#Arminius van Helsing

[moksutinn]

[milariro]

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️  ❤️ 

[favficbirthdays]

Happy Birthday

Arminius van Helsing (19th March)

The Vampire Dies in No Time

[yallemagne]

Everyone: "Man, how does Van Helsing know so much about Dracula and vampires?? Must be a personal connection between him and the Count."

Me: *pulling my hair out trying to rewrite the September 30 meeting scene* "IF YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING READ HIS MONOLOGUE TWENTY TIMES OVER YOU WOULD KNOW HE KNEW NONE OF THIS INFORMATION PRIOR TO THE STORY."

Maybe not none. But. Let me just. Most of the shit he says is filler. "Let me tell you, it's gonna be fucking spooky" is what he says like fifty times over in twenty words or more each time.

"Alas! Had I known at the first what now I know—nay, had I even guess at him—one so precious life had been spared to many of us who did love her."

Van Helsing says that if he knew all the info he's about to dump on us about vampires, they could have saved Lucy. Meaning he didn't know jack shit. He most certainly didn't know who Dracula was.

"Even friend Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him to eat, never! He throws no shadow; he make in the mirror no reflect, as again Jonathan observe. He has the strength of many of his hand—witness again Jonathan when he shut the door against the wolfs, and when he help him from the diligence too. He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship arrival in Whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at Whitby, and as friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as my friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy. He can come in mist which he create—that noble ship's captain proved him of this; but, from what we know, the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust—as again Jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small—we ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door."

Then finally he starts saying things that he may have already known since he cites no specific examples: night vision, requiring invitation, no power in the daytime, the sunrise and sunset bit, etc.. He does cite an example of what "unhallowed ground" vampires can enter uninvited, but that's just to illustrate his point. But then he talks about his friend Arminius.

"I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record; and, from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has been. He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land. If it be so, then was he no common man; for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' That mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as 'stregoica'—witch, 'ordog,' and 'pokol'—Satan and hell; and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all understand too well."

Van Helsing is really just like me for real oh my god. He sounds like me after just having gone on a Wikipedia binge. He knew absolutely nothing about Dracula before, and he really wants to capitalize on all the new shit he just learned.

"We know from the inquiry of Jonathan that from the castle to Whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all of which were delivered at Carfax; we also know that at least some of these boxes have been removed. It seems to me, that our first step should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house beyond that wall where we look to-day; or whether any more have been removed. If the latter, we must trace——"

*gunshots* Anyway.

More fucking fuel for the stop fucking painting him and Dracula as mortal enemies fire. He's literally just an old man who reads a lot, he's not a badass vampire hunter, Dracula didn't kill his gf or some shit, and he's probably never successfully dealt with a vampire before. Also, more ammo for my if you deny Jonathan's importance to the story one more time-- gun.

[thebibi]

Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Lucy and everyone else are starting on such a hopeful note, and there is Van Helsing is probably getting drunk midweek while reading Arminius Vambery's latest book because his life is barren and he has no friends.

[dragoneyes618]

He arrives from deepest Eastern Europe, carrying the soil of his homeland with him. He is an immigrant who must adapt to a new society and is very self-conscious about speaking English with a very thick accent. He has a dark complexion; his nose is hooked; he has massive and conspicuously bushy eyebrows and pointy ears; and he stands slightly stooped and hunched. He is clad in black from head to foot and he wears distinctive clothes, including a six-starred Magen David-like medallion, that set him apart from everyone else.

He remains proudly loyal to an alien tribe, the smallest of minorities, and though subject to intense persecution throughout his existence, he has remained steadfast through many centuries in his dedication to ensuring the survival of his race. He communicates with his followers through a mysterious code and a language unknown to others and, unlike everyone else on earth, his day begins at sundown. Not only is he unable to eat the same food as everyone else, his food preparation rite includes draining the animal upon which he feeds of every last drop of blood, and he also practices rituals that involve drinking a red-colored liquid. He is not only non-Christian, but he is physically and emotionally repelled by the mere sight of a Christian cross. Haters characterize him as evil, a capitalist bloodsucker, a person feeding on the social vigor of Europe, and as a general threat to contemporary civil society.

