|
|
 |
 |
|
|
Portrait
of Vlad Tepes, known as the Impaler, the historical Dracula.
|
|
I did not know
the Carpathians only through books, but through the strong images given
by Murnau's film transcription of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Better than descriptions
made by geographs, Nosferatu the Vampir gave the vision of baroque towns,
mythical forests, torrents and bridges and, above all, of a medieval castle
perched, like an eagle nest, on a dizzy peak. There was only a way of getting
rid of Murnau's images and the feelings they produce on me : to confront
them with ethnography and history and, first of all, with the film story
(...). As for the historical events to which the film implicitely refered
through the prince name and castle, they are now well established and the
places where they occured perfectly identified. Dracula was born in 1430
or 1431 in the German fortified town of Schassburg, that Rumanians call
Sighisoara (...). In 1431 Vlad Dracul received in Nurnberg from Emperor
Sigismund of Luxembourg the insignia of knight of the reversed dragon, the
duchy of Amlas and Fagaras and was confirmed in his hereditary rights on
the principality of Valachia. The dragon's sons, the Dracula, were commissioned
to protect the empire by making war to the Turks. Hence an incredible series
of campains, treasons, imprisonments, escapes, reversals, that won Vlad
II the nickname of Tepes, the impaler.
|
| |
|
J.C.:
Mémoire des Carpathes, La Roumanie millénaire, un regard intérieur,
Paris, Plon, Terre Humaine, 2000, pp.47-52 |
