Two Evening Lands:

replying to

the allegorical Bram Stoker indie docufiction novel

Dracula

in the allegorical James Joyce indie docufiction novel Ulysses

or,

jesting joker James bites Bram back

by Gary W. Wright

Where?

To evening lands.

Evening will find itself.

• Stephen Dedalus [Joyce, 63]

and wondering again how I would write such an essay, wonderment not helped by the fact that I had yet to actually read both novels in chronological order back to back to help the cause and was just dipping into my memory and into the two towering and tumultuous tomes when I needed to clarify a point or idea, about a Great Book created to take on and heal a world devastated by a Great War, with allusions to the equally healing and allegorical Homer epic poem The Odyssey [8^th century BCE] which followed the equally devasting and allegorical Homer epic poem The Iliad [8^th century BCE] to affirm that implicit intention on one level, and, on another level, to take on and take out a Great Horror Novel about the Great Hunger.  And sure if the implications that the Dublin born and raised James Joyce was taking on the allegorical and implicitly Great Hunger exorcising Bram Stoker indie docufiction novel Dracula [1897] on one level didn’t begin right from the beginning of the allegorical indie docufiction novel Ulysses [1922]. 

For the sight and sound of Malachi “Buck” Mulligan, the first of many nicknames of characters in the novel to remind us of the equally Dublin born and raised Abraham “Bram” Stoker, emerging from the depths to the parapet of a Martello Tower with a razor and a bowl of hot water to shave reminded us that Jonathan Harker also settled down with a bowl of hot water and a razor to shave with the help of a mirror on the wall of his room on his first morning in his room in a tower at Castle Dracula in Transylvania.  An ordinary shave that turned extraordinary after he cut his neck with the razor and the old and intimidating Count Dracula appeared out of nowhere to eagerly lick the blood off his neck to the shock of Harker, a shock increased by the fact that the reflection of Dracula could not be seen in the mirror.  A lack of reflection that has since the publication of Dracula been always interpreted as meaning that the lack of reflections in mirrors is one of the characteristics of vampires, rather than that Dracula was the Dark Side of Harker that existed only in his mind, and therefore could not be seen.  A Dark Side that also implicitly symbolized the Dark Side of Stoker, given that the name of Jonathan Harker was so similar to the full name of Abraham Stoker.

Fittingly, Mulligan soon left the tower to go swimming with his good friend Stephen Dedalus and their newfound Sassenach tourist friend “Heinous” Haines, where the three young men discovered that boats were searching Dublin Bay for a drowned man.  For the drowned man caused the grim and dark spectre of death to intrude on their sunny day and happy swim, evoking the grim and dark spectre of Count Dracula that haunted Dracula.  A grim, dark, and deadly spectre that grew closer when young Dedalus agreed to drop off a letter about foot and mouth disease in cattle to a Dublin newspaper for his employer and children’s school headmaster Mr. Deasy.  For the “mission” reminded us that young Harker agreed to travel to Transylvania on behalf of his London real estate firm to finalize the purchase of a London property by Count Dracula, implicitly linking Dedalus to Harker as well as Telemachus, and implying that Joyce thought that Stoker suffered from foot in mouth disease in Dracula.

Making it fitting that soon after Teledalus exited stage right, the implicitly Odysseus linked Mister Leopold “Poldy” Bloom entered from stage left, doing his best not to disturb his beautiful, buxom, and implicitly Penelope linked opera singer wife Maid Marion “Molly” Bloom of rocky, Mediterannean washed, and Ithaka evoking Gibraltar, a literal embodiment of art who was just awakening after he returned from morning shopping before putting on a black suit for the funeral of his friend Patrick “Paddy” Dignam later that morning.  Significantly, before Bloom left, Marion asked him to define the word “metempsychosis” which she had come across in a novel, and he obligingly told her that the word fittingly came from Greece and meant the “…transmigration of souls” [Joyce 77].  A significant word and possibility, indeed, for it reminded us that after seeing a picture of Harker’s young and beautiful fiancé Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker in a locket he wore while Harker stayed at his castle in Transylvania, Count Dracula was so shocked by her resemblance to his lost luv Elsbeta that he was instantly convinced that her soul had survived her death and travelled through space and time to inhabit the nineteenth century Victorian body of Mina.  Ecstatic and enflamed by this possibility, Count Dracula immediately decided to travel to England and woo Mina to his side and make her his bride.

