| Author | Message | ||
     Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.27.17.114 |
Question for the Sherlock Holmes fans out there. Do you feel that Sherlock Homes lived up to his arch-rationalist image or did Conan Doyle's own beliefs in spiritualism colour the stories, making some of them rather far-fetched and possibly even a veiled critique of the limitations of a purely rational approach to crime-solving and life in general? | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.13.54 |
Conan Doyle was very careful to keep Holmes free from any of his own Spiritualist beliefs; the stories might be full of contradictions (due to ACD's haste in writing them and his general feeling that they weren't all that important) such as Holmes going from 'Knowledge of Literature: Nil' in A STUDY IN SCARLET to being very well read in later tales, but he remained a firm rationalist. Conan Doyle felt free to convert Professor Challenger to a believer in Spiritualism, but he obviously realised that performing a similar trick with Holmes would have contradicted everything the character stood for and believed in. I don't see any evidence of ACD's Spiritualist beliefs in the canon; indeed, he goes to great lengths to show that the crimes Holmes investigates have a purely rational explanation, no matter how far-fetched, or possibly even supernatural, they appear at the beginning (see HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, 'The Speckled Band', 'The Sussex Vampire', 'The Devil's Foot', 'The Creeping Man'). Indeed, it's in SUSS that Holmes makes his famous 'This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground. . . . No ghosts need apply' speech (and that story was written in 1924, when ACD was fully committed to the Spiritualist cause). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
So Holmes and watson went round meeting monsters and debunking them to reveal the true protagonist. It's Scooby Doo a hundred years early. I woulda got away with it if it wasn't for you pesky detectives... | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.13.54 |
Weber, to dismiss so talented a story teller as Conan Doyle with a Scooby Doo reference says more about you than Conan Doyle. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.227.215 |
Question for the Sherlock Holmes fans out there. Do you feel that Sherlock Homes lived up to his arch-rationalist image or did Conan Doyle's own beliefs in spiritualism colour the stories, making some of them rather far-fetched and possibly even a veiled critique of the limitations of a purely rational approach to crime-solving and life in general? I would even state the opposite of your question. With Holmes providing rational explanations for events that simpler, or more naive characters in his stories consider as supernatural; it is actually strange for me that ACD became a Spiritualist. You'd expect that some of Holmes' critical thinking would be present in ACD as well! Of course SH did not suffer from the loss of several loved ones as ACD did, which may account for the writer turning to Spiritualism in an effort to make some sense of all his misery. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.73 |
As an aside, I'll just mention I got the Baz Rathbone box set of the movies for my birthday and am very much looking forward to watching them. Wasn't ACD the last writer before Stephen King (or JK Rowling) to fill the Albert Hall? And certainly the only one to do so after he'd died... I think part of the Holmes tales' appeal lies in the fact we never quite know Holmes except through Watson's eyes. Holmes is always one step removed from us. That's probably why the UK PI novel has never really taken off (popular Brit crime and mystery novels tend to feature cops) compared to US PI books cos of Chandler's first-person PI. I reckon. Lemon entry, my dear Webber. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.164.253 |
Stu: neither. Mycroft is the pure rationalist. Sherlock is a man of imaginative projection, of passion, of intervention and nerve. He looks under the surface of things and uses provocative tactics to make villains reveal themselves. He's not a spiritual or religious person, no, but he is a man for whom imagination and emotion mean a great deal. Eisenstein called SH a Marxist, and he certainly considers action to be crucial to the solution of any problem (as well as having a healthy contempt for the rich and powerful). SH is also a decadent, a dreamer, and an apparent homosexual (Watson being none of those things). As an intellectual and activist, he stands so far above the pallid bourgeois likes of Hercule Poirot that several planets come between them. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.220.200 |
"Wasn't ACD the last writer before Stephen King (or JK Rowling) to fill the Albert Hall?" The latest is John Barrowman. He's written a Torchwood comic. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.13.54 |
Joel wrote: 'Sherlock is a man of imaginative projection, of passion, of intervention and nerve. He looks under the surface of things and uses provocative tactics to make villains reveal themselves. He's not a spiritual or religious person, no, but he is a man for whom imagination and emotion mean a great deal. Eisenstein called SH a Marxist, and he certainly considers action to be crucial to the solution of any problem (as well as having a healthy contempt for the rich and powerful). SH is also a decadent, a dreamer, and an apparent homosexual (Watson being none of those things). As an intellectual and activist, he stands so far above the pallid bourgeois likes of Hercule Poirot that several planets come between them.' With respect, Joel, I have to disagree with several of your statements about Holmes. He CAN be a man of passion, when severely provoked, but for the most part he prefers to keep his emotions in tight check, lest they interfere with/cloud his investigations (so emotion only means a great deal to him in that he can't let it get in the way). I don't think Holmes is a decadent: his needs are few, and he lives a lifestyle which is simple in the extreme. I've never thought of Holmes as a dreamer: he is very much grounded in the here and now, and while he can get inside another person's head to the extent of being able to figure out what makes them tick, he is not given to flights of fancy. And 'an apparent homosexual'? Not apparent to this longtime Sherlockian. Asexual, possibly; not interested in either sex, almost certainly. ACD sets that out quite clearly in the first short story: that anything akin to love is foreign to him, and romance of any kind is right out. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.13.54 |
