¶ 《被窃的信》研讨班
来源：精神分析 Wiki：《被窃的信》研讨班
原页面最后修订：2024-09-01T08:08:57Z
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¶ 中文正文
¶ 法文版第11页
Und wenn es uns glückt, Und wenn es sich schickt, So sind es Gedanken.（倘若碰上运气好，事情来得又凑巧，思想就会呱呱叫。）
我的研究使我意识到，强迫重复（Wiederholungszwang）的基础在于我所称之为能指链的坚持。我把这个概念隔离出来，当作外－在（即离心位置）的对应物，而我们必然在后者中定位无意识的主体，如果我们要严肃对待弗洛伊德的发现的话。众所周知，在精神分析开创的经验中，我们可以通过歪曲的想象手段理解符号界如何深入人类有机体的哪怕是最深的地方。
本次研讨班的教学意在强调，想象效果远非代表分析经验的核心，除非它们与束缚并引导它们的符号链相关，否则它们不会给予我们任何一致性。
当然，我意识到在符号性替代物的部分化进程[译注1]中，想象印痕（Prägung）的重要性[译注2]，这些印痕使能指链显现。尽管如此，我主张，特定于这个链条的法律支配着对主体具有决定性影响的精神分析效果——如弃绝（Verwerfung）、压抑（Verdrängung）和否定（Verneinung）本身——并且我强调，这些效果如此忠实地跟随能指的移置（Entstellung），以至于想象因素尽管具有惰性，却仅以影子和反射的形式出现其中。
但是，如果这种强调在你们看来只是为了从现象中抽象出一种一般形式，尽管这些现象的特殊性在分析经验中对你们来说仍是核心，并且其原始的综合性质只能通过人工的方式来分解，那么这种强调就白白浪费了。
这就是为什么我今天决定通过一个故事来向你们展示一个真理，这个真理可以从我们一直在研究的弗洛伊德思想的这个时刻（moment）中得出——即，正是符号秩序对主体具有构成性——通过展示某个能指的行程对主体的主要决定作用来说明这一点。
¶ 第12页
恰恰是这个真理，使得虚构的存在成为可能。因此，一个寓言与任何其他故事一样适合作为揭示它的方式——只要我们愿意将寓言的连贯性进行考验。在这个前提下，一个寓言甚至具有显现符号必然性的优势，尽管我们可能倾向于认为它是由任意性支配的。
这就是为什么，不再费心寻找，我直接从游戏“猜单双”的辩证法中选取了我的例子，从中我们收集到了某些重要的事情。这个故事很适合继续那些已经依赖于它的研究路线，这也许不是偶然。
正如你们所知，我指的是鲍德莱尔翻译成法语的故事《失窃的信》（La lettre volée）。在这个故事中，我们必须立即区分戏剧（drama）和叙述及其条件。
此外，我们很快发现这些组成部分的必要性何在，意识到它们的创作者不可能无意间创造出它们。
实际上，叙述通过评论有效地将戏剧效果加倍，没有评论就无法进行场景调度（mise-en-scène）。可以说，除了对话由于戏剧性需要而完全缺乏其对听众的任何意义外，行动严格来说对观众是不可见的。换句话说，没有叙述从一个演员在扮演角色时的视角对每个场景施加的歪曲光线，不论是在图像的框架还是声音的取样中，任何戏剧都不会显现出来。
有两个这样的场景，第一个我会立即指定为原始场景，而这绝不是无意的，因为第二个场景可以被视为它的重复，按照我在本次研讨会上表述的这个术语的意义。
¶ 第13页
因此，据我们所知，原始场景是在皇家内院中进行的，这让我们猜测获称“地位至高无上的人物”，也被称作“崇高人物”的，独自在那里收到一封信的，是王后。这个感觉得到了确认，因为她在“另一位达官贵人”进入时处于尴尬境地，之前我们已经被告知，如果他知道这封信，将会至少危及这位王后的“荣誉和安宁”。在这段叙述中，我们立即意识到他实际上是国王，而这一点在接下来的场景中得到了迅速澄清，该场景以D部长的进入开始。因为在那一刻，王后最多只能利用国王的漫不经心，把信翻过来放在桌子上，“地址向上”。然而，这并没有逃过部长的锐眼，他也没有忽视王后的困境，因此理解了她的秘密。从那时起，一切都如时钟般运作。在以他一贯的速度和聪明处理日常事务之后，部长从口袋里掏出一封与眼前的信相似的信，假装阅读后将其放在另一封信旁边。用一点额外的对话来蒙蔽国王的眼睛后，他随即毫不动摇地拿起那封令人尴尬的信并离开，而王后由于她的皇室配偶此刻正站在她身边，无法干预。
一个理想的观众可能不会注意到这个其中没有人眨眼的操作，它的结果（quotient，商数[译注3]）是部长从王后那里偷走了她的信，更重要的是，王后知道他现在拥有它，且绝不是不小心的。
一位训练有素的分析师不会忽略一个剩余（remainder，余数），他在训练中要记住所有与能指有关的东西，即使他不总是知道如何处理它：那封部长留下的信，现在王后可以自由地揉成一团。
第二个场景：在部长的旅馆，他的办公室。我们从警察局长向杜宾提供的叙述中得知，在过去三个月里，警察已经从上到下搜查了这座酒店及其周围，每当部长晚上定期外出时，他们都会回到这里。然而，尽管任何人都可以从情况中推断出，部长将信件保存在随手可及的地方，但一切都徒劳无功。
¶ 第14页
杜宾拜访了部长。后者以一种漫不经心的姿态迎接他，在谈话中表现出浪漫的倦怠。同时，杜宾没有被这种假装蒙蔽，用一副绿眼镜保护着他的眼睛，检查了现场。当他的目光落在一封非常破旧的信上时，他已经知道他找到了他在寻找的东西，这封信似乎被遗弃在一个破烂的、引人注目的纸质卡片架的一个隔层里，正好悬挂在壁炉架的中央。
他的信念是由那些细节加强的，这些细节似乎是为了反驳他所得到的关于被盗信件的描述，除了大小之外，其它都符合。于是他只需告辞离开，在桌子上“忘记”他的鼻烟盒，然后第二天回来取回它——手持信件现状的复本。当街上的一个事件在合适的时机吸引了部长的注意力，使其望向窗外时，杜宾趁机将信件替换为一份仿制品，并保持正常离开的样子。
同样地，尽管过程并非完全无声，但至少没有任何喧闹。操作的结果是，部长不再拥有那封信，但他对此一无所知，并且完全没有怀疑是杜宾从他那里夺走了信件。此外，这一过程对接下来发生的事情具有重要意义。我稍后会回到杜宾在假信上写下某些东西的原因。无论如何，当部长尝试使用那封信时，他会看到杜宾告诉我们，其源自克雷比戎的《阿尔特拉厄》，写的字样让他认出杜宾的笔迹：
Un dessein sifuneste
如此恶毒的阴谋
S'ilnest digne d'Atree, est digne de Thyeste.
即使比不上阿尔特拉厄，也比得上蒂埃斯特了。
我是否需要强调这两个动作之间的相似性？是的，因为我所想到的相似性并不是简单地选择几个统一特征（trait）来准备它们的差异。仅仅保留相似性的特征，而忽略其他特征，是无法得出任何真理的。相反，我想强调的是这两个行动得以有动机的主体际性，以及主体际性结构着的三个项。
¶ 第15页
这些项的特殊地位源于它们既对应于决策得以沉淀的三个逻辑时刻，也对应于该决策给它所裁决的主体分配的位置。
这个决策是在目光（法：regard）的瞬间达成的。[1]在随后的操作中，不论这个瞬间在其中怎样悄悄地延长，都不会增加任何东西，就像第二幕中时机的推迟也不会破坏这一瞬间的统一性。
这个目光预设了另外两个目光，它们组合在一起，提供了一个视角，看到那些虚假的互补性中留下的缺口，预期（anticipate）到由揭露所提供的掠夺。因此，这里有三个时刻，排列着三次目光，由三个主体支撑，每次都由具身于不同的人。
第一个［时刻］基于一个什么也看不到的目光：国王和警察。
第二个［时刻］基于的目光是看到第一个目光什么也没看到，并因此自欺地进入［这个目光］，认为其所隐藏的东西被掩盖了：王后和部长。
第三个［时刻］基于的目光是看到前两个目光留下的、必须隐藏的东西暴露于任何想要夺取它的人：部长，最后还有杜宾。
为了让你们把握这个主体际的复杂性，我愿意寻求那种传说中鸵鸟（autruche）在危险中寻找庇护的技术。因为这种技术可能最终会被称为政治性的，分布在三个伙伴之间，第二个相信自己是隐形的，因为第一个把头埋在沙子里，而第三个则悠然自得地采摘他后部［的羽毛］。我们只需用一个字母（lettre）丰富它的谚语名称，产生la politique de l’autruiche，这种技术本身就会最终获得新的永恒意义。
在这样建立了重复行动的主体际模块之后，我们现在必须在其中指出一种强迫重复，这种强迫重复是我们在弗洛伊德的工作中感兴趣的。
¶ 第16页
我们这里有一群主体的事实，当然，不能构成对那些习惯于我所总结的视角——无意识是大他者的话语——的人的任何反对。我现在不会提醒你最近我在重新分析伊玛打针梦时引入的主体的混杂（inmixing of subjects，法：l’immixtion des sujets）这个概念在这里增加了什么。
今天我感兴趣的是诸主体在主体间重复过程中由于他们的移置而相互替换的方式。
我们将看到，他们的位置变化是由一个纯粹能指——被窃的信——在他们的“三”中占据的位置决定的。这将证实对我们来说，这是强迫重复。
然而，在继续这一探讨之前，问一下这个故事的目的和我们对此的兴趣是一致，似乎并非多余。
我们是否可以认为这个以悬疑的方式讲述为故事是简单的“合理化”，正如我们用粗陋的行话所说的？
事实上，我们有理由认为这是非常可疑的，考虑到一切创造了这样的谜团的关于犯罪或罪行的事情——它的性质和动机，工具和执行，发现其作者的程序，以及用来将其定罪的手段——在每一片段开始时都被仔细地排除在外。
的确，欺骗行为从一开始就被清楚地知道，策划者的阴谋及其对受害者的影响也是如此。问题，如向我们暴露的那样，仅限于寻找欺骗性获取的物品，以便归还；而解决方案似乎在解释给我们听的时候已经知道了。我们就是这样被吊起胃口的吗？无论我们多么相信一个体裁的惯例可以唤起读者的特定兴趣，我们不应忘记“杜宾故事”——这是第二个发表的故事——是原型，由于它只从第一个故事中获得其体裁，因此作者玩弄一个惯例还为时过早。
¶ 第17页
