The Detective Story
"The original social content of the detective story was the
obliteration of the individual's traces in the big-city crowd. Poe concerns
himself with this motif in detail in 'The Mystery of Marie Roget', the
most voluminous of his detective stories. At the same time this story is
the prototype of the utilization of journalistic
information in the solution of crimes. Poe's detective, the Chevalier
Dupin, here works not with personal information but with reports from the
daily press. The critical analysis of these reports constitutes the rumour
in the story. Among other things, the time of the crime has to be
established...(Poe writes)'...For my own part, I should hold it not only
as possible, but as far more than probable, that Marie might have
proceeded, at any given period, by any one of th e many routes betwen her
own residence and that of her aunt, without meeting a single individual
whom she knew, or by whom she was known. In viewing this question in its
full and proper light, we must hold steadily in mind the great
disproportion between the personal acquaintances of even the most noted
individual in Paris, and the entire population of Paris itself.'" 1938 "Since the French Revolution an
extensive network of controls had brought bourgeois life ever more
tightly into its meshes. The numbering of houses in the big cities may be
used to document the progressive standardisation. Napoleon's
administration made it obligatory for Paris in 1805. In proletarian
sections, to be sure, this simple police measure
encountered resistance...In the long run, of course, such resistance was
of no avail against the endeavour to compensate by means of a multifarious
web of registrations for the fact that the disappearance of people in the
masses of the big cities leaves no traces.
Baudelaire
found this endeavour as much of an encroachment as did any criminal. on
his flight from his creditors he went to cafés or reading circles.
Sometimes he had two domiciles at the same time - but on days when the
rent was due, he often spent the night at a third place with friends. So
he roved about in the city which had long ceased to be a home for the
flâneur." 1938
Return to the
Arcade
Click
here to order Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project
from Amazon.com
|
