in World War II, and especially medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps. He soon moved from theory to practice and began to dig up female corpses in cemeteries. The first was his mother, followed by others. "Old Man Eddie", as he was called in the village, learned to skillfully dissect corpses and use their parts in his household. When he was arrested, in addition to the decapitated and gutted body of Bernice Warden, who was missing on November 16, 1957, hanging on a hook, the police found other shocking things in his bachelor home. A head hanging on the wall like a hunting trophy, and next to it are nine masks of skinned human faces. A rug made of leather stripped from a woman's torso; a lampshade made of human skin and a chair upholstered in it, with legs made of tibia. Two soup bowls and four bedpost knobs made from human skulls. A box of salted female noses, and another filled with female genitals. Female nipple belt; a wig with long black hair, representing a woman's scalp, as well as a special costume consisting of a vest with breasts, knee pads sewn from women's skin and attached to the panties of women's genitals. Gin later admitted that he received indescribable pleasure, putting on these and other robes made of human skin, dancing and jumping around the house and pretending to be his own mother. In total, the scattered remains of about 15 female bodies were found in Gin's house. The refrigerator was filled with human remains, and Bernice Warden's half-eaten heart was on the plate.
After spending ten years in a mental hospital, Gin was put on trial. He was found guilty, but not criminally punishable due to insanity. He was described as an exemplary patient - modest, meek and polite. Ed Gin died in 1984 from respiratory failure in a nursing ward.
However, already during his lifetime, Gin acquired a second and much longer life, becoming the archetype of mass culture. Robert Bloch made him the inspiration for Norman Bates in his novel Psycho. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock turned this cheap "chiller" into a masterpiece of cinematography. This film opened a new era in the development of the horror genre and had a tremendous influence on the construction of images of maniacs in many subsequent works of fiction, both in cinema and in literature. The original Psycho was followed by a number of remakes (1983, 1986, 1990, 1998) and imitations. In 1967, Roddy McDowell's film "It" was released, in which the hero has conversations with the decomposed corpse of his mother, which he keeps at home in bed. In 1974, two films appeared at once, inspired by the image of Gin / Bates - "Deranged" by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by Tob Hooper. The last of these two films became an independent classic and, in turn, sparked a wave of remakes and imitations. While the film does not literally reproduce Gin's story, the gruesome house filled with human remains and the character named Leatherface, who hangs his victims alive on a butcher's hook and wears a mask of human skin on his face, clearly refer to the Plainsfield maniac. , stories about which Hooper rocked as a child. In the film Don't Enter This House (1980) by Joseph Ellison, a character named Donnie keeps his mother's corpse in an apartment. During her lifetime, she used to burn his hand with fire if he "misbehaved." True to her pious upbringing, Donnie can think of nothing better than bringing a girl into the house and roasting her alive. Gein's predilection for donning human skin is reflected in films such as William Lustig's Maniac (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) by Jonathan Demme, based on the novel by Thomas Harris. In Silence, Buffalo Bill, obsessed with the idea of "transformation" and sewing himself attire from the skin of women, has a distinct ancestral resemblance to "old man Eddie", as, indeed, a number of other characters in the subsequent series about Dr. Hannibal Lector. Finally, one cannot fail to mention the German director Jörg Buttgerait, who directly calls himself a "gynophile" and who made such films as "Necromantic" (1988) and "Necromantic 2" (1991), which became a kind of macaberry manifesto of necrophilic art. The only film I know about necrophilia that has escaped the direct influence of Psycho is Lynn Stopkiewicz's Kissed (1996) - perhaps because both the author and the heroine of the film are women. In 2001, Gin's biography was filmed ("Ed Gin", directed by Chuck Parello).
Another famous necrophile, Jeffrey Dahmer, known as the "Milwaukee cannibal monster", killed 17 men before one of his victims escaped and reported to the police. As with Hein, death meant more to Dahmer than life. During a search of his apartment, human heads, intestines, hearts and kidneys were found in the refrigerator. Around the house, police found skulls, bones, rotting remains, blood-stained bowlers, as well as several intact skeletons. Three bodies were found in the acid tank. In addition, chloroform bottles, an electric vise, a keg of acid and formaldehyde were found, as well as numerous Polaroid photographs in which Dahmer captured the torment of his victims. He surrounded himself with parts of his victims, made bizarre installations of them, cut off the faces of the dead and made masks out of them, dreamed of building an altar from skulls. As one commentator notes, "It was a long-term plan, the only ambitious plan for his life." Obsessed with the idea of living death, Dahmer tried to create a zombie that would completely obey him. To do this, he, having brought the victim into an unconscious state with the help of drugs, drilled holes in her head and injected acid or boiling water there. Usually the victims died, but one of his test subjects did survive for a while and walked the streets. Dahmer's forensic psychiatrist found that his necrophilia grew out of the sexual arousal he experienced when he viewed the corpses of animals that died under the wheels of cars as a child. In 1991, Dahmer was arrested and executed a year later.
One should not think, however, that cases of necrophilia are observed only in the West.
In Russia, Andrei Chikatilo, a schoolteacher from Rostov, has killed and raped at least 57 people in 25 years (a world record among maniacs of the 20th century). His victims were both male and female. After satisfying his lust, he usually mutilated corpses and ate parts of their bodies. It is believed that the formation of his inclinations was influenced by factors such as sexual weakness, which made it difficult to normal sexual intercourse (although he had a wife and two children), as well as the stories of his mother about cannibalism during the war, which he heard as a child. At the trial, Chikatillo played a madman, but was found sane and was shot in 1992.
Another Russian serial killer, necrophile and cannibal - Mikhail Novoselov - killed and posthumously raped at least twenty-two people - six in Tajikistan and sixteen in various cities of Russia. The age of his victims ranged from 6 to 50 years old, among them were little boys and elderly women. During interrogation, Novoselov confessed with the investigator: "A corpse is the same daily cabbage soup. The more it lies and" languishes ", the better it becomes. When asked why he did this, he replied: "Why did I kill? Not out of malice. I wanted sexual life. But what should I do if I can only do it with corpses?"
Necrophilia is not always associated with cruelty. In many cases, the motive for committing necrophilic actions is love and the inability to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
In 1994 in Brazil, a few days after Roberto Carlos da Silva's engagement to Raquel Cristina de Oliveira, the bride fell off a motorcycle driven by da Silva and died. Three months later, da Silva dug up his late beloved from the grave - and made love to her. He told a local news agency, "I was desperate and needed her."
However, Wittkop's novel is not an ordinary criminal chronicle, but a work of fiction that is as brilliant in form as it is terrible in content. And like any literary work, it can be inscribed in a certain tradition.
Of course, necrophilic motives can be found in literature even before Wittkop. Without going deep into this topic, we will only point out their presence in the work of such authors as de Sade, Poe, Heine and Baudelaire (at least the first two authors from this list are cited in the text of the novel). In Russian literature of the 19th century, necrophilic tendencies are found, for example, in writers such as Lermontov and Gogol. V.V.Rozanov directly called the latter a necrophile, capable of perceiving female beauty only when a woman is in a coffin. A similar tendency to build plots in such a way that the heroine must certainly die in order to become truly beloved, notes the protagonist of Oleg Postnov's story "Antiquary" in Lermontov. Let's replace that the name of the hero of "Necrophile" - Lucien - is a hidden allusion to the myth of Lucifer. The archetypal basis of "Necrophilus" and Lermontov's "Demon" is thus one and the same. It seems that a thorough analysis of the literature of the romantic make-up (including pre- and post-romanticism) could reveal a whole layer of images and ideas that directly or indirectly refer to the structures of necrophilic experience. Topos of night, death, cemetery, grave digging, anatomical studies, living death, dead bride, wedding with the deceased, love to the grave and beyond the grave; as well as the theme of the search for an object of ideal love (or an ideal object of love), which is not subject to the vicissitudes of time and which is embodied either in a work of art (statue, portrait), or in the image of a deceased beloved, - for literature focused on the inner world of a person and the depths of it souls are very common objects.
