Dracula

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.

Bram Stoker: Dracula. A Mystery Story

Today I completed the translation of Umberto Eco’s History of fabulous lands and places, which was my companion during the past six months in Subotica and Tokaj, Lwów and Odessa, Czernowitz and Kamenets-Podolsk, Berlin and Mallorca, at the source of the Tisa in Subcarpathia and the Hasidic pilgrim places in Podolia, in the wooden churches of Maramureș and the painted monasteries of Bukovina, when climbing up from the Radna mountains to the Nyíres Pass, and descending from the Borgó Pass to Bistritz/Beszterce/Bistrița. The sites he writes about are related with a particular syncopation to the sites where I translated it, the wanderings of Ulysses to the Cheremosh Valley, and the lost continent of Atlantis to Czernowitz, offering such unexpected readings of the books, which I am really sorry to be unable to share with the readers in the form of a continuous translator’s footnote.

The book, which Bompiani will publish in October in several languages at the same time (even after many years of translator’s experience, I read in an amazement the dates from the future in the colophon of a publisher’s pdf), is not just about legendary places in general, about which voluminous encyclopedias have been written, but specifically about imaginary places which were considered existing ones by the readers, who then tried to find them, even for centuries, from Atlantis to the Paradise on Earth, and from the hiding place of the Holy Grail to the unknown Southern Continent, with a special emphasis on twentieth-century mystification, from the Nazi occultism’s Thule and Hpyerborea, through the teachings of the eternal ice and hollow earth, to the stolen rubbish of Dan Brown. And in the last chapter Eco also expounds that existing places have also become the subject of successful novels, and hereby of a veritable cult. He offers a long list of examples, from Robinson’s island through Arsène Lupin’s rock and the prison of the Count of Monte Cristo to Sherlock Holmes’ house at Baker Street and Nero Wolfe’s one in New York, but – as we have already told in the posts on Eratosthenes’ well and the lion’s tail –, he would not be Eco, had he not let a juggler’s ball fall:

“A real person was also the 15th-century voivode Vlad Țepeș, now better known as Dracula after his father’s name, who of course was not a vampire, but became famous by indiscriminately impaling his enemies.”


As to ho how the existing person is mingled with the existing places as a cuckoo’s egg, is just the smaller issue. The bigger issue is that the example is completely wrong: the person is famous for being not linked to any actual place, or perhaps rather to too many places. Eco stuck his hand into a wasps’ nest. In fact, for Vlad Țepeș, Vlad the Impaler, prince of Wallachia, just like for Homerus, seven locations compete. The best known is the impressive fortress of Törcsvár/Bran, where the young Vlad is said to have been imprisoned for a short time, and which since 1920 has been propagated by the Romanian tourist office as Dracula’s castle. This claim was challenged after 1990 by Schäßburg/Segesvár/Sighișoara, in whose fortress Vlad was born in 1431 – his father having fled to Hungary before his pro-Ottoman rivals, and having been admitted in this year to the Order of the Knigths of the Dragon (in Romanian Dracul) founded by Emperor Sigismund –, so that even a decade ago the Mayor of Sighișoara urged the building of a huge Dracula entertainment park around the city, until Prince Charles of England, who after 1990 purchased and started to develop large former Saxon lands in the neighborhood, threatened him to withdraw from the region after such a tastelessness. The third place is the former princely center in Târgoviște, where a plaque and several horrific souvenirs recall his reign. The fourth is Istanbul, where the film Drakula İstanbul’da, “Dracula in Istanbul”, inspired by Stoker’s novel, was shot in 1953, recalling the years spent here by the young Vlad as an Ottoman hostage, and where the characters of Elizabeth Kostova’s 2005 bestseller The Historian research the traces of Dracula. The fifth is the fortress of Poienari in the southern Carpathians, which he caused to build by the forced labor of the boyars conspiring against him. The sixth Pécs in southern Hungary, where they recently excavated the palace donated him by King Matthias. And the seventh is of course the Borgó Pass, where the count’s castle stood in Stoker’s novel, and where today the reader crossing the pass will find a Hotel Dracula’s Castle: of course not where the castle stood according to the novel, for it was out of sight, over a few marsh-fires and a wolfs’ adventure, but at the crossroads, where Jonathan Harker, amongst the passengers’ universal crossing of themselves, changes from the Beszterce-Bukovina stagecoach to the cart sent for him by Count Dracula.

Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel. And again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed. He kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.

