Стоян Ставру

This study examines the shift in the prosecutorial strategy of Ernest Pinard in the cases against Gustave Flaubert (“Madame Bovary”) and Charles Baudelaire (“Les Fleurs du mal”), offering an interpretation that explores the ways in which legal professionals read literary works. Using examples such as the poet-detective Gabriel Syme, a character in G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday”, and the investigating monk William, a character in Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”, the article investigates potential connections between poetry and law. These connections create legal spaces where both laughter and music become possible. Particular attention is given to the relationship between text and music within the framework of court proceedings (the so-called “courtroom acoustics”) as well as in the formation of judicial practice (understood as a harmonious performance).

The article analyzes allegories and metaphors in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law.” The literary text is interpreted through the philosophical lenses of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, and Gershom Scholem. The central motif of the “door” is explored as a symbol of access to law and as a dual phenomenon of transcendence and immanence. The ambivalence of law is examined as well. On the one hand, it is read as a sacred, inaccessible authority (in the eyes of the man from the country). On the other, the law is interpreted as an intrusive force in everyday life (as exemplified by the judge’s repeated incursions into the painter’s studio). The present analysis links Kafka’s vision of law to the structural ambiguities of the legal system and the tension between legality and justice.