Anthology of Black Humor. André Breton
De Quincey, the terrible underside of “the most astonishing, the most complicated, the most splendid vision.”
No one ever showed a deeper compassion for human misery than De Quincey. His sense of universal brotherhood led him, in 1819, to become a passionate admirer of Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and to attempt a contribution to the development of this new science (Prolegomena to all future Systems of Political Economy). By dint of this very compassion, no one ever showed greater disdain for established reputations: “Generally speaking, the few people whom I have disliked in this world were flourishing people, of good repute. Whereas the knaves whom I have known, one and all, and by no means few, I think of with pleasure and kindness.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821. On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, 1839, etc.
* Cf. Days and Nights (1897).
* Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
* Le Livre de Monelle.
ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS
But it is now time that I should say a few words about the principles of murder, not with a view to regulate your practice, but your judgments. As to old women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased with anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the mind of sensibility requires something more. First, then, let us speak of the kind of person who is adapted to the purpose of the murderer; secondly, of the place where; thirdly, of the time when, and other little circumstances.
As to the person, I suppose it is evident that he ought to be a good man, because, if he were not, he might himself, by possibility, be contemplating murder at the very time; and such “diamond-cut-diamond” tussles, though pleasant enough where nothing better is stirring, are really not what a critic can allow himself to call murders. I could mention some people (I name no names) who have been murdered by other people in a dark lane; and so far all seemed correct enough; but, on looking further into the matter, the public have become aware that the murdered party was himself, at the moment, planning to rob his murderer, at the least, and possibly to murder him, if he had been strong enough. Whenever that is the case, or may be thought to be the case, farewell to all the genuine effects of the art. For the final purpose of murder, considered as a fine art, is precisely the same as that of tragedy in Aristotle’s account of it; viz. “to cleanse the heart by means of pity and terror.” Now, terror there may be, but how can there be any pity for one tiger destroyed by another tiger?
It is also evident that the person selected ought not to be a public character. For instance, no judicious artist would have attempted to murder Abraham Newland.* For the case was this: everybody read so much about Abraham Newland, and so few people ever saw him, that to the general belief he was a mere abstract idea. And I remember that once, when I happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as though I had pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or to have had an affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope would be a very improper person to murder; for he has such a virtual ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often heard but never seen, that I suspect most people regard him also as an abstract idea. Where, indeed, a public man is in the habit of giving dinners, “with every delicacy of the season,” the case is very different: every person is satisfied that he is no abstract idea; and, therefore, there can be no impropriety in murdering him; only that his murder will fall into the class of assassinations, which I have not yet treated.
Thirdly. The subject chosen ought to be in good health; for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. On this principle, no tailor ought to be chosen who is above twenty-five, for after that age he is sure to be dyspeptic. Or, at least, if a man will hunt in that warren, he will of course think it his duty, on the old established equation, to murder some multiple of 9—say 18, 27, or 36. And here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly mastered, the result is, to humanize the heart; so true is it that
“Ingenuas didicisse fideoliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.”
A philosophic friend, well known for his philanthropy and general benignity, suggests that the subject chosen ought also to have a family of young children wholly dependent on his exertions, by way of deepening the pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a judicious caution. Yet I would not insist too keenly on such a condition. Severe good taste unquestionably suggests it; but still, where the man was otherwise unobjectionable in point of morals and health, I would not look with too curious a jealousy to a restriction which might have the effect of narrowing the artist’s sphere.
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* Abraham Newland [chief cashier of the Bank of England] is now utterly forgotten. But, when this was written [1827], his name had not ceased to ring in British cars, as the most familiar and most significant that perhaps has ever existed. It was the name which appeared on the face of all Bank of England notes, great or small; and had been, for more than a quarter of a century (especially through the whole career of the French Revolution), a shorthand expression for paper money in its safest form. [De Quincey’s note]
PIERRE-FRANÇOIS LACENAIRE 1800 – 1836
“I’m going to my death,” says Lacenaire, “by a poor route: up a stairway.”
Deserter and forger in France, murderer in Italy, then thief and murderer in Paris—and constantly, as he himself said, “thinking up sinister projects against society”—Lacenaire devoted the few months preceding his execution to writing his Memoirs, Revelations, and Poems, and put all his efforts into reinforcing the spectacular appeal of his trial. The ghost of not one of his victims, whether the Swiss guard from Verona, his ex-cellmate Chardon, or the latter’s mother, no more than the image of the bank messenger whom he had tried to kill in order to rob, ruffled for even one instant the half-distracted, half-amused attitude he maintained throughout the proceedings. Without seeking in the least to save his own neck, he played one last cruel trick by testifying against his accomplices, who were trying mightily to save theirs. As for himself, he limited his efforts to offering a materialistic justification for his crimes. From the ethical viewpoint, there seems never to have been a more serene conscience than this bandit’s.
On the eve of his death, he joked with the priests who came to bother him, the phrenologists and anatomists who were waiting to get their hands on him; he admitted feeling “little bouts of melancholy” that “entertained” him. That night, through the bars of his cell, he was “on the verge of playing peek-a-boo with the guard.”
One critic, recently celebrating the hundredth anniversary of a famous work by Balzac, wrote: “In 1836, when the book appeared, coldly received and even denigrated by the press, the public that had just been wild about Lacenaire, the elegant murderer in the blue frock coat, the poet of the courtroom and theoretician of the ‘right to crime,’ did not seem immediately to appreciate the charms of The Lily of the Valley.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mémoires, Révélations et Poésies de Lacenaire, 1836.
DREAMS OF A MAN ON DEATH