然而，将整件事情简化为一个寓言——其寓意是，为了避开好奇的眼睛，为了夫妻间的和睦，信件的秘密是必要的，所以把信放在桌子上就足够的，甚至可以把它们能指的那面朝下——这样做似乎同样过于夸张。这将是一次诱惑，所以我个人绝不建议任何人尝试，否则他会因为信任它而失望。
那么，这里除了警察局长的无能导致的失败外，没有其他谜团了吗？杜邦在向我们介绍他的方法时，肯定会说一些很有洞察力的话（然而，这些话被概括后并不总是绝对相关的），而他实际上是如何干预的，这两者之间难道没有某种我们不愿承认的不和谐吗？
如果我们再进一步追寻我们被愚弄的感觉，我们可能很快就会开始怀疑——从只有主角的地位才能避免沦为滑稽剧的开场场景，到故事结尾处似乎等待着部长的嘲弄——是不是每个人都被骗的事实让我们如此愉快。
我会更倾向于认为是这样，因为我和读者一样，会在这里重新找到我曾在某处顺便给出的现代英雄定义，“在混乱的处境中，通过荒谬的壮举为表现”[2]。
但是，业余侦探是一种新的吹牛者的原型，但却没有当代超人*的平庸，我们难道不为他的威风凛凛所折服吗？
这是一个玩笑，但它使我们注意到，通过对比，这个故事中如此完美的逼真性，以至于可以说真理在这里揭示了其虚构的顺序。
因为这无疑是导致我们对这种逼真性产生推理的进路。首先进入其程序时，我们实际上看到了一出新的戏剧，我称之为第一出戏剧的补充戏剧，因为第一出被称为无声戏剧，而第二出的兴趣在于言语的属性。[3]
¶ 第18页
的确，虽然显然两出实在戏剧的场景是在不同的对话过程中叙述的，但必须掌握我教学中带出的某些概念，才能意识到这不仅仅是为了使讲述更愉快，而是这些对话本身，它们对言语功效（vertu）的相反运用中产生了一种张力[译注4]，使它们成为有差异的戏剧，我的术语将第一出戏剧与在符号秩序中维持自身的戏剧相区分。
第一个对话——在警察局长和杜宾之间——如同一个聋子和一个听者之间的对话。也就是说，它体现了交流这个概念中通常被简化的真正复杂性，及其最混乱的结果。
这个例子展示了交流如何给人这种印象，即传递的信息中只有一个意思——理论家们常常在这个印象上止步不前——好像听者将其整合的相当重要的评论可以被忽视，因为它没有被聋子察觉到。
事实是，如果我们仅将对话的意义保留为一个报告，它的逼真性似乎依赖于准确性（l’exactitude）的保证。但如果我们展示其策略，报告实际上会变得更加丰富，如同我们通过关注第一场景的叙述将看到的那样。
因为通过一个双重甚至三重主观过滤器传递的场景——由杜宾的亲密朋友（我将其称为故事的总叙述者）讲述的警察局长向杜宾透露女王给他的版本的叙述——并不仅仅是一个偶然安排的结果。
如果说，原叙述者被还原到的极端性不允许她改变任何事件，那么我们就错误地认为警察局长只是由于缺乏想象力（他似乎持有这种专利）而授权她在此传达他的声音。
¶ 第19页
信息以这种方式转达给我们，确保了某些绝对不理所当然的东西：信息属于语言的维度。
在座的各位都很熟悉我关于这个主题的论述，尤其是我以假定的蜜蜂语言为反例所作的论述，其中语言学家[4]只能看到对象位置的简单信号——换句话说，只能看到比其他［想象］功能更受分化的一种想象功能。
我要强调的是，这种形式的交流在人类中并不是不存在的，无论对象的自然被给予性（donné naturel）因人使用符号（symbole）而解体，对人类来说是多么微不足道。
实际上，在两个人之间建立的对某对象的共同仇恨中可以把握到某种等价的交流，前提是这种情况只能发生在单一对象上，一个由两人中的每个人拒绝接受的存在（者）特征所定义的对象上。
但是，这种交流不能以符号界的形式传递。它只能在与该对象的关系中得以维持。这就是为什么它可以在一个共同“理想”中联合无限多的主体；在这种群体中，一个主体与另一个主体之间的交流仍然不可避免地受到一种难以言表的关系的中介。
这段插话不仅是对那些指责我忽视非语言交流的人的原则的提醒；在确定关于话语重复范围的问题时，它为我们准备了症状重复什么的问题。
因此，［关于第一场景的］间接的叙述澄清了语言的维度，而总叙述者通过“假设性地”加以复述，并没有给它添加任何东西。但在第二次对话中，他的角色完全不是如此。
¶ 第20页
因为后者与前者相对，就像我在其他地方区分的语言的对立一样，即词与言语的对立。[译注15]
这就是说，我们在这里从准确性的场域换到了真理的界域。这个界域——我敢说不需要再回过头去讨论——完全位于另一个地方：位于主体际性的基础。在它［界域］的这个地方，主体几乎什么也抓不住，只能抓住将他者构成为绝对的主体性。为了指出它在这里的位置，我将仅提及一个对话，这似乎使我认为它可以被称为犹太笑话，因为能指与言语之间的关系赤裸裸地出现在将对话引向高潮的恳求中：“为什么你要骗我？”其中一个角色愤怒地喊道，“是的，为什么你要骗我说你要去克拉科夫，让我以为你要去利沃夫，而你确实要去克拉科夫？”
在我们心中可能会因杜宾方法引言中的一连串疑问、诡辩谜语、悖论，甚至玩笑，而产生类似的问题，如果说一位准信徒向我们转达了这些信息，而这并不能通过这种委托行为赋予它们新的内涵的话。证词必然具有的威力是：证人的忠诚是那些可能批评其证词的人的眼中的迷雾。
此外，还有什么比把牌面朝上放在桌子上更具说服力呢？它如此具有说服力，以至于我们暂时被说服，认为魔术师确实像他承诺的那样演示了他的把戏是如何完成的，尽管他只是以更纯粹的形式表演了它；这一刻让我们欣赏到在主体中能指的至高无上。
这就是杜宾在讲述那个在偶数或奇数游戏中用其认同对手的技巧欺骗了所有同学的神童故事时的操作方式，我已经展示了他［杜宾］不能达到其理论阐述的第一个［首要的］层次——即主体间交替的概念——在不立即被其再现的阻碍所绊倒的情况下。[5]
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这并没有阻止我们被带到一连串大名鼎鼎的人物——拉罗什富科[译注5]、拉布吕耶尔[译注6]、马基雅维利[译注7]和坎帕内拉[译注8]，他们的名声如今与那个孩子的聪明才智相比显得微不足道。[译注9]
然后是尚福尔[译注10]，他的格言“可能公众接受的每一个观点，每一个公认的约定（convention），都是愚蠢的，因为它们适合大多数人”无疑会满足所有那些认为自己逃脱其［格言］律法的人，也就是，恰恰是大多数人。杜宾指责法国人把“分析”一词应用于代数时[译注11]虚伪几乎没有威胁到我们的自尊，此外，将该术语解放用于其他用途绝不应该引发精神分析师介入并声称他的权利。而他开始进行的那些语言学评论肯定会让拉丁语爱好者感到高兴；当他回忆起而不屑一提的是“‘ambitus [不意指着] 野心’，‘religio 宗教’，‘homines honesti 一群正派的人，”你们中有谁不会乐于记得，这些词对西塞罗和卢克莱修的忠实读者意味着什么［拉康在1968年重印时删去：détour, lien sacré, les gens bien‘绕道、神圣联系、好人’］？无疑，坡正玩得开心……
但我们心中产生了一种怀疑：这场学识的展示是不是为了让我们听到我们戏剧的关键词（maîtres-mots）？[6]魔术师是否在我们眼前重复他的把戏，不是让我们以为这次他在揭示他的秘密，而是更进一步，真的为我们揭示它而我们却什么也看不见？这会是魔术师艺术的巅峰：让他虚构的一个角色真正（truly）欺骗我们。
而这种效果是否正是我们无害地将许多虚构英雄称为实在人物的依据？
由此，当我们敞开心扉聆听马丁·海德格尔在词语 ἀληθής 中为我们揭示的真理游戏时，我们只是在重新发现一个秘密，真理总是向她的爱人们传授这个秘密，通过这个秘密爱人们学到了正是在隐藏中真理最真正地（truly）向他们展现自己。因此，即使杜宾的评论没有如此公然地挑战我们去相信它们，我们仍然必须对抗相反的诱惑，尝试相信它们。
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因此，让我们来追踪（dépistons）他的步伐，看看他是如何甩掉（dépiste）我们的。[7]首先，他在批评中解释了警长没有取得成功的原因。我们已经在第一次与杜宾的对话中看到局长对那些含蓄讽刺毫不在意，只把它们当作笑料。[译注12]杜宾暗示，正因为问题过于简单，甚至太显而易见，它可能显得晦涩，这对局长来说就像无关痛痒一样，毫无影响。
一切都在让我们相信他的愚蠢。这在断言他和他的手下永远无法想出任何超出一个普通流氓藏匿物品的想法时得到了有力表达——也就是那一系列众所周知的藏匿地点，从书桌暗藏的抽屉到可拆卸的桌面，从椅子上拆下的软垫到挖空的椅腿，从镜子的背面到书籍装订的厚度。
然后是对局长的错误的嘲笑，他因为部长是诗人，就推断他与疯子只差一步[译注13]，这一错误实际上只是一个中项不周延的错误，虽然这并非微不足道，因为从所有疯子都是诗人不能得出所有诗人都是疯子。
但是，对于诗人在隐藏艺术方面的优势，我们自己却一无所知——即使他是一位数学家——因为我们的追求突然受挫，被拖入了一片针对数学家推理的恶论丛中，据我所知，数学家从未对他们的公式表现出如此虔诚的态度，以至于将它们与理性本身等同。至少，让我们确证一下，与波似乎的经验不同，我偶尔会在我朋友里盖特（Riguet）面前冒险提出这样严肃的偏离（在波看来这是虚拟的亵渎），质疑“x²+px是否完全等于某个q”，而不必防范任何意外的攻击。
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那么，这么多的情报难道不是为了转移我们的视线，使我们不再关注早先已经表明的事实，即警方已经找遍了所有的地方：我们要把这个词理解为——就警方不无理性地假定可能找到信件的区域而言——空间的穷尽，这无疑是理论上的，但关于这一点，故事的趣味性取决于我们是否按字面意思（au pied de la lettre）接受它。把整个表面分割成编了号的小格子，是这次操作的原则，我们看到的是如此精确，以至于据说“一条线（a line）的五十分之一”都逃不过调查人员的探查。[译注14]那么，我们难道没有权利问一问，为什么没有在任何地方发现这封信，或者说，作者用最高端的隐藏的概念告诉我们的一切，都不能严格地解释这封信为何逃脱了侦查，因为梳理过的地方确实藏有这封信，杜邦的发现最终证明了这一点。
