Here is a place to discuss Poe's three stories of the detective Auguste Dupin, which came up in a reading of Arthur Machen's Hieroglyphics, where Machen's Hermit was a bit shy of claiming they were fine literature but was sure they "almost" were.

1."The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

[ebooks.adelaide.edu.au]

2."The Mystery of Marie Rogêt"

[ebooks.adelaide.edu.au]

3."The Purloined Letter"

[ebooks.adelaide.edu.au]

Discussions of these stories should be reserved for those who have read them, or else don't object to "spoilers."

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a horror story, but it provided the template, more than 40 years earlier, for the Sherlock Holmes stories. You have the great amateur and his more ordinary friend and recorder. The unofficial detective solves the crime that had baffled the police. The setting is a great metropolis. The detective loves to expound the theory and method of detection that he follows. He isn't worried about money. He advises his friend to be armed with a pistol. He lures to his own residence either the perpetrator of the crime or the person who is most implicated in its perpetration.

More particularly, this story foreshadows one of the best-loved Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Speckled Band." You have the clue of a voice or voices uttering something not understood but which is important in the solving of the crime. A gruesome death has occurred in darkness. You have the mystery of a locked room. No human being could have committed it, but an animal could have. Both stories carry us along but are, frankly, absurd; but probably we don't notice or don't mind.

Poe describes Dupin as exhibiting a Bi-Part Soul. In "The Red-Headed League," Watson similarly describes Holmes as possessing a twofold personality, that of the dreamer and of the bloodhound. More remotely, we might be reminded of Machen's remark, in Hieroglyphics, of "the mysterious companion that walks beside each of one us on the earthly journey" -- which in turn recalls the Machen piece called "Fragments of Paper" or "Psychology." This piece is pretty far from the Holmes stories, but they share an interest in psychology.


Dupin is a little like Machen's Hermit and Poe's narrator a little like the recorder-figure of Hieroglyphics.

The Hermit wasn't willing to commit himself to the view that "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is fine literature, nor am I!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 4 Oct 19 | 09:21AM by Dale Nelson.

I hope one of these days I will get round to reading "Mademoiselle de Scuderi" (1819) by E. T. A. Hoffmann and "The Secret Cell" (1837) by William Evans Burton which are said to be a direct influnce on Poe and first examples of detective fiction genre.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 9 Oct 19 | 03:37PM by Minicthulhu.

Thanks for reminding me of Hoffmann -- an author I keep meaning to explore more extensively.

Great exchanges!

A wealth of new authors and works in the field of escapist fiction, with the occasional gem of something much more.

Good to follow this!

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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