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(All parts in English)

HAMLET (4)

Let me have my desire! Such is the meaning I told you HAMLET has for all those—critics, actors, or spectators—who seize upon it.

I explained to you that this is the case due to the exceptional, the brilliant structural rigor with which HAMLET’s theme emerges after a dark elaboration that begins in the 12th and 13th centuries with SAXO GRAMMATICUS, then continues in the romanticized version by BELLEFOREST, and no doubt in an outline by KYD and also an early draft, it seems, by SHAKESPEARE, culminating in the form we now know.

This form is characterized in our eyes, following the method we employ here, by something I call structure, which is precisely what I am attempting to provide you as a key, enabling you to navigate with certainty through this topological form I have referred to as the graph, which might perhaps also be called the gram.

Let us return to HAMLET. I assume that after the three sessions during which I have discussed it with you, you have all read it at least once. Let us attempt to grasp once again the movement of HAMLET, which is at once simple yet profoundly marked by the countless twists and turns through which so many human thoughts have taken refuge.

If this movement is at once simple and infinitely complex, it is not difficult to understand why. The drama of HAMLET is the encounter with death. Others have emphasized this… and I alluded to it in our earlier discussions… …the astonishingly compelling, pertinent nature of the first scene on the terrace of Elsinore, this scene centering on what is to reappear, which the sentinels have already seen once: it is the encounter with the ghost, this form from below, whose nature, meaning, and intent remain at first unknown.

COLERIDGE says in his notes on HAMLET—which are so charming and easily found in his Lectures on Shakespeare… I return to this point because I may have given the impression of disparaging them, I mean, by saying to you that, after all, COLERIDGE merely finds himself there, I seemed to minimize his commentary… …it was he who first plumbed, as in many other areas, the depth of what HAMLET contains.

Regarding this first scene, even HUME, who was so staunchly against the notion of ghosts, believed in this one, as SHAKESPEARE’s art managed to convince him against his resistance.

—”The force he deployed against ghosts,” HUME said, “is akin to that of a Samson. And here, Samson is vanquished.”

It is clear that this is because SHAKESPEARE came so close to something that was not merely the ghost but was indeed this encounter, not with the dead, but with death itself, which is, after all, the pivotal point of the play. HAMLET’s movement toward death is where we must begin to grasp what is promised to us from the very first scene where the ghost appears at the exact moment it is said to have appeared:

“The bell then beating one. La cloche sonnant une heure.” [I,1]

This “one” will resurface at the end of the play when, after a circuitous journey, HAMLET finds himself on the verge of committing the act that will at once seal his fate and where, in a sense, he moves forward with closed eyes toward the one he must reach, saying to HORATIO—and it is not at just any moment that he finally says it to him:

“What is it to kill a man, in the time it takes to say ‘one’?” [And a man’s life is no more than to say “one.” (V, 2)]

Of course, in approaching this, HAMLET takes detours; he, as one might say, “plays truant.” This allows me to borrow a word directly from the text. It is about HORATIO, to whom—so modest and so kind, after he has just offered his help—HAMLET says:

“Here I am a truant scholar, I dawdle.” [Horatio. A truant disposition, good my lord. (I, 2)]

No one believes it, but indeed it is precisely what has always struck critics: this HAMLET, he dawdles. Why does he not go straight to the point? In essence, what we are trying to do here, to delve into, is to understand why this is so. On this subject, what we are doing is not a side road but a different road, distinct from the one taken by those who spoke before us. Yet it is different to the extent that it perhaps pushes the question a little further. What they said does not lose its relevance for all that; what they sensed is what FREUD immediately brought to the forefront.

It is that in this action in question, the action of delivering death, we do not know why such an urgent action, one that is ultimately so brief to execute, takes HAMLET so much time. What we are first told is that this action of delivering death encounters, in HAMLET, the obstacle of desire. This is the discovery, the rationale, and the paradox, since what I have shown you—and which remains the unresolved enigma of HAMLET, the enigma we are trying to solve—is precisely that thing upon which the mind seems compelled to stop: that the desire in question—since it is the desire discovered by FREUD, the desire for the mother, the desire insofar as it incites rivalry with the one who possesses her—this desire, my goodness, should align with the action.

