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Oriental Vampires Vs British Imperialists: Analysis of Bram Stokers Dracula
On one hand, Bram Stokers Dracula features a villainous vampire who wishes to impose his demonic way of living on the people of England. Before setting foot in London, he researches Englands language, culture, and geography and while in London, he converts the locals into beings like himself. On the other hand, while entering Draculas castle Jonathan Harker describes it as leaving the west and entering the east (Stoker 2008). The figure of Dracula thus represents a paradox wherein he is both the oriental dealing with mystic arts unfamiliar to the scientific and rational west, as well as the inversion of the very trope of imperialism by being the conqueror who transforms the indigenous populace into creatures like himself in what could be considered a parallel of the civilizing burden of the white man. Stokers Dracula finds echoes in Robert Druces genre of mutiny gothic because it concerns thematically to the Indian rebellion of 1857 in depicting the orient as a bloodthirsty, mysteriously powerful enemy who must be defeated in a selfrighteous war (Druce 1993). This war between the East and the West is also a war between the occult and the scientific. Here Dracula represents the secret spiritual wisdom of the East which is a mystery to the rational scientific developments of the west represented by the men hunting the vampire. Moreover, Dracula is the embodiment of the state of halfdeath, especially in relation to Indian spiritualism of detachment of the astral soul from the body. Therefore, it finds resonance with the vetal of Indian mythology. In the seventies and eighties, Stoker discussed these legends and myths with Burton. Here it is interesting to note that Richard Burtons retelling of the tales of Vikram and Vetal turns this figure into a vampire. Such a misappropriation allows for an easy understanding of the mysterious character for the western readers familiar with the vampire.
The term vetal does not offer easy translatability for its western translators or audience because there is no complete equivalent for the concept. Various works enlist the being as genie, djinn, phantom, demon, or ghost.1 However, one particularly misleading translation of the term would be a vampire, especially considering the popularity of the folklore surrounding the same. Unlike a vampire, a vetal does not bite the neck of its victims to suck their blood. Instead, vetals devour magicians who try to control them to gather boons from them. On the other hand, accomplished magicians manage to overpower a vetal using their occult powers (sidhis). Vetal is related to alchemy and can inanimate a corpse but may not always have ill intentions. Unlike Dracula who is described as pure evil, the vetal in the tale ends up helping King Vikram. Burtons Vikram and the Vampire is chosen for the present study primarily to draw a connection between the two beings Dracula and Vetal but also because unlike other translations, Burton chooses not to remove the supernatural element and in fact focuses on the occult practices2. In calling the vetal a vampire, there is an erasure of the concept of vetal itself through its merging into another being called vampire. Burton does not attempt to explain the nature and origin of the vetal, further conflating the two categories of supernatural beings.
Burtons aim in translating Vetal Panchavimshati was to teach the ways of the east to the west so as to be able to govern the colonized better. Interestingly, Stokers Count Dracula also partakes in this imperialist exercise of learning the ways of the colonized. He studies extensively the history and geography of the place he seeks to conquer. He comes to a major English city (London) with the sole purpose of controlling her people and assimilating them into his own identity. Rather than being uncannily Other, Dracula for its Victorian readers is unnervingly familiar. Even though he confronts western rationalism with oriental magic, he uses this magic to obtain imperialistic gains and to colonize the colonizers. Hence, he questions the cultures sense of itself by showing it in the mirror. Interestingly, Stoker conflates the image of its protagonist Jonathan Harker and its villain Dracula when Harker sees only himself in the mirror:
This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself. (Stoker 2008)
It is possible that Harker only sees himself in the mirror because the goals of both Harker and Dracula are similar. It is not one man or the other but the empires monstrosity reflecting back at Harker. Both men intend to dominate a different race so as to establish themselves as superior and control the racial, cultural, and social identities of the other, both sap vitality from the other to profit in their enterprise of greed.