Locations of the Dracula novel from the blog of Gashicsavargó (it is also worth to read his English-language post)

Although if Eco – or rather his editors and students, who deliver an increasingly important part of his ideas and materials – had dug a bit into the Stoker literature, he could have easily found a cult place to Dracula as well. After 1990 the Saxons disappeared from Bistritz, but the Hungarians and Romanians remaining there have made great efforts to preserve and present the past of the city, including the only authentic place in Bram Stoker’s Dracula story.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Goldene 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 shirtsleeves, 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

Place of the former King of Hungary Hotel on the late 18th-century map of Bistritz

The former King of Hungary – between the two world wars Paulini – Hotel today

Bike on the dacha

Three families on the dacha. Smolensk Governorate, 1916

To the bike craze at the turn of the century.

“Nowadays it is difficult to imagine, that in the first quarter of the 20th century we lived fifty verstas from the train station, without electricity and telephone. The radio did not exist even in idea, a car was not seen by anyone in that place, and when the first cyclists arrived from us and Yuryev, the women in the village stuck to the fences and crossed themselves, the children threw stones on them, the dogs chased them with furious barking all over the village, and in the village the bicycle was called чертов конь, the devil’s horse, and чертово колесо, devil’s wheel.”

Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik (1874-1952) drama writer and translator: Из воспоминаний (My memories), 1959

“Now he’s healthy, he cycles all the day, which is why I’m really worried, because everyone says it is harmful. The doctor comes out every day, examines Dad, but he did not find any adverse changes.”

Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya’s letter to her son, Lev Tolstoy Jr., 1895

“Tolstoy wrote every morning, then he played tennis and cycled. Sofia took some photos of him during his recent entertainment. One picture shows both of them: Sofia stands not far away, and looks lovingly at her husband. The sixty-six-year old Tolstoy had a real passion for the new fun, and Sofia bought him a bicycle, with which he made long ways both in the city and outside town.”

Alexandra Popoff: Sofia Tolstaya’s life, 2012 (on 1896)

But the village of Shchepkina-Kupernik was perhaps a bit late. In fact, in Alexey Korzuhin’s painting, Petrushka is here! we already see the bike in the dacha in 1888.

And when did the bicycle reach the village in your country? Which traces did it leave in the literature?

Family

These three images were bought together with Natalie on the old book market of Lemberg/Lwów: two by her and the third one by me, after discovering that they represent the same family, so let them be together.




Were this photo from Lemberg, I would consider them Armenians on the basis of the big dark eyes and round faces. But they were not made in Lemberg, from where the draught of 1945 also swept out the photos: they are now sold on the flea market of Wrocław, and the ones here had been brought by the new settlers. I do not know in which city of Russia they were taken. I have not found any trace of S. A. Myalkin’s photo atelier: it must have been a small studio if it could not afford a printed reverse of its own, only a standard print and a stamp. The inscription was written in a peculiar phonetic orthography: Дяди тети и Кресны атъ Лены. Оглоблино, to the uncle and aunt from their godson and Lena, Ogloblino can be both a place and a family name, the godson the child shown in the picture, and Lena, who sends the picture, probably the young mother standing, on December 7, 1914.




The entire family from the same year, although the date was written on the reverse by a much later hand. It was probably the photographer to arrange, according to the contemporary conventions, as to who gets what: the man and his mother (?) a son each, the mother the family, and the eldest girl, standing in the center, but nevertheless somewhat lonely, a book.




Two boys, with the same age difference, maybe just three years later, and the elder is similar to the father. The eyes, lips and profile of the woman is also identical to that of the mother, but much more sunken. It seems to be the same family, but if it is so, in these three years the mother aged twenty. One would think she’s just a relative, but on the reverse of the photo there is an inscription in pre-revolutionary orthography: Viktor, Vasya, Mama. The war has been going on for three years, the father is probably on the front: a typical soldier’s wife photo, perhaps intended precisely for him: the mother did not dress up for the picture, she wears casual clothes. Instead of the pillars and draperies, the luxury of the studio is the small iron stove. The two children are emphatically clinging to their mother, one of them holding a book again as an attribute. The photographer’s stamp on the reverse is illegible, just as the postage or registry seal from perhaps the 1930s, I don’t know what it serves for. It must have been hard years for all of them, it would be great if they had survived it without a hitch. In any case, someone definitely survived to preserve the photos together and bring them to Lemberg/Lwów.

Sunday best

Festive Mass in Bârsana/Barcánfalva. The monastery complex, built in 1993 but referring to many centuries of tradition, is the idealized re-creation of a never-existed prosperity. Its church tower is the second tallest wooden building in Europe, preceding the 18th-century Șurdești/Dióshalom church. The mass of the faithful is constantly flowing around the entrance, from inside two nuns are singing on a penetrating, ringing voice.

Just thirty years ago, they still largely wore homespun clothes and plaited shoes in these parts, the spinning reel could not fall off the hands of women for any moment, the home production of tissues – enforced by poverty and isolation – gave a lot of work. The accessible prices of ready-to-wear clothes have changed a lot in everyday clothing, which, on the other hand, made the pieces of traditional costume an identity element to be consciously retained.


