Powers of Darkness

Stoker Bram Stoker, Asmundsson Valdimar Asmundsson, Roos Hans De Roos

Description

Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery: In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar a?smundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker's world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, "Powers of Darkness?), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker's preface to the book. However, no one looked beyond the preface and deeper into a?smundsson's story.In 2014, literary researcher Hans de Roos dove into the full text of Makt Myrkranna, only to discover that a?smundsson hadn't merely translated Dracula but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally re-worked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker's Dracula. Incredibly, Makt Myrkranna has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now.Powers of Darkness presents the first ever translation into English of Stoker and a?smundsson's Makt Myrkranna. With marginal annotations by de Roos providing readers with fascinating historical, cultural, and literary context; a foreword by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew and bestselling author; and an afterword by Dracula scholar John Edgar Browning, Powers of Darkness will amaze and entertain legions of fans of Gothic literature, horror, and vampire fiction.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 07 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781468313376
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

I n 1901 Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar smundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker s classic novel, Dracula . Called Makt Myrkranna , this Icelandic version was unnoticed outside the country until 1986, when Dracula scholars discovered Stoker s original preface to the book. It was not until 2014, however, that noted Dracula scholar Hans Corneel de Roos realized that smundsson hadn t merely translated Dracula but had, rather, penned an entirely new version of the story, with some all-new characters and a re-worked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and rivals the original in terms of suspense.
Powers of Darkness marks the first ever translation into English of Makt Myrkranna . This volume includes the translation of the main text of the novel, thorough annotations that mark changes from the original text and other fascinating items of note, an introduction by Hans de Roos, a foreword by Dacre Stoker, an afterword by John Edgar Browning, and numerous illustrations, historical and new, including original illustations by de Roos of Dracula s castle.
Icelandic Nobel Prize winner Halld r Laxness praised Powers of Darkness as one of the best works of Icelandic literature, drawing inspiration from it in the writing of his Under the Glacier . Stoker s great grand-nephew Dacre Stoker aptly writes: The resurrection of Makt Myrkranna illustrates another example of Dracula s immortality. Delivering all the dark glamour one expects from a cornerstone of Gothic literature, and drawing inspiration from Nordic sagas and myths, Powers of Darkness is truly a major literary rediscovery and a thrilling and essential new addition to the Dracula canon.
Copyright
This edition first published in hardcover in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2017 by Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
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Translated from the Icelandic, with an Introduction and annotations,
copyright 2016 by Hans Corneel de Roos
Foreword copyright 2016 by Dacre Stoker
Afterword 2016 by John Edgar Browning
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1337-6
Dedicated to Petre Tutunea, Pienette Coetzee, Lounette Loubser, Amanda Larasari, Marsha Maramis, Sarah Mawla Syihabuddin, Susannah Schaff, Joyce Georgewill, A da El Hani, Andreea and Teo Vechiu, Shantal Jeewon Kim, Shiva Dehghanpour, Dian Risna Saputri and Yofina Pradani, who all volunteered as assistants in my creative studio and over the past three years shared my enthusiasm, my questions and my worries about this book project.
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
FOREWORD by Dacre Stoker
INTRODUCTION by Hans C. de Roos
A ROOM WITH A VIEW : The floor plans of Castle Dracula
POWERS OF DARKNESS
AUTHOR S PREFACE
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
PART II
CHAPTER ONE: Lucia Western
CHAPTER TWO: The Storm in Whitby
CHAPTER THREE: From the Logbook
CHAPTER FOUR: Baron Sz kely
CHAPTER FIVE: The Tatars
CHAPTER SIX: Lucia s Illness and Death
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Search for Thomas Harker
CHAPTER EIGHT: A Visit to Castle Dracula
CHAPTER NINE: The Nunnery
CHAPTER TEN: Thomas and Wilma Find One Another
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Returning Home
CHAPTER TWELVE: The Professor and Barrington
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The People in Carfax
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Evening Party
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Conspiracy
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Count Killed
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Epilogue
AFTERWORD by John Edgar Browning
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
by Dacre Stoker