Is this an antisemitic description of a European Jew . . . or a description of Count Dracula?

Actually: both. As discussed below, that is no mere coincidence because Dracula represents the convergence of prevailing stereotypes of both Jews and vampires.

Abraham Stoker (1847-1912) – better known as “Bram” – was an Irish author who is best known for his 1897 Gothic horror novel, Dracula, which went on to become one of the most well-known works in English literature and which has been adapted in hundreds of films, television productions, video games, animated cartoons, comic books and dramas. It has been translated into 30 languages and, since its publication, it has never been out of print.

Stoker became interested in the theatre while a student and, while working for the Irish Civil Service, he became the theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which was co-owned by Sheridan Le Fanu, an author of Gothic tales who may have engendered his interest in such stories. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for Dracula, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore, and many critics suggest that his vampire character was inspired by various historical figures, including particularly the infamous Vlad the Impaler. Interestingly, though he traveled the world, he never actually visited Eastern Europe or Transylvania, where his seminal novel is set.

Of particular Jewish interest is that before writing Dracula, Stoker met and befriended Ármin Vámbéry (1832-1913), a renowned Hungarian-Jewish Orientalist and foundational figure in Hungarology. Many commentators argue that Dracula likely emerged from Vámbéry’s dark and moody stories of the Carpathian mountains and, in fact, Stoker claimed him as his consultant and credited him as a primary source of Balkan folklore. Some authorities further argue that the character of Professor Van Helsing, Stoker’s vampire hunter, was based on Vámbéry; in the novel, Stoker has Van Helsing refer to his “friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University,” where Vámbéry was a professor. Although Arminius is not a character in the novel, his influence upon Van Helsing is crucial to the ultimate defeat of Dracula.

Born Hermann Bamberger in Szent-György, Kingdom of Hungary into an impoverished Orthodox Jewish family, he eventually converted to Islam – and later to Protestant Christianity, probably to facilitate appointment to the faculty of the University of Budapest – and changed his name to Ármin Vámbéry. His father, a rabbi, died of cholera in his youth and, in a radical move disapproved of by the Jewish community, his remarried mother, believing that a secular education was key to upward social mobility in the non-Jewish world, transferred him from a yeshiva to a Catholic school – where his second-grade teacher taunted him with “Well, `Moshele,’ why do you study? Would it not be better for you to become a kosher butcher?” – and then to a Protestant school in Pressburg.

However, unable to support him and his siblings, his mother set him adrift at age 12 to fend for himself and, lame from tuberculosis, he was forced to serve an apprenticeship with a tailor and later as a tutor. However, he manifested an extraordinary talent for languages and, by age 16, he had become fluent in Hungarian, Hebrew, Latin, French and German, and was somewhat knowledgeable in English, Russian, Serbian, and other Slavic languages as he commenced his career as a writer.

After spending about a year in Constantinople, Vámbéry published a German-Turkish dictionary (1858). After years as a pioneering traveler of Central Asia in the double guise of a Turkish effendi disguised as a Sunni dervish, he published Travels in Central Asia (1865), which made him an internationally renowned writer and celebrity, and he was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Budapest (1865) (to which Stoker refers in Dracula).

Vámbéry notably served as a trusted consultant on diplomatic work in the Ottoman Empire to no less a personage than Theodor Herzl and, among other things, used his connections in the Ottoman Empire to introduce Herzl to Sultan Abdul-Hamid in 1901. Although he did play perhaps the leading role in enabling Herzl to argue his case for Zionism directly to the Sultan, he did not share the Zionist leader’s optimism regarding the outcome of the meeting (and he proved correct). As Herzl wrote in his diary, Vámbéry admonished him:

[do not] talk to [the Sultan] about Zionism. That is a phantasmagoria. Jerusalem is as holy to him as Mecca. Nevertheless, Zionism is good – against Christendom. I want to keep Zionism alive – and that is why I have secured the audience for you, as otherwise you would not be able to face your Congress. You must gain time and carry on Zionism somehow.

