dracula & vlad

7/27/2019 Dracula & Vlad

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Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, Were They the Same?

Bram Stokers Dracula, a dark gothic novel, was first published in 1897 and has

been recognized as a classic horror tale of all times. It is a brilliantly sensational book,

that causes a chill to run down ones spine even today with its spooky atmosphere and

imaginative plot. It is dark Gothic at its best, a brilliant, imaginative and can't-put-down

work of art. Many of the readers, who have enjoyed this book immensely, may not be

aware that Dracula is not altogether a character out of the imagination of Bram Stokers

creative mind, but rather is inspired by a high born and very prominent member of the

Romanian Court, known as Vlad the Impaler. There are enough hints on Bram Stokers

Dracula to show that Stoker had indeed been aware of the existence of Vlad Dracula, and

that he had borrowed more from him than a mere name (McNally and Florescu, 1972).

Bram Stoker based his Dracula upon a historical personage; Stoker modeled aspects

of the character Renfield upon a monastic chronicles description of Draculas behaviour

in prison. Stoker derived certain particulars of his shocker, like Draculas attendance of

the Devils school at Sholomance, from Emily de Laszowska-GerardsLand Beyond the

Forest; Stoker used, with deliberation and skill, a number of characteristically East-

European folk beliefs (Kirtley, 1956). It is therefore, a reasonable assumption that while

writing of Count Dracula Stoker had Vlad as a role model for the protagonist of his story.

Vlad, ironically, is perceived as much more horrifying than his fictional clone as per

some historians; the Romanians, however, have mixed reactions. Bram Stokers Dracula

was a century old, fanged vampire who wore black cloaks, seduced other mens women


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and sucked blood, but the historical figure known as Vlad the Impaleroutperformed the

literary figure in dreadfulness. He had a particular craze for impaling his victims, and

they numbered by the thousand, on sharp pointed stakes. Stokers Dracula is dreadful,

mysterious and a vampire, but he kills to survive, or it can be best described as,

something he did for a reason. While Vlad the Impalerwas a sadist who derived pleasure

form sufferings of his enemies he killed to feel powerful. At the same time he too is

considered to be a champion and hero by his countrymen for the battles he waged for the

liberty and sovereignty of his country against the Turks and the Hungarians. He was not a

real Vampire but Bram Stokers Dracula has plenty of shades that characterize the

historical character of Vlad, orVlad the Impaleras he was called later. There are

references to his character in the novel as Stokers Dracula refers to an ancestor who had

done something shameful as bringing slavery to his people by his terrible mistake. Vlad

also had a history of such a relative, a brother who did something similar to what Dracula

alluded. His method of ruling was cruel and bloodthirsty, perhaps it was his own paranoia

of his position as a supreme ruler being snatched away, and that caused such manic desire

for tyranny and sovereignty.

The fact is that whatever un-endearing characteristics he might have had, Vlad

Dracula was not a vampire (Shaw, 1986). The historical Dracula is something of a

Romanian national hero, having been the victim both of the Hungarians and the Turks he

fought for the independence of his country and thus been seen as a martyr in the early

Wallachian independence against these two powerful neighbors. All of Vlads brutality

would have been lost in the dust of history were it not for the fact that Vlads excesses,

fiendish brutality directed not only against his enemies but also against the highly

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influential German minority in Transylvania, quickly became the subject of widespread

literary production in the German language (ibid).

This flow of German work dried up in the late sixteenth century till Bram Stoker

suddenly revived him in the guise of a cruel but thoroughly credible supernatural

bogeyman. However, there is no one to support the thought that Dracula was a fact and

not a figment of Stokers imagination. Prince Vlad, or as he was called even in his own

time,Dracula (which means "Son of the Dragon") tops the list of Romania's many, many

Christian crusaders who, in the transition years between the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance, fought to keep the Muslim Ottoman Turks out of their country.

McNally and Florescu (1972), have put together in English a considerable amount

of information about the personal life of the fifteenth century military leader and

Wallachian Prince Vlad Tsepesh (Vlad the Impaler, so called from his practice of

impaling his enemies, legendarily by the thousand, on pointed stakes and watching them

die slowly), but his historical role as a defender of Christendom against the Turks, about

his outrages against both his own subjects and his luckless prisoners of war, an about his

literary and cinematic resuscitations long centuries later as the ultimate predacious

vampire. The authors state that Romanian popular ballads and legends commemorate

Dracula, and, make him a Robin Hood style hero (p-52).

