No Statue for Bram Stoker?

Three thousand kilometres from Bram Stoker’s birth place in Clontarf and about three hours’ drive from Bucharest, along Highway DN73, towers the formidable fortress, Castle Bran, in the town of Toerzburg, Transylvania. Built by the Teutonic Knights as a defence
against the Ottoman Turks, Tartars and Hungarian marauders, Castle Bran straddles the historic fault line between Western Europe and the steppes of Eastern Europe.

Castle Bran is also a shrine to Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’.

Our guide for the day, Szidonia, tells us that the Romanians are happy to blend the legend of their own Vlad the Impaler with the Dublin author’s Count Dracula and turn it into a tourist attraction. And be in no doubt, it is - with bustling market stalls dedicated
to the macabre; T-shirts, snow globes, toys, horror masks and dolls, all depicting Stoker’s creation in its various guises. This is despite Stoker never setting foot in Romania and Vlad’s bloody rule taking place in the Northern region of the country.

The castle itself, has to a degree, a split personality; one half is dedicated to Queen Mary,
Grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, a woman who embraced the Romanian culture,
eschewing royal dress in favour of traditional Romanian costume, the other to the Victorian gothic novel ‘Dracula’. It’s here that Bram Stoker and the novel is celebrated. Vampire imagery abounds from Bela Lugosi, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lee, Kiefer Sutherland and Max Schreck’s ‘Nosferatu’. Stephen King’s vampire, Kurt Barlowe from ‘Salem’s Lot’ shows how much influence Stoker’s novel filters down into the 20^th Century and influencing writers and filmmakers world-wide. ‘Dracula’ has never been out of print since 1897, it has spawned approximately 1000 films and TV shows

Which raises the question in my mind – why isn’t Stoker celebrated in his home city? The industrious eastern Europeans have turned his creation into a smart, well thought-out tourist attraction that brings thousands of people from all over the world to visit
Castle Bran.

Is it that Stoker’s most famous novel is no so much as overlooked here, but perhaps looked down on slightly? That it is viewed here as ‘pulp’ the way all horror novels are perceived? He was peers with Oscar Wilde and W.B.Yeats – no strangers to the macabre
themselves, and yet, not elevated to their status here? Or is it that he went to England to seek his fortune and building his reputation with The Lyceum Theatre, mixing with society London and thus seen as a sort of turncoat?

In an age when Ireland has embraced America’s Halloween holiday of ‘trick or treat’, perhaps it’s time to follow Romania’s lead and embrace Bram Stoker and his brilliant novel. He lost out to having a bridge named after him in Dublin, but at the very least, he
should have a statue made in his honour, situated in Dublin.

Robert Craven 2016.