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| − | Und wenn es uns gluckt, <br>
| + | #redirect [[Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter']] |
| − | Und wenn es sich schickt, <br>
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| − | So sind es Gedanken.</i></div><p>
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| − | <a name="S1">Our inquiry has led us to the point of recognizing that the repetition
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| − | automatism (<i>Wiederholangszwang </i>) finds its basis in what we have called
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| − | the insistence of the signifying chain. We have elaborated that notion
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| − | itself as a correlate of the <i>ex-sistence</i> (or: eccentric place) in which we
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| − | must necessarily locate the subject of the unconscious if we are to take
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| − | Freud's discovery seriously. As is known, it is in the realm of experience
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| − | inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary
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| − | lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being,
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| − | manifests its capture in a <i>symbolic</i> dimension.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S1"> The lesson of this seminar is intended to maintain that these
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| − | imaginary incidences, far from representing the essence of our
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| − | experience, reveal only what in it remains inconsistent unless they are
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| − | related to the symbolic chain which binds and orients them.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S1"> We realize, of course, the importance of these imaginary
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| − | impregnations (<i>Prägung </i>) in those partializations of the symbolic
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| − | alternative which give the symbolic chain its appearance. But we maintain
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| − | that it is the specific law of that chain which governs those
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| − | psychoanalytic effects thar are decisive for the subject: such as
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| − | foreclosure (<i>Verwerfung</i>), repression (<i>Verdrängung </i>), denial (<i>Verneinung </i>)
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| − | itself–specifying with appropriate emphasis that these effects follow so
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| − | faithfully the displacement (<i>Entstellang </i>) of the signifier that imaginary
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| − | factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections in
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| − | the process.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S1"> But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your
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| − | opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose
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| − | particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and
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| − | whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S1"> </a><a name="S13">Which is why we have decided to illustrate for you today </a><a name="S45">the truth
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| − | which may be drawn from that moment in Freud's thought under
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| − | study–namely, that it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for the
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| − | subject–by demonstrating in a story the decisive orientation which the
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| − | subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S45"> </a><a name="S14"></a><a name="S12"></a><a name="S10">It is that truth, let us note, which makes the very existence of
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| − | fiction possible. And in that case, a fable is as appropriate as any other
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| − | narrative for bringing it to light–at the risk of having the fable's
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| − | coherence put to the test in the process. Aside from that reservation, a
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| − | fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity
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| − | more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S10"> </a><a name="S15">Which is why, without seeking any further, we have chosen our
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| − | example from the very story in which the dialectic of the game of even or
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| − | odd–from whose study we have but recently profited–occurs. </a><a name="S16">It is, no
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| − | doubt, no accident that this tale revealed itself propitious to pursuing a
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| − | course of inquiry which had already found support in it.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S16"> </a><a name="S18">As you know, we are talking about the tale which Baudelaire
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| − | translated under the title "La lettre volée." At first reading, we may
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| − | distinguish a drama, its narration, and the conditions of that narration.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S18"> We see quickly enough, moreover, that these components are
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| − | necessary and that </a><a name="S42">they could not have escaped the intentions of whoever
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| − | composed them.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S42"> The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without
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| − | which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action
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| − | would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit–aside from the
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| − | fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity
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| − | devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience: in other words,
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| − | nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without,
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| − | dare we say, the twilighting which the narration, in each scene, casts on
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| − | the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S42"> </a><a name="S25"></a><a name="S19"></a><a name="S17">There are two scenes, the first of which we shall straightway
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| − | designate the primal scene, and by no means inadvertently, since the
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| − | second may be considered its repetition in the very sense we are
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| − | considering today.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S17"> The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal
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| − | <i>boudoir</i>, so that we suspect that the person of the highest rank, called the
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| − | "exalted personage," who is alone there when she receives a letter, is the
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| − | Queen. This feeling is confirmed by the embarrassment into which she is
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| − | plunged by the entry of the other exalted personage, of whom we have
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| − | already been told prior to this account that the knowledge he might have
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| − | of the letter in question would jeopardize for the lady nothing less than
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| − | her honor and safety. Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptly
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| − | dissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entry of the
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| − | Minister D–. At that moment, in fact, the Queen can do no better than to
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| − | play on the King's inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table "face
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| − | down, address uppermost." It does not, however, escape the Minister's Iynx
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| − | eye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen's distress and thus to fathom her
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| − | secret. From then on everything transpires like clockwork. After dealing in
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| − | his customary manner with the business of the day, the Minister draws
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| − | from his pocket a letter similar in appearance to the one in his view, and,
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| − | having pretended to read it, he places it next to the other. A bit more
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| − | conversation to amuse the royal company, whereupon, without flinching
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| − | once, he seizes the embarrassing letter, making off with it, as the Queen,
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| − | on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervene
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| − | for fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, close at her side
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| − | at that very moment.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S17"> Everything might then have transpired unseen by a hypothetical
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| − | spectator of an operation in which nobody falters, and whose <i>quotient</i> is
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| − | that the Minister has filched from the Queen her letter and that–an even
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| − | more important result than the first–the Queen knows that he now has it,
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| − | and by no means innocently.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S17"> </a><a name="S6">A <i>remainder</i> that no analyst will neglect, trained as he is to retain
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| − | whatever is significant, without always knowing what to do with it: the
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| − | letter, abandoned by the Minister, and which the Queen's hand is now free
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| − | to roll into a ball.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S6"> Second scene: in the Minister's office. It is in his hotel, and we
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| − | know–from the account the Prefect of Police has given Dupin, whose
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| − | specific genius for solving enigmas Poe introduces here for the second
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| − | time–that the police, returning there as soon as the Minister's habitual,
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| − | nightly absences allow them to, have searched the hotel and its
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| − | surroundings from top to bottom for the last eighteen months. In
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| − | vain–although everyone can deduce from the situation that the Minister
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| − | keeps the letter within reach.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S6"> Dupin calls on the Minister. The latter receives him with studied
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| − | nonchalance, affecting in his conversation romantic ennui. Meanwhile
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| − | Dupin, whom this pretense does not deceive, his eyes protected by green
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| − | glasses, proceeds to inspect the premises. When his glance catches a
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| − | rather crumpled piece of paper–apparently thrust carelessly into a
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| − | division of an ugly pasteboard card rack, hanging gaudily from the middle
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| − | of the mantelpiece–he already knows that he's found what he's looking for.
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| − | His conviction is reinforced by the very details which seem to contradict
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| − | the description he has of the stolen letter, with the exception of the
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| − | format, which remains the same.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S6"> Whereupon he has but to withdraw, after "forgetting" his snuffbox on
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| − | the table, in order to return the following day to reclaim it–armed with a
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| − | facsimile of the letter in its present state. As an incident in the street,
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| − | prepared for the proper moment, draws the Minister to the window, Dupin
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| − | in turn seizes the opportunity to snatch the letter while substituting the
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| − | imitation and has only to maintain the appearances of a normal exit.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S6"> Here as well all has transpired, if not without noise, at least
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| − | without any commotion. The quotient of the operation is that the Minister
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| − | no longer has the letter, but far from suspecting that Dupin is the culprit
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| − | who has ravished it from him, knows nothing of it. Moreover, what he is
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| − | left with is far from insignificant for what follows. We shall return to
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| − | what brought Dupin to inscribe a message on his counterfeit letter.
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| − | | |
| − | </a><a name="S51">Whatever the case, the Minister, when he tries to make use of it, will be
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| − | able to read these words, written so that he may recognize Dupin's hand: ".
