Nyctivoe

Nyctivoe forms the central panel in Dimitris Lyacos' trilogy "Poena Damni". The book recounts the staging of a verse play in a grim inner-city setting, by a company of lumpen-like actors, unfolding as a pattern of intermittent monologues - solitary visions of characters apparently in a state of trance. The setting suggests elements of realism (a crashed car, distant trains, a fire, the beat of the sea) in the midst of a bleak inner city or even post-war landscape, but the text hovers on the brink of the metaphysical: A male character, named Legion after the demoniack in St. Mark's Gospel, is taken away, in the course of what seems to be the enactment of a rite, by a female vampire, Nyctivoe. The work is cast in a structure reminiscent of Greek tragedy and No play, and interspersed with biblical references, but handles the vampire legend from a non-gothic perspective, focusing more in its symbolic and religious nature.

Origins

Nyctivoe (a Greek compound meaning night-cry or calling by night) appears for the first time as an epithet of the goddess of the moon, related to Ekate, in "Magical Papyri"(PMag.Par.1.2808)