那么，在所有物品中，信件是否必须被赋予“nullibiety”［无何有之乡］的属性：这个术语就是罗杰特辞典从威尔金斯主教的符号学乌托邦中收录的那个词？[8]
显然（“有些太过显然”）[9]，这封信与场所（lieu）的关系是“odd”［奇怪、不成对、有余……］的，并没有任何法语词能完全涵盖这个英语形容词的含义。波德莱尔按常理将其翻译成“bizarre”，但这只是一个近似。可以说，这些关系是“singulier”［独特］的，因为它们正是能指与场所的关系。
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你们明白我的意图并不是把它们变成“微妙”的关系，我的目标不是混淆信［－字符］与精神（即使我们通过气动传递接收到前者），而且我欣然承认，如果说一者带来生命，那么另一者就带来死亡，因为能指（你们或许开始明白我的意思了）物质化了死亡的动因（instance）。但我首先强调的是，能指的物质性在许多方面是独特的，首先是它不允许被分割。把一封信［一个字符］切成小块，它仍然是它本身——这与格式塔理论在其整体概念中的潜在活力论完全不同。[10]
语言通过作为部分冠词的使用向那些知道如何听的人传达它的判决。确实，如果精神是活的意义，它似乎跟信－字符同样独特地允许量词化。首先，通过允许我们说“这个充满意义的［plein de signification］演讲”的意指，就像它允许我们在一次行动中认出一些意图［de l’intention］，哀叹不再有爱［plus d’amour］，储存仇恨［de la haine］，消耗奉献［du dévouement］，并注意到如此多的自负［tant d’infatuation］可以与总是有大量的争吵［de la cuisse］相伴随，人们之间有如此多的斗争［du rififi chez les homme］。
但就“lettre”［字符－信］本身而言，无论我们是把它当作一个印刷元素［字符］、一封信件，还是成就文人的东西，我们常说人们的话必须按字面理解［à la lettre］，一封信［une lettre］在邮局等你，或者你精通文学［des lettres］——从来不会说某处有一些字符［de la lettre］，无论在什么情况下，即使是指延误的邮件。
因为能指是一种特殊存在的单位，其本质上是一个缺席的象征。这就是为什么我们不能像其他对象那样说失窃的信件必须在或者不在某处，而是与其他对象不同，它将会且将不会在它所在的地方，无论它去往哪里。
事实上，让我们仔细看看警察那里发生了什么。我们被省略了关于在他们调查的空间中进行搜索的程序的细节：从对空间的分割，一小块东西都无法逃脱探查，到探针软垫和显微镜检查硬木上的钻孔粉末，甚至家具接缝的微小缝隙。随着网络的收紧，以至于警察不满足于抖动书页，而是开始清点书页，难道我们没有看到空间本身像信件一样落叶吗？
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但是搜寻者有如此不变的对实在的观念，以至于他们没有注意到他们的搜索倾向于将其转化为其对象——通过这种特质，他们本应该区分出该对象与所有其他对象的区别。
这无疑是太苛求他们了，不是因为他们缺乏洞见，而是因为我们［缺乏洞见］。因为他们的愚蠢既不是个体的也不是团体的；它的来源是主体性的。这就是现实主义者的愚蠢，他们不会静下心来去观察，无论一只手如何深藏于地底，没有任何东西会永远藏在那里，因为另一只手总能把它找出来，而被藏起来的东西永远只是不在它的位置上的东西，就像在谈到图书馆里丢失的一卷书时，它的登记卡片所说的那样。即使书在相邻的架子上或下一个槽里，它在那里也是隐藏的，尽管它在那里看起来是可见的。因为在字面意义上说，只有可以换位置的东西才能说不是在它的位置上［manque à sa place］——即符号界［能指］。而实在，无论你对它带来什么样的动荡，它始终在它的位置，无论如何，它都粘在它的鞋底上，根本不知道有什么东西能够将它放逐。
现在，回到我们的警察，当他们从隐藏的地方取出信时，他们怎么能理解它呢？他们在用手翻动的，却与他们被给出的描述不符的东西是什么？在乔伊斯的圈子里，他们玩弄英语中“letter”和“litter”两个词的同音。[11]警察们处理的看似是废纸［déchet］的东西在那一刻并没有因为是撕开的一半而揭示其另一种性质。另一种颜色的封印上的有着一个不同的印戳［cachet］，信封上的地址是另一种字迹［cachet］，这都是最不可破获的藏物地点［chattes］。而如果他们停留在信的背面——我们知道当时收件人的地址写在背面——那是因为对他们来说，信没有别的面，只有这背面。
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他们能从它的正面中发现什么？它的信息，正如人们常说的那样，这是对我们业余控制论爱好者的一个令人愉悦的答案？……但难道我们没有想到这个信息已经到达了它的收件人，并且连同那无足轻重的废纸一起留下了，后者现在不比原件更好地代表它吗？
如果我们可以说信件在完成其功能后实现了其命运，那么退还信件的仪式就不会是一个通常被接受的结束丘比特节庆的方式。能指不是功能性的。如果信只限于一个意义，那么我们正在追随的上流社会的变动将毫无意义。向一群警察宣布这个意义并不是保守秘密的合适方式。
我们甚至可以承认，信对王后的意义完全不同，如果不是更棘手的话，［信对王后的意义］不是它向部长展示的意义。事件的进程不会因此受到显著影响，即使信对不知情的人来说是完全不可理解的时候也是这样。
因为信显然对某些人来说是可以理解的，因为正如警长强烈保证的那样，引起大家的嘲笑，“向一个不愿透露姓名的第三者透露文件”（他的名字像猪尾巴一样在愚比王的牙齿之间跳出来）“会威胁到一个地位最尊贵的人的荣誉”，确实，杰出人物的“荣誉和安宁将受到威胁”。
因此，不仅传播信件的含义是危险的，传播信件的文本同样也是危险的。并且，信件文本看似越无害，其无意间泄露的风险就越大。
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警察的立场因此无法挽救，即使让他们变得更“有文化”也无济于事。Scripta manent［寫下的字能留存］：即便他们从豪华版人文主义中学到了用verba volant［口說的話會飛走］这个短语总结的格言教训，也无济于事。但愿上天能让写下的字就像口说的话一样留存下来：因为后者不可磨灭的债务会让我们的行动印刻（impregnate，cf. Prägung）它的转移。
文字像风一样，带走了一支疯狂骑兵的空白支票。如果它们不是飞散的［volant］叶子，也就不会有被窃的信。[译注16]
但这又如何呢？为了有被窃取的信件，我们不禁要问，信件究竟属于谁呢？我们将会强调，把信回归到那个不久前急切地看着抵押物不翼而飞的人那里，是一件很独特的事。而我们通常认为这种提前公布的手段是卑劣的，正如伊恩骑士（Knight of Eon）通过这种方法让他的几位通信者陷入了相当可悲的境地。
那么，寄信人仍然保留某些权利，因而信件不完全属于收信人吗？或者说，收信人从来就不是这封信的真正收信人吗？
让我们看一看：乍一看会使问题变得模糊的事情——即，故事几乎没有告诉我们任何关于寄信人或信件内容的信息——实际上会启发我们。我们仅被告知，部长立即认出了信封上女王地址的笔迹，只有在描绘部长伪装信件时才偶然提到原始的密文是S公爵的密文。至于信件的内容，我们只知道，如果信件落入某个第三者手中，将会带来危险，并且其持有使部长得以“出于政治目的，在极度危险的程度上”对相关人行使权力。但这并未告诉我们信件所携带的信息。
情书还是阴谋信，告密信还是指令信，要求信还是求助信，我们唯一可以确信的是：女王不能让她的君主兼主人知道它的存在。
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然而这些词（君主、主人）远不像在布尔乔亚喜剧中具有的贬义，在这里具有崇高的意义，因为它们通过暗指她的君主而具有了某种突出的意义，因为她对君主有着忠贞的誓言，而且加倍地忠贞，因为她作为配偶的角色并没有减轻她作为臣民的责任，而是将她提升为王权的守卫者，守卫王权依据法律而是的权力的化身，守卫所谓的合法性。
因此，无论女王对信件做什么，这封信是契约的象征仍然是事实，即使其收件人不承担该契约的责任，信件的存在也将她置于一个与构成她忠诚的符号链条相异的符号链条中。其与她的忠诚不相容的事实证明了这一点，因为持有信件的行为不可能以合法方式公开，女王只能诉诸她的隐私权，这一特权建立在她的荣誉之上，而持有信件反而会损害她的荣誉。
她象征着恩典与主权，不可能接受哪怕是私人的沟通却不涉及权力，而关系到君主时，她不能利用自己的秘密而不成为秘密。
因此，信件作者的责任退居其次，而持有者的责任更为重要：因为对王权的冒犯加上了叛国罪。
我说的是“持有者”而不是“所有者”。因为显然，收件人对信件的所有权和其他任何人对其的所有权同样值得怀疑，只要会受到损害的那个拥有特权的人没有作出决断，一切关于信的存在的事情都无法重回正轨。
然而，即使信件的保密性无法辩护，这并不意味着揭露这一秘密在某种情况下会是光荣的。Honesti homines，正派的人们，不能这么轻易逃脱。Religio不止一种，神圣的纽带将继续在相反的方向上拉扯我们。而至于ambitus，绕道，有时并非出于野心。在这里，虽然我迂回了一下，但我并没有盗窃（volé）这个词——因为，说实话，我采用波德莱尔给故事的标题只是为了强调，能指相对于所指的优先性质，而不是人们错误地认为的“约定俗成”的性质。尽管他十分景仰坡，波德莱尔仍然背叛了坡，将他的标题“The Purloined Letter”（待领的信）翻译成“La lettre volée”（被窃信件），英语标题包含一个足够罕见的词，以至于我们发现定义其词源比使用更容易。
¶ 第29页