In his published diaries, Herzl also documented his relationship with Vámbéry and, with great affection, describes him thus:

Vámbéry doesn’t know whether he is more Turk than Englishman, writes books in German, speaks twelve languages with equal mastery, and has professed five religions, in two of which he has served as a priest . . . He told me 1001 tales of the Orient, of his intimacy with the sultan, etc. He immediately trusted me completely and told me, under oath of secrecy, that he was a secret agent of Turkey and of England.

Notwithstanding his apostasy, Vámbéry argued for the right of believing Jews – which he definitionally limited to the Orthodox – to retain their way of life and, after Herzl’s death, his counsel was actively solicited by David Wolfssohn. Some critics note that Vámbéry never publicly embraced Zionism and that, as a convert to Islam, he certainly would have at least embraced the Muslim belief that Jews were better off under benevolent Muslim rule. However, Herzl’s diary entries and the esteem with which he was held by Zionist leadership would seem to belie the argument that he wasn’t at least sympathetic to the Zionist cause.

The first film adaptation of Dracula, and arguably its most famous, was F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922), with Max Schreck starring as the vampire Count Orlok. [Ironically, “Shrek” – which was the actor’s real name – means “fright” in German and Yiddish.] Stoker’s widow, Florence, sued the filmmakers, alleging that her approval had never even been sought, let alone granted; maintaining that she had not been paid any royalties; and demanding that all negatives and prints of the unauthorized film be destroyed. When the lawsuit was finally resolved in her favor three years later, only a single print of the film had survived, but it had broad distribution as contraband and has survived to become one of the most important films of all time. The first authorized film version of Dracula did not make an appearance until almost ten years later when Universal Studios released Tod Browning‘s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi, which became known as perhaps the definitive Dracula film.

Interestingly, in Nosferatu, a manuscript page that is shown in passing displays mystical symbols on it, including a six-pointed star evocative of a Magen David and what may possibly be a few Hebrew letters (amid dozens of other signs) and, in the Lugosi film, the vampire also wears what appears to be a Magen David. This became an amusing issue in 1987 when General Mills, in response to complaints by Jewish media, agreed to redesign cereal boxes for its Count Chocula breakfast food to remove the same six-pointed medallion.

Moreover, the cast of Nosferatu included several Jewish actors, including Alexander Granach, the foremost Jewish actor in Berlin, who played Knock, the vampire’s henchman. Granach plays his character as the ultimate antisemitic stereotype, a cackling, grasping, bushy-eyebrowed money-grubber. He later fled Germany when Hitler rose to power, ultimately settling in Hollywood, where he became a successful actor in American films, often playing Nazis. Albin Grau, a student of the occult and a graphic artist who produced, designed, and marketed the film, was not Jewish, but he was nonetheless arrested, charged with being a socialist, and murdered by the Nazis at Buchenwald.

Nosferatu became a leading source of Nazi propaganda. Julius Streicher, who would become the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer, the great organ of Nazi antisemitism, attended the film’s premiere in 1922 and quickly began featuring articles discussing parallels between Jews and vampires. In Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly refers to Jews as vampires and bloodsuckers.

Given the literally hundreds of versions of the original novel – including particularly Nosferatu, whose plot differs dramatically from Stoker’s original narrative – it is worthwhile to summarize here Stoker’s original story. For example, in Stoker’s novel, sunlight merely weakens Dracula, but it was Galeen in Nosferatu who first came up with the idea that sunlight evaporates a vampire and turns him into dust or wisps of smoke, which has become a universal theme in virtually all successor vampire stories

Stoker’s novel begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visiting Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains to help him purchase a house near London. Paying no attention to the Count’s stern warning, he wanders the castle at night and encounters three vampire women, but he is saved by Dracula, who gives the women a small child bound inside a bag. When Harker awakens the next morning and finds that the Count has abandoned him to the three vampires, he escapes and ends up delirious in a Budapest hospital. Meanwhile, Dracula has sailed on a ship to England with boxes of earth from his castle. Meanwhile, the captain’s log reflects the disappearance of the entire crew, until he alone remains, and when the ship finally docks at Whitby, a large dog is seen leaping ashore.

