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(All parts in English)

HAMLET (8)

Today we will continue the study of the role of the function of fantasy as it is symbolized in the subject’s relationships, with respect to the subject as marked by the effect of speech, and in relation to an object (a) that we attempted to define as such in our previous discussion.

This function of fantasy, as you know, is situated at a certain level within the framework of this relationship that we have attempted to inscribe in what we call the graph.

It is, in essence, something very simple since the terms are reduced to four points, so to speak, located at the intersections of the two chains of signifiers by a loop [$→I(A)], which constitutes the subjective intention.

These intersections, therefore, determine these four points that we have referred to as:

• Points of code, which are those on the right, here [A and $◊D],
• And the two other points of message [S(Ⱥ) and s(A)], functioning retroactively due to the effect of the chain of signifiers on meaning.

Here are the four points that we have learned to furnish with the following significations:

• [A and s(A)]: These are the places where the subject’s intention encounters the concrete fact, the fact that language exists.
• Here, the two other signs [S(Ⱥ) and $◊D], which we will revisit today, are S in the presence of D [$◊D] and S as a signifier of A [S(Ⱥ)].

These two chains of signifiers—this has long been clarified—respectively represent:

• The lower chain [G1], which is the subject’s concrete discourse as it is, let us say, accessible to consciousness.
• What analysis has taught us is that, insofar as this chain is accessible to consciousness, it is perhaps—or certainly—because it begins with illusions that we affirm it as entirely transparent to consciousness.

And if, for several years, I have insisted before you… in every possible way, suggesting the illusory aspects inherent in this effect of transparency; if I have sought to demonstrate, through all sorts of fables that you may still recall, how at the limit we might attempt, under the form of an image in a mirror made effective beyond all subjective subsistence, by what mechanism persisting in the subjective void created by the destruction of all life, if I have tried to provide you with an image of the possibility of the persistence of something absolutely specular, independent of any subjective support, …it is not merely for the pleasure of such a game, but because it is based on the fact that a structure assembled like that of a chain of signifiers may be supposed to endure beyond all subjectivity of its supports.

Consciousness, insofar as it gives us the sense of being “me” in discourse, is something that, from the analytical perspective… the one that continually forces us to confront the subject’s systematic misrecognition, …is precisely something that our experience teaches us to relate to a relationship. It shows us that this consciousness, insofar as it is first experienced, first felt in an image that is the image of the similar, is something that, rather, covers over with an appearance of consciousness:

• What is included in the subject’s relationships to the primary chain of signifiers, the naive demand, the innocent speech,
• The concrete discourse as it perpetuates itself from one mouth to another, organizing what discourse consists of in history itself,
• What rebounds from articulation to articulation in what happens, at varying distances, in relation to this common, universal concrete discourse that encompasses all real, social activity of the human group.

The other chain of signifiers [G2] is the one positively given to us in the analytical experience as inaccessible to consciousness. You already sense that, for us, this reference to consciousness concerning the first chain is suspect; even more so, the sole characteristic of inaccessibility to consciousness raises questions for us about the meaning of this inaccessibility.

We must therefore consider—and I will return to this—we must clarify precisely what we mean by it. Should we consider that this chain, as such, inaccessible to consciousness, is structured like a chain of signifiers? But this is something I will revisit shortly; for now, let us take it as it presents itself to us.

Here, the dotted line on which it is represented [G2] signifies that the subject does not articulate it as discourse. What the subject articulates at present is something else. What the subject articulates at the level of the chain of signifiers is situated at the level of the intentional loop [$→I(A)]. It is to the extent that the subject orients themselves as acting within the alienation of signification through the play of speech that the subject articulates themselves—as what?—as an enigma, as a question, precisely.

What is given to us in experience, from what is tangible in the evolution of the human subject, particularly at a moment in the child’s articulation, is the observation that beyond the first demand, with all the consequences it already entails, there comes a moment when the subject seeks to sanction what is before them, to sanction things within the order inaugurated by signification. At this point, they will say “What?” and they will say “Why?”

This occurs within what is an express reference to discourse. This is what presents itself as continuing the initial intention of demand, carrying it forward to the secondary intention of discourse as discourse, discourse that questions itself, that interrogates things in relation to itself, in relation to their position within discourse. This is no longer exclamation, interpellation, or a cry of need but already nomination.

