The myth of Dracula

The myth of Dracula

To clarify things from the beginning, we should point out the confusion that has been created with regard to the identification of Vlad III Pockets (Vlad III Ţepeş) with bloodthirsty vampire Dracula, a purely literary creation of author Bram Stoker Dubliners ( Bram Stoker).

Well, Vlad III Pockets (Vlad III Ţepeş) or otherwise Vlad Dracula (Vlad Dracula) (November 1431 - December 1476) was the son of Princess Sneazna (Cneajna) and former voivode Vlad II Dracul (Vlad II Dracul), governor Wallachia-his nickname was Vlad II Dracul (dragon). Best known by the titles Vlad the Impaler (Vlad the Impaler) and Count Dracula, Prince of Wallachia was the years 1448, 1456-1462 and 1476. Born in 1431 in Sighisoara (Sighişoara), of Transylvania, which is known by the name Sasmpourgk (Schassburg) from the time of the Austro-Hungarian domination. He inherited the title of the Order of the Dragon granted to his father, founder of the Vlach state of the king of the Holy Roman Empire (Luxembourg) Sigkismoundo (Sigismund). The first of the knowledge got from his mother and her family, but the actual study began in 1436, when he learned the art of war and peace, which was necessary for a Christian knight. In 1438 he accompanied his father Sultan Murad II in his campaign in Transylvania where he tried to protect the local population from the depredations of the invaders, which caused suspicion of the sultan. The last imprisoned him for this reason at Gallipoli for quite a while. It was released in exchange for the hostages the sons of Vlad and Radu in 1444.

Young Vlad remained in the Ottoman Empire until 1448. During the hostage learned the Turkish language and had excellent military training. Troubled childhood formed a hard character the like of which was recorded in the annals. His father was executed by the Hungarians, which gigantic hatred against any heterodox. A primitive makiavelismos marked the historical development in the years that followed. A course painted blood of thousands of innocents. Emblem was the dragon hung from a cross. The governance of cruelty, lack of understanding, mercy, compassion and respect for each another religion item, but for every offender laws. All these combined to born a legend around his name, which laid the foundation for further distortion of his name.

Specifically, followed by the identification of the name of Vlad the bloodthirsty character of a vampire in "Dracula": a monster that oscillates between live and dead because of non-definitive separation of the soul from the body and continues through the tomb of a peculiar life, which allows him to get out at will, especially at night, looking for prey. The creation of this legend is, as we said, the Bram Stoker (Bram Stoker).

The Stoker was born in Dublin in one day in November 1847. Ampraam named as his father-an employee of the Chief Secretary's Office in the tower of Dublin, but affectionately called him "Brahms' throughout his life. As a child she was sickly and weak. So he took home his first lessons from the Reverend William Woods, who was the owner of a private school and continued to be the major professor until Brahms at age 16 in 1864, he entered at Trinity College Dublin. The acquaintance and friendship with the actor Henry Irving made him quit his job at the Irish State and the young wife Florence Anna LEMONI Balkomp, to go to London. There he worked a total of 27 years as secretary of actor Henry Irving, who had just taken the Lyreun Theater. O Henry Irving in his memories characterizes friendship with Stoker deep, close and enduring. His acquaintance with the Hungarian professor A. Vampery brings him into contact with stories surrounding the infamous Count Vlad. Now starting to study systematically the issue picking material for Transylvania and folklore for Dracula. Bram Stoker died in 1912. The novel "Dracula" was published in 1897.

The Stoker chose scenery of Transylvania Dracula because he was, and still is, a distant and chimerical country in the eyes of the English and most western European 'country beyond the forests "where anything can happen, a perfect setting for a vampire. The city as presented in the novel is the point of starting over Borgo, leading to Moldova-factual description of the actual location. Noting that Stoker received congratulations for accurate, firsthand descriptions of a country that had never seen in reality. The bond between the Dracula of Stoker and in the Bistrica is not completely fictional. There was an old family shekel in this region. The family called Orntogk, which is the Hungarian translation of the word Dracuk, or devil. In the novel, the inhabitants of Bistrica, uttering the words "Orntogk, Satan" before entering Jonathan Hacker on the trolley for passing the Borgo. The Transylvanian Sekelsi, who consider themselves descendants of East Asian race earliest the Magyars, link to their folk tradition with the bat vampyrismo while, according to Slavic folklore, the vampire moving only at night, do not appear in the mirror and repelled with the cross, things the Stoker Dracula passed to it.

The Stoker chose to tell the story through his diaries Englishman Jonathan Harker and his fiancée Mina Murray, from the diary of Lucy, and the testimony of Dr.. John Stewart recorded on phonograph, a new technique at the time. The book was an immediate success and critical if the faced lukewarm.