To begin deciphering what this might mean—ultimately the mythical function of HAMLET, which makes it a theme equal to that of ŒDIPUS—what first becomes evident is what we read in the myth: the intimate link that exists, in essence, between this murder to be committed, this just murder, this murder he wants to commit:

• There is no conflict within him of law or order, concerning, as some authors have suggested, and as I have reminded you, the foundations of the execution of justice.
• There is no ambiguity within him between public order, the hand of the law, and private duties.
• There is no doubt for him that this murder embodies the entire law, that this murder is unquestionable.

…and his own death. This murder will only be carried out when HAMLET is already mortally struck, within that brief interval that remains to him between the death he receives and the moment when he is lost to it.

Thus, this is where we must begin. From this appointment to which we can ascribe its full meaning. HAMLET’s act projects itself, situates itself, in its finality, at the ultimate rendezvous, in that point with regard to:

• The subject as we are attempting to articulate and define it here,
• The subject insofar as it has not yet emerged: its advent is delayed in its properly philosophical articulation,
• The subject as FREUD has taught us it is constructed,
• A subject that is distinct from the subject Western philosophy has spoken of since there has been a theory of knowledge—a subject that is not the universal support of objects and, in some sense, its negative, its omnipresent support.
• A subject insofar as it speaks and is structured within a complex relationship with the signifier, which is exactly what we are trying to articulate here.

And to represent it once again:

If indeed the intersecting point of the intention of the demand and of the signifying chain takes place for the first time at the point A that we have defined as the great Other as the locus of truth.

I mean as the locus where speech takes place, establishing this order evoked and invoked each time the subject articulates something, each time they speak and perform this act that is distinct from all other immanent forms of captivation, where nothing in the relationship between one and another is equivalent to what, in speech, always establishes this third element: namely, the locus of the Other, where speech, even when false, is inscribed as truth.

This discourse toward the Other, this reference to the Other, extends beyond itself, into something that is taken up again from the Other to constitute the question:

“What do I want?”

Or more precisely, the question that arises for the subject in an already negative form:

“What do you want?”

The question of what—
beyond this demand alienated within the system of discourse as it exists, grounded in the locus of the Other—
the subject, in extending their momentum, asks of themselves as a subject, and where, in essence, they must encounter what lies beyond the locus of truth. The very genius—not of language but of extreme metaphor, which tends to emerge in the face of certain meaningful spectacles—calls this by a name we shall recognize here as it passes by: “the hour of truth.”

For let us not forget—
in a time when all philosophy has undertaken to articulate the bond between time and being—
that it is quite simple to realize that time—
in its very constitution: past-present-future, the dimensions of grammar—
is grounded in, and nothing other than, the act of speech.
The present is this moment in which I speak and nothing else. It is strictly impossible for us to conceive of temporality within an animal dimension, that is to say, within a dimension of appetite.

The rudiments of temporality demand the structure of language. In this beyond of the Other, in this discourse that is no longer for the Other but is properly the discourse of the Other itself, within which the broken line of the signifiers of the unconscious will form, in this Other into which the subject advances with their question as such, what they ultimately aim for is:

• The hour of this encounter with themselves,
• This encounter with their desire,
• This encounter with something we shall ultimately attempt to formulate, something whose elements we cannot yet fully define, though certain signs here already represent it to us, serving as a kind of marker or prefigurement of the layers of what awaits us in what we might call the steps or necessary stages of the question.

Let us nevertheless observe that if HAMLET—
who, as I have said, is not this or that, is not an obsessive for the simple reason that he is first and foremost a poetic creation. HAMLET does not possess neurosis; rather, HAMLET demonstrates neurosis to us, which is entirely different—
if HAMLET, through certain phrases—
when we look into HAMLET, under a certain light of the mirror—
appears closer than anything to the structure of the obsessive, it is already in this, that the function of desire—
since this is the question we pose regarding HAMLET—
reveals itself to us precisely in what is indicative of the essential element of structure, the one maximally emphasized in obsessive neurosis: namely, that one of the functions of desire, the major function for the obsessive, is to maintain this hour of the desired encounter at a distance, to await it.