To his own countrymen and the Turks he was Vlad The Impaler, Vlad Die Tepes

(pronounced Tee-pish). Determined not to be overtaken by the intrigue of an intriguing

political underhandedness, in a world in which princes fell daily to smiling, hypocritical

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"allies," paranoia among the aristocracy was, and probably needed to be, utmost in a

sovereign's disposition. Vlad built a defense around him that dared not open kindness nor

trust to anyone. During his tenure, he killed by the droves, impaling on a forest of spikes

around his castle thousands of subjects who he saw as either traitors, would-be traitors or

enemies to the security of Romania and the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes, he slew

merely to show other possible insurgents and criminals just what their fate would be if

they became troublesome.

The impaler has been traditionally approached in Rumanian histography with

caution and ambivalent feelings. While some evaluations have been wholly negative;

others, while crediting him with grat milatary valor, have been balanced by a sober view

of his cruel internal excesses. (Stoicescu, 1976). The barbaric cruelity is described as a

ingenious military and psychological strategy in warfare and any method is good if its

aim is the strengthening of the country and defense of its liberty, the two ideals of Vlad

Tepess policy (p. 226) (see Socor, 1978).

But, Vlad Dracula was more than just a medieval despot. Biographers Radu R.

Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (1973) call him "a man of many faces". He was a

politician; a voivode (warrior); an erudite and well-learned gentleman when the occasion-

to-be fit; and, as has been indicated, he was a mass murderer. He spoke several languages

Romanian, Turkish, Latin and German and extremely adept in the use of broadsword

and crossbow. He was an equestrian, riding at the head of his attacking army like a

berserker. At three separate times, Dracula governed Wallachia, one of three Hungarian

principalities that later merged with the others Transylvania (to the north) and Moldavia

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(to the east) to become the country of Romania. Because Wallachia, his province, sat

directly above the open Danube River Plain, which separated the Ottoman Empire from

free Romania, his was the frontal defense against the non-Christian Turks. Despite his

cruelties and severe punishments, and because of his seething hatred for anything

Turkish, he is considered today a national hero by the populace. Because he died in

warfare against the foe, even fought against a brother whom he considered a sell-out to

the enemy, he is often upheld as a martyr. Statues stand in his honor, and his birthplace at

Sighisoara and resting-place at Snagov are considered almost canonical.

Vlad Tepes was a significant ruler both as the champion of law and order at home

and as Wallachias defender agains Turkish encroachment. He was a defensive loner who

did not open himself to kindness, neither did he trust anyone. Bram Stokers Dracula also

lived alone in a creepy castle and had no living being around him, before Jonathan Harker

came to visit his castle. He killed unscrupulously and impaled his victims on spikes all

around his castle to create fear and terror in the minds of people around him. Most of his

victims were innocent persons who were used as a put up for those who would have

dared to arouse his wrath. His was named Vlad the Impaler due to his senseless cruelty to

victims.

Count Dracula in Bram Stokers classic gothic tale is as sinister and cruel, with a

conquerors history behind his lineage. While Vlad loved to shed blood of his victims.

Dracula drank blood of his victims, and with the same mindless cruelty as Vlad Dracula.

Stoker creates the image of Dracula , keeping in mind Vlads erudite and multifaceted

personality. When Jonathan Harker, the British Solicitor who visits Draculas castle to

close a land deal he enters a library and finds books on every conceivable language and

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subject. In the novel, Dracula is presumed to be a well-read gentleman who knows many

languages. The place chosen as a backdrop of the novel, where Count Dracula lived is

Transylvania, which is one of the places that Vlad Dracula governed, and like a writer

true to his craft, Bram Stoker created a character with historical shades and background,

and even though Count Dracula of the novel was a fictional character, it came alive in

many versions of the film and Television adaptations.

It was no idle choice that the Irish novelist Bram Stoker in 1896 chose the factual

Impaler as the model for his nosferatu, his "undead" vampire. Although admittedly never

having set foot on Romanian soil, having done most of his research at the London

Library, it is obvious that the infamous Count Dracula emulates his historical counterpart.

