#above quote is said to armand and the children of darkness in the catacombs

[miraculan-draws]

"There is no bedchamber, no ballroom that I cannot enter. Death in the glow of the hearth, Death on tiptoe in the corridor, that is what I am. Speak to me of the Dark Gifts — I use them. I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose."

—The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

[savagewildnerness]

Part IV

The Children of Darkness

Notes are a bit random on this and not well formulated, but in case anyone is interested… book version for page references is new UK Sphere publishing.

POTENTIAL EPISODE TITLES

The Devil’s Road

Symphony of Malice

Notes:

Lestat’s fighting spirit: how have we seen this manifest of the TV show so far?  How will we see it manifest in the future?

What is the connection between Lestat refusing to surrender and him always enduring?

Even in terror: Nicki prisoner and he and Gabrielle in danger, Lestat is still the *doer* - a being of action, who, at odds with his impulsive stereotype is immediately attempting to form some kind of plan.

Nicolas’ presence is often described as some form of “shimmer” – as if his mind is unreachable.

Lestat also describes himself “staring coldly” at Nicki – disassociating in order to be able to cope with the situation?

Lestat talks of his instincts here numerous times – he is drawn to Armand – to his beauty, his power and his allure, but his instinct tells him over and over again how dangerous Armand is and basically Lestat’s instinct says RUN.  Where is this instinct from?  Is it the instinct of The Hunter and Lestat knows the danger of Armand in the exact same way he knows the danger of The Wolves when in front of them?

“the astonishing innocence of his boyish face” (p216) how Assad is this description of Armand?

“as if the devil still retained the face and form of the angel after the fall” is so Memnoch coded!

Lestat is a very new vampire here and even as a mortal he was young!  Yet he is so brave.

Magnus, Allessandra and Armand are not a dissimilar age?  1400’s-ish?

The old queen (Alessandra) talks about dreaming of the mortal world above and its music and so on from her stone pillow in just the same way Lestat describes himself doing in modern day at the start of the book.

P221 “Nicolas looked like an animated corpse.” And I think, in many respects, already he is, sadly sadly sadly.  I love the description of him as “A child thrown among porcelain dolls.”

“The power of Satan will blast you into hell.”  “You keep saying that! And it keeps not happening as we can all see!”  Surely this will be on TV!

“Will any of them allow me to take Nicki alive from this place?” Yes as a reader you already feel how doomed Nicolas is by now.  How can Lestat not feel it too?

Anne loves the word “MALICE” and uses it a lot in this part (in relation to Nicki and to Armand)

P226 he Devil’s fiddler whom you worship from afar every night” – how much of Lestat’s thoughts has Armand actually eavesdropped upon?

I can imagine TV Armand saying “You, for whom the working of the dark trick is an act of shameless greed.  You gave it to the very womb that bore you!”

“that our immortal faces should be such masks for our true souls” I found interesting, as you’d often say a human’s face reflects their soul.  But of course a vampire’s face does not change with time.

P227 – Armand’s quote “Tell me why!” surely will be on the show?

“He knows no limit and so he has no limit” is essentially “Only the impossible can do the impossible”!

Is Lestat’s rage (p227) transference (he feels Armand’s rage) or his own range towards Armand and about Nicolas?

“Ah sad lost child, roaming catacombs beneath a great city and an incomprehensible century.” – Does this description reflect show-Armand’s nature/essence?

I REALLY HOPE Lestat says “I never lie.  At least not to those I don’t love.”

“I am that new evil.  I am the vampire for these times” will surely be on TV?

Nicolas, no matter how on the verge of death he seems is listening to every word when they’re in this place, as he later brings up “The canker In the heart of the rose” that Lestat calls himself.  So what does Nicolas make of it all, listening as a human who has just been tortured by these beasts… who thinks Lestat didn’t love him enough to turn him.  And who knows what the vampires said to Nicki.  They can see his thoughts, so beyond the physical torture, the power they will have had in his mind to potentially reinforce and solidify all of Nicolas’ deepest fears��  Nicki moans at the canker in the heart phrase.

“There is no romance in what you are.  There is great romance in what I am.” I feel this is deeply the essence of Lestat, to be remembered in all he does.  Lestat despises lack of Romance!

“She receded from me as if she were an image in a sailor’s glass.” What a gorgeous metaphor!

Magnus appears to have brought death to MANY mortals quite fine!  So what exactly is Alessandra saying here? I do think Lestat hasn’t fully understood her when he talks of loving mortals already and maybe he is in part horrified by the implications of immortality?  I also wonder what Nicolas, the only human listening here makes of Alessandra’s summation of immortality?

P233 Lestat asks if Magnus loved mortals the way boys love butterflies as they rip of their wings – it’s a thing Armand is often accused of by others.

Orpheus allegory re-Lestat and Nicki p234

P234 The way Lestat describes Nicolas’ experience of being locked up so closely to his own… and Lestat will now do unto Nicki as was done unto him by Magnus.  This is A Lot for them both… because Nicki has fully seen what these beasts are from the way they tortured him… and Lestat is now both beast, lover and lover who (Nicki thinks) didn’t love him enough…?

