Kamelia Spassova

Returning to “The Purloined Letter” introduces the question of interpretation on two intertwined levels – the internal (the fictional characters’ comments) and the external (the critics’ comments). The paper has the task of tracing interpretive strategies through characters’ voices, i.e. through the conflict of internal interpretations. Monsieur G’s method insists on the typical and on hermeneutic depth. The detective Dupin uses the contrasting approach; he conceptualizes the logic of the incommensurable and mimicry. The anonymous narrator's voice is not impartial, he confides in Dupin and so there are blind spots in the narrative itself. The following paper unfolds two detective micro-plots by following the tracks of the epigraphist and the author of the purloined letter. I examine the poetics of narrative as isomorphic to the manners in which we interrogate the interpretations of the characters within it. The conclusion is not surprising – reading is a real detective story.

The article focuses on the battle against modernism by the Marxist theory of reflection in Eastern Europe. The term reflection was in circulation as one of the key concepts of the dogmatic Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and especially of Todor Pavlov’s theory of reflection, in which literature is seen as an authentic reflection of reality, it requires the correct mirror of sober realism. The confrontation between Isaac Passy and Todor Pavlov in the early 1960s demonstrates the mechanisms of subverting the ideological state.