Demon Lover
Friedl should have known. The young man at the door was selling encyclopedias, which no one had heard of for decades. He wore a black t-shirt, ragged around the neck, that said FREE THE PEOPLE in white letters. Two knobby little scarlet horns erupted from his forehead just below the hairline, about an inch and a half long; also he had a tail, you couldn't miss it, with a dragon spike at the tip. The tail coiled and swished excitedly as if it had a life of its own. But Friedl ignored the oddities because the boy was so cute otherwise, quick and lean, with an open, inviting smile and sparkling eyes.
Commentary
What can I say? A universal story. We all fall for inappropriate people. Against our better judgment.
What happens next? Catastrophe.
Okay, perhaps not everyone. Maybe just me. Maybe this story is ever so slightly autobiographical, with the genders switched to protect the innocent. This is an interpretation I only thought of today. Now it seems blazingly obvious, much to my chagrin.
But enough of that.
The demon lover is, of course, an old folkloric theme. So this story uses the shadow text technique; it references and feeds off a prior literary form as part of its structure. I must have read that medieval ballad when I was in high school. “The Daemon Lover” by the prolific yet little known poet Anonymous. (There are many variants.)
The demon lover returns after a seven-year absence to redeem promises a young woman once made to him, only, in the meantime, she has married someone else and has a son.
‘Where have you been, my long lost lover, This seven long years and more?’ ‘I've been seeking gold for thee, my love, And riches of great store. ‘Now I'm come for the vows you promised me, You promised me long ago;’ ‘My former vows you must forgive, For I'm a wedded wife.’
Nevertheless, she acquiesces to his charms, kisses her son goodbye, and off they go. The poem ends.
He took her up to the topmast high, To see what she could see; He sunk the ship in a flash of fire, To the bottom of the sea.
Exactly.
One version of this poem was called “A Warning for Married Women,” which is a bit sexist.
Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” switches genders, same theme. He might have called it “A Warning for Young Men Wandering about in Full Armor.”
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.No doubt there is something Jungian on the way these stories haunt me.
Both Elizabeth Bowen and Shirley Jackson have written short stories based on the demon lover theme (click on their names to see the stories). At one time, the dark Elizabeth Bowen was near the top of my list. Novel after novel seems to climax in suicide. I was going to write an essay, “Great Suicides in Literature.” Demon lovers and suicide.
There is something deeper to think about. The demon lover is haunting because it speaks to the danger of fantasy when we fall in love. You never truly know the other person, your vision is mystified by eros and old wounds. Fantasy and need blind you to the horns and tail. Those mischievous, bright eyes, possibly a sign of a violent personality disorder, bedazzle you.
I wrote an aphorism in one of my short stories: Love is an erotic accident prolonged to disaster.
Of course, being me, I have to make a joke of this. And there is irony in brevity. “Search parties failed to turn up any sign of human remains” has always seemed like a perfect short story to me.
How many of you have encountered a demon lover? Please answer in the comment box. How catastrophic was the experience? Give it a rating from one to ten, ten being an 80 kiloton nuclear explosion of the heart.
February 9 2024
Much later. Readers helped with the mystery of Pirner’s actual 1893 Daemon Lover painting.
Hannah Grant sent me this.
This is a Wikimedia image. Link here. I am not sure but it seems to be one of Pirner’s contributions to a small book of poetry and paintings called Démon láska (1893) by Pirner and a Czech poet Jaroslav Vrchlický. Thirteen illustrations by Pirner. A narrative poem by Vrchlický.
Here’s another.
And another.
Larry Bole (see his comment below) found a link to this picture, which seems to be from the same sequence of illustrations (and makes me think of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights).
Larry also corrects the “Demon Lover” title to “Demon Love,” which changes the balance and torque of the tale in a fascinating way.
I am just thinking, after reading comments from Erica and Genese, that we should never forget how much fun demon lovers can be before it all goes to hell.
There was one I actually called "The Wolf." He had very seductive eyes, danced with me, made potions out of plants, did perfectly outrageous things, had multiple lovers of both sexes,, could not be trusted at all, and had a whole arsenal of sophisticated damage control methods. We smeared each other with honey.