Tea at Trianon: The Two Camps of Crime

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, March 28, 2022

The Two Camps of Crime

From CrimeReads:

Christie’s DNA has its source in Poe’s “stories of ratiocination,” and seminally in the character of his Inspector Dupin, who through a detached and cool contemplation works the case of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Out of the incomprehensible facts, which on the surface would seem to the reader “impossible” to explain, Dupin solves the puzzle. He puts the world right again, here resolving for the reader the tension created in the otherwise inexplicable. He makes sense out of non-sense, thus satisfying a fundamental drive all readers share, which is to comprehend the larger meaning of the facts of any story. Writers in Christie’s camp most assiduously develop a “noetic thread,” and to an exact and ultimate meaning. Christie, in the bulk of her narratives (there were thirty-three Poirots), first introduces the reader to a group of individuals forced by circumstances to close interaction, most of these individuals variations of types. A murder, or murders, take place (“Murder becomes a habit,” says her sleuth, Poirot). As written, any of the individuals in Christie’s dramas could have committed the murder, or then—murders. Christie brings her sleuth in late (in person, or in action) and only after the reader is thoroughly flummoxed by her cast of murder-motivated suspects. Following an engaged consideration of all the “facts” of the case through her sleuth, the murderer is revealed—even when he or she—or it—is as preposterous as an orangutan (as in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”).

It is most instructive to note that the first murderer in the lineage of ratiocination is an absurdity.

And why is this important? Because, even granted the plot is ridiculous—an orangutan, having escaped its seaman owner, enters an apartment via the chimney and kills the apartment’s two occupants—and beyond unlikely—the story still delivers its pleasures. Through it, the reader is transported, however briefly, into the rarified air of mystery and murder.

How could the murderer have gained entrance to the apartment when the doors and windows were locked? the reader is compelled to ask. Why was this murder committed? And by whom? (Read more.)