And here I employ the term FREUD uses in Inhibition, Symptom, Anxiety: “Erwartung”—
which he expressly distinguishes from “abwarten,” “waiting it out.”
“Erwartung,” “awaiting” in the active sense, is also “making it wait.” This game with the hour of the encounter essentially dominates the obsessive’s relationship.

Undoubtedly, HAMLET demonstrates to us this entire dialectic, this unfolding interplay with the object in many other aspects as well, but this one is the most evident, the one that surfaces and strikes, that gives the play its style, and that has always made it an enigma.

Let us now try to examine other elements and the coordinates the play provides us.

What distinguishes HAMLET’s position with respect to a fundamental framework?

What makes it such a striking variation of the Oedipus myth in its nature as a variation?

After all, ŒDIPUS did not make such a fuss about it, as FREUD aptly noted in his brief explanatory note often cited when one is at a loss for words, namely:

• “My God, everything is degenerating; we moderns are living in a period of decadence. We twist and turn six hundred times before doing what the others, the good, brave, ancient ones, did straightforwardly!”

This is not an explanation; this reference to the idea of decadence should be treated with suspicion. We can approach it from other angles. I believe it is appropriate to push the question further. If it is indeed true that this is where the moderns stand, it must be for a reason—at least, if we are psychoanalysts—other than simply because they lack the sturdy nerves their forefathers possessed.

No! Already something I have drawn your attention to is essential: ŒDIPUS, for his part, did not deliberate thirty-six times before the act; he had done it before even thinking about it and without knowing it. The structure of the Oedipus myth is fundamentally constituted by this.

Now, it is quite clear and evident that there is something here, something that is precisely why I introduced you this year—not by chance—to this initiation into the gram as a key to the problem of desire. Recall the very simple dream from The Pleasure and Reality Principle, the dream in which the dead father appears, and I pointed out to you on the upper line, the line of enunciation in the dream: “He didn’t know.” This blessed ignorance of those caught up in the necessary drama ensuing from the fact that the speaking subject is subject to the signifier—this ignorance is present here. Let me point out, in passing, that no one explains why.

After all, if the father asleep in the garden was wounded by having poured into his ear—as JARRY might say—that delicate juice, “hebenon,” it seems the event must have escaped him, for nothing tells us he woke from his sleep to observe the damage. The scabs that covered his body were seen only by those who discovered his corpse.

This suggests that, in the domain of the beyond, one has very precise information about how one arrived there, which indeed might be a hypothetical principle, but it is not something we are obliged to accept as certain from the outset. All of this highlights the arbitrariness of the initial revelation, the one that informs the entire grand movement of HAMLET: the revelation by the father of the truth about his death. This essentially distinguishes a coordinate of the HAMLET myth from what happens in the Oedipus myth.

Something is unveiled, a veil, one that weighs precisely on the articulation of the unconscious line. This is the veil we are also trying to lift, not without it giving us, as you know, a fair amount of difficulty.

It is clear that it must have some essential function—I would say, for the safety of the subject as a speaking being—that our interventions aimed at reestablishing the coherence of the signifying chain at the level of the unconscious present all these difficulties and meet with so much opposition and resistance from the subject. This is what we call “resistance”, and it is the pivot of the entire history of analysis.

Here, the question is resolved: the father knew. And because he knew, HAMLET knows as well. That is to say, he has the answer. He has the answer, and there can only be one answer.

This answer is not necessarily expressible in psychological terms. I mean that it is not an answer that is necessarily comprehensible, much less one that grips you viscerally, but it is nonetheless an answer of a fatal kind.

Let us try to understand what this answer is. This answer, which is, in essence, the message at the point where it is constituted in the upper line, in the line of the unconscious. This answer, which I have already symbolized for you in advance, and—not, of course, without being forced by this fact to ask you to trust me. But it is easier, more honest, to ask someone to trust you on something that initially makes no sense at all. This does not commit you to anything, except perhaps to seek it out, which still leaves you the freedom to create it for yourselves.