This represents the secondary intention of the subject. And if I place this secondary intention at the locus A, it is because, insofar as the subject is entirely within the alienation of signification, within the alienation of articulated speech as such, it is at this level that the question arises that I called last time: the subject as such, “S?” with a question mark.

Thus, it is not that I indulge in the play of equivocation, but it is consistent with the level at which we are operating, with the articulation we are providing.

It is within this questioning, this internal interrogation in the locus instituted by speech, within discourse, that the subject must try to position themselves as the subject of speech, once again asking:

• Is it so?
• What?
• Why?
• Who is speaking?
• Where is this speech occurring?

It is precisely because what is articulated at the level of the chain of signifiers cannot be articulated at the level of this “S?”, this question that constitutes the subject once instituted in speech, that the fact of the unconscious exists.

Here, I merely wish to recall—for the benefit of those who might be concerned that this identification of the unconscious chain as I present it here, in relation to the subject’s questioning, is an arbitrary construction—that it is in the same relation as that of the primary discourse of demand to the intention arising from need.

I want to remind you of this: if the signifier, if the unconscious, has meaning, this meaning has all the characteristics of the function of the chain of signifiers as such.

Here, I know well that in making this brief reminder, I must evoke, for most of my listeners, what they have already heard from me when I have spoken of this chain of signifiers, insofar as it is illustrated in the story I have published elsewhere—the fable of the white discs and black discs—as it illustrates something structural in the relationships from subject to subject, insofar as it contains three terms.

In this story, a distinctive sign allows identification, discrimination between a white or black pair, in relation to other subjects. For those who do not remember, I will simply tell them to refer to what I have written on this subject regarding this succession of oscillations through which the subject finds orientation.

In relation to what? In relation to the search for the other, which is carried out based on what others see of oneself and what determines them conclusively, namely what I will call here the [gender?], that by which the subject decides they are indeed white or black and is prepared to declare it, for which the fable is constructed.

Do you not find here precisely what, in the structure of the drive, is so familiar to us, namely this fact of relative identification, this possibility of denial, refusal of articulation, defense, which are as inherent to the drive as the reverse is to the obverse of the same thing, and which culminate in something that becomes for the subject a mark, a choice under specific conditions, in specific situations, whereby they always, in fact, choose this power of repetition—always the same—which we attempt to name, depending on the subjects, a masochistic tendency, a penchant for failure, return of the repressed, or fundamental evocation of the primitive chain?

All this is one and the same thing: the repetition in the subject of a type of sanction whose forms far exceed the characteristics of the content. Essentially, the unconscious always presents itself to us as an articulation repeated indefinitely, which is why it is legitimate for us to situate it in this schema in the form of this dotted line. Why do we depict it here with a dotted line?

As we have stated:

• Insofar as the subject does not have access to it, and we specify further:
• Insofar as the way the subject can name themselves within it, can situate themselves as the bearer of this sanction,
• Insofar as they can designate themselves within it,
• Insofar as they are the one upon whom the mark, the stigmas of what remains not only ambiguous but, strictly speaking, inaccessible until a certain point—precisely the point revealed by analytical experience—will finally fall.

No “I” of theirs can be articulated at this level, but the experience presents itself as “it comes from outside,” and it is already significant that it arrives—it can be read as “It speaks.”

There is a distance here that is not even guaranteed, despite Freud’s directive giving us the perspective, that the subject could, in any way, reach the goal. The significance, then, at this level of what we call the point of code, insofar as we symbolize it here by the confrontation of $ with demand D: $◊D, signifies what?

Very precisely this: it is nothing other than this point, which we call the point of code, and which only emerges insofar as analysis begins the deciphering of the coherence of the upper chain. It is insofar as the subject $, as the subject of the unconscious—
that is, as the subject constituted beyond the concrete discourse, as the subject who sees, reads, hears, I say retroactively—we can posit them here as the support of the articulation of the unconscious—
encounters—what?—encounters that which, in this chain of the subject’s speech as they question themselves, encounters demand. What role does demand play at this level?

