The Historian

“Across those two pages I saw a great woodcut of a dragon with spread wings and a long looped tail, a beast unfurled and raging, claws outstretched. In the dragon’s claws hung a banner on which ran a single word in Gothic lettering: DRAKULYA.”

The narrator’s father, Paul, is bequeathed an antiquated book with this dragon at its center; his is one of many copies that appear, uncannily, throughout the book. The dragon is not just a symbol of Dracula but also representative of the long and dangerous reach of history.

“What could offer better protection against the forces of darkness—internal, external, eternal—than light and warmth, as one approaches the shortest, coldest day of the year?”

In Rossi’s first letter to his unknown successor (it turns out to be his student, Paul), he uses the juxtaposition of dark and light to express not only the physical experience of darkness (and cold) but also the moral experience of darkness (and despair). This serves as a common motif throughout.

“It was designed to threaten and intimidate, to commemorate power. But for the persistent, it might be a clue; its tail pointed to the tomb as surely as any finger points to the self: this is me. I am here.”

Rossi refers to the dragon of the mysterious book. Obviously, as a symbol of Dracula, it is also a symbol of potency, representing the conquering strength of a ferocious warrior-prince. In addition, it functions as a map (a symbol within a symbol), to those who dare to wrangle with the dragon himself.

“I wondered with horror if she might not be in league with the vampire: Dracula’s bride, I thought, aghast, the Sunday matinees coming back to me in rapid frames.”

It takes time for Paul to trust Helen entirely. His fear that she might be an ally of the vampire serves to foreshadow the later revelation that Helen is, indeed, a descendant of Dracula. This also emphasizes the gothic thrill of horror that the author employs throughout the novel; horror can be terrifying, certainly, but it is also exciting.

“I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line—something limited to the neighbors.”

Paul chooses the Catholic church in which to meet Helen instead. The collision of cultures throughout the book echoes the clash of religions. It also contrasts an American sensibility with a European one, revealing Paul’s biases.

“The quiver of rebellion I felt walking beside a handsome university student came to me like a strain of music from an alien culture. But I clutched my notebook and my childhood more tightly and asked him why the courtyard was mainly stone instead of grass.”

The narrator employs a simile to describe her awakening sexual desire upon meeting Stephen Barley. This awakening coincides with her newly discovered sense of independence and rebellion. But rather than abandon her innocence altogether, she uses metonymy (clutching her “childhood”) to cling to her youthful innocence. The novel is, at least in part, a coming-of-age story.

“Now I went in as quietly as a burglar, shut the door, and opened his desk. It was a terrible feeling, like breaking the seal of a coffin.”

The narrator steals into her father’s office after he has left in search of her mother. She finds his letters which allow her to follow the rest of his story. The simile here makes clear that the hunt for Dracula, and his tomb, is afoot. It also instills a sense of dread, of suspense regarding the fate of Paul.

“From about that time, there is a record of vampirism in Istanbul. It is my notion—and it is still unpublished, alack, and I cannot prove it—that his first victims were among the Ottomans, maybe the guards who became his friends. He left behind him contamination in our empire, I propose, and then it must have been carried into Constantinople with the Conqueror.”

Bora expounds upon his theory of Dracula’s travels. One can trace his path, at least after his death, by examining the records for outbreaks of plague, which becomes a euphemism for vampirism. Vampirism is a disease, in this view, a corruption of the body and of the soul.

“It’s not Western, you know—it’s an ancient game from India—shahmat in Persian. Checkmate, I think you say in English. Shah is the word for king. A battle of kings.”

In another example of Cultural Tension Between the East and the West, Helen lectures Paul on the roots of chess. It is also notable that the game is a microcosm of actual warfare. As such, it becomes a metaphor for the battles between the sultan and the vampire, or the East and the West.

“Looking at Helen as she turned to me with her level gaze, I was unavoidably struck by the similarity between her strong yet fine features and that luminous, appalling image behind Turgut’s curtain.”

Paul recognizes that Helen resembles the ancient prince, the vampire they hunt, even before it is confirmed. This highlights the endurance of Dracula’s potential legacy: Even if Dracula is killed, he will live on in his heirs (and, later, his library).

“There is something vastly mysterious for me about the shift one sees, along that route, from the Islamic world to the Christian, from the Ottoman to the Austro-Hungarian, from the Muslim to the Catholic and Protestant. It is a gradation of towns, of architecture, of gradually receding minarets blended with the advancing church domes, of the very look of forest and riverbank, so that little by little you begin to believe you can read in nature itself the saturation of history.”

The power of history is etched into the cityscapes and landscapes through which Paul and Helen travel. It recognizes the distinctions between these cultures and religions while also acknowledging their blending, as in the syncretism Paul observes at the Hagia Sofia, for example.

“In ancient Greece, and in Greek tragedies, the amphora sometimes contained human ashes, you see, and the ignorant folk of Greece believed that if things didn’t go quite right with the amphora, it could produce a vampire.”

Hugh James, the Englishman, explains to Paul what his mentor’s most recent research is about. Rossi has been working on a paper entitled “The Ghost in the Amphora,” which clearly focuses on Dracula. Now Paul truly understands that Rossi’s historical research has landed him in legendary trouble.