The general rise of nationalism brought back folklore elements into street fashion in Hungary, too, but here, in Maramureș they – not accidentally – appear more organic and continuous than the Matyó embroidery on the Budapest asphalt. Depending on the quicker or slower pace of labor market mobility, the ethnic wear is increasingly limited to the festive occasions. On these occasions, however, even those put on a piece of traditional costume or one referring to it, who do not wear it any more in everyday life.

King Matthias' Palace

How does a private house become a city symbol?

The Jakab palace does not belong to the oldest buildings in Košice/Kassa, so rich in medieval monuments. It was built in 1899 by the Jakab brothers, the contractors Árpád and Géza, on the property inherited from their father, out of the former city wall, on the bank of the Malomárok, the “Mill Ditch”. The family is not considered among the outstanding architects of the age: the authoritative A századforduló magyar építészete (Hungarian architecture at the turn of the century) by János Gerle (1990) does not dedicate a special entry to them, and apart from the palace in Košice it only mentions two of their works: the villa in Érmelléki street 9 in Budapest (1914) and the Catholic high school in Skalica/Szakolca (1911). Nevertheless, they built more than this in Kassa, where they, as contractors with a brick factory of their own, participated in the construction of the Schalkház Hotel, the Art Nouveau high school designed by Gyula Pártos, or of the eclectic Corps Headquarters, and after the family moved to Budapest in 1908, they also planned the civil servant estate of Virányos in Buda.

However, the house also had a number of features which from the outset attracted the attention of the local public. On the one hand, the Jakab brothers acquired and incorporated in their palace the discarded medieval stone carvings of the local cathedral, recently restored by Frigyes Schulek, thus adding several hundred years of pedigree to the fin-de-siècle villa. On the one hand, the palace, built in a Venetian Gothic style, whose representative rear facade, similarly to its models, looked on the local canale, the Mill Ditch, offered a very picturesque spectacle at the beginning of the road towards the rest and entertainment place of the citizens, the city park. The local postcard edition exploited this sight indeed, emphatically presenting the Neo-Gothic private house as “the palace of the architect Árpád Jakab”.

The third, historically definitive feature of the building was that its front tower explicitly copied the left gate tower of the “Vajdahunyad Castle”, built in the City Park of Budapest for the Hungarian millenary celebrations (1896), whose picture was spread by thousands of postcards throughout the country. The obvious connection with the ancestral nest of the Hunyadi family – the castle of Vajdahunyad/Hunedoara in southern Transylvania, of which the Budapest monument was a free replica – was probably particularly important in Kassa, in whose tradition and self-image King Matthias Hunyadi (1456-1490) played an important role: he visited the city on several occasions, and his donations were an important contribution to the completition of the cathedral, whose right-side tower bears his name and his coat of arms. It is telling, however, that such a tower cannot be found in the original castle of Vajdahunyad: Árpád Jakab intended to copy not the original monument, but its well-known romantic representation in his private palace.

The “Vajdahunyad Castle” in Budapest’s City Park (1896), and the original castle in Vajdahunyad/Hunedoara

This connection must have played a role in the fact that in 1943, when the city of Kassa wanted to erect a memorial for the 500th birthday of the ruler who was so decisive for the city’s history, they placed it on the main facade of the still privately owned Jakab palace facing the Hernád street, which on this occasion received the much more majestic name of King Matthias Boulevard.


The house, which thus became a public sight of the city, soon gained further, although unexpected historical prominence. When the Red Army occupied Kassa as the first of the Slovakian great cities, and it became clear that Slovakia will be assigned not the role of the last German satellite, but that of the martyr Czechoslovakia cut in pieces by Hitler, Edvard Beneš held the first meeting of the new Czechoslovak government in this building. Here they issued the notorious Košice Program, which declared the collective guilt of the Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. The event is still commemorated by a plaque on the wall, as a counterpart of the Matthias memorial, and the Slovak guides usually emphasize this historical role of the building.

After the war the house was nationalized, and thus it became not only symbolically, but also in practice a public building of the city. Its ground floor became the central marriage hall, the first floor the meeting room of the mayor of Košice. In addition, the building also housed the ironworkers’ club. In 1968, in the spirit of socialist urban planning, the Mill Ditch was drained, and now a four-lane highway runs at the foot of the building, through the city’s heart.


But the Jakab palace has legally remained a private house. The heirs of Hugó Barkányi, who in 1908 purchased the house from the builder, are still engaged in a lawsuit to reclaim their property, while the city, understandably, does not want to return the historical palace. Which indicates, independently of the outcome of the lawsuit, to which extent the former private house has became during its hundred-year of history a public building and an identity symbol of the city.