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Only that in Fleming an unconscious dissociation is performed, and the characteristics of the fine dark one, fascinating and cruel, sensual and ruthless, are subdivided between the Villain and Bond. |
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Between these two characters are distributed the traits of the Schedoni of Ann Radcliffe and of Ambrosio of Lewis, of the Corsair and of the Giaour of Byron; to love and suffer is the fate that pursues Bond as it did René of Chateaubriand: "everything in him turned fatal, even happiness itself. . . ." But it is the Villain that, like René, is "cast into the world like a great disaster, his pernicious influence extended to the beings that surrounded him." |
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The Villain, who combines the charm of a great controller of men with great wickedness, is the Vampire, and Blofeld has almost all the characteristics of the Vampire of Merimée ("Who could escape the charm of his glance? . . . His mouth is bleeding and smiles like that of a man drugged and tormented by odious love"). The philosophy of Blofeld, especially as preached in the poisoned garden of You Only Live Twice, is that of the Divine Marquis in his pure state, perhaps transferred into English by Maturin in Melmoth. And the exposition of the pleasure that Red Grant derives from murder is a minor treatise on sadismexcept that both Red Grant and Blofeld (at least when in the last book he commits evil not for profit but from pure cruelty) are presented as pathological cases. This is natural enough: the times demand compliance; Freud and Kraft-Ebbing have not lived in vain. |
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It is pointless to linger over the taste for torture except to recall the pages of the Journaux Intimes in which Baudelaire comments on their erotic potentiality; it is pointless perhaps to compare finally the model of Goldfinger, Blofeld, Mr. Big, or Dr. No with that of various Übermensch produced by the feuilleton literature. But it cannot be denied that of all such even Bond 'wears' several characteristics, and it will be opportune to compare the various descriptions of the herothe ruthless smile, the cruel, handsome face, the scar on his cheek, the lock of hair that falls rebelliously over his brow, the taste for displaywith this description of a Byronic hero concocted by Paul Féval in Les mystères de Londres: |
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He was a man of some thirty years at least in appearance, tall in stature, elegant and aristocratic. . . . As to his face, he offered a notable type of good looks: his brow was high, wide without lines, but crossed from top to bottom by a light scar that was almost imperceptible. . . . It was not possible to see his eyes; but, under his lowered eyelids, their power could be divined. . . . Girls saw him in dreams with thoughtful eye, brow ravaged, the nose of an eagle, and a smile that was devilish, but divine. . . . He was a man entirely sensual, capable at the same time of good and of evil; generous by nature, frankly enthusiastic by nature, but selfish on occasion; |
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