A person at the beginning of the third millennium needs myths - that is what contemporary ethnographers and folklorists gathered in the small Romanian town of Sighișoara, where the III International Congress of Dracula Researchers took place in mid-May, believe. Correspondents of the weekly Itogi attended this unusual event and learned about Dracula perhaps more than even Bram Stoker knew.
Prototypes of Dracula
It turns out that the famous Irishman had never even been to Romania. He had only seen it on a map. He sat down to write the novel under the impression of stories heard from soldiers of the Austrian army, who in the nineteenth century marched triumphantly through Transylvania. At that time, the local rural population thoroughly regaled the soldiers with horror stories about house spirits, evil spirits, devils, vampires, and other unclean forces. An unkind reputation about Transylvania spread throughout Europe. The most surprising thing is that even a century and a half later, tales of evil forces are alive in Romanian folklore. Today, if you find yourself in this country, you will learn approximately the same thing that the Austrian soldiers once heard. Locals will reluctantly tell you about house spirits terrorizing their homes, as well as how their ancestors in the Middle Ages dealt with dead people suspected of connections with unclean forces.
Professor of history, doctor of ethnology Ioan Preavyanu, having thoroughly studied this subject, asserts that it was customary before burial to pierce such people's hearts with a knife. If this was not done, it was believed that the buried person did not die even underground. He simply fell asleep, and his soul came out at night. These were the vampires.
In Romania there still exists a custom, perhaps wild for our understanding, but nevertheless rooted since ancient times: seven years after a person's death, his grave is dug up, and the preserved bones are sprinkled with holy water. Allegedly, otherwise the person becomes a house spirit. So, according to Professor Preavyanu, old people told him that when some graves were opened, the dead in them lay turned over. People had no doubt that the deceased had a connection with the devil.
When you hear such things from a serious scientist, you perfectly begin to understand Bram Stoker, who was so impressed that he wrote a spine-chilling novel. But any novel needs a hero. Positive or negative - that is already a secondary question. And Stoker looks for such a hero, as a result everything is turned upside down, and Transylvania receives the status of a fiefdom of unclean forces.
Stoker studied (though superficially) the history of Transylvania, and he came across a mention of a wealthy lord Vlad Dracula. In Romanian, dracule means 'devil, demon'. Where did such a nickname come from? It turns out that this voivode, who lived in the 15th century, showed himself to be a real beast in battles with the Turks, who plagued the Romanians. For his military merits, he was accepted into the Order of the Dragon and honored with such a terrible name. But, of course, he did not drink blood, did not climb sheer walls, and died a natural death. Stoker was not embarrassed by this. It was enough that a distant historical character had such a suitable name.
Stoker also did not know that Vlad Dracul had brought into the world a very, very 'worthy' offspring, who received the name Vlad at birth in honor of his father. Later, among the people, he got the nickname Vlad Tepes (the Impaler). The son, frankly, outdid his father. He must have tried hard to earn such recognition among the people! At the age of 20-25, he becomes the ruler of Wallachia and, just like Ivan the Terrible, begins to deal with the boyars he disliked, who were just waiting for any convenient moment to eliminate the young ruler or harm him in every possible way. Vlad Tepes knew no mercy. He beats the Turks in battles, defends the interests of domestic merchants, impales his own citizens for banditry and corruption, and thus makes enemies - both internal and external, which became a fertile ground for creating all sorts of speculations around him. But theft was put to an end, and, probably, it is not by chance that some members of the modern Romanian parliament dream of Vlad Tepes returning to their land.
He subdued his enemies with very unpopular methods. For example, he would invite a boyar to the table, ply him with wine, and order the drunken man's head to be cut off. There was a certain gradation. Tepes took the lives of rich citizens and citizens of moderate means in different ways. He forced the rich man to dig his own grave - during this time a funeral prayer was read - and when the grave was dug to a sufficient depth, the unfortunate man's head was cut off and he was pushed down. Tepes, without much ceremony, impaled the less well-off or personally pierced them with an iron stake right through the heart. While the unfortunate writhed in their death throes, the cruel ruler invited his soldiers to the banquet table and treated them to wine. Their glasses trembled in their hands with fear, as the chronicles say.
Tepes was already more suitable for the role of a bloodsucker, naturally, not in the direct sense of the word. Moreover, modern researchers believe that it was the ruler Vlad Tepes who served as the model for the novel written by Stoker. But, we repeat, Stoker knew nothing about such a person as Vlad Tepes, although the whole world is sure that he knows everything about him.
How Myths Are Born
We have already said that the Irishman saw Romania only on a map. Thinking about where exactly the action of his book should take place, Stoker randomly poked his finger at the map. The finger landed on the town of Bistrița in the north of Romania. And here is what came of it.
Nikolae Paduraru, chairman of the Transylvanian society "Dracula", says: "Around the 1960s, Stoker's novel gained wild popularity. And people flocked to Romania, wanting to personally visit the places described on the pages of the book. They came to Bistrita but, to their disappointment, saw neither a scary castle nor the "Golden Crown" hotel. Tourists resented us Romanians, saying: 'You are simply mocking us, you know everything but tell us nothing.' Eventually, everyone got tired of this situation. Demand for exoticism grew, and neither local travel agencies, nor local historians, ethnologists, or historians could satisfy people's thirst to know everything about evil spirits. Specialists from the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore and the Institute of History in Bucharest began to look into how justified are the claims about Romania as the cradle of evil spirits."
While scientists conducted their research, the organizations responsible for receiving tourists did not waste time. The director of the travel and excursion bureau in Bistrita, tired of fending off annoying questions like "Where did Dracula live here?", one fine day came to the city authorities and laid out his cunning plan: "Gentlemen, we have only one hotel in the city. Why don't we rename it the "Golden Crown"?"