Lucy Westenra writes a letter to Mina Murray, Harker’s fiancée, about her acceptance of Arthur Holmwood’s marriage proposal. Dracula stalks Lucy and, after she hosts Mina at Whitby, she begins sleepwalking. When Mina receives a letter about her missing fiancé’s illness and goes to Budapest to care for him, Lucy becomes very ill. Professor Abraham Van Helsing determines that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire but, refusing to divulge the truth, he diagnoses her with acute blood loss. He places garlic flowers around her room and makes her a necklace of them but Lucy’s mother, unaware that garlic repels vampires, removes them, after which they are terrified by a wolf. The mother dies of a heart attack, with Lucy’s death following soon after.

After her burial, newspapers report that children are being stalked in the night by a beautiful woman and, when Van Helsing figures out it is Lucy, he takes a small group to her tomb, disinters her, drives a stake through her heart, beheads her, and fills her mouth with garlic. Harker and his now-wife Mina return, join the hunt for Dracula, and are advised by Van Helsing that vampires can only rest during the day on earth from their homeland.

Dracula secretly attacks Mina three times, drinking her blood each time, and he forces her to drink his blood on the final visit, the result of which is that she will be turned into a vampire after her death unless Dracula is killed. When the vampire hunters find Dracula’s English properties, they discover many earthen boxes within and they open each of the boxes; deposit blessed wafers of sacramental bread inside them, rendering them useless to Dracula; and reseal them. When they learn that Dracula is fleeing to his Transylvanian castle with his last box in tow, Van Helsing uses hypnosis to exploit Mina’s psychic connection to the count to track the vampire’s movements.

In Romania, the hunters split up, with Van Helsing and Mina going to Dracula’s castle, where they destroy the vampire women; Harker and Holmwood follow the Count’s boat on the river; and two others parallel them on land. When the hunters see Dracula’s box being loaded onto a wagon, they converge and attack it and, after they slash Dracula’s neck and drive a stake through his heart, he crumbles to dust and Mina is freed. (In some later versions of the story, Mina becomes a vampire and is killed through impalement.)

While Jewish villains are plentiful in gothic literature of the time, few appear in vampire stories. Nonetheless, critics have published many works claiming not only that Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula had Jewish origins, as described above, but also that antisemitism underscores the entire novel. However, for all the subtexts of the novel that have become fodder for the academics, Dracula himself is certainly not Jewish and there are actually only two explicit references to Jews in the novel.

First, trying to track down Dracula’s possessions, the vampire hunters discover that one item was received by German Jew Immanuel Hildesheim, whom Stoker describes as a “Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez.” Thus, the only named person whose assistance Dracula enlists in escaping from London is a German Jew, who requires a bribe to help capture Dracula.

Second, after Dracula shipped 50 boxes of ordinary soil to London, one of the transporters, when asked about the strange cargo, responds in a working-class accent: “. . . There was dust that thick in the place you might have slep’ on it without ‘urtin’ of yer bones; an’ the place was that neglected that yer might ‘ave smelled ole Jerusalem in it.” Thus, the odor emanating out of the cargo was not any ordinary smell but, rather, a Jewish smell, feeding popular antisemitic views of Jews as being unsanitary.

While never identified as a Jew, Dracula – and vampires more generally – encompassed a variety of antisemitic stereotypes including, as described in the introduction to this article, being rootless and strange foreigners of East European origin, dark-complected, and lustful for the money and blood of others. Moreover, the mythology of the vampire has historically been closely linked to the Blood Libel slander, pursuant to which Jews are accused of using the blood of Christian children to prepare their Passover matzot, and Stoker frequently evokes the Blood Libel, including particularly in one scene where he has Dracula bring a child to feed his vampire wives. Significantly, the vampire hunters ultimately succeed in destroying Dracula using specifically Christian elements: crucifixes, holy water and wafer hosts as their weapons, which are the tools Christians claim to have used to “redeem” Jewish souls during the Crusades.