Stoker chanced upon the tales of Dracula. In the manuscripts he studied, Stoker assuredly

read of the voivode Dracula, whose atrocities made the Christian Western World tremble

and whose audacity saved it from Allah.

Many 20th Century authors have accepted the connection between the Romanian

prince of fact and the bloodthirsty count of fiction, opining that Stoker merely used the

rhythmical name he discovered in the pages of old histories. They base their

interpretation primarily on two premises. The first is that Stoker's ghoul resides in a castle

in the Transylvanian Alps and not in Wallachia's foothills, the better part of some 150

miles away. The other is that the vampire is described by Stoker as being of Szekely

blood, from a race of people in the "northern country," and not of an older Wallachian

stock.

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Other writers, however, recognizing the liberties afforded by literary license, point

to the striking similarities that speak very strongly beyond coincidence. Most notable are

the references to Count Dracula's past as uttered by the fictional nobleman himself. They

paint a history parallel to Vlad Dracula's.

In the novel, when Jonathan Harker, a British solicitor, visits Dracula's castle in

Transylvania for the purpose of closing a real estate deal (the vampire is relocating to

London to pursue fresh blood), the count describes the land over which Harker has just

journeyed as "ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon and the

Turk...enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders."

In a subsequent chapter, Count Dracula relates to Harker a virtual history of his own

royal heritage. "Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race," he asks, "that we were

proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar or the Turk poured his

thousands on our frontiers we drove them back?...To us, for centuries, was trusted the

guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland; aye, and more than that, endless duty of the

frontier guard."

At one point, Count Dracula alludes to an "ancestor" who "sold his people to the

Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them!" Vlad Dracula had such a brother. There

are other tens of references, actually, throughout the novel that not-too-subtly point to

Vlad Dracula as the accurate source references to particular military campaigns in

which he took part, contemporaries with whom he acquainted, and places he visited.

Stoker uses excellent use of language to create the haunting lead, such as offering of

a crucifix by the landlady to Jonathan. This gives a subtle warning to the readers about

the imminent danger that lies ahead for Jonathan. The atmosphere is built up from the

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first chapter itself. In the book your imagination identifies with the writers imagination

as he takes you along in his journey with words such as flickering ray of lamps, white

clouds, chorus of screams, flash of lamps, very red lips, sharp looking teeth, white as

ivory, strange chill, howling dogs, cold powdery snow all these mange to lend the

desired eerie effect to the novels atmosphere. Watching a ring of wolves with white

teeth and lolling red tongues, with long sinewy limbs and shaggy hairs, it sends a real

chill up the spine. At another place they were hundred times more terrible in grim

silence which held them than even when they howled all this creates as Jonathan says,

a sort of paralysis of fear. You could feel the dread of silence even while you read.

Stokers Dracula has been a watershed novel in the genre of horror-thrillers and has

hardly ever been matched since. It is no wonder that Dracula is one of the most

understood words in the English language. In summary, had Stoker not taken his

protagonist from the crimson cloth of Vlad the Impaler, he then certainly adorned his

creation with a cloak colored amazingly close to the same hue.

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Bibliography

Bram Stokers novel Dracula (1897)

Florescu, R and McNally, RT: In Search of Dracula: A True History of Dracula andVampire Legends, Book Review by Bacil F. Kirtley The Journal of American

Folklore, Vol. 86, No. 342. (Oct. - Dec., 1973), pp. 400-401.

Florescu, R and McNally, R.T. (1973): Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler,

Hawthorn Books, New York.

Kirtley, B. (1956): Dracula, the Monastic Chronicles and Slavic Folklore; MidwestFolklore, 6 (1956), 133-139.

Shaw, F. (1986): Book Review: Der Anfang von Dracula: Zur Geschichte vonGeschichten by Dieter Harmening The Modern Language Review, Vol. 81, No. 1.(Jan., 1986), pp. 245-249.

Socor, V. Book Review: Stoicescu, N. (1976): Vlad Tepes, Bucharest, Editura AcademieiRepublicii Socialiste Romania. Slavic Review, 1978, p 337-338.

The 1977 adaptation for BBC was entitled Count Dracula and Louis Jordan

played an effective role as Count Dracula. The 1992 version by Francis Frank Cappola

Came much later when Gary Oldman challenged the role, by depicting a brilliant

characterization of Dracula. But I feel it is unfair to compare the two actors, although the

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first thing that comes to mind is , Who is the best Dracula?

