Dracula, the true story...

Count Dracula has been undead for a hundred and thirteen years. He is a legend mixed with reality, superstition and fearful fantasies for nobody else in all of history impaled as many victims as Vlad Tepes...

Bram Stoker was studying medicine, ethnology and the occult. The Dead Un-Dead was one of Stoker's original titles for Dracula, and up until a few weeks before publication, the manuscript was titled simply The Un-Dead. Stoker's Notes for Dracula show that the name of the count was originally "Count Wampyr", but while doing research, Stoker became intrigued by the name "Dracula", after reading William Wilkenson's Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them (London 1820) and Tepes fit the bill to a tee. The descriptions of how Prince Vlad impaled, roasted, skinned alive, hacked to pieces and boiled the heads of his victims were all exactly what he was looking for. Horror stories were in vogue at this time and he knew that a contemporary setting would mean his book would be devoured by the public. There had been popular novels relating to vampires well before Bram Stoker. He became inspired by Transylvania (though it wasn't his original plan) and described it as a gloomy, mountainous region from his research - for he never set foot in Roumania. Incredible how one novel changed the image of an entire region and the very fact that Vlad Tepes never even lived at Bran Castle doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Cruelty was a political power tool for Vlad Tepes and the reputation of his impaling deeds as punishment of his enemies and law-breakers was an excellent way to hold on to it. Human life had very little value at that time and the punishments meted out for even petty crimes throughout the country in fact made Vlad Tepes look somewhat generous and forgiving!

After Prince Vlad's wife committed suicide throwing herself out of a window and into the Arges River far below following reception of a falsified letter (shot through the window) from the Turks stating her husband had been killed in battle, Vlad Tepes became far crueler. Some sources say the letter told of the Turks invasion and in fact, she killed herself to avoid enslavement, but I guess we'll never know.

Back to the 20th century and Ceausescu's role model was Stalin, but it was evident he couldn't say so publically. Instead he needed an appropriate national hero and chose Vlad Tepes. Comparing himself with this Walachian prince and warrior was unbearable for the Roumanian aristocracy in exile outside the country not to mention many of the population still within. But in the end, the choice was a twisted parallel - a vampire who sucked the life out of his own people...and then fled to Tîrgoviste. How ironic....

We are few in the west to have an inkling of Roumanian history. As you know, to many, Roumania means only one thing: Dracula. Tut.The whys and wherefores are of no importance and it is hard for us to understand why Tepes is such an admired figurehead in the country's history. I remember asking a class of students in Bucharest who they considered their greatest national historical figure and several chose Vlad Tepes. I was amazed and asked why. I sat and listened for the rest of the lesson as they explained that, even though he was cruel, he made Roumania great. He protected it. If you dropped a bag of gold in the street, you would find it again the next day (an old saying)... sadly not the case today - far from it. Even if you were to sleep with it under your head it's unlikely you'd find it there in the morning! As we take a look at the slippery slope upon which the beloved country of my heart finds herself today, it is easier to understand this call, this desire for an iron fist. Today, Roumania needs a strong leader, one who puts his country first, one who is proud to be Roumanian. Vlad Tepes has always stood for national security, justice and civilisation. He was a dictator, overpoweringly authoritarian, but he successfully controlled crime through fear.

Please watch this video, Dracula,The True Story, produced by Janson Media I saw on Facebook today (thanks, Aless!). It is as funny in places (is Daïan for real? And what about The Sexy Club in Bucharest...although the staff don't suck blood, they certainly suck money from clients' wallets!!) as it is fascinating. It explains who Vlad Tepes really was, how the legend developed and why. It contains historical and medical fact and for 36 minutes, I was hooked. I didn't even touch my glass of palinca for 34 of them!

Comments

[cnlawson2004]

Here is the highly impressive list of Prof Miller's publications:



http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/pub_doc_papers.html

[cnlawson2004]

Whoops! The home university of Professor Emerita Elizabeth Miller is Memorial University, Newfoundland, not Nova Scotia. Prof. Miller is now based in Toronto.



Was Dracula Irish? Please see this link, especially the description of the vampire chieftain ABHARTACH.



http://thevampireproject.blogspot.ro/2009/03/was-dracula-irish.html

[cnlawson2004]

http://blooferlady.livejournal.com/11478.html



This is the link for The Journal of Dracula Studies.

[cnlawson2004]

The greatest living expert on Stoker and Dracua is Elizabeth Miller, Professor Emerita at the University of Nova Scotia. Prof.Miller, a prolific author, also runs two fascinating journals, both available on the web.

