The Classic Tale of the Un-dead Count by Bram Stoker: DRACULA

Recently vampires have become objects of undying love, thanks to Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame, who made “lover boys” out of the nocturnal creatures that vampires were always deemed to be. But pre-Twilight era, vampires meant just one thing & one name – Count Dracula.

This post is about the legendary un-dead Count brought to life by Bram Stoker in his 1897 book DRACULA. The post will deal with what inspired Stoker to envisage this character & his journey on penning down Dracula, to the hallmark icon that Dracula has become today.

VAMPIRE LORE:

Vampires have always been part of folkloric & traditional tales of horror since time immemorial. Out of all the nocturnal beasts, vampires have the utmost “popularity”, and this can be attributed to many reasons. A vampire, to my mind, is more intriguing as a character because it is the most human “beast” & hence it becomes easier to fall prey to one. To top this, a certain amount of sex appeal was always associated with vampires. Even in the old folk tales that I researched for this post, vampires came across as suave, sexy, with hypnotic qualities, which suck life away from you, generally in throes of passion.

The earliest known vampire folklore is the Indian “Baitaal Pacheesi” (25 tales of Baitaal), in which Baitaal is a vampire hanging upside down on a mythical tree (like a bat) in a faraway mythical forest full of nocturnal beasts. This story collection was found in 1^st century BC, although the actual written time period is still speculated. A little more delving in the subject revealed that vampires were part of folklores in almost all ancient civilisations at that time along with India.

Carrying forward from these civilisations over time, the stories travelled to Europe, where this phenomenon became popular to the extent that villagers reported known sightings of Vampires from time to time. This provided the basis for many literary scholars & historians to take the mythical lore more seriously.

INSPIRATION FOR DRACULA:

·        Literary Inspiration: Dracula is not the earliest works of vampire fiction. From Baitaal Pacheesi to medieval Europe, many works of literature were based on vampires; the most notable one before Dracula being, Sheridan LeFanu’s 1871 novella, Carmilla. Carmilla was the story of a lesbian vampire (sexual connotation in place) who killed young virgins & drank their blood. Stoker was highly influenced by Carmilla, before penning his own Dracula 25 years later. However, the biggest known inspiration for Stoker was the 1885 essay written by Emily Gerrard, known as Transylvanian Superstitions (link of an excerpt from the essay attached below) , that explored why all horror tales made Transylvania as their popular breeding ground. http://www.ulm.edu/~eller/men/focus/drac/dracgeo/beyond.htm

This essay was the biggest influence for Stoker to pen down Dracula. He had also researched other Western folk tales & newspaper clippings that cited vampire like creature vicariously before starting work on his book.

·        Historical Inspiration: Many cruel Romanian & other European kings were considered heavy inspiration for creating Dracula. The most notable monarch being Vlad III – Dracula of Wallachia (Romania). The emperor was known to have executed almost 1,00,000 Turks by getting them impaled on a sharp pole. However, comparisons end here. There is no recorded evidence to suggest that Vlad III had any nocturnal longings for the men he got executed. But this did shape the character of Count Dracula in Stoker’s mind.

 

BRAM STOKER’S – DRACULA

Seeking these inspirations, Dracula is set in Transylvania in late 19^th century. The book follows an epistolary format of narrative – where the first narrative is comprised of written letters & newspaper clippings solely, & second or third narrative is a person. Stoker, was highly influenced by the newspaper clippings & various letters he read while researching material for his book, and he possibly wanted to give his story a more realistic touch than a mere fictional account, therefore he used the EPISTOLARY NARRATIVE for Dracula.

I am sure many of you have read Dracula, however for those who have not & just to refresh memory; the novel starts with the central protagonist, Jonathan Harker, writing a letter to his fiancée, Wihemina “Mina” Murray, relating that he is visiting a Count Dracula for a real estate business in his castle at Transylvania, situated somewhere deep in the Carpathian mountains. This meeting has been arranged by his employer, Peter Hawkins. The letter also relates how Jonathan finds the whole area very gloomy, diabolical and eerie in nature. His journey to Count Dracula’s castle is related in such an eerie manner (the mysterious coachman, the villagers refusing to talk when asked directions for the Count’s castle, an elderly gentlemen advising Jonathan to turn back, the eerie look of the castle situated on a lonely hillock with bats flying, wolves howling), that it starts filling your heart with a sinister feeling. Today these symbols have become synonymous with horror (and even spoof comedy), but in 1897 these set a benchmark for creating a superbly Gothic feel to the story.

Jonathan meets the mysterious Count Dracula, who invites him to stay over for a few days in his castle. His huge castle lacks any servants & the Count seems to be doing all the work around. Soon Jonathan realises that he has become a captive in the castle with no route to escape at all. Jonathan’s desperation to get out of the castle & his apparent frustration at being held hostage fills your heart with fear & frustration, because you know what impending danger is lurking around the corner.

Meanwhile, back in England, Mina is increasingly getting worried as letters have stopped coming from Jonathan. She relates this to her friend Lucy, and is hell bent on going after finding Jonathan. Meanwhile through a chain of events, Dracula has travelled to London, and mysteriously Mina notices some changes in her friend Lucy, that are not of welcome nature. In the midst of all this, one person is called for help, Abraham Van Helsing (a friend of Lucy’s fiancé), and one who apparently KNOWS what exactly is going on….

I do not wish to reveal the book further, although many of you must have read it or seen innumerable film versions of it. It is still better to read the book & find out what happens next.

Dracula is and will always remain a cult in horror fiction. Whether it is the cleverly crafted name, or the manner in which the book is written, or the complete mystique behind the character of Count Dracula, each facet of the novel is diabolically enjoyable. You can easily dismiss it as a horror fiction done to death in today’s date & age, but all this changes the minute you start reading Dracula. The novel sucks you in to 19^th century England & Transylvania. Yes, the book’s symbolism has been repeated & referred to the extent that it has today become a repetitive symbol for all things associated with horror – the coffin, the fangs of the vampire, the lonely coach travelling at the dead of the night carrying a coffin, the lonely castle at the top of a mountain with full moon shining on it, Dracula’s polished & suave appearance – however at that time these were symbols more or less invented or popularised by Stoker in his novel.

The novel was not a bestseller in its time, although it got unanimously positive feedback from critics & fellow authors like H.G.Wells, P.B.Shelly & Mary Shelly (who had penned another horror cult Frankenstein), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle etc. But it provided nothing to Stoker at that time, who actually died in extreme poverty. In fact he could not get proper copyright issues in place for Dracula either, which resulted in his story getting spawned by various small time authors in different languages. The book gained its cult status after its numerous stage & feature film versions in 20^th century (most iconic ones being where actor Bela Lugosi beautifully portrayed the blood sucking Count, and W.Muranu’s unauthorized 1922 film Noseferatu, that was immensely popular & faced plagiarism charges from Stoker’s wife).

Today, we might have started thinking Vampires are loveable little dolls, who piggyback humans across mountains & make love to them in moonlit oceans (yes I am rolling my eyes Twilight lovers), but the era of Count Dracula is as un-dead as the Count himself.