根据《牛津英语词典》，to purloin是一个英法词汇，由前缀pur-（在purpose、purchase和purport中可以找到）和古法语词loing、loinger、longe组成。我们在第一个元素中认出拉丁语pro-，与ante相对，假设它站在其前面的背后，可能是为了保证它，甚至作为其抵押（而ante则是迎接它所遇到的东西）。至于第二个元素，古法语词loinger是一个动词，意指将位置分配到loing（或longe），不是远处，而是沿着。To purloin因此是mettre de cote（放到一旁）或者，用一个带有两种含义的俗语来说，mettre a gauche（字面意思是放在左边，也指藏起来）。
因此，我们的迂回得到了引导我们的对象物所确认：因为我们简单地在处理一封被绕道的信，其轨迹被延长了（这是标题中的字面意思），或者，用邮局的语言来说，一封en souffrance（待投递或未领取）的信。
于是，信件的独特性被简化到最简单的表达方式，“简单且独特”（simple and odd），正如故事第一页所告诉我们的；而信件，正如标题所示，是故事的真正主题（sujet）。既然它可以绕道，那么它必须有其特有的轨迹——这是其作为能指的效果的特征之一。能指只有在与电子显示牌或拟人思维机器[12]的旋转记忆相比拟的移置中才能维系自身，这是因为其核心的交替运作要求它离开它的位置，以便在绕圈之后再回到这个位置上。
¶ 第30页
这就是重复的自动性中发生的事情。弗洛伊德在我一直评论的文本［即《研讨班二》探讨的《超越快乐原则》］中教给我们的是，主体遵循符号界的序列。但这里展示的更引人注目：不仅是主体，而且是主体们，在其互主体性中排列成行——换句话说，我们的鸵鸟，他们比羊更驯服，他们的存在以能指链穿过它们的那一刻为模型。
如果弗洛伊德发现的、再次突然重新发现的东西有什么意义，那就是能指的移置决定了主体的行动、命运、拒绝、盲目、成功和命运，无论其天赋和教育如何，也不论其性格或性别；所有与心理学前定地有关的东西都无奈地跟随能指的轨迹，像武器和行李一样。
实际上，我们再次回到了那个交叉路口，上次我们提出了我们的戏剧及其循环中，主体们如何接替的问题。我的寓言旨在表明，正是信及其迂回支配了他们的出场和角色。虽然信件可能待领（en souffrance，有受苦之义），但他们将因此受苦。在其阴影[译注17]下经过，他们成为其反映（reflection）。通过进入信件的拥有——一种令人钦佩的模棱两可的语言[译注18]——其意义拥有了他们。
这正是戏剧中的英雄所表明的，当他在第一次大胆胜利时所创造的情景重演。如果他现在屈服了，那是因为他在三元组中从最初的第三位置转移到了第二位置，并且同时凭借其偷窃的对象成为了小偷。
如果说现在和以前一样，重点在于保护信件不被好奇的目光窥见，那么他不得不使用他自己已经破解过的技巧：将信件放在显眼的地方。我们可以合理怀疑他是否知道自己在做什么，因为我们看到他突然被一种二元关系捕获，在这种关系中，我们发现了模仿性诱惑或动物诈尸的所有特征，而他被困在典型的想象性处境中，看见他没有被看见，这导致他误解了实在处境，即他被看见没有看见。那么，他没有看到什么呢？恰恰是他自己曾经如此能够看清的符号性处境，而现在他在其中被看见看见自己没有被看见。
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大臣的行动像一个意识到警察的搜查正是他自己的防御的人，因为我们知道他故意通过缺席让警察完全进入他的酒店；然而，他忽略了他对这种形式的搜查之外的任何事情没有防御。这就是他自己制造的那种 autruicherie［他者鸵鸟］（如果我可以允许我多层次地增加我的怪物），但现在他成为其受害者绝非因为愚蠢。
因为在玩捉迷藏的游戏中，他不得不扮演女王的角色，甚至包括女性气质和影子的属性，这些都适合于隐蔽行动。我并不打算将阴阳这对老搭档简化为黑暗与光明的原始对立。因为它的精确使用涉及到闪光中令人盲目的东西，不亚于为了不失去猎物而利用的闪烁的阴影。[译注19]
在这里，符号（signe）和存在，奇妙地分开，揭示了当它们对立时哪个胜出。一位其男子气概足以蔑视一位女士的可怕怒火的男人（L’homme assez « homme »），会受到他剥夺的女人的符号的诅咒，甚至变形。因为这个符号显然是女人的，因为她在其中展示了她的存在，将其建立在法律之外，而法律在起源上总是将她包含在一个能指，或者说，一个崇拜物（fétiche）中。为了配得上这个符号的力量，她只需在其阴影中保持不动，从而像女王一样模拟不行动的掌握，只有大臣的“猞猁眼”能够看穿。
被偷窃的符号——男人现在处于它的控制之下——这种控制是凶恶的，因为它只能通过它所违抗的荣誉来维持；而且它是受诅咒的，因为它诱使维护它的人受罚或犯罪。这两者都违反了他对法律的臣服。
这个符号中一定有一个非常独特的“勿碰我”（noli me tangere）[译注20]，使得它的持有者像苏格拉底的电鳗[译注21]一样麻木，以至于他陷入一种明确无误的状态，即不行动。
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因为如叙述者在第一次对话时所指出的那样，当信件被使用时，其权力就消失了，我们意识到这一点只与其为权力目的的使用有关，同时大臣将不得不以这种方式使用它。
大臣为了使自身无法摆脱它，他必须不知道这封信的其他用途。因为这个用途使他如此完全地依赖于信件本身，以至于久而久之这个用途将不再涉及信件。我们的意思是，要使这种用途真正涉及信件，大臣——毕竟他有权因为为他的主人国王服务而这样做——可以向女王提出尊重的谏言，即使他不得不通过适当的保证来确保其期望的效果；或者他可以对信件的作者提起诉讼（事实上其作者保持在旁观者的位置，揭示了这里不涉及罪责，而是信件所构成的矛盾和丑闻的符号，就像《福音书》中所说的那样，它必将到来，无论谁是其持有者）；或者他甚至可以将信件作为证据提交给有资格决定是否对女王成立“烈焰审判室”或让大臣蒙羞的“第三人”。
我们不会知道为什么大臣不以任何这些方式使用信件，这正合适，因为这不使用的效果才是我们关心的；我们只需要知道的是，获取信件的方式不会对其中任何一个构成障碍。
因为很明显，虽然大臣将被迫以无意义（non significatif）的方式使用信件， 但它为权力目的的使用只能是潜在的，因为它不能在没有立即消失的情况下成为现实。因此，信件作为权力的手段仅通过纯粹能指的最终召唤而存在——要么通过延长其绕道，使其通过额外的转送（即通过另一个叛变，其严重性使得信件的重力难以预防）达到相关的人，要么通过销毁信件，这将是唯一可靠的方式，正如杜邦在开始时所建议的那样，以结束其注定要象征的事物的取消。
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大臣从这种局势中获得的优越地位并不是来自信件，而是无论他知道与否，来自其为他构建的角色。省长的评论因此将他描述为一个“敢于一切的人”，这被显著地评论道：“那些不适合一个人的以及那些适合他的东西”，这些话的含义在鲍德莱尔翻译时没有抓住：“ce qui est indigne d’un homme aussi bien que ce qui est digne de lui”（那些不适合一个人以及那些适合他的东西）。因为在其原始形式中，这种评价更适合与女人有关的事情。
这使我们看到了这个角色的想象性影响，即大臣所陷入的自恋关系，这一次肯定是他自己不知道的。它也在英文文本的第二页由叙述者的评论所指出，其形式值得品味：我们被告知，大臣的优越地位“将取决于抢劫者对失主知道抢劫者的知识”。作者通过让杜邦在省长叙述信件被盗场景后，谈话恢复时一字一句地重复这些话，强调了其重要性。这里我们可能会说，鲍德莱尔在他的语言上不够准确，让一个人问另一个人确认以下内容：“Le voleur sait-il?..”（抢劫者知道吗？），然后：“Le voleur sait…” （抢劫者知道）。什么？“que la personne volée connaît son voleur”（被抢劫的人知道她的抢劫者）。
对于抢劫者来说，重要的不仅是被抢劫者知道是谁抢劫了她，而且她知道她在与什么样的抢劫者打交道；事实是，她认为他能做任何事，这应理解为：她赋予他一个没有人能够真正承担的地位，因为这是想象中的，即绝对主人的地位。
实际上，这是一个绝对弱点的位置，但对于我们引导相信这一点的人来说并非如此。证明不仅仅是女王采取了大胆的步骤召唤警察。因为警察只是符合他们在初始三人组阵列中被置于下一个位置的位移，接受占据该位置所需的盲目性：“没有更精明的特工，我想，”杜邦讽刺地指出，“被期望，甚至被想象。”不，如果女王采取了这一步，不是因为她“绝望了”，正如我们被告知的那样，而是因为她承担了一种应该归因于镜像幻影的急躁。
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因为大臣很难将自己局限于目前他的处境中的无所作为。实际上，大臣“并非完全是个傻瓜”。这句话是省长说的，他的每一句话都是金玉良言：事实上，他的话语中的金子只为杜邦而流，直到按照当时的金属标准达到将花费他的五万法郎，但却不无给他留下了一笔可观的利润。于是，大臣在他的愚蠢停滞中并非完全是个傻瓜，这就是为什么他必须按照神经症的模式行事。就像那个退隐到岛上以忘记——忘记什么？他忘记了——的人一样，大臣因为不使用信件而逐渐忘记它。这表现在他行为的持续性上。
但是，这封信并不像神经症患者的无意识那样忘记他。它如此少地忘记他，以至于它越来越多地将他转化为她的形象，她将信件呈现给他发现，而他现在将效仿她的例子，将其交给一个类似的发现。
这种转变的特征被注意到，并以一种在其表面上看来毫无意义的形式出现，以至于它们可以合理地被比作被压抑的回归。
因此，我们首先了解到大臣反过来已经翻转了信件，当然不是像女王匆忙的举动那样，而是更加勤勉地，就像将衣服翻过来一样。实际上，这是他必须按照当时的折叠和封信的方法进行操作，以便腾出新的地址空间。