This answer, I began articulating it in the following form: the signifier of the Other, S(Ⱥ), which distinguishes the answer at the level of the upper line from the one at the level of the lower line.

At the level of the lower line, the answer is always the signified of the Other, s(A). It is always in relation to that speech which unfolds at the level of the Other and which shapes the meaning of what we intended to say.

But who intended to say that at the level of the Other? It is signified at the level of simple discourse, but at the level beyond this discourse [d → $ ◊ a], at the level of the question the subject poses to themselves, which ultimately means: “What have I become in all of this?”

The answer, as I have told you, is the signifier of the Other, marked with a bar: S(Ⱥ).
There are countless ways to begin unpacking what this symbol includes.

But today, since we are dealing with HAMLET, we shall take the clear, evident, pathetic, and dramatic route. And this is what gives HAMLET its value: that we are given access to the meaning of S(Ⱥ).

The meaning of what HAMLET learns from his father lies before us, starkly clear: it is the irreparable, absolute, unfathomable betrayal of love. The betrayal of the purest love, the love of this king who may well have been, as all men are, a scoundrel in many respects, but who, with this being who was his wife, was the one who “brushed the winds from her face,” at least according to what HAMLET says.

It is the absolute falsehood of what appeared to HAMLET as the very testimony of beauty, truth, and the essential. That is the answer: HAMLET’s truth is a truth without hope. There is not a trace throughout HAMLET of any elevation toward something beyond—no redemption, no salvation.

We are already told that the first encounter came from below. This oral, infernal relationship to that ACHERON, which FREUD sought to agitate, failing to bend the higher powers—that is where HAMLET is situated, in the clearest way possible. Yet this is, of course, only a simple, self-evident observation, and it is curious to note that authors—
perhaps out of a certain delicacy, to avoid upsetting sensitive souls—
seldom emphasize this when discussing HAMLET.

I present this to you, after all, merely as a step in the order of the pathetic, in the realm of the sensitive, as painful as it may be. There must be something where the reason and motive behind all this can be articulated more radically. Because after all, every conclusion, every verdict—
no matter how radical it may be in taking on the form of what is called pessimism—
is still something designed to obscure the issue.

S(Ⱥ) does not mean: everything that occurs at the level of A is worthless, that all truth is deceptive.
That is something that might amuse people during those postwar periods of lightheartedness when one devises, for example, a “philosophy of the absurd” that is primarily useful in basements [a reference to Albert Camus].

Let us try to articulate something more serious—or perhaps lighter. With the bar as well, what does this essentially mean? I believe it is time to say it, though naturally, it will appear in a very particular light, but I do not think it is contingent.

S(Ⱥ) means this:
If A, the great Other, is not a being but the locus of speech,
S(Ⱥ) means that in this locus of speech—
where the total system of signifiers, that is, of a language, is situated, whether in an expanded or an encapsulated form—
something is missing.

Something is lacking, which may be nothing more than a single signifier. The signifier that is missing at the level of the Other, and which gives its most radical value to this S(Ⱥ), is the great secret of psychoanalysis. It is through this secret that psychoanalysis contributes something, revealing that the speaking subject—
as the experience of analysis shows us, necessarily structured in a particular way—
is distinct from the eternal subject, the subject described by a philosophical evolution which, while perhaps appearing fruitful from a certain perspective, might well seem like a kind of retrospective delirium.

This is the great secret:
“There is no Other of the Other.”

In other words:

For the subject of traditional philosophy, this subject endlessly subjectivizes itself: if “I am insofar as I think,” then “I am insofar as I think that I am,” and so on, with no reason for this process to ever stop.

The truth is that analysis teaches us something entirely different. It shows us that it is not so certain that I am insofar as I think, and that the only thing we can be certain of is this: I am insofar as I think that I am. This much is certain. However, what analysis teaches us is that I am not the one who is thinking that I am. For the simple reason that, in thinking that I am, I think “in the place of the Other,” I am someone other than the one who thinks that I am.

The question, then, is that I have no guarantee whatsoever that this Other, through what exists within its system, can return to me, so to speak, what I have given it: its being and its essence of truth.