“Actually, that connection with plague is not so far-fetched, in a way—I read in an Italian document at the British Museum Library that Dracula used germ warfare against the Turks. He must have been one of the first Europeans to use it, in fact. He liked to send any of his own people who’d contracted infectious diseases into the Turkish camps, dressed like Ottomans.”

The disease model of vampirism has echoes with the historical realities of Vlad Dracula. In life, and now in death, he contaminates the blood of his enemies. The viral nature of Dracula (and, by extension, his legend) is insidious and virtually unstoppable.

“My mother said it was put on one child in every generation of my father’s family and that he had chosen me because he thought I might grow up to be the ugliest. He said that his grandfather had told him this was necessary to keep evil spirits away from our family.”

In Helen’s mother’s story, she references the dragon tattoo on her shoulder (Helen herself bears the same mark). It is the sign of Dracula, revealing his ancestral claim on the family. Helen and her mother have been marked (or tainted) by history. This also speaks to The Perils of Inheritance.

“To make it short and shocking, I’m on a quest of sorts, an historian’s hunt for Dracula—not Count Dracula of the romantic stage, but a real Dracula—Drakulya—Vlad III, a fifteenth-century tyrant who lived in Transylvania and Wallachia and dedicated himself to keeping the Ottoman Empire out of his land as long as possible.”

In Rossi’s letters to his friend back in Oxford, he reveals the truth about his search. He seeks the undead prince in the service of his historical curiosity. This reverberates with the monster-hunting instincts of Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula. It also neatly blurs the line between legend and history.

“The Wallachian prince was formidably creative as well as destructive, an enemy clever in the extreme. A second later I realized that I’d just thought of him in present tense.”

Paul considers Dracula’s skill in battle, his ability to stave off an overwhelmingly more prepared army for an impressive length of time. Ironically, throughout the book, the characters often admire Dracula even as they fear and despise him. Paul also implicitly acknowledges here that he accepts the reality of Dracula’s 500-year lifespan.

“As we passed through the country, it seemed that some of the Bulgarians knew already of the mission, for more and more of them came out along the roads, bowing silently to our procession, and some followed for many miles, touching our wagon with their hands or kissing the side of it.”

This passage is from the tale of Stefan, as transcribed by the Bulgarian historian, Stoichev, and his mentor. In Stefan’s recollections, the villagers act as if Dracula were a saint and not a monster. After all, he did defend them from the Ottomans. This foreshadows the discussions about the reversal of the legend of Saint George, where the dragon slays the saint rather than the other way around, highlighting Dracula as a complex character.

“‘They exist wherever the Ottoman yoke fell over the Balkan peoples, I think,’ Stoichev said gravely. ‘We have in Bulgarian folklore thousands of such songs, with various themes—all are a cry of protest against the enslavement of our people.’”

Stoichev talks about the Romanian ballads that Helen and Paul have uncovered, historical records of resistance. This again reflects on the ambivalence surrounding the legend of Dracula, the dragon who once protected the people before he became an object of fear and predation.

“Helen almost shrugged. ‘Is it any stranger than hoping for bodily resurrection?’ she asked, but she smiled at Stoichev, and he too was charmed.”

Paul and Helen are discussing the transfer of Dracula’s body from Bulgaria to Constantinople; they wonder why the body would not decay. Stoichev says that the myths about vampirism suggest that those polluted with the disease do not decay. Helen points out that this is similar to many Christian beliefs; thus, saints and monsters are not so far apart.

“And on these lay piles and piles of books—crumbling leather-bound volumes and gilt covers that picked up the glimmer of my candle flame. There were other objects, too—never had I seen such an inkstand, or such strange quills and pens. There was a stack of parchment, glimmering in the candlelight, and an old typewriter supplied with thin paper. I saw the gleam of jeweled bindings and boxes, the curl of manuscripts in brass trays. There great folios and quartos bound in smooth leather, and rows of more modern volumes on long shelves. In fact, we were surrounded: every wall seemed to be lined with books.”

Rossi describes the contents of Dracula’s great library: It is stuffed to the brim with treasure, like the dragon hoards in fairy tales. This treasure, in particular, is of a literary kind; there are ancient books and writing implements, rare parchments and historical scrolls. Dracula is, indeed, a scholar and a historian, no matter how unnatural his long life may be. It is enough to tempt any historian into joining forces with him.

“There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood.”

Dracula tries to seduce Rossi into becoming his acolyte, though Rossi will refuse. The phrasing he uses is a subversion of biblical scripture: As the blood of Christ washes away sin, the blood of Dracula offers another kind of resurrection.

“I don’t know why, but at that moment, my body seemed to move toward him slight of its own volition.”

The narrator experiences the mesmerizing powers of Dracula firsthand. This echoes the experience of Mina Murray in the seminal Stoker text. All the young women who fall under Dracula’s spell are (at least momentarily) enthralled. This points to the potential for complicity.

“He seemed always to have liked scribes, archivists, librarians, historians—anyone who handled the past through books.”

Helen recognizes the scholar’s tendency in Dracula, as well. It is no coincidence that she becomes a professional anthropologist and amateur historian, or that her daughter will be anointed the titular “historian.” They are Dracula’s descendants, sharing in this passion for history.