De strigis, quae non sunt...

While browsing a number of articles, I started re-reading the old paper by Tekla Dömötör De strigis, quae non sunt... (published in 1975 in Miscellanea Prof. Em. Dr. K. C. Peters). As a Dane, i.e. living in Scandinavia, I can't help being a bit amused when he notes that 'man sich während meiner Auslandreisen, besonders in Skandinavien immer für die ungarischen Vampire interessierte, und meine Antwort, daß nämlich im ungarischen Volksglauben keine Vampire-Gestalt lebe, immer mit der größten Bezweiflung empfangen wurde. In short, while traveling abroad, particularly in Scandinavia, people Professor Dömötör met always showed an interest in the Hungarian vampire, and always questioned Dömötör's claim that there was no such thing in Hungarian folk belief!

Dömötör quotes two chapters from Calmet, and notes concerning the Kisiljevo vampire case that the locations are located in (what was back then) modern Yugoslavia. He is, however, unable to locate 'Medreiga', at least there was no haiduk town with a name similar to that, but he provides us with some interesting information on the haiduks. He also mentions that names like 'Arnold Paul', 'Stanoska', 'Jotuitzó', and 'Millo' aren't Hungarian names.

Today it is well-known that this vampire case happened in Serbia, but much confusion originates from the references to 'Hungary' and certain other countries and locations in many books on vampires.

The Kiss

It's really very interesting to be able to study Stoker's Notes. It allows one to see what material inspired e.g. Christopher Frayling to claim that Stoker's book actually must have been inspired by a dream:

'Above all, the 'Notes' in the Rosenbach Foundation confirm, beyond any doubt, that the dream (was is really a nightmare?) from which the novel eventually emerged was there from the very beginning.

In March 1890 Bram Stoker wrote on a piece of scrap paper, in handwriting which he always called 'an extremely bad hand': 'young man goes out - sees girls one tries - to kiss him not on the lips but throat. Old Count interferes - rage and fury diabolical. This man belongs to me I want him.' Six days later, he reiterated: 'Loneliness, the Kiss "this man belongs to me" '. Again, in February 1892, in one of the many 'structures' he scribbled down: 'Bistritz - Borgo Pass - Castle - Sortes Virgil - Belongs to me'. And in shorthand, again and again, over the next few years: '& the visitors - is it a dream - women stoop to kis him. terror of death. Suddenly Count turns her away - "this man belongs to me" '; 'May 15 Monday Women kissing'; 'Book 1 Ch 8 Belongs to me'.

Whatever the changes that happened between 1890 and 1897 to the novel's beginning, its characters, its villain, its locations and its length, one incident and one alone remained constant right up to the publication day, the incident which occurs when, as Jonathan Harker recalls in his Journal entry for 15 May, 'I suppose I must have fallen asleep; I hope so, but I fear ... I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep.' ' (Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1991), p. 301).

So now, those pieces of paper are easily available, and going through the Notes brings back memories of hours spent on this subject in my youth. With Leslie S. Klinger's new annotated edition of Dracula being published soon, perhaps it's time to re-read the novel which somehow got me started on my own search for information about vampires and magia posthuma some thirty years ago.


Here, by the way, is a new comic book adaptation of that famous scene.

The creation of a modern myth

In 1897, Bram Stoker was asked if there is any historical basis for the vampire legend. He answered:

'It rested, I imagine, on some such case as this. A body may have been dug up and found alive, and from this a horror seized upon the people, and in their ignorance they imagined that a vampire was about.'

It is well known that Stoker was inspired by Emily Gerard's article on 'Transylvanian Superstitions', and as I have mentioned in an earlier post, this was where he found the word 'nosferatu' that he immortalized as a synonym for 'vampire', although no such word actually exists in Transylvania.

But now anyone interested in how Stoker shaped the modern literary vampire with his Count Dracula, is able to study his working notes and literary sources in a remarkable book that I have just received: Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition annotated and transcribed by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller with a foreword by Michael Barsanti (published by McFarland).

The above interview is quoted in the overview at the end of the book, where the authors also tell us that 'Stoker did more writing and research on vampires before his vacation in Whitby than many people have assumed. The Notes confirm that he began working on a vampire novel before he discovered the name "Dracula" or chose Transylvania as the monster's homeland.' (p. 284)

In his foreword, former associate director of the Rosenbach Foundation where the notes are kept, Michael Barsanti writes that 'Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula are one of the greatest treasures in the Rosenbach Museum & Library - a small house that has been converted into a museum and rare-book library on a shady, residential street in the center of Philadelphia. The Notes are kept in a specially-made box in company with manuscripts by Stoker's fellow Dubliners Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, as well as Joseph Conrad, Lewis Carroll, and other famous writers.'

The Notes were originally first mentioned in a popular book in the late Seventies, but have been studied intensely by a some researchers over the past few years, and many popular myths about Dracula have been debunked, as I have already mentioned in a couple of posts like this one. However, now that the Notes are available to the general reader, anyone with an interest in the genesis of Dracula can study Stoker's hand written and machine typed notes. They give an invaluable insight into what Stoker actually knew about vampires and the so-called 'historical Dracula', as well as knowledge on how the plot and characters developed. It is e.g. quite delightful to see how he initially intended the count to be called Count Wampyr, but later on replaced 'Wampyr' with 'Dracula'!

