CHAPTER 1 Jonathan Harker's Journal (Kept in shorthand)

3 May. Bistritz . Left Munich  at 8:35 P.M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late . Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh . Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina. ) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. 

I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.

I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps ; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina .
In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then .

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem., get recipe for this also.)

I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move.

It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear.

At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque.
The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them.

The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.

It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier--for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina--it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.

I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress--white undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, "The Herr Englishman?"

"Yes," I said, "Jonathan Harker."

She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirt-sleeves, who had followed her to the door.

He went, but immediately returned with a letter:

"My friend.--Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well tonight. At three tomorrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.--Your friend, Dracula."  

Comments

[Ladi]

It occurs to me that traveling to strange lands has changed very little over time.

[Ladi]

One more thing for reference. Some recipes:

Paprika Hendl:
http://tinyurl.com/c3rdp
Mamalgia:
http://tinyurl.com/b7lho
Impletata?
http://tinyurl.com/dt65r

Can't vouch for how good any of them might be, but maybe someone else is brave enough and has a real kitchen available.

[Elizabeth Miller]

Why May 3 as starting date? Stoker's Notes include a calendar of events for the plot, drawn up in 1892 (using dates for 1893). He includes items back as far as March. But he decided to cut out the first sections of the planned story (what would have been Chapters 1-3) and begin with Harker's departure from Munich on May 1 (recorded on May 3).

[Dracula]

From the Livejournal of VladDrac666:

Greets! I've been offline, cleaning up the basement, writing letters, getting ready for some visitors. BTW, I've cleaned up my Friends list, so if I cut you by mistake (LOL!) be sure to "ping" me.

Last night DarkMidnittte and I tried to get into the Krone Klub, where they play old Siouxsie tunes if you tip them, but they were having some kind of birthday party and wouldn't let us in, so we just hung out across the street and smoked bidis. We went to see if RageMonster was up, but he was watching some football he'd taped earlier, so we called it a night. L8r!

[laura]

Note the attractive "red and white" food. Bram Stoker, you nutfreak.

[Bryan]

Two notes and queries on method:

First, on this blog's form: I'm going to try to reserve posts for Stoker, and comments for myself. This should keep the experience of the front page as focused as possible on the novel, while allowing exploration through appended comments. This reflects one of my inspirations for this project, the excellent Pepys Diary blog (http://www.pepysdiary.com/).
I plan on making exceptions and posting occasionally to the main page, as spaces open up between entries this summer, and as special occasions require. That content will be grouped under a department: http://infocult.typepad.com/dracula/about_this_blog_project/index.html .
Any thoughts, o readers?

Second, May 3 vs May 1: I chose the published date, as it were, rather than the intended one, out of a methodological desire to reflect the texts' materiality, rather than the characters' intent. Put another way, this is the date Mina will read, later this year. I hope the novel's content, and appended comments (like Elizabeth's fine observation) will bring out these depths and details.
Will this work out? I can imagine a different blog approach, perhaps next year, which uses a nonmaterialist approach, posting on numerous other points.

[Gardner]

I'm intrigued by the idea of a nonmaterialist approach. Would love to hear more.

I'm also intrigued by this approach. Terrific stuff, in all senses of the word. Perhaps "sublime" is the word I'm groping for, in the Burkean sense this time (not my usual Longinus sense).

[Guillermo Cerceau]

I have been reading this blog day by day, and have felt the chilling sensation of being a silent witness to the story, something that did not happen to me when I read the book. The fact that Bryan is following the calendar sequence of the original journal gives the blog an unexpected perspective.

[Mary]

This is my first time reading this book. I became interested after seeing parts of the movie by Coppola in '92. I also looked some stuff up online and found articles by Elizabeth Miller, which I found very interesting, and I saw the link to this page. (By the way, even though I am new to this field, I think it's AWESOME that Ms. Miller is taking the time to post comments on here. She seems like a very knowledgable source!) I also think that this is a wonderful idea, so that the reader can get a more realistic portayal of the time sequencing that the Stoker originally had in mind. It's like Jonathon is writing to us! It's cool that there is the postings too so you can discuss each day with other people who are interested.