Furthermore, in the last two decades of the 19th century, the number of Jews living in England had increased more than sixfold because of pogroms and antisemitic laws enacted elsewhere, and there were widespread fears regarding foreign contagion and anxieties regarding the “dangers” presented by the veritable flood of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Britain. By feeding off upstanding English citizens, Stoker’s Dracula maintains the survival of his race, just as Jews newly arrived in Great Britain sustain themselves by usurping money and wealth through devious means, leaving their victims” dry.”

As such, whether intentionally or incidentally, whether he was an antisemite or merely reflected the ethos of his time, Stoker played on these anxieties – notably, one critic at the time describes Dracula’s schemes to further his undead bloodline as an attempt to “Judaize” Great Britain – and, by characterizing Dracula as raising loyal only to his own people in Transylvania, he similarly exacerbated public xenophobia and anxiety over Jewish “dual loyalty.”

[see-arcane]

Barking Harker Cast Snapshot 11: Detours

Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg, to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mircalla’s grave. He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvelously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his fingers’ ends all the great and little works upon the subject. “Magia Posthuma,” “Phlegon de Mirabilibus,” “Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,” “Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris,” by John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. —Laura, Carmilla 

“I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster, and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance. Not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman, and alchemist. Which latter was the highest development of the science knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.” —Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula

Behold two men of letters.

Letters written. Letters burned.

Lessons taught. Lessons learned.

Both are far older than they look.

Both have grown adept at telling the right kind of tale to soothe an audience into believing otherwise. Ancestors invented. A lineage of sons all bearing the same name. Never mind, friends, never mind. Who wants to hear a story of old? Of all the men who were not me, but saw and did such bloody works?

Both have a vision.

Though only one of the two has Vision. A useful gift. Knowledge always is, so long as proper action can follow. And the proper action must follow. It has to.

(England is the least of what he’s after. Please. It will all bleed.)

More details about Barking Harker here.

[levysoft]

La nascita di Dracula

L’autore affermò che l’idea per scrivere il suo libro gli venne da un incubo causato da una cena, con lo studioso ungherese Arminius Vambery, a base di gamberi e insalata.

Addormentandosi, lo scrittore sognò un vampiro che sorgeva dalla tomba per recarsi a compiere i suoi misfatti.

Ma l’incubo di Stoker di certo non bastò per costruire la trama di questo capolavoro della narrativa gotica. È noto infatti che l’autore, sotto la guida di Vambery, si documentò scrupolosamente trascorrendo molte ore al British Museum a consultare libri e mappe fino a quando non riuscì a trovare tutto ciò che gli occorreva per scrivere il romanzo. Fece tesoro di quanto apprese sul folklore e sulle tradizioni sui vampiri e su un sanguinario personaggio realmente vissuto nel XV secolo, Vlad Tepes l’Impalatore re di Valacchia, il cui nome deriva da “Dracul”, usato dai suoi contemporanei per designare il padre, Vlad II, della principesca famiglia dei Basarab. Ma sull’origine di questo soprannome di Vlad vi sono due interpretazioni: la prima associa il nome “Dracul” con il diavolo, giacchè “drac” in romeno significa “diavolo” mentre il suffisso “ul” è l’articolo determinativo che viene aggiunto alla fine della parola; la seconda sostiene invece che il nome derivi dalla parola “drago”, l’emblema della famiglia di Vlad.

Perchè la Transilvania?

Stoker scelse la terra dove era vissuto Vlad per ambientare in modo attendibile il suo racconto, la Transilvania, “la terra oltre la foresta”, uno dei luoghi più selvaggi d’Europa. Per descrivere tali luoghi, che non aveva avuto modo di vedere, egli ricorse all’aiuto di Arminius Vambery, insegnante di lingue orientali all’Università di Budapest. Si noti che Arminius è il nome dell’amico del medico Van Helsing, uno dei personaggi del libro.

