Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (12 page)

There is something else at play here besides the understandable regret at no longer being able to look forward to the detective’s
new adventures: a phenomenon that, in many respects, is like a kind of collective madness. How can we explain that the death
of a fictional creation could have such effects, unless we suppose that he is not entirely fictional?

Psychoanalysis can provide a few rough explanations for such phenomena of mourning. One explanation can be found in the concept
of identification: to say that we identify with a literary character is to say that, on a subconscious level, we
become
that character for a time; the character offers an idealized image of ourselves and thus provides a plausible incarnation
of what we would like to be, or of what others would like us to be.

The reactions to Sherlock Holmes’s death also bring to mind, though on a different scale, those processes (described by Freud
with regard to fanatical crowds) that we find at work in outbursts of passion for actors or singers. Of course here it’s a
question not of a single crowd, but of one single psychological behavior that gathers together the members of this literary
cult: an intense identification with a shared model.

This shared identification presents another likeness with the case of fanatical crowds. It has the effect of dissolving the
borders of the Ego—by making it more permeable to others—and freeing it from the prohibitions of the Superego. In this somewhat
altered state, the subject is capable of actions that he would not allow himself to carry out normally, because they go against
his conscious principles.

But we have to go farther than recognizing the phenomenon of identification between readers and characters. What happened
in this case makes it seem
as if some readers had taken up residence in the world of fiction
and could not be torn from it without unbearable suffering.

For some readers of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the world Holmes inhabits along with Dr. Watson is not a completely
imaginary universe, but rather possesses a form of reality. Naturally, in the great majority of cases, this belief is subconscious;
the reader knows perfectly well that Sherlock Holmes has never existed and will readily testify to this if he is questioned.
But things happen quite differently on the level of the subconscious, populated as it is with incredible beliefs, where some
imaginary characters acquire such vividness that they become real.

This confirms the hypothesis mentioned earlier, by which there exists between the world of fiction and the “real” world an
intermediate world
unique to each person; for some subjects, the investment in this world is profound. Performing a function of transition between
illusion and reality, this world is neither completely imaginary nor completely real, since inhabitants from both worlds meet
there and intermingle.

This intermediate world that everyone constructs in his reading can become pathological if the subject is no longer capable
of making the distinction between reality and illusion. But it also performs a beneficial function by offering the subject,
at little expense, the possibility of identity-shifting that allows him to improve his self-image.

This intermediate world does not have the precision of the world of fantasy, which remains rooted in an elementary, repetitive
scenario built to satisfy precise conditions. The subject does not necessarily occupy a precise, limited place in this transitional
space; in the present case, he does not have to choose to be either Holmes or Moriarty. His identity there is often fluid
and mobile, and his relationships to literary characters can remain indistinct. But he is indeed an inhabitant of this world,
and he undergoes the psychological effects of events that occur in it.

This explains why for many admirers of Sherlock Holmes, his disappearance did not only deny them the pleasure of reading.
It constituted a violent intrusion into their own intermediate world, and hence into a space that they inhabit inwardly and
that is part of themselves. Thus, what they experience is authentic psychic suffering, all the greater because it is shared
by other readers. Just as emotions are reinforced in fanatical crowds, so the readers’ suffering is increased by being shared.

This intermediate space allows the inhabitants of the “real” world to come and live, if not in the world of the book, at least
in a world that they give rise to as its continuation, a world where they can meet the characters they admire. In the present
case, the readers of Conan Doyle leave reality for a time to come inhabit this other world, from which they feel expelled
by the death of the detective.

But it is not out of the question that this border might be crossed in the other direction—that this passageway can, at times,
help fictional characters leave the world where they are usually enclosed and join us in our world.

III
The Emigrants from the Text

READERS’ REACTIONS to the death of Sherlock Holmes offered a striking illustration of the bonds that can link us to fictional
creations. They left such a mark on literary history that they have overshadowed another phenomenon closely linked to that
death: the reasons Conan Doyle decided to execute his detective in the first place.

This was to all appearances a completely incomprehensible decision; after all, Sherlock Holmes had brought fame and wealth
to his creator. This enigma is an important one to solve. It has, as we shall see, close ties with what takes place in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and with the detective’s failure to find the correct solution.

Conan Doyle commented a number of times on his motives in killing off Sherlock Holmes: he wanted to devote himself to the
rest of his work, which seemed to him to be more worthy of his attention.

Many readers familiar with the detective’s cases are unaware that they comprise only a small part of Conan Doyle’s considerable
body of fiction. His other writings are primarily adventure stories, often grouped into cycles, that take place in different
epochs. There are medieval novels around the figure of Sir Nigel; stories that occur under the First Empire, around the figure
of Brigadier Gerard; an epic devoted to the first immigrants to America,
The Refugees
; and science fiction novels.

To this abundant literary work must be added a large number of essays that Conan Doyle devoted to international problems with
which he was concerned, such as the Boer War, and to what would increasingly become his exclusive passion, spiritualism—a
passion to which he would eventually sacrifice both his time and his reputation.
^*

The paradox, for those who live in our era and are familiar only with the cycle of Sherlock Holmes adventures, is that Conan
Doyle was much more concerned with the rest of his body of work; he thought the Holmes stories held a much more limited interest
than the adventures of his other heroes, and with an eye toward posterity, it was those stories to which he wanted to devote
himself.

But the desire for more time to devote to the remainder of his work, or the fear that his other work might be overshadowed
by the success of the Holmes adventures, cannot by themselves explain the antagonistic feelings Conan Doyle developed toward
his detective.