[cnlawson2004]

On Dracula,etc.



This was my entry for the Anthony Burgess/Observer media competition. Alas, I was limited to 1500 words and spent as much time cutting as writing. The whole subject of monsters and their kin in Irish history and Celtic mythology is vast, and I could have written much more. But it would have taken me weeks to distill the essence of the horrors!



Transylvania



Christopher Lawson

FORTIFIED CHURCH IN TRANSYLVANIA



Lodgings

For bats

Hanging

Unauthorized

Like open umbrellas

In the armpits of walls.

When tourists come by

They crochet

Their legends,

Laughing softly,

With pigeon manure.



(By a Transylvanian Saxon poet now resident in Germany)



Transylvania, which I have known for almost 40 years, has one of the most stunning landscapes in Europe. Villagers live in handsome, colourful old homes on lanes lined with pear trees. Beyond their barns lie vegetable gardens, orchards and small farm plots. Farther out are meadows and pastures, carpeted with wildflowers, used cooperatively by the villagers for grazing animals and making hay. Imperious turkeys lead flocks of geese, ducks and chickens. Oak and beech woods cover the steep hillsides, where firewood is gathered.



In 1977, halfway through my teaching contract, Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died two years ago at the age of 96, published A time of gifts. In his trilogy, he depicts the Transylvania of the 1930s. The same year the notorious Madame Lupescu, widow of King Carol II, died in Estoril. Both events reminded me of another Romania and another time.



Following an invitation, I flew to Sibiu and was offered wine and tuica (plum brandy), with its wonderful golden colour, to accompany dinner. The following day, with friends, we walked into a valley and practiced FKK (nudity), just as Germans would in Germany. But here there was an element of protest against the highly puritanical Communist regime.





My hosts now live in Freiburg im Breisgau. Many of their former friends and neighbours from Sibiu live in the same city. Rroma (gypsies) have taken over the neat houses and orchards in Sibiu.





On another occasion, on a train journey, Adrian, an economist, invited me to stay in Sibiu, even though this was forbidden for foreigners. Shortly after our arrival at his apartment, his wife arrived, crying with triumphant laughter. Ceausescu had been to Sibiu on an official visit. The factories were closed and schoolchildren had the day off. They were supposed to line the streets, waving Romanian flags and cheering. But they had been directed to the wrong place. The streets were empty. There would be no pictures for the evening news.





Every week a group of friends gathered to watch Dallas. These young Romanians loved the beautiful women, the scheming menfolk, the huge cars and houses.



Sibiu now has a Saxon Mayor, Klaus Iohannis, who is re-elected with larger majorities by Hungarians and Romanians at each election. There are virtually no Saxons left. Iohannis has transformed Sibiu into a city which resembles one in Germany.



The spirit of Leigh Fermor infused the first Transylvania Book Festival, which took place in three Saxon villages from 5 to 9 September. Paddy was an exponent ofleventeia, Greek for high spirits, humour, quickness of mind and action, the love of living dangerously and a readiness for anything. A handsome, bright-eyed teenager aged 18-19, Paddy had walked from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, reciting verse as he walked, now staying in a hayrick, now in an aristocrat’s mansion. In wartime Crete, the dashing Paddy, Stanley Moss and a group of Cretan guerrillas abducted the German general commanding, drove him past 22 Nazi checkpoints, marched him through chilly mountains, and delivered him to Cairo.



Leigh Fermor was a great traveller and a sublime exponent of English prose.



Some 60 participants came to Richis, Copsa Mare and Biertan. The star of the show was Artemis Cooper, Paddy’s biographer. Her life of the great man, “An adventure”, is already a classic. She is also joint editor of “The broken road”, the long-awaited final book in his trilogy about his 1933-34 walk across Europe. Artemis sparkled. Another big name was Roy Foster, Professor of Irish Studies at Oxford, who spoke entertainingly on Bram Stoker and Dracula, first published in 1897 and never out of print since.





Jessica Douglas-Home, chairperson of the Mihai Eminescu Trust, one of the leaders of the fight to protect Transylvanian villages from Ceausescu’s lunatic systemization policy, was flanked by local Saxons, sundry poets and broadcasters, and the younger generation of burgeoning travel writers.



