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(All parts in English)

Hamlet (1)

I believe we have sufficiently advanced the structural analysis of the model dream found in Ella SHARPE’s book to enable you to understand how essential this work is for the path we are attempting to follow—namely, what we must regard as desire and its interpretation.

Although some claimed they couldn’t locate the Lewis CARROLL reference I provided last time, I am surprised you didn’t retain the double rule of three. Since this is where I concluded my remarks about the two stages of the subject’s relationship to the more or less fetishistic object—the thing ultimately expressed as the “I,” the ideal identification I intentionally left open—for the first of the two equations, concerning the straps of the sister’s sandals, where, instead of “I,” we have an “X.”

I don’t think any of you failed to notice that this “X”—as one would expect—was something identified as the phallus. But what is important here is the place occupied by this phallus: precisely in the position of “I,” the primal identification, the identification with the mother, precisely at this locus where the subject does not wish to deny the phallus to the mother.

As doctrine has always taught, the subject wishes to maintain the mother’s phallus. The subject refuses the castration of the Other. The subject, as I explained to you, does not wish to lose his “lady,” since this is about the game of chess.

He does not wish, in this instance, to place Ella SHARPE in any position other than that of the idealized phallus, which he signals to her with a “little cough” before entering the room, as though ensuring that no aspect of this would need to be brought into play.

We might have the chance this year to revisit Lewis CARROLL; you will see that, quite literally, his two great works—Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass—are about nothing else. They are almost a poetic chronicle of phallic transformations. You can start delving into them a bit, preparing yourselves for certain things I may have to say about them.

One point from what I told you might have struck you: the position of the subject concerning the phallus, which I emphasized in the opposition between “being” and “having.” When I said it was because, for him, the question of being arose, that he must “be without having”… this is how I defined the feminine position. It cannot be that, concerning this “to be or not to be,” the phallus did not resonate within you, an echo that imposes itself even when considering the enigmatic observation of “To be or not to be,” which has almost become a caricature but still defines Hamlet’s stylistic stance.

And if we were to delve into this opening, it would only bring us back to one of Freud’s most primal themes of thought: that sphere where the position of desire is organized, where it becomes evident that from the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, the Hamlet theme was elevated by Freud to a status equivalent to that of the Oedipal theme, which was being introduced for the first time in The Interpretation of Dreams.

Of course, we know Freud had been contemplating this for some time, but only in letters that were not intended for publication. The first appearance of the “Oedipus complex” is in The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. The observation on Hamlet is also published in 1900 in the form Freud left it, as a note, but it wasn’t integrated into the main text until 1910-1914. I believe the Hamlet theme can help reinforce the elaboration of this castration complex. How does the complex manifest concretely in the analytical process? The Hamlet theme, after Freud, has been revisited numerous times; I probably won’t cover all the authors who explored it. You know the first was JONES.

Ella SHARPE also made a number of contributions regarding Hamlet that are not without interest; Shakespeare’s thought and practice were central to this analyst’s training. We might have the opportunity to discuss it.

Today, we begin clearing this ground, asking ourselves what Freud himself meant by introducing Hamlet, and what subsequent developments in other authors’ works demonstrate. Here is Freud’s text, worth reading at the beginning of this inquiry, which I provide in its French translation.

After discussing the Oedipus complex for the first time, and it is not insignificant to note here that Freud introduces this complex in The Interpretation of Dreams in the context of “dreams of the death of loved ones”—that is, precisely the topic we used this year as a starting point and initial guide for elucidating something that initially appeared quite naturally in the dream I chose as one of the simplest related to death.

This dream served to demonstrate how the subject was positioned along two intersubjective lines, superimposed and doubled one upon the other. The famous “he didn’t know,” which we placed on one line—the line of the subject’s position, the paternal subject in this instance evoked by the dreaming subject—locates somewhere under a form embodied, so to speak, by the father himself and replacing the father. Under the guise of “he didn’t know,” the father’s unconscious serves here as the image, the very unconscious of the subject—and of what?—of the subject’s own wish, the wish for the father’s death.

Of course, he also knows another wish, a kind of benevolent wish, a call for a consoling death. But it is precisely this unconsciousness, that of the subject regarding his Oedipal death wish, that is in some way embodied in the dream image in this form: that the father must not even know the son has made against him this benevolent wish for death.

“He didn’t know,” the dream absurdly says, “that he was dead.” This is where the dream text ends.

