Book//mark – Dracula / Rare book covers | Bram Stoker, 1897

 First edition, Archibald Constable and Co, 1897                       Grosset & Dunlap, 1930 .

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things
which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”

“I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems
of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.”

“Perhaps at the end, it’s the little things that may teach us the most.”

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we
can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.”

 

Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897

 

Oifig Díolta Foillseacháin Rialtais, 1933                 Modern Library edition, 1932            First American edition, Doubleday & McClure, 1899

 

1927                      1916                                        1901                                    1901

1947                               –                                     1904                                  1902

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”



“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; 
to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.”

 

Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897

Penguin Classics, 1993                           Maciej Ratajski, 2010

Dracula – Tod Browning (1931) (Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan)

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“I will not let you go into the unknown alone.”

 

 

“Listen to them – the children of the night. What music they make!”

“I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, 

as we used to sit, and I would try to tell you what I feel.”

“Despair has its own calm.”

 

 

“Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, 

all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”

 

 

Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897

…

When he was 22, Bram Stoker read “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman’s poetry collection that would change the young novelist’s life. So enthralled with the American poet was he that Stoker penned a nearly 2,000-word letter to Whitman describing himself and pouring out his love for the poet and his works.

“I have to thank you for many happy hours, for I have read your poems with my door locked late at night, and I have read them on the seashore where I could look all round me and see no more sign of human life than the ships out at sea: and here I often found myself waking up from a reverie with the book lying open before me,” he wrote.

He closed, “I have been more candid with you – have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before.” 

That letter began a surprising literary friendship that lasted until Whitman’s death.

(…)

”Διάβασα έντεκα χρονών τον Δράκουλα. Εκείνο τον παλιό, του Δαρεμά. Θα έχω να τον δω μισό αιώνα πια, όμως την κουβερτούρα του εξωφύλλου τη θυμάμαι: πράσινο φόντο, η κοπέλα, ο Κόμης με τα μαύρα. Με την εικόνα, και με όλα τα άλλα εκεί μέσα, τα ροζ μού τέλειωσαν απότομα και οριστικά. Για κάποια χρόνια, που ξαναγυρνούσα και τον ξαναδιάβαζα, ήτανε νύχτες που το Πέρασμα του Μπόργκο ανηφόριζε δίπλα ή κάτω απ’ το κρεβάτι μου. Έβλεπα εφιάλτες, περιπέτειες ασπρόμαυρες, τεχνικολόρ. Πάντα τη γλίτωνα, ξημέρωνε εγκαίρως. Τα πρωινά –με τρόπο, εννοείται– έριχνα μια ματιά και για σημάδια στον λαιμό. Είχα αρχίσει να φαντάζομαι επιτέλους το σκοτάδι και από την άλλη του μεριά. Τέλεια ήτανε.”