A review of Elizabeth Kostova's A Historian
Bobby Kunhu
That's what Elizabeth Kostova's novel A Historian can be rightly described. The notes are extensive and Dracula has been historicised. The Count is brought out of Bram Stoker's Transylvania and from the dark corners of the numerous Hollywood adaptations of the novel and placed in his historic context - Vlad III, Vlad Tepes or Vlad Dracula.
Vlad, the ruler of Wallachia and Transylvania, has been an important peg in the history of the resistance against Ottoman incursions. Supposedly hostaged by his father to Sultan Mehmet as a young boy in exchange for a ceasefire, he learnt extensively from his captors, particularly methods of torture and employed them liberally in his later life as the ruler of Wallachia and Transylvania, impaling his enemies and earning the epithet of the Impaler for himself. Kostova provides the missing links in Stoker's novel or rather provides defence against the criticisms of lack of historicity of the novel.
The novel tells the story of a family of Historians and their friends piecing together various fragments of evidences in a chase for the tomb of Vlad Dracula, to destroy him – there are personal passions that drive each of the protagonists on this macabre trail – for those with a taste for the supernatural. The novel offers vignettes of a not-much-studied past for those of us who are fascinated by either history or theology or the history of theology. It is pieced together through oral narratives, letters between lovers, parent and child and simple references to texts – a labyrinth of love stories straddling the horrific.
But what makes the book beautiful is the way Kostova goes about this. In the process of writing this novel, Kostova's characters, most of whom are historians, bring history down from its pedestal of high culture and uses credible subaltern sources like folklore without any hint of condescension, navigating through texts with as much alacrity as superstitions and personal narratives. The text is replete with vampire stories from Romania, the Balkans, Russia and Turkey and these stories act as the key to the search for the tomb of Vlad Tepes III
In the process, Kostova dwells a lot on medieval Central European History, particularly the skirmishes with the Ottoman Empire, and the role of the Order of the Dragon (the word Dracul is supposed to be the Romanian derivative for Dragon), careful enough not to take sides in the process of telling the story. In fact as a masterstroke, she gets the protagonists to ally with traditional rivals from the erstwhile Ottoman Empire and with interesting forays into the former soviet bloc in fighting the dreaded Dracula – a Vampire.
The flipside of the novel is the uncanny feeling that Kostova is trying to do a Da Vinci Code, especially with pure bloodline bit tracing the direct descendants of Vlad Dracula. The most touching part of the book is a post-card written by the Narrator's mother, which in some ways validates this tracing of the bloodline:
"My beloved daughter
When you were born, your hair was black and stuck to your slimy head in curls. After they washed and dried you, it became a soft down around your face, dark hair like mine, but also coppery like your father's. I lay in a pool of morphine, and held you and watched the lights in your newborn hair change from Gypsy dark to bright, and then back to dark. Everything about you was polished and shone; I had shaped and polished you inside me without knowing what I was doing. Your fingers were golden, your cheek was rose, your eyelashes and eyebrows were the feathers of the baby crow. My happiness overflowed even the morphine.
Your Loving Mother
--
Bobby Kunhu
http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/
damodar prasad
Bobby Kunhu
The point of Kostova's book is that he is seen as a historical persona who was on the side of christendom against the Ottomans (Crusades), while in her novel itself christendom holds hands with a muslim turkey to defeat Vlad Dracula!!!!!!
I have not read Chullikad's poem, but would definitely like to know more
damodar prasad
Chuliikad poem is about malayali dracula...
Bobby Kunhu
Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally, In Search of Dracula
Bobby Kunhu
Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally, In Search of Dracula