The funeral for poor ol’ Paddy Dignam that Bloom soon left Marion to attend also evoked Dracula, for it took place in an old graveyard in the morning daylight, evoking Count Dracula’s fondness for sleeping during the daylight hours in coffins.  A spooky and creepy graveyard filled with rotting corpses and literally crawling with fat rats that got Bloom wondering if “…I will appear to you after death…[if] my ghost will haunt you after death” [Joyce 146], reminding us that Count Dracula and all his victims returned from the dead to haunt the living.  A funeral that led to Bloom sympathizing with his wife’s well known philandering and wandering lugubriously around Dublin on his own tragicomic odyssey, not wanting to disturb her afternoon tryst with the ginger haired and implicitly Stoker linked Hugh “Blazes” Boylan, his ginger hair evoking that of Stoker to implicitly affirm the link of Stoker to Boylan.  Curiously, this was possibly not the first time that Stoker had been implicitly linked to a literary character.  For in the late nineteenth century, the Dublin born and bred Stoker moved to London where the Irishman soon became the faithful and novel, novella, and short story writing secretary to Sir Henry Irving, a tall, slim, brilliant, commanding, disguise luvin’, eccentric, and acclaimed English actor who was the first British actor to be Knighted for his service to the United Kingdom.  Making Irving and Stoker a quirky real life London based odd couple that was noticed by their mutual friend Sir Arthur C. Doyle, who implicitly used them in part as inspiration for his own quirky and London based literary odd couple comprised of the equally tall, slim, brilliant, commanding, disguise luvin’, eccentric, and acclaimed English detective Sherlock Holmes and his equally faithful and literary Scottish secretary Doctor John Watson, MD.

As for Bloom, he wandered off on his tragicomic odyssey, indeed, and one that did more than affirm the implicit link of Bloom to Odysseus.  For Bloomyseus was still wearing the mourning black funeral suit that made him appear to all baffled observers as the living embodiment of death, implicitly affirming his link to the nonliving embodiment of death, Count Dracula, as the vampire wandered around London in Dracula.  An implicit link to Drac reaffirmed by the fact that Bloom, like Dracula, was a solitary, lonely, and luvlorn outsider from Eastern Europe who longed for the return of the luv of his sad wife Molly, like Dracula longed for the return of the luv of his dead wife, Elsbeta, a lack of luvin’ and sex from Molly for ten years due to her being despondent about the stillborn death of their son Rudy that had led Poldy to satisfy his sexual desires with anguished masturbation and embarrassing trysts with Dublin prostitutes.  Along the way, the royal carriage that drew a mixture of awe, longing, fear, and loathing as it rolled through the streets of  Dublin in the “Wandering Rocks” segment evoked the demonic carriage implicitly driven by Dracula that was treated with universal fear and loathing as it drove young Harker to Castle Dracula.

An implicit link again affirmed when Bloom stood outside Daly’s pub looking hungrily at its two beautiful young barmaid sirens but not entering the pub until invited in by his friend Richard “Richie” Goulding, reminding us that Dracula was also forced to wait outside houses looking hungrily in at his victims until also unwittingly invited inside by them, victims who were also usually beautiful young women like the brunette Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker and the redheaded Lucy Westenra who implicitly returned in the forms of barmaids Wilhelmina “Mina” Kennedy aka “Gold” and Lydia Douce aka “Bronze”, reminding us that Ireland’s English or “Sassenach” nightmare began when the deposed king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada or Dermot MacMurragh, invited in Anglo-Norman mercenaries to help him wrest his kingdom back, soon leading to Ireland being taken over and ruled by King Henry II of England. 

Thus it was fitting that an air from an Italian opera called Sonnambula was raved about by Goulding to Bloom during his music and song filled stay in Daly’s pub.  For Sonnambula reminded us that Dracula spoke to Westenra in her dreams and persuaded her to sleepwalk to her window and open it so that he could slowly drink the beautiful young red head’s sweet virginal blood night after night, slowly draining her of her life Force and causing her to slowly waste away growing thinner and thinner as if she was starving to death in a famine to implicitly affirm that Dracula was the undead symbolic embodiment of the Great Hunger.  Making it also fitting that Lucy’s name was almost an acronym comprised of the first letters of Ireland’s four provinces, Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, and Munster. 

