You cannot arrest an Arsène Lupin!

A tribute to Maurice Leblanc’s ‘gentleman thief’, an anarchistic cultural icon

~ Maurice Schuhmann ~

On July 15, 1905, the first story featuring the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin was published in the French popular science magazine Je sais tout. Written by French author Maurice Leblanc and inspired by the famous Strand Magazine and its Sherlock Holmes stories, “The Arrest of Arsène Lupin” introduced a new French pulp hero. As a tribute to this inspiration, Lupin repeatedly encounters the British master detective Herlock Sholmes—and, true to his motto, always manages to escape him: “You cannot arrest an Arsène Lupin!”

Arsène Lupin is among the best-known pop-cultural figures to emerge from France. During his lifetime, Maurice Leblanc wrote 20 novels, two plays, and over 30 short stories featuring his brilliant thief. Film adaptations, television series, and comic versions appeared early on. Today, the stories exist in Takashi Morita’s manga, and Lupin’s youth has been spun off into children’s books and comics.

But Arsène Lupin did more than to establish a new genre within the French crime novel. Through his character—whose name is presumably a jab at the Paris city councillor Arsène Lopin, whom Leblanc despised—the author also showcased his sympathy for anarchism. Lupin constantly challenges state institutions and robs members of the upper class—i.e., those who profit from capitalist society—repeatedly escaping the clutches of law enforcement. It’s almost a form of class warfare—a stance particularly evident in stories such as “The Hollow Needle” (L’Aiguille creuse) and “813”.

However, unlike the common practice among anarchist illegalists of the time—who would donate part of their loot to the families of imprisoned comrades or to anarchist causes—Lupin keeps his spoils. According to “The Hollow Needle”, he hides them inside the cliffs of Étretat.

For a long time, there were rumours that Leblanc’s character had been inspired by the life of French illegalist Marius Jacob, the so-called travailleur de nuit (night worker). Just before the first Lupin story appeared, Jacob had been tried in Paris. While more recent research has largely debunked this theory, there are many striking similarities between the pulp hero and the practices of French illegalists of the time.

Today, Arsène Lupin’s fame has been shamelessly commercialised. Maurice Leblanc’s former home in Étretat has been turned into a museum dedicated to him, and fans can follow in the master thief’s footsteps using a kind of Pokémon Go-style app. But while Lupin’s adventures have been adapted into may spin-offs, their anarchist implications are often overlooked.

Photos: Yvonne Schwarz, Semiramis Photoart

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