As I have told you: there is no Other of the Other. There is no signifier in the Other capable, on occasion, of answering for what I am. To put it in a transformed way: this truth without hope that I mentioned earlier, this truth that we encounter at the level of the unconscious, is a truth without a face, a truth closed off, a truth pliable in every direction. We know this all too well: it is a truth without truth.

And this is precisely the greatest obstacle for those who approach our work from the outside and who, confronted with our interpretations—
because they are not on the same path with us, where those interpretations are meant to have their effect, which can only be conceived metaphorically, insofar as they resonate between the two lines—
are unable to understand what analytic interpretation is about.

This signifier, which the Other does not possess—
if we are able to speak of it at all, it is still because, of course, it exists somewhere.
I gave you this little gram to ensure you do not lose your bearings. I created it with as much care as I could, but certainly not to increase your confusion.
You can recognize it wherever the bar appears: the hidden signifier, the one the Other does not have, and which concerns you specifically.

It is the same signifier you draw into play because you, poor fools, have been ensnared in this sacred business of λόγος (logos) since the day you were born. It is the part of you that has been sacrificed in this process—
and sacrificed not merely, physically or “actually,” as one might say, but symbolically, which is far from nothing—
this part of you that has taken on a signifying function.

And for that reason, there is only one, not thirty-six. It is precisely this enigmatic function we call the phallus, which represents something from the organism of life, from its vital drive—what some might call “vital impulse,” though I have often cautioned against using that term indiscriminately. Once properly defined, symbolized, and placed where it belongs—especially where it serves, where it is truly taken up within the unconscious—it takes on its meaning.

The phallus, the vital swelling, this enigmatic, universal entity—more male than female and yet something of which the female herself can become the symbol—this is what is at stake. And this is what, because it is unavailable within the Other—
even though it is this very life that the subject makes signifying—
offers no guarantee for the meaning of the discourse of the Other. In other words, though this life is wholly sacrificed, it is not returned to the subject by the Other.

This is the starting point for HAMLET: from the response of the given. It is this foundation that allows the entire trajectory to be swept clear, that enables this radical revelation to lead him to the final rendezvous. To reach this, we will now revisit what happens in the play HAMLET. The play, as you know, is the work of SHAKESPEARE, and we must therefore pay attention to what he added to it.

It was already quite an impressive journey, but we must believe it offered—
and it was enough that it offered itself for it to be taken—
a long enough path to give us a view of the landscape, for SHAKESPEARE to have traversed it. Last time, I pointed out the questions raised by the play scene, the “scene of the actors”; I will return to that.

Today, however, I would like to introduce an essential element—essential because it concerns what we are approaching after establishing the function of the two lines. Namely, what lies in the interval, what, if I may put it this way, creates for the subject the distance they can maintain between the two lines, allowing them to breathe during the time they have left to live. And this is what we call desire.

I told you about the pressure, the obliteration, the destruction that this desire nonetheless undergoes when it encounters something of the real Other, the mother as she is—this mother like so many others—namely, something structured, something less of desire and more of voracity, even engulfment, something which, obviously…

we don’t know why, but after all, what does it matter…
at that point in SHAKESPEARE’s life, became a revelation for him.

The problem of woman, of course, has never been absent from SHAKESPEARE’s work, and there were bold women before HAMLET. But as abyssal, fierce, and tragic as those appearing after HAMLET, there are none.

Troilus and Cressida—
which is an absolute marvel and certainly has not received the recognition it deserves—
perhaps allows us to delve deeper into what SHAKESPEARE was contemplating at that time.

The creation of Troilus and Cressida, I believe, is one of the most sublime pieces in dramatic literature.

At the level of HAMLET and the dialogue that may be considered the climax of the play—
between HAMLET and his mother—
I already told you last time about the meaning of this adjuration toward the mother, which is approximately:

“Do not destroy beauty, the order of the world; do not confuse Hyperion—
this is how he refers to his father—
with the basest of beings.” [III, 4]

…and the collapse of this adjuration before what he knows to be the fatal necessity of this kind of desire, a desire that sustains nothing and retains nothing. The quotations I could offer here about SHAKESPEARE’s reflections on this subject are excessively numerous. I will only give you one that I noted during the holidays, in an entirely different context.