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| − | . . <i>Un dessein si funeste / S'il n'est digne d'Atrée est digne de Thyeste</i>, "
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| − | whose source, Dupin tells us, is Crebillon's <i>Atrée</i>.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S51"> Need we emphasize the similarity of these two sequences? Yes, for
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| − | the resemblance we have in mind is not a simple collection of traits
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| − | chosen only in order to delete their difference. And it would not be enough
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| − | to retain those common traits at the expense of the others for the
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| − | slightest truth to result. It is rather the intersubjectivity in which the
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| − | two actions are motivated that we wish to bring into relief, as well as
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| − | the three terms through which it structures them.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S51"> The special status of these terms results from their corresponding
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| − | simultaneously to the three logical moments through which the decision is
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| − | precipitated and the three places it assigns to the subjects among whom
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| − | it constitutes a choice.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S51"> That decision is reached in a glance's time.</a><a name="1"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#1">1</a></sup> For the maneuvers
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| − | which follow, however stealthily they prolong it, add nothing to that
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| − | glance, nor does the deferring of the deed in the second scene break the
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| − | unity of that moment.</p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | This glance presupposes two others, which it embraces in its vision
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| − | of the breach left in their fallacious complementarity, anticipating in it
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| − | the occasion for larceny afforded by that exposure. Thus three moments,
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| − | structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each time
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| − | by different characters.</p><p>
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| − | The first is a glance that sees nothing: the King and the police.</p><p>
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| − | The second, a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes
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| − | itself as to the secrecy of what it hides: the Queen, then the Minister. </p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34">The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden
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| − | exposed to whoever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> In order to grasp in its unity the intersubjective complex thus
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| − | described, we would willingly seek a model in the technique legendarily
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| − | attributed to the oserich attempting to shield itself from danger; for that
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| − | technique might ultimately be qualified as political, divided as it here is
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| − | among three partners: the second believing itself invisible because the
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| − | first has its head stuck in the ground, and all the while letting the third
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| − | calmly pluck its rear; we need only enrich its proverbial denomination by a
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| − | letter, producing <i>la politique de l'autruiche</i>, for the ostrich itself to take
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| − | on forever a new meaning.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> Given the intersubjective modulus of the repetitive action, it
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| − | remains to recognize in it a <i>repetition automatism</i> in the sense that
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| − | interests us in Freud's text.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S34"> The plurality of subjects, of course, can be no objection for those
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| − | who are long accustomed to the perspectives summarized by our formula:
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| − | <i>the unconscious is the discourse of the Other</i>. And we will not recall now
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| − | what the notion of the <i>immixture of subjects</i>, recently introduced in our
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| − | reanalysis of the dream of Irma's injection, adds to the discussion.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> What interests us today is the manner in which the subjects relay
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| − | each other in their displacement during the intersubjective repetition.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> We shall see that their displacement is determined by the place
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| − | which a pure signifier–the purloined letter–comes to occupy in their trio.
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| − | And that is what will confirm for us its status as repetition automatism.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> It does not, however, seem excessive, before pursuing this line of
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| − | inquiry, to ask whether the thrust of the tale and the interest we bring to
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| − | it–to the extent that they coincide–do not lie elsewhere.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> May we view as simply a rationalization (in our gruff jargon) the
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| − | fact that the story is told to us as a police mystery?</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S34"> In truth, we should be right in judging that fact highly dubious as
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| − | soon as we note that everything which warrants such mystery concerning
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| − | a crime or offense–its nature and motives, instruments and execution, the
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| − | procedure used to discover the author, and the means employed to convict
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| − | him–is carefully eliminated here at the start of each episode.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S34"> The act of deceit is, in fact, from the beginning as clearly known as
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| − | the intrigues of the culprit and their effects on his victim. The problem,
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| − | as exposed to us, is limited to </a><a name="S28">the search for and restitution of the object
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| − | of that deceit, and it seems rather intentional that the solution is already
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| − | obtained when it is explained to us. Is <i>that</i> how we are kept in suspense?
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| − | Whatever credit we may accord the conventions of a genre for provoking a
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| − | specific interest in the reader, we should not forget that "the Dupin
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| − | tale"–this the second to appear–is a prototype, and that even if the genre
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| − | were established in the first, it is still a little early for the author to
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| − | play on a convention.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S28"> It would, however, be equally excessive to reduce the whole thing to
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| − | a fable whose moral would be that in order to shield from inquisitive eyes
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| − | one of those correspondences whose secrecy is sometimes necessary to
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| − | conjugal peace, it suffices to leave the crucial letters Iying about on one's
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| − | table, even though the meaningful side be turned face down. For that would
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| − | be a hoax which, for our part, we would never recommend anyone try, lest
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| − | he be gravely disappointed in his hopes.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S28"> Might there then be no mystery other than, concerning the Prefect,
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| − | an incompetence issuing in failure–were it not perhaps, concerning Dupin,
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| − | a certain dissonance we hesitate to acknowledge between, on the one
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| − | hand, the admittedly penetrating though, in their generality, not always
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| − | quite relevant remarks with which he introduces us to his method and, on
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| − | the other, the manner in which he in fact intervenes.</a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S28"> Were we to pursue this sense of mystification a bit further we
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| − | might soon begin to wonder whether, from that initial scene which only
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| − | the rank of the protagonists saves from vaudeville, to the fall into
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| − | ridicule which seems to await the Minister at the end, it is not this
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| − | impression that everyone is being duped which makes for our pleasure.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S28"> And we would be all the more inclined to think so in that we would
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| − | recognize in that surmise, along with those of you who read us, the
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| − | definition we once gave in passing of the modern hero, "whom ludicrous
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| − | exploits exalt in circumstances of utter confusion."</a><a name="2"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#2">2</a></sup></p><p>
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| − | But are we ourselves not taken in by the imposing presence of the
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| − | amateur detective, prototype of a latter-day swashbuckler, as yet safe
| |
| − | from the insipidity of our contemporary <i>superman?</i></p><p>
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| − | A trick . . . sufficient for us to discern in this tale, on the contrary,
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| − | so perfect a verisimilitude that it may be said that truth here reveals its
| |
| − | fictive arrangement.</p><p>
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| − | For such indeed is the direction in which the principles of that
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| − | verisimilitude lead us. Entering into its strategy, we indeed perceive a
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| − | new drama we may call complementary to the first, insofar as the latter
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| − | was what is termed a play without words whereas the interest of the
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| − | second plays on the properties of speech. <a name="3"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#3">3</a></sup></p><p>
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| − | If it is indeed clear that <a name="S20">each of the two scenes of the real drama is
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| − | narrated in the course of a different dialogue, it is only through access to
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| − | those notions set forth in our teaching that one may recognize that it is
| |
| − | not thus simply to augment the charm of the exposition, but that the
| |
| − | dialogues themselves, in the opposite use they make of the powers of
