Und wenn es uns gluckt, <br>Und wenn es sich schickt, <br>So sind es Gedanken.</i></div><p><a name="S1">Our inquiry has led us to the point of recognizing that the repetitionautomatism (<i>Wiederholangszwang </i>) finds its basis in what we have calledthe insistence of the signifying chain. We have elaborated that notionitself as a correlate of the <i>ex-sistence</i> (or: eccentric place) in which wemust necessarily locate the subject of the unconscious if we are to takeFreud's discovery seriously. As is known, it is in the realm of experienceinaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginarylines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being,manifests its capture in a <i>symbolic</i> dimension.</a></p><p> <a name="S1"> The lesson of this seminar is intended to maintain that theseimaginary incidences, far from representing the essence of ourexperience, reveal only what in it remains inconsistent unless they arerelated to the symbolic chain which binds and orients them.</a></p><p><a name="S1"> We realize, of course, the importance of these imaginaryimpregnations (<i>Prägung </i>) in those partializations of the symbolicalternative which give the symbolic chain its appearance. But we maintainthat it is the specific law of that chain which governs thosepsychoanalytic effects thar are decisive for the subject: such asforeclosure (<i>Verwerfung</i>), repression (<i>Verdrängung </i>), denial (<i>Verneinung </i>)itself–specifying with appropriate emphasis that these effects follow sofaithfully the displacement (<i>Entstellang </i>) of the signifier that imaginaryfactors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections inthe process.</a></p><p><a name="S1"> But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in youropinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whoseparticularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, andwhose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially.</a></p><p> <a name="S1"> </a><a name="S13">Which is why we have decided to illustrate for you today </a><a name="S45">the truthwhich may be drawn from that moment in Freud's thought understudy–namely, that it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for thesubject–by demonstrating in a story the decisive orientation which thesubject receives from the itinerary of a signifier.</a></p><p><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 offiction possible. And in that case, a fable is as appropriate as any othernarrative for bringing it to light–at the risk of having the fable'scoherence put to the test in the process. Aside from that reservation, afictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessitymore purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.</a></p><p><a name="S10"> </a><a name="S15">Which is why, without seeking any further, we have chosen ourexample from the very story in which the dialectic of the game of even orodd–from whose study we have but recently profited–occurs. </a><a name="S16">It is, nodoubt, no accident that this tale revealed itself propitious to pursuing acourse of inquiry which had already found support in it.</a></p><p><a name="S16"> </a><a name="S18">As you know, we are talking about the tale which Baudelairetranslated under the title "La lettre volée." At first reading, we maydistinguish a drama, its narration, and the conditions of that narration.</a></p><p><a name="S18"> We see quickly enough, moreover, that these components arenecessary and that </a><a name="S42">they could not have escaped the intentions of whoevercomposed them.</a></p><p> <a name="S42"> The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary withoutwhich no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the actionwould remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit–aside from thefact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessitydevoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience: in other words,nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without,dare we say, the twilighting which the narration, in each scene, casts onthe point of view that one of the actors had while performing it.</a></p><p><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 straightwaydesignate the primal scene, and by no means inadvertently, since thesecond may be considered its repetition in the very sense we areconsidering today.</a></p><p><a name="S17"> The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal<i>boudoir</i>, so that we suspect that the person of the highest rank, called the"exalted personage," who is alone there when she receives a letter, is theQueen. This feeling is confirmed by the embarrassment into which she isplunged by the entry of the other exalted personage, of whom we havealready been told prior to this account that the knowledge he might haveof the letter in question would jeopardize for the lady nothing less thanher honor and safety. Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptlydissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entry of theMinister D–. At that moment, in fact, the Queen can do no better than toplay on the King's inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table "facedown, address uppermost." It does not, however, escape the Minister's Iynxeye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen's distress and thus to fathom hersecret. From then on everything transpires like clockwork. After dealing inhis customary manner with the business of the day, the Minister drawsfrom his pocket a letter similar in appearance to the one in his view, and,having pretended to read it, he places it next to the other. A bit moreconversation to amuse the royal company, whereupon, without flinchingonce, he seizes the embarrassing letter, making off with it, as the Queen,on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervenefor fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, close at her sideat that very moment.</a></p><p><a name="S17"> Everything might then have transpired unseen by a hypotheticalspectator of an operation in which nobody falters, and whose <i>quotient</i> isthat the Minister has filched from the Queen her letter and that–an evenmore important result than the first–the Queen knows that he now has it,and by no means innocently.</a></p><p> <a name="S17"> </a><a name="S6">A <i>remainder</i> that no analyst will neglect, trained as he is to retainwhatever is significant, without always knowing what to do with it: theletter, abandoned by the Minister, and which the Queen's hand is now freeto roll into a ball.</a></p><p><a name="S6"> Second scene: in the Minister's office. It is in his hotel, and weknow–from the account the Prefect of Police has given Dupin, whosespecific genius for solving enigmas Poe introduces here for the secondtime–that the police, returning there as soon as the Minister's habitual,nightly absences allow them to, have searched the hotel and itssurroundings from top to bottom for the last eighteen months. Invain–although everyone can deduce from the situation that the Ministerkeeps the letter within reach.</a></p><p><a name="S6"> Dupin calls on the Minister. The latter receives him with studiednonchalance, affecting in his conversation romantic ennui. MeanwhileDupin, whom this pretense does not deceive, his eyes protected by greenglasses, proceeds to inspect the premises. When his glance catches arather crumpled piece of paper–apparently thrust carelessly into adivision of an ugly pasteboard card rack, hanging gaudily from the middleof the mantelpiece–he already knows that he's found what he's looking for.His conviction is reinforced by the very details which seem to contradictthe description he has of the stolen letter, with the exception of theformat, which remains the same.