I vampiri del folklore rumeno

La storia del romanzo di basa su una credenza molto diffusa, quella dell’esistenza dei vampiri, creature terrificanti già menzionate nella letteratura greca ed egizia. Tuttavia per la creazione del conte Dracula, Stoker attinse soprattutto alle credenze del folklore rumeno. Secondo la Chiesa ortodossa orientale, la religione dominante in quel paese, chi muore maledetto o scomunicato diventa un morto vivente, o moroi, finchè non ottiene l’assoluzione da parte del sacerdote. La superstizione locale si associa a creature denominate strigoi, demoniaci uccelli notturni, affamati di carne e sangue umani. La tradizione popolare attribuisce ai vampiri la causa di epidemie e pestilenze.

Secondo le leggende rumene, alcune persone, bambini illegittimi o non battezzati, streghe e il settimo figlio di un settimo figlio, sono destinati a diventare vampiri. Questi ultimi possono assumere le sembianze di animali come il lupo e il pipistrello.

In certi villaggi, chi non mangia aglio è sospettato di essere un vampiro e infatti la miglior difesa contro di essi è quella di strofinare con l’aglio porte e finestre.

Stoker ottenne queste informazioni facendo delle ricerche al British Museum e avvalendosi delle preziose informazioni fornitegli dall’amico Vambery ma sicuramente fu fortemente influenzato dai misteriosi omicidi compiuti, in quel periodo, da “Jack lo Squartatore” e dagli 11 racconti indù sull’argomento “vampiri” tradotti da Richard Burton, altro suo amico, esploratore e letterato.

[moksutinn]

[nocandnc]

This is the Helsing I’ll be picturing while reading the remaining Dracula Daily entries thankyouverymuch.

[vanhelsingenthusiast]

I got Van Helsing x Dracula for angst and Van Helsing x Arminius for fluff n that’s rlly all I need in life

[thegoatsongs]

I think Van Helsing bases initially all his methods (stake, garlic, religious items, wild rose, methods of killing a vampire) on his books, his "friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University" (also Stoker's friend) and the rest of the lore he summarises is from Jonathan's discoveries that didn't exist in folklore books.

Also Mina isn't only vital for sharing and transcribing the journal, but also for making Jack share his diary so she can transcribe it. All the intel they got from Renfield from his words and behaviors is from her studying Jack's notes and next up by having Renfield talk to her honestly by treating him like a human person rather than a lunatic (like what Jonathan was deemed by himself and doctors).

Apparently, Mina is the one who figured out the importance of limnality today too, thanks for decoding Jack's notes on Renfield and Jonathan's journal on the 4 vampires' patterns.

She wakes up and practically goes get up and gogogo!! at sleepy Jonathan next to her because she has no time to explain.

Van Helsing has read all the journals too but the one who figured these vital parts out is her.

Oh and Mina made BACKUPS. You are welcome, everyone.

I don't have the panels and screenshots now but several adaptations make the "use hypnosis to take advantage of the link between Mina and Dracula" to be Van Helsing's idea

[yallemagne]

Hmm Mina studying criminology independent of any usefulness to Jonathan (she kept up with his studies on property law instead, and like you said he's a solicitor), kind of reminds me... Jonathan also has no use for ghost stories. Mina though spends paragraphs talking about every spooky legend about her vacation spot. Not every young person researches about girl ghosts in ruins, and invisible mourning bells for their seaside summer break. (Now I also recall she reads an old poem about a buried girl while there? Marmion?). Further, she pokes old men there to tell her more about those. (And gets "oh don't be scared it's all fake! not for young girls like you!" but she keeps pestering). When Mr Swales told her that she and Lucy sit upon a suicide grave, Lucy jumped, disturbed (but resolved to remain there anyway because she likes the seat), while Mina didn't.

Also, she talks of the Vikings sacking a town there during a specific invasion, and this tracks her knowledge about Dracula's historical battles... though I can't decide if the latter is a newer research. But it does show she has an interest in old wars.

So, I feel that maybe she has an affinity for darker subjects in general, both legendary and real life?

um that got long but your post gave me food for thought sorry

Don't be sorry for the long ask. Do you know how long I've been waiting for people to come into my inbox? I have been starved.

