这几天读了埃德加·爱伦·坡的小说（Edgar Allan Poe）的中篇小说 《莫格街凶杀案》（The Murders in the Rue Morgue）。
文学界公认该作品是现代侦探小说的鼻祖。咱虽然是福尔摩斯迷，而且福尔摩斯对杜宾 (Dupin, 爱伦·坡小说里的法国侦探）不屑一顾，但毕竟是鼻祖级的作品，不能不读。
读后，确实能从柯南道尔塑造的福尔摩斯身上看到杜宾的影子。
人物构架也雷同。在柯南道尔的系列小说里，大侦探福尔摩斯离不开他的搭档华生。华生在福尔摩斯面前相形见绌，对福尔摩斯佩服得五体投地。华生其实就是个衬托，是为了凸显福尔摩斯的侦探天赋。此外还有来自官方的侦探，他们对案件往往一筹莫展。
在 爱伦·坡的小说里，也有来自官方的侦探，同样很笨。杜宾是业余侦探，但具有特殊的推理天赋，他能通过人的肢体看到内心活动。当然还有一位类似华生的角色做搭档，他就是故事的叙述者。跟华生对福尔摩斯一样，叙述者对杜宾佩服得五体投地，赞赏不已。
而且，像华生和福尔摩斯一样，叙述者与杜宾两人同居一室，与外界也不怎么接触。两人出门上街还搂肩搭背，不清楚是啥关系--这个不重要啦。
《莫格街凶杀案》故事本身并不复杂，但挺引人入胜。在巴黎莫格街上发生了一件神秘而残忍的凶杀案，死者是一对颇为富有的母女，两人被凶手以离奇又凶残的手法杀害。听到受害人惨叫后，几位邻居和巴黎警察及时赶到现场。他们往楼上冲时听到除了受害者以外还有两个声音。一个声音是法语，可以判断出这是一个极度恐慌的法国人发出的声音。另一个声音，则没有人能听懂，或判断出生哪国语言。受害人的房间从内部紧锁。他们砸开房间，房间一片狼藉，屋内贵重的钱币没有丢失（案件发生前，母女刚才银行提取了很多钱），在壁炉的烟囱边发现受害的年轻女子，身体倒挂着，惨不忍睹。母亲的尸体在院子里发现，头都快被割断了。
可是，房间从内部锁着，两个窗子都紧闭。凶手是怎么进来的，又是怎么逃出去的？那两个声音，尤其是第二个，是谁发出的？此案存在似乎无法解开的死结。警察匆匆抓了一位嫌疑人了事。
当然，杜宾最终把案子破了。具体的破案细节就不透露了。这里要讲的是小说的开头和结尾。
小说的开头三段比较罗嗦，也比较难懂。我把原文搬过来：
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture. --Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial.
THE mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. 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. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract --Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his 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.
Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognizes what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation --all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.
The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.
洋洋洒洒写了这么多前言后，案件才正式展开。如果只对侦探感兴趣，这几段完全可以越过。
警方不但没破案，还抓错了人（Le Bon)。杜宾破案后，到警察局去解释。小说的最后两段是杜宾对官方侦探的评价，原文如下：
Le Bon was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from Dupin) at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or two, about the propriety of every person minding his own business.
"Let him talk," said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. "Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless, that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna, -- or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature after all. I like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has 'de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas.' "
最后一段用了三个比喻：
1. "In his wisdom is no stamen"
2. "It is all head and no body like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna,"
3. "or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish."
一头雾水，不懂。看不懂就查文献。从网文到学术论文，找到了很多相关讨论。下面是其中一篇，并把相关的部分搬过来，供参考方面。
Lemay, J.A. Leo, "The Psychology of 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'", American Literature, vol. 54, no. 2 (1982), 165-66.
In the conclusion of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe wrote three metaphors which challenge the reader. They do not make literal sense. Dupin is explaining (for the final time) the reason why the Prefect of Police failed to solve the mystery. Dupin says, "in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound." He illustrates the generalization with three paradoxical comparisons: "In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna, - or at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish."
I believe that if we fully understand the ways that these three metaphors - and the final quotation - complement the story, then we will understand the psychology of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
All three tropes point to a head-body dichotomy and all concern sex. The first, "In his wisdom is no stamen," is an obvious paradox. What does stamen have to do with wisdom? The stamen, of course, is a flower's pollen-producing organ - comparable to the male genitalia. (Since the stamen indicates one essential theme of the story, Poe may also have been punning on the uncommon meaning of stamen as "the fundamental or essential element of a thing.") Literally, Dupin seems to be saying that the Prefect failed to solve the mystery because he failed to take sex into account - or because he failed to integrate the entire person, head and body, intellect and sex.
The second trope, "It is all head and no body like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna," directly names the head-body dichotomy. In identifying the head with Laverna, Dupin reverses the normal, expected associations; for the head - the citadel of reason - is usually associated with intelligence and wisdom, as in the first trope. Laverna, however, is the classical goddess of the underworld, night, and thieves. She suggests crime and evil, not wisdom and good. This trope echoes at least two details in the story. The head-body dichotomy recalls the corpse of Madame L'Espanaye "with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off". And the Goddess Laverna reminds us of an attribute of Dupin and the narrator, for the goddess of the night is evidently the "sable divinity" whom Dupin is "enamored of".
The third trope is "or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish." Does a fish have shoulders? Even by itself, the metaphor seems strained, since a fish appears to be an absurd choice. This comparison again reverses the normally positive associations of wisdom and instead identifies it with a fish-head, a monstrosity of mouth and jaws. The comparison again emphasizes the head-body dichotomy, thus reaffirming that "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" concerns this dualism. Further, the codfish reference, which calls attention to itself, probably does so for the sexual suggestion. Marlowe, Shakespeare, and other Renaissance writers frequently pun about cods and codfish, and Mark Twain's splendidly scurrilous poem "The Mammoth Cod" attests that the pun remained popular until well after Poe's time. More Info So when Poe drags in a reference to a codfish, I suspect that, as in the first trope, he alludes to sex, as well as to the head-body dichotomy.
貌似学问很深。还是留给专业人士去解读吧。
读后匆匆写了篇随感，虽然是浅尝辄止，但对自己有个交代。
至于高深的学问，留着以后慢慢咀嚼品味吧。
2023年3月11日，星期六
附：The Murders in the Rue Morgue 全文链接：
