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Zusatztext "Those who cannot find their own reflection in Bram Stoker's still-living creation are surely the undead." Informationen zum Autor Abraham “Bram” Stoker (1847–1912) was born in Ireland. He was a theater critic in Dublin and then manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, as well as the author of many novels and short stories. Joan Acocella is a cultural critic for The New Yorker. She is the author of several books, including Mark Morris and Willa Cather and The Politics of Criticism. She lives in New York. Klappentext Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, and in fact based his character's life-in-death on extensive research in European folklore, his novel elevated the nocturnal creature to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies that flourishes to this day. But a century of imitations has done nothing to diminish the power of Stoker's tale. As his chilling, suave monster stalks his prey from a crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania to an insane asylum in England to the bedrooms of his swooning female victims, the drama is infused with a more and more exquisite measure of sensuality and suspense. Dracula is a classic of Gothic horror, an undying wellspring of modern mythology, and an irresistible entertainment. From the Introduction By Joan Acocella 'Unclean, unclean!' Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker's Dracula , Mina's friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, Essex, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. Mina's husband, Jonathan, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife's violation. Later, between sobs, Mina relates what happened. She was in bed with Jonathan when a strange mist crept into the room. Soon, it congealed into the figure of a man — Count Dracula. With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so: 'First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions...' And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat! The Count took a long drink. Then he drew back, and spoke sweet words to Mina. 'Flesh of my flesh', he called her, 'my bountiful wine-press'. But now he wanted something else. He wanted her in his power from then on. A person who has had his — or, more often, her — blood sucked repeatedly by a vampire turns into a vampire too, but the conversion can be accomplished more quickly if the victim also sucks the vampire's blood. And so, Mina says, he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he ... seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the — Oh, my God! The unspeakable happened — she sucked his blood, at his breast — at which point her friends stormed into the room. Dracula vanished, and, Seward relates, Mina uttered 'a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing ... that it will ring in my ears to my dying day'. That scene, and Stoker...