Postnov's story was written under the direct influence of "Necrophilus" Wittkop. Actually, both the title and the character's profession from the very first lines are linked by Postnov with the "Necrophil's Diary". However, the interpretation of the causes of necrophilia is different here. If in Wittkop the roots of sexual attraction to corpses are found in the childhood experiences of the hero, then in Postnov's necrophilous excess, at first glance, is not motivated by anything other than falling in love with a still living girl. However, in the further reflection of the hero, the reasons for the obsessive attraction to dead bodies (necrophilia) and things (antiques) are found in the leveling of spiritual and material values, which began in the era of the Reformation and has reached its maximum expression in our time. In this situation, the corpse and artifacts of the past turn out to be more valuable, authentic and individualized phenomena than the impersonal bodies and things of our time. Hence the second difference follows. If for Wittkop necrophilia is a kind of cultural and psychological universal, then Postnov is inclined to explain this phenomenon historically. However, the point is only in the placement of accents; in both cases, we are talking about the interaction of natural and social, human passion and circumstances external to a person.
Interest in corpses can be motivated in another way. For example, in the work of Andrei Platonov (who, like many other writers of the 20-30s of the XIX century, was greatly influenced by the teaching of Nikolai Fedorov about the physical resurrection of the dead in the future), the corpse is usually not so much an object of romantic feelings as a thing , concealing in itself the riddle of life, which his characters are trying to solve by natural-scientific methods. Yuri Mamleev's corpse is also a secret, but not scientific, but metaphysical. The methods of penetrating this "final secret" are often sexual. "Death", "corpse" and other words of similar semantics are key for Mamleev. So, in Mamleev's novel "Cranks", written a few years before Wittkop's "Necrophile" (in 1966-1968), we meet a whole gallery of characters obsessed with an interest in death, as well as a number of frank necrophilic scenes.
Fyodor, meanwhile, was looking for Lidin's death; inwardly he felt that she was close; he gasped in a violent chill, feeling for her like a mole; looked into Lidinka's decaying face and held on to finish the moment she died, on the line between death and life.
Lidinka did not understand anything; she was shaking with jumping nonsense ...
- Zealous, zealous, Fedinka ... Fly, fly with you ... Out of the pipe, - she squeaked.
Suddenly something collapsed in her chest and she immediately realized that she was dying. She froze, her eyes frozen in a silent question before the void.
Now only a faint shadow of sexual filth flickered in them.
Fyodor realized that the end was near; Throwing his head back a little, gazing motionlessly into her eyes, he began to deathly choke her body, press on her heart - in order to hasten the arrival of the desired moment. "We need to help her, help," he muttered to himself.
- He caressed ... Forever, - Lidinka snapped weakly at the bottom of her mind.
And suddenly everything disappeared, except for one stopped, terrible question in her eyes: "What's wrong with me? .. What will happen?" Fedor made an effort, as if trying to squeeze out this question, this last remnant of the idea.
And I saw her eyes suddenly rolled back and Lidinka, twitching, gave out a stinking wheeze, which reached her tender lips, as if strewn with invisible flowers.
At that moment Fyodor finished ...
Of course, there is no need to talk about Mamleev's influence on Wittkop: she could not read him in any way; "Rods" and other works of Mamleev began to be translated into French and other European languages much later. Even more significant is the fundamental difference in approach and style: Mamleev's metaphysical grotesque and Wittkop's extreme psychological realism are mutually inconvertible.
I would venture to assert that Wittkop has no direct literary predecessors. Allusions and quotes referring to the necrophilic "cultural texts" contained in the novel show that the author and his character deliberately construct a "line of succession" of the necrophilic tradition. It seems, however, that the real sources of the novel should be sought elsewhere.
We cannot prove or disprove the existence of a real life story, presumably forming the basis of the novel. We do not know who KD is, to whom the novel is dedicated and who, with the help of various artistic techniques, is identified with the author of the "necrophilous diary" that composes the text of the novel. Both are likened to Narcissus "drowned in his reflection"; both are associated with Gabrielle, who, on the one hand, is the real author of the text, and on the other, his episodic character, the narrator's neighbor, whom he voluptuously presents as hanged.
Stylistically, the novel is closest not to the works of Poe and certainly not de Sade (although Wittkop in one of his interviews refers to his "120 Days of Sodom" as a source of his inspiration). The sincerity and frankness of the descriptions, as well as the tender attitude towards the dead lovers recall the testimony of another necrophile - Victor Ardisson, whose case is described in detail in the scientific literature (see, for example: R. Villeneuve "Werewolves and Vampires"). I will cite an excerpt from Ardisson's confession, leaving the reader to independently compare its style and tone with the text of Wittkop's novel.
I dug up the girl's body that you found in my house the day after her funeral. On September 12, 1901, after midnight, I opened the coffin held together with two pins, then after I removed the body, I closed the coffin and buried it in the ground again. When I got home, I put the corpse on the straw, where you found it. Then I indulged in shameful acts with her. Whenever I slept with her, I satisfied my lust. I have always done this alone, and my father did not know anything about these things. To get to the cemetery, I climbed over the north wall, and did the same when I needed to leave. Some time ago, I heard that one girl I noticed earlier is seriously ill. I was glad to hear this, and promised myself that I would copulate with her corpse. I had to wait patiently for several days. Every day and every night I fantasized about her, and it invariably gave me an erection. When she died, I decided to unearth her body the night after the funeral. I arrived at the cemetery at eight o'clock in the evening. It took me a while to dig up the corpse. Having exposed her, I began to kiss and caress her. I noticed that there was no hair on her pubes and that she had small breasts. I satisfied my impulses on this corpse, after which I decided to take it home. I did not think about the dangers that threatened me. It was almost midnight when I left the cemetery, carrying the body with my left hand and pressing it against my face with my right. On the way home, I kissed my load and told her: "I carry you back home, you will be fine, I will not harm you." Fortunately, no one met me. Returning home, I lay down next to the corpse, telling her: "I love you, honey." I slept well. Waking up in the morning, I again satisfied my lust and, before leaving, said to her: "I am going to work, I will be back soon. If you want something to eat, tell me." She did not answer, and I guessed that she was not hungry. I even told her: "If you are thirsty, I will bring you water." During the day I worked, I fantasized about this girl. At noon I returned to see her and asked her if she missed me. In the morning I came to her again. Before I was arrested, I spent all my nights with her, and every night I satisfied my lust. During this time, no other girls died. If any other girl had died, I would have brought her home too, put her next to the first one and fondled both of them. But I did not forget the severed head (of a 13-year-old girl whom Ardisson called "his little bride" - E. G.) and kissed her from time to time.
Of course, Victor Ardisson, unlike Lucien N., the antiquarian-necrophile, was a poor man, uneducated and, according to the doctors, feeble-minded. However, just like Lucien, he really loved those girls and women whom he dug up in the cemetery, washed, dressed up, treated them tenderly and affectionately and cried when the time came to part with them, because their corpses were becoming worthless.
Gabriel Wittkop's novel is not about necrophilia, understood in a narrow sense as some rather rare perversion. In any case, not only about her. First of all, this is a love novel.
"Of course, I loved her ... If only I have the right to use this word, for the necrophile, as he appears in the wrong images of popular consciousness, obviously does not have such a right," writes Lucien N. "This is a novel about love, of course , melancholic - because a good love novel cannot be too funny - but, in general, about eternal love, since love takes many forms, but necrophilic love is nothing more than one of the forms of eternal love, "says Gabriel Wittkop in an interview with Le tan de livre magazine.
