“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe (post 3): Nameless narrator, Doubling, “Bi-Part Soul,” “double Dupin,” and first famous detective

The protagonist of this short story, C. Auguste Dupin, is literature’s first famous detective, from before they were even called detectives. Sherlock Holmes mentions him, dismissively, but Holmes was jealous.

The nameless narrator makes introductory remarks—e.g., “what is only complex is mistaken…for what is profound” and “the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis”—and then describes how he first met Dupin:

“Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume brought us into closer communion…It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city…renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper…Our seclusion was perfect…We existed within ourselves alone…

“I could not help remarking and admiring…a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise…He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs…His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract…while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble…Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the creative and the resolvent” (1).

Comment

The unnamed narrator and Dupin are doubles. And Dupin, himself, is double. Which make three personalities.

It is significant that the narrator is unnamed. Namelessness, a recurrent topic in this blog, is common among alternate personalities.

Additionally, in a past post, I discussed Poe’s real-life published debate with a letter writer, who was named “Outis,” the Greek word for nobody, and how it was probably Poe, himself, who took both sides of that debate.

And in another post, I discussed Poe’s best-known multiple personality story, “William Wilson.”

So “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” makes a third example of Poe’s probable multiple personality: here with a nameless narrator, doubling, a “Bi-Part Soul,” and “double Dupin.”

1. Edgar Allan Poe. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” [1841], in The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Edited by Stephen Peithman. New York, Avenel Books, 1981.