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| − | speech, take on a tension which makes of them a different drama, one
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| − | which our vocabulary will distinguish from the first as persisting in the
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| − | symbolic order.</a></p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | <a name="S20"> The first dialogue–between the Prefect of Police and Dupin–is
| |
| − | played as between a deaf man and one who hears. That is, it presents the
| |
| − | real complexity of what is ordinarily simplified, with the most confused
| |
| − | results, in the notion of communication.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S20"> This example demonstrates indeed how an act of communication may
| |
| − | give the impression at which theorists too often stop: of allowing in its
| |
| − | transmission but a single meaning, as though the highly significant
| |
| − | commentary into which he who understands integrates it, could, because
| |
| − | unperceived by him who does not understand, be considered null.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S20"> It remains that if only the dialogue's meaning as a report is
| |
| − | retained, its verisimilitude may appear to depend on a guarantee of
| |
| − | exactitude. But here dialogue may be more fertile than it seems, if we
| |
| − | demonstrate its tactics: as shall be seen by focusing on the recounting of
| |
| − | our first scene.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S20"> For the double and even triple subjective filter through which that
| |
| − | scene comes to us: a narration by Dupin's friend and associate (henceforth
| |
| − | to be called the general narrator of the story) of the account by which the
| |
| − | Prefect reveals to Dupin the report the Queen gave him of it, is not merely
| |
| − | the consequence of a fortuitous arrangement.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S20"> If indeed the extremity to which the original narrator is reduced
| |
| − | precludes her altering any of the events, it would be wrong to believe that
| |
| − | the Prefect is empowered to lend her his voice in this case only by that
| |
| − | lack of imagination on which he has, dare we say, the patent.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S20"> The fact that the message is thus retransmitted assures us of what
| |
| − | may by no means be taken for granted: that it belongs to the dimension of
| |
| − | language.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S20"> Those who are here know our remarks on the subject, specifically
| |
| − | those illustrated by the countercase of the so-called language of bees: in
| |
| − | which a linguist</a><a name="4"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#4">4</a></sup> can see only a simple signaling of the location of
| |
| − | objects, in other words: only an imaginary function more differentiated
| |
| − | than others.</p><p>
| |
| − | We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in
| |
| − | man, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split as
| |
| − | it is in its submission to symbols.</p><p>
| |
| − | Something equivalent may no doubt be grasped in the communion
| |
| − | established between two persons in their hatred of a common object:
| |
| − | except that the meeting is possible only over a single object, defined by
| |
| − | those traits in the individual each of the two resists.</p><p>
| |
| − | But such communication is not transmissible in symbolic form. It
| |
| − | may be maintained only in the relation with the object. In such a manner it
| |
| − | may bring together an indefinite number of subjects in a common "ideal":
| |
| − | the communication of one subject with another within the crowd thus
| |
| − | constituted will nonetheless remain irreducibly mediated by an ineffable
| |
| − | relation.</p><p>
| |
| − | This digression is not only a recollection of principles distantly
| |
| − | addressed to those who impute to us a neglect of nonverbal
| |
| − | communication: in determining the scope of what speech repeats, it
| |
| − | prepares the question of what symptoms repeat.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S23">Thus the indirect telling sifts out the linguistic dimension, and the
| |
| − | general narrator, by duplicating it, "hypothetically" </a><a name="S21">adds nothing to it. But
| |
| − | its role in the second dialogue is entirely different.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S21"> For the latter will be opposed to the first like those poles we have
| |
| − | distinguished elsewhere in language and which are opposed like word to
| |
| − | speech.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S21"> Which is to say that a transition is made here from the domain of
| |
| − | exactitude to the </a><a name="S46">register of truth. Now that register–we dare think we
| |
| − | needn't come back to this–is situated entirely elsewhere, </a><a name="S22">strictly
| |
| − | speaking at the very foundation of intersubjectivity. It is located there
| |
| − | where the subject can grasp nothing but the very subjectivity which
| |
| − | constitutes an Other as absolute. We shall be satisfied here to indicate its
| |
| − | place by evoking the dialogue which seems to us to merit its attribution
| |
| − | as a Jewish joke by that state of privation through which the relation of
| |
| − | signifier to speech appears in the entreaty which brings the dialogue to a
| |
| − | close: "Why are you Iying to me?" one character shouts breathlessly. "Yes,
| |
| − | why do you lie to me saying you're going to Cracow so I should believe
| |
| − | you're going to Lemberg, when in reality you <i>are</i> going to Cracow?"</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S22"> We might be prompted to ask a similar question by the torrent of
| |
| − | logical impasses, eristic enigmas, paradoxes, and even jests presented to
| |
| − | us as an introduction to Dupin's method if the fact that they were confided
| |
| − | to us by a would-be disciple did not endow them with a new dimension
| |
| − | through that act of delegation. Such is the unmistakable magic of legacies:
| |
| − | the witness's fidelity is the cowl which blinds and lays to rest all
| |
| − | criticism of his testimony.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S22"> </a><a name="S24">What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying
| |
| − | one's cards face up on the table? So much so that we are momentarily
| |
| − | persuaded that the magician has in fact demonstrated, as he promised,
| |
| − | how his trick was performed, whereas he has only renewed it in still
| |
| − | purer form: at which point we fathom the measure of the supremacy of the
| |
| − | signifier in the subject.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S24"> Such is Dupin's maneuver when he starts with the story of the child
| |
| − | prodigy who takes in all his friends at the game of even and odd with his
| |
| − | trick of identifying with the opponent, concerning which we have
| |
| − | nevertheless shown that it cannot reach the first level of theoretical
| |
| − | elaboration; namely, intersubjective alternation, without immediately
| |
| − | stumbling on the buttress of its recurrence.</a><a name="5"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#5">5</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | We are all the same treated–so much smoke in our eyes–to the
| |
| − | names of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Machiavelli, and Campanella,
| |
| − | whose renown, by this time, would seem but futile when confronted with
| |
| − | the child's prowess.</p><p>
| |
| − | Followed by Chamfort, whose maxim that "it is a safe wager that
| |
| − | every public idea, every accepted convention is foolish, since it suits the
| |
| − | greatest number" will no doubt satisfy all who think they escape its law,
| |
| − | thatis, precisely, the greatest number. That Dupin accuses the French of<br>
| |
| − | deception for applying the word <i>analylis</i> to algebra will hardly threaten<br>
| |
| − | | |
| − | our pride since, moreover, the freeing of that term for other uses ought by<br>
| |
| − | no means to provoke a psychoanalyst to intervene and claim his rights.<br>
| |
| − | And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively
| |
| − | delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say
| |
| − | anymore that "<i>ambitus</i> doesn't mean ambition, <i>religio</i>, religion, <i>homines
| |
| − | honesti</i>, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remember
| |
| − | ing . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and
| |
| − | Lucretius. No doubt Poe is having a good time....</p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S50">But a suspicion occurs to us: Might not this parade of erudition be
| |
| − | destined to reveal to us the key words of our drama? Is not the magician
| |
| − | repeating his trick before our eyes, without deceiving us this time about
| |
| − | divulging his secret, but pressing his wager to the point of really
| |
| − | explaining it to us without us seeing a thing? <i>That</i> would be the summit of
| |
| − | the illusionist's art: through one of his fictive creations to <i>truly delude
| |
| − | us</i>.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S50"> And is it not such effects which justify our referring, without
| |
| − | malice, to a number of imaginary heroes as real characters?</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S50"> As well, when we are open to hearing the way in which Martin
| |
| − | Heidegger discloses to us in the word <i>aletheia </i>the play of truth, we
| |
| − | rediscover a secret to which truth has always initiated her lovers, and
| |
| − | through which they learn that it is in hiding that she offers herself to
| |
| − | them <i>most truly</i>.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S50"> Thus even if Dupin's comments did not defy us so blatantly to believe
| |
| − | in them, we should still have to make that attempt against the opposite
| |
| − | temptation.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S50"> Let us track down [<i>dépistons </i>] his footprints there where they elude
| |
| − | [<i>dépiste </i>] us.</a><a name="6"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#6">6</a></sup> And first of all in the criticism by which he explains the
| |
| − | Prefect's lack of success. We already saw it surface in those furtive gibes
| |
| − | the Prefect, in the first conversation, failed to heed, seeing in them only a
| |
| − | pretext for hilarity. That it is, as Dupin insinuates, because a problem is
| |
| − | too simple, indeed too evident, that it may appear obscure, will never have
| |
| − | any more bearing for him than a vigorous rub of the ribcage.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | Everything is arranged to induce in us a sense of the character's
| |
| − | imbecility. Which is powerfully articulated by the fact that he and his
| |
| − | confederates never conceive of anything beyond what an ordinary rogue
| |
| − | might imagine for hiding an object–that is, precisely the all too well
| |
| − | known series of extraordinary hiding places: which are promptly cataloged
| |
| − | for us, from hidden desk drawers to removable tabletops, from the
| |
| − | detachable cushions of chairs to their hollowed-out legs, from the reverse
| |
| − | side of mirrors to the "thickness" of book bindings.</p><p>
| |
| − | After which, a moment of derision at the Prefect's error in deducing
| |
| − | that because the Minister is a poet, he is not far from being mad, an error,
| |
| − | it is argued, which would consist, but this is hardly negligible, simply in a
| |
| − | false distribution of the middle term, since it is far from following from
| |
| − | the fact that all madmen are poets.</p><p>
| |
| − | Yes indeed. But we ourselves are left in the dark as to the poet's
| |
| − | superiority in the art of concealment–even if he be a mathematician to
| |
| − | boot–since our pursuit is suddenly thwarted, dragged as we are into a
| |
| − | thicket of bad arguments directed against the reasoning of
| |
| − | mathematicians, who never, so far as I know, showed such devotion to
| |
| − | their formulae as to identify them with reason itself. At least, let us
| |
| − | testify that unlike what seems to be Poe's experience, it occasionally
| |
| − | befalls us–with our friend Riguet, whose presence here is a guarantee
| |
| − | that our incursions into combinatory analysis are not leading us astray–to
| |
| − | hazard such serious deviations (virtual blasphemies, according to Poe) as
| |
| − | to cast into doubt that <i>x2 </i>+ <i>px </i>is perhaps not absolutely equal to <i>q</i>,"
| |
| − | without ever–here we give the lie to Poe–having had to fend off any
| |
| − | unexpected attack.</p><p>
| |
| − | Is not so much intelligence being exercised then simply to divert our
| |
| − | own from what had been indicated earlier as given, namely, that the police
| |
| − | have looked everywhere: which we were to understand–vis-à-vis the area
| |
| − | in which the police, not without reason, assumed the letter might be
| |
| − | found–in terms of a (no doubt theoretical) exhaustion of space, but
| |
| − | concerning which the tale's piquancy depends on our accepting it literally?
