[1] Trains leaving - Central Station Milan.

 

 

Not so easy a novelist – even if successful as Agatha Christie[2] was – can release him, or herself, through the sole punctual identification also when excellently written, of the thought of someone else with whom he, or she, does keep unsolved conflicts. Why then ?

‘The mistery of the Blue Train’[3] is a tale by Agatha Christie, well interesting since the title, which is infact the crossroads of two different interpretations, where the more profitable could even refer to the author herself : but in vain, as anyone can read in the course. ‘The Blue Train’ was, first of all, the romantic luxury ‘Côte d’Azur’ train which, going down from Calais was passing also by Paris :  but in the English language ‘blue’ is not just a colour, is also the affect of excruciating and unsatisfied desperate jealousy.

To that unsolved affect Hercule Poirot, the detective made up by the fantasy of Agatha Christie, ascribes the greater part of crimes, and serial too also when committed by a woman : so that the romantic ‘The Blue Train’[4] is – for English readers only – also the ‘melencholy’ train where nothing can divert from murderous intents too.

In her novel, Agatha has been sliding in the risky pleasure of the victim, which the genre could allow but the life really not, as any revenge does literally transfer the victim in the same previous position of the persecutor : so that the original tale doesn’t persuade the reader, due to its  unlikely twists. We can add also that Agatha Christie never tried to come into an analytical work notwithstanding she could know enough about.

We wonder then that right a movie version[5] - sometimes criticized when the unavoidable shortness neglects complicated details of a novel – gets instead to perform a brilliant and crucial direction, making of someone – maybe involved into an analytical work – a successful man, or woman, i.e. come to the goal without the shortness of breath caused by impatience and rush : as,  on the other hand, Agatha Christie was not at all, notwithstanding her large audience.

To let fall that ‘melencholia’ to which the ‘mass psychology’ – or ‘group psychology’ - does submit, in favour then of a defense avoiding the homicide and using the sanction[6] is, as a matter of fact, not a clerical ability, neither ‘natural’ nor spontaneous at all.

Here is why get to conclude one’s own thinking[7] well before concluding life, is really a talent by an undoubtedly successful patient.

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio February 11, 2022

 

[1] I’ve found well said by Maria Delia Contri, psychoanalist intervened last January 15 at Symposium ‘Amore’ as per a proposal by Giacomo B. Contri, president of Association ‘Studium Cartello – Il lavoro psicoanalitico’ in Milan : the psychoanalist indicated that ‘notable passage to the Law’ which is the ‘real Trust in social bond’ and goal ‘of any claimed analysis’.  

[2] Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was a British writer, since today appreciated and translated. She was also contemporary of Sigmund Freud, whose works were published in English language by ‘Hogarth Press’, owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

[3] The novel, published by Agatha Christie in 1928, precedes of a few years the publication of the most famous ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (1934) with an apparent more limpid plot.

[4] Left the first time in 1922 from Calais, on French side of the Channel, the luxury and romantic ‘Train bleu’ went through the ‘Côte d’Azure’ for more than fifty years, passing by Paris up to Sanremo in Italy.

[5] ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’, directed by Hettie Mc Donald (2005)

[6] ‘Il difensore della salute. Una categoria e le sue varietà professionali (psicoanalisi e altre)’- Docum. pubblico Dott. Giacomo B. Contri 25 marzo 2013 ai sensi legge 14 gennaio 2013 n.4

[7] “…So that three are my concluding items : Law, Science, Trust”, cit. in “Tre capitoli”, by Giacomo B.Contri ‘Contributo 7 gennaio 2022’ to the Symposium ‘Amore’ for ‘Studium Cartello – Il lavoro psicoanalitico’.