This love is tragic because it is doomed to be temporary. The tragedy of human existence lies in the fact that although people, unlike other living beings, are aware of the fact of death, this awareness does not rid them of their subjection to it. They yearn for eternal life and eternal love, but this desire is in vain. The living, whom we love, like corpses, become worthless - they grow old, "deteriorate", and die. Love ends and life ends, and nothing is eternal.
Necrophilia is a passion for non-being, to which the qualities of being are attributed. Or otherwise - an absurd rebellion against the finiteness of human existence. Or, to put it another way, it is a reflection of the state of ignorance, of the invisibility of reality as it is, which again and again plunges human beings into endlessly repeating cycles of suffering. It is also a novel about fate, about forces that are higher than us. A chance coincidence that gave rise to an associative connection between two strongest experiences - the first, still childhood orgasm and the image of a beautiful dead woman, the woman most beloved and closest (mother), including the accompanying environment (twilight, candles, the smell of silkworm) - going into the past, predetermine future. Love, sex and a corpse form a single complex that sets the structure of the personality and its destiny. Only by loving corpses, the necrophile finds himself: "I become a different person, at the same time a stranger to myself and more myself than ever. I cease to be vulnerable and unhappy, I become the quintessence of my own being, I fulfill the task to which fate is destined ".
What drives us, what determines who we will become and what we will come to if we follow our nature (and it is impossible not to follow it) - this is fate. "The conflict of a person's personal will and conscious aspirations with forces beyond his control, leading to sad or catastrophic results that awaken compassion or horror" - this is the definition of tragedy. The open ending of "Necrophilia" must not be misleading. A real tragedy always ends in death.
Autumn 2002
Moscow - London
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"Nowadays it is customary to speak openly about all forms of sex, except one and only one. Necrophilia meets intolerance from governments and disapproval of rebellious youth," - wrote the protagonist of the novel Gabriel Wittkop with the laconic title "Necrophile" in his intimate diary. In the three decades that have passed since the publication of this book, the situation has not changed significantly. Erotic attraction to the dead is still considered an extreme pathology, causing only disgust and horror in the vast majority of the living.
It is possible, however, that the reaction of rejection is a consequence of cultural taboos and the result of ignorance, that is, an unwillingness to perceive reality as it is, in all its - sometimes monstrous - manifestations. Manifestations of necrophilia have been found with striking regularity in the actions of individuals and communities throughout human history. For this reason alone, it can be assumed that necrophilia is a certain constant, a stable element of human nature, even though it exists mainly in a latent form and only sometimes blooms with a deathly pale flower of passion and crime. This means that necrophilia deserves study and comprehension - philosophical, scientific, artistic - if, of course, we are interested in understanding the sphere of being-consciousness in its entirety of its potentials and realizations.
In making an attempt to study phenomena of this kind, it is useful to recall Goethe's statement: "Nature transcends the boundary she set for herself, but by doing so she achieves a different perfection. We will do well, therefore, if we refrain from negative expressions as long as possible." It is necessary to refrain from evaluations because (we will continue the quote): "In no way can a complete view be achieved without considering the normal and the abnormal in their vibrations and interactions."
Let's start with etymology. The word "necrophilia" is made up of the roots of Greek words and means "love of corpses". This concept is not the same as the death drive in a broad sense. Death, dying in Greek - thanatos (hence, in particular, the word "thanatology" - the study of the process of dying). Necros is precisely a corpse, a dead body. (From this root such words as "necrobiosis", "necrolatria", "obituary", "necromancy", "necrosis", "necropolis" and others are also formed.) Necrophilia is defined as "sexual connection with an object devoid of the movement of life" , as "perversion, which makes the patient seek erotic pleasure, copulating with corpses, looking at them or touching them."
"Necrophilia" is an artificial word that is not found in ancient Greek texts. It entered European languages as a medical term only in the second half of the 19th century, when scientific research began on the phenomenon designated by this word. One of the first scientists to describe a series of cases in which sexual gratification was associated with the use of corpses was the German neuropathologist Richard Krafft-Ebing, whose book Psychopathia Sexualis was published in 1886. The penetration of the term "necrophilia" into English and French was recorded by dictionaries even later, in the 1900s. Thus, the concept (and the word itself) "necrophilia" is historically quite recent. This, of course, does not mean that people did not copulate with corpses in previous eras. It only means that these copulations were interpreted in contexts other than medical.
As F. de Gaudenzi, the author of the afterword to the first edition of Wittkop's novel, notes, the origin of the problem of necrophilia "should be sought in a wide range of relationships connecting a person with death." Turning to ancient myths and rituals, we will see that love for the dead (including sexual intercourse with them) is just one of the many options for answering the insoluble question that human beings face, coming to the realization of their own inevitable death and the fragility of everything. what is desirable and dear for them.
The veneration of the dead has been characteristic of humanity throughout its entire existence. Archaeological evidence suggests that funeral rites and rituals already existed among the Neanderthals. Different types of burials, adopted in different cultures at different times, agree on one thing - in the idea that a dead human body is not "rubbish", but an object worthy of respect, reverence and love. This is usually mixed with an element of fear - both of their own impending death, and of the fact that the dead may somehow interfere in the affairs of the living. The mythical and religious roots of necrophilia are clear. The necrophile, on the one hand, follows these archetypal ideas deeply rooted in the collective subconscious, on the other, enters into an insoluble conflict with them. He ritually overcomes the finality of death, thereby embodying the secret hopes of humanity, but at the same time desacralizes fear of it, thereby violating one of the most durable taboos inherited from our ancestors. It seems that it is precisely for this reason that necrophilia remains a socially unacceptable phenomenon, no matter what rational arguments are made by supporters of its legalization (such as, for example, John Pie, publisher of The NecroErotic newsletter for necrophilia, advocating the creation of "cadaverous brothels "as a healthy alternative for people who" cannot find sexual satisfaction with a living partner due to innate shyness, social inability, or their unattractive appearance ").
However, intercourse with corpses is not only a taboo, designed to keep the border between the living and the dead intact, but also one of the mythologically legitimized ways to cross this border, thereby ensuring the unity and interaction of the worlds.
Again and again, in the myths of different peoples, we meet the figure of the Great Mother, who appears to us under different names - Isis, Ishtar, Kali - but which always symbolizes existence as a whole. The Great Mother is the progenitor, nurse and protector, but at the same time - a ruthless destroyer and destroyer of people and worlds. These two of its most important hypostases are inseparably linked, and thanks to this connection, life and death endlessly flow into each other. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about reincarnation or resurrection - death turns out to be only a particular moment in the chain of metamorphosis, and love is the connecting link of this chain.
Let's give just one example. Isis, the Egyptian manifestation of the Great Mother, the wife of Osiris, resurrected her beloved, whom the insidious Seth killed and dismembered, hiding them in various parts of the Nile Valley. Having collected the corpse in parts, with the help of the god Thoth, Isis revived him and, by a secret spell awakening an erection in him, copulated with him. From this copulation Horus was born, from which then all the dynasties of the Egyptian pharaohs originated. The Egyptian civilization, one of the oldest in the world, thus turns out to be necrophilic, not only in essence, due to the dominance of the cult of the dead, but also in its mythological origins. Herodotus in his "Histories" says that the noble Egyptians gave the bodies of their dead wives and daughters to the embalmers only three or four days after their death, because they were afraid that the embalmers would copulate with fresh corpses.
The hero of the novel Wittkop, who builds a historical and literary tradition of necrophilic love, quotes this "the most ancient commentary of many scattered in human annals, talking about that harmless passion, which some call perversion", knowingly noting: "But how much naivety there are in these" three or four days "!"