| |
| − | The division of the entire volume into numbered "compartments," which
| |
| − | was the principle governing the operation, being presented to us as so
| |
| − | precise that "the fiftieth part of a line," it is said, could not escape the
| |
| − | probing of the investigators. Have we not then the right to ask how it
| |
| − | happened that the letter was not found <i>anywhere</i>, or rather to observe that
| |
| − | all we have been told of a more far-ranging conception of concealment
| |
| − | does not explain, in all rigor, that the letter escaped detection, since the
| |
| − | area combed did in fact contain it, as Dupin's discovery eventually proves?</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | Must a letter then, of all objects, be endowed with the property of
| |
| − | nullibiety: to use a term which the thesaurus known as <i>Roget</i> picks up
| |
| − | from the semiotic utopia of Bishop Wilkins?<a name="7"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#7">7</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | It is evident ("a little <i>too </i>self-evident")<a name="8"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#8">8</a></sup> that between <i>letter </i>and
| |
| − | <i>place</i> exist relations for which no French word has quite the extension of
| |
| − | the English adjective <i>odd</i>. <i>Bizarre</i>, by which Baudelaire regularly
| |
| − | translates it, is only approximate. Let us say that these relations are . . .
| |
| − | | |
| − | <i>singuliers</i>, for they are the very ones maintained with place by the
| |
| − | <i>signifer</i>.<br>
| |
| − | <br>
| |
| − | You realize, of course, that our intention is not to turn them into
| |
| − | "subtle" relations, nor is our aim to confuse letter with spirit, even if we
| |
| − | receive the former by pneumatic dispatch, and that we readily admit that
| |
| − | one kills whereas the other quickens, insofar as the signifier–you perhaps
| |
| − | begin to understand–materializes the agency of death. <a name="S9">But if it is first of
| |
| − | all on the materiality of the signifier that we have insisted, </a><a name="S8">that
| |
| − | materiality is<i> odd </i>[<i>singulière</i>] in many ways, the first of which is not to
| |
| − | admit </a><a name="S47">partition. </a><a name="S48">Cut a letter in small pieces, and it remains the letter it
| |
| − | is–and this in a completely different sense than <i>Gestalttheorie </i>would
| |
| − | account for with the dormant vitalism informing its notion of the whole.</a><a name="9"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#9">9</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | Language delivers its judgment to whoever knows how to hear it:
| |
| − | through the usage of the article as parritive particle. It is there that
| |
| − | spirit–if spirit be living meaning–appears, no less oddly, as more
| |
| − | available for quantification than its letter. To begin with meaning itself,
| |
| − | which bears our saying: a speech rich with meaning ["plein <i><b>de</b></i>
| |
| − | signification"], just as we recognize a measure of intention ["<i><b>de</b></i>
| |
| − | l'intention"] in an act, or deplore that there is no more love {"plus
| |
| − | <i><b>d'amour</b></i>"]; or store up hatred {"<i><b>de la</b></i> haine"] and expend devotion ["<i><b>du</b></i>
| |
| − | devouement"], and so much infatuation ["tant <i><b>d'</b></i>infatuation"] is easily
| |
| − | reconciled to the fact that there will always be ass ["<i><b>de la </b></i>cuisse"] for
| |
| − | sale and brawling ["<i><b>du</b></i> rififi"] among men.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | But as for the letter–be it taken as typographical character, epistle,
| |
| − | or what makes a man of letters–we will say that what is said is to be
| |
| − | understood <i>to the letter</i> [<i>è la lettre</i>], that <i>a letter</i> [<i>une lettre</i>] awaits you
| |
| − | at the post office, or even that you are acquainted with <i>letters</i> [<i>que vous
| |
| − | avez des lettres</i>]–never that there is <i>letter </i>[<i>de la lettre</i>] anywhere,
| |
| − | whatever the context, even to designate overdue mail.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature
| |
| − | symbol only of an absence. Which is why we cannot say of the purloined
| |
| − | letter that, like other objects, it must be <i>or</i> not be in a particular place
| |
| − | but that unlike them it will be <i>and</i> not be where it is, wherever it goes.</p><p>
| |
| − | Let us, in fact, look more closely at what happens to the police. We
| |
| − | are spared nothing concerning the procedures used in searching the area
| |
| − | submitted to their investigation: from the division of that space into
| |
| − | compartments from which the slightest bulk could not escape detection,
| |
| − | to needles probing upholstery, and, in the impossibility of sounding wood
| |
| − | with a tap, to a microscope exposing the waste of any drilling at the
| |
| − | surface of its hollow, indeed the infinitesimal gaping of the slightest
| |
| − | abyss. As the network tightens to the point that, not satisfied with
| |
| − | shaking the pages of books, the police take to counting them, do we not
| |
| − | see space itself shed its leaves like a letter?</p><p>
| |
| − | But the detectives have so immutable a notion of the real that they
| |
| − | fail to notice that their search tends to transform it into its object. A
| |
| − | trait by which they would be able to distinguish that object from all
| |
| − | others.</p><p>
| |
| − | This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of their
| |
| − | lack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility is neither
| |
| − | of the individual nor the corporative variety; its source is subjective. It is
| |
| − | the realist's imbecility, which does not pause to observe that nothing,
| |
| − | however deep in the bowels of the earth a hand may seek to ensconce it,
| |
| − | will ever be hidden there, since another hand can always retrieve it, and
| |
| − | that what is hidden is never but what is <i>missing from its place</i>, as the
| |
| − | call slip puts it when speaking of a volume lose in a library. And even if
| |
| − | the book be on an adjacent shelf or in the next slot, it would be hidden
| |
| − | there, however visibly it may appear. For it can <i>literally</i> be said that
| |
| − | something is missing from its place only of what can change it: the
| |
| − | symbolic. For the real, whatever upheaval we subject it to, is always in
| |
| − | its place; it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it
| |
| − | from it.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | And to return to our cops, who took the letter from the place where
| |
| − | it was hidden, how could they have seized the letter? In what they turned
| |
| − | between their fingers what did they hold but what <i>did not answer</i> to their
| |
| − | description. "A letter, a litter": in Joyce's circle, they played on the
| |
| − | homophony of the two words in English.<a name="10"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#10">10</a></sup> Nor does the seeming bit of
| |
| − | refuse the police are now handling reveal its other nature for being but
| |
| − | half torn. A different seal on a scamp of another color, the mark of a
| |
| − | different handwriting in the superscription are here the most inviolable
| |
| − | modes of concealment. And if they stop at the reverse side of the letter,
| |
| − | on which, as is known, the recipient's address was written in that period,
| |
| − | it is because the letter has for them no other side but its reverse.</p><p>
| |
| − | What indeed might they find on its obverse? Its message, as is often
| |
| − | said to our cybernetic joy? . . . But does it not occur to us that this
| |
| − | message has already reached its recipient and has even been left with her,
| |
| − | since the insignificant scrap of paper now represents it no less well than
| |
| − | the original note.</p><p>
| |
| − | If we could admit that a letter has completed its destiny after
| |
| − | fulfilling its function, the ceremony of returning letters would be a less
| |
| − | common close to the extinction of the fires of love's feasts. The signifier
| |
| − | is not functional. <a name="S4">And the mobilization of the elegant society whose
| |
| − | frolics we are following would as well have no meaning if the letter
| |
| − | itself were content with having one. For it would hardly be an adequate
| |
| − | means of keeping it secret to inform a squad of cops of its existence.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S4"> We might even admit that the letter has an entirely different (if no
| |
| − | more urgent) meaning for the Queen from the one understood by the
| |
| − | Minister. The sequence of events would not be noticeably affected, not
| |
| − | even if it were strictly incomprehensible to an uninformed reader.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S4"> For it is certainly not so for everybody, since, as the Prefect
| |
| − | pompously assures us, to everyone's derision, "the disclosure of the
| |
| − | document to a third person, who shall be nameless" (that name which
| |
| − | leaps to the eye like the pig's tail twixt the teeth of old Ubu) "would bring
| |
| − | in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station, indeed that
| |
| − | the honor and peace of the illustrious personage are so jeopardized."</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S4"> In that case, it is not only the meaning but the text of the message
| |
| − | which it would be dangerous to place in circulation, and all the more so to
| |
| − | the extent that it might appear harmless, since the risks of an
| |
| − | indiscretion unintentionally committed by one of the letter's holders
| |
| − | would thus be increased.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S4"> Nothing then can redeem the police's position, and nothing would be
| |
| − | changed by improving their "culture." <i>Scripta manent</i>: in vain would they
| |
| − | learn from a deluxe-edition humanism the proverbial lesson which <i>verba
| |
| − | volant</i> concludes. </a><a name="S49">May it but please heaven that writings remain, as is
| |
| − | rather the case with spoken words: for the indelible debt of the latter
| |
