Arius and the Vampire

Abstract

This essay focuses on two figures in James Joyce’s Ulysses, the heretic Arius and the vampire, who when examined together address issues of anxiety over the body and artistic creation. Stephen’s early musings on Arius lead directly into his primary act of artistic creation, a poem he writes that begins, “He comes, pale vampire.” Like the heretic, the vampire will recede into the background, but will continue to haunt the novel, offering troubling and disruptive commentary on the narrative. Joyce’s less literal vampires have the ability to change forms—a rat in the cemetery, a bat flying over a church, ghosts of deceased characters, and a “black panther vampire”—and along with his paradigmatic heretic, Arius, they seem to float from the mind of character to character, forcing them to question received wisdom about creation, procreation, authority, succession, and the relationship of body to mind. Throughout the novel, heretics and vampires work as figures of disruption, as symbols of an alternative taxonomy, and as reminders of the threat or promise of undeserved births and unnatural death. Ultimately, we will see that vampire narratives, classical heresy, and Ulysses share a common central project: questioning and rethinking the act of creation itself.