And what is repressed for the subject, which is not unknown to the fantasized father, is the “according to his wish” that FREUD tells us must be regarded as the repressed signifier.

“Another one of our great tragic works,” FREUD tells us, “Hamlet by Shakespeare, has the same roots as Oedipus Rex. The entirely different execution shows, in an identical way, the differences in the intellectual life (Seelenleben) of these two eras and the progress repression has made in emotional life (Gemütsleben, which the word ‘sentimental’ approximates). In Oedipus, the child’s desires appear and are realized as in a dream.” [p. 230]

FREUD indeed emphasized that Oedipal dreams are, in a way, the offspring and fundamental source of these unconscious desires that constantly resurface. And Oedipus—I refer to Oedipus by SOPHOCLES or to Greek tragedy—serves as the mythic elaboration, the construction of what perpetually emerges from these unconscious desires. This is how things are textually articulated in The Interpretation of Dreams.

“…In Hamlet, these same childhood desires are repressed, and we learn of their existence, as in neuroses, only through their inhibitory effects (Hemmungswirkungen). A peculiar fact: while this drama has always exerted a significant impact, agreement on the character of its hero has never been reached. The play is based on Hamlet’s hesitation to carry out the revenge he has been tasked with; the text does not reveal the reasons and motives for these hesitations, and the numerous attempts to explain them have failed.

According to Goethe—and this remains the dominant interpretation—Hamlet represents a man whose activity is dominated by an excessive development of thought (Gedankentätigkeit), whose capacity for action is paralyzed, ‘Stricken by the pale cast of thought’ (Von des Gedankens Blässe angekränkelt). According to others, the poet sought to depict a morbid, irresolute, and neurasthenic character. But we see in the play that Hamlet is not incapable of action. He acts twice:

– First, in a moment of violent passion, when he kills the man eavesdropping behind the tapestry.” [pp. 230-231]

You know this is POLONIUS, and it occurs during a conversation between HAMLET and his mother that is far from crucial since nothing in this play is ever crucial—except its fatal conclusion, where, in just a few moments, the accumulation of corpses resolves all the previously delayed action knots.

“…Then, in a deliberate and cunning manner, with the total indifference of a Renaissance prince, he sends two courtiers”—ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, who serve as pseudo-brothers—”to the death that had been intended for him. What, then, prevents him from carrying out the task assigned by the ghost of his father?” [p. 231]

You know the play begins on the terrace of Elsinore with the ghost’s appearance to two guards, who shortly thereafter inform HAMLET.

“It must be acknowledged that the nature of this task is the reason. Hamlet can act, but he cannot take revenge on a man who has removed his father and taken his place beside his mother. […] In reality, it is the horror that should propel him to revenge, which is replaced by remorse, by pangs of conscience. […] I have just translated into conscious terms what remains unconscious in the soul of the hero.” [p. 231]

This initial contribution by FREUD is characterized by an equilibrium that, if I may say so, keeps us on the straight path for situating and maintaining HAMLET in the place FREUD assigned him. Here, everything is perfectly clear. However, it is also in relation to this first insight of FREUD’s that all subsequent elaborations—excursions around the subject and, as you will see, at times quite distant embellishments—must be situated.

Authors, following the advancement of analytical exploration, focus interest on points that sometimes validly appear in Hamlet but at the expense of the rigor with which FREUD originally approached the matter.

I would also say that simultaneously—and this is perhaps the least examined aspect—everything is already present. Something situated on the plane of “scruples of conscience,” which can only be considered an elaboration.

If we are presented with what occurs, the way in which the conscious mind expresses what remains unconscious in the hero’s soul, it seems justified to ask how this can be articulated within the unconscious.

For there is one certain fact: a symptomatic elaboration like a “scruple of conscience” cannot exist in the unconscious if it is present in the conscious mind. If it is constructed by defensive mechanisms, we must nonetheless inquire what corresponds in the unconscious to this conscious structure. That is what we are now attempting to explore.

I finish the little that remains of FREUD’s paragraph. It doesn’t take him long to lay out—definitively—the bridge over HAMLET’s abyss. Indeed, it is striking that HAMLET remained a total literary enigma until FREUD. That is not to say it is no longer an enigma, but there is now this bridge.

The same is true for other works. The Misanthrope is a similar kind of enigma.