It concerns someone who is quite in love, but also, it must be said, rather eccentric—though a good man, all the same. This is from Twelfth Night, where the hero, in conversation with a girl who, to win his affection—
even though there is no doubt in the hero, the Duke as he is called, that his inclinations are toward women—
approaches him disguised as a boy. This is, after all, a peculiar way to present oneself as a girl, since she loves him.

I am not providing these details without reason; they lead us toward something I will now introduce you to: the creation of OPHELIA. This woman, VIOLA, precedes OPHELIA. Twelfth Night predates the development of HAMLET by about two years, and it serves as an exact example of the transformation occurring in SHAKESPEARE’s treatment of his female characters. These creations, as you know, are among the most fascinating, alluring, captivating, and simultaneously troubling aspects of his work, making up one truly immortal side of his genius.

This girl-boy, or boy-girl, is the very type of creation where something surfaces, where something reveals itself—something that will lead us to what will now be our focus: the role of the object in desire.

After using this example to show the perspective in which our question about OPHELIA is situated, let us look at what the Duke—
unaware that the person before him is a girl, a girl who loves him—
says in response to the probing questions of the girl who, while he despairs, tells him:

“How can you complain? If someone were near you, sighing for your love, and you had no desire to love them back—
which is precisely the case, this is what you are suffering—
how would you receive them? You should not blame others for what you would undoubtedly do yourself.”

He, blind and lost in the enigma of the situation, replies with a profound statement about the difference between feminine and masculine desire:

“There is no woman who can bear the beating of a passion as violent as the one that possesses my heart.
No woman’s heart can endure so much. They lack that suspension…” [Twelfth Night (II, 4)]

And all of its development stems from something that, in desire, essentially creates this distance—the specific relationship to the object as such. This is precisely what is expressed in the symbol I place here on this returning line: the X of the will.

This refers to the relationship $ to (a). The object (a), as it is, can be described as the cursor or the level where the desire within the subject is properly situated. I would like to introduce the character of OPHELIA by taking advantage of what philological and textual criticism has brought to light about, so to speak, her antecedents.

I came across the words of some critic—whose name I cannot recall but who struck me as a complete fool—who was suddenly struck with a lively sense of humor on the day he realized—
not particularly hastily, as he should have known it for some time—
that in BELLEFOREST, there is a character playing the role of OPHELIA. In BELLEFOREST, the situation regarding HAMLET is just as perplexing. That is, he certainly appears mad, but no one feels entirely reassured, as it is clear that this madman knows well enough what he wants, and what he wants…
is precisely what no one knows; it is many things.
What he wants is the question for everyone else.

To uncover his secrets, they send him a prostitute—her task is to lure him into a secluded part of the forest, elicit his confidences, while someone else, hidden nearby, eavesdrops to learn more. As is fitting, the stratagem fails, thanks, I believe, to the girl’s love. What is certain is that this critic was thrilled to discover this kind of “proto-OPHELIA,” seeing in it an explanation for the ambiguities of OPHELIA’s character.

Naturally, I will not revisit the role of OPHELIA in its entirety, but this character—so eminently pathetic and moving, whom we can consider one of the great figures of humanity—presents herself, as you know, in profoundly ambiguous terms. No one has yet been able to definitively declare:

• Whether she is pure innocence, speaking or alluding to her most carnal impulses with the simplicity of a purity unburdened by modesty,
• Or, on the contrary, a wanton woman ready for any endeavor.

The texts are a veritable hall of mirrors, offering endless interpretations, yet ultimately revealing a profound charm, where the mad scene is not the least of its highlights. This much is entirely clear.

On the one hand, HAMLET treats her with an extraordinary cruelty, one that disturbs, that—as we say—hurts, and which makes her feel like a victim. On the other hand, it is equally evident that she is far from the disembodied or desexualized creature depicted by the Pre-Raphaelite paintings I mentioned earlier. She is something entirely different.