</a></p><p><a name="S6"> Whereupon he has but to withdraw, after "forgetting" his snuffbox onthe table, in order to return the following day to reclaim it–armed with afacsimile of the letter in its present state. As an incident in the street,prepared for the proper moment, draws the Minister to the window, Dupinin turn seizes the opportunity to snatch the letter while substituting theimitation and has only to maintain the appearances of a normal exit.</a></p><p><a name="S6"> Here as well all has transpired, if not without noise, at leastwithout any commotion. The quotient of the operation is that the Ministerno longer has the letter, but far from suspecting that Dupin is the culpritwho has ravished it from him, knows nothing of it. Moreover, what he isleft with is far from insignificant for what follows. We shall return towhat brought Dupin to inscribe a message on his counterfeit letter. </a><a name="S51">Whatever the case, the Minister, when he tries to make use of it, will beable to read these words, written so that he may recognize Dupin's hand: ".. . <i>Un dessein si funeste / S'il n'est digne d'Atrée est digne de Thyeste</i>, "whose source, Dupin tells us, is Crebillon's <i>Atrée</i>.</a></p><p><a name="S51"> Need we emphasize the similarity of these two sequences? Yes, forthe resemblance we have in mind is not a simple collection of traitschosen only in order to delete their difference. And it would not be enoughto retain those common traits at the expense of the others for theslightest truth to result. It is rather the intersubjectivity in which thetwo actions are motivated that we wish to bring into relief, as well asthe three terms through which it structures them.</a></p><p><a name="S51"> The special status of these terms results from their corresponding simultaneously to the three logical moments through which the decision isprecipitated and the three places it assigns to the subjects among whomit constitutes a choice.</a></p><p><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 maneuverswhich follow, however stealthily they prolong it, add nothing to thatglance, nor does the deferring of the deed in the second scene break theunity of that moment.</p><p> This glance presupposes two others, which it embraces in its visionof the breach left in their fallacious complementarity, anticipating in itthe occasion for larceny afforded by that exposure. Thus three moments,structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each timeby different characters.</p><p>The first is a glance that sees nothing: the King and the police.</p><p>The second, a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deludesitself as to the secrecy of what it hides: the Queen, then the Minister. </p><p><a name="S34">The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hiddenexposed to whoever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> In order to grasp in its unity the intersubjective complex thusdescribed, we would willingly seek a model in the technique legendarilyattributed to the oserich attempting to shield itself from danger; for thattechnique might ultimately be qualified as political, divided as it here isamong three partners: the second believing itself invisible because thefirst has its head stuck in the ground, and all the while letting the thirdcalmly pluck its rear; we need only enrich its proverbial denomination by aletter, producing <i>la politique de l'autruiche</i>, for the ostrich itself to takeon forever a new meaning.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> Given the intersubjective modulus of the repetitive action, itremains to recognize in it a <i>repetition automatism</i> in the sense thatinterests us in Freud's text.</a></p><p> <a name="S34"> The plurality of subjects, of course, can be no objection for thosewho are long accustomed to the perspectives summarized by our formula:<i>the unconscious is the discourse of the Other</i>. And we will not recall nowwhat the notion of the <i>immixture of subjects</i>, recently introduced in ourreanalysis of the dream of Irma's injection, adds to the discussion.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> What interests us today is the manner in which the subjects relayeach other in their displacement during the intersubjective repetition.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> We shall see that their displacement is determined by the placewhich a pure signifier–the purloined letter–comes to occupy in their trio.And that is what will confirm for us its status as repetition automatism.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> It does not, however, seem excessive, before pursuing this line ofinquiry, to ask whether the thrust of the tale and the interest we bring toit–to the extent that they coincide–do not lie elsewhere.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> May we view as simply a rationalization (in our gruff jargon) thefact that the story is told to us as a police mystery?</a></p><p> <a name="S34"> In truth, we should be right in judging that fact highly dubious assoon as we note that everything which warrants such mystery concerninga crime or offense–its nature and motives, instruments and execution, theprocedure used to discover the author, and the means employed to convicthim–is carefully eliminated here at the start of each episode.</a></p><p><a name="S34"> The act of deceit is, in fact, from the beginning as clearly known asthe intrigues of the culprit and their effects on his victim. The problem,as exposed to us, is limited to </a><a name="S28">the search for and restitution of the objectof that deceit, and it seems rather intentional that the solution is alreadyobtained when it is explained to us. Is <i>that</i> how we are kept in suspense?Whatever credit we may accord the conventions of a genre for provoking aspecific interest in the reader, we should not forget that "the Dupintale"–this the second to appear–is a prototype, and that even if the genrewere established in the first, it is still a little early for the author toplay on a convention.</a></p><p><a name="S28"> It would, however, be equally excessive to reduce the whole thing toa fable whose moral would be that in order to shield from inquisitive eyesone of those correspondences whose secrecy is sometimes necessary toconjugal peace, it suffices to leave the crucial letters Iying about on one'stable, even though the meaningful side be turned face down. For that wouldbe a hoax which, for our part, we would never recommend anyone try, lesthe be gravely disappointed in his hopes.</a></p><p><a name="S28"> Might there then be no mystery other than, concerning the Prefect,an incompetence issuing in failure–were it not perhaps, concerning Dupin,a certain dissonance we hesitate to acknowledge between, on the onehand, the admittedly penetrating though, in their generality, not alwaysquite relevant remarks with which he introduces us to his method and, onthe other, the manner in which he in fact intervenes.</a></p><p><a name="S28"> Were we to pursue this sense of mystification a bit further wemight soon begin to wonder whether, from that initial scene which onlythe rank of the protagonists saves from vaudeville, to the fall intoridicule which seems to await the Minister at the end, it is not thisimpression that everyone is being duped which makes for our pleasure.