However, let's return to our era. In modern textbooks on sexology, necrophilia is usually interpreted as one of the varieties of sexual deviations (paraphilia) associated with deviations in relation to the object of attraction. Necrophilia, thus, is put in a row with such phenomena as pedophilia, gerontophilia, bestiality, fetishism, transvestism, transsexualism, incest, narcissism, pygmalionism, etc. The Explanatory Dictionary of Sexological Terms and Concepts defines paraphilia as "sexual and erotic disorders in which sexual arousal or orgasm is achieved through atypical or culturally prohibited activities. " The most common forms of manifestation of deviations are sexual fantasies, role-playing games and other types of symbolic substitution, as well as the sporadic realization of the corresponding drives.
At the same time, when the non-standard orientation of the sexual desire becomes obsessive, compulsory and excludes any conventional forms of achieving sexual satisfaction, it is no longer viewed as a deviation (deviation), but as a perversion (perversion). Variations here become a theme, phantasm becomes reality, a character trait becomes fate.
The difference between deviation and perversion is only in degree. Dividing them from each other is often difficult, since there is a wide range of transitions from one to the other. But, speaking of necrophilia, it seems possible to argue that in many cases where erotic or sexual pleasure occurs through manipulation of a corpse, in the immediate vicinity of a corpse, or is accompanied by fantasies about corpses, the element of necrophilia itself plays a secondary or auxiliary role.
For example, the study of the cases of serial maniacs shows that the pleasure from the act of murder is often no less significant for them than the pleasure received from the subsequent act of necrophilia. In the case of necrosadism, sexual attraction to corpses turns out to be secondary, the obsessive desire to mutilate and dismember dead bodies comes to the fore.
A classic example is the case of Sergeant Bertrand, described by Krafft-Ebing and others. Unlike the necrophilous degenerative type, he was an educated, secular, amiable person. However, education did not prevent him from digging up corpses with his bare hands in the cemeteries of Pere Lachaise and Montparnasse, copulating with them, and then cutting, chopping and tearing with his teeth into pieces. In 1849 he was caught. Although he was found guilty of desecrating fifteen corpses, he was sentenced to only a year in prison. At the trial, he said that he would not dig up the corpses just to rape them. He also admitted that he began to masturbate at the age of three and from early childhood he received sexual pleasure, tormenting animals and imagining scenes of torture. The urge to destroy and dismember dead bodies in the case of François Bertrand was no less strong than the erotic impulse.
At the same time, such culturally legalized practices as the veneration of the graves of ancestors or the worship of the relics of saints also contain necrophilic tendencies - as a peripheral or symbolic element. The last examples can be attributed to necrophilia only in the broadest, philosophical sense.
The philosophical concept of necrophilia was developed in the writings of Erich Fromm, a representative of humanistically oriented psychoanalysis. In his article "Adolf Hitler: A Clinical Case of Necrophilia", included in his book "Anatomy of Human Destructiveness", he gives the following descriptive definition: "Necrophilia in a characterological sense can be described as a passionate attraction to everything that is dead, decaying, rotting, unhealthy. It is passion to make living things inanimate, to destroy in the name of destruction alone. This is an increased interest in everything mechanical. This is the desire to dismember living structures. " Necrophilia, as love for the dead, frozen, decaying, is opposed by Fromm to biophilia as love for the living, creative, developing. This understanding of necrophilia makes it possible to overcome the limitations of the medical-criminal approach and to involve a variety of cultural and psychological material in the analysis of this phenomenon. At the same time, such an expansive interpretation can lead to the blurring of the boundaries of the concept. Therefore, one should as clearly as possible distinguish between the use of the term "necrophilia" in the literal, clinical sense, on the one hand, and the figurative, symbolic sense, on the other. (Although sometimes these meanings are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish where one ends and another begins.)
One can try to classify the variety of necrophilic experiences by evaluating various manifestations of necrophilia according to the following criteria: "strong - weak" (deviation or perversion), "pure - mixed" (attraction to corpses per se, on the one hand, and vampirism, cannibalism, coprophagia, necrosadism, etc. - on the other), "real - symbolic" (sexual intercourse with corpses - craving for the dead in a broad sense).
Wittkop's novel is remarkable primarily for the fact that in it, perhaps for the first time in world literature, we find a detailed depiction of necrophilia in its "nuclear" form - strong, clean and real(albeit with different symbolic projections). The genre form of the intimate diary allowed the author to combine almost clinical severity with lyrical expressiveness, to show the necrophile's psyche from the inside - in its formation and final degradation - while avoiding external evaluations and superficial moralizing.
How typical is the case described in the novel? It is generally accepted that necrophilia is an extremely rare phenomenon. However, a simple search for a keyword in a media database or on the Internet can shake this belief. Here is a sample from the Russian press for several months of 2002.
April 11, 2002 The man, who was detained a few days ago on suspicion of the murder of a 30-year-old woman, has been convicted of yet another crime. While visiting a 24-year-old resident of Tikhvin (Leningrad region), the man strangled the unfortunate woman in order to satisfy his sexual needs, after which he abused the corpse.
March 15, 2002 In the detention center of Perm, a 23-year-old maniac committed suicide, on account of whom five women were killed. In 1999-2001, Alexander Lobanov attacked women he knew with a scalpel right on the street or brought them home and killed them with a knife. Psychiatric examination showed that the killer was prone to sadism and necrophilia. In December 2001, the Perm Regional Court sentenced the maniac to life imprisonment. Without waiting for the entry into force of the verdict, Lobanov hanged himself.
May 15, 2002 In the Omsk Regional Court, the hearings in the case of K. Yemelyanov, born in 1983, have ended, who was charged by the preliminary investigation authorities with several particularly grave crimes, including violent acts of a sexual nature, two murders and desecration of the bodies of the dead. The court sentenced K. Yemelyanov to 18 years of imprisonment in a strict regime colony.
May 16, 2002... A necrophile was arrested in Dolgoprudny. The Victory Day in the town of Dolgoprudny near Moscow was overshadowed by a terrible tragedy. On the evening of May 10, a 12-year-old schoolgirl was brutally murdered and raped here. The recidivist noticed the schoolgirl at the hospital, asked her to smoke a cigarette on the way, patiently followed her. At the garages, he pounced on the victim, grabbed by the throat. When the girl began to scream, the criminal stabbed her three times. He aimed at the heart, but did not hit ... and raped the lifeless body.
June 7, 2002 A necrophile was caught in Aleksin. A mortuary worker abused the woman's corpse and cut off her breasts. A criminal case was initiated under Article 244, part one - desecration of the bodies of the dead and their burial places. The maximum punishment is arrest for up to three months.
June 22, 2002 Khmelnitsk: 17-year-old necrophilic killer was detained. The 24-year-old girl went to the wedding with her friend and never came back. The naked body of the disappeared was soon found in the bushes a few meters from the local club where the wedding was being played. Experts found that during the celebration, the girl was strangled and then raped, already dead. A 17-year-old resident of the neighboring district, detained on suspicion of murder, did not deny his acquaintance with the deceased, but did not confess to the murder. But under the pressure of irrefutable evidence, including wounds on his own body and marks on his clothes, he eventually pleaded guilty.
Note that news headlines mostly hit those cases where necrophilic actions are associated with murder or sadistic abuse of corpses. Manifestations of "silent" necrophilia usually remain outside the field of vision of law enforcement agencies and journalists. Since necrophilia prefer to act secretly and do not advertise their activities, most acts of necrophilia are not recorded in any way and reliable statistics do not exist here.
Nevertheless, one can try to sketch a generalized portrait of the necrophiliac. American scientists Roseman and Resnick, in their study published in 1989, distinguish three types of "true" necrophilia: 1) necrophilic murder - murder with the aim of obtaining a corpse; 2) common necrophilia - the use of the corpses of already dead people for sexual pleasure; 3) necrophilous fantasies - the presentation of acts of necrophilia without their real implementation. After analyzing 122 cases of necrophilia, they found that most of the necrophilia belonged to the second category.