At this level—and this is what the symbol ◊ between $ and D [$◊D] signifies—at this level, demand is imbued with its properly symbolic form. Demand is utilized insofar as, beyond what it requires in terms of satisfying need, it poses itself as this demand for love or this demand for presence through which we have said that demand institutes the Other to whom it is addressed as the one who can be present or absent. It is insofar as demand fulfills this metaphorical function, insofar as demand—whether oral or anal—becomes a symbol of the relationship with the Other, that it fulfills its function as code, enabling the constitution of the subject as situated in what we call, in our terminology, the oral or anal phase, for example.

But this can also be referred to as the correspondence of the message, that is, what, with this code, the subject can respond to or receive as a message regarding what constitutes the question that, beyond, provides the initial grasp in the chain of signifiers.

It is also presented here in a dotted form and as coming from the Other, the question “Che vuoi?”, “What do you want?”. This is what the subject, beyond the Other, poses to themselves in the form of “S?”. The response is symbolized here in the schema by the signification of the Other as s(A). This signification of the Other as “S?” is given at this level a meaning that encompasses the broader sense, the sense in which the concrete subject’s adventure, their subjective history, is shaped.

The most general form is this:

• There is nothing in the Other,
• There is nothing in the signification that could suffice at this level of the articulation of signifiers,
• There is nothing in the signification that could serve as the guarantee of truth,
• There is no other guarantee of truth than the good faith of the Other, which is to say, something that always presents itself to the subject in a problematic form.

Does this mean that the subject is left at the end of their questioning with full faith in what the realm of speech reveals to them? It is precisely here that we arrive at our discussion of fantasy.

As I showed you last time, fantasy, insofar as it is the concrete stopping point where we reach the shores of consciousness, plays the role for the subject of the imaginary support at that precise point where the subject finds nothing to articulate them as the subject of their unconscious discourse. This is where we return today, where we must examine more closely the nature of this phenomenon.

I remind you of what I said last time regarding the object: how the object plays there the same mirage-like role that, on a lower level, the image of the specular other, i(a), plays in relation to the ego.

Thus, facing the point where the subject situates themselves to access the level of the unconscious chain, I position fantasy here as such: $◊a. This relation to the object as it exists in fantasy leads us to what? To a phenomenology of the cut, to the object as it can serve on the imaginary plane as the support of this relation of cut, which is the one where—at this level—the subject must situate themselves.

This object, as the imaginary support of this relation of cut, we have observed on three levels:

• Pre-genital,
• Of castrative mutilation,
• And also of the hallucinatory voice as such, meaning less as an embodied voice than as speech interrupted, as [voice] cut off from the inner monologue, as [voice] severed in the text of the inner monologue.

Let us see today if there is not much more to be said if we revisit the meaning of what is expressed there. For, after all, what is at stake in relation to something I introduced last time, namely, from the point of view of the real, from the point of view of knowledge?

At what level are we here, since we are introduced to the level of an S? Is this “S?” anything other than an equivocation that can be filled with any meaning? Or shall we limit ourselves to its verbal conjugation, to the verb “to be”?

Something about this was already addressed last time. It is indeed a question of understanding at what level we are here in relation to the subject, insofar as the subject does not only refer to discourse but also to certain realities.

I say this: if something presents itself, articulates itself in such a coherent way that we could call it reality—
I mean the reality that we reference in our analytical discourse—
I would situate its field in the schema here, in the field below the concrete discourse, insofar as this discourse encompasses and closes it, as it is a reserve of knowledge, knowledge that we can extend as far as everything that can speak for humanity. I mean that they are not obligated at every moment to recognize what, already in their reality, in their history, they have included in their discourse, that everything presented, for instance, in Marxist dialectics as alienation, can here be grasped and articulated coherently.

Further, I will say: the cut, let us not forget—
and this is already indicated to us in the type of the first object of fantasy, the pre-genital object—
to what am I referring as objects that could support fantasies here, if not real objects in a close relation with the subject’s vital drive, insofar as they are separated from them?

What is all too evident is that the real is not a compact continuum; the real is made—of course—of cuts, just as much and even far beyond the cuts of language. It is not a recent insight that the philosopher—Aristotle—spoke to us of the good philosopher, which, in my opinion, also means:

• “The one who knows, in all its generality, is comparable to the good cook, the one who knows how to pass the knife at the precise point of articulation, cutting through without damaging.”