</a></p><p> <a name="S28"> And we would be all the more inclined to think so in that we wouldrecognize in that surmise, along with those of you who read us, thedefinition we once gave in passing of the modern hero, "whom ludicrousexploits 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> But are we ourselves not taken in by the imposing presence of theamateur detective, prototype of a latter-day swashbuckler, as yet safefrom the insipidity of our contemporary <i>superman?</i></p><p> A trick . . . sufficient for us to discern in this tale, on the contrary,so perfect a verisimilitude that it may be said that truth here reveals itsfictive arrangement.</p><p> For such indeed is the direction in which the principles of thatverisimilitude lead us. Entering into its strategy, we indeed perceive anew drama we may call complementary to the first, insofar as the latterwas what is termed a play without words whereas the interest of thesecond plays on the properties of speech. <a name="3"><sup></sup></a><sup><a href="lacan_notes.html#3">3</a></sup></p><p> If it is indeed clear that <a name="S20">each of the two scenes of the real drama isnarrated in the course of a different dialogue, it is only through access tothose notions set forth in our teaching that one may recognize that it isnot thus simply to augment the charm of the exposition, but that thedialogues themselves, in the opposite use they make of the powers ofspeech, take on a tension which makes of them a different drama, onewhich our vocabulary will distinguish from the first as persisting in thesymbolic order.</a></p><p> <a name="S20"> The first dialogue–between the Prefect of Police and Dupin–isplayed as between a deaf man and one who hears. That is, it presents thereal complexity of what is ordinarily simplified, with the most confusedresults, in the notion of communication.</a></p><p><a name="S20"> This example demonstrates indeed how an act of communication maygive the impression at which theorists too often stop: of allowing in itstransmission but a single meaning, as though the highly significantcommentary into which he who understands integrates it, could, becauseunperceived 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 isretained, its verisimilitude may appear to depend on a guarantee ofexactitude. But here dialogue may be more fertile than it seems, if wedemonstrate its tactics: as shall be seen by focusing on the recounting ofour first scene.</a></p><p><a name="S20"> For the double and even triple subjective filter through which thatscene comes to us: a narration by Dupin's friend and associate (henceforthto be called the general narrator of the story) of the account by which thePrefect reveals to Dupin the report the Queen gave him of it, is not merelythe consequence of a fortuitous arrangement.</a></p><p><a name="S20"> If indeed the extremity to which the original narrator is reducedprecludes her altering any of the events, it would be wrong to believe thatthe Prefect is empowered to lend her his voice in this case only by thatlack 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 whatmay by no means be taken for granted: that it belongs to the dimension oflanguage.</a></p><p> <a name="S20"> Those who are here know our remarks on the subject, specificallythose illustrated by the countercase of the so-called language of bees: inwhich 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 ofobjects, in other words: only an imaginary function more differentiatedthan others.</p><p> We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent inman, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split asit is in its submission to symbols.</p><p> Something equivalent may no doubt be grasped in the communionestablished between two persons in their hatred of a common object:except that the meeting is possible only over a single object, defined bythose traits in the individual each of the two resists.</p><p> But such communication is not transmissible in symbolic form. Itmay be maintained only in the relation with the object. In such a manner itmay bring together an indefinite number of subjects in a common "ideal":the communication of one subject with another within the crowd thusconstituted will nonetheless remain irreducibly mediated by an ineffablerelation.</p><p> This digression is not only a recollection of principles distantlyaddressed to those who impute to us a neglect of nonverbalcommunication: in determining the scope of what speech repeats, itprepares the question of what symptoms repeat.</p><p> <a name="S23">Thus the indirect telling sifts out the linguistic dimension, and thegeneral narrator, by duplicating it, "hypothetically" </a><a name="S21">adds nothing to it. Butits 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 havedistinguished elsewhere in language and which are opposed like word tospeech.</a></p><p><a name="S21"> Which is to say that a transition is made here from the domain ofexactitude to the </a><a name="S46">register of truth. Now that register–we dare think weneedn't come back to this–is situated entirely elsewhere, </a><a name="S22">strictlyspeaking at the very foundation of intersubjectivity. It is located therewhere the subject can grasp nothing but the very subjectivity whichconstitutes an Other as absolute. We shall be satisfied here to indicate itsplace by evoking the dialogue which seems to us to merit its attributionas a Jewish joke by that state of privation through which the relation ofsignifier to speech appears in the entreaty which brings the dialogue to aclose: "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 believeyou'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 oflogical impasses, eristic enigmas, paradoxes, and even jests presented tous as an introduction to Dupin's method if the fact that they were confidedto us by a would-be disciple did not endow them with a new dimensionthrough that act of delegation. Such is the unmistakable magic of legacies:the witness's fidelity is the cowl which blinds and lays to rest allcriticism of his testimony.</a></p><p> <a name="S22"> </a><a name="S24">What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of layingone's cards face up on the table? So much so that we are momentarilypersuaded that the magician has in fact demonstrated, as he promised,how his trick was performed, whereas he has only renewed it in stillpurer form: at which point we fathom the measure of the supremacy of thesignifier in the subject.</a></p><p><a name="S24"> Such is Dupin's maneuver when he starts with the story of the childprodigy who takes in all his friends at the game of even and odd with histrick of identifying with the opponent, concerning which we havenevertheless shown that it cannot reach the first level of theoreticalelaboration; namely, intersubjective alternation, without immediatelystumbling 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 thenames of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Machiavelli, and Campanella,whose renown, by this time, would seem but futile when confronted withthe child's prowess.</p><p> Followed by Chamfort, whose maxim that "it is a safe wager thatevery public idea, every accepted convention is foolish, since it suits thegreatest 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 positivelydelight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to sayanymore that "<i>ambitus</i> doesn't mean ambition, <i>religio</i>, religion, <i>homineshonesti</i>, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remembering . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero andLucretius. 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 bedestined to reveal to us the key words of our drama? Is not the magicianrepeating his trick before our eyes, without deceiving us this time aboutdivulging his secret, but pressing his wager to the point of reallyexplaining it to us without us seeing a thing? <i>That</i> would be the summit ofthe illusionist's art: through one of his fictive creations to <i>truly deludeus</i>.</a></p><p> <a name="S50"> And is it not such effects which justify our referring, withoutmalice, 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 MartinHeidegger discloses to us in the word <i>aletheia </i>the play of truth, werediscover a secret to which truth has always initiated her lovers, andthrough which they learn that it is in hiding that she offers herself tothem <i>most truly</i>.</a></p><p><a name="S50"> Thus even if Dupin's comments did not defy us so blatantly to believein them, we should still have to make that attempt against the oppositetemptation.</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 thePrefect's lack of success. We already saw it surface in those furtive gibesthe Prefect, in the first conversation, failed to heed, seeing in them only apretext for hilarity. That it is, as Dupin insinuates, because a problem istoo simple, indeed too evident, that it may appear obscure, will never haveany 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'simbecility. Which is powerfully articulated by the fact that he and hisconfederates never conceive of anything beyond what an ordinary roguemight imagine for hiding an object–that is, precisely the all too wellknown series of extraordinary hiding places: which are promptly catalogedfor us, from hidden desk drawers to removable tabletops, from thedetachable cushions of chairs to their hollowed-out legs, from the reverseside of mirrors to the "thickness" of book bindings.</p><p> After which, a moment of derision at the Prefect's error in deducingthat 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 afalse distribution of the middle term, since it is far from following fromthe fact that all madmen are poets.</p><p> Yes indeed. But we ourselves are left in the dark as to the poet'ssuperiority in the art of concealment–even if he be a mathematician toboot–since our pursuit is suddenly thwarted, dragged as we are into athicket of bad arguments directed against the reasoning ofmathematicians, who never, so far as I know, showed such devotion totheir formulae as to identify them with reason itself. At least, let ustestify that unlike what seems to be Poe's experience, it occasionallybefalls us–with our friend Riguet, whose presence here is a guaranteethat our incursions into combinatory analysis are not leading us astray–tohazard such serious deviations (virtual blasphemies, according to Poe) asto 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 anyunexpected attack.</p><p> Is not so much intelligence being exercised then simply to divert ourown from what had been indicated earlier as given, namely, that the policehave looked everywhere: which we were to understand–vis-à-vis the areain which the police, not without reason, assumed the letter might befound–in terms of a (no doubt theoretical) exhaustion of space, butconcerning which the tale's piquancy depends on our accepting it literally?The division of the entire volume into numbered "compartments," whichwas the principle governing the operation, being presented to us as soprecise that "the fiftieth part of a line," it is said, could not escape theprobing of the investigators. Have we not then the right to ask how ithappened that the letter was not found <i>anywhere</i>, or rather to observe thatall we have been told of a more far-ranging conception of concealmentdoes not explain, in all rigor, that the letter escaped detection, since thearea 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 ofnullibiety: to use a term which the thesaurus known as <i>Roget</i> picks upfrom 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 ofthe English adjective <i>odd</i>. <i>Bizarre</i>, by which Baudelaire regularlytranslates 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 wereceive the former by pneumatic dispatch, and that we readily admit thatone kills whereas the other quickens, insofar as the signifier–you perhapsbegin to understand–materializes the agency of death. <a name="S9">But if it is first ofall on the materiality of the signifier that we have insisted, </a><a name="S8">thatmateriality is<i> odd </i>[<i>singulière</i>] in many ways, the first of which is not toadmit </a><a name="S47">partition. </a><a name="S48">Cut a letter in small pieces, and it remains the letter itis–and this in a completely different sense than <i>Gestalttheorie </i>wouldaccount 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 thatspirit–if spirit be living meaning–appears, no less oddly, as moreavailable 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 easilyreconciled to the fact that there will always be ass ["<i><b>de la </b></i>cuisse"] forsale 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 beunderstood <i>to the letter</i> redirect [<i>è la lettre</i>], that <i>a letter</i> [<i>une lettre</i>] awaits youat the post office, or even that you are acquainted with <i>letters</i> [<i>que vousavez 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 naturesymbol only of an absence. Which is why we cannot say of the purloinedletter that, like other objects, it must be <i>or</i> not be in a particular placebut 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. Weare spared nothing concerning the procedures used in searching the areasubmitted to their investigation: from the division of that space intocompartments from which the slightest bulk could not escape detection,to needles probing upholstery, and, in the impossibility of sounding woodwith a tap, to a microscope exposing the waste of any drilling at thesurface of its hollow, indeed the infinitesimal gaping of the slightestabyss. As the network tightens to the point that, not satisfied withshaking the pages of books, the police take to counting them, do we notsee space itself shed its leaves like a letter?</p><p> But the detectives have so immutable a notion of the real that theyfail to notice that their search tends to transform it into its object. Atrait by which they would be able to distinguish that object from allothers.</p><p> This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of theirlack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility is neitherof the individual nor the corporative variety; its source is subjective. It isthe 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, andthat what is hidden is never but what is <i>missing from its place</i>, as thecall slip puts it when speaking of a volume lose in a library. And even ifthe book be on an adjacent shelf or in the next slot, it would be hiddenthere, however visibly it may appear. For it can <i>literally</i> be said thatsomething is missing from its place only of what can change it: thesymbolic. For the real, whatever upheaval we subject it to, is always inits place; it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile itfrom it.