In truth, it is surprising that prejudices concerning the type, nature, meaning, and conduct—let us say morality—of women are still so deeply ingrained that, even in OPHELIA’s case, such questions arise. It seems OPHELIA is simply what any girl is, whether or not she has crossed—after all, we do not know—the taboo threshold of losing her virginity. This question does not seem, in any way, to be posed regarding OPHELIA.

The point here is to understand why SHAKESPEARE introduced this character, who appears to represent an extreme point on a curve—extending from his early heroines, the girl-boys, to something that later reclaims its form, albeit transformed in another nature.

OPHELIA, who seems to represent the pinnacle of SHAKESPEARE’s creation of the female type, stands precisely at the point where she herself is like a bud ready to bloom, yet threatened by the worm gnawing at the heart of the bud. This vision of life poised to blossom, life that carries all future life within it, is how HAMLET himself perceives and situates her, only to reject her:

“Why would you be the mother of sinners?” [Hamlet: …Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? (III, 1)]

This image of vital fertility, this image, in every respect, illustrates better than any other creation, I believe, the equation I have referred to in my lectures: “girl = phallus.” This is clearly something we can very easily recognize.

I will not dwell on things that, in truth, seem to me mere curious coincidences. I happened to wonder where OPHELIA’s name originated, and in an article by BOISSACQ in the Greek Etymological Dictionary, I found a Greek reference. SHAKESPEARE did not have access to the dictionaries we use, but authors of that era exhibit, alongside vast and splendid ignorance, insights so penetrating, and constructions so closely aligned with modern criticism, that I feel compelled to share this observation, drawn from notes I had forgotten.

If my memory serves me correctly, in HOMER there is the term Ὄϕηλίὀ [ophelio], meaning “to swell,” “to grow.” Ὄϕηλίὀ is used to describe “molting” or “vital fermentation,” roughly signifying “letting something change” or “thicken.”

What is even more amusing—and it is impossible not to note this—is that in the same article, BOISSACQ, an author rigorous in his treatment of chains of signifiers, explicitly links Ὄϕηλίὀ to the verbal form of ὀμϕαλός [omphalos], meaning phallus. The connection between OPHELIA and ὀμϕαλός [omphalos] does not require BOISSACQ to make it apparent to us—it is evident in the structure.

What matters now is not whether OPHELIA can be seen as the phallus but rather—
if she is, as we say, truly the phallus—
how SHAKESPEARE makes her fulfill this function. And this is where the key lies.

SHAKESPEARE elevates what is given to him in BELLEFOREST’s legend to a new plane. In BELLEFOREST, the courtesan is bait, used to extract HAMLET’s secret. By transposing this to a higher level—the level where the true question resides—I will show you next time how OPHELIA is positioned to interrogate the secret. This is not the secret of the sinister plots HAMLET’s surrounding figures attempt to extract from him without truly understanding his capacity for action. Rather, it is the secret of desire.

In OPHELIA’s relationship with the object—
as punctuated throughout the play by a series of distinct moments, which we will examine in detail—
something is articulated that allows us to grasp, in a particularly vivid way, the relationships of the subject as a speaking being. That is, the subject as one subjected to the rendezvous with their destiny, in connection with something that must acquire, through and within analysis, a new meaning.

This meaning, around which analysis revolves, is no coincidence. It emerges precisely as we approach this term “object,” which has become so prevalent in analytic theory, so much more emphasized and central than it was in FREUD. To the point where some have claimed that analysis has transformed the meaning of the term, shifting it from the libido as a seeker of pleasure to the libido as a seeker of the object.

As I have told you, analysis risks venturing down a misguided path when it articulates and defines the object in a way that misses its true mark, failing to sustain what truly matters in the relationship inscribed within the formula S(Ⱥ). It is a relationship where $, the subject, is subjected to something I will name for you next time. I will teach you to decipher it under the term “fading of the subject,” which stands in contrast to the notion of the splitting of the object and to the subject’s relationship with the object as such.

What is the object of desire?

One day—not too long ago, I believe in the second session this year—I quoted someone, whom I hope someone has since identified, saying that what the miser mourns in the loss of his treasure chest would teach us much about human desire, if we understood it.

It was Simone WEIL who said this. This is what we will try to unravel as we follow the thread running through the tragedy between OPHELIA and HAMLET.