Contrary to popular belief, most necrophiliacs are heterosexual, although about half of the known necrophiliacs who killed their victims were homosexuals. (Note in parentheses that often, as shown in Wittkop's novel, the sex of the object of desire is indifferent for the necrophiliac.) Only 60% of cases were diagnosed with personality disorder, 10% with psychosis. Among necrophiliacs, men predominate (presumably up to 90%), although women are no exception. Examples include Karen Greenlee, who, in a famous interview published in Apocalyptic Culture edited by Adam Parafrey, admitted to having sex with about 40 fresh male cadavers, and Leila Wendell, head of the American Association for Necrophilic Research and Education ", the owner of the Westgate Gallery in New Orleans, dedicated to necromantic art, who calls herself a necrophilous occultist, prefers dry remains and views sex with corpses as a way of communicating with the Angel of Death Azrael.
The most common professions among necrophiliacs involve contact with corpses in one way or another. An orderly or doctor in a hospital, a morgue, funeral home or cemetery employee, a clergyman, a military man - these are the most frequent occupations that necrophiliacs choose or choose. To this we can add that, from the point of view of the cultural-psychological approach, necrophilic potencies are inherent in a number of professions associated with conservation, classification, dismemberment and analysis. Not only a butcher, anatomist, taxidermist can serve as examples of "necrophilic" professions, but also a museum worker, a keeper of antiquities, a literary philologist. (However, historical and philological studies at their best come closer not so much to necrophilia as to necromancy - or "negromancy", as this word was often distorted in European languages - by the magical "black art" of "torturing the truth" with the help of "reviving" the dead bodies and questioning of their restless souls.) The "necrophilic professions" include those that are associated not so much with the preservation of the dead, but with the manipulation of the living: an ideologist, a politician, a "political strategist." All these "men in black" usually have the same sense of being chosen and a somewhat cynical attitude towards "ordinary morality" (perceived by them as a prejudice) as butchers, pathologists or gravediggers. The former manipulate living souls as the latter manipulate dead bodies. Both those and others perceive the world as a "world of objects" in which they themselves are the only subject. A narcissistic subject who is attracted to inanimate objects and takes pleasure in manipulating them - this is how the metaphysical essence of necrophilia can be determined in a working manner. “Truly, the profession of an antiquarian is an almost ideal state of a necrophile,” the hero of the novel Wittkop observes, and he knows what he is talking about.
Psychoanalysis connects the origin of the phenomenon of necrophilia with the conditions for the awakening of child sexuality, implying fixation on a dead or motionless body, for example, when a child sleeps with his mother and lusts for a body engulfed in sleep, or when the first orgasm occurs near a corpse or when thinking about it. (Note in parentheses that in Wittkop's novel these conditions are combined within one situation, thereby mutually reinforcing each other. The motivation for the development of necrophilia here is completely psychoanalytic.) Transpersonal psychology goes even deeper and relates the formation of necrophilic tendencies in the psyche to the prenatal period "the third perinatal matrix", according to S. Grof). However, the most common motive that psychologists point out is related to the sphere of interpersonal relations and consists in the desire to find a passive, non-resisting, non-rejecting partner. The fear of being rejected or abandoned naturally leads to attempts to somehow keep the beloved. These human, all too human feelings under certain conditions can lead to the fact that a dead object is preferable to a living subject. The corpse does not have consciousness and will, it is not capable of damaging your self-esteem or breaking off relations, since it is completely in your power. The corpse turns out to be an ideal object of affection and love. (Extrapolating this situation to the realities of the modern world, in which a human being is increasingly turning into a cyborg - an interface between nature, society and technology - one can see that the advantages of a corpse over a living partner are similar to the advantages of "virtual reality" over the real world: complete compliance, the possibility of absolute control and arbitrary manipulation. Both the corpse and the computer are a kind of "magic crystal" that transforms the world into a series of reflections of the one who looks into it, eliminating any need for the Other. As we know, it is easy to drown in these reflections.)
Here is one fairly typical story.
Dennis Nielsen lived in London and met his victims in pubs. As Brian Masters, author of a detailed biography of Nielsen, puts it, he "killed for company." Even in his youth, he experienced an erotic attraction to death. It happened that for hours he lay in front of the mirror, pretending to be dead and peeping through closed eyelids at his corpse image. Passivity, insecurity awakened in him a strong desire. His few lovers (Nielsen was a homosexual), he involved in erotic games based on his fantasies. However, the matter soon took a more serious turn.
Nielsen committed his first murder in 1978. Seized with a thirst for complete possession, he strangled a barely familiar person with a scarf and received from this previously unknown pleasure. Having experienced an orgasm with a corpse, he began to look for ways to repeat this experience.
His actions followed the same pattern. He invited random acquaintances to his house, strangled them, washed the dead bodies, put them in his bed, usually made attempts at sexual contact, and in the end he chopped the corpses into pieces and hid them in different places of his apartment. He especially loved the first night, which he spent in bed with corpses - before they began to decompose and exude a specific smell. Nielsen was delighted with the fact that they could not get up and leave. This meant that his power over them was absolute.
After washing the corpses, he sometimes took a bath in the same water himself, and then decided what to do with them: put them in bed, put them in a chair, or chop them into pieces and scatter them around. Working as a butcher, Nielsen gained the necessary experience: he easily dismembered bodies, and separated flesh from bones by means of digestion. All this was for him an act of love - the last one available to his victims. This thought brought him tremendous satisfaction.
He usually flushed the remains down the toilet, which ultimately killed him. When the sewers in the house got clogged in 1983, the investigation led to Nielsen's apartment, and he did not hesitate to show the police the closet where the dismembered remains of two male corpses were kept. Another torso and many bones were found in the closet. Nielsen was arrested. He admitted that he had killed 15 men in five years, partly because he did not want to let go of his apartment, fearing loneliness, and partly because he just liked it. Sitting in prison, he painted corpses and scattered body parts.
A similar complex of motives - attachment, fear of loneliness, fear of being ridiculed (for example, due to impotence), social inability, desire for complete power over a partner - is found in the overwhelming majority of "corpse lovers". Many necrophiliacs are characterized by fixation on the image of a deceased mother or lover. Sometimes sexual intercourse with corpses is accompanied by cannibalism (which can be viewed as a desire to connect even more closely with the corpse - not only to penetrate it, but also to include it in its own body). In some cases, but not always, necrophilia is associated with occult ideas. As for the mental state, some necrophilia were later declared insane, others mentally healthy.
Here are a few more real cases of necrophilia in brief.
Albert Hamilton Fish is a vagabond, child killer and cannibal who killed and ate four-year-old Billy Gaffney in 1927, and eleven-year-old Grace Buddha a year later. In 1930 he was arrested for vagrancy and for sending "obscene letters." In one such letter to Mrs. Buddha, Fish described in detail how he killed and ate her daughter. He enjoyed remembering his crime and fantasizing about others. Perhaps, however, he wanted to console his mother with his last phrase: "I did not rape her, although I could if I wanted to. She died a virgin." (He later admitted to a psychiatrist that this was not true.) In another letter, he detailed how he prepared Billy Gaffney's body. He did not look like a madman, although few psychiatrists believed that this person was normal - a person who ate human flesh and excrement, drank human urine and blood, stuck twenty-seven needles in his genitals at the same time, set fire to cotton wool soaked in gasoline in his anus, to experience an orgasm, constantly praying and repeating endlessly: "I am Jesus! I am Jesus!" Fish was executed in 1936 at Sing Sing Prison at the age of 66.