But let's clear things up. What is a vampire and what the vampire? Vampires and vampires are not identical, although they share some common features, since they have common myth-logical starting point, but different things, since vampires (vampires in zoology) means bat, which feeds exclusively with blood, and only at night (hence the vampire can be and animal), in contrast with the vampire always coincides with a human. The vampire is somehow an ancestor of vampire. Vamp is a truncated form of the word vampire and means "fatal woman" who determines the fate of men fascinated by it. In the movie, the word denotes a type similar to that which launched Marlene Dietrich in "Blue Angel." Also publicans are other mythical creatures, cute and witty (remember Aladdin the Thousand and One Nights), limited to cheating. O Dracula, is one and unique, and we can say that it is the literary form of the vampire myth is much later than the ancient myths of vampires and vampires. Naturally these beings from paganism, not at all like in Christianity and considered as partners of Satan and dark powers, since they act contrary (especially vampires) from the divine commandments, and shall have the privilege to give immortality where they wish. So with prayers, spells, crosses and holy water christianity battling all these dark superhuman powers. But for the ancient creatures has spoken beautifully by Plato in the "Phaedrus", which says that the soul that is not totally free from the weight, ie from around the residue got her coming out of the body, it tends to fall, just because of the weight at the point where he started its big trip to the world of ideas, the perfect and original world of every being and thing.

The history of vampires and fictional beings in literature is very old. From the eighteenth century onwards literary works whose content had a transcendent character, saying Gothic and formed a special literary genre (one stage in the English literature). The term "Gothic" is difficult to analyze, a simple explanation is that it has to do with fear but in the texts of this kind of imagination should prevail over actually strange on the banal, the supernatural over the natural and all m a determinate final purpose: to intimidate. The Gothic novel was originally a story about ghosts that had medieval atmosphere emotive. This fear is not addressed to the soul to provide some clearance but the aim is that throughout this body, muscles, glands, the skin and the circulatory system to all tarakounimena with an intense and accelerated how to create all of those physiological responses of fear.

Many women were involved with this genre and became so popular that the audience jokingly called them "Terrorist." We created the tradition of the female Gothic and the most prominent was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the George Sand and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But she gave the final form of the female Gothic was Ann Radcliffe: always the central character of the novel was a young woman who also was the victim chased and courageous heroine.

But with the emergence of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (first published in 1818) that the literary genre called Gothic began to be transformed into what we now call science fiction. The Shelley succeeded horror and mystery through the use of science, that here is not vulgar science, but the effort of a modern Prometheus as was the subtitle of the project, solving the mysteries of life and death, to relieve human from fear of dodging and give him a calmer and happier life. Nobody can doubt the good intentions of Frankenstein. The factor of horror in her book Shelley was not the ghost nor the supernatural nor delusion, but the arrogant attempt Prometheus Frankenstein agonist and violator of eternal principles to overcome the limits of himself. The plasma is initially benevolent and asks the community affection, love and understanding. And only when abandoned by a rolling pin and isolated from the community immediately becomes vile and antisocial, and that's because he sees himself pathetic and miserable that can not be enjoyed and that the values ​​of life. Both the vampire and Frankenstein's creature created almost the same time in English literature and in the same space.

It all started when Mary Shelley and her husband Percy B. Shelley, traveled to Geneva in 1816, where geitonepsan with the already located there Lord Byron. Then formed a group that consisted of Shelley, Lord, the half-sister of Mary, the Klaiar already associated with the Lord and your doctor / secretary Byron, John William Polidori.

Mary Shelley describes features wet and dismal those days, that endless hours read ghost stories until the Byron suggested they each write such a history, and a year from then meet again to read it. All promised to do. So Mary Shelley response "completely," writes the masterpiece of Frankenstein was first published in 1818. Lord Byron squeeze published in June 1819 at the end of the collection Mazeppa. The Vampire of Polidori will be published initially as a project of Byron entitled The Vampyre: Atale dy Lord Byron in April 1819 in the journal «New Monthly Magazine» and note triumphant success laminated reprints, to the wretched misery (M. Shelley, " Preface "1831) Polidori will start a hard and amid multiple mock struggle to assert his paternity.

Followed, Alexander Dumas father, who composed a drama entitled Le Vampire. In 1820 the Vampire of Nontier translated into English by JR Planch. In 1830 melodrama of Planch, The Vampire posted in Baltimore. In Melmoth the Wanderer, published by the eccentric Irish priest Robert Matsourin 1820, the hero is an amalgamation wandering Jew and Vyronis vampire. In 1847, Thomas Preston Presket published Varney the Vampire or The Feast Blood, which was well received and reprinted in 1853.

Dubliners A writer with the unusual name Tzofer Sheridan Le Phage (1814 - 1873) wrote the novelette Karmilla, one of the most important stories of vampires ever written. The description of Le torch for how someone becomes a vampire also based on the folklore of Eastern Europe. The Le Phage faithfully followed the mythology for vampires. The Stoker having read Karmilla found the key components of vampire characteristics of vampires fascinated and began to seriously investigate the mythology of vampires.

1914 Dubley Wright released the book "Vampires and Vampirism", the first comprehensive collection of vampire stories that were common to all five continents of the globe.