" Who my blood drinks, eternal life will have ", Jesus. Blood as the mistery which connects God and Man. The idea of blood as force and vitality giving material has its origins way back in history. Blood is mistery.
Wampires. They drink blood and live an eternal life. The collectors have these definitions : wampire is that dead person who's body does not dwindle away, that evil man who was not accepted back by earth, that person whose spirit was bewitched by the Devil, that man whose spirit went back in his body after he died etc.
According to French and Italian ethimological dictionaries the word wampire seems to have its origins the Serb language as upir or vampir. The wampire - culture has developed among East - European cultures and its origins can be put somewhere in the XVII th century.
Interesting is the fact that in spite of the richness of the Romanian wampire - traditions the word appeared in this language only at the end XVIIIth century. Explanation is the fact that there are a dozen of words which denote this type of dead - alive people : strigoi, moroi, vircolac, priculici, striga, naluca, duh, aratare, stafie etc. In fact the Romanians are the nation with the worldwide best known wampire called DRACULA.
It is obvious that Bram Stroker, the " father " of this hero, has made extended researches before he wrote his famous book " Dracula ", and frequently uses the notions moroi, strigoi, and priculici. But lets take a brief look on Stroker's personage.
The historical Dracula was the ruler of Wallachia in the XVth century. His real name was Vlad Tepes which means Vlad the Impalementer. His name Dracula is the result of his father's entering of the Societas Draconis of Nürnberg, a society founded by Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1408. The members of this group were allowed to wear the emblems of the Crucifix and of the Dracon. These emblems can be found even nowdays on some Wallachian buildings. The latin word Draco in Romanian means : Devil. Researches have revealed that Vlad Dracula and his brother Radu cel Frumos (Beautiful Radu) were catholic. The two boys have spent their young ages in the Turkish Sultan's court as a result of the Sultan's method to break the opponence of the father, (who was called Vlad Dracula) by keeping his sons prisoners. Here the young Vlad had the oppotunity to get familiar with the most modern fighting strategies. But the thing which mostly impressed him was the discipline and the severity which characterized every soldier and every operation.
This fact was reflected in his later methods of ruling. He became the ruler of Wallachia in 1448. He is known as the bloodiest and the cruelest ever ruler of a nation. He decided alone in important matters, and abrogated the privileges of the Boyars, and often punished even them, with killing by impalement.
Only two years after he became waide of Wallachia, stories about his acts of cruelty begun to spread all over Europe thanks to the german - saxon tales, first oral later in printed form. For example, an edition of one newspaper from Strasbourg relates a story which informs the readers that, Count Dracula after inviting all Wallachian Boyars in his court, asked them how many rulers Wallachia had. By this question he meant : how many members of his family, the Draculesti, had ruled the country. Because nobody gave the right answer, which would have been seven the waide exterminated all the invited by impalamenting.
Another source Michael Beheim1, a german knight and poet of Frederick the IIIrd's court, in his epic poems talks about the death of 20,000 people who were killed by Dracula " without any pang of conscience " as the famous Romanian story collector Petre Ispirescu2 writes. " From one corner of the country to the other, the land was evaporating the blood of those unruly. ", he adds. However Beheim's numbers shouldn't be accepted without any reservations given the population's number of Eastern - Europe at that time.
Dracula won his European reputation thanks to the fact that he had kept the Eastern part of Eurpoe, especially the Transylvanian and the Wallchian, Hungarian - Saxon and Romanian inhabitants in terror. Even during his 12 year prisonership spent in King Mathias's prison, Dracula had been often shown to the Turkish ambassadors by the hungarian king, in order to frighten them. Janus Pannonius wrote at learning about the tyran's imprisoning:" Sing celebration songs! the tyran wears chains... ".
Dracula often robbed and killed with an unimaginable cruelty the inhabitants of the Transylvanian cities Brassó and Nagyszeben. He " visited " these towns every year, because the richness gained by the saxons thanks to their Europe - wide trade, was a temptation for him. Another reason was the anger felt for the saxons complots aginst him. He often punished them by burning down whole willages and masacring those who tried to run. The saxons became one of the best exporters of Dracula stories which soon became popular all over Europe.It seems that at the end of the 1450s Dracula's name was known not only in Buda but also in the bigger German cities as Wien and Nürnberg.
Researches revealed four Dracula tales - descriptions written in the XVth century. The original of story kept in the Launbach Monstery, Austria is lost. The other three descriptions are : " Gesichte Dracole Wayde ", a handwritten work is kept in the Swiss Sankt Gallen; " Die histori von dem pösen Dracol ", kept in the British Library; and a handwriting kept in Celmar, France. In these works written in different languages the geographical and historical datas are so similar at certain places that experts released a theory accrding to what there had been a single Dracula description dated to 1462 - 63 which was rewritten later.
However, so different sources as Beheim's epic poem, the rushian and turkish chronicles, Bonfini's relatations and the papal letters seem to agree at almost every point of their descriptions. What really differs are the political - moral expectations of the German, Hungarian, Slavonian and Turkish auditorium or readers. Traditions and intentions of telling these stories differ from nation to nation. Each has its particular focus on the happenings : the russian version concentrates on the voivode's faith losing in the church and becaming the Devil himself, the turkish stresses Draculas cruelty and sadism, the romanian accentuates Vlad's heroism in his fights against the Sultan, and finally the german describes detailed the horror of Dracula's actions.
Because if this never - met interest in the subject a huge amount of material about the voivode is gathered at the end of the 1460s and the the most exciting horror - story begins to take shape. The newspaper editors soon realise that the printed cuts of Dracula with the explanatory stories are " bestsellers ". Papers written by B. Gothan appear with such titles : Van eyneme bosen tyranne gehnomet Dracola wyda, work which was reprinted five times.(1488 two times, 1499, 1520, 1521) The american writers R. Florescu & R.T. McNally might have been right, when in their work " A Biography of Vlad The Impaler "3 affirmed that the newspapers' aim was to frighten and entertain the readers. This might have maid Dracula one of the most succesfull horror - stories of the world.
Dracula entered the English literature in the XIXth century thanks to Bram Stroker who wrote his story according to that days' literal expectations in form of diary written by one of the heroes of the book Johnatan Harkes. Since then the bloody - handed voivode's tale was adopted by the cinema and such great actors as Lugosi Béla and Christopher Lee became famous as Dracula's best revivals. One of the latest releases of the film was F. Coppola's work " Dracula " made in 1993.
The myth lives on. It begun to live at the day the tyrann died, and even nowdays lives its renaissance. It is looked for as it was ages ago: as perhaps the best in horror, a story which combines fantasy, popular traditions and history.
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