Jonathan has no use for ghost stories, but we do see him express curiosity about the local folklore on his trip... too bad no one wanted to talk much about it. Mina's interest in ghost stories is definitely a mix of an affinity for the macabre and her desire to be a lady journalist. She knows Whitby has a lot of rich folklore, so she reasons that the most obvious subject to tackle in her interviews is that.

Marmion! So, I will have to read this poem. I just read the summary so far. Lord Marmion was lusting after this woman, Clara, so in order to gain access to her, he and his nun mistress, Constance, framed her fiancé, Ralph, for treason. Constance hoped playing wing woman would get Marmion to like her more, but he ditched her once Clara joined a convent to escape him, and Constance was walled up for breaking her vows. She got the last laugh when she revealed Marmion's deceit, and Marmion died in battle. It's such delicious drama. I'm sure you could project Dracula onto this poem the same way you can with the Ballad of Lenore (*cough cough* Jonathan is Clara, Mina is Ralph, Constance is Renfield, Marmion is Dracula-- *gets shot*).

Sorry for that aside lol. Mina only briefly mentions it: "Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall.", and I'm like "honey tell us the whole story, would ya?"

Her knowledge of Dracula's military conquests comes from Jonathan's journal, where he interviewed Dracula about his family lineage. That is supplemented with Van Helsing's research done with the help of his friend Arminius. That was not really a personal interest thing, it was homework for killing Dracula.

But once again! Student of life. I don't know if I'd say she believed in any of the ghost stories before (hence her not being worried about the unconsecrated grave of the suicide victim, but Lucy, who is more sensitive, jumping from the seat), but she certainly has an interest in them for how they shape the world around her. She doesn't care for Mr. Swales trying to assure her that none of it is true because she isn't inquiring about the ghosts out of apprehension, she's asking because spooky legends are a part of history! They shape the cultures they are born from and inform the attitudes of the people who come from those cultures.

little bit of spoilers, read November 1:

Later on, we see that she doesn't seem very interested in Eastern European folklore. Now... a lot was going on at the time, but she does rather patronizingly call the locals superstitious. That could just be denial talking. The landscapes? Lovely. The people? Quaint. Their beliefs? Ohhhh, they're soooo irrational, psh. They acted like I was becoming a vampire right in front of them.

She's intrigued by English folklore and history, but she turns up her nose a bit when it comes to the mythology of other places... to be expected from a Victorian, but sad.

[throwawaydracula]

Incidentally, Van Helsing's "friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth University" was a case of inserting real contemporary figures into fiction, because that almost certainly referred to Ármin Vámbéry, a renowned Hungarian Jewish (although nonobservant and an atheist later in life) expert on the Ottoman Empire and its territories and vassals. In western Europe, he sometimes went by Arminius. Stoker had met and conversed with Vámbéry personally twice. Before the discovery of Stoker's notes, it was assumed Vámbéry was Stoker's main source of information about Transylvania and its history, but these days that's disputed-- no evidence they ever talked about Vlad the Impaler or Transylvania at all.

But Stoker apparently found the man fascinating, so this little inclusion is kinda cute.

[pop-goes-the-weasel]

Wait a minute....is the Arminius whom Van Helsing consults Armin Vambery? The well known Turkologist?

First Ellen Terry

Now Armin Vambery

Bram just cannot stop name dropping

[thegoatsongs]

Yep, Van Helsing has namedropped one of his sources: "Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know. But he is clever. I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record; and, from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has been." and "As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminus of Buda-Pesth, [Dracula] was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman, and alchemist"

He recognised something vampiric on Lucy due to the fact that he is an old man from Old Europe in Industrial England. He has belief in things that these English youngsters don't. But he knows nothing about how to treat her condition and that's why he immediately returns to Amsterdam for books and research and then he orders garlic flowers.

His main source on vampire behavior, powers, and weakness, ends up being Jonathan Harker's Journal. And he cites it very often as a reference.

I’m a little behind on Re: Dracula so maybe there’s an answer to this that people already know but is there a reason why Van Helsing knows so much about vampires? Like yes he probably got the knowledge from folklore and stories but there’s definitely a history behind this right?

You don’t diagnose someone with being a vampire sippy cup unless you have encountered vampires before

This man has seen things