the murderer; the second has to do with the circumstances around the book’s creation
and the reasons why Conan Doyle allowed so many improbabilities to exist within it. In my opinion, we have to clear up this
second mystery before we have any chance of solving the first.
In order to grasp what is at play deep down in this book, that which has escaped the all-too-rational critics, we must try
to understand the tormented relationships Conan Doyle shared with his characters—especially his greatest character, Sherlock
Holmes. These relationships were tinged with madness, and, in the case of this novel, ended up influencing the plot to the
point of making it indecipherable to the writer himself. It is as if, having lost control of his own work, Conan Doyle hid
his own confusion behind that of his characters.
We should not underestimate the bonds that can form between a creator and his characters, bonds whose fierceness makes us
wonder to what extent these characters might possess a form of existence like our own. This question about the independent
lives of literary characters is all the more acute for Sherlock Holmes; in fact, the celebrated Holmes is the best example
we can point to of the difficulties, and at times dramatic consequences, inherent in separating real people from fictional
beings.
This tricky distinction is not the product of current criticism; rather, it is an idea readers have struggled with since ancient
times. In his book Fictional Worlds , 53 Thomas Pavel retraced the history of the schools of thought that, since antiquity, have reflected on the separations between
the world of reality from the world of fiction, and on the intersections that might exist between them. *
Commenting on an excerpt from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Pavel notes that although the reader knows perfectly well that Mr. Pickwick does not exist, he is still
caught, while reading the passages devoted to him, with an irrepressible feeling of reality:
The reader [ . . . ] experiences two contradictory intuitions: on the one hand he knows well that unlike the sun, whose actual
existence is beyond doubt, Mr. Pick-wick and most of the human beings and states of affairs described in the novel do not
and never did exist outside its pages. On the other hand, once Mr. Pickwick’s fictionality is acknowledged, happenings inside
the novel are vividly felt as possessing some sort of reality of their own, and the reader can fully sympathize with the adventures
and reflections of the characters. 54
All of us who try to define the status of fictional characters are confronted with this feeling of reality—which is also,
in many respects, a feeling of unsettling strangeness. But the attempt to define a character’s status is indeed the heart
of the problem. These characters do not precisely inhabit our world, but they unquestionably occupy a certain place in it,
which is not so easy to define.
In a book devoted to listing a full range of the possible theoretical stances, it is interesting that the character of Sherlock
Holmes plays a large role; Pavel cites various authors who use the example of Holmes to question the degree of validity of
statements concerning fictional beings. Thus Pavel quotes Saul Kripke stating that Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but noting
that “in other states of affairs he would have existed.” 55 Less hospitable, Robert Howell notes that if the character of Sherlock Holmes is made to achieve the geometric impossibility
of drawing a square circle, his world stops being a possible world. 56 And Pavel postulates that “there are worlds where Sherlock Holmes, while behaving as he does in Conan Doyle’s stories, is
a secret but compulsive admirer of women.” 57
Other characters might occupy the same symbolic function: the names Hamlet and Anna Karenina turn up many times in Pavel’s
work. But Holmes has become so famous that he takes on a special
and the reasons why Conan Doyle allowed so many improbabilities to exist within it. In my opinion, we have to clear up this
second mystery before we have any chance of solving the first.
In order to grasp what is at play deep down in this book, that which has escaped the all-too-rational critics, we must try
to understand the tormented relationships Conan Doyle shared with his characters—especially his greatest character, Sherlock
Holmes. These relationships were tinged with madness, and, in the case of this novel, ended up influencing the plot to the
point of making it indecipherable to the writer himself. It is as if, having lost control of his own work, Conan Doyle hid
his own confusion behind that of his characters.
We should not underestimate the bonds that can form between a creator and his characters, bonds whose fierceness makes us
wonder to what extent these characters might possess a form of existence like our own. This question about the independent
lives of literary characters is all the more acute for Sherlock Holmes; in fact, the celebrated Holmes is the best example
we can point to of the difficulties, and at times dramatic consequences, inherent in separating real people from fictional
beings.
This tricky distinction is not the product of current criticism; rather, it is an idea readers have struggled with since ancient
times. In his book Fictional Worlds , 53 Thomas Pavel retraced the history of the schools of thought that, since antiquity, have reflected on the separations between
the world of reality from the world of fiction, and on the intersections that might exist between them. *
Commenting on an excerpt from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Pavel notes that although the reader knows perfectly well that Mr. Pickwick does not exist, he is still
caught, while reading the passages devoted to him, with an irrepressible feeling of reality:
The reader [ . . . ] experiences two contradictory intuitions: on the one hand he knows well that unlike the sun, whose actual
existence is beyond doubt, Mr. Pick-wick and most of the human beings and states of affairs described in the novel do not
and never did exist outside its pages. On the other hand, once Mr. Pickwick’s fictionality is acknowledged, happenings inside
the novel are vividly felt as possessing some sort of reality of their own, and the reader can fully sympathize with the adventures
and reflections of the characters. 54
All of us who try to define the status of fictional characters are confronted with this feeling of reality—which is also,
in many respects, a feeling of unsettling strangeness. But the attempt to define a character’s status is indeed the heart
of the problem. These characters do not precisely inhabit our world, but they unquestionably occupy a certain place in it,
which is not so easy to define.
In a book devoted to listing a full range of the possible theoretical stances, it is interesting that the character of Sherlock
Holmes plays a large role; Pavel cites various authors who use the example of Holmes to question the degree of validity of
statements concerning fictional beings. Thus Pavel quotes Saul Kripke stating that Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but noting
that “in other states of affairs he would have existed.” 55 Less hospitable, Robert Howell notes that if the character of Sherlock Holmes is made to achieve the geometric impossibility
of drawing a square circle, his world stops being a possible world. 56 And Pavel postulates that “there are worlds where Sherlock Holmes, while behaving as he does in Conan Doyle’s stories, is
a secret but compulsive admirer of women.” 57
Other characters might occupy the same symbolic function: the names Hamlet and Anna Karenina turn up many times in Pavel’s
work. But Holmes has become so famous that he takes on a special
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