Fifty-year-old clerk John Reginald Halliday Christie confessed to the murder of his wife, a housemate, as well as several random women, whose bodies were found under the floor of his former apartment and in the garden near the house. He said he killed women with inhalation cans into which he pumped household gas. When women died, he raped their bodies. As the newspaper report said: "This disgusting lecher, who collected old tobacco cans, could not copulate with living women." Executed in 1957.
Ed Gin, a meek farmer from Plainfield, Wisconsin, is perhaps the most famous necrophiliac of the 20th century. Although he killed at least two women (both outwardly resembled his deceased mother), in general he belongs rather to the category of "quiet" necrophilia, since he usually dug up female corpses in the cemetery. Gin was born in 1907 and lived on a farm with his mother and brother. His brother Henry died in 1944 (according to one version, Ed himself shot him), and his mother died a year later. Ed was very emotionally attached to his mother, despite the fact that she endlessly tyrannized and, being an ardent Puritan, instilled that sex is filth and sin. Ed was left with a huge house, which he soon turned into the "House of Horrors". While receiving federal benefits, Ed had the leisure time to do what he was most interested in. And he was primarily interested in the anatomy of the female body, especially its intimate parts. At first, he satisfied his interest by studying medical encyclopedias and textbooks on anatomy. Another source of his knowledge was cheap horror novels and pornographic magazines. In addition to anatomy, he was keenly interested in the atrocities of the Nazis in World War II, and especially medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps. He soon moved from theory to practice and began to dig up female corpses in cemeteries. The first was his mother, followed by others. "Old Man Eddie", as he was called in the village, learned to skillfully dissect corpses and use their parts in his household. When he was arrested, in addition to the decapitated and gutted body of Bernice Warden, who was missing on November 16, 1957, hanging on a hook, the police found other shocking things in his bachelor home. A head hanging on the wall like a hunting trophy, and next to it are nine masks of skinned human faces. A rug made of leather stripped from a woman's torso; a lampshade made of human skin and a chair upholstered in it, with legs made of tibia. Two soup bowls and four bedpost knobs made from human skulls. A box of salted female noses, and another filled with female genitals. Female nipple belt; a wig with long black hair, representing a woman's scalp, as well as a special costume consisting of a vest with breasts, knee pads sewn from women's skin and attached to the panties of women's genitals. Gin later admitted that he received indescribable pleasure, putting on these and other robes made of human skin, dancing and jumping around the house and pretending to be his own mother. In total, the scattered remains of about 15 female bodies were found in Gin's house. The refrigerator was filled with human remains, and Bernice Warden's half-eaten heart was on the plate.
After spending ten years in a mental hospital, Gin was put on trial. He was found guilty, but not criminally punishable due to insanity. He was described as an exemplary patient - modest, meek and polite. Ed Gin died in 1984 from respiratory failure in a nursing ward.
However, already during his lifetime, Gin acquired a second and much longer life, becoming the archetype of mass culture. Robert Bloch made him the inspiration for Norman Bates in his novel Psycho. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock turned this cheap "chiller" into a masterpiece of cinematography. This film opened a new era in the development of the horror genre and had a tremendous influence on the construction of images of maniacs in many subsequent works of fiction, both in cinema and in literature. The original Psycho was followed by a number of remakes (1983, 1986, 1990, 1998) and imitations. In 1967, Roddy McDowell's film "It" was released, in which the hero has conversations with the decomposed corpse of his mother, which he keeps at home in bed. In 1974, two films appeared at once, inspired by the image of Gin / Bates - "Deranged" by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by Tob Hooper. The last of these two films became an independent classic and, in turn, sparked a wave of remakes and imitations. While the film does not literally reproduce Gin's story, the gruesome house filled with human remains and the character named Leatherface, who hangs his victims alive on a butcher's hook and wears a mask of human skin on his face, clearly refer to the Plainsfield maniac. , stories about which Hooper rocked as a child. In the film Don't Enter This House (1980) by Joseph Ellison, a character named Donnie keeps his mother's corpse in an apartment. During her lifetime, she used to burn his hand with fire if he "misbehaved." True to her pious upbringing, Donnie can think of nothing better than bringing a girl into the house and roasting her alive. Gein's predilection for donning human skin is reflected in films such as William Lustig's Maniac (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) by Jonathan Demme, based on the novel by Thomas Harris. In Silence, Buffalo Bill, obsessed with the idea of "transformation" and sewing himself attire from the skin of women, has a distinct ancestral resemblance to "old man Eddie", as, indeed, a number of other characters in the subsequent series about Dr. Hannibal Lector. Finally, one cannot fail to mention the German director Jörg Buttgerait, who directly calls himself a "gynophile" and who made such films as "Necromantic" (1988) and "Necromantic 2" (1991), which became a kind of macaberry manifesto of necrophilic art. The only film I know about necrophilia that has escaped the direct influence of Psycho is Lynn Stopkiewicz's Kissed (1996) - perhaps because both the author and the heroine of the film are women. In 2001, Gin's biography was filmed ("Ed Gin", directed by Chuck Parello).
Another famous necrophile, Jeffrey Dahmer, known as the "Milwaukee cannibal monster", killed 17 men before one of his victims escaped and reported to the police. As with Hein, death meant more to Dahmer than life. During a search of his apartment, human heads, intestines, hearts and kidneys were found in the refrigerator. Around the house, police found skulls, bones, rotting remains, blood-stained bowlers, as well as several intact skeletons. Three bodies were found in the acid tank. In addition, chloroform bottles, an electric vise, a keg of acid and formaldehyde were found, as well as numerous Polaroid photographs in which Dahmer captured the torment of his victims. He surrounded himself with parts of his victims, made bizarre installations of them, cut off the faces of the dead and made masks out of them, dreamed of building an altar from skulls. As one commentator notes, "It was a long-term plan, the only ambitious plan for his life." Obsessed with the idea of living death, Dahmer tried to create a zombie that would completely obey him. To do this, he, having brought the victim into an unconscious state with the help of drugs, drilled holes in her head and injected acid or boiling water there. Usually the victims died, but one of his test subjects did survive for a while and walked the streets. Dahmer's forensic psychiatrist found that his necrophilia grew out of the sexual arousal he experienced when he viewed the corpses of animals that died under the wheels of cars as a child. In 1991, Dahmer was arrested and executed a year later.
One should not think, however, that cases of necrophilia are observed only in the West.
In Russia, Andrei Chikatilo, a schoolteacher from Rostov, has killed and raped at least 57 people in 25 years (a world record among maniacs of the 20th century). His victims were both male and female. After satisfying his lust, he usually mutilated corpses and ate parts of their bodies. It is believed that the formation of his inclinations was influenced by factors such as sexual weakness, which made it difficult to normal sexual intercourse (although he had a wife and two children), as well as the stories of his mother about cannibalism during the war, which he heard as a child. At the trial, Chikatillo played a madman, but was found sane and was shot in 1992.
Another Russian serial killer, necrophile and cannibal - Mikhail Novoselov - killed and posthumously raped at least twenty-two people - six in Tajikistan and sixteen in various cities of Russia. The age of his victims ranged from 6 to 50 years old, among them were little boys and elderly women. During interrogation, Novoselov confessed with the investigator: "A corpse is the same daily cabbage soup. The more it lies and" languishes ", the better it becomes. When asked why he did this, he replied: "Why did I kill? Not out of malice. I wanted sexual life. But what should I do if I can only do it with corpses?"
Necrophilia is not always associated with cruelty. In many cases, the motive for committing necrophilic actions is love and the inability to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
In 1994 in Brazil, a few days after Roberto Carlos da Silva's engagement to Raquel Cristina de Oliveira, the bride fell off a motorcycle driven by da Silva and died. Three months later, da Silva dug up his late beloved from the grave - and made love to her. He told a local news agency, "I was desperate and needed her."