| − | impregnates our acts with its transferences.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S49"> Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And
| |
| − | were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S49"> But what of it? For a purloined letter to exist, we may ask, to whom
| |
| − | does a letter belong? We stressed a moment ago the oddity implicit in
| |
| − | returning a letter to him who had but recently given wing to its burning
| |
| − | pledge. And we generally deem unbecoming such premature publications as
| |
| − | the one by which the Chevalier d'Eon put several of his correspondents in a
| |
| − | rather pitiful position.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S49"> Might a letter on which the sender retains certain rights then not
| |
| − | quite belong to the person to whom it is addressed? Or might it be that
| |
| − | the latter was never the real receiver?</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S49"> Let's take a look: we shall find illumination in what at first seems
| |
| − | to obscure matters: the fact that the tale leaves us in virtually total
| |
| − | ignorance of the sender, no less than of the contents, of the letter. We are
| |
| − | told only that the Minister immediately recognized the handwriting of the
| |
| − | address and only incidentally, in a discussion of the Minister's
| |
| − | camouflage, is it said that the original seal bore the ducal arms of the S
| |
| − | family. As for the letter's bearing, we know only the dangers it entails
| |
| − | should it come into the hands of a specific third party, and that its
| |
| − | possession has allowed the Minister to "wield, to a very dangerous extent,
| |
| − | for political purposes," the power it assures him over the interested
| |
| − | party. But all this tells us nothing of the message it conveys.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S49"> </a><a name="S27">Love letter or conspiratorial letter, letter of betrayal or letter of
| |
| − | mission, letter of summons or letter of distress, we are assured of but
| |
| − | one thing: the Queen muse not bring it to the knowledge of her lord and
| |
| − | master.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S27"> Now these terms, far from bearing the nuance of discredit they have
| |
| − | in bourgeois comedy, take on a certain prominence through allusion to her
| |
| − | sovereign, to whom she is bound by pledge of faith, and doubly so, since
| |
| − | her role as spouse does not relieve her of her duties as subject, but rather
| |
| − | elevates her to the guardianship of what royalty according to law
| |
| − | incarnates of power: and which is called legitimacy.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S27"> From then on, to whatever vicissitudes the Queen may choose to
| |
| − | subject the letter, it remains that the letter is the symbol of a pact and
| |
| − | that, even should the recipient not assume the pact, the existence of the
| |
| − | letter situates her in a symbolic chain foreign to the one which
| |
| − | constitutes her faith. This incompatibility is proven by the fact that the
| |
| − | possession of the letter is impossible to bring forward publicly as
| |
| − | legitimate, and that in order to have that possession respected, the Queen
| |
| − | can invoke but her right to privacy, whose privilege is based on the honor
| |
| − | that possession violates.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S27"> For she who incarnates the figure of grace and sovereignty cannot
| |
| − | welcome even a private communication without power being concerned,
| |
| − | and she cannot avail herself of secrecy in relation to the sovereign
| |
| − | without becoming clandestine.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S27"> </a><a name="S2">From then on, the responsibility of the author of the letter takes
| |
| − | second place to that of its holder: for the offense to majesty is
| |
| − | compounded by <i>high treason</i>.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S2"> </a><a name="S3">We say the <i>holder </i>and not the <i>possessor</i>. For it becomes clear that
| |
| − | the addressee's proprietorship of the letter may be no less debatable than
| |
| − | that of anyone else into whose hands it comes, for nothing concerning the
| |
| − | existence of the letter can return to good order without the person whose
| |
| − | prerogatives it infringes upon having to pronounce judgment on it.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S3"> All of this, however, does not imply that because the letter's
| |
| − | secrecy is indefensible, the betrayal of that secret would in any sense be
| |
| − | honorable. The<i> honesti homines</i>, decent people, will not get off easily.
| |
| − | There is more than one <i>religio,</i> and it is not slated for tomorrow that
| |
| − | sacred ties shall cease to rend us in two. As for <i>ambitus</i>: a detour, we see,
| |
| − | is not always inspired by ambition. For if we are taking one here, by no
| |
| − | means is it stolen (the word is apt), since, to lay our cards on the table,
| |
| − | we have borrowed Baudelaire's title in order to stress not, as is
| |
| − | incorrectly claimed, the conventional nature of the signifier, but rather
| |
| − | its priority in relation to the signified. It remains, nevertheless, that
| |
| − | Baudelaire, de spite his devotion, betrayed Poe by translating as "la lettre
| |
| − | volee" (the stolen letter) his title: the purloined letter, a title containing
| |
| − | a word rare enough for us to find it easier to define its etymology than its
| |
| − | usage.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S3"> To<i> purloin,</i> says the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word, that
| |
| − | is: composed of the prefix<i> pur-,</i> found in <i>purpose, purchase, purport,</i> and of
| |
| − | the Old French word: <i>loing, loigner, longé</i>. We recognize in the first
| |
| − | element the Latin <i>pro-</i>, as opposed to <i>ante</i>, insofar as it presupposes a
| |
| − | rear in front of which it is borne, possibly as its warrant, indeed even as
| |
| − | its pledge (whereas ante goes forth to confront what it encounters). As
| |
| − | for the second, an Old French word: <i>loigner</i>, a verb attributing place <i>au
| |
| − | loing </i>(or, still in use, <i>longé</i>), it does not mean <i>au loin</i> (far off), but <i>au long
| |
| − | de </i>(alongside); it is a question then of <i>putting aside</i>, or, to invoke a
| |
| − | familiar expression which plays on the two meanings: <i>mettre à gauche</i> (to
| |
| − | put to the left; to put amiss).</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S3"> Thus we are confirmed in our detour by the very object which draws
| |
| − | us on into it: for we are quite simply dealing with a letter which has been
| |
| − | diverted from its path; one whose course has been <i>prolonged</i>
| |
| − | (etymologically, the word of the title), or, to revert to the language of the
| |
| − | post office, a <i>letter in sufferance.</i></a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S3"> </a><a name="S26">Here then, <i>simple and odd</i>, as we are told on the very first page,
| |
| − | reduced to its simplest expression, is the singularity of the letter, which
| |
| − | as the title indicates, is the <i>true subject</i> of the tale: since it can be
| |
| − | diverted, it must have a course <i>which is proper to it</i>. the trait by which
| |
| − | its incidence as signifier is affirmed. For we have learned to conceive of
| |
| − | the signifier as sustaining itself only in a displacement comparable to
| |
| − | that found in electric news strips or in the rotating memories of our
| |
| − | machines-that-think-like-men, this because of the alternating operation
| |
| − | which is its principle, requiring it to leave its place, even though it
| |
| − | returns to it by a circular path.</a><a name="11"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#11">11</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | This is indeed what happens in the repetition automatism. <a name="S11">What
| |
| − | Freud teaches us in the text we are commenting on is that the subject
| |
| − | must pass through the channels of the symbolic, but what is illustrated
| |
| − | here is more gripping still: it is not only the subject, but the subjects,
| |
| − | grasped in their intersubjectivity, who line up, in other words our
| |
| − | ostriches, to whom we here return, and who, more docile than sheep,
| |
| − | model their very being on the moment of the signifying chain which
| |
| − | traverses them.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S11"> If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetually
| |
| − | increasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that </a><a name="S5">the displacement of the
| |
| − | signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their
| |
| − | refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate, their innate
| |
| − | gifts and social acquisitions notwithstanding, without regard for
| |
| − | character or sex, and that, willingly or not, everything that might be
| |
| − | considered the stuff of psychology, kit and caboodle, will follow the path
| |
| − | of the signifier.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S5"> </a><a name="S32">Here we are, in fact, yet again at the crossroads at which we had
| |
| − | left our drama and its round with the question of the way in which the
| |
| − | subjects replace each other in it. Our fable is so constructed as to show
| |
| − | that it is the letter and its diversion which governs their entries and
| |
| − | roles. If <i>it</i> be "in sufferance," <i>they </i>shall endure the pain. Should they pass
| |
| − | beneath its shadow, they become its reflection. Falling in possession of
| |
| − | the letter–admirable ambiguity of language–its meaning possesses them.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> So we are shown by the hero of the drama in the repetition of the
| |
| − | very situation which his daring brought to a head, a first time, to his
| |
| − | triumph. If he now succumbs to it, it is because he has shifted to the
| |
| − | second position in the triad in which he was initially third, as well as the
| |
