Ричард Хо Сквозь увеличительное стекло: роль науки в детективной литературе XIX века

Many writers have discussed the prevalent role of mathematics in Poe’s Dupin stories, citing the long-winded treatise on mathematical study and analysis in the introduction of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” as an example. A quick exercise in inductive reconstruction produces a chain of causes which explains this curious preoccupation with mathematics. As Dupin might say, “the larger links of the chain run thus”: mathematics, West Point, École Polytechnique, Parisian politics, Gaspard Monge.

The Dupin tales are set in France during an era of intense political turmoil. The periodic revolutions and constant political turnover aside, France was still considered the foremost nation in the world in mathematics - and indeed, mathematics and politics were inextricably linked, for “a great many of the most distinguished French mathematicians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were eminent political figures as well” (Irwin 188). Among these prominent mathematician/politicians was Gaspard Monge, the “foremost French geometer of his day” as well as “a staunch republican and Bonapartist” (Irwin 188). In the unstable political atmosphere of nineteenth century France, Monge contributed to the establishment of the École Polytechnique, one of the foremost institutions of higher learning in that nation. In 1830, Poe enrolled as a cadet at the West Point Military Academy. At that point, the school’s curriculum had recently undergone a drastic overhaul - it was remodeled after the École Polytechnique, which emphasized practical applications of mathematics over theoretical ones (Irwin 196). It was here that Poe became indoctrinated in the principles of practical and analytical mathematics. “To judge, then, from the curriculum at West Point in Poe’s day, it seems fairly certain that his course of studies there would have indelibly linked in his mind the subject of mathematics with contemporary French politics” (Irwin 197-8).

Scientific disciplines

There are many mentions of specific scientific skills throughout both “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and A Study in Scarlet. Here are a few examples:

Defined as the study of handwriting, graphology is one “one of [Sherlock] Holmes's least understood talents” (Trapp 20). Holmes’s analysis of the writing of the word “Rache” on the wall of the crime scene is a prime example of this skill. Though he was able to determine that the word was not written by a German (“a real German invariably prints in the Latin character, so that we may safely say that this was not written by one, but by a clumsy imitator who overdid his part” (Conan Doyle 36)), the use of graphology in crime detection was still not widespread at the time of Conan Doyle, and Holmes kept its use to a minimum. “Although it is an old science, dating back before Christ, only a few papers had been written, and recognition of it had not spread very far... So he had little to work with, and cannot be blamed for refusing to use a science that was still a child” (Trapp 20-1).

Though the study of encryption is never really discussed in either tale, many critics have pointed to the incoherent screams of the ourang-outang in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” as an example of “the propensity of language to obscure truth” (Beegel 5). More specifically:

The ourang-outang’s language-no-language seems to represent an area of human mental activity that defies expression, and affective experience beyond linguistic construction and hence beyond the borders of rational comprehension... For Poe and Dupin alike, the use of language is an extended exercise in cryptography, each utterance containing a hidden meaning, or perhaps no meaning at all. (Beegel 6)

Ichnology

The official definition of ichnology is the study of plant and animal traces - but in the realm of criminal detection, it can be used to describe one of Sherlock Holmes’s most useful skills: the study of footprints. “There is no branch of science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me” (Conan Doyle 123-4).

Dupin makes a reference to stereotomy, which is defined as the science or art of cutting solids (often stones) into figures or sections. The use of stereotomy in Poe’s tale is significant, for it mirror’s Dupin’s philosophy of reasoning:

As an analytical science it is, like atomism and positivism, founded on the assumption that the nature of the whole can be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself. This is, of course, precisely Dupin’s procedure, who always breaks problems down into a series of logical steps and examines each piece of evidence closely. (Martin 37-8)

Geology

Holmes’s study of rocks and soil allows him to determine geographic locations based on the properties of the ground. As Watson observes in his list of Holmes’s abilities, “After walks [he] has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them” (Conan Doyle 16).

“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but

little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects.”