Anyways, I had a couple questions for her or anyone else who may know:
*How accurate was Stoker in his accounts of geography and history?
*Where is this town Bistritz located?
*Has anyone ever tried to recreate a map of the journey? This could be helpful to the reader.

Ok, thanks alot!

[language hat]

"How accurate was Stoker in his accounts of geography and history?"

Pretty accurate, actually. I'm delighted to report that the Transylvania section of the 1883 edition of Baedeker's Austria-Hungary, which he undoubtedly used in his research, is online, which will save me a lot of laborious copying from my 1905 edition; I urge everyone interested in the geographical/historical background to bookmark it:
http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/baed/b_alla.shtml
(It even reproduces the italics, which is nice and suggests it's been better proofread than many of these electronic text versions.)

The first thing you have to know is that Transylvania (which is now part of Romania) was until WWI part of Hungary, and thus part of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, a decaying but still impressive power in 19th-century Europe. When Harker starts out by leaving Munich and arriving at Vienna early next morning, he is passing from the Kingdom of Bavaria (part of the loose, Prussian-dominated German Empire) into Austria-Hungary (whose capital was Vienna). He then proceeds east to Budapest, the capital of Hungary (which had fought fiercely for its autonomy within Austria-Hungary), and then further east to Klausenburg (the German name for the city the Hungarians call Kolozsvár and the Romanians Cluj, officially Cluj-Napoca, under which name you will find it in modern atlases -- pretty much every town and geographical feature in Transylvania has two or three different names). From there he heads northeast to Bistritz (the German name for Hungarian Besztercze, Romanian Bistriţa).

(I'll post this and start a new comment on the nationalities.)

[language hat]

The discussion of the "four distinct nationalities" is accurate, but leaves out a basic fact: the only ones who had a say in running things were the Saxons (Germans), Magyars (Hungarians), and Szekelys (a separate group of Hungarians) -- the Romanians (whom Stoker calls "Wallachians"), though the majority population, were merely the exploited peasantry, which accounts for the resentment Romanians feel towards Hungarians to this day.

From Baedeker:

"These three races have from an early period shared the govern­ment of the country among them, as being, in virtue of the rights of conquest and colonisation, the sole 'privileged nations'. Tran­sylvania, however, is peopled by various other races. Indeed the principal part of the population consists of Rumanians or Wallachians, of whom there are no fewer than 1,161,647. They regard themselves as the lineal descendants of the Roman colonists, but are in reality a heterogeneous race, made up of Dacian, Ro­man, Teutonic, Slavonian, and Bulgarian elements, which was formerly settled on the Balkans. Driven thence by the Greek Emperor Isaac Angelus, they migrated to the left bank of the Da­nube, and, after the power of the Kumans had been broken by the Teutonic Order, crossed the mountains and entered Transylvania. They named themselves Rumanians as members of the E. Roman Empire (Rum), and had adopted the Greek form of Christianity during their long subjection to the Greek emperors. According to other authorities the Rumanians were settled on the left bank of the Danube long before the advent of the Magyars, but were from the very first treated by their conquerors and the foreign colonists as people possessed of no political rights.

"Another element in the population is formed by the Armenians, 4344 in number, who first settled in Transylvania about the year 1660. They are almost entirely confined to the towns of Szamos Ujvar, Elisabethstadt, and Gyergyo Szt. Miklos. There are nearly 90,000 Gipsies in Transylvania, where they are heard of as early as 1417, when they were governed by a Woiwode of their own. At Haromszek, Torda, Ober-Weissenburg, and Innerszolnok many of them have become industrious husbandmen. The other races repre­sented are Jews (24,864), Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Greeks. — The total population is 2,115,024."