P235 “Do not do this thing” is italicised.  Lestat cannot hear Gabrielle’s thoughts.  So does she even say this, or does Lestat just imagine it or know she would say it?

I love the mix of love and death and desire in Nicolas’ turning.  It’s a weird combination of the most carnal of all the turnings and yet the only emotion aside from this pure satiation of lust and need is the entire existential dread of existence itself!  That interspersed with such human memory of love and human experiences that are lost forever now, for them both.  Lestat is clearly aroused by turning Nicolas and he seems to kind of shut off his reason/human love and let his desire take over?  It’s a strange mix of desire (what Lestat always wanted), domination (the power Lestat has over Nicki – reflecting somehow that his class meant he always had some kind of power over Nicki) and what Lestat knows himself is a disaster I think even as he does it.

What a quote – “philosophy straining to contain the ghastly images, the torture, to surround it with language…”

Nicki raves about The Witches place on p236 just as Lestat did when he had just been turned on p97

It’s interesting how Lestat acknowledges here that Nicolas cannot truly know what he is asking for in pleading for The Dark Gift and acknowledges how awful it is the power he has over Nicolas.  It’s one of the things I love about this book in particular – no matter what Lestat does, his internal moral compass is incredibly self-aware and correct.

P238 & p266 – Lestat tells Nicki he has misunderstood everything here and Nicolas says very similar in their last argument on p266

For anyone thinking Nicki only hated Lestat by this time – p 239 “Unspoken words coming from him of love.”  Nicolas loves Lestat even now, no matter what he’ll later say.  Lestat sees it in his mind while Nicki is here still mortal.

I feel as though Nickistat represents to Lestat for eternity that tantalizing prospect of what a mortal life might have been.  Lestat was only on the cusp of manhood when he was turned.  What might it have been to be two artists, in love – growing old together, loving and dying.  Well, it would have been awful Lestat – but because you can never access it, it remains eternally an ideal and unreachable vision – that glimmer of a possible mortal life and love with Nicolas.  The last vestige of the idea ever having any reality to it dies along with Nicolas in this section.  Perhaps while Nicki is still human, Lestat is still connected to his own humanity in a way that once Nicki is turned Lestat isn’t ever again, as there is nobody who loved him as his human self who is also still human left alive…?

In Nicolas’ turning, Lestat slits his own throat rather than his wrist to make Nicki a vampire – it is carnal, sexual and indicative of death as well.  On TV there could be some visual parallel possibly between how Lestat creates Nicki and how Louis killed Lestat?

The slant of the colourless landscape in Nicolas’ mind reminded me of the slant of the floor in S2E5

P243 To see Nicki change had been to see him die.  Why do we usually see most humans cope fine with turning and their transition into a vampire in the books?  If it really is so random as Armand says…?  That said, Nicolas was utterly broken before he was turned, so!

P258 – Nicolas keeps his and Lestat’s dressing room as a shrine to Lestat – even a half-drunk bottle of wine left untouched.  If that does not speak of the depth of his love for Lestat and of his pain at his loss, what does?

Lestat finds Nicki’s violin not where he lives, but at Renauds.  Nicolas left Renauds never to return after Lestat’s on-stage breakdown where he saw Lestat shot but not die.  Not only had Nicki given up studying violin – he never played the violin again after that day, until he became a vampire.  Imagine what his experience must have been.  Friendless as all the actors from Renaud’s have gone abroad.  Not even a violin for solace.  Thinking he is unloved.  Nicolas must have felt his own descent into death.

Lestat worries whether vampire Nicki feels anything at all anymore p256

What does Nicki feel about playing The Devil’s instrument?  Especially when he has not played it for so long…

What does it mean that Anne introduced characters as villains (e.g. Armand, but Lestat too) then she and we grow to love them….

P260 quote – why exactly can’t Lestat stand Nicki’s music now seeing as he describes it still as very expressive.  How does it feel to Nicolas that he now has all of the technical and emotional skill he always wished for on the violin and can do with it as he will, and Lestat just calls it ‘petty’ – another punch to the heart to tell him Lestat never loved him? 

Lestat and Nicki loved each other as humans and despise each other as vampires as much.

Lestat compares Nicki to his whinnying and dying mare numerous times – poignant allegory

The sorrow that Lestat and Nicolas’ last fight is in Renauds – a place they were truly happy

Sam is gonna act his socks off in expressing the meaning behind the loss of Renuads and the perversion of it into something vampiric, when it was Lestat’s whole world of artistic expression as a mortal and an emblem too of his and Nicki’s love and start of life.

The Witching Hour again on p247!  Anne uses it so often!

Armand consuming Nicki’s abode, like an insect-demon and he instantly lets Lestat know he knows about Nicki being made (nonverbally)

I love the juxtaposition of opposites in Armand - Devil versus innocence etc… and for Lestat - danger versus allure

When Armand attacks Lestat with the way nobody has ever cared to teach him anything (p250) it is The Cruelest.  That he steals this from Lestat’s mind is even crueller… and I love it.  Please make the TV show…!