| − | thief– and this by virtue of the object of his theft.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S32"> For if it is, now as before, a question of protecting the letter from
| |
| − | inquisitive eyes, he can do nothing but employ the same technique he
| |
| − | himself has already foiled: Leave it in the open? And we may properly
| |
| − | doubt that he knows what he is thus doing, when we see him immediately
| |
| − | captivated by a dual relationship in which we find all the traits of a
| |
| − | mimetic lure or of an animal feigning death, and, trapped in the typically
| |
| − | imaginary situation of seeing that he is not seen, misconstrue the real
| |
| − | situation in which he is seen not seeing.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> And what does he fail to see? Precisely the symbolic situation
| |
| − | which he himself was so well able to see, and in which he is now seen
| |
| − | seeing himself not being seen.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> The Minister acts as a man who realizes that the police's search is
| |
| − | his own defense, since we are told he allows them total access by his
| |
| − | absences: he nonetheless fails to recognize that outside of that search he
| |
| − | is no longer defended.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> This is the very <i>autruicherie</i> whose artisan he was, if we may allow
| |
| − | our monster to proliferate, but it cannot be by sheer stupidity that he now
| |
| − | comes to be its dupe.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> For in playing the part of the one who hides, he is obliged to don the
| |
| − | role of the Queen, and even the attributes of femininity and shadow, so
| |
| − | propitious to the act of concealing.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S32"> Not that we are reducing the hoary couple of <i>Yin</i> and <i>Yang </i>to the
| |
| − | elementary opposition of dark and light. For its precise use involves what
| |
| − | is blinding in a flash of light, no less than the shimmering shadows
| |
| − | exploit in order not to lose their prey.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> Here sign and being, marvelously asunder, reveal which is victorious
| |
| − | when they come into conflict. A man man enough to defy to the point of
| |
| − | scorn a lady's fearsome ire undergoes to the point of metamorphosis the
| |
| − | curse of the sign he has dispossessed her of.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> For this sign is indeed that of woman, insofar as she invests her
| |
| − | very being therein, founding it outside the law, which subsumes her
| |
| − | nevertheless, originarily, in a position of signifier, nay, of fetish. In order
| |
| − | to be worthy of the power of that sign she has but to remain immobile in
| |
| − | its shadow, thus finding, moreover, like the Queen, that simulation of
| |
| − | mastery in inactivity that the Minister's "Iynx eye" alone was able to
| |
| − | penetrate.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> This stolen sign–here then is man in its possession: sinister in that
| |
| − | such possession may be sustained only through the honor it defies, cursed
| |
| − | in calling him who sustains it to punishment or crime, each of which
| |
| − | shatters his vassalage to the Law.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S32"> There must be in this sign a singular <i>noli me tangere</i> for its
| |
| − | possession, like the Socratic sting ray, to benumb its man to the point of
| |
| − | making him fall into what appears clearly in his case to be a state of
| |
| − | idleness.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> For in noting, as the narrator does as early as the first dialogue,
| |
| − | that with the letter's use its power disappears, we perceive that this
| |
| − | remark, strictly speaking, concerns precisely its use for ends of
| |
| − | power–and at the same time that such a use is obligatory for the Minister.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> To be unable to rid himself of it, the Minister indeed must not know
| |
| − | what else to do with the letter. For that use places him in so total a
| |
| − | dependence on the letter as such, that in the long run it no longer involves
| |
| − | the letter at all.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> We mean that for that use truly to involve the letter, the Minister,
| |
| − | who, after all, would be so authorized by his service to his master the
| |
| − | King, might present to the Queen respectful admonitions, even were he to
| |
| − | assure their sequel by appropriate precautions–or initiate an action
| |
| − | against the author of the letter, concerning whom, the fact that he
| |
| − | remains outside the story's focus reveals the extent to which it is not
| |
| − | guilt and blame which are in question here, but rather that sign of
| |
| − | contradiction and scandal constituted by the letter, in the sense in which
| |
| − | the Gospel says that it must come regardless of the anguish of whoever
| |
| − | serves as its bearer,–or even submit the letter as document in a dossier
| |
| − | to a 'third person' qualified to know whether it will issue in a Star
| |
| − | Chamber for the Queen or the Minister's disgrace.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> We will not know why the Minister does not resort to any of these
| |
| − | uses, and it is fitting that we don't, since the effect of this non-use alone
| |
| − | concerns us; it suffices for us to know that the way in which the letter
| |
| − | was acquired would pose no obstacle to any of them.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S32"> For it is clear that if the use of the letter, independent of its
| |
| − | meaning, is obligatory for the Minister, its use for ends of power can only
| |
| − | be potential, since it cannot become actual without vanishing in the
| |
| − | process– but in that case the letter exists as a means of power only
| |
| − | through the final assignations of the pure signifier, namely: by prolonging
| |
| − | its diversion, making it reach whomever it may concern through a
| |
| − | supplementary transfer, that is, by an additional act of treason whose
| |
| − | effects the letter's gravity makes it difficult to predict–or indeed by
| |
| − | destroying the letter, the only sure means, as Dupin divulges at the start,
| |
| − | of being rid of what is destined by nature to signify the annulment of what
| |
| − | it signifies.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> The ascendancy which the Minister derives from the situation is
| |
| − | thus not a function of the letter, but, whether he knows it or not, of the
| |
| − | role it constitutes for him. And the Prefect's remarks indeed present him
| |
| − | as someone "who dares all things," which is commented upon significantly:
| |
| − | "those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man," words whose
| |
| − | pungency escapes Baudelaire when he translates: "ce qui est indigne d'un
| |
| − | homme aussi bien que ce qui est digne de lui" (those unbecoming a man as
| |
| − | well as those becoming him). For in its original form, the appraisal is far
| |
| − | more appropriate to what might concern a woman.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> This allows us to see the imaginary import of the character, that is,
| |
| − | the narcissistic relation in which the Minister is engaged, this time, no
| |
| − | doubt, without knowing it. It is indicated, as well, as early as the second
| |
| − | page of the English text by one of the narrator's remarks, whose form is
| |
| − | worth savoring: the Minister's ascendancy, we are told, "would depend upon
| |
| − | the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber." Words
| |
| − | whose importance the author underscores by having Dupin repeat them
| |
| − | literally after the narration of the scene of the theft of the letter. Here
| |
| − | again we may say that Baudelaire is imprecise in his language in having
| |
| − | one ask, the other confirm, in these words: "Le voleur saitil? . . ." (Does the
| |
| − | robber know?), then: "Le voleur salt . . ." (the robber knows). What? "que la
| |
| − | personne volée connâit son voleur" (that the loser knows his robber).</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> For what matters to the robber is not only that the said person
| |
| − | knows who robbed her, but rather with what kind of a robber she is
| |
| − | dealing; for she believes him capable of anything, which should be
| |
| − | understood as her having conferred upon him the position that no one is in
| |
| − | fact capable of assuming, since it is imaginary, that of absolute master.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> In truth, it is a position of absolute weakness, but not for the person
| |
| − | of whom we are expected to believe so. The proof is not only that the
| |
| − | Queen dares to call the police. For she is only conforming to her
| |
| − | displacement to the next slot in the arrangement of the initial triad in
| |
| − | trusting to the very blindness required to occupy that place: "No more
| |
| − | sagacious agent could, I suppose," Dupin notes ironically, "be desired or
| |
| − | even imagined." No, if she has taken that step, it is less out of being
| |
| − | "driven to despair," as we are told, than in assuming the charge of an
| |
| − | impatience best imputed to a specular mirage.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S32"> For the Minister is kept quite busy confining himself to the idleness
| |
| − | which is presently his lot. The Minister, in point of fact, is not altogether
| |
| − | mad. That's a remark made by the Prefect, whose every word is gold: it is
| |
| − | true that the gold of his words flows only for Dupin and will continue to
| |
| − | flow to the amount of the fifty thousand francs worth it will cost him by
| |
| − | the metal standard of the day, though not without leaving him a margin of
| |
| − | profit. The Minister then is not <i>altogether</i> mad in his insane stagnation,
| |
| − | and that is why he will behave according to the mode of neurosis. Like the
| |
| − | man who withdrew to an island to forget, what? he forgot–so the
| |
| − | Minister, through not making use of the letter, comes to forget it. As is
| |
| − | expressed by the persistence of his conduct. But the letter, no more than
