#the annotated dracula

[enchantedbook]

'Τhe Annotated Dracula' by Wilfred Satty, 1975

[charnel-grounds]

Wilfried Sätty (1939-1982) - The Annotated Dracula, 1975

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

I guess my question is why did Orlock kill the girls? I get killing Anna because of Ellen but why the children?

This is the best example on why the collective psychosis angle of interpretation works so well in this film. At the funerals, Harding still doesn’t believe in any monster when Orlok supposedly ripped his daughters’ throats the night before. He blames Ellen and Von Franz “diseased minds” for Anna and the children deaths, and only sort of changes his mind when Thomas shows him his own bite mark, but later doesn’t even care about using his final hours to hunt the monster who is said to have killed his family, he goes to them to die, instead. Plus, the girls Orlok kills have straight, dark hair (sort of like Ellen), while Clara and Louise have curly blonde hair like Anna and wear nightcaps to bed.

We know the children die of plague, but so does Harding yet Orlok doesn’t feed on him and, on top of Anna, there were plague rats (Nosferatu controls). Nosferatu and the plague rats are the same, and I think Eggers decision to ditch the extra boxes of earth and let the plague-carrier rats be attracted to the demonic power of Nosferatu is far more interesting, and also comes from the “Dracula” novel. And are of extreme importance to the ending, as well, because when the vampire hunters arrive at Grunewald Manor, the chapel is filled with rats yet Orlok is not there anymore, Knock is.

But, from Thomas at the castle (now a deleted scene), we also know these characters have some sort of visions/dreams of Orlok when they are connected to Nosferatu. Thomas dreams of Orlok’s shadow reaching out to Ellen in Wisburg, and that’s why he’s so sure he wants Ellen. So, while the scene of Orlok killing two girls is more fitting with the collective psychosis angle of interpretation (death and disease spare no one; Anna’s identity is tied with her children because of her gender role; Anna’s dark desires (she connects love with burden); the dark hair might be because Anna sees Ellen as one of her children), it still has an explanation if the supernatural (Count Orlok) is real, and is most likely connected to Orlok showing these characters’ visions. Also, Eggers compared his Orlok to Heathcliff (“Wuthering Heights”) several times, and one of the things about book Heathcliff is how he projects and forces his own trauma into the “second generation”. As Eggers put it: “What is the dark trauma that even death cannot erase?” This is a key part of the “enigma of Nosferatu”, and Bill Skarsgård did reveal that Orlok had a wife and family. Harding is one of his mirror foil characters for a reason.

The two girls were included by Eggers, because there were no children in the previous “Nosferatu” adaptations, and no characters in the “Dracula” novel have kids during the book events, either. The source for these two girls has to come from a book Eggers mentioned on one of his essays: “The Annotated Dracula” by Leonard Wolf, and I already talked about it in connection to this very topic in another post.

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Wilfried Sätty - The Annotated Dracula, 1975.

[the-mayor-of-space]

even a man born in 1923 couldn’t help but notice how much the boys discount Mina

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 456

The Annotated Dracula

Bram Stoker / notes by Leonard Wolf / illustrated by Sätty

Ballantine Books 1975

With annotations by noted poet, author, and translator Leonard Wolf (1923-2019), who has also annotated Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and The Phantom of the Opera, The Annotated Dracula is a wonderful book. Besides the informative and entertaining notes, among the features of this edition are 18 Doré-inspired illustrations by Wilfried Sätty as well as over 100 other incidental illustrations, eight detailed maps tracing the Count’s journey, a detailed calendar of events set against the phases of the moon, a guide to every appearance of Dracula in the book and in what form, a brief filmography of notable Dracula films, and even a list of English and foreign language editions of the book. Using as the base text a photo offset reproduction of a copy from the second printing of the first edition of the book, this version of Bram Stoker’s (1847-1912) most famous work feels definitive.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes*, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where.

— Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897); Ch. 3 (The “weird sisters” feed on Jonathan Harker)

GIF by @phantom-threaded

“And my two girls… Two, Tom. I love them more than the world.” // “Papa! Papa! Papa!”

*Dracula scholar Leonard Wolf on his “The Annotated Dracula” (1975) proposes the physical resemblance of two of the “weird sisters” to Count Dracula suggests they are his daughters (or sisters), while the “fair girl” might be Dracula's wife, as the others recognize her authority (“You are first, and we shall follow. Yours' is the right to begin”), and she’s buried “in a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved”. This book was mentioned by Robert Eggers in connection to his re-interpretation of “Nosferatu”: “I had Leonard Wolf’s The Annotated Dracula, which my grandfather had picked up for me at a used bookstore. I devoured it.” Bill Skarsgård revealed in an interview: Count Orlok had a wife and children, in the late 16th century.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Harker says some things that seem... Antithesis to Hutter? I don't know how to word it better in English. But he says.

"I care for nothing now,” [Harker] answered hotly, “except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I would sell my soul to do it!”

“Oh, hush, hush, my child!” said Van Helsing. “God does not purchase souls in this wise, and the Devil, though he may purchase, does not keep faith."

He also says to himself alone, right after Mina's forehead burns by the Communion Wafer, to indicate that she is out of communion with God, and after Van Helsing's sermon:

"To one thing I have made up my mind. If we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks."

I don't think that Hutter ever shows that he would forsake or sell his soul, at least not with any such intensity, for the sake of killing the vampire or for staying with his damned wife forever (and all the implications of the latter choice, considering his early experiences). Could he be matching a different character?

Well, in the 2024 adaptation Hutter did sold his soul the moment he signed the covenant papers, because, in the Nosferatu tale (in opposition to the book) vampires are created via a Faustian bargain, a deal with the Devil (like both Orlok and Knock did), not by “infection”. Count Orlok is considered by film critics as closer to the folk vampire because his victims die of plague, yet Robert Eggers took this to a whole new level because Folk Horror is his brand, so his re-interpretation of Orlok is based on true Balkan and Slavic vampire folklore. Orlok can’t create more vampires by infecting others (nor does he want to). And this is clear in Knock’s case.

We do have several characters here which embody two characters from the novel; Herr Knock’s case being the most obvious, he’s a combination of Mr. Peter Hawkins and Renfield. And this had such an impact on pop culture, most think Renfield was a solicitor and a ex-colleague of Harker (thanks to both 1922 “Nosferatu” and 1931 “Dracula”). In the book, as I’m sure you know, there’s no indication of his past work nor how he came into contact with Dracula.

Earlier today I said Eggers did some wild playing with book canon, and on this topic, the wildest thing he did was interchanging references/plots of Dracula and Sir Arthur Holmwood in Orlok and Friedrich Harding characters (as I’ll explore on this blog for the next week or weeks). Not that far-fetched since Holmwood and Dracula are considered foil characters in the book, and still… unexpected, like Eggers warned.

Yet, we do have characters who only have one book counterpart since they don’t take any other characters’ plots: Hutter (Harker), Von Franz (Van Helsing) and Sievers (Seward).

But then, the “Nosferatu tale” is sort of his own thing. It’s not a book adaptation in the sense folks think of adaptations, even though each director (Murnau, Herzog and Eggers) took different things from the book. Which is why I think it being described as a “Dracula fanfiction” is the most appropriate, because it’s a story based on “Dracula” but heavily influenced by German Romanticism and folklore, and Albin Grau’s occult beliefs (1922 “Nosferatu” Producer and Production designer). Werner Herzog rejected the occult subplot on his 1979 adaptation, Eggers did not (he was very open about it in interviews, and it’s very present in the film). Herzog combined Lucy and Mina’s characters into his Lucy, Eggers followed a different route with his Ellen (based on Leonard Wolf’s interpretations in “The Annotated Dracula”).