An implicit Stoker addressing intent that continued after Bloom left Daly’s and wandered into Barney Kiernan’s pub.  For a citizen sippin’ in the pub by the name of Giltrap had a huge, nasty, and beastly dog named Garryowen that eventually chased Bloom out of his pub and down the street, a bad tempered dog that evoked the equally huge, nasty, and beastly black dog that leapt out of the corpse strewn and ragged sailed coffin filled ship, a coffin ship that evoked the notorious sailing ships quickly and despairingly called coffin ships that were filled with the corpses of Irish citizens who had tried to flee the Great Famine in Ireland by sailing to North America but died on the way, that brought Count Dracula to England and slammed into the southern coast of the island nation at the head of a huge, howling, and lightning filled storm of the century.  An implicit Dracula addressing intent that also continued in the next segment, which found Bloom hiding at Sandymount beach where he had fled the demon dog and standing in the gathering twilight as the land of evening approached staring with his usual tragicomic and vampiric intensity at a pretty young maid named Gerty MacDowell, who ironically but fittingly was the lame teenaged granddaughter of “grandpapa” Giltrap, owner of the “…lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked, it was so human” [Joyce 458]. 

For as Count Bloomula stared wistfully, “…a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry [of a nearby church] through the dusk, hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry” [Joyce 473].  A small bat later fittingly noticed by Bloom itself after his voyeuristic encounter with flirty Gerty, a wistful flirtation from afar “…that was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don’t tell” [Joyce 478].  A small and solitary bat so completely lacking in ominous menace that even Count Bloomula, when he noticed it again later, thought “…no harm in him” [Joyce 498].  An ironic thought, indeed, given that Stoker insisted in Dracula that some bats transformed into the vampire Dracula and that in the next segment, set fully in evening lands in the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin pondering the overlong birth labours of one Mina Harker evoking Mrs. Mina Purefoy, a drunk Dedalus exuberantly expounded on the theories people had used for centuries to explain pregnancy and spoke “…of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower” [Joyce 509]. 

An implicit interest in vampiric Dracula that continued in the next surreal, phantasmagoric, haunted, and theatrical “Circe” segment as Bloom, Dedalus and companions wandered off into a red light district in dark and creepy Dublin streets that evoked the equally dark and creepy London streets of Dracula to truly unite the two cities and novels in two evening lands.  For the Dublin prostitutes that Bloomyseus, Dedamachus, and company consorted with evoked the more beautiful, beguiling, sensual, and sexy trio of women that bewitched young Harker in the hellish confines of Castle Dracula in Transylvania.  An ancestral castle located in an area of Transylvania that was openly referenced by the ghost of Bloom’s father, Virag, who appeared and spoke about “…a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era” [Joyce 632]. 

Later in the fevre dream Dedalus also mentioned vampires again when he “gabbled” about “…chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants” [Joyce 673], raving nonsense which caused his drunk companion Lynch to exuberantly shout “…vive le vampire!” [Joyce 673].  As the drunken and phantasmagoric night which saw the ghosts of Stephen’s mother and the ghosts of Leopold’s dead father and son arrive to haunt the living, as well as the exultantly triumphant, very spirited, and still alive Frederick M. “Bantam” Lyons, celebrating his victory with the dark horse winner Throwaway,  finally wound up and left young Dedalus lying dead drunk on the pavement, a concerned Bloom bent over his prostrate form and shouted “…Stephen!”  Fittingly, given that Bloom had been implicitly linked to Dracula throughout Ulysses, the drunk Stephen groaned and replied “…Who?  Black panther vampire” [Bloom 701]. 

The implication that Joyce was addressing Stoker continued two segments later in “Ithaka” where young Stephen walked with Leopold to the small house of Bloomula and met Molly, reminding us that Jonathan and Mina Harker travelled to Transylvania to kill and exorcise Dracula at the healing, harmonizing, and eucatastrophic end of Dracula.  Curiously, after seeing Dedalus out, Bloom made an inventory of books on his shelf, one of which was the allegorical Doyle indie docufiction novel The Stark Munro Letters [1895], reminding us of the implicit link of Holmes and Watson to Irving and Stoker.  Last but not least, the implicit Dracula addressing intent of Ulysses was reaffirmed in the end, when maid Marion pledges herself again to Leopold in her roaming thoughts with a final eager Yes, ending his lonely ten year curse, reminding us that Count Dracula was freed from his undead vampiric curse by the strong and sturdy knives of Harker and Quincey P. Morris at Castle Dracula at the healing, harmonizing, and eucatastrophic end of Dracula.  All of which got me wandering around my wee apartment

Bibliography

Joyce, James.  Ulysses.  London: The Bodley Head, 1967.

Stoker, Bram.  Dracula.  London: Collins, 2021.