However, Wittkop's novel is not an ordinary criminal chronicle, but a work of fiction that is as brilliant in form as it is terrible in content. And like any literary work, it can be inscribed in a certain tradition.
Of course, necrophilic motives can be found in literature even before Wittkop. Without going deep into this topic, we will only point out their presence in the work of such authors as de Sade, Poe, Heine and Baudelaire (at least the first two authors from this list are cited in the text of the novel). In Russian literature of the 19th century, necrophilic tendencies are found, for example, in writers such as Lermontov and Gogol. V.V.Rozanov directly called the latter a necrophile, capable of perceiving female beauty only when a woman is in a coffin. A similar tendency to build plots in such a way that the heroine must certainly die in order to become truly beloved, notes the protagonist of Oleg Postnov's story "Antiquary" in Lermontov. Let's replace that the name of the hero of "Necrophile" - Lucien - is a hidden allusion to the myth of Lucifer. The archetypal basis of "Necrophilus" and Lermontov's "Demon" is thus one and the same. It seems that a thorough analysis of the literature of the romantic make-up (including pre- and post-romanticism) could reveal a whole layer of images and ideas that directly or indirectly refer to the structures of necrophilic experience. Topos of night, death, cemetery, grave digging, anatomical studies, living death, dead bride, wedding with the deceased, love to the grave and beyond the grave; as well as the theme of the search for an object of ideal love (or an ideal object of love), which is not subject to the vicissitudes of time and which is embodied either in a work of art (statue, portrait), or in the image of a deceased beloved, - for literature focused on the inner world of a person and the depths of it souls are very common objects.
Postnov's story was written under the direct influence of "Necrophilus" Wittkop. Actually, both the title and the character's profession from the very first lines are linked by Postnov with the "Necrophil's Diary". However, the interpretation of the causes of necrophilia is different here. If in Wittkop the roots of sexual attraction to corpses are found in the childhood experiences of the hero, then in Postnov's necrophilous excess, at first glance, is not motivated by anything other than falling in love with a still living girl. However, in the further reflection of the hero, the reasons for the obsessive attraction to dead bodies (necrophilia) and things (antiques) are found in the leveling of spiritual and material values, which began in the era of the Reformation and has reached its maximum expression in our time. In this situation, the corpse and artifacts of the past turn out to be more valuable, authentic and individualized phenomena than the impersonal bodies and things of our time. Hence the second difference follows. If for Wittkop necrophilia is a kind of cultural and psychological universal, then Postnov is inclined to explain this phenomenon historically. However, the point is only in the placement of accents; in both cases, we are talking about the interaction of natural and social, human passion and circumstances external to a person.
Interest in corpses can be motivated in another way. For example, in the work of Andrei Platonov (who, like many other writers of the 20-30s of the XIX century, was greatly influenced by the teaching of Nikolai Fedorov about the physical resurrection of the dead in the future), the corpse is usually not so much an object of romantic feelings as a thing , concealing in itself the riddle of life, which his characters are trying to solve by natural-scientific methods. Yuri Mamleev's corpse is also a secret, but not scientific, but metaphysical. The methods of penetrating this "final secret" are often sexual. "Death", "corpse" and other words of similar semantics are key for Mamleev. So, in Mamleev's novel "Cranks", written a few years before Wittkop's "Necrophile" (in 1966-1968), we meet a whole gallery of characters obsessed with an interest in death, as well as a number of frank necrophilic scenes.
Fyodor, meanwhile, was looking for Lidin's death; inwardly he felt that she was close; he gasped in a violent chill, feeling for her like a mole; looked into Lidinka's decaying face and held on to finish the moment she died, on the line between death and life.
Lidinka did not understand anything; she was shaking with jumping nonsense ...
- Zealous, zealous, Fedinka ... Fly, fly with you ... Out of the pipe, - she squeaked.
Suddenly something collapsed in her chest and she immediately realized that she was dying. She froze, her eyes frozen in a silent question before the void.
Now only a faint shadow of sexual filth flickered in them.
Fyodor realized that the end was near; Throwing his head back a little, gazing motionlessly into her eyes, he began to deathly choke her body, press on her heart - in order to hasten the arrival of the desired moment. "We need to help her, help," he muttered to himself.
- He caressed ... Forever, - Lidinka snapped weakly at the bottom of her mind.
And suddenly everything disappeared, except for one stopped, terrible question in her eyes: "What's wrong with me? .. What will happen?" Fedor made an effort, as if trying to squeeze out this question, this last remnant of the idea.
And I saw her eyes suddenly rolled back and Lidinka, twitching, gave out a stinking wheeze, which reached her tender lips, as if strewn with invisible flowers.
At that moment Fyodor finished ...
Of course, there is no need to talk about Mamleev's influence on Wittkop: she could not read him in any way; "Rods" and other works of Mamleev began to be translated into French and other European languages much later. Even more significant is the fundamental difference in approach and style: Mamleev's metaphysical grotesque and Wittkop's extreme psychological realism are mutually inconvertible.
I would venture to assert that Wittkop has no direct literary predecessors. Allusions and quotes referring to the necrophilic "cultural texts" contained in the novel show that the author and his character deliberately construct a "line of succession" of the necrophilic tradition. It seems, however, that the real sources of the novel should be sought elsewhere.
We cannot prove or disprove the existence of a real life story, presumably forming the basis of the novel. We do not know who KD is, to whom the novel is dedicated and who, with the help of various artistic techniques, is identified with the author of the "necrophilous diary" that composes the text of the novel. Both are likened to Narcissus "drowned in his reflection"; both are associated with Gabrielle, who, on the one hand, is the real author of the text, and on the other, his episodic character, the narrator's neighbor, whom he voluptuously presents as hanged.
Stylistically, the novel is closest not to the works of Poe and certainly not de Sade (although Wittkop in one of his interviews refers to his "120 Days of Sodom" as a source of his inspiration). The sincerity and frankness of the descriptions, as well as the tender attitude towards the dead lovers recall the testimony of another necrophile - Victor Ardisson, whose case is described in detail in the scientific literature (see, for example: R. Villeneuve "Werewolves and Vampires"). I will cite an excerpt from Ardisson's confession, leaving the reader to independently compare its style and tone with the text of Wittkop's novel.
I dug up the girl's body that you found in my house the day after her funeral. On September 12, 1901, after midnight, I opened the coffin held together with two pins, then after I removed the body, I closed the coffin and buried it in the ground again. When I got home, I put the corpse on the straw, where you found it. Then I indulged in shameful acts with her. Whenever I slept with her, I satisfied my lust. I have always done this alone, and my father did not know anything about these things. To get to the cemetery, I climbed over the north wall, and did the same when I needed to leave. Some time ago, I heard that one girl I noticed earlier is seriously ill. I was glad to hear this, and promised myself that I would copulate with her corpse. I had to wait patiently for several days. Every day and every night I fantasized about her, and it invariably gave me an erection. When she died, I decided to unearth her body the night after the funeral. I arrived at the cemetery at eight o'clock in the evening. It took me a while to dig up the corpse. Having exposed her, I began to kiss and caress her. I noticed that there was no hair on her pubes and that she had small breasts. I satisfied my impulses on this corpse, after which I decided to take it home. I did not think about the dangers that threatened me. It was almost midnight when I left the cemetery, carrying the body with my left hand and pressing it against my face with my right. On the way home, I kissed my load and told her: "I carry you back home, you will be fine, I will not harm you." Fortunately, no one met me. Returning home, I lay down next to the corpse, telling her: "I love you, honey." I slept well. Waking up in the morning, I again satisfied my lust and, before leaving, said to her: "I am going to work, I will be back soon. If you want something to eat, tell me." She did not answer, and I guessed that she was not hungry. I even told her: "If you are thirsty, I will bring you water." During the day I worked, I fantasized about this girl. At noon I returned to see her and asked her if she missed me. In the morning I came to her again. Before I was arrested, I spent all my nights with her, and every night I satisfied my lust. During this time, no other girls died. If any other girl had died, I would have brought her home too, put her next to the first one and fondled both of them. But I did not forget the severed head (of a 13-year-old girl whom Ardisson called "his little bride" - E. G.) and kissed her from time to time.
