Dracula, starring Walt Whitman?

http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/novemberdecember/feature/when-bram-met-walt

When Bram Met Walt

By Meredith Hindley | HUMANITIES, November/December 2012 | Volume 33, Number 6

Given Stoker’s hero worship of Whitman, literary scholars have looked for evidence of the poet’s influence onDracula. A cryptful of critics spent the late 1980s and 1990s fixating on the novel’s morbid sensuality and what it suggested about homosexuality. It was on this issue that they frequently located Whitman’s fingerprints. Belford regards Whitman’s influence as “profound,” noting that the Count and Whitman share common physical traits. “Each has long white hair, a heavy moustache, great height and strength, and a leonine bearing. Whitman’s poetry celebrates the voluptuousness of death and the deathlike quality of love.”