If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Lestat de Lioncourt here.
You know me: six feet tall, with magnificent blond hair. Gray eyes that are often warm, sometimes blue but always sharp. Big mouth, big dreams.
I’m public property now, an icon, the hero of a million google hits.
In my time I’ve worn many costumes and I've told many tales. I’ve taken a little artistic licence in telling them because my books masquerade as fiction, as they always must. I’ve been a boy, a saint and a devil, a teacher, adventurer and a fool. And an actor, of course, always that. Sometimes it’s the actor who talks to you here. Sometimes it’s simply Lestat.
Right now, I’m at a crossroads on the Devil’s Road. My life has endured for two hundred and sixty years and for the most part I’ve broken brave new ground. However, I’m still faced with some of the same problems that I’ve had for centuries. I’m fighting the same battles. I’m having the same arguments with the same people and I want to break this eternal cycle, if it’s even possible for an immortal being to do so. How can you shape a new future without returning to the past?
I’m also aware that my name is no longer exclusively my own. Someone else has claimed my publishing rights. Someone else has written me into fiction. Someone else recreates who I am. I hated it to begin with and I’m not sure that I’ve grown used to it even now, but this bizarre situation has got me thinking about the nature of my identity and about ancient history and how I have faced it. If I am to change old patterns, then I must know who I really was.
I was once a nobody in a nowhere town. I was naïve, credulous and full of yearning. I was the youngest of many sons, knowing nothing, believing nothing and going nowhere. My family was decaying aristocracy and it was I who held our small world together. It was to me that the villagers came for help, not to my father who played chess in the Great Hall when the last harvest was gathered and not to my brothers who viewed the world beyond our castle with a casual contempt. It was to me that they bowed in genuine respect. I alone hunted for meat, I was the crack shot and the expert horseman. I was the one who did all that had to be done and this was my only satisfaction in life. I was bitter and lonely and I despaired. That was the Once Upon a Time Lestat. That was my mortal self who I still carry somewhere within me.
But something extraordinary happened to me. I don’t mean that I ran off to Paris or realized my vocation as a Boulevard actor.
I fell in love.
What did it really take for me to do that? The promise of worldly knowledge that had always been denied me? The thrill of the forbidden in those sly eyes? His beauty? The flattering attention he paid me? It was all of these things and more. I soon discovered the sublime intensity of belonging. I was a foil for his cynicism, but I hung on his every word. Nicki became the length and breadth of my life. I still don’t really know if he loved me, but he certainly transformed me. And here I finally pay him the credit he deserves. It wasn’t those damn wolves who changed my life. It was Nicolas de Lenfent.
We went to Paris, where I sought a life and he sought sin. I shed my real aristocratic name and became Lestat de Valois. I was Lelio. My new name was high on the billboards. I made people happy. I was happy - I think it really was that simple. I drank too much wine, I laughed too much and I loved too much. Perhaps for me, that was just enough.
But I’m talking about identity so I must make a confession: I have a considerable talent for ignoring everything I don’t want to face. I’ve long since forgotten the stench of those Paris streets and the hunger I felt. I’ve forgotten the exhaustion and the piercing cold. I’ve forgotten the press of the Paris crowd, the marks of smallpox on thin faces and those ragged, filthy bodies. This was France before the Revolution when the king lived in glittering splendor and children starved to death in the gutter. Everywhere I could see suffering, everywhere there was disease and injustice; death, degradation and pain and all for nothing. This terrible idea made me panic. I’d rolled these things into one terrifying entity and called it evil and I avoided it with all my soul. It was so much better to be happy. It was better not to think of the bones of Les Innocents crunching under my boots or how mercilessly Nicki mocked my exhilaration and my dreams.
The tragedy of immortal life is that it makes us fixed and unyielding. My face hasn’t altered and it never will, but neither will that part of my soul that I call Lestat. I carry with me all my old fears and dreams, my terror of evil and my capacity for love - all of which, you might say, are not ideal traits for a monster to have. I am a monster, have no doubt about it, but if I am to change the little patterns of my life that were crystallized so long ago, I must understand why things are the way they are. If I can’t change, then I can surely adapt, for that has always been in my nature to do.
My immortal life had an ignominious beginning. It started in an ancient stone building on the outskirts of the modern world, alone, unknowing, surrounded by the crumbling relics of the past and it felt depressingly like being back at my father’s house. I no longer hunted wolves. I was the wolf.
I saw myself in a jewelled mirror. I saw a pretty white face and those sharp white teeth but it wasn’t me. I asked then who am I?
Once upon a time, Nicki sat by the little fire where my boots were drying and told me that we would both die within the year. I took up a new bottle of wine and practised my lines.