</p><p> And to return to our cops, who took the letter from the place whereit was hidden, how could they have seized the letter? In what they turnedbetween their fingers what did they hold but what <i>did not answer</i> to theirdescription. "A letter, a litter": in Joyce's circle, they played on thehomophony 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 ofrefuse the police are now handling reveal its other nature for being buthalf torn. A different seal Seminar on a scamp of another color, the mark of adifferent handwriting in the superscription are here the most inviolablemodes 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 oftensaid to our cybernetic joy? . . . But does it not occur to us that thismessage has already reached its recipient and has even been left with her,since the insignificant scrap of paper now represents it no less well thanthe original note.</p><p> If we could admit that a letter has completed its destiny afterfulfilling its function, the ceremony of returning letters would be a lesscommon close to the extinction of the fires of love's feasts. The signifieris not functional. <a name="S4">And the mobilization of the elegant society whosefrolics we are following would as well have no meaning if the letteritself were content with having one. For it would hardly be an adequatemeans 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 nomore urgent) meaning for the Queen from the one understood by theMinister. The sequence of events would not be noticeably affected, noteven 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 Prefectpompously assures us, to everyonePurloined Letter's derision, "the disclosure of thedocument to a third person, who shall be nameless" (that name whichleaps to the eye like the pig's tail twixt the teeth of old Ubu) "would bringin question the honor of a personage of most exalted station, indeed thatthe 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 messagewhich it would be dangerous to place in circulation, and all the more so tothe extent that it might appear harmless, since the risks of anindiscretion unintentionally committed by one of the letter's holderswould thus be increased.</a></p><p><a name="S4"> Nothing then can redeem the police's position, and nothing would bechanged by improving their "culture." <i>Scripta manent</i>: in vain would theylearn from a deluxe-edition humanism the proverbial lesson which <i>verbavolant</i> concludes. </a><a name="S49">May it but please heaven that writings remain, as israther the case with spoken words: for the indelible debt of the latterimpregnates our acts with its transferences.</a></p><p><a name="S49"> Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. Andwere 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 whomdoes a letter belong? We stressed a moment ago the oddity implicit inreturning a letter to him who had but recently given wing to its burningpledge. And we generally deem unbecoming such premature publications asthe one by which the Chevalier d'Eon put several of his correspondents in arather pitiful position.</a></p><p><a name="S49"> Might a letter on which the sender retains certain rights then notquite belong to the person to whom it is addressed? Or might it be thatthe 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 seemsto obscure matters: the fact that the tale leaves us in virtually totalignorance of the sender, no less than of the contents, of the letter. We aretold only that the Minister immediately recognized the handwriting of theaddress and only incidentally, in a discussion of the Minister'scamouflage, is it said that the original seal bore the ducal arms of the Sfamily. As for the letter's bearing, we know only the dangers it entailsshould it come into the hands of a specific third party, and that itspossession has allowed the Minister to "wield, to a very dangerous extent,for political purposes," the power it assures him over the interestedparty. 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 ofmission, letter of summons or letter of distress, we are assured of butone thing: the Queen muse not bring it to the knowledge of her lord andmaster.</a></p><p><a name="S27"> Now these terms, far from bearing the nuance of discredit they havein bourgeois comedy, take on a certain prominence through allusion to hersovereign, to whom she is bound by pledge of faith, and doubly so, sinceher role as spouse does not relieve her of her duties as subject, but ratherelevates her to the guardianship of what royalty according to lawincarnates of power: and which is called legitimacy.</a></p><p><a name="S27"> From then on, to whatever vicissitudes the Queen may choose tosubject the letter, it remains that the letter is the symbol of a pact andthat, even should the recipient not assume the pact, the existence of theletter situates her in a symbolic chain foreign to the one whichconstitutes her faith. This incompatibility is proven by the fact that thepossession of the letter is impossible to bring forward publicly aslegitimate, and that in order to have that possession respected, the Queencan invoke but her right to privacy, whose privilege is based on the honorthat possession violates.</a></p><p> <a name="S27"> For she who incarnates the figure of grace and sovereignty cannotwelcome even a private communication without power being concerned,and she cannot avail herself of secrecy in relation to the sovereignwithout becoming clandestine.</a></p><p><a name="S27"> </a><a name="S2">From then on, the responsibility of the author of the letter takessecond place to that of its holder: for the offense to majesty iscompounded 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 thatthe addressee's proprietorship of the letter may be no less debatable thanthat of anyone else into whose hands it comes, for nothing concerning theexistence of the letter can return to good order without the person whoseprerogatives 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'ssecrecy is indefensible, the betrayal of that secret would in any sense behonorable. 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 thatsacred 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 nomeans 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 isincorrectly claimed, the conventional nature of the signifier, but ratherits priority in relation to the signified. It remains, nevertheless, thatBaudelaire, de spite his devotion, betrayed Poe by translating as "la lettrevolee" (the stolen letter) his title: the purloined letter, a title containinga word rare enough for us to find it easier to define its etymology than itsusage.</a></p><p> <a name="S3"> To<i> purloin,</i> says the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word, thatis: composed of the prefix<i> pur-,</i> found in <i>purpose, purchase, purport,</i> and ofthe Old French word: <i>loing, loigner, longé</i>. We recognize in the firstelement the Latin <i>pro-</i>, as opposed to <i>ante</i>, insofar as it presupposes arear in front of which it is borne, possibly as its warrant, indeed even asits pledge (whereas ante goes forth to confront what it encounters). Asfor the second, an Old French word: <i>loigner</i>, a verb attributing place <i>auloing </i>(or, still in use, <i>longé</i>), it does not mean <i>au loin</i> (far off), but <i>au longde </i>(alongside); it is a question then of <i>putting aside</i>, or, to invoke afamiliar expression which plays on the two meanings: <i>mettre à gauche</i> (toput to the left; to put amiss).