From the literary firmament came Beatrice Rezzori Monti della Corte, widow of Gregor von Rezzori, chronicler of Bukovina, and Elisabeth Jelen Salnikoff, grandaughter of Count Miklos Banffy who wrote a classic trilogy about the dying days of the Hungarian aristocracy. Presiding over this glitteringly impressive line-up was Lucy Abel Smith, an art historian resident in Transylvania several months of the year, who exuded energy, enthusiasm and good humour.



SHAKESPEARE



Shakespeare wrote about half of his late play Pericles (1608). His co-author, George Wilkins, a thoroughly disreputable and violent individual, a keeper of prostitutes, provided genuine inside knowledge of what went on in brothels which the fastidious Bard assimilated and made his own.



Shakespeare’s brothel scene takes place in Mytilene in Lesbos and contains the first reference to a Transylvanian in English, indeed in Western literature.



Pand. Thou sayst true; they’re too unwholesome, o’ conscience. The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.



Boult. Ay, she quickly pooped him; she made him roast-meat for worms. But I’ll go search the market. [Exit]



Pandar, a procurer and pimp, discusses with Boult, his servant, the shortage of girls and how drab and diseased their prostitutes are. The “poor Transylvanian” has travelled to Greece to die of syphilis.



BROWNING



Much of Robert Browning's familiar poem of 1842 about the Pied Piper of Hamelin is rooted in historical truth.

And I must not omit to say



That in Transylvania there's a tribe



Of alien people who ascribe



The outlandish ways and dress



On which their neighbours lay such stress,



To their fathers and mothers having risen



Out of some subterraneous prison



Into which they were trepanned



Long time ago in a mighty band



Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,



But how or why, they don't understand.



On 26 June, the Saints Day of John and Paul, in 1284, 130 of the town's children in Hamelin (Hameln), Germany, totally disappeared. The town's oldest record, dated 1384, states "It is 100 years since our children left." A stained glass window (1300) in a Hamelin church which commemorated the event was destroyed in 1660.



King Geza II of Hungary (1141–1162) began the colonization of Transylvania in the mid-12th century to defend the southeastern border of his kingdom. A second phase came during the early 13th century. Saxons, as they were collectively known, were talented miners who could also develop the economy. The settlers came primarily from the Rhineland, the Southern Low Countries, Luxembourg and the Moselle region. To this day the Saxon dialect strongly resembles Letzebuergesch,the official language of Luxemburg.

Rats were not added to the story until 1599. Furthermore, the bubonic plague, the Black Death, did not reach Europe until 1348-1350.



The Saxons are an important element of Transylvania’s history. The vast majority of the Saxons have emigrated to Germany, but a few hundred still remain.



STOKER



Stoker wanted to call his novel Count Vampyr, or the Undead, when he discovered that the Romanian word Dracul meant Devil. He knew the legend of Vlad the Impaler from Wilkinson’s 1820 description of Wallachia and Moldavia. (But Wilkinson does not even use the name Vlad. He writes of Voivode Dracula.)



Vlad the Impaler was king on three separate occasions. He had acquired a fearsome reputation, but was also a defender of his territory against the Turkish invader. He ordered Turks and his Wallachian enemies to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, and stabbed. Impaling was his preferred method of execution.



Dracula scholars, notably Elizabeth Miller, argue that Stoker in fact knew little of the historic Vlad III except for the name "Dracula". In Chapter 3, Dracula refers to his own background. Stoker directly copied parts of these speeches from Wilkinson's book. Stoker’s gloomy, threatening Transylvania comes from books. The Irishman never travelled east of Vienna.







Stoker’s Dracula has many influences. Perhaps Dracula owes his existence to Celtic rather than Balkan sources. Stoker was born in the worst year of the great Irish famine and, although he lived most of his adullt life in England, he was steeped in Irish

mythology. Bram Stoker was just as fascinated by folklore and customs from his own country and other lands as well as those of Eastern Europe. Stoker was going to set his novel in Styria (Steiermark) when his attention was drawn to Transylvania.

Since the coup d’etat of 1989, there has been a marked increase in the number of books devoted to Romania and Transylvania. Of books published in the 20thcentury the most entertaining is Raggle-Taggle: Adventures with a Fiddle in Hungary and Roumania (1933) by that modern George Borrow, Walter Starkie, and the most exhilarating is Paddy’s Between the Woods and the Water.





I may be something of a romantic, but it is broadly true that, in Transylvania, Romanians, Hungarians, Saxons, Armenians, Jews and rroma have been living peacefully with each other for centuries, a model for the rest of Europe.