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.
-B RAM S TOKER , Dracula , 1897
I T IS AN HONOR TO WRITE THIS FOREWORD FOR MY FRIEND and travelling companion Hans de Roos, who has bravely delved into the newest of the Dracula mysteries. I remember well the phone conversation in which Hans first told me there were significant textual differences between the English and Icelandic editions of Dracula . Once I realized Makt Myrkranna was not simply an Icelandic translation of Dracula -that this was a unique story-I wondered: How could this go unnoticed for so many years? As I shared my enthusiasm and initial thoughts with De Roos, I was eager to read the English translation of the Icelandic text and begin to make my own sense of this new development. Moreover, I was prompted to reflect anew on the enduring legacy of my great granduncle s most famous work.
I lecture regularly at literary and film events-on the subject of the history and mysteries which surround Dracula -and always find that fans of the novel and of the subgenres it has inspired are genuinely interested in any background information about Bram and the circumstances associated with the novel. Dracula is considered a classic-in part because more than a century after its initial publication, speculative material keeps readers and researchers searching for answers to some of the mysteries surrounding the novel s origins. The translation of Makt Myrkranna and the uncertainty about the text s source present more than enough fodder for another generation to wonder and speculate about.
With de Roos s discovery, another significant mystery is added to the list of unresolved questions about Bram Stoker s Gothic classic. For example, how did 124 pages of author s notes for Dracula survive such a circuitous journey before finding a home at Philadelphia s Rosenbach Museum? And where was the one known typescript of Dracula during the years between its arrival in Philadelphia and its eventual possession by Paul Allen of Microsoft fame?
It appears that shortly after Dracula s publication, Bram gave the only known typescript of the novel to Col. Thomas C. Donaldson, Esq. of Philadelphia, a close friend and biographer of Walt Whitman who handled the affairs of many writers. After Whitman s death, according to his wishes, Donaldson gave Bram the original notes from Whitman s 1886 lecture on Abraham Lincoln. During one of Bram s visits with Whitman, the men discussed their mutual interest in Lincoln; Bram later quoted Whitman s exaggerated personal account of the night Lincoln was shot in his own presentations about Lincoln. Donaldson passed away in 1898, and the next year, Henkel s sold his extensive collection of manuscripts and letters. Yet it was nearly a century before the Dracula typescript was found in a Pennsylvania barn amongst the Donaldson family possessions. The typescript changed hands a few times, and then in 2002, after being offered with great fanfare by Christie s, failed to meet the reserve bid and was subsequently bought by Paul Allen.
On July 7, 1913, fifteen months after Bram Stoker s death, Sotheby s sale of his personal library included a book written by Col. Donaldson and inscribed in 1898 by his son Thomas Blaine Donaldson to Bram, as a remembrance. At the same Sotheby s auction, James Drake, a New York book dealer, purchased lot # 182, 124 pages, Original Notes and Data for his Dracula for the price of two pounds. The Notes surfaced again in 1946, pictured in a Life magazine article about rare manuscripts, having been purchased for Scribner s collection for $500; then in 1970 they were bought by the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia from an antiquarian bookseller, Charles Sessler. It was not until the mid 1970s that-thanks to Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu, two Boston College professors-attention shifted to Bram s preparatory work for Dracula . While researching a famous pamphlet, Dracole Waida , Nuremberg (c.1488), which included a woodcut of Vlad Dracula lll, McNally and Florescu visited the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. To their great surprise, the archivist suggested they might also be interested in Bram Stoker s research notes for Dracula , which had been purchased by the Museum a few years before and were still in the archives in relative obscurity. Thus, they gained new insight into Bram s research and writing process, which they referenced in their book The Essential Dracula (1979). However, in another of their works, In Search of Dracula (1972), they drew a close connection between Bram s Count Dracula and the Wallachian leader Prince Vlad Dracula, essentially transforming Vlad Dracula lll into a vampire-much to the dismay of historians and the Romanian people. Other scholars followed McNally and Florescu, and to this day, a pilgrimage to the Rosenbach provides a unique and important opportunity to form conclusions based on Bram s source notes. Alternatively, those who are interested can consult the excellent annotated facsimile edition created by scholars Dr. Elizabeth Miller and Robert Eighteen-Bisang in 2008.
Unfortunately, apart from the typescript and the notes, Bram left us very little firsthand information about Dracula . In the void, a private family joke relayed by Noel Stoker, Bram s only son, to Harry Ludlam, author of A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker (1962) and My Quest for Bram Stoker (2000), has been quoted over and over as the gospel truth: flippantly, Bram attributed the genesis of Dracula to a nightmare he had after a surfeit of dressed crab at supper one night.
To date, only one interview given by Bram on the subject of Dracula has been found: written by Jane Stoddard of the British Weekly , it appeared within five weeks