Dracula daily
Commentary on the current date’s events in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), for fellow followers of DraculaDaily.
The contents of this page will change continuously, so don’t link to
it for the content of a specific date. I provide “permalinks” to the
corresponding entry in the notes file, but they’ve already proven
impermanent, because I made a silly mistake. If you’ve already
bookmarked any, you will need to add a “d” before the id, e.g.
#05-31 → #d05-31. Apologies!
If you’re not worried about spoilers, also see the full annotated timeline and other musings in my Dracula notes. If you are worried about spoilers, be careful what links you follow below.
18 August: And I dreamed I was flying
After all that’s happened, Mina and Lucy are STILL sitting on that seat.
Dracula is at his new home near Purfleet, and probably busy – Carfax sounded like a fixer-upper – so back in Whitby, the spell is lifted and Lucy’s doing better. For now. The “dream” she recalls is an out-of-body experience – suggesting she was near death, or in a state of sleep paralysis, or “traveling clairvoyance,” or seeing through his bat eyes?
Permalink to the 18 August entry:
https://christianmoe.com/en/notes/dracula#d08-18
Lucy’s dream of flying above the lighthouse somehow reminded me of Paul Simon’s hauntingly beautiful “American Tune,” so I started adapting it as a Dracula musical. 1st verse sung by Jonathan (“certainly misused … so far away from home”), 2nd by Mina (“I don’t know a soul that’s not been battered, I don’t have a friend who feels at ease”), bridge by Lucy (“And I dreamed I was dying”), and 3rd verse, slightly adapted, by Dracula (“I come on a ship they call the Demeter … and sing a Transylvanian tune”). However, better judgment kicked in, and I’ll spare you the full horror of my travesty.
But as noted elsewhere, there are so many Dracula musical numbers I’d love to see, and the actual Dracula: the Musical doesn’t sound silly enough.
Previous date
17 August: Keynes
As the 50 boxes of Transylvanian soil near their destination at Carfax near Purfleet, perhaps it’s time to appreciate Dracula as a novel of fin-de-siecle globalization.
Permalink to the 17 August entry:
https://christianmoe.com/en/notes/dracula#d08-17
Dracula’s UK venture is sped by wagon, ship and rail, facilitated by a network of solicitors and shipping agents communicating by reliable international mail. Global trade is a mighty circulatory system, and Dracula, Bradshaw’s Railway Guide in hand, has his fangs on its pulse.
Figure 1: Purfleet on the map. Image: Apple Maps.
Though globalization thus does bring vampirical infestation with it, it’s hard to detect anti-globalist notes (or the anti-Semitic undertones they have in some quarters: the agents have names like Hawkins and Billington, not Rothschild).*
*) Not Rothschild: but a sheep-nosed “Hebrew” shipping agent named Hildesheim will eventually turn up, as if Stoker suddenly realized he’d forgotten to include a stereotyped Jew.
The novel rather celebrates a dawning age when, as J. M. Keynes wrote,
The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep.
— John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919)
Indeed, Keynes might almost** have been writing of Dracula:
**) But our learned and industrious Count certainly does not proceed to foreign quarters “without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs.”
He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighbouring office of a bank (…), and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, (…), bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference.
– Ibid.
15 August: Lucy was languid
🧛🏻♂️ “Lucy was languid”: and if you like the word “languid” – not to mention beautiful young women spending a summer of mutual attraction and mysterious bite marks together – you should read Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) now if you haven’t already. Another great Irish vampire story and, I think, an important influence on Stoker.
Permalink to the 15 August entry:
https://christianmoe.com/en/notes/dracula#d08-15
(If you want a paper copy, do look for the 2019 Lanternfish Press edition, for the added value of Carmen Maria Machado’s introduction and the learned references therein. It will astound you. No, I’m not going to tell you why.)
(Unexpected bonus: apparently, reading Carmilla can also harm the national interests of Belarus, where it is officially blacklisted by the Ministry of Information. 🤡)
🧛🏻♂️ Obviously Mrs Westenra’s heart condition is another device that keeps other characters from sharing crucial information, and Lord Godalming’s sickness keeps Arthur from noticing Lucy’s plight and coming to her aid.
But I wonder if there is any further significance to the theme of dying parents handing over to a new generation.
14 August: His red eyes again
🧛🏻♂️ “[…T]he red light was thrown over on the East Cliff and the old abbey, and seemed to bathe everything in a beautiful rosy glow.”
Permalink to the 14 August entry:
https://christianmoe.com/en/notes/dracula#d08-14
Figure 2: Whitby Abbey (but from the southeast side, across from the angle Mina and Lucy are currently viewing it from, see below). Photo: © Christian Moe 2024.
🧛🏻♂️ “His red eyes again.” Just a trick of the light? Or is Dracula up and about early?
I commented on Mina’s good eyesight on 11 August when, from the West Cliff, she saw in the moonlight a reclining white figure on the seat on the East Cliff. But making out glowing red eyes at that distance, as both Lucy and Mina seem to do? Must be a trick of the light, as she says. Or a psychic phenomenon, perhaps.
Figure 3: View from the West Cliff to the East Cliff. Photo: © Christian Moe 2024.
🧛🏻♂️ Re: movie vampire eyes, I’m partial to the slit-pupil versions: They’re predators, after all.
🧛🏻♂️ What’s that up there with Lucy on the windowsill? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, Mina, it’s a bat.
(Probably. Can’t rule out Dracula taking owl shape, but he’s pretty consistent about being a bat here, and Lucy’s wounds are hardly from a beak.)