The Historian

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1, Chapter 12

Part 1, Chapters 13-24

Part 2, Chapters 25-36

Part 2, Chapters 37-48

Part 3, Chapters 49-65

Part 3, Chapter 66-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Perils of Inheritance

All the characters in the novel contend with the various legacies left behind by Vlad Dracula: Both the narrator and her mother are blood descendants of the Prince of Wallachia. Dr. Rossi, Paul’s mentor, eventually becomes like him, in more ways than merely physical. Thus, Paul’s life is irrevocably linked to the vampire; Dracula inhabits his family and destroys his mentor. The book itself is concerned with successors and subsequent generations: Dr. Rossi’s letters describe events from the 1930s, while Paul’s letters reveal the fruitless chase for Dracula’s tomb in the 1950s. The narrator frames all of this from the perspective of her teenaged self, in the 1970s. Each successive generation becomes entangled in the legend, and implicated in the crimes, of Dracula in this way. Writing 36 years later, the narrator has again confronted the possibility that her undead ancestor still lives.

Dr. Rossi addresses the narrator’s father, Paul, in his first letter, as, “My dear and unfortunate successor,” which Paul’s daughter reads, in secret, some 40 years later (55). This eventually opens the door for Paul to tell the narrator his story, an unbelievable tale of supernatural forces and appalling cruelty; this inevitably becomes her story. His halting style—stopping in the middle of a revealing scene or putting off his daughter for long periods of time—not only serves to heighten the atmosphere of suspense, but it also indicates his deeply felt reluctance: He knows that his own daughter will inherit the evil burdens of this story. She will be the next “unfortunate successor” to this awareness.

In turn, when the narrator begins reading the letters that her father left to her, she realizes that her involvement in this story goes much deeper than she first intuited. Her father makes it clear that these letters form the core not only of her inheritance but also of her identity: “In the worst case,” he writes, “you will inherit my house, my money, my furniture and books, but I can easily believe that you will treasure these documents in my hand more than any of the other items, because they will contain your own story, your history” (188). Indeed, she learns that, contrary to previous accounts, the legend of Dracula is real; he lives, 500 years after his death. Furthermore, she is his heir, a living descendant of the undead vampire. When she finally encounters Dracula, she knows this legacy to be true: When he speaks (in Romanian, presumably), she can understand him, as “they were words I knew with my blood, not my ears” (656). The narrator is inextricably bound to Dracula.

Her mother, too, comes to realize her connection to the Wallachian prince. While Paul initially remarks that Helen must “take after this aunt of yours” (300), he quickly discovers that her legacy is more complicated. First, part of her heritage has been erased by the circumstances of her birth. Her mother “refused to teach [her] any Romanian” (323), and Helen is raised in Hungary, far from her cultural birthright, cut off from her mother’s homeland, and denied her father’s presence. Helen herself is bitter about her upbringing, blaming Rossi for this situation.

Second, she soon learns that she is heir to something far more disturbing. Paul recognizes the uncanny resemblance between Bora’s composite picture of Vlad Dracula and Helen even before learning confirmation of their connection. As Paul watches her approach him at the hotel, “I was remembering again, with an uneasy quiver inside, the portrait in Turgut’s room—the proud head, the long straight nose, the great dark eyes with their heavy, hooded lids” (359). Rossi’s letters, along with Helen’s mother’s own story, reveal the truth: Rossi’s courtship was indeed “with a descendant of Vlad Dracula” (418). The tattoo of the dragon on her shoulder, and the Getzi family name, provide incontrovertible evidence that Helen’s mother—and, by extension, Helen and the narrator—is marked by history. This becomes doubly true of Helen when she is bitten by another vampire. As she asks Paul, “Would you marry a woman who has been marked by hell?” (536). While the answer is yes, their fears about their union are justified. Ultimately, the narrator herself will bear the full weight of this inheritance.

Cultural Tension Between the East and the West

While primarily a reinvention of the myth of the vampire, the novel is, in other ways, about the tension between two cultures—sometimes conflicting, sometimes converging—which provides the foundation for the legend of Dracula. The Prince of Wallachia represents the Christian West, while his enemies are the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire in the East; this conflict is replicated in the period in which much of the novel takes place, when the Cold War between western democracies and eastern communism is underway. Still, it becomes abundantly clear that the divisions between the two cultures are not as complete, or as divisive, as they initially appear. In the first place, “West” and “East” are not actual geographical spaces but rather ideological concepts; thus, they do not represent discrete realities. Second, the collision of cultures often results in collusion; that is, the features of one culture borrow from the other, and vice versa. The amalgam of influences belies the original antagonistic impulse.

For example, the point at which the narrator’s story begins is in a town she calls Emona. It is a monument to the practice of syncretism, the blending of various cultural and religious influences: “Emona, like her sisters to the south, showed flourishes of a chameleon past: Viennese Deco along the skyline, great red churches from the Renaissance of its Slavic-speaking Catholics, hunched between medieval chapels with the British Isles in their features” (7). This mirrors the myriad influences that the narrator herself inherits from the story her father begins telling her in this city. This blending is evident even in the two formerly warring religions of Dracula’s time. When Paul and Helen visit the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, they are struck by “the round shields covered with Arabic calligraphy in the upper corners, mosque overlaying church, church overlaying the ruins of the ancient world” (192). History melds, rather than obscures, the various cultures to which it bears witness. Rather than remaining forever at war, “East” and “West” come together to produce artistic beauty and historical meaning.

