Searching for Montalbano, I also found the Saint and Father Brown because the authors' names are Camilleri, Charteris and Chesterton. Like Poul Anderson's Trygve Yamamura, Father Brown is a detective and, like Anderson's Axor, is a Catholic priest but how different in both cases. These examples demonstrate the comprehensiveness of language. Although the terms, "detective" and "priest," are specific and different in meaning, they are general and abstract enough to apply to such different characters in such different historical contexts, especially if we lose the adjective, "Catholic," but keep the noun, "priest."
There were priests long before there were detectives. If the human race survives, then the same terms will be applicable in even more diverse contexts in future - will aliens convert to Christianity? - and will retain a historical significance even if the functions of detective and priest cease to exist.
Detectives can be police, private or amateur. Thus, Yamamura is private whereas Brown is amateur and their milieus could hardly be more different.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course all mystery fans should know of Chesterton's Fr. Brown stories, which I have read.
I don't know if you ever heard of an American Catholic priest named Fr. Andrew M. Greeley, some of whose books I've read. His works includes a long series about the fictional priest/detective Blacie Ryan.
I never read any of the Fr. Ryan mysteries because I was more interested in Fr. Greeley's forays into science fiction, like his GOD GAME.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I never heard of Greeley. I imagine he followed in the footsteps of Chesterton.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know. I would need to read some of the Fr. Ryan mysteries
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I've been forgetting to mention how you can find mysteries in the Bible. The Book of Daniel has two short mysteries: "Susanna and the Elders" (Daniel 12), and "Bel and the Dragon" (Daniel 14). Not bad, I thought, for stories written so long ago--esp. "Susanna."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The Bible includes every kind of literature.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It does! I'm just surprised when I remember you can find mystery stories in it.
Ad astra! Sean
There have always been spies and detectives. What's changed is formalization and institutionalization.
So now you can set out to be a detective in the same way you set out to be an electrician; you get formal training, pass tests, and are employed by an organization that does "detection".
Likewise, intelligence agencies are a 19th and 20th-century phenomenon. Before that it was ad-hock, temporary and freelance. The first real intelligence/security agencies in our sense were in Napoleonic France and then Czarist Russia.
As late as 1912, the head of the predecessor organization of MI-6 was going around Germany in a false mustache personally trying to get a look at the latest German battleships.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You are right, it's that formalizing and institutionalizing of detective and intelligence work now so characteristic of our times which distinguishes them from similar but ad hoc things in the past.
And you reminded me of yet another analog which can be found in the Bible: when Moses sent spies ahead of the invading Israelites to spy out the land of Canaan.
Ad astra! Sean
And the Homeric parallel is Odysseus entering Troy in disguise.
Kaor, Paul!
I forgot about that one, "Odysseus of the nimble wits," as he was often called in the ILIAD.
Ad astra! Sean
The Greeks had a saying: "It wasn't Achilles who took Troy".
I've always liked Odysseus, starting with the fact that he didn't -want- to go to Troy and tried to get out of it.
He's the man of cunning wits and clever hands, who can build a bed, plow a field or fool a monster, or make up a plausible story on the spot, who uses his -brains- when he has to fight too.
All -he- wants is to get back to Ithaka and his family. Achilles can have glory over length of days; he's a vainglorious idiot who gets his friends killed and really doesn't accomplish dick.
Odysseus, OTOH, weeps with joy when he's reunited with his wife.
It's no wonder he's Athena's favorite.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have to agree, Odysseus is the most likable of the Achaeans we see in Homer's poems.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Odysseus is a very hard man and a dangerous enemy, but it's -rational- and on a human scale. He comes up with the Trojan Horse because he wants the war over and he wants to go home where his family need him. Get in the way of his doing that, and you're toast.
OTOH, leave him alone and he'll probably leave you alone. His men end up getting destroyed because they won't obey his orders to do just that, in fact.
BTW, note that Palamedes, Agammemnon's messenger sent to summon Odysseus to the Trojan War, doesn't find the fact that the "King of Ithaka" is out plowing his own fields odd. He just finds his pretense of madness suspicious. In fact Odysseus is more like a rich farmer, and primus inter pares.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your comments about Odysseus fits in with what I recall from reading Rieu's translations of the ILIAD and ODYSSEY, a wily and hard man, but not needlessly cruel.
Many of the "kings" in the archaic age of Greece were like that, not much more than rich farmers and local leaders. Rather like the shire kings Norway had down to St. Olaf's time.
Merry Christmas! Sean
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