</a></p><p> <a name="S3"> Thus we are confirmed in our detour by the very object which drawsus on into it: for we are quite simply dealing with a letter which has beendiverted from its path; one whose course has been <i>prolonged</i>(etymologically, the word of the title), or, to revert to the language of thepost 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, whichas the title indicates, is the <i>true subject</i> of the tale: since it can bediverted, it must have a course <i>which is proper to it</i>. the trait by whichits incidence as signifier is affirmed. For we have learned to conceive ofthe signifier as sustaining itself only in a displacement comparable tothat found in electric news strips or in the rotating memories of ourmachines-that-think-like-men, this because of the alternating operationwhich is its principle, requiring it to leave its place, even though itreturns 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">WhatFreud teaches us in the text we are commenting on is that the subjectmust pass through the channels of the symbolic, but what is illustratedhere is more gripping still: it is not only the subject, but the subjects,grasped in their intersubjectivity, who line up, in other words ourostriches, to whom we here return, and who, more docile than sheep,model their very being on the moment of the signifying chain whichtraverses them.</a></p><p><a name="S11"> If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetuallyincreasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that </a><a name="S5">the displacement of thesignifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in theirrefusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate, their innategifts and social acquisitions notwithstanding, without regard forcharacter or sex, and that, willingly or not, everything that might beconsidered the stuff of psychology, kit and caboodle, will follow the pathof 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 hadleft our drama and its round with the question of the way in which thesubjects replace each other in it. Our fable is so constructed as to showthat it is the letter and its diversion which governs their entries androles. If <i>it</i> be "in sufferance," <i>they </i>shall endure the pain. Should they passbeneath its shadow, they become its reflection. Falling in possession ofthe 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 thevery situation which his daring brought to a head, a first time, to histriumph. If he now succumbs to it, it is because he has shifted to thesecond position in the triad in which he was initially third, as well as thethief– 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 frominquisitive eyes, he can do nothing but employ the same technique hehimself has already foiled: Leave it in the open? And we may properlydoubt that he knows what he is thus doing, when we see him immediatelycaptivated by a dual relationship in which we find all the traits of amimetic lure or of an animal feigning death, and, trapped in the typicallyimaginary situation of seeing that he is not seen, misconstrue the realsituation in which he is seen not seeing.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> And what does he fail to see? Precisely the symbolic situationwhich he himself was so well able to see, and in which he is now seenseeing himself not being seen.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> The Minister acts as a man who realizes that the police's search ishis own defense, since we are told he allows them total access by hisabsences: he nonetheless fails to recognize that outside of that search heis no longer defended.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> This is the very <i>autruicherie</i> whose artisan he was, if we may allowour monster to proliferate, but it cannot be by sheer stupidity that he nowcomes 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 therole of the Queen, and even the attributes of femininity and shadow, sopropitious 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 theelementary opposition of dark and light. For its precise use involves whatis blinding in a flash of light, no less than the shimmering shadowsexploit in order not to lose their prey.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> Here sign and being, marvelously asunder, reveal which is victoriouswhen they come into conflict. A man man enough to defy to the point ofscorn a lady's fearsome ire undergoes to the point of metamorphosis thecurse 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 hervery being therein, founding it outside the law, which subsumes hernevertheless, originarily, in a position of signifier, nay, of fetish. In orderto be worthy of the power of that sign she has but to remain immobile inits shadow, thus finding, moreover, like the Queen, that simulation ofmastery in inactivity that the Minister's "Iynx eye" alone was able topenetrate.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> This stolen sign–here then is man in its possession: sinister in thatsuch possession may be sustained only through the honor it defies, cursedin calling him who sustains it to punishment or crime, each of whichshatters 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 itspossession, like the Socratic sting ray, to benumb its man to the point ofmaking him fall into what appears clearly in his case to be a state ofidleness.</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 thisremark, strictly speaking, concerns precisely its use for ends ofpower–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 knowwhat else to do with the letter. For that use places him in so total adependence on the letter as such, that in the long run it no longer involvesthe 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 theKing, might present to the Queen respectful admonitions, even were he toassure their sequel by appropriate precautions–or initiate an actionagainst the author of the letter, concerning whom, the fact that heremains outside the story's focus reveals the extent to which it is notguilt and blame which are in question here, but rather that sign ofcontradiction and scandal constituted by the letter, in the sense in whichthe Gospel says that it must come regardless of the anguish of whoeverserves as its bearer,–or even submit the letter as document in a dossierto a 'third person' qualified to know whether it will issue in a StarChamber 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 theseuses, and it is fitting that we don't, since the effect of this non-use aloneconcerns us; it suffices for us to know that the way in which the letterwas 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 itsmeaning, is obligatory for the Minister, its use for ends of power can onlybe potential, since it cannot become actual without vanishing in theprocess– but in that case the letter exists as a means of power onlythrough the final assignations of the pure signifier, namely: by prolongingits diversion, making it reach whomever it may concern through asupplementary transfer, that is, by an additional act of treason whoseeffects the letter's gravity makes it difficult to predict–or indeed bydestroying 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 whatit signifies.