Of course, Victor Ardisson, unlike Lucien N., the antiquarian-necrophile, was a poor man, uneducated and, according to the doctors, feeble-minded. However, just like Lucien, he really loved those girls and women whom he dug up in the cemetery, washed, dressed up, treated them tenderly and affectionately and cried when the time came to part with them, because their corpses were becoming worthless.
Gabriel Wittkop's novel is not about necrophilia, understood in a narrow sense as some rather rare perversion. In any case, not only about her. First of all, this is a love novel.
"Of course, I loved her ... If only I have the right to use this word, for the necrophile, as he appears in the wrong images of popular consciousness, obviously does not have such a right," writes Lucien N. "This is a novel about love, of course , melancholic - because a good love novel cannot be too funny - but, in general, about eternal love, since love takes many forms, but necrophilic love is nothing more than one of the forms of eternal love, "says Gabriel Wittkop in an interview with Le tan de livre magazine.
This love is tragic because it is doomed to be temporary. The tragedy of human existence lies in the fact that although people, unlike other living beings, are aware of the fact of death, this awareness does not rid them of their subjection to it. They yearn for eternal life and eternal love, but this desire is in vain. The living, whom we love, like corpses, become worthless - they grow old, "deteriorate", and die. Love ends and life ends, and nothing is eternal.
Necrophilia is a passion for non-being, to which the qualities of being are attributed. Or otherwise - an absurd rebellion against the finiteness of human existence. Or, to put it another way, it is a reflection of the state of ignorance, of the invisibility of reality as it is, which again and again plunges human beings into endlessly repeating cycles of suffering. It is also a novel about fate, about forces that are higher than us. A chance coincidence that gave rise to an associative connection between two strongest experiences - the first, still childhood orgasm and the image of a beautiful dead woman, the woman most beloved and closest (mother), including the accompanying environment (twilight, candles, the smell of silkworm) - going into the past, predetermine future. Love, sex and a corpse form a single complex that sets the structure of the personality and its destiny. Only by loving corpses, the necrophile finds himself: "I become a different person, at the same time a stranger to myself and more myself than ever. I cease to be vulnerable and unhappy, I become the quintessence of my own being, I fulfill the task to which fate is destined ".
What drives us, what determines who we will become and what we will come to if we follow our nature (and it is impossible not to follow it) - this is fate. "The conflict of a person's personal will and conscious aspirations with forces beyond his control, leading to sad or catastrophic results that awaken compassion or horror" - this is the definition of tragedy. The open ending of "Necrophilia" must not be misleading. A real tragedy always ends in death.
Autumn 2002
Moscow - London
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LITERATURE:
The story I want to tell is quite scary - in any case, it may seem like that to many. First of all, because it will talk about things that lie far beyond what we are used to considering normal and acceptable. And if some of the phenomena that a psychiatrist has to deal with every day, any of you can (very conditionally, of course, calling on a developed imagination for help) try on yourself - they say, but what it could be - there are things that are strictly taboo for most of us ... Those that make you shiver even when you try to imagine such a fitting.
I will not torment you for a long time: we will talk about necrophilia. More precisely, about one of her cases. You understand that the attitude of the overwhelming majority of people to some abstract necrophiliac is strictly negative. And so much so that even the methods of the Holy Inquisition in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic measures, many will not seem so unjustified for such incidents. But this is really a disease. More precisely, a number of diseases that can turn a person into what you consider a monster.
So forensic psychiatric experts of one of the large psychiatric institutions had to deal with such a case once. The commission was presented with a young guy, a little over twenty years old, rather tall and sturdy, in appearance - nothing so ominous or, even more hopefully, macabre. In the family - not a single direct indication that any of the relatives was mentally ill. Well, yes, my mother loved to lay behind the neckline, which is why she parted with his father, a fairly religious man and intolerant of such feints. The father brought up the child in severity, complaining that his son's studies are so-so - he would rather run with his classmates on the street and make another prank.
Nine classes, a technical school - and now it's time to join the army. The medical board at the military registration and enlistment office does not even have a shadow of suspicion at his expense, so a physically strong young man is sent to the airborne troops. And not only trumpets there from conscription to demobilization, but also remains to serve under a contract: there is really no work in his hometown, and here you have full support, and some kind of salary drips. Yes, and no complaints from the bosses, but the fact that he shows little initiative, plus has recently become absent-minded and thoughtful - so this is quickly fixable by a magical bossy pundel. It seems that even a girl appeared, and then another one, but both for a short time and without the final engraving on the precious metal - they say, this rare woodpecker was ringed there and then. No, it's not that he wasn't interested in girls - it was just that they took up too much time. And strength. And the nerves, which each considered it her duty to start winding already in the second or third week of dating. And brains to take away - this is a dish for him and in his native military unit will be happy to cook, and the further the service, the more often this happens for some reason. Well, at least another vacation arrived in time, you can go home and relax.
Finding that the contract soldier had not returned from vacation on time, the commander was obscenely surprised and called his home: they say, where is the indefinite article wearing you there? It's time, the universal Russian-German direction indicator, and return to the native part. To which the subordinate replied that he would be glad, but he spent a little bit, and if the bossy beaver would be so kind and send him a cash allowance in advance, then he would be right there and then, just like a bayonet. He was cunning, of course: the liberties and general relaxation of civil life had sunk into his soul so deeply that he had no intention of returning - as, indeed, to inform the commander about it. And then the man will swear. And then he will put it with his fist, it will not rust behind him.
Having finished helping his father with the housework, the guy waited for the same money allowance with abusive parting words and, having said goodbye at the station, took a train to the capital. True, he never got to the white-stone one - he had the idea to confuse the tracks - and left somewhere along the road.
And a few weeks later, in one small town, there was an alarming rumor: the cemetery became restless. And if you have to bury a woman who left this world much earlier than the deadline, then it is better to choose a stronger coffin. Or a churchyard further away. And then, you know, people have recently met different: to whom and the deceased bride. Already two cases in the same cemetery, can you imagine?
And the guy, meanwhile, was settling in the territory. The question is - why money and work when everything is at hand? And oh, how far away from winter. At the dachas - canned food, bedding and all sorts of useful household items, at the cemetery - sweets and vodka, especially on parental days. And also - girls. Just to do: find a fresh grave with a suitable photo on the cross, check the dates of birth and death - and you can get acquainted.
The police outfit that was on duty at the cemetery that day drew attention to a lonely guy busily making a round of graves, and decided to ask - what are you, my dear man, doing? Would you like to hire us? He was snapping back over his shoulder - they say, this is a purely intimate matter, and if there is such a desire - dig for yourself and live happily ever after ... well, in any case, one of the partners - but, looking at the shoulder straps, he realized that he was asleep. And he honestly confessed everything.
The forensic psychiatric commission, after conducting a detailed study, found in the guy a simple form of schizophrenia, which was the reason for the necrophilous tendencies - in his particular case. And she recommended to the court to issue compulsory treatment for the guy.
It is difficult to say in advance what the prognosis will be: even within the framework of one form of schizophrenia, it can proceed in very different ways. But there are times when the illness for a while (long or short - that's how it comes out) recedes. And the consciousness is clearing up. And the memory remains. And I can't even imagine what it will be like for him to remember everything that happened, but to evaluate his actions no longer through the prism of illness.
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