The relationship between the cut in the real and the cut in language is something that, to a certain extent, seems to satisfy what the philosophical tradition has always rested upon: the notion that one system of cuts merely overlays another system of cuts.

What I mean by saying that the Freudian question arrives at its proper moment is that the trajectory now accomplished by science allows us to articulate that there is something in the adventure of science that goes far beyond this identification, this overlaying of natural cuts by the cuts of any given discourse.

What arose from an effort that essentially sought to strip scientific articulation of its mythological foundations has, as we will see shortly, led us to the point we have reached. It is sufficiently characterized, without dramatizing further, by the term “disintegration of matter.”

This is something that might lead us to see this adventure as nothing more than pure and simple knowledge. Yet, if we place ourselves at the level of the real—or, if you prefer temporarily, something I will call here, with the necessary irony, as it is certainly not my inclination to call it so, “the grand All”—from this perspective, the science and its adventure appear not as the real reflecting its own cuts back to itself, but as creative elements of something new. This new development proliferates in a way that, here, we cannot deny as humans—our mediating function, our role as agents—raises the question of whether the consequences of what is unfolding might exceed us somewhat. To put it plainly: humanity enters into this game at its own expense.

Perhaps we do not need to go further here. Through this speech, which I deliver deliberately in a restrained and minimal manner—yet whose dramatic and contemporary undertone I assume does not escape you—what I wish to convey is that the question concerning the adventure of science is something entirely other than anything that could have been articulated, even with the extreme consequences of science and all the outcomes inscribed in the drama of human history.

Here, in this case, the particular subject is confronted with this kind of cut constituted by the fact that, relative to a certain discourse, they are not conscious—they do not know what they are.

This is the issue: it concerns the relationship of the subject’s real, as entering into the cut, and this advent of the subject at the level of the cut to something that must indeed be called a real but which is symbolized by nothing.

You might find it excessive to see designated—
at the level of what we earlier called a pure manifestation of being—
the elective point of the relationship of the subject to what we might call their “pure being as subject,” through which the fantasy of desire takes on the function of designating this point: [S(Ⱥ) → $◊a → I(A)].

This is why, at another moment, I was able to define this function fulfilled by fantasy as a metonymy of being and, at this level, identify desire as such.

Let us be clear that, at this level, the question remains entirely open as to whether we can call what is thus indicated “human.” For what can we call “human” if not what has already been symbolized as such—and which, moreover, every time it is spoken of, is charged with all the historical recognitions, let us say?

The word “humanism” commonly designates nothing at this level. Yet, there is something real in it, something real that is necessary and sufficient to ensure, within the very experience, this dimension we usually—but, I believe, improperly—call “depth,” or the “beyond,” which ensures that being is not identifiable with any of the roles—if I may use the term currently in vogue—that it assumes.

Thus, the dignity, if I may say, of this being is defined in a relationship that is not, in any sense, “cut off”—if I may express it this way—from all backgrounds, especially castrative references.

If, with other experiences, you could place not a “guilty party”—to allow me a play on words—but the “cut” as such, namely, ultimately, what presents itself to us as the last structural characteristic of the symbolic as such, I merely wish to point out in passing that what we find here is the direction in which I have already taught you to seek what Freud called the death instinct, that by which this death instinct may be found converging with being.

At this point, there may be some difficulties, and I would like to try to address them. In the latest issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, there is a very interesting article—moderately so—by Mr. Kurt Eissler titled “The Junction of Details in the Interpretation of Works of Art” (The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1959, No. 28).

It is to a work of art, and to art in general, that I will attempt to refer in illustrating what is at stake here. Kurt Eissler begins and ends his discourse with a remark that, I must say, can be described variously depending on whether it is seen as confusing or simply unexplained. Here is roughly what he articulates: The term detail seems to him particularly significant in relation to and on the occasion of the work of an author otherwise perfectly unknown beyond Austrian circles.

This author is an actor-playwright…
and if I refer to this, it is because I will return shortly to Hamlet…
The actor-playwright in question is a little-known Shakespeare.

Concerning this Shakespeare, who lived in the previous century in Vienna, Eissler created one of those charming little stories typical of what is called applied psychoanalysis.