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> The ascendancy which the Minister derives from the situation isthus not a function of the letter, but, whether he knows it or not, of therole it constitutes for him. And the Prefect's remarks indeed present himas someone "who dares all things," which is commented upon significantly:"those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man," words whosepungency escapes Baudelaire when he translates: "ce qui est indigne d'unhomme aussi bien que ce qui est digne de lui" (those unbecoming a man aswell as those becoming him). For in its original form, the appraisal is farmore 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, nodoubt, without knowing it. It is indicated, as well, as early as the secondpage of the English text by one of the narrator's remarks, whose form isworth savoring: the Minister's ascendancy, we are told, "would depend uponthe robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber." Wordswhose importance the author underscores by having Dupin repeat themliterally after the narration of the scene of the theft of the letter. Hereagain we may say that Baudelaire is imprecise in his language in havingone ask, the other confirm, in these words: "Le voleur saitil? . . ." (Does therobber know?), then: "Le voleur salt . . ." (the robber knows). What? "que lapersonne 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 personknows who robbed her, but rather with what kind of a robber she isdealing; for she believes him capable of anything, which should beunderstood as her having conferred upon him the position that no one is infact 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 personof whom we are expected to believe so. The proof is not only that theQueen dares to call the police. For she is only conforming to herdisplacement to the next slot in the arrangement of the initial triad intrusting to the very blindness required to occupy that place: "No moresagacious agent could, I suppose," Dupin notes ironically, "be desired oreven 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 animpatience best imputed to a specular mirage.</a></p><p><a name="S32"> For the Minister is kept quite busy confining himself to the idlenesswhich is presently his lot. The Minister, in point of fact, is not altogethermad. That's a remark made by the Prefect, whose every word is gold: it istrue that the gold of his words flows only for Dupin and will continue toflow to the amount of the fifty thousand francs worth it will cost him bythe metal standard of the day, though not without leaving him a margin ofprofit. 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 theman who withdrew to an island to forget, what? he forgot–so theMinister, through not making use of the letter, comes to forget it. As isexpressed by the persistence of his conduct. But the letter, no more thanthe neurotic's unconscious, does not forget him. It forgets him so littlethat it transforms him more and more in the image of her who offered itto his capture, so that he now will surrender it, following her example, toa similar capture.</a></p><p> <a name="S32"> </a><a name="S7">The features of that transformation are noted, and in a form socharacteristic in their apparent gratuitousness that they might validly becompared 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 letterover,</i> not, of course, as in the Queen's hasty gesture, but, moreassiduously, as one turns a garment inside out. So he must proceed,according to the methods of the day for folding and sealing a letter, inorder 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 sealchanging from the red of passion to the black of its mirrors, he willimprint his stamp upon it. This oddity of a letter marked with therecipient's stamp is all the more striking in its conception, since, thoughforcefully articulated in the text, it is not even mentioned by Dupin in thediscussion he devotes to the identification of the letter.</p><p> Whether that omission be intentional or involuntary, it will surprisein the economy of a work whose meticulous rigor is evident. But in eithercase 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 aphase 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 ofeffeminacy; the display of an ennui bordering on disgust in hisconversation; 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> canelicit from virtually impalpable details (like that of the musicalinstrument on the table), everything seems intended for a character, all ofwhose 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, describingbehind 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 sensethat we teach that the unconscious means that man is inhabited by thesignifier: Could we find a more beautiful image of it than the one Poehimself forges to help us appreciate Dupin's exploit? For with this aim inmind, he refers to those toponymical inscriptions which a geographicalmap, lest it remain mute, superimposes on its design, and which maybecome the object of a guessing game: Who can find the name chosen by apartner?–noting immediately that the name most likely to foil a beginnerwill 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 entirecountry....</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 sodoes he already expect to find it, and has only, with his eyes veiled bygreen lenses, to undress that huge body.</a></p><p><a name="S29"> And that is why without needing any more than being able to listenin at the door of Professor Freud, he will go straight to the spot in whichlies and lives what that body is designed to hide, in a gorgeous centercaught in a glimpse, nay, to the very place seducers name Sant' Angelo'sCastle in their innocent illusion of controlling the City from within it.Look! between the cheeks of the fireplace, there's the object already inreach of a hand the ravisher has but to extend.... The question of decidingwhether he seizes it above the mantelpiece as Baudelaire translates, or<br>beneath it, as in the original text, may be abandoned without harm to theinferences 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 meanthat the symbolic debt would as well be extinguished? Even if we couldbelieve so, we would be advised of the contrary by two episodes which wemay all the less dismiss as secondary in that they seem, at first sight, toclash with the rest of the work.</p><p> First of all, there's the business of Dupin's remuneration, which, farfrom being a closing pirouette, has been present from the beginning in therather unselfconscious question he asks the Prefect about the amount ofthe reward promised him, and whose enormousness, the Prefect, howeverreticent he may be about the precise figure, does not dream of hiding fromhim, even returning later on to refer to its increase.</p><p> The fact that Dupin had been previously presented to us as a virtualpauper in his ethereal shelter ought rather to lead us to reflect on the dealhe makes out of delivering the letter, promptly assured as it is by thecheckbook he produces. We do not regard it as negligible that theunequivocal hint through which he introduces the matter is a "storyattributed to the character, as famous as it was eccentric," Baudelairetells 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 totake medicine, but to take advice.</p><p> <a name="S35">Do we not in fact feel concerned with good reason when for Dupinwhat is perhaps at stake is his withdrawal from the symbolic circuit ofthe letter–we who become the emissaries of all the purloined letterswhich at least for a time remain in sufferance with us in thetransference. And is it not the responsibility their transference entailswhich we neutralize by equating it with the signifier most destructive ofall 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 hisexploit, if its purpose is to allow him to withdraw his stakes from thegame, makes all the more paradoxical, even shocking, the partisan attack,the underhanded blow, he suddenly permits himself to launch against theMinister, whose insolent prestige, after all, would seem to have beenauflficiently 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 nothelp dedicating, in his counterfeit letter, to the moment in which theMinister, enraged by the inevitable defiance of the Queen, will think he isdemolishing 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 hishandwriting, all of which, since depriving of any danger a merciless act ofinfamy, would seem, concerning a figure who is not without merit, atriumph without glory, and the rancor he invokes, seemming from an evilturn done him at Vienna (at the Congress?) only adds an additional bit ofblackness to the whole.