Narrator, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

In order to better understand the role of science in Poe’s writing, an examination of his detective’s beliefs and methods is necessary. As readers, we are given numerous indications throughout “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” that Dupin is scientifically inclined. As his various acts of observation and analysis illustrate, “he practices the classical scientific method of analysis; that is, he formulates hypotheses and then tests them empirically by predicting and verifying each of the narrator's reactions in turn” (Martin 37). More specifically, he utilizes a process which combines induction and deduction to determine a chain of reasoning.

A central aspect of this methodology is the emphasis on starting with the end result and reasoning backward to determine the causes, since the nature of criminal detection usually necessitates the recreation of a chain of events from the end result (the crime itself). As such, induction, or backward reasoning, is Dupin’s primary weapon:

Induction, the foundation of the modern scientific method, involves reasoning from a body of evidence to more general conclusions... Sir Francis Bacon is usually given credit for developing this technique, though Aristotle anticipated it, and important refinements in the method were later introduced by Bacon’s successors. Induction has also been referred to at times as reasoning a posteriori, “from what comes after,” or reasoning from effect to cause. (Nygaard 230-1)

Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, relies on the more conventional progression of events from past to present:

Deductive reasoning is generally defined to be reasoning from premises to specific conclusions according to the set rules of logic. If the premises are true and the proper rules of logic followed, then the conclusion is held to be certainly true. Deduction has also been called reasoning a priori, from first principles, and sometimes crudely characterized as reasoning from cause to effect. (Nygaard 230)

In the course of the story’s unraveling, Dupin utilizes both. Perhaps the most illustrative example of Dupin’s inductive reasoning is the incident at the beginning of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in which he seemingly reads the mind of the narrator. Based on the process of induction, he is able to trace the course of the narrator’s thoughts, from a point fifteen minutes in the past to the present moment, when he interrupts the narrator’s train of thought with the words, “He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Theatre des Varietes” (Poe 402).
Induction:

We will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run thus - Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichol, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer...

We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C--. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair...

...You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence... You kept your eyes upon the ground - glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,)...

... until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured the word ‘stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement...

... I knew that you could not say to yourself ‘stereotomy’ without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so...

... You did look up; and I was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s “Musee,” the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the line: Perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum. I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware that you could not have forgotten it...

... It was clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow - that Chantilly - he would do better at the Theatre des Varietes” (Poe 403-4).

Dupin utilizes the same process in solving the mystery for which the tale was named: “In solving the mystery of the murders, Dupin proceeds backward from the crime itself, from the confused evidence of the witnesses and the mutilated bodies in the Rue Morgue, to try to reconstruct what had occurred” (Nygaard 231). One aspect of the mystery that gives him an unusual amount of trouble is the problem of the window. The fact that the windows in the room are firmly shut, allowing for absolutely no mode of escape, clashes directly with the witness's assertion that voices were heard just prior to the discovery of the murders. In order to reconcile this seeming paradox, Dupin again defers to inductive reasoning:

I proceeded to think thus - a posteriori. The murderers did escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could not have re-fastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened; -the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. there was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts, as I had anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises, at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the nails. A careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satisfied with the discovery, forbore to upraise the sash. (Poe 418)

By anchoring his chain of reasoning around the assumption that the murderers must have escaped, he is able to reason backwards to find the solution. In Dupin’s own words, “I had traced the secret to its ultimate result” (Poe 419). Near the end of the tale, Dupin reveals to the narrator his collection of evidence in an attempt to lead him along the same path of seasoning towards the solution. Here, the process utilized by Dupin is deductive, rather than inductive - he starts out with all the facts, and determines the solution based on their logical combination:

Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention - that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this... If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nation, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? (Poe 422-3)

Despite Dupin’s success in arriving at the proper solutions, however, the case of the Rue Morgue reveals the shortcomings of the inductive method. Many critics have pointed out the lack of certainty associated with its conclusions, insisting that the confidence displayed by Dupin is actually a mask of deception: “[Dupin] generally manages to lend to his conclusions a much greater aura of certainty and definitiveness than they deserve, and for the most part manages to disguise from his audience the problematic aspects of the inductive methods he employs” (Nygaard 237).