That is to say, once again, he uncovered through the character’s life a number of paradoxical identifying elements that introduce questions destined to remain forever unresolved—for instance, whether Mr. Ferdinand Raimund was particularly affected, five years before he wrote one of his masterpieces, by the death of someone who served as a sort of model for him—a model so deeply assumed that it raises all kinds of questions about paternal, maternal, sexual identifications, and anything else one might imagine!

The question itself leaves us rather indifferent; it is an example of one of those gratuitous works in this genre, repeatedly undertaken with a sense of repetition that also retains its conviction. But that is not the issue here. The issue is this: the type of distinction Eissler wants to establish between the function of what he roughly calls the relevant detail in English—let’s call it the detail that does not fit, the pertinent detail.

Indeed, it concerns something in a fairly well-made play by the aforementioned Ferdinand Raimund, something that appears, let’s say, like hair in soup—completely uncalled for. This is what pricked Kurt Eissler’s ear and, following one clue after another, led him to discover a number of biographical facts whose interest is undeniably evident.

So, it is about the guiding value of the irrelevant [non-pertinent] detail. Here, Eissler establishes a sort of opposition between what happens in clinical practice and what happens in so-called applied psychoanalysis, particularly in the analysis of a work of art.

He repeats twice something…
If I had the time, I would read it to you in the text to let you feel its somewhat opaque nature…
He essentially says: the role played by the symptom and this discordant detail is roughly the same, except that in analysis we start with a symptom that is fundamentally irrelevant to the subject. Through interpretation, we progress toward its resolution.

In the other case, it is the detail that introduces us to the problem—that is, in a text…
He doesn’t even formulate the concept of a text…
In a text, we grasp something that wasn’t particularly implied as being discordant. This introduces us to something that can lead us to the personality of the author.

If you examine this more closely, it cannot really pass as a relationship of contrast. Upon reflection, you will realize this…
If there is contrast, there is, of course, also parallelism…
That overall, the observation seems to lead toward the idea that discordance in the symbolic—
in the symbolic as such in a written work, and in this case at least—
plays a functional role quite identical to that of a real symptom, at least from the perspective of progress, if this progress is considered as an advancement in knowledge regarding the subject.

From this perspective, the comparison certainly has value. However, the question then arises for us: In a work of art, is it only the typo that will become meaningful for us?

And why not, after all? For if it is clear that in a work of art, what we might call the typo…
You understand, of course, that I mean something that appears to us as a discontinuity…
can lead us to some useful knowledge, serving as an index through which we uncover, in greater clarity and unconscious significance, this or that incident from the author’s past life…
as is indeed the case in this article…
Does this not, in any case, introduce us to the idea that the dimension of the work of art must itself be illuminated for us?

Indeed, we can then, based on this simple fact…
and we will see it well beyond this fact…
assert that the work of art can no longer, in any way, be affirmed as representing this transposition, this sublimation—call it what you will—of reality:

• It is not about something that operates as broadly as possible in imitation,
• It is not about something that operates as broadly as possible in the order of mimēsis [μίμησις].

This observation can just as easily apply to the general case, namely, that the work of art always involves profound reworking. This does not undermine what, I believe, has already surpassed us. But it is not this point that I wish to draw your attention to. It is that the work of art is, for us, limited to a specific type of work of art. For now, I will limit myself to written works of art.

Far from being something that transfigures reality in any way…
no matter how broadly you wish to define it…
the work of art introduces into its very structure the fact of the emergence of the cut, insofar as it manifests the real of the subject, in that beyond what the subject says, they are the unconscious subject.

For if this relationship of the subject to the emergence of the cut is forbidden to them insofar as it is precisely their unconscious, it is not forbidden insofar as the subject experiences fantasy, in the sense that they are animated by this relationship, which we call desire, and that…
through the sole reference of this experience and insofar as it is intimately interwoven into the work…
something becomes possible whereby the work expresses this dimension, this real of the subject, as we earlier called it: the advent of being beyond any possible subjective realization.

It is both the virtue and the form of the work of art—whether it succeeds or fails—that it engages with this dimension. This dimension, if I may put it this way, can be sensed through the topology of my schema. It is a transversal dimension, one that is not parallel to the field created in the real by human symbolization, which is called reality, but which intersects it. It intersects it insofar as the most intimate relationship of man to the cut—one that surpasses all natural cuts—is rooted in the essential cut of his existence: the fact that he is here and must situate himself within the very emergence of this cut. This is what is at stake in the work of art.