</p><p> Lee us consider, however, more closely <a name="S39">this explosion of feeling, andmore specifically the moment it occurs in a sequence of acts whosesuccess depends on so cool a head.</a></p><p><a name="S39"> It comes just after the moment in which the decisive ace ofidentifying the letter having been accomplished, it may be said that Dupinalready has the letter as much as if he had seized it, without, however, asyet 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 andthe Minister. Will he, in showing himself to be above it, reveal to us at thesame 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, itremains for him to make it arrive at its address. And that address is inthe place previously occupied by the King, since it is there that it wouldreenter 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 inthat position were able to read the letter because that <i>place entailedblindness.</i></a></p><p> <a name="S41"> <i>Rex et augur</i>, the legendary, archaic quality of the words seems toresound 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 doso. It is not natural for man to bear alone the weight of the highest ofsignifiers. And the place he occupies as soon as he dons it may be equallyapt 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 equivocationnatural to the sacred, with the imbecility which prizes none other thanthe Subject.</p><p> That is what will give their meaning to the characters who willfollow him in his place. Not that the police should be regarded asconstitutionally 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 theirfunctions here are plainly marked by the forms of liberalism, that is, bythose imposed on them by masters on the whole indifferent to eliminatingtheir indiscreet tendencits. Which is why on occasion words are notminced as to what is expected of them: "<i>Sutor ne uItra crepidam</i>, just takecare 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 thedark."<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 principlesshall have lasted in history but a morning's time, that already the marchof destiny is everywhere bringing back–a sequel to a just aspiration tofreedom'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 beobserved that this practice, which was always well received to the extentthat it was exercised only in favor of the greatest number, comes to beauthenticated in public confessions of forgery by the very ones who mightvery well object to it: the most recent manifestation of the preeminenceof the signifier over the subject.</p><p> It remains, nevertheless, that a police record has always been theobject of a certain reserve, of which we have difficulty understandingthat it amply transcends the guild of historians.</p><p> It is by dint of this vanishing credit that Dupin's intended delivery ofthe letter to the Prefect of Police will diminish its import. What nowremains of the signifier when, already relieved of its message for theQueen, it is now invalidated in its text as soon as it leaves the Minister'shands?</p><p> It remains for it now only to answer that very question, of whatremains of a signifier when it has no more signification. But this is thesame question asked of it by the person Dupin now finds in the spotmarked by blindness.</p><p> For that is indeed the question which has led the Minister there, ifhe be the gambler we are told and which his act sufficiently indicates. Forthe 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 ofhuman life a reprieve obtained from morning to morning in the name ofmeanings whose sign is your crook. Thus did Schcherazade for a thousandand one nights, and thus have I done for eighteen months, suffering theascendancy of this sign at the cost of a dizzying series of fraudulent turnsat the game of even or odd."</p><p> So it is that Dupin, <i>from the place he now occupies</i>, cannot helpfeeling <a name="S40">a rage of manifestly feminine nature against him who poses such aquestion. The prestigious image in which the poet's inventiveness and themathematician's rigor joined up with the serenity of the dandy and theelegance of the cheat suddenly becomes, for the very person who invitedus to savor it, the true <i>monstrum horrendum</i>, for such are his words, "anunprincipled man of genius."</a></p><p><a name="S40"> It is here that the origin of that horror betrays itself, and he whoexperiences it has no need to declare himself (in a most unexpectedmanner) "a partisan of the lady" in order to reveal it to us: it is known thatladies detest calling principles into question, for their charms owe muchto the mystery of the signifier.</a></p><p><a name="S40"> Which is why Dupin will at last turn toward us the medusoid face ofthe signifier nothing but whose obverse anyone except the Queen has beenable to read. The commonplace of the quotation is fitting for the oraclethat face bears in its grimace, as is also its source in tragedy: </a><a name="S52">". . . Undestin 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 whichI knot your desires. Thus do they grow in force and multiply in objects,bringing you back to the fragmentation of your shattered childhood. So beit: such will be your feast until the return of the stone guest I shall be foryou 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 withwhich–along with some of you who had followed us to the Zurich Congresslast year–we rendered homage to the local password, the signifier'sanswer 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 credulousof his diversions.</a></p><p><a name="S52"> No doubt the brazen creature is here reduced to the state ofblindness which is man's in relation to the letters on the wall that dictatehis destiny. But what effect, in calling him to confront them, may weexpect from the sole provocations of the Queen, on a man like him? Love orhatred. The former is blind and will make him lay down his arms. Thelatter is lucid, but will awaken his suspicions. </a><a name="S43">But if he is truly thegambler we are told he is, he will consult his cards a final time beforelaying them down and, upon reading his hand, will leave the cable in timeto avoid disgrace.</a></p><p><a name="S43"> </a><a name="S37">Is that all, and shall we believe we have deciphered Dupin's realstrategy above and beyond the imaginary tricks with which he was obligedto deceive us? No doubt, yes, for if "any poin requiring reflection," asDupin states at the start, is "examined to best purpose in the dark," wemay now easily read its solution in broad daylight. It was already implicitand easy to derive from the title of our tale, according to the very formulawe have long submitted to your discretion: in which the sender, we tellyou, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form. </a><a name="S31"></a><a name="S44">Thus itis that what the "purloined letter" nay, the "letter in sufferance," meansis that a letter always arrives at its destination.</a></p><p><a name="S44"><br></a></p><p><a name="S44"> [[Category:Works by Jacques Lacan]][[Category:Essays by Jacques Lacan]][[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