“The aversion to sexual acts […] aligns with this symptom. This disgust must have grown increasingly strong in the poet until he fully expressed it in Timon of Athens.”

I read this passage to the end because it is significant and, in just two lines, opens a path for those who subsequently sought to organize Shakespeare’s body of work around the issue of personal repression.

This is precisely what Ella SHARPE attempted to do. What was suggested in her posthumously published Unfinished Papers, including her essay on Hamlet initially published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, resembles an effort to interpret the evolution of SHAKESPEARE’s work as meaningful in some way. While I believe that Ella SHARPE made a methodological misstep by trying to impose a certain framework, she nonetheless uncovered something of value.

“The poet could only have expressed his own feelings in Hamlet. Georg Brandes notes in his Shakespeare (1896) that this drama was written immediately after Shakespeare’s father’s death (1601). […] We may assume that, at that moment, childhood impressions concerning his father were particularly vivid. It is also known that Shakespeare’s son—who died young—was named Hamnet.” [p. 231]

I believe we can conclude this passage here, which demonstrates how far FREUD, even with simple indications, surpasses the points where subsequent authors have engaged.

I would like to approach the issue here based on the data that I have been presenting to you since the beginning of this year. For I believe this data allows us:

• To synthesize and capture more strikingly the various driving forces in Hamlet.
• To simplify, to some extent, the multiplicity of instances we currently face. These instances often seem to lend an air of duplication to analytic commentaries on any observation when we see them simultaneously revisited. For instance, within the register of the opposition between the unconscious and defense, then subsequently within that of the “ego” and the “id,” and I think also within whatever arises when one adds the “superego” as an instance—without ever unifying these various perspectives, which sometimes lend these works a certain blur, an overload, seemingly unusable in our practical experience.

What we are trying to grasp here are guiding principles that allow us to reposition the various mechanisms and stages of the mental apparatus that FREUD provided. These principles help us situate them in a way that accounts for their semantic overlap being only partial.

It is not by adding these instances together or forming some sort of amalgamation that we can make them function effectively. Instead, as you may see, by mapping them onto a framework that we aim to make more fundamental, we attempt to understand how to utilize each of these orders of reference when we bring them into play.

Let us begin to spell out this great drama of HAMLET. No matter how evocative FREUD’s text is, I must remind you of its substance. The play opens shortly after the death of a king who—his son HAMLET tells us—was an admirable king, the ideal king and father, who died mysteriously. The given account of his death is that he was bitten by a serpent in an orchard—the “orchard” being interpreted here by analysts.

Then, very quickly—just a few months after his death—HAMLET’s mother marries her brother-in-law: CLAUDIUS.
This CLAUDIUS, the object of all the central hero HAMLET’s revulsion, is burdened not only with the motives of rivalry HAMLET may harbor against him (HAMLET being displaced from the throne by this uncle), but also with everything HAMLET intuits and suspects regarding the scandalous nature of this substitution.

Even more, the father, who appears as a ghost to reveal the conditions of his dramatic betrayal, tells HAMLET that this was indeed an act of treachery. Specifically—the text says, and it has not escaped the curiosity of analysts—that poison, named the mysterious “hebenon,” was poured into his ear while he slept.
“Hebenon” is a kind of fabricated term; I don’t know if it appears in any other text. Attempts have been made to find equivalents, such as a term designating, in most translations, henbane. Certainly, this assassination by poisoning through the ear cannot satisfy a toxicologist, which provides analysts with plenty of interpretive material.

Let us immediately consider something striking to us, based on the criteria and articulations we have emphasized. Let us use these keys, however peculiar they may seem to you in their emergence. This has been done on this very particular and determined occasion, but it does not preclude—and this is one of the clearest phases of analytical experience—that what is particular often holds the greatest universal value.

It is absolutely clear that what we highlighted by stating, “he didn’t know he was dead,” is something fundamentally essential. In the relationship with the Other, the Other (A) as such, the ignorance maintained by this Other regarding any given situation is something entirely original.

You are well aware of this because it is one of the revolutions of the infantile soul—the moment when the child, after believing that all his thoughts (“all his thoughts” is something that should always prompt great caution; I mean, what the subject experiences as thoughts encompasses everything)—realizes that the Other might “not know.”

It is crucial to consider this correlation of the Other’s “not knowing” with the formation of the unconscious itself: one is, in a sense, the reverse of the other, and perhaps its foundation. For indeed, this formulation alone does not suffice to constitute them.

