On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1827; vuoden 2015 painos)

Eccentric, unique and rather funny. It is a mannered send-up of belles-lettres and aesthetic criticism, applied to the history and practice of murder. What could have been grotesque is instead amusingly absurd, and the author's own reference to Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" is quite fitting.

No. 4 in the Little Black Classics series. Once again, this collection delivers a taste of a work long-forgotten but worth remembering. ( )

Fair, but not my cup of tea at all. It was interesting to see a bit of philosophy thrown into the mix where murder is concerned, although this monograph was roughly a century before the start of criminology, not to mention forensic psychology. Not my style at all, but still an interesting dip into murder as posed nearly two-hundred years ago. ( )

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Thomas de Quincey states at the start of the essay that it is a transcript from a meeting of a mysterious group of gentleman who are fascinated by murder. The rest of the essay is then the transcript and elaborates on several murders and the murder of philosophers.

Based on the fact that people are usually (to some extant) fascinated by murder, I was really looking forward to it. However, I didn't think it was as hilarious as the description told me. The humor was rather bad or maybe sometimes I just didn't get it. I don't think I would read a complete book by Thomas de Quincey.

Little Black Classics #4 ( )

A note in this postcard-sized publication, issued to celebrate eighty years of Penguin paperbacks, tells us that the 26-year-old author was somewhat affected by the Ratcliffe Highway murders in London's East End in late 1811. We know from The Maul and the Pear Tree how deeply traumatising for the public those violent killings were, and De Quincey apparently was to write more than once about them over some three decades.

In 1827 he wrote this witty satire for Blackwood's Magazine---a piece which I fancy the Brontë siblings would have eagerly pored over---in the course of which X. Y. Z. (De Quincey's pseudonym) quotes verbatim a lecture to the fictional Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. As the magazine editor noted, "We cannot suppose the lecturer to be in earnest, any more than Erasmus in his Praise of Folly, or Dean Swift in his proposal for eating children." But we can also suspend our disbelief for a while to examine the outrageous claims of the anonymous lecturer, all written in a perfectly learned and civil style. Entitled the Williams' Lecture on Murder (in honour of the supposed perpetrator of the Ratcliffe Highway atrocities) the text is full of Latin and Greek quotations which fortunately are here translated for us in square brackets.

People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed---a knife---a purse---and a dark lane [...] Mr. Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us...

After a consideration of morality, with appeals to Coleridge, Aristotle and Mr. Howship the surgeon, the lecturer then dismisses pretty much all the murders, homicides and assassinations of the classical period. He begins with the first murderer, Cain,"a man of first-rate genius":

All the Cains were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, or some such thing...

Having established his tongue to be placed firmly in his cheek the author (or his proxy) romps through history, noting obscure murders and even murder attempts and holding up for especial approbation those involving philosophers such as Hobbes. In Munich we hear of "a distinguished amateur of our society" who goes to work on a baker, which proceedings are described in the manner of a boxing match between two unequal pugilists.

The reader will now have unavoidably noted that I have lapsed into a Regency mode of speech, the inevitable outcome of perusing De Quincey's text. Pray bear with me as I complete my summary of this slim volume.

The lecture concludes with a few words about the principles of murder, which touch on the kind of person suited to be a murderer, the place and the time of the deed, and a few other particulars.

"The final purpose of murder, considered as a fine art, is precisely the same as Tragedy, in Aristotle's account of it, " we're told, namely to cleanse the heart of pity and terror. Exactly who, then, is this connoisseur of heart-cleansing? A bloodthirsty surgeon? A butcher of finesse? A dispassionate dispatcher? None of these, it turns out: he declaims all pretensions to the character of a professional man. "I never attempted any murder in my life, except in the year 1801, upon the body of a tom-cat... "

Fifty-six pages of black humour turned out to be just what I needed to restore composure when I was contemplating violence on certain politicians and their asinine supporters: though in truth I had no thoughts of assassination, only to bang heads together. No real sense I suspect would have thus been lodged there, sadly, but I may have---just possibly---felt a bit better. ( )

I liked the premise of the lecture but would have preferred the Latin be translated differently. ( )