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The Originality of Bram Stoker's Character Count Dracula: An Addendum

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/notesj/gjt226

1471-6941

A W Collins,

Historical and Scientific Studies

IN a recent article in Notes & Queries I challenged the widespread idea that Bram Stoker’s character of Count Dracula in the original novel (1897) was merely a vampire version of Vlad the Impaler (or Vlad Tepes). That view is ubiquitous in popular culture, and until recently has found strong support in scholarly study of the novel by biographers and literary critics.1 Recent scholars have started to rebel against the association,2 but, as I demonstrated,3 they have still missed the explicit evidence that Count Dracula was deliberately imagined by Stoker as a later member of a ‘Dracula dynasty’, distinct from the clear figure in the novel who is based on Vlad the Impaler. In the mind of Stoker, Count Dracula was not a fictionalized Vlad the Impaler. I adduce below another clear passage in the novel that strongly confirms this interpretation. Stoker’s only proven source for information on Vlad the Impaler was derived from William Wilkinson’s An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (London 1820), although Wilkinson did not use the name ‘Vlad Tepes’ or ‘Vlad the Impaler’. Wilkinson refers to three ‘Draculas’, as follows: Stoker read Wilkinson’s book, and then invented two distinct characters with the name ‘Dracula’ for his novel: In the speech which Count Dracula himself gives on Transylvanian history in his castle to Jonathan Harker, the Count describes both his earlier relation and himself: Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the ‘bloody sword,’ or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent, who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! [viz., Wilkinson’s Vlad the Impaler—author] Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, [viz., Vlad the Impaler—author] who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land, who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! [viz., Count Dracula—author; my emphasis] They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys—and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains, and their swords—can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach … (Chapter III, Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 8 May; Leatherdale, Dracula Unearthed, 67–8).