Apart from the facsimile reproduction and transcription of the Notes, the book contains an overview of the characters, the plot, and the sources. It also contains a short biography and bibliography of Stoker's works, and the 1888 entry on Vampire from the Encyclopedia Britannica which mostly deals with the vampire bat, although both Ranft and Calmet are briefly mentioned.

The Notes, of course, provide no insights into the original vampire cases or the 17th and 18th century magia posthuma, but they allow us to come as close as will probably ever be possible to know how Stoker actually developed his vampiric count and in doing so influenced modern popular culture.

In an essay on 'The Myth of Dracula', the authors try to give a clue to why Dracula has proved to be so popular. As they say, 'Many literary critics are baffled by Dracula's undying popularity.' The Notes will hardly answer that question, but as the authors say:

'Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula not only reveal the genesis of a novel but serve as the first tentative steps in the creation of a modern myth. They provide a wealth of insights into this tale of "spiritual pathology", which transcends its author's talents as a writer to speak to us today in the timeless language of myth.'

Consequently, I can only highly recommend this important book to anyone interested in gaining that insight.

More from Equiamicus

Fellow blogger Equiamicus keeps offering new posts on 18th century sources on his blog and web site, so I don't think I need to do more than just recommend frequent visits to his blog (or better still, subscribing to feeds from it).

A note on comments

I received another comment to a previous post concerning the True Blood series. Initially I said, OK, I'll let one or two comments pass, even though I wasn't very happy about the contents, but the last was pretty hateful, so I'm not going to publish that one.

From the start, I decided to moderate all comments because I don't want to be flooded by useless or hateful comments, so after receiving this last pretty annoying comment, I've decided that in the future I'll only publish comments that I find useful. Fortunately, this has never been a big issue, but I just wanted to say this in public, so I can refer to this policy if necessary. So please keep comments 'clean' and informative :-)

Medveđa (Trstenik)

If you wish to know a bit about modern Medvedja, you can read about Medveđa (Trstenik) in the Serbian Wikipedia (ВИКИПЕДИЈА). It's not very informative, but the same goes for the entry on Kukljin.

That porphyria theory is hard to put to rest...

In the spring 2006 issue of the Polish journal Foton there is yet another paper (A Vampire Story: Science, Folklore and Beyond by Bakó, Gudowska-Nowak and Smoluchowski) speculating whether the vampire cases could be explained by Porphyria. The authors don't make a better case for this, honestly, absurd theory than so many others have done. Still, it's interesting to read their short review of the 18th century vampire debate, including the vitalist-animalist school of Georg Ernst Stahl. The illustrations and the usual quote from Montague Summers ('Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons...') don't make their case more sound.

'Vampire tourism'

Here is an example of 'vampire tourism', which is apparently very popular. Personally, I would go elsewhere, as should be obvious from many of the places mentioned in this blog.

W.S.G.E.

Nicolaus Equiamicus has added yet another source to his collection of contemporary texts on the 18th century vampires: an excerpt from Kurioser und sehr wunderbarer Bericht, von denen sich neuerdings in Serbien zeigenden Blutsaugern oder Vampiren (d. i. Curieuse und sehr wunderbare Relation von denen sich neuer Dingen in Servien erzeigenden Blut-Saugern oder Vampyrs),aus authentischen Nachrichten und mit philosophischen Erwägungen begleitet by W. S. G. E., originally published in 1732. Like the title of the book, the German text has been modernized to make it more easy to read and understand for the modern reader.

The conquest of Belgrade 1717

From the English Wikipedia entry on Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736):

'After Eugene took the Banat fortress of Temesvár in mid-October 1716 (thus ending 164-years of Turkish rule), the Austrian commander turned his attention to the next year’s campaign and to what he considered the main goal of the war, Belgrade. Situated at the confluence of the Rivers Danube and Save, Belgrade held a garrison of 30,000 men under Mustapha Pasha. The siege progressed steadily, but by the first days of August 1717 a huge Turkish field army under Halil Pasha (150–200,000 strong) had arrived on the plateau east of the city to relieve the garrison. News spread through Europe of the imminent destruction of the Imperial army, yet Eugene had no intention of lifting the siege. With his men suffering from dysentery and continuous bombardment from the plateau, Eugene, aware that a decisive victory alone could relieve the army from their dangerous situation, decided to attack the relief force. On the morning of 16 August, 40,000 imperial troops marched through the fog, caught the Turks unawares, and routed Halil Pasha’s army; a week later Belgrade surrendered effectively bringing an end to the war. The victory was the crowning point of Eugene’s military career and had confirmed him as the leading European general; his ability to snatch victory at the moment of defeat had shown the Prince at his best.'

The above painting of the conquest of Belgrade by Jan van Huchtenburg shows Prince Eugene in the lower left corner. Click on the painting to view it in more detail!