Dracula himself admits that his homeland has been through a perpetual exercise of invasion. He says, …there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders (Stoker 2008). In his pride about invading and conquering, Dracula links vampires to military conquests and the rise and fall of empires. Dracula is both a vampire and an invader. However, as a vampire, he is able to colonize his victims bodies. He functions as a threat to their personal identities as well as their cultural, political, and racial selves. Dracula has the ability to colonize by turning his victims into beings like himself. He doesnt so much as destroy bodies but transforms and thus appropriates them much like his counterpart vetal who takes over a human corpse of the oilmans son and changes its shape and appearance. Dracula then is by all means an occident who seeks to colonize the other and transform it into a being like himself. However, he is often associated with the east and the orient. Both Dracula and Vetal possess shape-shifting abilities. While Dracula can transform into a bat (amongst other things) Vetal is often described as having a bat-like appearance.
…Scarcely, however, had the words passed the royal lips, when the Vampire slipped through the fingers like a worm, and uttering a loud shout of laughter, rose in the air with its legs uppermost, and as before suspended itself by its toes to another bough. And there it swung to and fro… (Burton 1893)
On his way to Castle Dracula, Jonathan Harker notes how he feels like he is entering the east. He says, it seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains (ibid). Throughout his journey, he exercises an imperial gaze in noting the peculiarities of the places he visits. He comments on the dress, food, and mannerisms of the natives. His imperial eyes3 travel through the landscape and its people whom he calls oriental bands of brigands (ibid). Kaplan defines the imperial gaze as gaze structures specific to representing ethnic Others (Kaplan 1997). This representation is situated within an unequal nexus of power where the one who controls the gaze also controls the view of the reader. That is to say, the gaze becomes a tool to mislead or educate the reader about the Other who is being looked at. For instance, Burtons whole exercise in translation is a work of imperial gaze which turns the colonized into objects to be studied by the more rational colonizing subjects. It isnt just the vetal who serves as an equivalent to a vampire but Goddess Kali too is described in a manner that portrays her as a blood-sucking vampire.
There stood Smashana-Kali, the goddess, in her most horrid form. She was a naked and very black woman, with a half-severed head, partly cut and partly painted, resting on her shoulder; and her tongue lolled out from her wide yawning mouth; her eyes were red like those of a drunkard, and her eyebrows were of the same color: her thick coarse hair hung like a mantle to her heels. (Burton 1893)
Kalis bloodshot eyes, her wide mouth with the tongue lolling out, these physical features describe her as a bloodthirsty vampire4. But the whole paranoia and dread of the gaze is inverted by Stoker in his anti-British oriental villain Count Dracula who serves as both the orient dealing with eastern occult as well as the conqueror who transforms (conquers) people into beings like himself. He simultaneously represents oriental mysticism and British imperialism. He embodies the wests worst fears about what the orient was capable of. Through his mysticism, he represents the dread of the eastern occult but through his enterprise of turning the others into creatures like himself, he is the guilty projection of Britains own imperial practices.
Jill Galvan notes how the battle between Dracula and the humans is a contest between eastern and western technology, telegram vs. telepathy (Galvan 2015). Indeed, Draculas occult means of communication (mind control, telepathy) and the Londoners technological modes like memos and telegrams are foils of each other, perpetually competing to either spread vampirism or defend the British nation against the imperialism of the mind and body. The text can be read as a competition between the occult and scientific means of communication where triumph means control of the land and the body while losing the battle also means losing ones very own identity and personhood, much akin to the enterprise of colonialism.
The reception of Dracula for the British audience included their fascination for mesmerism and hypnotism and its association with the east. It also intersected with the British interest in theosophy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which popularised the image of the mystical east and its spiritual wisdom. Dracula constructs this eastern mysticism as a western lack, as concepts, notions and knowledge missing amongst the civilized. Blavatsky connects vampirism with astral projection5. She introduces this concept as rooted in Indian belief (Blavatsky 2010). Interestingly, Burton too writes in his tales about astral projection and similar bodily experiences in the form of dream sequences. These often serve as deus ex machina and propel the action forward.
