After New Year's but before
la Befana (Epiphany) my husband gifted me a trip to Milano. I've never set foot in Lombardia and I was anxious to see the differences between my golden, glowing Toscana and the foggy land of Gauls and Lombards. The real reason for the trip wasn't just site-seeing, but to check-out an exhibit called
Dracula e il mito dei vampiri ("Dracula and the Myth of Vampires") at the
Triennale di Milano. Alberto has always about my
secret not-so-secret love of Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel "Dracula"(published in 1897), as well as my penchant for Eastern European folklore. Since 2006, I've started reading "Dracula" about once a year and any time I come across a copy in a bookstore I always have the urge to buy it (I only have three copies...not nearly enough).
This whole morbid love affair with vampires started when I was 11 or 12 years old and I wandered into a dark corner of the local library. There I came across a strange book about Slavic myth and folk stories; to my horror I discovered that Stoker's Count Dracula was based on a real person!
Vlad Ţepeş was guilty of some pretty shocking crimes (mass impaling, torture, nailing turbans to the heads of Turkish ambassadors...) and apparently, "real" cases of vampirism have been recorded as far back as the 17th century. At age 12, the lines between history, fiction and reality were far too blurry for me to understand, so I spent a few months taking precautions: a rosary hidden under my T-shirt, a bulb of garlic under the bed. Since then, my child-like fascination with the "un-dead" has subsided a great deal. But my love of libraries, research and the mysterious blending of fact and fiction has only grown.
The exhibit at the Triennale was really excellent: an entire section on the man who inspired the novel (Vlad
Ţepeş), along with first source materials like maps of Walachia and Transylvania, 17th and 18th century manuscripts and pamphlets on Vlad, outbreaks of vampirsm in the Balkans and advice on "how to defend yourself from the un-dead." Then there was an entire section dedicated to Bram Stoker, which included one of his diaries and the first printed edition of "Dracula." The rest of the show was covered Dracula in film, fashion and pop culture, which was all equally well presented and interesting. This section also featured clips from varying vampire films and costumes from Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992). My favorite part of the exhibit? The two unsettling portraits of Vlad (see the catalogue above) - one of which had his eyes scratched out by an unknown owner.
So in Milan, with vampires, torture and death on the mind, I discovered that the gloomy metropolis is really a city of the living dead, filled with relics of the past that are venerated in its churches and museums, kept eternally for the next generations of historians (and vampire hunters) to discover. You just need the time, and the stomach, to look for them.
 |
| St. Bartolomeo holds onto his flayed skin by Marco d'Agrate 1562, Duomo di Milano |
The exhibit at the Triennale was really excellent: an entire section on the man who inspired the novel (Vlad Ţepeş), along with first source materials like maps of Walachia and Transylvania, 17th and 18th century manuscripts and pamphlets on Vlad, outbreaks of vampirsm in the Balkans and advice on "how to defend yourself from the un-dead." Then there was an entire section dedicated to Bram Stoker, which included one of his diaries and the first printed edition of "Dracula." The rest of the show was covered Dracula in film, fashion and pop culture, which was all equally well presented and interesting. This section also featured clips from varying vampire films and costumes from Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992). My favorite part of the exhibit? The two unsettling portraits of Vlad (see the catalogue above) - one of which had his eyes scratched out by an unknown owner.