And Baedeker's description of Bistritz:

"Bistritz, Hungar. Bestercze (Town Hotel), a royal free town and capital of the district Bistritz-Naszod, with 8063 inhab., chiefly Germans of a different stock from the 'Saxons', perhaps the relies of a still earlier immigration. It was formerly called Nösen, and gave its name to the Nösner Land (p. 367). The town, which lies on the river Bistritz, formerly carried on a considerable trade, particularly in the 15th and the begin­ning of the 16th cent., but has long since lost its commercial importance. The walls and towers, with which it is still surrounded, give the town a quaint and medieval air, but it possesses no other attractions. The Gothic Protestant Church, finished in 1519, has lost almost the whole of its external embellishments in consequence of repeated conflagrations. The Burgberg, above the town, with the castle of John Hunyady, affords a beautiful view of Bistritz, embedded among orchards and vineyards, and of the Carpathians on the frontier of the Bukowina."

(I've corrected a few misprints.)

[Elizabeth Miller]

Re Stoker's sources for geography. There were many more in addition to Baedeker. His working papers contain many notes taken from Charles Boner, Transylvania: Its Products and Its People (1865), Andrew Crosse, Round About the Carpathians (1878), E.C. Johnson, On the Track of the Crescent (1885). His information about Bistritz is copied almost directly from Boner. He found Borgo Pass on a map inserted in the same book.

It's very easy to trace the route. I have traveled over quite a bit (though not all) of it - certainly the Budapest to Borgo Pass segment (though I did it in reverse).

[Mouse]

Very interesting site, please keep me updateted.

[pitchperfect]

I don't know if anyone else has seen this yet, but National Geographic has an article in their latest magazine about the Csángós, a race of Romanian peasants that live in the Carpathian Mountains, just south of the town Bistritz that Harker encounters in the novel. It is interesting to note their juxtaposed Christian-shamanistic religion, as well as other cultural curiosities that they have retained from their eastern origins.

Check it out:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0506/feature4/index.html

[Ben]

Excellent link pitchperfect. Well done. I blogged it here with credit to you and Dracula Blogged, of course.
http://carnacki.blogspot.com/2005/06/romanias-csng.html

[pitchperfect]

awww geeze, you're too kind...

[Felipe]

Do not read Twilight. Gag. So so so so bad, all of them. By end of summer you'll wanna shoot yorsleuf.What about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series? Three books will keep you busy for some time.The Help is light and fun. The Book Thief will break your heart. Anything by Lori Lansens.Lullabies for Little Criminals. A Town Like Alice, classic.The Ruins. Awesome scary summer read. The Time Traveler's Wife, my fave.I could go on. Let me know if you want me to.And all but the last Harry Potter are completely and totally wicked. I loved them. Except the last, I read two thirds and scrapped it. I couldn't take it anymore. I know, it's crazy.

[Barbara]

, so I will just quickly meniton a few. Is this an erotic story? Certainly, to some extent, but there is certainly nothing overtly sexual in these pages. Is it really horrible? One might wonder how much blood one would encounter in this product of the Victorian age, but there are indeed some rather shockingly gruesome descriptions of events nothing to shock modern readers but probably quite surprising to Stoker's contemporaries. There are also subtle overtones of religion in these pages. Aside from the Christian objects that have the power to keep vampires at bay, the most striking scene in the novel is Dracula's perversion of the Lord's Supper in his own most nefarious deed. I cannot recommend Stoker's masterpiece highly enough. The impatient reader may encounter sections that move too slowly than he/she would like, but such lulls are always wiped away by sudden spurts of activity and drama. Feminists will dislike the Victorian characterization of the women but can find unexpected pleasure in the strength and intellect of Mina. Literary critics will surely find in these pages a deep ocean of issues ripe for analysis. Of most importance, the common reader will find an absorbing storyline which may horrify him/her to some degree in places but which will certainly offer great rewards of enjoyment. I think most individuals would be won over completely by the great humanity of these characters and the unexpected richness and complexity to be found in this story of a fiend they thought they already knew.

[Elahe]

Chris: Me too. I think this was so frustrating beucase they were dumb enough to go through the trouble of filling out a blog submission form as if they thought I'd use it. Then I'd get an inbox full of submissions, which I thought I'd be able to use just to end up with that crap. Yes, it would have been fun and up my alley but I'll just continue on merrily with Short Story Mondays- they're far less frustrating.Tell-Tale Heart, eh? Bit of a dark side?