In the 1977 BBC adaptation, Louis Jordan combined a subtle charm with a simmering

menace, brilliantly. He did not come across as an over the top Dracula with menacing

looks , like when Count Dracula opens the door for Jonathan , Louis looks like a normal

man and not someone who will scare the daylights out of you with fangs and red eyes.

In the original novel, there are certain specific hints as to what may come with little

details of Draculas physical appearance given in the introductory scene, such as his

aquiline nose, thin cheeks , sharp pointed canines, and horror of horrors, hair on the

palm! But in spite of the familiarity with frightful Dracula, you dont expect an ogre with

blood dripping from his mouth.

The BBC adaptation also has Louis Jordan creating the kind of a gradual

build up of the menacing side of Count Dracula. The 1977 BBC version the sets

are marvelous and it is no mean task, considering the fact that the budgets are limited

in television, unlike films. The castle manages to look creepy from inside and outside

both and the scenes were actually filmed in Whitby , which added authenticity to this

version.

There are some deviations from the novel here , as Mina and Lucy are shown as sisters,

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The scene where Draculas brides are shown feeing upon a child is not elaborated

In the novel but is shown in the BBC version, so as to create more macabre to the scenes.

But after being canned away for 25 years, this version proves to be worth the wait.

In fact Bram Stoker himself would have agreed with his books portrayal in this version.

You can call it a faithful rendition of the original novel without losing the vital

threads that held the story together.

In 1992 Frank Coppola released an adaptation of this classic novel with Gary Oldman as

the infamous Dracula. Now I must say that nothing could be a greater challenge to the

actors over the years than playing Dracula to the hilt and outshining their predecessors.

Earlier played by Bela Lugose and Christopher Lee in the earlier versions, Count

Dracula came alive on big screen once again through Gary Oldman. It is entitled

Bram Stokers Dracula presumably to pledge a claim that it is the most authentic

adaptation of the novel. The film is gorgeous with its Baroque sets and plenty of gore.

However Coppola does not rely solely on making a gruesome horror film.

He smoothly shifted his focus upon creating a tragic tale of unattainable love.

He interspersed the character of blood sucking Dracula with the emotions of a tragic

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hero who is desperate to reunite with Mina, whom he believes to be the

reincarnation of his first wife . There is a dilemma that is forced on the audience

and especially if you have read the novel before, your concept of Dracula

changes imperceptibly and rather forebodingly. The dilemma is that

Dracula is a blood sucking monster who has kidnapped Minas fianc, raped and

murdered her best friend and yet how can he become Minas object of love?

This baffles the audience, as something like this can never be a plausible start to any

relationship, whether romantic or platonic.

The music score really added a macabre thrill to the scenes. The mixture of sex and

violence, the foolproof formula to pull audience to the movie hall or pick up a

DVD is used extensively by Frank Coppola in his adaptation. Although the novel

doesnt elaborate on sex scenes between Mina and Dracula, in the film version

the screen almost scorched as Gary Oldman (Dracula ) and Winona Ryder (Mina)

enact the scenes.

I the novel I come across the word Undead for the first time in chapter 15 when Van

Helsing opens the coffin, and I feel that the usage is spooky, morbidly amusing and yet

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curious. In the film adaptations this word doesnt send across any special chill to my

bones as the familiarity had already bred the contempt

In the novel Draculas bride were always stopped by him from feeding upon Jonathan

as the Count told them that he belonged to him first. In the novel no intercourse

happens between Dracula and Lucy, but in the film she is shown as having intercourse

and also enjoying it as he feeds upon her blood. In the novel Mina never tries to seduce

Count Dracula, but in the film she falls in love with him.

But apart from few major omissions and deviations, this film is honest to the

book, and is replete with the power to titillate, repulse, excite and keep the audience

riveted with bone chilling imagery, brilliant cinematography, and background music.

The stark play of shadows and colour along with a memorable acting by Gary Oldman

makes this version a seamless and impressive film that does full justice to the original

book. The atmosphere created on the screen is true to its evocative brilliance in the

novel. In this adaptation Gary owns the character of Dracula by adding refreshing

connotations and intimidating allusions to what Bram Stokers Dracula must have been.

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