And so they did. The tourists were immensely pleased. But the main thing was missing - the gloomy castle. What won't you do for a client, and so in the 20th century they decided to build a medieval castle in Bistrita. While the structure was growing, restless fans of Stoker's novel from all over the world continued to travel around Romania in search of the vampire's lair. And as a result of these searches, a new myth was born. They say that once a group of American Dracula admirers drove into the small town of Bran, where tourists almost went crazy with overwhelming delight. On the mountain at whose foot Bran nestles, their eyes beheld a magnificent medieval castle, stern and mysterious, overwhelming with its grandeur and inaccessibility. "Here it is - Dracula's castle!" cried the exalted Yankees. And since then, Bran Castle has been called nothing other than Dracula's Castle.
As you understand, this castle has not the slightest relation either to Dracula or to his possible historical prototypes. True, with one small exception. Historians consider it likely that Vlad Tepes may have passed through Bran Castle a couple of times, since it is known that on his orders the city of Brasov, located 20 kilometers from here, was burned twice. Tepes could have directed his actions from the castle.
However, nothing prevents Bran Castle from being considered Dracula's residence today. At least, it is listed as such in all promotional tourist brochures on Romania. Crowds of tourists come here with one goal - to visit Dracula. Instead, they find themselves in the summer residence of the Romanian kings, whose scariest exhibit is a stuffed bear spread out on the floor.
Nevertheless, the castle's servants assure that the atmosphere here is mystical. They do not go into details, and what exactly the mysticism consists of is not entirely clear. Ioan Praveanu, who worked as the castle director for 17 years, says: people believe that ghosts supposedly inhabit the castle. He himself, however, has not seen them, but it is possible that the castle's inhabitants have seen them. For example, historians assure that one of the princesses who lived in the castle in the 20th century once saw something at night that caused her mind to be finally and irrevocably damaged.
Congress routine
The congress of researchers of this character, which is held once every four years, necessarily in May, is called upon to separate truth from fiction in the myths about Dracula. The fact is that the novel's action takes place in this very month. Who gathers for such events? When we arrived in Sighisoara, we were quite surprised that the congress was held within the walls of the city hall, and the city mayor himself, Dorin Danesan, gave a welcoming speech at the congress. The composition of the congress participants is nothing but professors and academics from around the world.
The main theme of all reports was devoted to discussing the topic of fear in all its manifestations. If you want, talk about Dracula; if you want, about claustrophobia. Everyone was free to choose any topic they liked. For example, English professor Victoria Amador reflected on the fear of aging among American actresses. Spanish professor Julio Angel Olivares Merino spent a whole hour talking about how scary it must be to be buried alive. They were waiting for the arrival of a Japanese professor from Ritsumeikan University, Mashimo Atsushi, who for many years studied the topic of evil spirits in the literature and folklore of Japan, but his plans to visit Romania were thwarted by the fear of atypical pneumonia.
The presentations of Romanian scholars in one way or another hovered around their national hero - Dracula. Professor Silvio Angelescu from the Institute of Art History in Bucharest tried to figure out who is scarier - vampires or house spirits. Dr. Silvia Hitimia from the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore assured listeners that the fear of vampires haunts people to this day.
Chairman of the Transylvanian society "Dracula" Nicolae Paduraru, who knows Stoker's novel by heart, directed the work of the congress. "Do you want to join our society?" he suggested to a correspondent of Itogi. "For that you need very little: just to have fangs like a vampire's. Just kidding!" But he really had no time for joking. He was constantly calling somewhere, running off, bursting into the conference hall, then finding himself at the bar, where he would gulp down a cup of coffee on the move, and dash off forgetting to pay, then run back into the bar, pay for the coffee, and only then remember that coffee was free for congress participants. This example alone gives an idea of how intense the congress's work was. Between reports, speakers nervously smoked two or three cigarettes in the corridors of the city hall, while on the windowsills laptop owners showed each other Dracula comics on their screens. In the evenings, congress participants relaxed. Some went on a night tour of the old houses of Sighisoara connected to Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad Tepes, some went to listen to organ music, and others indulged in gastronomic pleasures at the Dracula restaurant. It is said that the "Transylvanian" cocktail was especially popular, made from the following ingredients: 50 ml of type I blood, 30 ml of type II blood, 20 ml of type III blood, lemon, and ice. So it is written on the menu. What the cocktail is actually mixed from, no bartender in Sighisoara will tell you.
It is said that at the previous congress, participants amused themselves in the following way: at the local cemetery they howled at the Moon. This time, fortunately, it did not come to that - cloudy weather prevented it.
Universal "Draculization"
"We are proud that Stoker's novel has such success," says Nicolae Paduraru. And this pride is understandable. Exploiting the name of Dracula to the fullest is beneficial in every respect. Romania's tourism minister Matei Agathon Dan proposed building a "Dracula Park" or "Draculaland" near Sighisoara. The sale of shares in this project has already begun in Romania. Their emission totaling $5 million is the first step toward financing the project to create a park of scary entertainment. One of the first shareholders, by the way, was the country's prime minister, Adrian Nastase. It is planned that on an area of 130 hectares there will be another Dracula castle and a huge number of various attractions and entertainment venues.
The Transylvanian society "Dracula" in the future sees the possibility of creating in Sighisoara an international institute of vampinology with libraries and conference halls for meetings of Dracula fans.
Romanian public opinion is ambiguous about such projects. Realizing that their implementation, on the one hand, could bring the country considerable money, Romanians fear that, on the other hand, the "Draculization" of Romania's image abroad is not at all what the country, striving to integrate into European structures, needs. In the end, it is up to the Romanians themselves to decide which path to take, but they should remember that playing with evil forces is a very, very risky business.