Vampires

Perhaps if Abraham (Bram) Stoker (1847–1912) had not suffered from an illness that forced him to bed until he was eight, the themes of endless sleep and resurrection from the world of the dead would not have inflamed his imagination so much. The miraculous physical recovery of which he was the protagonist, capable of transforming a sick person into an athlete, has much in common with the myth of the vampire who, through blood, rejuvenates, regenerates his own tissues, reverses the course of nature.

Born in Clontarf, Ireland — formerly the land of goblins and banshee — Bram Stoker graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Trinity College and was a theater critic for The Evening Mail. He married Florence Balcombe, for some time also courted by Oscar Wilde, with whom he had an only child. He cultivated important friendships with Arthur Conan Doyle, with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Whistler, and a very close one with the actor Henry Irving, of whom he was secretary. Allusions are all too easy, it is certain that the myth of the vampire has always been placed in that aura of deviant sexuality, which goes from pedophilia — think of the children that Lucy Westenra feeds on and the vampirization of Claudia in “Interview with the Vampire” — to necrophilia, but always in a perspective of decolpevolization, decriminalization of the erotic act. From Bram Stoker to Anne Rice, down to most of the Stephenie Meyer saga, sex becomes oral, done from the waist up, in a voluptuousness that, in addition to extreme, superhuman pleasure, provides knowledge, eternal life, wisdom, beauty. At least until Bella Swan and Edward Cullen decide that one can also try to consummate the marriage, generating a small human /vampire hybrid.

The Dracula manuscript was already circulating among Stoker’s circle of friends in 1890 but was only published in 1897, after seven years of in-depth study of Balkan culture and beliefs. The novel is located in both an earlier and later tradition, it acts as a watershed, as a milestone. It is connected to Goethe, to “The Vampire” of Polidori, to the works of Ann Radcliffe, of Monk Lewis, of Maturin, of Mary Shelley, of Edgar Allan Poe and of the slightly later Rider Haggard. It tells the well-known story of Count Dracula, a nosferatu, that is, an undead of the Central European tradition. The inspiration was provided to Stoker by the Hungarian Arminius Vambéry, (and, apparently, also from a nightmare resulting from a feast of prawns), a professor who had introduced him to the legend of Vlad Tepes Dracul, the Impaler. The Irishman never visited the places he describes in his novel about him, namely Bistritza and Transylvania, but he wrote a very realistic, almost documentary novel despite the subject.

The atmospheres are gloomy and dark but the tone is clerical. It should not be forgotten that the most famous gothic novel was written by the author of “The Duties of Clerks in Petty Crime Hearings in Ireland”. The language is weighed down by a nagging attention to detail and an excessive repetition of the terms. The author dwells to reflect, linguistic imperfection creates a sense of truth, of growing anxiety and also of unusual modernity for the time.

But what matters is the creation of a mythical and archetypal character. The minor characters are not well characterized, only Dracula stands out. The vampire is evil, he is the unknown hidden in everyday life and within us but he is also the Byronic and Satanic romantic hero. Just as Lord Ruthven of Polidori was inspired by the feminine, disturbing and diabolical figure of Byron, as well as the modern vampires of Anne Rice — Louis, Lestat, Armand and the little girl Claudia, immortal doll fixed in an eternal childish image — will be surrounded by a romantic aura, of melancholy, of boundless despair, of eternal need for redemption never satisfied, even Count Dracula is enveloped in an aura of loneliness and pain. The same marginalization and gloom dissolve as the monster created by Victor Frankestein.

“I seek neither gaiety nor cheerfulness, nor the voluptuous brightness of the sunlight and the sparkling waters that are so popular with those who are young and gay. I am no longer young. And to my heart, worn out by the years of mourning for my dead, gaiety is little suited. And then, the walls of my castle are unraveling; many are the shadows, and the wind blows cold through the battlements and the broken windows. I love darkness and shadows, and as much as possible I would like to be alone with my thoughts. “

Stoker’s vampire, however, differs from that of Polidori while retaining its aristocratic melancholy. The bond with animals and the forces of nature is accentuated, in particular with the wolf, a bond that will then be taken up by Meyer in the vampire Edward / werewolf Jacob dichotomy.

Count Dracula will die at the hands of Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker and his death will mean atonement. The same redemption that, in Coppola’s beautiful film, Dracula will receive from Mina, the reincarnation of his lost woman. The film, in fact, more than ever focuses on the combination of love and death, eros and thanatos, so dear to romantic and decadent atmospheres.

“What will console me as long as I live was seeing on his face, right at the moment of final dissolution, an expression of peace that I never imagined I could see.”

More than a real literary work, we can speak of a myth, an archetype that crosses tradition, both enriches, changes and, at the same time, becomes fixed, to every rewrite, to every cinematographic or theatrical adaptation. The atmospheres are the same, haunted and ghosted, traceable to Emily Brönte, with the moors of Yorkshire turning into the snowy cliffs of the Carpathians.

“We soon found ourselves enclosed in the trees, which in some places intersected in an arch on the road, so much so that it seemed to pass through a tunnel. Once again, large rocks frowned upon us, escorting us gruffly to the right and left. Although we were sheltered, I felt the wind rise, it moaned and whistled among the rocks, and the branches of the trees collided with each other as we passed. It was getting colder and colder, and an intangible snow began to fall, soon ourselves and all around us we were covered with a white mantle. The piercing wind still carried the howling of the dogs, but it grew fainter as we proceeded on our path. The cry of the wolves rang out closer as if they were encircling us. “

Each place (the count’s castle, Lucy Westenra’s house, Carfax) corresponds to a killing. The death of Lucy, an innocent victim, discriminates between those who are unaware, and therefore at the mercy of evil, and those who know it in order to fight it. Lucy is the decadent prototype of violated innocence, of corrupted purity, of the crumpled flower with a subtly erotic and forbidden perfume. Mina is not very different in the book but she acquires more depth and romantic value in Coppola’s film, embodying the love that goes beyond death, becoming the instrument through which Providence works.

The structure of the narrative exploits the epistolary form but not only, using, in addition to letters, also telegrams and newspaper articles, in an already very modern game of facets. The narrator is multiple.

“The story, therefore, is not made by the voice of a single narrator, but of many, and these have not only a hypothetical reader as their referent, but from time to time themselves (through the diary, a sort of rethinking and fixing of events), another character (through the reading of the diaries of others and through the exchange of letters and telegrams) and only in the last resort the reader who, like an accidental spectator or witness, indirectly becomes aware of the events. “ (Paola Faini)