The idea of getting rid of Holmes came quite early to Conan Doyle. He had originally agreed to a series of six stories, then
had consented to add six others. But even before he finished this second series he wrote to his mother, “I’m thinking of killing
Holmes in the sixth. He’s keeping me from thinking about better things.”
⁷⁹
His mother, concerned, suggested the plot of one of the most famous of the detective’s stories,“The Copper Beeches,” thus
sparing Holmes’s life for a time.
⁸⁰
But Conan Doyle continues to think about whether to remove him and how: “A man like that cannot die of a trifle or a bad
flu, his end must be violent and tragic.”
⁸¹

When Conan Doyle writes that Holmes is keeping him from thinking about better things, we imagine that he is alluding to his
wish to pursue what is closest to his heart: his cycles of adventure tales. But we can also intuit that there is something
more serious at play, and that the question is not really about whether Holmes is keeping his creator from writing other books.

In fact, it seems as if the creator were reproaching his creation for keeping him from living. About his relations with Sherlock
Holmes, Conan Doyle wrote this sentence, which says much about the anguish into which his psychic cohabitation with the detective
plunged him: “If I don’t kill Holmes, he will kill me.”
⁸²
The sentence makes Holmes not just someone who prevents him from writing, but a sort of evil twin, who, like Maupassant’s
Horla, is taking over his mind.

The feeling that gradually comes to dominate the relationship between the two men is hatred. Conan Doyle can no longer bear
the existence of a character who has taken on such importance in his social and inner life, with whom he is constantly linked
by the public. His very identity is now threatened by his creation, and he must try to preserve his identity, no matter what
the price.

How can one come so to detest someone who is the source of one’s success? What at first sight seems a paradox is not necessarily
so for the subconscious, and we can speculate that it was precisely because he owed his success to him that Conan Doyle detested
Sherlock Holmes so much.

Some psychoanalysts, especially Gabrielle Rubin in
Pourquoi on en veut aux gens qui nous font du bien
,
⁸³
have stressed the profound ambivalence that links us to those who come to our aid—an ambivalence that, against rational expectations,
sometimes goes so far as to make us hate them. This phenomenon comes as no surprise to those familiar with the subconscious.

Even as he seems to be doing us good, the one who tries to help us confronts us violently with our own weakness, and that
is difficult for us to forgive. No doubt Conan Doyle felt this; after all, the rest of his body of work brought him only a
fraction of the publishing success the Sherlock Holmes adventures did—as the detective, by his very success, keeps cruelly
reminding him.

What’s more, contracting excessive debts to someone creates infantile situations of dependence and reminds us of the fundamental
impotence of childhood, which we energetically strive to forget in our adult life. Old subconscious debts are reactivated,
bringing with them the strong ambivalence that is attached to parental figures.

These debts are all the more burdensome when we are insolvent, when they rest on such inequality that it is impossible for
us to imagine ever getting rid of them. How could Conan Doyle hope to restore everything another had brought him—even conferring
a new identity on him—especially when this other, so overwhelmingly beneficial, was a literary character?

The question of how we can come to hate someone who wants to help us is paired with this other, even more singular, question:
how can one hold so much hatred for someone who doesn’t exist?

The simplest answer to this question can be found in the idea we began studying above: this literary character does in fact
exist, or in any case he has taken on, for the person he affects, a form of existence that can interfere with his own life.

So we are led to imagine that for a time in his life Conan Doyle felt persecuted by a character that he himself had created,
but who had contrived to invade him psychically, making existence impossible for him, destroying him from within, and obstinately
refusing to let himself be put to death.

The first, most obvious response to this notion is that Conan Doyle was simply a victim of his imagination, that he forgot
the borders that theoretically separate reality from fiction and began to behave as if the fictional Holmes were an inhabitant
of the real world.

But another hypothesis cannot be entirely ignored. It stems from the most extreme conclusion of the “integrationist” theoretical
position: that literary characters live their lives autonomously, and that they can sometimes leave the world they inhabit
and sojourn temporarily in our own.

In short, this hypothesis states that the avenues between the worlds of reality and fiction can be traveled in both directions
and that, if we sometimes “pass” into the world of fiction (as did all those who couldn’t accept Sherlock Holmes’s death),
the inhabitants of that world sometimes make the opposite journey, and emigrate into our own.

If this is so, then we must admit that the inhabitants of a literary world possess not only a sort of reality, but also a
sort of autonomy. And thus is is hopeless to claim that we can control their actions completely, just as it would be to claim
to control beings in the real world.

To recognize this autonomy is to think about literature, and the relationship writers and readers have with literary characters,
using the model of the
golem
.

The golem is that character of fantastic literature into whom its creator could breathe such life that it ends up escaping
him, and is able to decide its own fate and to commit actions its creator never intended, even crimes.
^*
It is a figure that crosses the ages and mythologies; we can find examples as early as the Greek myth of Pygmalion.

There is indeed something fantastic in the way the admirers of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle think of the detective
as a living person, whose resurrection (or death) they desire. In this intermediate world they share with fictional creations,
there is scarcely any difference between the modalities of existence of the character and the “real person.”

Thus we are led to suppose that, after a certain number of cases, the character of Sherlock Holmes, like the golem, has stopped
obeying the injunctions of his creator and has begun to lead his own life, in those intermediate places between books and
readers where reality and fiction collide. This autonomy of the character reaches its height when he refuses to let himself
be executed. In the battle between Conan Doyle and Holmes, the latter emerges victorious. The writer first has to accept making
him live again—probably under pressure from Holmes, his victim—then (after
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, where he revives him) must once and for all renounce putting him to death; he is forced to let him live out other adventures
where he will continue to play the hero.