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这个地址变成了他自己的。无论是用他的笔迹还是别人的，它以微小的女性字体出现，并且，封蜡从激情的红色变为镜子的黑色，他在上面盖上了自己的密码。信件上标有收件人密码的奇特性更值得注意，因为尽管它在文本中被有力地表达，但在杜邦讨论他如何识别信件时却没有提及。
无论这种遗漏是故意的还是无意的，在一个明显具有严格严谨性的创作中都是令人惊讶的。但无论如何，重要的是大臣最终寄给自己的信件是一封女人的信：好像这是他不得不经历的一个阶段，归因于能指的某种自然亲和力。
一切——从那种冷淡的气氛，甚至表现出一种倦怠的做作，到他谈话中流露出接近厌恶的无聊氛围，再到“家具哲学”的作者知道如何从几乎不可察觉的细节中引发的氛围（如桌子上的乐器）——似乎都在共谋，使一个每一句话都赋予他最阳刚特质的人物，当他出现时散发出最奇异的女性气息。
杜邦没有忽略强调这确实是一种技艺，在虚假的外表后描述了准备跳跃的捕食兽的警觉。但我们如何找到一个更美丽的形象来说明这是无意识的效果，确切地说，正如我所教授的那样，无意识是人类被能指居住的事实，比波自己锻造的形象更能帮助我们理解杜邦的壮举呢？因为，为了做到这一点，波引用了那些地图上的地名铭文，为了不保持沉默，地图将其覆盖在轮廓上，这些铭文可能成为“一种拼图游戏”的对象，在游戏中一个人必须找到另一个玩家选择的名字。他随后指出，那些最有可能使新手困惑的名字，将是那些眼睛经常忽略的名字，但它们以大字母在地图的整个范围内标示出一个国家的名字。
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被偷走的信就像一个巨大的女性身体，在杜邦进入时横跨在大臣办公室的空间中。但他已经预计到会在那儿找到它，只需用戴着绿色眼镜的眼睛“解剖”那个巨大的身体。
这就是为什么，无需（也因为显而易见的原因也没有机会）在弗洛伊德教授的门口偷听，他直接走到那个身体被设计用来隐藏的地方，在一个美丽的中间地带，目光滑向那个地方，甚至滑向那些诱惑者称之为圣安杰洛城堡的地方，他们天真地以为可以从城堡控制整个城市。瞧！在壁炉的门柱之间，有一个物品，劫掠者只需伸手就能触及…无论他是在壁炉架上方抓住它，正如鲍德莱尔所翻译的那样，还是在其下方，正如原文所述，这个问题可以在不损害厨房推论的情况下放弃。
如果符号的效力仅止于此，是否意味着象征性的债务也在此消失？如果我们能够相信如此，我们将被两个情节所提醒，不能轻易将其视为附带的，因为它们乍看之下似乎与作品的其余部分矛盾。
首先是杜邦的报酬问题，这不仅仅是最后一个游戏，它从一开始就存在于杜邦向省长询问他所承诺的报酬金额的相当随意的问题中，省长虽然对确切数额保持谨慎，但并不梦想对他隐瞒，甚至在提到报酬翻倍时再次提到这一点。
杜邦之前被描绘为一个几乎无所依靠的人，靠虚无缥缈的追求谋生，这一事实应该让我们反思他为递交信件所达成的交易，由他出示的支票簿迅速保证。我认为他以“他处理的直接暗示*”开头这一事实并不忽视，鲍德莱尔告诉我们，这是一个被认为既有名又古怪的人物的故事，这个英国医生名叫亚伯内西；这位医生对一个希望从他那里免费得到医疗意见的吝啬富翁的回答不是吃药，而是听取意见。
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我们是否真的有理由感到，当杜邦可能要退出信件的象征性循环时，我们被牵连在内——我们将自己视为所有被窃信件的使者，这些信件至少在一段时间内在移情中停留在我们手中？而这种移情所带来的责任，是否正是我们通过将其等同于彻底消灭一切意义的能指——即金钱——来中和的？
但事情还不止于此。杜邦如此轻松地从这一壮举中获利，假设其目的是为了在为时已晚之前撤出他的赌注，这只会使他突然允许自己对大臣进行的谴责和暗中攻击更加矛盾，甚至令人震惊，毕竟杜邦刚刚对他施展的计策似乎已经足够削弱大臣的傲慢威望。
我已经引用过那些残酷的句子，杜邦声称自己无法克制地在伪造信件中献给大臣，这些句子指向大臣在面对女王不可避免的挑衅时，将会想到推翻她并将自己投身于深渊——“通往地狱的路易如反掌”，他道貌岸然地说道，并补充说大臣一定会认出他的笔迹。留下无情的耻辱，而自己毫无危险，这似乎是一场没有荣耀的胜利，对一个并非没有优点的人物而言，杜邦所提到的在维也纳（是否指大会上）遭受的“恶意行为”带来的怨恨，只不过为这场胜利增添了一丝黑暗。
然而，让我们更仔细地考虑这种情感的爆发，尤其是它发生在一个成功依赖于如此冷静头脑的行为中的时刻。
它发生在杜邦已经可以说握住信件，就像他已经抓住它一样的时刻之后，识别信件的决定性行为已经完成，尽管他还不能完全摆脱它。
因此，他显然是主体间三元组中的一员，并且作为这样的成员，发现自己处于之前由女王和大臣占据的中间位置。在这里表现出优越的同时，他是否也向我们揭示了作者的意图？
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虽然他成功地将信件放回了其正确的轨道，但它还需要到达其地址。而那个地址是之前由国王占据的位置，因为信件必须在那里重新回到基于法律的秩序中。
正如我们所见，国王和代替他位置的警察都无法阅读信件，因为那个位置意味着盲目，”Rex et augur”——这些词语的传奇古老似乎只会让我们意识到，呼吁一个人去符合这些词语是多么嘲讽。而历史人物已经很久没有鼓励我们这样做了。让一个人独自承受最高能指的重负并不自然。而当他穿上它时，他所占据的位置同样可能成为极度愚蠢的象征。
假设这里的国王——由于神圣事物固有的两重含义——具备了一种根植于主体的愚钝。
这正是将赋予继位者意义的原因。并不是说警察在宪法上是文盲，而我们也了解围绕大学设立的长矛在国家诞生中的作用。但是，行使职能的警察显然被自由的形式所标记，即那些对其无礼倾向不甚感兴趣的主人们强加给他们的形式。这就是为什么有时不会对他们的期望有所保留地说出：“Sutor, ne ultra crepidam，只管看好你的小偷。我们甚至会给你科学手段来做到这一点。这样你就不会去思考那些最好留在黑暗中的真理。”18
我们知道，这种明智原则带来的缓解在历史上不过是昙花一现，四处奔走的命运之神已经带回了对自由统治的正当渴望后，对那些因其犯罪而扰乱这一秩序的人产生了兴趣，这种兴趣有时甚至会伪造证据。甚至可以观察到，这种行为一直被接受，只要它是为了大多数人的利益进行的，实际上通过那些本来会反对它的人的公开自白来认证：这是能指优越于主体的最新表现。
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事实仍然是，警察档案一直被某种保留态度对待，远远超出了历史学家的圈子，原因有些奇怪。
杜宾打算将信件交给警察局长，这将减少这种短暂信用的大小。当信件已经从王后的手中解脱出来，其文本一旦离开大臣之手便无效时，能指还剩下什么？
它唯一要做的就是回答这个问题：当一个能指不再有任何意义时，还剩下什么？这是杜宾现在找到的那个人所问的问题，这个人的地方因盲目而被标记。
这显然是将大臣带到这里的问题，假设他真的是我们所说的赌徒，因为他的行为足以证明这一点。赌徒的激情不过是对能指提出的问题，由机会的自动装置所代表。
“你是什么，我在与你的偶然遭遇（tyche）中掷出的骰子形象？什么都不是，除了死亡的存在使人类生命成为从早到晚在意义名义下获得的缓刑。谢赫拉扎德千夜如此，我也在十八个月里以一系列令人眩晕的奇偶游戏经历了这种标志的优势。”
这就是为什么杜宾在他所在的位置不能不对以这种方式提问的人感到一种显然是女性化的愤怒。诗人的创造力与数学家的严谨性在这位诗人那里与花花公子的冷漠和骗子的优雅结合的高端形象，突然间对于给我们品味这种形象的那个人来说，变成了真正的“可怕怪物”，用他自己的话说，“一个无原则的天才。”
¶ 第40页
恐惧的根源在这里显现，而体验到这种恐惧的人无需意外地宣布自己是“女士的支持者”来向我们揭示它：女士们，我们知道，不喜欢原则被质疑，因为她们的魅力很大程度上依赖于能指的神秘。
这就是为什么杜宾最后会转向我们，展示这个能指的惊愕（medusante）面貌，只有王后才能读出这个面貌的另一面。引用一个常见的习惯是适合这种面貌所带来的神谕的，因为它是从悲剧中借来的：
不幸的命运，
如果不配阿特柔斯，也配堤厄斯忒斯。
这就是能指的回答，超越一切意义：“你认为你在采取行动，而实际上是我在以你欲望的羁绊让你行动。这样它们的力量增强并在对象中繁殖，把你带回到你破碎童年的碎片中。那将是你的盛宴，直到你召唤的石客回来成为你的宾客。”
回到更温和的语调，我们说——正如去年在苏黎世大会上随我致敬的当地口号那样——能指对任何提问者的回答是：“吃掉你的此在。”
这就是部长在命运之约时等待他的东西吗？杜宾向我们保证是这样，但我们也学会了不要过于轻信他的各种花招。
当然，胆大妄为的家伙被降到了与墙般的字母相比无知的状态，这些字母决定了他的命运。但是，在召唤他面对这些字母时，我们能指望女王的单一挑衅对这样一个人产生什么效果呢？爱或恨。爱是盲目的，会让他放下武器。恨是清醒的，但会唤起他的怀疑。但是，如果他真的是我们所说的赌徒，他会在最后一次咨询他的牌面，然后在看到他的手牌后及时离开桌子以避免耻辱。
¶ 第41页
仅此而已，我们是否应该相信我们已经破解了杜宾的真正策略，超越了他被迫欺骗我们的想象伎俩？是的，毫无疑问，因为如果“任何需要反思的点，”正如杜宾一开始所说，在黑暗中审视“会更好”，我们现在可以轻松地在阳光下读出它的解决方案。它已经包含在我们的故事标题中，并且根据我早就提供给你们辨别的主体间交流公式很容易引出，这个公式中发送者，正如我所说，从接收者那里接收到他自己的信息，以一种倒置的形式。这就是为什么“被窃信件”，不如说“未寄出的信”意味着一封信总是会到达它的目的地。
¶ 英文正文
来源
此译文来自Jeffrey Mehlman（”French Freud” in Yale French Studies 48, 1972.）。点击
此处
查看Mehlman版本的译文。
¶ 法文边码第11页
Und wenn es uns gluckt, Und wenn es sich schickt, So sind es Gedanken.