Paul’s enthusiasm for this reverberation between cultures leads him deeper into his story. When he and his daughter are overlooking the lagoon in Venice, Paul talks about the city’s history, in conflict, and conjunction, with Byzantine cultures, in particular. For instance, he informs her, “San Marco was designed partly in imitation of Santa Sophia, in Istanbul” (84). The great church in Venice’s famous piazza fuses elements from Eastern architecture into its Western location. In turn, the great mosque in Istanbul was once a church—remade rather than destroyed. As Paul remarks about the Hagia Sofia, “You really see East and West collide in there” (84), coexisting in architectural, if not political, harmony. This not only reveals that he has been to Istanbul, but it also emphasizes the overlap, rather than the discrepancy, between East and West.

Even Dracula’s legacy of antagonism becomes bound up with the tradition of syncretism. While the reader does not learn until later that Dracula’s tomb resides in the monastery of Saint-Mathieu, the narrator’s early visit there exposes the blending of cultural influences. The manager of the restaurant in which she eats with her father says of the residents, “We are la salade, all the different cultures” (61). In the metaphor of the salad, the cultural distinctions remain intact but mix to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Saint-Matthieu itself is described as “a later expression of the Romanesque,” with a door “crowned by geometric, Islamic borders and two grimacing, groaning Christian monsters” (79). This, the monastery itself represents the syncretic impulse, even its inevitability, given a long enough history. Ironically, Dracula’s final resting place emphasizes the cohesion of cultures rather than the discord between them.

Historians and the Search for Truth

The novel is populated with historians, expert and novice alike. Their primary focus—finding Dracula’s tomb and proving Dracula’s authenticity—emphasizes the paradox that resides at the heart of the novel: These historians are using legitimate research and genuine documentation to uncover what is essentially a superstitious legend. The novel itself blends fact and fiction, blurring the lines between actual history (Vlad Ţepeş was real) and creative imagination (Bram Stoker’s Dracula provides its template) throughout. This prompts questions about the definition of history, as it resonates also with “his story,” which can refer to Rossi’s letters, Paul’s letters, or an account of the existence of Dracula himself. Finally, it begs the question of who, in the end, is the final authority on the matter and the historian of the title.

When the narrator begins her own research into Dracula, she reads ancient texts and combs through historical documents—and she delves into Bram Stoker’s classic novel. She admits that she does not know what she seeks in the book, with its “alternating Gothic horror and cozy Victorian love stories” (58). Stoker’s novel, like this one, uses the legend of Dracula to reflect contemporary concerns. For Stoker, the modernization of society and the increasing independence of women threaten the traditional patriarchal order. For Kostova, anxieties over the clash of cultures and their competing ideologies animate the book. As Bora admits, of his continuing search for the vampire, “the line between literature and history is often a wobbling one” (288), a line this novel constantly blurs.

Paul takes this even further, defining history as an act of personal revelation, at least in part: “It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves that we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship” (250). In this way, history becomes conflated with a search for self-identity. This illuminates the narrator’s concerns and methods, as well. The narrator ends her account—in effect, the novel itself—with a scene from her own imagination, “a clear autumn morning in 1476,” as Dracula makes his preparations for his long and fruitful afterlife (672). This echoes her admission in the preface, that she has sometimes “resorted when necessary” to “a final resource” quite distant from first-hand accounts and historical research: “the imagination” (xvi). It is up to the reader to decide whether her imagination compromises, or enhances, her historian’s impulses.

Dracula, on the other hand, knows exactly what he seeks from history, the perfectibility of evil: “With your unflinching honesty, you can see the lesson of history” (617), he tells Rossi. “History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is” (617). Indeed, he becomes not only a historian in the scholarly sense, with his vast library and knowledge, but also an orchestrator of historical events. He nudges Hitler toward power, it is implied, and supports Stalin’s purges; the terrifying devastation of World War II and its oppressive aftermath are the result of Dracula’s machinations. As he tells Rossi, after being imprisoned by the Ottomans, he “vowed to make history, not to be its victim” (616). In this way, Dracula could be considered The Historian of the novel’s title. Indeed, he will ultimately outlive the narrator—and everyone else, if the encounter in the Epilogue is to be trusted.

Still, it is the narrator who commits the story to paper. Though Helen dutifully searches archives across Europe, looking for clues to the whereabouts of Dracula’s tomb; Rossi refuses to leave off his research even after the death of his friend; and Paul ultimately tracks Dracula down while searching for his wife, the narrator becomes the sole author of the story. She is also the instigator of it, as she admits to her mother: “I found the book,” to which her mother responds, self-evidently, “You are a historian” (664). The narrator herself knows this, knows that she is, indeed, The Historian very early on: “[I]t would be up to me to study it again, to piece it all together” (108). That is her destiny, to become the final authority on the legendary story.