One flaw in Dupin’s method is his habit of dismissing alternate possibilities. For example, “he is... much too quick to dismiss money as a conceivable motive for the crime,” choosing instead to explain the victims’ withdrawal of a large sum of gold just prior to their deaths as “mere coincidence” (Nygaard 239). There are other instances in which Dupin’s seemingly indisputable results seem to have alternative explanations - such as the passage in which he admits that the sailor is just as agile as the ourang-outang, and therefore just as capable of climbing the lighting rod and entering the scene of the crime; or the narrator’s observation that the sailor carried a heavy wooden club that could easily have been used as a murder instrument, providing an alternative to the ourang-outang’s animalistic strength (Nygaard 240). Ultimately, Dupin’s solution is correct, but the impenetrability of his chain of reasoning is suspect. The possibility still remains that Dupin was wrong. A reconstruction of any sort, in which the investigator is separated from the crime by any space of time, is subject to the possibility of error at every step - and in the case of the Rue Morgue murders, we must also allow for the possibility that “the reconstruction is less than fully accurate,” and that there has been “that slippage or break between the past and contemporary attempts to reproduce it” (Nygaard 248).

Literary analysis of “Murders in rue Morgue”

“We are invited to discover the combination of gears which causes the witches to

fly and the ghost to appear, and to admire the ingenuity of their creator, Edgar Allan Poe.”

Susan F. Beegel

Edgar Allan Poe’s account of Dupin’s first case is an explicit illustration of art imitating the artist. Poe’s fascination with re-creation and re-construction drives the plot of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” providing the scientific basis for Dupin’s struggle against the unknown. Indeed, the detective’s inductive tendencies can be interpreted as a direct transplantation of the author’s obsessively precise methodology. Poe’s essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,” along with his three Dupin short stories, “seem to have sprung from a similar authorial impulse: the desire to demystify the process of composition” (Beegel 1). For Poe, “the backstage world” holds an immense amount of appeal - it has “a colorful fascination of its own, one which rivals the finished production in interest” (Beegel 2). In a similar manner, the inner workings of criminal thought and cunning induction are as fascinating as the bare facts of the case, if not more so. “The Dupin mysteries, which uncover spectacular and puzzling criminal machinations, have the special appeal to curiosity and reverence characteristic of a visit behind-the-scenes” (Beegel 2).

Even the structure of the story itself takes advantage of the subject matter. Poe’s unique brand of narration “seems purposely crafted for the fictional illustration of the author’s literary theories. The tale of detection is an inverted short story, not only written backwards... but presented backwards as well” (Beegel 2). Since the actual murders take place early in the chronological unfolding of the tale, the majority of the subsequent action is devoted to piecing together the circumstances and events leading up to the beginning of the story. “The Dupin mysteries, unlike conventional short stories, commence rather than conclude with a climatic event” (Beegel 2), and “the whole method of the narrative tends to be close to that of induction” (Nygaard 231). This model has since become the standard for detective literature, influencing the works of all of Poe’s successors, from Arthur Conan Doyle to John Grisham.

Poe’s detective stories have been described as “ratiocinative tales” - a fitting name, considering the emphasis placed on methodical reasoning and logic by Dupin. In tales such as these, the primary concern of the plot is “ascertaining truth,” and the usual means of obtaining the truth is “through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation and perspicacious inference” (Engel 83). Oddly enough, the implication here is that the crime itself is secondary to the efforts taken to solve it. In effect, the detective becomes a storyteller who must create a narrative to fit the facts:

The main interest of a detective story is not the crime itself, but the detective’s creation of a story, his unfolding of the circumstances which led to the crime, and his uncovering of the persons involved and their motives. The highly literary process of dénouement replaces action as the central drama of Poe’s tales of detection. The detective-artist, creating plot and character, giving meaning to crime-experience, is the hero of this drama. (Beegel 2)