Nonetheless, something is entirely clear and serves as our guide in the drama of Hamlet. We will attempt to give substance to this historical notion—a notion that remains somewhat superficial, imbued with the atmosphere and style of the time, which suggests a modern myth…
…contrasted with the stature of the ancients, portrayed as poor degenerates.

We are in the style of the 19th century; it is no coincidence that Georg BRANDES is cited here. We will never know if FREUD at that time, though it seems likely, was familiar with NIETZSCHE.

But this reference to the moderns may not suffice for us. Why should the moderns be more neurotic than the ancients? This is, at best, an assumption. What we are trying to uncover goes beyond this assumption or the explanation-by-explanation approach: “Things are bad because things are bad!”

What lies before us is a work whose fibers we will attempt to begin unraveling—the first fibers.

The first fiber: here, the father knows very well that he is dead—dead according to the wish of the one who wanted to take his place, namely CLAUDIUS, his brother. The crime is undoubtedly hidden from the center of the stage, from the world of the play. This is an absolutely essential point, without which the drama of Hamlet would have no reason to exist. This is precisely what JONES highlights in his article—accessible to him—The Death of Hamlet’s Father, emphasizing the crucial difference introduced by SHAKESPEARE compared to the original saga.

In the saga, the slaughter of the character who—though bearing a different name—is the king, occurs openly and under the pretext of his relationship with his wife. The king is also slaughtered by his brother, but everyone knows it. In HAMLET, however, the deed is hidden. But—and this is the important point—the father knows it, and it is he who comes to tell us:

“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.”
[Horatio, Act I, Scene 5, 126]

FREUD cites this line several times because it has become proverbial:
“There is no need for a ghost, my good lord, no need for a ghost to tell us this.”

Indeed, if this concerns the Oedipal theme, we already know much about it. But it is clear that in the construction of HAMLET’s theme, we are not yet aware of this. And there is something significant in the fact that, within the narrative, it is the father who reveals this, the father who knows it. I believe this is something absolutely essential.

This constitutes a first difference in the “fiber,” compared to the situation, construction, and fundamental fabrication of the Oedipal drama. For Oedipus himself does not know. When he learns everything, the drama erupts, leading to his self-punishment—his own resolution of the situation. But the Oedipal crime is committed by Oedipus in ignorance. Here, the Oedipal crime is known. And who knows it? The Other, the one who is the victim and who emerges to reveal it to the subject.

Essentially, you see the path we are following, a method of comparison and correlation between these different “fibers” of the structure—a classical method that consists of articulating a coherent whole, nowhere more articulated than in the realm of the signifier.

The very notion of articulation—which I constantly emphasize—is consubstantial to the signifier. After all, articulation is only discussed in the world because the signifier gives the term its meaning. Otherwise, there is only continuity or discontinuity, but not articulation.

We are attempting to observe and grasp, through a comparison of homologous fibers in both phases—the Oedipal and the Hamletian phases, as FREUD juxtaposed them—a coherence of phenomena. This allows us to understand how, to what extent, and why it is conceivable that, when one key on the keyboard is marked by an opposing sign compared to its counterpart in the other drama, a strictly correlative modification occurs. This correlation is what must reveal the type of causality at play in these dramas.

Starting from the idea that these correlative modifications are the most instructive for us, we seek to organize the mechanisms of the signifier in a way that becomes usable in our analysis.

There must be a discernible and ultimately notable relationship—almost algebraic—between these initial modifications of the sign and the events that unfold. On this upper level of “he didn’t know,” here it becomes “he knew he was dead.” He was dead according to the murderous wish that drove him to his grave—his brother’s wish. We will now examine the relationship between this and the hero of the drama.

Before rushing into the superimposition of identifications—something always slightly hasty in tradition—there are concepts, and the most convenient are often the least developed. And heaven knows what is done with these “identifications.”

“In the end, Claudius, in what he has done, embodies a form of Hamlet; he is Hamlet’s desire!”

This is quickly stated, for in situating HAMLET’s position regarding this desire, we find ourselves needing to suddenly introduce the notion of “scruple of conscience.” This introduces a dual and deeply ambivalent stance in HAMLET’s relationship to CLAUDIUS: a rivalry, but one where it is clear that this rivalry is singular, on a second level. CLAUDIUS is the one who, in reality, dared to do what HAMLET himself would not have dared to do.

