An odd one, this latest post, as it lands with me Annette.
Who, reading you, doesn't know, that Transylvania has always been a real place, albeit one long schismed by Stoker's hot chance poker playing and branding it, horror realm?
When I was, long back in the count of days that seem to pass so rapidly now, a boy growing into young man, Halloween wasn't the Foul Faux Fest that it is since been morphed and monstered into misbecoming.
Halloween? Long since needing a silver nail driven deep into the depths of its utterly devoid of real life and thoroughly wrong minded commercial heart.
As always just expressing a personal point of view in the passing moment.
What, moving on and actively getting back to the news of this passing 21st Century week: what are your present thoughts on the real legacies of The Georgian period, in particular what you your view on the Starmer-Reeves stance on the serious subject of Imperial Slaving Age Reparations?
I began the week, frankly, conflicted but reading a little and ruminating somewhat more I'm ever less impressed by such jingoistic nonsense as is sung so loud and garrulously in The Albert Hall in the second half of The Last Night of The Proms. "England ever ever shall enslave" is the way I've long heard it.
And so, I'm inclined to opine, such stuff and nonsensicality is - I do, thoughtfully,dare to suggest - by perpetuating the appropriating, suborning and morphing Transylvania's actual heritage into being about 'Dracula: The Vampire Who Never Was'.
Let me be clear, never been, if I ever happen to be able to, would happily go visit Transylvania but in search of what is not what never was...
Thanks for this, ever genial, Sunday provocation to thought Annette.
The slaving reparations is a complex subject about which I’m not qualified to talk about and could not do justice to here. Transylvania has embraced Dracula because it increases tourism, which is good for the economy, but the history of Romanian nationhood is also so complex that Dracula tat is the least of the nation’s worries. I’ll write more about it if people are interested.
Thanks for this considered reply Annette. If you, a passionate and articulate afficionado of so many things Georgian, feel yourself unqualified to talk about and unable to do justice to... who I wonder could be better placed to do so?
I'm finding myself standing, somewhat uneasily, akimbo on what I sense to be tectonically shifting sands. I'm inclining to revise my long held view that "history is history; live for today; let tomorrow take care of itself". The unwelcome truth that seems ever more emergent and to be landing smack bang in The Pale of my lap is best stated as "Beware the Perils of Unlearning Lessons from History".
As it happens I'm lately rivetted in reading 'The Seasonwife' by Saige England. I got there by the happenstance of Substack correspondence with Saige. Only a third of the way through, and being a slow reader will take some little time to see where it lands with me in its ending, but rivetted is the very word. Reparation is one relevant word for the moment but so to, it's increasingly seeming to me, are other 'R' words such as Raid, Rape and Rapine.
Tourism is, I agree, good for economies but only to a point as we Post Brexit Brits and many others wanting to arrive carrying the lucre of hard cash are finding in the increasing blipping of 'Tourists Not Welcome Here' hotspots on our cultural radar screens. On the back of Dracula's being coffined - imaginatively - at Whitby Abbey the town has enjoyed a long gain from attracting paying Goths.
When I first went to Whitby, back in October 1973, and walked down into the town from Oddfellows Hall, first street sign that greeted us was a warning notice, along the lines of: "Only Two Persons, At A Time, Allowed To Enter Licensed Premises: Three Or More Attempting To Do So Constitutes a Crowd, Crowds Are Forbidden" By Order.
Thanks for putting Transylvania on my mental map. You give me reason to hope that, in the unlikely event that I should get to go there, there will be a there there beyond the 🦇 tat 🌄
An odd one, this latest post, as it lands with me Annette.
Who, reading you, doesn't know, that Transylvania has always been a real place, albeit one long schismed by Stoker's hot chance poker playing and branding it, horror realm?
When I was, long back in the count of days that seem to pass so rapidly now, a boy growing into young man, Halloween wasn't the Foul Faux Fest that it is since been morphed and monstered into misbecoming.
Halloween? Long since needing a silver nail driven deep into the depths of its utterly devoid of real life and thoroughly wrong minded commercial heart.
As always just expressing a personal point of view in the passing moment.
What, moving on and actively getting back to the news of this passing 21st Century week: what are your present thoughts on the real legacies of The Georgian period, in particular what you your view on the Starmer-Reeves stance on the serious subject of Imperial Slaving Age Reparations?
I began the week, frankly, conflicted but reading a little and ruminating somewhat more I'm ever less impressed by such jingoistic nonsense as is sung so loud and garrulously in The Albert Hall in the second half of The Last Night of The Proms. "England ever ever shall enslave" is the way I've long heard it.
And so, I'm inclined to opine, such stuff and nonsensicality is - I do, thoughtfully,dare to suggest - by perpetuating the appropriating, suborning and morphing Transylvania's actual heritage into being about 'Dracula: The Vampire Who Never Was'.
Let me be clear, never been, if I ever happen to be able to, would happily go visit Transylvania but in search of what is not what never was...
Thanks for this, ever genial, Sunday provocation to thought Annette.
The slaving reparations is a complex subject about which I’m not qualified to talk about and could not do justice to here. Transylvania has embraced Dracula because it increases tourism, which is good for the economy, but the history of Romanian nationhood is also so complex that Dracula tat is the least of the nation’s worries. I’ll write more about it if people are interested.
Thanks for this considered reply Annette. If you, a passionate and articulate afficionado of so many things Georgian, feel yourself unqualified to talk about and unable to do justice to... who I wonder could be better placed to do so?
I'm finding myself standing, somewhat uneasily, akimbo on what I sense to be tectonically shifting sands. I'm inclining to revise my long held view that "history is history; live for today; let tomorrow take care of itself". The unwelcome truth that seems ever more emergent and to be landing smack bang in The Pale of my lap is best stated as "Beware the Perils of Unlearning Lessons from History".
As it happens I'm lately rivetted in reading 'The Seasonwife' by Saige England. I got there by the happenstance of Substack correspondence with Saige. Only a third of the way through, and being a slow reader will take some little time to see where it lands with me in its ending, but rivetted is the very word. Reparation is one relevant word for the moment but so to, it's increasingly seeming to me, are other 'R' words such as Raid, Rape and Rapine.
Tourism is, I agree, good for economies but only to a point as we Post Brexit Brits and many others wanting to arrive carrying the lucre of hard cash are finding in the increasing blipping of 'Tourists Not Welcome Here' hotspots on our cultural radar screens. On the back of Dracula's being coffined - imaginatively - at Whitby Abbey the town has enjoyed a long gain from attracting paying Goths.
When I first went to Whitby, back in October 1973, and walked down into the town from Oddfellows Hall, first street sign that greeted us was a warning notice, along the lines of: "Only Two Persons, At A Time, Allowed To Enter Licensed Premises: Three Or More Attempting To Do So Constitutes a Crowd, Crowds Are Forbidden" By Order.
Thanks for putting Transylvania on my mental map. You give me reason to hope that, in the unlikely event that I should get to go there, there will be a there there beyond the 🦇 tat 🌄