In this manner, the detective in Poe’s story transcends the bounds of fiction and takes on the role of his creator. “In short, the protagonist of Poe’s detective tales is a portrait of the artist” (Beegel 2). Indeed, there are many similarities between Dupin and Poe: “Impoverished sons of genteel families, both combine the talents of poet and mathematician. Both require the stimulation of opium, are fond of conundrums and hieroglyphics, have an aesthete’s taste for the dark and grotesque” (Beegel 2). Here, the notion of art imitating artist is quite literal.

The development of Dupin as a character is important to the overall success of the tale, for science alone is not enough to sustain a complete narrative. Dupin is captivating not just for his unparalleled skill, but for his human idiosyncrasies as well. Like all complex characters, the character of Dupin is flawed, and riddled with contradiction. At times, he exudes an aura of moral righteousness in his honorable quest for truth, refusing to manipulate facts even for the sake of strengthening his case: “This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ultimate object is only the truth” (Poe 420). And yet, his motivation for pursuing these mysterious crimes is not entirely derived from such lofty intentions. He makes it blatantly clear that he derives a certain amount of satisfaction - even pleasure - in the unraveling of a difficult case. The narrator picks up on this hedonistic element in the introduction to the story, in which he explains: “As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles” (Poe 397). Dupin clearly delights in the exercise of his mental powers - the enthusiasm with which he displays during the "mind-reading" conveys an ostentatious flair, and his motivation for investigating a pair of grisly murders is the hope that “an inquiry will afford us amusement” (412). Additionally, Dupin displays a stubborn competitive spirit - he sees the struggle to solve a mystery as a struggle against an unseen opponent, and he directs his keen observation skills are towards one goal: the discovery of on opponent's weakness. “The analyst throws himself into the spirit of this opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation” (Poe 398). Even in the end, when the case has been solved and credit has been assigned, Dupin takes a final indignant jab at his rival, the police Prefect: “I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle” (Poe 431).

The conflict within Dupin’s character can, to a certain extent, be extended to encompass Poe. Because of his love of “duplicity, obfuscation, and manipulation,” readers have learned that “they cannot trust Poe, that they must approach his narratives warily and with suspicion” (Nygaard 223). The danger lies in taking his narrators at face value - as we have seen with Dupin, “the self-absorbed, obsessed figures through whom he relates his tales are notoriously unreliable in their perceptions and interpretations of events” (Nygaard). Even the seemingly rational facts of Dupin’s scientific reasoning are looked upon with suspicion, for “despite the aura of cool objectivity and logical rigor that surrounds his analyses... he is still somehow having us on, trying to pull the wool over our eyes” (Nygaard 224). Some critics point to the similarity between Dupin’s name and the word “duping,” and insist that the introduction to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” contains “an implicit challenge to the reader to prove himself capable of analysis, that is, to be skeptical of superficial truths and alive to the metaphorical potential of language” (Martin 42).

One final aspect of Poe’s fiction worth noting here is the author’s use of physical enclosure as a means of heightening mood and suspense. This tool is used throughout Poe’s writing, from the crypt in “The Fall of the House of Usher” to the chamber in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” These physical enclosures are “distinctly sealed off from the rest of the setting so that what takes place in it is set apart, or ‘insulated,’ from events in the world outside” (Engel 83).

In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the enclosure is Dupin’s isolated chamber. The effect is to amplify the intensity of his mental powers, for “both literal enclosures and enclosures on the level of image and metaphor isolate and concentrate the action, intensify the mystery and thus enhance the ratiocinative process of crime solving” (Engel 83). The enclosures also delineate a sense of distance between Dupin and the rest of the society, both in terms of physical distance and his intellectual superiority. There is irony in this construction as well - for the one person most capable of banishing mystery is himself shrouded in mystery.