I want that old innocence back. I know too much.
You know me: six feet tall, with magnificent blond hair. Gray eyes that are often warm, sometimes blue but always sharp. Big mouth, big dreams.
I’m public property now, an icon, the hero of a million google hits.
In my time I’ve worn many costumes and I've told many tales. I’ve taken a little artistic licence in telling them because my books masquerade as fiction, as they always must. I’ve been a boy, a saint and a devil, a teacher, adventurer and a fool. And an actor, of course, always that. Sometimes it’s the actor who talks to you here. Sometimes it’s simply Lestat.
Right now, I’m at a crossroads on the Devil’s Road. My life has endured for two hundred and sixty years and for the most part I’ve broken brave new ground. However, I’m still faced with some of the same problems that I’ve had for centuries. I’m fighting the same battles. I’m having the same arguments with the same people and I want to break this eternal cycle, if it’s even possible for an immortal being to do so. How can you shape a new future without returning to the past?
I’m also aware that my name is no longer exclusively my own. Someone else has claimed my publishing rights. Someone else has written me into fiction. Someone else recreates who I am. I hated it to begin with and I’m not sure that I’ve grown used to it even now, but this bizarre situation has got me thinking about the nature of my identity and about ancient history and how I have faced it. If I am to change old patterns, then I must know who I really was.
I was once a nobody in a nowhere town. I was naïve, credulous and full of yearning. I was the youngest of many sons, knowing nothing, believing nothing and going nowhere. My family was decaying aristocracy and it was I who held our small world together. It was to me that the villagers came for help, not to my father who played chess in the Great Hall when the last harvest was gathered and not to my brothers who viewed the world beyond our castle with a casual contempt. It was to me that they bowed in genuine respect. I alone hunted for meat, I was the crack shot and the expert horseman. I was the one who did all that had to be done and this was my only satisfaction in life. I was bitter and lonely and I despaired. That was the Once Upon a Time Lestat. That was my mortal self who I still carry somewhere within me.
But something extraordinary happened to me. I don’t mean that I ran off to Paris or realized my vocation as a Boulevard actor.
I fell in love.
What did it really take for me to do that? The promise of worldly knowledge that had always been denied me? The thrill of the forbidden in those sly eyes? His beauty? The flattering attention he paid me? It was all of these things and more. I soon discovered the sublime intensity of belonging. I was a foil for his cynicism, but I hung on his every word. Nicki became the length and breadth of my life. I still don’t really know if he loved me, but he certainly transformed me. And here I finally pay him the credit he deserves. It wasn’t those damn wolves who changed my life. It was Nicolas de Lenfent.
We went to Paris, where I sought a life and he sought sin. I shed my real aristocratic name and became Lestat de Valois. I was Lelio. My new name was high on the billboards. I made people happy. I was happy - I think it really was that simple. I drank too much wine, I laughed too much and I loved too much. Perhaps for me, that was just enough.
But I’m talking about identity so I must make a confession: I have a considerable talent for ignoring everything I don’t want to face. I’ve long since forgotten the stench of those Paris streets and the hunger I felt. I’ve forgotten the exhaustion and the piercing cold. I’ve forgotten the press of the Paris crowd, the marks of smallpox on thin faces and those ragged, filthy bodies. This was France before the Revolution when the king lived in glittering splendor and children starved to death in the gutter. Everywhere I could see suffering, everywhere there was disease and injustice; death, degradation and pain and all for nothing. This terrible idea made me panic. I’d rolled these things into one terrifying entity and called it evil and I avoided it with all my soul. It was so much better to be happy. It was better not to think of the bones of Les Innocents crunching under my boots or how mercilessly Nicki mocked my exhilaration and my dreams.
The tragedy of immortal life is that it makes us fixed and unyielding. My face hasn’t altered and it never will, but neither will that part of my soul that I call Lestat. I carry with me all my old fears and dreams, my terror of evil and my capacity for love - all of which, you might say, are not ideal traits for a monster to have. I am a monster, have no doubt about it, but if I am to change the little patterns of my life that were crystallized so long ago, I must understand why things are the way they are. If I can’t change, then I can surely adapt, for that has always been in my nature to do.
My immortal life had an ignominious beginning. It started in an ancient stone building on the outskirts of the modern world, alone, unknowing, surrounded by the crumbling relics of the past and it felt depressingly like being back at my father’s house. I no longer hunted wolves. I was the wolf.
I saw myself in a jewelled mirror. I saw a pretty white face and those sharp white teeth but it wasn’t me. I asked then who am I?
Once upon a time, Nicki sat by the little fire where my boots were drying and told me that we would both die within the year. I took up a new bottle of wine and practised my lines.
I want that old innocence back. I know too much.