Dracula’s real Transylvania
QUESTION How accurate was the geography of Romania depicted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula?
One of the defining features of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, is its detailed geography, which sets it apart from other early gothic novels.
Surprisingly, Dubliner Stoker never visited Transylvania, but he certainly did his research.
The first section takes the form of a travel journal written by young english solicitor Jonathan Harker, who is travelling across europe to help conduct a land purchase on behalf of a noble client.
Stoker read widely while researching Harker’s journey: ‘Having 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 . . .
‘I find that the district he [Dracula] 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.’
Stoker consulted Arminius Vambery, professor at the University of Budapest, and read published journals of travellers to Hungary and what is now Romania.
In Dracula, the towns of Klausenburgh (modern day Cluj) and Bistritz (Bistrita) are described accurately, as are small villages such as Fundu and Verestri.
Dracula’s Castle, perched high on a rock above a valley, is thought by some to have been based on the fortress of Bran Castle.
The famed Borgo Pass in the eastern Carpathians that connects Transylvania with Moldavia is beautifully detailed.
Jonathan Harker’s vivid description of the Carpathians is based on a passage in Major e.C. Johnson’s 1885 book On The Track Of The Crescent: erratic notes From The Piraeus To Pesth:
‘Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly.’
Clive Radwell, Over Norton, Oxon.
QUESTION Who coined the term ‘the Big C’?
In THe mid-1960s, the actor John Wayne had his first bout with lung cancer. He told his fans he had ‘licked the Big C’ and campaigned tirelessly for people to get themselves checked and to nag their friends and family to do the same.
Though he won the battle, he sadly lost the war, dying of stomach cancer in 1979. His family set up the John Wayne Cancer Foundation in his memory, raising millions of dollars to fund research.
Mike O’Hara, Birchington, Kent.
QUESTION Was the term Middle Ages adopted in the 15th century?
THe Middle Ages or the medieval period refers to the era between the collapse of the Roman empire in the 5th century AD and the beginning of the Renaissance.
The concept was inspired by the Italian poet Petrarch, who described his world as a cultural Dark Age, inferior to the Classical Greco-Roman world.
Italian scholar Leonardo Bruni was the first to describe this period of ignorance and superstition after the collapse of the western Roman empire, followed by his own enlightened times.
Flavio Biondo developed a chronological scheme, providing an embryonic notion of the Middle Ages.
The phrase media tempestas (middle time) was coined in 1469 by Giovanni Andrea de’ Bussi, Pope Paul II’s librarian.
english antiquarian William Camden first used the term ‘middle age’ in 1605 in his Remaines Of A Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine. Christoph Cellarius’s Historia Medii
Aevi in 1688 marked the first time Middle Ages appeared in the title of a book.
During the 19th century, medium aevum (Latin for middle ages) evolved into medieval. Its first recorded use is in British Monachism, Or Manners And Customs Of The Monks And nuns Of england, an 1817 work by vicar Thomas Dudley Fosbroke. In his preface notes, ‘he professes to illustrate medieval customs on medieval principles’.
Suzanne Rice, Royal Leamington Spa, Warks.
QUESTION Are hollow cones used to deter rats from running up ropes on to a ship?
FURTHeR to earlier answers, in 1958, while anchored in the port of Kingston, Jamaica, I saw hundreds of rats scampering up the ropes and climbing over each other until they reached the brim of the cones. They then hopped down the other side and onto the ship.
They were crafty as our cargo was bananas bound for england.
C. Barnes, Welwyn, Herts.
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