As a lover of sunrises and sunsets, may I say, I love how Anne describes skies!

Armand trying to get Lestat to kill Gabrielle and Nicki is utterly horrific.  I hope that’s on TV!

The way Lestat says “Exactly!” When Gabrielle is saying they need to get Armand’s knowledge even though she cares less about it than the meaning of leaves and stars etc. even though Lestat absolutely doesn’t mean exactly, as Gabrielle’s pondering are alien to his own humanistic mindscape!

Nicolas’ shrine to Lestat in Renaud’s.  HE LOVED LESTAT.  I will say it over and over!  (This is not saying they were meant for each other.  I LOVE TOO that Nicki is DEAD!)

I love how Anne even makes the traditional comedy and tragedy theatre emblem into a poetically poignant image

Even though Lestat and Nicki despise each other’s vampire-selves, there’s such sensuality still between them.  When Lestat gives Nicolas his violin, Nicki leans his head against Lestat.  When Nicki says “The Devil’s Instrument”, he looks into Lestat’s eyes for the fist time, and he’s trembling.  This is the first time he has played violin since Lestat’s theatre breakdown!

The music Nicolas plays, Lestat tells Nicki it is petty.  However, he describes this too as sensual and full of emotion.  The violin tells a tale.  The emotion bends and twists Nicki.  It is a lamentation and it seems to perfectly express Nicolas’ inner world.  Why does Lestat call it petty?  Because Nicolas can mock humanity with his music now?  It certainly isn’t because it lacks emotion.  I think Lestat fears how inhuman he is as a vampire, and he hears confirmation of it in Nicki’s music now.  But that doesn’t mean Nicolas’ art is bad or petty or lesser.  Of course, Nicki’s art is *more* now in most respects as now he is technically perfect.  I’m reminded of how this week I told someone (who was asking technical aspect of piano playing of me and I am NOT technical on piano!!!) That violin is my first instrument and their response was - “Like Paganini! Like Stephan Grappellli!”  And like… No…. Not like genius violinists!  Like a rubbish violinist!  Obviously, I know them… but it is odd to me that you namecheck them to me.  Because.  NO.  NOT like them!  Anyway, I digress….

To Nicolas, Lestat calling his vampire-art petty must feel horrendous - like a physical slap.  He envied the ease of Lestat’s success as a mortal, but never begrudged him it.  Now, Nicolas has all the technical skill he desired and Lestat calls his creativity PETTY.  What an insult & a DISMISSAL!  Cruel as Nicki’s words are to Lestat.   (I really wanted to read from Nicki’s perspective this time.  We are literally in Lestat’s mind this entire book, but he is not the only being who feels pain.)

P264 versus p230 - Nicki remembers Lestat’s “canker in the heart of a rose” comment from when he was mortal, near death, tortured by Armand and his coven.  He remembers all these beasts said to each other that night.  What a horrific true first introduction to what happened to Lestat - these monsters torture him, drink his blood, tell him goodness knows what horrendous things about Satan and how evil and Satanic Lestat is… Then Lestat is one of them….

All Lestat wanted as a mortal was to be good and to carve a grove in The Savage Garden.  But now, he uses that as an insult to Nicki.

And I’ve said it many times, but I do not believe Nicki went to Paris, hoping for he and Lestat to fail.  I believe there is truth in it, in the nihilistic way we can all believe “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was an apocalypse in 5 minutes and we were all DEAD.” (Just me?  Well, ME, anyway..) and we all have these dark thoughts… I definitely believe these were thoughts Nicolas had.  But I do not believe he desired it… at least not for Lestat.  I think of it more as a depressive thing - if it fails - YAY, I always knew it would.  And he DID love Lestat.  And he did need his light.  But now he doesn’t.  Now he is A Dark Thing: the summation of his worst fears he no longer needs Lestat and what’s more I think it’s why Lestat cannot stand him - he is now the embodiment of what Lestat fears *he* might be as a vampire: an entirely inhuman creature.  But Lestat is never that.  However, Lestat created vampire-Nicki and the inhuman thing he is.

“It’s all a misunderstanding, my love” Nicki says to Lestat on p266 in their final argument.  Almost exactly what Lestat says to Nicki p238 “You have misunderstood everything” before Nicki is turned.  The sorrow in this echo/twist/reiteration.

I am not sure about it, but I wonder whether part of why Nicki is SO cruel to Lestat at the end is as he NEEDS Lestat to leave him and he knows that no matter how Lestat despises him, he won’t abandon him.  Yet, Nicki probably knows DEATH awaits him not too far away now.  And he likely knows, were Lestat to stay, he could drag Lestat to his death as well.  So, maybe he is freeing Lestat, in a way?

But although Lestat and Nicolas despise each other, they love each other too.  The opposite of love is indifference.