In these conditions, CLAUDIUS seems surrounded by a kind of mysterious protection that needs defining—”scruple of conscience,” as it’s called?—in relation to what presses upon HAMLET, what imposes itself on him even more after the initial encounter with the ghost, literally the command to avenge him. The ghost arms HAMLET with every feeling to act against his father’s murderer:

• He has been dispossessed: a feeling of usurpation.
• A feeling of rivalry.
• A feeling of vengeance.
• And, above all, the explicit command of his most admired father.

Surely, everything aligns for HAMLET to act… And yet he does not! This is where the problem begins, and where our progression must be armed with the utmost simplicity. What misleads and confounds us is substituting pre-made keys for directly confronting the issue.

FREUD tells us this is the conscious representation of something that must be articulated in the unconscious. What we are trying to articulate and locate in the unconscious is the meaning of a desire.

In any case, as FREUD suggests, something goes awry once the situation has been set in motion in this way. Something is wrong with HAMLET’s desire. It is here that we will choose our path. This is not easy because we are not much further than where we have always been.

Here, HAMLET must be considered—his conduct throughout the tragedy as a whole. Since we have spoken of HAMLET’s desire, we must recognize what analysts, naturally, have not overlooked, but which may not belong to the same register or order. The task is to situate HAMLET as […]—the axis, the soul, the center, the touchstone of desire.

This does not exactly concern HAMLET’s relationship to the conscious object of his desire. In this regard, nothing is withheld from us by the author.

In the play, we have what serves as the barometer of HAMLET’s position regarding desire, and it is presented in the clearest and most obvious way through the character of OPHELIA. OPHELIA is quite evidently one of the most fascinating creations ever offered to human imagination—something we might call:

• the drama of the feminine object,
• the drama of the world’s desire.

This emerges at the dawn of civilization in the form of HELEN, and it is remarkable to observe it at a peak, perhaps even a summit, incarnated in the tragedy and misfortune of OPHELIA.

You are aware that this has been revisited in countless forms by artistic and aesthetic creation—whether by poets or painters—most notably during the Pre-Raphaelite period, culminating in meticulously detailed paintings. These vividly depict the very terms SHAKESPEARE uses to describe OPHELIA, floating in her dress along the water where, in her madness, she has let herself drift. For OPHELIA’s suicide is ambiguous.

What unfolds in the play is that, almost immediately and correlatively with the drama—as FREUD points out—we witness a horror of femininity as such. The terms of this horror are articulated in the most literal sense.

That is to say, HAMLET discovers, exposes, and plays out before OPHELIA’s very eyes all the possibilities of degradation, variation, and corruption tied to the progression of a woman’s life, insofar as she allows herself to be carried along by all the acts that eventually make her a mother. It is in the name of this that HAMLET rejects OPHELIA in a manner that appears in the play as the most sarcastic and cruel.

Here, we have a primary correlation of something that clearly marks the progression and correlation as essential to HAMLET’s case and his position regarding desire.

Notice how we immediately encounter, in passing, the “wild psychoanalyst” POLONIUS, OPHELIA’s father, who instantly pinpoints the issue: HAMLET’s melancholy? It is because he wrote love letters to POLONIUS’s daughter, and POLONIUS, fulfilling his fatherly duty, had OPHELIA sternly reject him. In other words: HAMLET is lovesick!

This caricatural character provides us with an ironic accompaniment to what external interpretations of events always tend to offer as overly simplistic explanations. Yet, the situation is structured in a somewhat different way, as no one doubts.

The matter at hand pertains, of course, to something concerning HAMLET’s relationship—with what?—Essentially, with his act. Of course, the profound transformation of his sexual position is of paramount importance, but it must be articulated and organized in a somewhat different way. It involves an act to be performed, and his overall position depends on it.

It is precisely this dynamic, manifest throughout the play, that makes it a work fundamentally concerned with action. In English, there is a word far more commonly used than in French for this concept: procrastination—or, as it is called in French, delay or postponement.

Indeed, that is precisely the issue. Throughout the play, HAMLET procrastinates. It is a question of understanding what the repeated postponements of action signify each time he is presented with the opportunity, and what ultimately determines that he will carry out this act in the end.