| |
| − | the neurotic's unconscious, does not forget him. It forgets him so little
| |
| − | that it transforms him more and more in the image of her who offered it
| |
| − | to his capture, so that he now will surrender it, following her example, to
| |
| − | a similar capture.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S32"> </a><a name="S7">The features of that transformation are noted, and in a form so
| |
| − | characteristic in their apparent gratuitousness that they might validly be
| |
| − | compared to the return of the repressed.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S7"> Thus we first learn that the Minister in turn has <i>turned the letter
| |
| − | over,</i> not, of course, as in the Queen's hasty gesture, but, more
| |
| − | assiduously, as one turns a garment inside out. So he must proceed,
| |
| − | according to the methods of the day for folding and sealing a letter, in
| |
| − | order to free the virgin space on which to inscribe a new address.</a><a name="12"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#12">12</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | That address becomes his own. Whether it be in his hand or another,
| |
| − | it will appear in an extremely delicate feminine script, and, the seal
| |
| − | changing from the red of passion to the black of its mirrors, he will
| |
| − | imprint his stamp upon it. This oddity of a letter marked with the
| |
| − | recipient's stamp is all the more striking in its conception, since, though
| |
| − | forcefully articulated in the text, it is not even mentioned by Dupin in the
| |
| − | discussion he devotes to the identification of the letter.</p><p>
| |
| − | Whether that omission be intentional or involuntary, it will surprise
| |
| − | in the economy of a work whose meticulous rigor is evident. But in either
| |
| − | case it is significant that the letter which the Minister, in point of fact,
| |
| − | addresses to himself is a letter from a woman: as though this were a
| |
| − | phase he had to pass through out of a natural affinity of the signifier.</p><p>
| |
| − | Thus the aura of apathy, verging at times on an affectation of
| |
| − | effeminacy; the display of an ennui bordering on disgust in his
| |
| − | conversation; the mood the author of the philosophy of furniture<a name="13"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#13">13</a></sup> can
| |
| − | elicit from virtually impalpable details (like that of the musical
| |
| − | instrument on the table), everything seems intended for a character, all of
| |
| − | whose utterances have revealed the most virile traits, to exude the oddest
| |
| − | | |
| − | <i>odor di femina </i>when he appears.</p><p>
| |
| − | Dupin does not fail to stress that this is an artifice, describing
| |
| − | behind the bogus finery the vigilance of a beast of prey ready to spring.
| |
| − | But that this is the very effect of the unconscious in the precise sense
| |
| − | that we teach that the unconscious means that man is inhabited by the
| |
| − | signifier: Could we find a more beautiful image of it than the one Poe
| |
| − | himself forges to help us appreciate Dupin's exploit? For with this aim in
| |
| − | mind, he refers to those toponymical inscriptions which a geographical
| |
| − | map, lest it remain mute, superimposes on its design, and which may
| |
| − | become the object of a guessing game: Who can find the name chosen by a
| |
| − | partner?–noting immediately that the name most likely to foil a beginner
| |
| − | will be one which, in large letters spaced out widely across the map,
| |
| − | discloses, often without an eye pausing to notice it, the name of an entire
| |
| − | country....</p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S29">Just so does the purloined letter, like an immense female body,
| |
| − | screech out across the Minister's office when Dupin enters. But just so
| |
| − | does he already expect to find it, and has only, with his eyes veiled by
| |
| − | green lenses, to undress that huge body.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S29"> And that is why without needing any more than being able to listen
| |
| − | in at the door of Professor Freud, he will go straight to the spot in which
| |
| − | lies and lives what that body is designed to hide, in a gorgeous center
| |
| − | caught in a glimpse, nay, to the very place seducers name Sant' Angelo's
| |
| − | Castle in their innocent illusion of controlling the City from within it.
| |
| − | Look! between the cheeks of the fireplace, there's the object already in
| |
| − | reach of a hand the ravisher has but to extend.... The question of deciding
| |
| − | whether he seizes it above the mantelpiece as Baudelaire translates, or<br>
| |
| − | beneath it, as in the original text, may be abandoned without harm to the
| |
| − | inferences of those whose profession is grilling.</a><a name="S33"></a><a name="14"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#14">14</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | Were the effectiveness of symbols to cease there, would it mean
| |
| − | that the symbolic debt would as well be extinguished? Even if we could
| |
| − | believe so, we would be advised of the contrary by two episodes which we
| |
| − | may all the less dismiss as secondary in that they seem, at first sight, to
| |
| − | clash with the rest of the work.</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | First of all, there's the business of Dupin's remuneration, which, far
| |
| − | from being a closing pirouette, has been present from the beginning in the
| |
| − | rather unselfconscious question he asks the Prefect about the amount of
| |
| − | the reward promised him, and whose enormousness, the Prefect, however
| |
| − | reticent he may be about the precise figure, does not dream of hiding from
| |
| − | him, even returning later on to refer to its increase.</p><p>
| |
| − | The fact that Dupin had been previously presented to us as a virtual
| |
| − | pauper in his ethereal shelter ought rather to lead us to reflect on the deal
| |
| − | he makes out of delivering the letter, promptly assured as it is by the
| |
| − | checkbook he produces. We do not regard it as negligible that the
| |
| − | unequivocal hint through which he introduces the matter is a "story
| |
| − | attributed to the character, as famous as it was eccentric," Baudelaire
| |
| − | tells us, of an English doctor named Abernethy, in which a rich miser,
| |
| − | hoping to sponge upon him for a medical opinion, is sharply told not to
| |
| − | take medicine, but to take advice.</p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S35">Do we not in fact feel concerned with good reason when for Dupin
| |
| − | what is perhaps at stake is his withdrawal from the symbolic circuit of
| |
| − | the letter–we who become the emissaries of all the purloined letters
| |
| − | which at least for a time remain in sufferance with us in the
| |
| − | transference. And is it not the responsibility their transference entails
| |
| − | which we neutralize by equating it with the signifier most destructive of
| |
| − | all signification; namely money.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S35"> </a><a name="S36">But that's not </a><a name="S38">all. The profit Dupin so nimbly extracts from his
| |
| − | exploit, if its purpose is to allow him to withdraw his stakes from the
| |
| − | game, makes all the more paradoxical, even shocking, the partisan attack,
| |
| − | the underhanded blow, he suddenly permits himself to launch against the
| |
| − | Minister, whose insolent prestige, after all, would seem to have been
| |
| − | auflficiently deflated by the trick Dupin has just played on him.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S38"> We have already quoted the atrocious lines Dupin claims he could not
| |
| − | help dedicating, in his counterfeit letter, to the moment in which the
| |
| − | Minister, enraged by the inevitable defiance of the Queen, will think he is
| |
| − | demolishing her and will plunge into the abyss: <i>facilis descensus Averni,</i></a><a name="15"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#15">15</a></sup>
| |
| − | | |
| − | he waxes sententious, adding that the Minister cannot fail to recognize his
| |
| − | handwriting, all of which, since depriving of any danger a merciless act of
| |
| − | infamy, would seem, concerning a figure who is not without merit, a
| |
| − | triumph without glory, and the rancor he invokes, seemming from an evil
| |
| − | turn done him at Vienna (at the Congress?) only adds an additional bit of
| |
| − | blackness to the whole.</p><p>
| |
| − | Lee us consider, however, more closely <a name="S39">this explosion of feeling, and
| |
| − | more specifically the moment it occurs in a sequence of acts whose
| |
| − | success depends on so cool a head.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S39"> It comes just after the moment in which the decisive ace of
| |
| − | identifying the letter having been accomplished, it may be said that Dupin
| |
| − | already has the letter as much as if he had seized it, without, however, as
| |
| − | yet being in a position to rid himself of it.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S39"> He is thus, in fact, fully participant in the intersubjective triad,
| |
| − | and, as such, in the median position previously occupied by the Queen and
| |
| − | the Minister. Will he, in showing himself to be above it, reveal to us at the
| |
| − | same time the auchor's intentions?</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S39"> </a><a name="S30">If he has succeeded in returning the letter to its proper course, it
| |
| − | remains for him to make it arrive at its address. And that address is in
| |
| − | the place previously occupied by the King, since it is there that it would
| |
| − | reenter the order of the Law.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S30"> </a><a name="S41">As we have seen, neither the King nor the police who replaced him in
| |
| − | that position were able to read the letter because that <i>place entailed
| |
| − | blindness.</i></a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S41"> <i>Rex et augur</i>, the legendary, archaic quality of the words seems to
| |
| − | resound only to impress us with the absurdity of applying them to a man.