Our inquiry has led us to the point of recognizing that the repetition automatism (Wiederholangszwang) finds its basis in what we have called the insistence of the signifying chain. We have elaborated that notion itself as a correlate of the ex-sistence (or: eccentric place) in which we must necessarily locate the subject of the unconscious if we are to take Freud’s discovery seriously. As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.
The lesson of this seminar is intended to maintain that these imaginary incidences, far from representing the essence of our experience, reveal only what in it remains inconsistent unless they are related to the symbolic chain which binds and orients them.
We realize, of course, the importance of these imaginary impregnations (Prägung) in those partializations of the symbolic alternative which give the symbolic chain its appearance. But we maintain that it is the specific law of that chain which governs those psychoanalytic effects thar are decisive for the subject: such as foreclosure (Verwerfung), repression (Verdrängung), denial (Verneinung) itself-specifying with appropriate emphasis that these effects follow so faithfully the displacement (Entstellang) of the signifier that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections in the process.
But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially.
Which is why we have decided to illustrate for you today the truth which may be drawn from that moment in Freud’s thought under study-namely, that it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for the subject-by demonstrating in a story the decisive orientation which the subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier.
¶ 第12页
It is that truth, let us note, which makes the very existence of fiction possible. And in that case, a fable is as appropriate as any other narrative for bringing it to light-at the risk of having the fable’s coherence put to the test in the process. Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary.
Which is why, without seeking any further, we have chosen our example from the very story in which the dialectic of the game of even or odd-from whose study we have but recently profited-occurs. It is, no doubt, no accident that this tale revealed itself propitious to pursuing a course of inquiry which had already found support in it.
As you know, we are talking about the tale which Baudelaire translated under the title ”La lettre volée.” At first reading, we may distinguish a drama, its narration, and the conditions of that narration.
We see quickly enough, moreover, that these components are necessary and that they could not have escaped the intentions of whoever composed them. The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit-aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid 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 on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it.
There are two scenes, the first of which we shall straightway designate the primal scene, and by no means inadvertently, since the second may be considered its repetition in the very sense we are considering today.
¶ 第13页
The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal boudoir, 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 the Queen. This feeling is confirmed by the embarrassment into which she is plunged by the entry of the other exalted personage, of whom we have already been told prior to this account that the knowledge he might have of the letter in question would jeopardize for the lady nothing less than her honor and safety. Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptly dissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entry of the Minister D-. At that moment, in fact, the Queen can do no better than to play on the King’s inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table ”face down, address uppermost.” It does not, however, escape the Minister’s Iynx eye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen’s distress and thus to fathom her secret. From then on everything transpires like clockwork. After dealing in his customary manner with the business of the day, the Minister draws from 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 more conversation to amuse the royal company, whereupon, without flinching once, he seizes the embarrassing letter, making off with it, as the Queen, on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervene for fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, close at her side at that very moment.
Everything might then have transpired unseen by a hypothetical spectator of an operation in which nobody falters, and whose quotient is that the Minister has filched from the Queen her letter and that-an even more important result than the first-the Queen knows that he now has it, and by no means innocently.
A remainder that no analyst will neglect, trained as he is to retain whatever is significant, without always knowing what to do with it: the letter, abandoned by the Minister, and which the Queen’s hand is now free to roll into a ball.
Second scene: in the Minister’s office. It is in his hotel, and we know-from the account the Prefect of Police has given Dupin, whose specific genius for solving enigmas Poe introduces here for the second time-that the police, returning there as soon as the Minister’s habitual, nightly absences allow them to, have searched the hotel and its surroundings from top to bottom for the last eighteen months. In vain-although everyone can deduce from the situation that the Minister keeps the letter within reach.
¶ 第14页
Dupin calls on the Minister. The latter receives him with studied nonchalance, affecting in his conversation romantic ennui. Meanwhile Dupin, whom this pretense does not deceive, his eyes protected by green glasses, proceeds to inspect the premises. When his glance catches a rather crumpled piece of paper-apparently thrust carelessly into a division of an ugly pasteboard card rack, hanging gaudily from the middle of 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 contradict the description he has of the stolen letter, with the exception of the format, which remains the same.
Whereupon he has but to withdraw, after ”forgetting” his snuffbox on the table, in order to return the following day to reclaim it-armed with a facsimile of the letter in its present state. As an incident in the street, prepared for the proper moment, draws the Minister to the window, Dupin in turn seizes the opportunity to snatch the letter while substituting the imitation and has only to maintain the appearances of a normal exit.
Here as well all has transpired, if not without noise, at least without any commotion. The quotient of the operation is that the Minister no longer has the letter, but far from suspecting that Dupin is the culprit who has ravished it from him, knows nothing of it. Moreover, what he is left with is far from insignificant for what follows. We shall return to what brought Dupin to inscribe a message on his counterfeit letter. Whatever the case, the Minister, when he tries to make use of it, will be able to read these words, written so that he may recognize Dupin’s hand:
… Un dessein si funeste / S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste,
whose source, Dupin tells us, is Crebillon’s Atrée
Need we emphasize the similarity of these two sequences? Yes, for the resemblance we have in mind is not a simple collection of traits chosen only in order to delete their difference. And it would not be enough to retain those common traits at the expense of the others for the slightest truth to result. It is rather the intersubjectivity in which the two actions are motivated that we wish to bring into relief, as well as the three terms through which it structures them.
¶ 第15页
The special status of these terms results from their corresponding simultaneously to the three logical moments through which the decision is precipitated and the three places it assigns to the subjects among whom it constitutes a choice.
That decision is reached in a glance’s time. 1 For the maneuvers which follow, however stealthily they prolong it, add nothing to that glance, nor does the deferring of the deed in the second scene break the unity of that moment.
This glance presupposes two others, which it embraces in its vision of the breach left in their fallacious complementarity, anticipating in it the occasion for larceny afforded by that exposure. Thus three moments, structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each time by different characters.
The first is a glance that sees nothing: the King and the police.
The second, a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides: the Queen, then the Minister.
The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whoever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin.
In order to grasp in its unity the intersubjective complex thus described, we would willingly seek a model in the technique legendarily attributed to the oserich attempting to shield itself from danger; for that technique might ultimately be qualified as political, divided as it here is among three partners: the second believing itself invisible because the first has its head stuck in the ground, and all the while letting the third calmly pluck its rear; we need only enrich its proverbial denomination by a letter, producing la politique de l’autruiche, for the ostrich itself to take on forever a new meaning.
Given the intersubjective modulus of the repetitive action, it remains to recognize in it a repetition automatism in the sense that interests us in Freud’s text.
¶ 第16页
The plurality of subjects, of course, can be no objection for those who are long accustomed to the perspectives summarized by our formula: the unconscious is the discourse of the Other. And we will not recall now what the notion of the immixture of subjects, recently introduced in our reanalysis of the dream of Irma’s injection, adds to the discussion.
What interests us today is the manner in which the subjects relay each other in their displacement during the intersubjective repetition.
We shall see that their displacement is determined by the place which 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.
It does not, however, seem excessive, before pursuing this line of inquiry, to ask whether the thrust of the tale and the interest we bring to it-to the extent that they coincide-do not lie elsewhere.
May we view as simply a rationalization (in our gruff jargon) the fact that the story is told to us as a police mystery?
In truth, we should be right in judging that fact highly dubious as soon as we note that everything which warrants such mystery concerning a crime or offense-its nature and motives, instruments and execution, the procedure used to discover the author, and the means employed to convict him-is carefully eliminated here at the start of each episode.
The act of deceit is, in fact, from the beginning as clearly known as the intrigues of the culprit and their effects on his victim. The problem, as exposed to us, is limited to the search for and restitution of the object of that deceit, and it seems rather intentional that the solution is already obtained when it is explained to us. Is that how we are kept in suspense? Whatever credit we may accord the conventions of a genre for provoking a specific interest in the reader, we should not forget that ”the Dupin tale”-this the second to appear-is a prototype, and that even if the genre were established in the first, it is still a little early for the author to play on a convention.
¶ 第17页
It would, however, be equally excessive to reduce the whole thing to a fable whose moral would be that in order to shield from inquisitive eyes one of those correspondences whose secrecy is sometimes necessary to conjugal peace, it suffices to leave the crucial letters Iying about on one’s table, even though the meaningful side be turned face down. For that would be a hoax which, for our part, we would never recommend anyone try, lest he be gravely disappointed in his hopes.
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 one hand, the admittedly penetrating though, in their generality, not always quite relevant remarks with which he introduces us to his method and, on the other, the manner in which he in fact intervenes.
Were we to pursue this sense of mystification a bit further we might soon begin to wonder whether, from that initial scene which only the rank of the protagonists saves from vaudeville, to the fall into ridicule which seems to await the Minister at the end, it is not this impression that everyone is being duped which makes for our pleasure.
And we would be all the more inclined to think so in that we would recognize in that surmise, along with those of you who read us, the definition we once gave in passing of the modern hero, "whom ludicrous exploits exalt in circumstances of utter confusion."2
But are we ourselves not taken in by the imposing presence of the amateur detective, prototype of a latter-day swashbuckler, as yet safe from the insipidity of our contemporary superman?
