thinking abt know how close the world came to having one of the undisputed classics of gothic literature be a book about a guy named count wampyr the vampire
as I understand it the name dracula first occurs relatively late in bram stoker’s drafts of the novel (dracula scholars seem to be universally against the draft name)
(david j. skal, ‘something in the blood,’ 2016 / robert eighteen-bisang & elizabeth miller, 'bram stoker’s notes for dracula,’ 2008)
“When I asked the landlord if he knew Count Wampyr, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further.”
“Count Wampyr?’ He bowed in a courtly way as he replied: –
‘I am Wampyr; and I bid you welcome, Mr Harker, to my house.”
“The light and warmth and Count Wampyr’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears.”
“The last I saw of Count Wampyr was his kissing his hand to me; with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.”
I. Letter to President Incorporated Law Society Letter from [ditto] to Abraham Aaronson solicitor enclosing copy of reply Letter to Aaronson from Count ___ Styria asking to come or send trustworthy law who does not speak German Letters from latter to his principal with inter alia letters to his pal (In this series of letters is told visit to Castle — Munich Dead house — people on train knowing address dissuade him — met at station storm arrive old castle — left in courtyard driver disappears Count appears — describe old dead man made alive waxen colour dead dark eyes — what fire in them — not human — hell fire — Stay in castle. No one but old man but no pretence of being alone — old man in waking trance — Young man goes out sees girls one tries to kiss him not on lips but throat Old Count interferes — rage & fury diabolical — This man belongs to me I want him. A prisoner for a time — looks at books — English law directory sortes Virgilianae central place marked with point of knife. Instructed to buy property — requirement consecrated church on grounds — near river
it may be near the beginning but the may 16th journal entry of ‘dracula’ is the beating heart of the whole novel – it’s the inception point around which the entire story is built
in every draft and outline, in all the 7 years that bram stoker was writing it, the narrative climax when, after long paragraphs charged with palpable lust and dread, the count thrusts back the weird sisters and claims jonathan harker as his own is the single point of consistency
in support of the above claim:
(sir christopher frayling, preface to the revised penguin edition of 'dracula,’ 2003 / david j. skal, 'something in the blood,’ 2016)
it’s basically like when you have one really good idea for a hot scene or a powerful line and you write a whole novel-length story around it just to justify it
bram stoker had one sexy idea in his whole life and it scared him so much he wrote 'dracula’
thinking abt know how close the world came to having one of the undisputed classics of gothic literature be a book about a guy named count wampyr the vampire
as I understand it the name dracula first occurs relatively late in bram stoker’s drafts of the novel (dracula scholars seem to be universally against the draft name)
(david j. skal, ‘something in the blood,’ 2016 / robert eighteen-bisang & elizabeth miller, 'bram stoker’s notes for dracula,’ 2008)
For all my Dracula Daily folks who might not read 19th Century lit on the regular “making a hasty toilet” means like … “I freshened up quickly before dinner because I just spent hours and hours on a dusty road and feel kind of gross” not “I am telling you explicitly that I took a shit and was hasty about it”
it may be near the beginning but the may 16th journal entry of ‘dracula’ is the beating heart of the whole novel – it’s the inception point around which the entire story is built
in every draft and outline, in all the 7 years that bram stoker was writing it, the narrative climax when, after long paragraphs charged with palpable lust and dread, the count thrusts back the weird sisters and claims jonathan harker as his own is the single point of consistency
in support of the above claim:
(sir christopher frayling, preface to the revised penguin edition of 'dracula,’ 2003 / david j. skal, 'something in the blood,’ 2016)
“I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young*; and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.”
dracula really said “give me the creepiest oldest biggest darkest most haunted possible house on the fucking planet” and peter hawkins said “yes sir right away sir we’ve got one right here”
at least he actually wants to live in it. dracula may be a dracula but i suppose even he can draw the line at house-flipping and gentrification
Hey, so I’m super excited that Dracula Daily is a thing, but I feel like I should warn people that one of the main characters in the novel is a guy that drinks peoples blood. It’s kinda creepy! And it’s kinda scary. So watch out. Because he does do that. And it is important to the plot. So maybe turn your night lights on in preparation.
I’ve started Dracula Daily and there’s a lot of posts going around about how this book is so “unintentionally funny” because of the dramatic irony of the readers knowing who Dracula is (nowadays) and nobody in the book knowing who Dracula is. I take umbrage with this because it’s not only assuming that the book isn’t really good as well as funny on its own merits, intentionally, but because it makes a critical error: it is wrong to assert that nobody in Draculaknows who Dracula is because Dracula in Draculaknows who Dracula is and he literally introduces himself by saying he’s early because “the dead travel fast” and he’s fucking with Jonathan the whole way to the castle. He’s doing all of this on purpose because he’s Dracula and knows he’s Dracula and he’s having a goddamn blast and so am I
not sure why specifically there’s so much scholarly pushback against reclaiming dracula as a romantic figure: he is clearly written that way in the book, as ambiguously charismatic in terms of his looks as he is clearly amoral, and the vampire genre itself began as a romantic thing (polidori’s lord ruthven and le fanu’s carmilla are both intensely and explicitly romantic figures- this is not debatable). i don’t know where this denial of dracula’s inherent romanticism comes from but we really ought to move past it as a literary movement because it doesn’t give the character, his historicity, and- i believe- stoker’s intention any credit whatever.
lucy westenra was a fallen figure before dracula, she was too human, she was too fallible, she felt his coming because she was innately like him (he with his three brides, she with her three suitors), she is unafraid of suicide, she is cycles between being nourished by vampiric attentions and being drained by them. she says of perfectly right mind “his red eyes again! they are just the same” as if recalling the look of a lover and not a monster. she was predisposed to sleepwalking because of her father. the sins of the father are visited upon their sons. and in the absence of sons are visited upon daughters predisposed towards independence, towards ineffable minds which baffle even psychologists accustomed to madmen, daughters who are impenetrable to men unless those men are not-men, unless they are to men what that daughter is to conventional womanhood: apart, neither of the world or apart from it, both condemned by holiness and blessed in morbidity.
when jonathan encounters the brides of dracula their voices are “honey-sweet”, “with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood” and when lucy sleepwalks to the cemetery seat she saw “something long and dark with red eyes…and something very sweet and very bitter all around me at once”: but unlike jonathan she does not recognize this as an evil thing even in the throes of near-sexual ecstasy. it is only ecstasy because it provides escape from the mundane, in which she as a woman is permanently trapped: men are not. so too does she not fear dogs or wolves, when she sees a struck dog she is “full of pity…but looked at it in an agonized way”- a sign of her sensitive nature, her deplorable ability to see beyond monstrosity, an ability both good and evil (echoed by her flippant disregard for the horrors of the grave of a suicide being below the seat she occupies with mina, only “it is my favourite seat, and i cannot leave it”). she possesses a preternatural enchantment with the bittersweet, unlike jonathan who apparently maintains his ability to recognize the bittersweet as an amoral thing, both seductive and terrible.
thanks to daily dracula I’ve just now for the first time clocked the fact that dracula is already shepherding jonathan harker at the point where the book begins
that dog howling under the window is the count for sure – “queer dreams” are a sign of his presence throughout the novel
if we accept that something like the short story ‘dracula’s guest’ was originally the first chapter of dracula – and it definitely was – then it’s like obvious in fact this must be true