Helsing, who himself is a student of the occult tries to convince Seward that there are phenomena that science and technology cannot explain. He then gives a reference of the vampiric behavior of an Indian fakir:
Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men come and take away the unbroken seal, and that there lie the Indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before? (ibid)
Helsing compares the bloodthirsty and mysteriously powerful Dracula to an Indian fakir. This fakir needs no explaining, finds a direct correlation with the vetal who is a powerful being. Stoker here may be hinting at the latent power of control over the mind and the body through trance or meditation, a practice he surely derived from India due to its Victorian reputation of dabbling with magic and occult. Burton too forms the frame tale of a yogis sadhna6 to fulfill his revenge on King Vikram. Moreover, Stoker had at the time of writing his treatise met Richard Burton several times and in fact admired him. Christina Artenie discusses the theory that Dracula might be modeled after Burton and comes to the conclusion that Despite the possible comparison between Burtons teeth-baring tic and Count Draculas iconic representation, one should note that the famous traveler is shown as an example of Western mettle in savage places and supremely of all the East, where the adventurer must kill or be killed. Rather than an inspiration for the vampire, Burtons figure seems to be a model of fortitude and resoluteness for Draculas vampire hunters (Artenie 2015). Said calls Burton a master of societal rules and codes who could easily assimilate the values of a culture without ever feeling any real sense or alliance with that culture (Said 2006). However, if Burton truly did understand the rules and codes of other societies, he did not venture to defend them against the British imperialist cultural hegemony. His translation of Vikram and the Vampire in no way challenges the ethnocentric or racist ideas, nor is it in any manner subversive but rather confirms and at times adds to the stereotypes that the British readers had about Indian culture.
Stephen Arata talks about reverse colonization in Dracula where the imperialist practices of Britain are mirrored by the eastern orient that in turn colonizes the British populace thus serving them a taste of their own medicine. Moreover, he says that Dracula is the response to the cultural guilt of the colonizers and their fear of turning into the Other.
Both Dracula and Vetal express a certain epistemophilia where each either controls or seeks to control knowledge and knowledge systems that govern the world around them. Vetal is privy not just to the greater knowledge of the plot against Vikram, which Vikram only suspects, but as the narrator of the stories and asker of questions to which he knows the answer, he is also part of a larger network of dissemination of knowledge where he, as the disseminator, has the upper hand. Before invading the bodies of his victims, Dracula first invades the spaces of their knowledge through his extensive study of Britains customs which he pursues via his books. His victory is dependent on his successful juggling of the occidental study of the British society as well as his oriental knowledge of that which this very same British society considers as primitive. The means of knowledge acquisition however are different in each case indicating the differences of the same means within the lives of the translator and author respectively. While Burton traveled extensively throughout the eastern regions of the world, his travels under the guise of an Arab gained much popularity7; Stokers research of the different folklores surrounding vampires was based mostly on his reading of various treatises and tracts that he does not fail to mention in his notes8. Moreover, knowledge becomes a tool of dominance in the hands of the colonizer who seeks to prove his hegemonic superiority on the basis of superior knowledge. Macaulays minute on education details how …lakh of rupees [was] set apart not only for reviving literature in India,…for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories (Macaulay 1835). This scientific knowledge that needs revival is obviously the one deemed necessary by the British territories and hence posits itself in contradiction to the oriental knowledge which is considered primitive. However, in Dracula, the western scientific technology in the hands of the Londoners is heavily inadequate compared to Draculas mystical knowledge and networks of information gathering. He must in the end be defeated by means of an amalgamation of the two knowledge systems, the scientific and the occult. Draculas end is only possible using the eastern weapon of a kukri knife and by utilizing the means of hypnotism. This hypnotism is couched in scientific terminology developed by the neurologist Dr. Charcot whom Helsing mentions. The purpose of mentioning Dr. Charcot and the western scientific discourse is to seamlessly blend the eastern and western knowledge systems such that the task of defeating Dracula can only be accomplished by the merger of the two. Valente proposes that the novel posits a certain level of metrocoloniality which exceeds the demands of simplistic reductions like east/west and Self/Other (Valente 2000). Helsing finds the flaw in modern science for not being open to newer concepts:
…it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explains not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young (ibid)
The novel does not follow any binary patterns of the west as progressive and advanced in technology and the east as primitively constituting of crude practices and systems of superstitious beliefs because Dracula embodies both the notions of the self and the other, the occident and the orient. On the other hand, Burtons translation offers a peak into the world of the orient but neither does it laud nor does it criticize the As mentioned earlier, the translation offers nothing in way of explanation for certain misconceptions in the minds of its British readers nor does it downplay the aspects of mystical or occult within the narrative.
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