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 its fictive arrangement.
For such indeed is the direction in which the principles of that verisimilitude lead us. Entering into its strategy, we indeed perceive a new drama we may call complementary to the first, insofar as the latter was what is termed a play without words whereas the interest of the second plays on the properties of speech. 3
¶ 第18页
If it is indeed clear that each of the two scenes of the real drama is narrated in the course of a different dialogue, it is only through access to 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 speech, take on a tension which makes of them a different drama, one which our vocabulary will distinguish from the first as persisting in the symbolic order. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
¶ 第19页
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.
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 4 can see only a simple signaling of the location of objects, in other words: only an imaginary function more differentiated than others.
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.
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.
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.
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. Thus the indirect telling sifts out the linguistic dimension, and the general narrator, by duplicating it, ”hypothetically” adds nothing to it. But its role in the second dialogue is entirely different.
¶ 第20页
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. Which is to say that a transition is made here from the domain of exactitude to the register of truth. Now that register-we dare think we needn’t come back to this-is situated entirely elsewhere, 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 are going to Cracow?”
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. 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.
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. 5
¶ 第21页
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. 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 deception for applying the word analysis to algebra will hardly threaten our pride since, moreover, the freeing of that term for other uses ought by_no means to provoke a psychoanalyst to intervene and claim his rights. And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say anymore that ambitus doesn’t mean ambition, religio, religion, homines honesti, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remembering… what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and Lucretius. No doubt Poe is having a good time…
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? That would be the summit of the illusionist’s art: through one of his fictive creations to truly delude us.
And is it not such effects which justify our referring, without malice, to a number of imaginary heroes as real characters?
As well, when we are open to hearing the way in which Martin Heidegger discloses to us in the word aletheia 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 most truly.
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.
¶ 第22页
Let us track down (dépistons) his footprints there where they elude (dépiste) us. 6 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.
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. 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.
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 ”x2 + px is perhaps not absolutely equal to q,” without ever-here we give the lie to Poe-having had to fend off any unexpected attack.
¶ 第23页
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 anywhere, 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? Must a letter then, of all objects, be endowed with the property of nullibiety: to use a term which the thesaurus known as Roget picks up from the semiotic utopia of Bishop Wilkins? 7
It is évident (”a little too self-evident”) 8 that between letter and place exist relations for which no French word has quite the extension of the English adjective odd. Bizarre, by which Baudelaire regularly translates it, is only approximate. Let us say that these relations are… singuliers, for they are the very ones maintained with place by the signifer.
¶ 第24页
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. But if it is first of all on the materiality of the signifier that we have insisted, that materiality is odd (singulière) in many ways, the first of which is not to admit partition. Cut a letter in small pieces, and it remains the letter it is - and this in a completely different sense than Gestalttheorie would account for with the dormant vitalism informing its notion of the whole. 9
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 de signification), just as we recognize a measure of intention (de l’intention) in an act, or deplore that there is no more love {plus d’amour); or store up hatred {de la haine) and expend devotion (du dévouement), and so much infatuation (tant d’infatuation) is easily reconciled to the fact that there will always be ass (de la cuisse) for sale and brawling (du rififi) among men.
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 to the letter (è la lettre), that a letter (une lettre) awaits you at the post office, or even that you are acquainted with letters (que vous avez des lettres)-never that there is letter (de la lettre) anywhere, whatever the context, even to designate overdue mail.
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 or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes.
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?
¶ 第25页
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.
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 missing from its place, 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 literally 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.
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 did not answer to their description. ”A letter, a litter”: in Joyce’s circle, they played on the homophony of the two words in English. 10 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.
¶ 第26页
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.”
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.
¶ 第27页
Nothing then can redeem the police’s position, and nothing would be changed by improving their ”culture.” Scripta manent: in vain would they learn from a deluxe-edition humanism the proverbial lesson which verba volant concludes. 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.
Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.
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. 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?
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. 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.
¶ 第28页
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.
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.
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. 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 high treason. We say the holder and not the possessor. 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.
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 honesti homines, decent people, will not get off easily. There is more than one religio, and it is not slated for tomorrow that sacred ties shall cease to rend us in two. As for ambitus: 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.
¶ 第29页
To purloin, says the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word, that is: composed of the prefix ”pur”, found in purpose, purchase, purport, and of the Old French word: loing, loigner, longé. We recognize in the first element the Latin ”pro”, as opposed to ante, 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: loigner, a verb attributing place au loing (or, still in use, longé), it does not mean au loin (far off), but au long de (alongside); it is a question then of putting aside, or, to invoke a familiar expression which plays on the two meanings: mettre à gauche (to put to the left; to put amiss).
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 prolonged (etymologically, the word of the title), or, to revert to the language of the post office, a letter in sufferance.
Here then, simple and odd, 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 true subject of the tale: since it can be diverted, it must have a course which is proper to it. 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. 11
¶ 第30页
This is indeed what happens in the repetition automatism. 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.
If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetually increasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that 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.
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 it be ”in sufferance,” they 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.
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.
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. 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.
¶ 第31页
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.
This is the very autruicherie 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.
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.
Not that we are reducing the hoary couple of Yin and Yang 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.
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.
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.
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.
There must be in this sign a singular noli me tangere 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.
¶ 第32页
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 sait-il?.. (Does the robber know?), then: Le voleur salt… (the robber knows). What? que la personne volée connâit son voleur (that the robbed knows his robber).
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.
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.
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 altogether 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.
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.
Thus we first learn that the Minister in turn has turned the letter over, 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. 12
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.
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.
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 13 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 odor di femina when he appears.
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…
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.
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_beneath it, as in the original text, may be abandoned without harm to the inferences of those whose profession is grilling. 14
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.
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.
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.
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.
But that’s not 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.
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: facilis descensus Averni, 15 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.
Lee us consider, however, more closely this explosion of feeling, and more specifically the moment it occurs in a sequence of acts whose success depends on so cool a head.
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.
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?
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.
As we have seen, neither the King nor the police who replaced him in that position were able to read the letter because that place entailed blindness. Rex et augur, 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. 16
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. 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 campus 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: ”Sutor ne uItra crepidam, 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.” 17
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.
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.
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?
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. 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 automaton of chance.
. ”What are you, figure of the die I turn over in your encounter (tyche) with my fortune? 18 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.”
So it is that Dupin, from the place he now occupies, cannot help feeling 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 monstrum horrendum, for such are his words, ”an unprincipled man of genius.” 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.
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:
… Un destin si funeste, / S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.
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.
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.”
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.
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. 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.
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. Thus it is that what the ”purloined letter” nay, the ”letter in sufferance,” means is that a letter always arrives at its destination.
Notes:
1 The necessary reference here may be found in ”Le temps logique et l’assertion de la certitude anticipée,” Ecrits (1966a, 197).
2 Cf. ”Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage” in …crits (1966a, 244); ”The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” in …crits: A Selection (1977, 36).
3 The complete understanding of what follows presupposes a rereading of the short and easily available text of ”The Purloined Letter.”
4 Cf. Emile Benveniste, ”Communication animale et langage humain,” Diogène, no. 1, and our address in Rome, …crits (1966a, 297; 1977, 84). (See Benveniste I97I, 49-54.)
5 Cf. …crits (1966a, 58). ”But what will happen at the following step (of the game) when the opponent, realizing that I am sufficiently clever to follow him in his move, will show his own cleverness by realizing that it is by playing the fool that he has the best chance to deceive me? From then on my reasoning is invalidated, since it can only be repeated in an indefinite oscillation.”
6 We should like to present again to M. Benveniste the question of the antithetical sense of (primal or other) words after the magisterial rectification he brought to the erroneous philological path on which Freud engaged it (cf. La Psychanalyse, I:5-I6). For we think that the problem remains intact once the instance of the signifier has been evolved. Bloch and Von Wartburg date at 1875 the first appearance of the meaning of the verb dépister in the second use we make of it in our sentence. (See Benveniste 1971, 65-75.)
7 The very one to which Jorge Luis Borges, in works which harmonize so well with the phylum of our subject, has accorded an importance which others have reduced to its proper proportions. Cf. Les Temps Modernes, June-July 1955, 2135-36 and October 1955, 574-75.
8 Underlined by the author. 9 This is so true that philosophers, in those hackneyed examples with which they argue on the basis of the single and the multiple, will not use to the same purpose a simple sheet of white paper ripped in the middle and a broken circle, indeed a shattered vase, not to mention a cut worm.
10 Cf. Our Examination Round His Factifuation for Incamination of Work in Progress (Shakespeare & Co., 12 rue de l’Odéon, Paris, 1929).
11 See Écrits (1966a, 59): ”It is not unthinkable that a modern computer, by discovering the sentence which modulates without his knowing it and over a long period of time the choices of a subject, would win beyond any normal proportion at the game of even and odd.”
12 We felt obliged to demonstrate the procedure to an audience with a letter from the period concerning M. de Chateaubriand and his search for a secretary. We were amused to find that M. de Chateaubriand completed the first version of his recently restored memoirs in the very month of November 1841 in which the purloined letter appeared in Chamber’s Journal. Might M. de Chateaubriand’s devotion to the power he decries and the honor which that devotion bespeaks in him (the gift had not yet been invented), place him in the category to which we will later see the Minister assigned: among men of genius with or without principles?
13 Poe is the author of an essay with this title.
14 And even to the cook herself.
15 Virgil’s line reads: facilis descensus Averno.
16 We recall the witty couplet attributed before his fall to the most recent in date to have rallied Candide’s meeting in Venice: Il n’est plus aujourd’hui que cinq rois sur la terre, / Les quatre rois des cartes et le roi d’Angleterre. (There are only five kings left on earth: / the four kings of cards and the king of England.)
17 This proposal was openly presented by a noble lord speaking to the Upper Chamber in which his dignity earned him a place.
18 We note the fundamental opposition Aristotle makes between the two terms recalled here in the conceptual analysis of chance he gives in his Physics. Many discussions would be illuminated by a knowledge of it.
