There are men so monstrous that they inspire characters of terrible fictions. To the point that it is difficult to differentiate fiction and reality. This is the case of Count Dracula, the central character in Bram Stoker’s book. As part of a partnership with the magazine Read, which publishes a special issue devoted to famous monsters of literature, Stéphane Bern retraces on Europe 1 the story of the character who is hidden behind the most famous vampire.
Its story is simple and effective. Jonathan Harker is a young lawyer clerk who travels to Romania to conclude a real estate transaction with Count Dracula. He finds himself trapped in the castle of this terrifying man, with a white complexion, sharp canines and able to move around by crawling on sheer walls like a lizard.
Dracula takes the opportunity to come to England where Mina, his prisoner’s wife, and Lucy, a friend, are waiting for the lawyer. Dracula sucks Lucy’s blood and tries to grab Mina as well. Then follows a chase of a group formed around Jonathan, who has managed to free himself. The novel ends with the killing of Dracula in extremis with a stab in the heart.
The dark passions behind Victorian rigor
Bram Stoker published this terrifying vampire story in 1897. He was not the first writer to take an interest in these blood-sucking undead. The 19th century, especially in England, is renowned for its great cultural gap: Victorian conformism coexists with a certain romanticism, even a secret passion for the occult sciences.
Bram Stoker himself maintains an intimate relationship with this dark universe. He has been fascinated by death since he was 5 years old. It was at this time that a violent cholera epidemic struck down many inhabitants of the North of Ireland. Gradually, he became interested in esotericism and the occult. He would even be part of a secret society, the Golden Dawn, translate Golden Dawn.
This “school”, founded at the end of the 1880s, specializes in the teaching of magic and occult sciences of the Middle Ages. Rituals are practiced there from manuscripts, such as the Book of the dead of the ancient Egyptians.
The novelist flirts with darkness. Dracula becomes his favorite subject. It suffices to read the presentation he makes of it in his novel: “his aquiline nose really gave him the profile of an eagle … The mouth, or at least what I saw under the enormous mustache, had a cruel expression. , and the teeth, dazzling with whiteness, were particularly sharp; they protruded above the lips whose bright red announced an extraordinary vitality in a man of this age. “
Dracula, a bloodthirsty son of a prince
But beyond the fantastic, Bram Stoker was largely inspired for his Count Dracula by a very real character, who lived in Romania almost 600 years ago.
Dracula is part of the name borrowed from a certain Vladislav III, or Vlad Tepes, born in 1431, in Transylvania. His father is Vlad II said Dracul, the Dragon or the Devil, depending on the translations. A name that is not devilish, but that it simply owes to the fact of having been decorated with the Order of the Dragon by Emperor Sigismund of Hungary. Vlad II is Prince of Wallachia, a principality which somehow resists the regular assaults of the powerful Ottoman Empire.
The childhood and adolescence of Vlad III are not the most cheerful. When his father is not captured by enemies, it is he who is taken prisoner for several years in Turkish jails. He is barely 13 years old. As the son of a prince, his conditions of detention are rather comfortable. But he will keep from this seclusion a taste of revenge, of combat… and of blood.
Installed at the head of Wallachia, Vlad III known as Dracula, the son of the Dragon, becomes a bloodthirsty sovereign. His other nickname is none other than the Impaler. The reason is simple: he would take malicious pleasure in torturing any opponent to his authority. Impalement would be one of his favorite punishments. The principle, if it is necessary to explain it, consists in introducing a stake in the anus of the victim who, by leverage effect, has no other solutions than to let himself be spit up until the the object of the crime by the thorax, shoulders or mouth.
Impale enemies by entire forest
The impaled then die in excruciating pain, either from internal bleeding, from hunger, thirst or simply devoured by the vultures. The executioners do not hesitate to select a rounded stick so that the torture does less damage to the internal organs and that the suffering therefore lasts longer.
The worst anecdote about this very real Dracula is called “the night of terror”. It is said that in order to impress his Turkish enemies, he requires the impalement of 20,000 Ottomans. A veritable forest of impales.
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