I believe that, at this point, if there is one thing to emphasize, it is precisely the question posed regarding the meaning of the act presented to him. This act, ultimately, has nothing to do—and this has been sufficiently highlighted in my earlier remarks—with the Oedipal act of rebellion against the father. The conflict with the father, in its psychical creative dimension, is not the act of OEDIPUS insofar as OEDIPUS’s act sustains his life and makes him the hero he is before his downfall—so long as he knows nothing. It is this ignorance that makes the Oedipal drama conclude so dramatically.

HAMLET, on the other hand, knows he is guilty of being. To him, existence itself is unbearable. Before the drama of Hamlet begins, HAMLET already knows the crime of existing, and it is from this starting point that he must choose.

For HAMLET, the problem of existence presents itself in terms that are uniquely his own, articulated clearly in his famous line, “To be or not to be.”

It is precisely because the Oedipal drama is open for him at the beginning, not at the end, that the choice arises between “to be” and “not to be.” And it is precisely because there is this “either… or…” that he finds himself inevitably ensnared in the chain of signifiers—trapped by a dynamic in which, no matter the choice, he is its victim.

I will provide LETOURNEUR’s translation, which I find the most accurate:

“To be or not to be! That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. To die—to sleep—no more; And by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”

*”This mortal coil” is not quite “this shell”; it is that twisting coil that seems to encircle us…

…is what forces us to pause. That is the idea that gives calamity such long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?*”

These words, I believe, are not meant to leave us indifferent:

“To die—to sleep. To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.”

What HAMLET faces in this “To be or not to be” is the position dictated by what his father told him. And what his father, as a ghost, told him is this: that he was taken by death “in the blossom of his sins.” It is a matter of confronting the position dictated by the sin of the other, the unpaid sin. Unlike ŒDIPUS, HAMLET is someone who knows—yet has not paid for the crime of existence.

The consequences for the next generation, in the case of ŒDIPUS, are not mild: his two sons think of nothing but massacring each other with all the vigor and conviction one could imagine. For HAMLET, the situation is entirely different: he can neither pay on behalf of the other nor leave the debt unsettled. Ultimately, he must exact payment, but in the conditions in which he is placed, the blow passes through himself. And it is with the very weapon…
…in the course of a dark series of events we will need to examine more closely…
…that HAMLET is wounded. Only after being mortally struck himself can he strike the criminal within his reach—CLAUDIUS.

This shared knowledge—the fact that both father and son know—is the crux of the difficulty HAMLET faces in assuming his act. The paths by which HAMLET may reach this act, rendering an otherwise impossible action achievable because the other already knows, are circuitous. These paths that ultimately enable him to accomplish what must be done should be our focus, as they are what will enlighten us. Since this is the true problem that I wanted to introduce today, I must bring you, in a sense, to its conclusion: the means by which, and the paths through which, HAMLET finally accomplishes his act.

Let us not forget, however, that when he does succeed—when CLAUDIUS finally falls—it is, after all, a botched job. It is only after passing through the body of another person that HAMLET ultimately plunges into the abyss.

That person is his friend and companion, LAERTES, and this happens only after his mother, through a mistake, poisons herself with the very cup meant as a fallback measure in case the poisoned rapier failed to wound HAMLET. This occurs after a series of other victims, and not until HAMLET himself has been fatally struck can he finally deal the blow.

There is something here that must raise questions for us.

If something is indeed accomplished, if there is an in extremis rectification of desire that enables the act, how exactly was it carried out?

This is precisely where the key lies—what makes this genius of a play irreplaceable, unmatched by anything “better crafted.” For, ultimately, what are these great mythical themes on which poets across ages build their works, if not a kind of prolonged approximation—an attempt to push the myth as close as possible to its essence until it penetrates subjectivity and psychology?

I argue—and will unambiguously continue to argue…
…and I believe I am aligned with FREUD in doing so…
…that poetic creations generate psychological creations more than they reflect them.

This diffuse canvas, so to speak, floating vaguely in this primordial relationship of father-son rivalry, takes on full relief here and forms the true heart of the play Hamlet.

It is to the extent that something comes to compensate for what was missing…
…what was missing precisely because of this distinct, original situation compared to the Oedipal narrative—that is, the absence of castration. It is the very fact that within the play, events unfold as a kind of slow, zigzagging progression—a protracted and circuitous delivery of the necessary castration…
…to the extent that this is realized in the final act, HAMLET brings forth the ultimate action in which he perishes. At this point, events are driven to a point where they can no longer escape, and others—like FORTINBRAS, always ready to claim the inheritance—come to take his place.