¶ 译注
^ 或许指“部分冲动”中的“部分”。符号性替代品的部分化，也许是说想象印痕在符号层面的替代品（如粪便作为符号替代了giving nothing这个想象-实在的缺失）开始受制于部分冲动。
^ ”The prägung is the originating traumatic event that occurs within a non-repressed unconscious which is strictly limited to the domain of the imaginary.” See: Lacan’s The Nucleus of Repression -The Élaboration of the ‘Prägung’ 总之，想象印痕作为第一次符号性的整合，事后具有实在的创伤作用。按这段话的描述，印痕相当于S1。
^ 这里的除法隐喻暗指拉康索绪尔语言学模型S/s。在研讨班十《焦虑》中，拉康用“除法”（division）刻画了一些能指的关系：A除以S等于$余a。（S10，1962年11月21日）
^ 从
φ φ
Φ Φ
^ 法蘭索瓦·德·拉羅希福可（François de La Rochefoucauld，1613-1680），法国箴言作家，其著名箴言包括“真愛猶如鬼魅：眾口相傳，然嘗目擊者，鮮矣。”
^ 让·德·拉布吕耶尔（Jean de La Bruyère，1645-1696），法国哲学家、作家。主要作品是讽刺性的《品格论》。
^ 尼古洛·马基雅维利（Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli，1469-1527），意大利政治学家、哲学家。被后人誉为“近代政治学之父”，著有《君主论》。
^ 托马索·康帕内拉（Tommaso Campanella，1568-1639），意大利哲学家、神学家、占星学家和诗人。最著名的著作是《太阳城》，他在这本书中借航海家与招待所管理员的对话，描绘了一个完全废除私有制的社会，启发了后来空想社会主义的众多理论与实践。
^ 《被窃的信》中，杜宾在描述孩子的“推理模式”时提到了这四名人物。“孩子的这种反应是一切看似深奥的东西的深层本质，拉罗希福可、拉布吕耶尔、马基雅维利、康帕内拉等大家的身上都体现出这些特点。”
^ 尼古拉·尚福尔（Nicolas Chamfort，1741-1794），法国作家，因其箴言而出名。
^ 杜宾认为部长作为数学家完全不能推理，这和世人的观点相悖。于是杜宾引用了尚福尔的那句悖论性的箴言，说：“我敢保證數學家已經竭盡全力散布你所說的那種群眾性的錯誤，把這樣的東西當作真理同樣是錯誤的，其中一例就是：把一種值得在更有好處的事業裏運用的學問用到‘代數’裏去，把它命名為‘分析’。法國人是這個獨特的謊言的始作俑者。但是，如果命名有什麽重要的話，如果詞語的含義應該在使用裏體現的話，那麽，‘分析’本來就表現了拉丁文裏的algebra（代數）的意思［4］，正如’ambitus’表現了‘雄心，’、'religio’表現了‘宗教’，'homines honesti’表現了‘誠實的人群’一樣。”其中，ambitus是裙摆、位于…周围的意思，后来包含了雄心的意思，religio是严格性、精确性的意思，包含了宗教之义，而homines honesti是西塞罗给自己的同党命的名，后来才有诚实的人群的含义。类似地，拉丁文algebra（代數）原意為（將碎片）合成（原樣）。要研究合成自然得分析。所以algebra已包含分析的意思。
^ 杜宾第一次和G局长对话时的讽刺和大笑： “說不定正因為案子太簡單，你們才追失了獵物的騷味的吧。”我的朋友說。“你瞎說個什麽呀！”G局长哈哈大笑。“神秘大概就在簡單得過了分。”杜邦說。“啊，天哪！誰聽說過這樣的想法！”“是個一目了然的案子吧。”“哈！哈！哈！——哈！哈！哈！——呵！呵！呵！”客人被逗得非常快活，放聲大笑，“啊，杜邦，你會笑死我的！”杜宾用“简单而独特”（simple and odd）形容这个案件。
^ G局长认为D部长是傻瓜，他是这样说的：“費這個事你倒大可不必，”杜邦說，“我估計德完全不是傻瓜。既不是傻瓜，就一定會估計到剪徑是當然的事。”“不完全是傻瓜，”戈總監說，“但他是個詩人，而我認為詩人距傻瓜只有一步之遙。”法文译本将傻瓜“fool”译成了疯子“fou”，拉康沿用了这种叫法。
^ 据称，一切地方都搜查遍了……而且我們有精確的規定，一根线（a line）五十分之一大小的東西也逃不過我們的眼睛。
^ 此处“le mot”（词）和“la parole”（言语）的对立，拉康并未详细阐释。J.P. Muller 和 W.J. Richardson 在其《被窃的坡》（The Purloined Poe）一书中将前者解释为“speech”，不妥。词与言语的对立大概类似于陈述内容（所述）与陈述行为（能述）的对立，或语言与言语的对立。
^ 原句的翻译难度堪称典范： “Les ecrits emportent au vent les traites en blanc d’une cavalerie folle"。空白的（银行）汇票（或转账（transfers））没有交付给它们的合法收款人（de cavalerie，de complaisance）。也就是说，通过分析，我们会发现荒谬的象征性债务被支付给了“错误”的人。同时，“traite”中潜藏着支付的疯狂和动力，也可能指疯狂骑兵的一日游。在我们的翻译中，我们将“转换词”–连接金融和马术系列–从 traite 移至 charge。在法语中，“飞叶”和“被窃的信”–“feuilles volantes ”和 “lettres volees”–是同一个词的不同含义。——Mehlman译注 “de cavalerie, de complaisance”是与“骑兵”或“骑术”相关的隐喻表达。这在法语中可以理解为一种不正当或讽刺性的行为。例如，“de cavalerie”可能指的是一种欺骗性的金融操作，类似于“空头支票”或“假汇票”；而“de complaisance”则可以理解为一种表面上的、敷衍的礼貌或客套行为。在这段话中，这些行为隐喻地被用来描述荒谬的债务支付行为，象征着不合常理的、荒诞的交易。 “traite”这个词，具有双重含义。一方面，“traite”可以指金融上的“汇票”或“账单”，与经济交易相关。另一方面，在法语中，“traite”也可以指“行程”或“路程”。这里作者通过引申，把“traite”与“疯马骑兵”（cavalerie folle）联系在一起，创造了一个隐喻，描述一种疯狂而混乱的行动。 Feuilles volantes：字面意思是“飞叶”或“飞散的纸张”，可以指一些松散的、未装订的纸页，这些纸页在风中飞舞或随意散落。这个短语中的“volantes”来自“voler”，意思是“飞翔”或“飞舞”。 Lettres volées：字面意思是“被盗的信件”，这里的“volées”来自同一个动词“voler”，但在这个短语中，“voler”表示“偷窃”的意思。所以，“lettres volées”指的是被窃取的信件。
^ “阴影”指的是《哀悼与忧郁》中著名的句子，“对象的阴影落在了自我上……”。见Freud, Sigmund (1953-74). James Strachey. ed (in English). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIV. London: Hogarth. p. 249.
^ « En possession » de la lettre，这个短语中的“de”既可以表示前者属于后者，也可以表示后者属于前者。拉康在《主体的颠覆》一文中谈论了这种语法现象。
^ cf. 拉康：“疯狂决不是对自由的“一个污辱”，它是自由最忠实的同伴，它像影子一样追随着自由的运动。” cf. 《弗洛伊德之物》：“阿克泰翁追逐女神而罪孽深重，猎物将成为你的影子，复仇者，让猎犬们先走吧，戴安娜会知道猎犬们的价值…”
^ “勿碰我”是出現在拉丁文聖經約翰福音 20:17 中的一句話。 據說這是耶穌復活後對抹大拉的馬利亞說的話。
^ 柏拉图的《美诺》篇中，美诺把苏格拉底比作那种扁平的海鱼电鳗——无论在外形上还是在其它方面都像，他指责苏格拉底“总是自己处在困惑之中又使别人陷于困惑。”（80a1-2）
¶ 原文脚注
- 此处必要的参考文献可参见我的论文，”Le temps logique et l’assertion de la certitude anticipée”，载于 Eerits 1966,197-213.
- 见《精神分析中言语与语言的功能和领域》，载于 Ecrits 1966,244.
- 要完全理解下面的内容，必须重读《被窃的信》这篇简短易懂的文章。
- 见 Emile Benveniste，"Communication animale et langage humain，"Diogène I，以及我的罗马报告[”The Function and Field of Speech and Language”]，Ecrits 1966，297 英语，见 Emile Benveniste，Problemsin Gen Meek 著，Coral Gables：
迈阿密大学出版社，1971 年），49-54]。 - Cf. Ecrits (1966a, 58). ”但是，在下一步（对局）中，当对手意识到我足够聪明，可以跟着他走棋时，他又会表现出自己的聪明，意识到装傻才是他欺骗我的最佳机会，那又会发生什么呢？从那时起，我的推理就失效了，因为它只能在无限的振荡中重复。”
- 【1968年拉康补注：】起初我给这三个词的意义加上了评注，其中每个词都可以说明这个故事，如果［故事的］结构（尽管结构渴望说明它）不足以说明的话。
我现在取消了这一非常不完美的说明，因为在我为了重印而重读我的文本时，有人向我证实说，在出卖我的人的时代（还有今天，1968年12月9日）过后，会到来另一个时代，那时人们为了阐释得更远而阅读我的著作。
后者［阐释得更远］会发生在这一页之外。
7. 在本维尼斯特先生对弗洛伊德在语言学方面所走的错误道路（参见《精神分析》，第 1 卷，第 5-16 页）进行了高超的纠正之后，我们想再次向他请教某些词的反义词意义，不管是原始词还是其他词。因为在我们看来，这个问题仍然没有答案，要在严格性中识别出能指的动因。布洛赫和瓦特伯格认为，动词 “dépister”（即我们在句子中第二次使用它的时候）的含义出现于 1875 年（参见 “pister”，第 489 页）。
8. 豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯（Jorge Lois Borges）在他的那部与我们的主题如此和谐的作品中，也强调了这个乌托邦的价值。其他人对此作出了恰当的评论。Cf. Les Temps modernes, juin-juillet 1955 : pp. 2135-38, et oct. 1955 : pp. 574-75.
9. 波的强调。
10. 这一点是如此正确，以至于哲学家们在用那些老掉牙的例子来论证一和多时，不会为了同样的目的而使用一张简单的白纸：从中间撕开、破碎的圆圈，甚至一个破碎的花瓶，更不用说一条被割断的虫子了。
11. 参见：《Our Examination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress》，Paris: Shakespeare & Co., 12 rue de l’Odeon, 1929。
12. 参见《导论》部分，Ecrits, 1966, p.59 。