Tom: ACD may have fully embraced Spiritualism after he lost loved ones - as did many thousands during, and during the aftermath of, the Great War, but he'd been involved with it for a long time before that. From his time in Southsea in the late 1800s, in fact. And there was certainly no lack of critical thinking in his analysis of the subject, or his reasons for his faith. Doesn't mean to say that he was correct, of course - not by any means - but he put forward just as much a rational argument for his own particular beliefs, as his opponents put forward for theirs. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.254.101 |
Thought I'd try and explain one point in my comments above in more detail, in case anyone queries it, given that I probably won't have another chance to visit this board until Thursday. People often suggest (or assume) that Holmes and Watson are lovers, and only the code of the time prevented Doyle from saying so. Others consider this an offensive and perverse misreading of the texts. But I think their relationship is more conflicted than either of those views would suggest. Even when first reading the Holmes stories in my teens, it was clear to me that (to paraphrase Aickman) there is a difference between the two men that neither of them would ever mention or ever forget. Why exactly does Holmes constantly belittle Watson's intelligence? He is used to being around people who do not share his exceptional brilliance, so he can't really see Watson as unusually dim. He knows that Watson is a highly capable doctor and is also his chronicler as well as his best friend... so what is the matter between them? His behaviour towards Watson is a kind of playful, affectionate sarcasm. You don't get that in uncomplicated same-sex friendships. You do, however, get it in same-sex friendships that are complicated by a one-sided sexual attraction... and you get it a lot. Trust me. When Holmes speaks of Watson's marriage as a "defection", he means it. The bitchiness arises from a sense of unfinished emotional business between them. But as they mature and start to age, both men accept each other's nature and their friendship survives. That's my reading of it, anyway. The Holmes-Watson dialogue is so charged and uneasy because it has that subtext. And next to nothing has happened between them that we're not told about. OK, did anyone care enough to read that? Probably not.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.254.101 |
Aha! While I was typing, others were responding. My posting above took a while... And it's all I have to say, so feel free to bury it under the weight of evidence. It's late now, so I'll catch up with any further discussion later. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.254.101 |
Of course, also feel free to ignore it and move on. Goes without saying. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
What about the "Cottingley Fairies" mediatic battle? To me, the photos of fairies immediately look so brazen-facedly fake I wonder at really having there been any technical investigations about them...but ACD's ardent Spiritualism was in the faction so the "polemos" was probably unavoidable. The general issue about Fairies, however, can't be ruled out by the fake photos episode or such pseudo-phenomena. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.78.35.185 |
Christopher, thanks for the clarification. I admit that I have not read any of his more spiritual texts (I assume he must have written some essays on the matter?), as this is far from my own interests, and it is indeed curious how a very critical mind can be so swayed by spiritualism. Many people feel the need of believing in something bigger than earthly life, but without the rules that come with a classic religion. I did know a few people who would vehemently reject christianity but believed in healing powers of scale model pyramids and the like. Compared to some of these new agey superstitions, a classic religion seems so reasonable ! | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.2.67.191 |
Maybe at the time the fairies didn't look so fake, what with photography being fairly new at the time. Didn't Conan Doyle get his own back on a lot of his critics by showing them cinema footage of a dinosaur which they all thought was real until he explained about the special effects? Or is my rather imperfect memory just making that up? Anyway, the non-rationalist thing was brought up by a non-Holmes fan and although I didn't agree with him it's a while since I'd read the stories (and I never really remembered the later ones anyway) so I thought it might be interesting to see if anyone else had spotted anything that agreed with his take on the stories. Interesting answers so far. I've been reminded elsewhere of this hallucination scene from the Adventure of the Devil's Foot'which has been compared to both Lovecraft and Machen. Whaddya reckon?: "Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul." >>I think part of the Holmes tales' appeal lies in the fact we never quite know Holmes except through Watson's eyes. Holmes is always one step removed from us. There were one or two stories told in the first person by Holmes himself. And one or two told in the third person. Anyone know what they were and save me the trouble of looking them up? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.2.67.191 |
Conan Doyle on Holmes and psychic phenomena. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eq18U5btcg | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Matthew, do I really need to point out that I was making a joke... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
To not recognise a blatant joke when you see one says more about you than it does about me. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
"think part of the Holmes tales' appeal lies in the fact we never quite know Holmes except through Watson's eyes. Holmes is always one step removed from us. That's probably why the UK PI novel has never really taken off (popular Brit crime and mystery novels tend to feature cops) compared to US PI books cos of Chandler's first-person PI." I feel that Chandler's Marlowe is also removed from the reader even though he is a first person narrator. Yes, you see the world through his eyes but you never actualy know him. Even his office ocnsits only of a chess set and an empty filing cabinet, oh and a whisky bottle probably. Benji Spritemen, now there's a private eye... Regards Terry Grimwood | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.246.169 |
Matthew, do I really need to point out that I was making a joke... And you'da gotten away with it too, Weber, if it hadn't been for that pesky Matthew....  |