| |
| − | And the figures of history, for some time now, hardly encourage us to do
| |
| − | so. It is not natural for man to bear alone the weight of the highest of
| |
| − | signifiers. And the place he occupies as soon as he dons it may be equally
| |
| − | apt to become the symbol of the mose outrageous imbecility.</a><a name="16"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#16">16</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | Let us say that the King here is invested with the equivocation
| |
| − | natural to the sacred, with the imbecility which prizes none other than
| |
| − | the Subject.</p><p>
| |
| − | That is what will give their meaning to the characters who will
| |
| − | follow him in his place. Not that the police should be regarded as
| |
| − | constitutionally illiterate, and we know the role of pikes planted on the
| |
| − | <i>campus </i>in the birth of the State. Bue the police who exercise their
| |
| − | functions here are plainly marked by the forms of liberalism, that is, by
| |
| − | those imposed on them by masters on the whole indifferent to eliminating
| |
| − | their indiscreet tendencits. Which is why on occasion words are not
| |
| − | minced as to what is expected of them: "<i>Sutor ne uItra crepidam</i>, just take
| |
| − | care of your crooks. We'll even give you scientific means to do it with.
| |
| − | That will help you not to think of truths you'd be better off leaving in the
| |
| − | dark."<a name="17"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#17">17</a></sup></p><p>
| |
| − | We know that the relief which results from such prudent principles
| |
| − | shall have lasted in history but a morning's time, that already the march
| |
| − | of destiny is everywhere bringing back–a sequel to a just aspiration to
| |
| − | freedom's reign–an interest in those who trouble it with their crimes,
| |
| − | which occasionally goes so far as to forge its proofs. It may even be
| |
| − | observed that this practice, which was always well received to the extent
| |
| − | that it was exercised only in favor of the greatest number, comes to be
| |
| − | authenticated in public confessions of forgery by the very ones who might
| |
| − | very well object to it: the most recent manifestation of the preeminence
| |
| − | of the signifier over the subject.</p><p>
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| − | | |
| − | It remains, nevertheless, that a police record has always been the
| |
| − | object of a certain reserve, of which we have difficulty understanding
| |
| − | that it amply transcends the guild of historians.</p><p>
| |
| − | It is by dint of this vanishing credit that Dupin's intended delivery of
| |
| − | the letter to the Prefect of Police will diminish its import. What now
| |
| − | remains of the signifier when, already relieved of its message for the
| |
| − | Queen, it is now invalidated in its text as soon as it leaves the Minister's
| |
| − | hands?</p><p>
| |
| − | It remains for it now only to answer that very question, of what
| |
| − | remains of a signifier when it has no more signification. But this is the
| |
| − | same question asked of it by the person Dupin now finds in the spot
| |
| − | marked by blindness.</p><p>
| |
| − | For that is indeed the question which has led the Minister there, if
| |
| − | he be the gambler we are told and which his act sufficiently indicates. For
| |
| − | the gambler's passion is nothing but that question asked of the signifier,
| |
| − | figured by the <i>automaton</i> of chance.</p><p>
| |
| − | "What are you, figure of the die I turn over in your encounter (<i>tyche</i>)
| |
| − | with my fortune?<a name="18"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#18">18</a></sup> Nothing, if not that presence of death which makes of
| |
| − | human life a reprieve obtained from morning to morning in the name of
| |
| − | meanings whose sign is your crook. Thus did Schcherazade for a thousand
| |
| − | and one nights, and thus have I done for eighteen months, suffering the
| |
| − | ascendancy of this sign at the cost of a dizzying series of fraudulent turns
| |
| − | at the game of even or odd."</p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | So it is that Dupin, <i>from the place he now occupies</i>, cannot help
| |
| − | feeling <a name="S40">a rage of manifestly feminine nature against him who poses such a
| |
| − | question. The prestigious image in which the poet's inventiveness and the
| |
| − | mathematician's rigor joined up with the serenity of the dandy and the
| |
| − | elegance of the cheat suddenly becomes, for the very person who invited
| |
| − | us to savor it, the true <i>monstrum horrendum</i>, for such are his words, "an
| |
| − | unprincipled man of genius."</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S40"> It is here that the origin of that horror betrays itself, and he who
| |
| − | experiences it has no need to declare himself (in a most unexpected
| |
| − | manner) "a partisan of the lady" in order to reveal it to us: it is known that
| |
| − | ladies detest calling principles into question, for their charms owe much
| |
| − | to the mystery of the signifier.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S40"> Which is why Dupin will at last turn toward us the medusoid face of
| |
| − | the signifier nothing but whose obverse anyone except the Queen has been
| |
| − | able to read. The commonplace of the quotation is fitting for the oracle
| |
| − | that face bears in its grimace, as is also its source in tragedy: </a><a name="S52">". . . Un
| |
| − | destin si funeste, / S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste. "</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S52"> So runs the signifier's answer, above and beyond all significations:
| |
| − | "You think you act when I stir you at the mercy of the bonds through which
| |
| − | I knot your desires. Thus do they grow in force and multiply in objects,
| |
| − | bringing you back to the fragmentation of your shattered childhood. So be
| |
| − | it: such will be your feast until the return of the stone guest I shall be for
| |
| − | you since you call me forth."</a></p><p>
| |
| − | | |
| − | <a name="S52"> Or, to return to a more moderate tone, let us say, as in the quip with
| |
| − | which–along with some of you who had followed us to the Zurich Congress
| |
| − | last year–we rendered homage to the local password, the signifier's
| |
| − | answer to whoever interrogates it is: "Eat your Dasein."</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S52"> Is that then what awaits the Minister at a rendezvous with destiny?
| |
| − | Dupin assures us of it, but we have already learned not to be too credulous
| |
| − | of his diversions.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S52"> No doubt the brazen creature is here reduced to the state of
| |
| − | blindness which is man's in relation to the letters on the wall that dictate
| |
| − | his destiny. But what effect, in calling him to confront them, may we
| |
| − | expect from the sole provocations of the Queen, on a man like him? Love or
| |
| − | hatred. The former is blind and will make him lay down his arms. The
| |
| − | latter is lucid, but will awaken his suspicions. </a><a name="S43">But if he is truly the
| |
| − | gambler we are told he is, he will consult his cards a final time before
| |
| − | laying them down and, upon reading his hand, will leave the cable in time
| |
| − | to avoid disgrace.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S43"> </a><a name="S37">Is that all, and shall we believe we have deciphered Dupin's real
| |
| − | strategy above and beyond the imaginary tricks with which he was obliged
| |
| − | to deceive us? No doubt, yes, for if "any poin requiring reflection," as
| |
| − | Dupin states at the start, is "examined to best purpose in the dark," we
| |
| − | may now easily read its solution in broad daylight. It was already implicit
| |
| − | and easy to derive from the title of our tale, according to the very formula
| |
| − | we have long submitted to your discretion: in which the sender, we tell
| |
| − | you, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form. </a><a name="S31"></a><a name="S44">Thus it
| |
| − | is that what the "purloined letter" nay, the "letter in sufferance," means
| |
| − | is that a letter always arrives at its destination.</a></p><p>
| |
| − | <a name="S44"><br>
| |
| − | </a></p><p>
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| − | <a name="S44">
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| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | [[Category:Works by Jacques Lacan]]
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| − | [[Category:Essays by Jacques Lacan]]
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| − | [[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
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