Particularly in the work we have most recently approached, because it is, in this regard, the most problematic work: Hamlet. There are all sorts of irrelevant elements in Hamlet. I would even say that this is how we have progressed, though in a completely enigmatic way.

At every moment, we are left wondering: what does this irrelevance mean?

One thing is clear: it can never be excluded that Shakespeare intended it. If—rightly or wrongly, it matters little—Kurt Eissler can find it strange in Ferdinand Raimund’s work that a five-year period is introduced, a period that no one had ever mentioned before…
this irrelevant detail leads him to a certain line of inquiry…
it is clear that we have not proceeded in the same way with what happens in Hamlet. For, in any case, we are certain that this web of irrelevances cannot simply be resolved by assuming that Shakespeare was guided here by his genius.

We sense that he was involved in some way, and after all, even if he was involved only as a manifestation of his deepest unconscious, what stands out is the architecture of these irrelevances. This architecture reveals that what Shakespeare achieves is fundamentally an assertion of the profound relationship we distinguished earlier: the relationship of the subject, at their deepest level, as a speaking subject—that is, insofar as they bring to light their relationship to the cut as such.

This is precisely what the architecture of Hamlet shows us, insofar as we see how the play fundamentally depends on the relationship of the subject to truth.

Unlike the “dream of the dead father,” with which we began this year’s exploration—the dream in which the dead father appears before the son pierced with grief—here, the father knows he is dead and makes this known to his son. What distinguishes the scenario, the articulation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, from the Hamlet story as it appears in Saxo Grammaticus is precisely that only the father and the son know.

In Saxo Grammaticus, the murder is public, and Hamlet feigns madness to conceal his intentions; everyone knows a crime has occurred. Here, only the father and the son know—and one of them is a ghost. And what is a ghost if not the representation of a paradox that only a work of art can construct? This is where Shakespeare renders it entirely credible.

Others before me have demonstrated the function fulfilled by the appearance of the ghost.

The function of the ghost is established from the very beginning of Hamlet. And what does the ghost say? He says very strange things, and I am surprised that no one has even attempted—not to psychoanalyze the ghost—but to emphasize any question about what the ghost says. What he says, in any case, is beyond doubt.

He says: betrayal is absolute; there was nothing greater, nothing more perfect than my bond of loyalty to this woman. There is nothing more total than the betrayal of which I have been the object.

Everything that is posited, everything that asserts itself as good faith, loyalty, and vow is, for Hamlet, presented not only as revocable but as literally revoked. The absolute nullification of this takes place at the level of the chain of signifiers, and it is something entirely different from a mere lack of some guarantee. This notion of guarantee is the non-truth, this sort of revelation—if one can call it that—of falsehood. This, which deserves to be examined further, represents Hamlet’s spirit, this kind of stupor into which he falls after the paternal revelations. This is something rendered quite remarkably in Shakespeare’s text. When he is asked what he has learned, he refuses to say—and with good reason!

But he expresses it in a very peculiar way. In French, one might say:

• “There is not a single scoundrel in the Kingdom of Denmark who is not a vile wretch.”
  (There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark… But he’s an arrant knave. [I, 5, 124])

In other words, he speaks in the mode of tautology.

But let us set this aside; these are merely details and anecdotes. The question lies elsewhere. The question is this: where are we deceived? It is generally accepted that a dead man cannot be a liar. And why is that?

Perhaps for the same reason that all our science still maintains this postulate.
Einstein emphasized it in his own terms…
he sometimes said things that were not so superficial in the philosophical order…
he said: “The good old God is cunning, but he is not malicious.”

Can we say the same of a father who tells us categorically that he is tormented by the flames of hell for absolutely heinous crimes?

There is something here that cannot fail to alert us; there is a certain discordance…

• and if we follow the effects in Hamlet of what presents itself as eternal damnation,
  truth eternally condemned to elude him,
• if we consider that Hamlet remains trapped in this assertion by the father,
  …can we not, to some extent, question what this statement signifies—at least functionally—concerning the genesis and unfolding of the entire drama?

Many things could be said, including this: Hamlet’s father says—translated into French:

• “But if virtue does not stir when vice would tempt it in the guise of heaven,
  Thus lust, thus vice, in the bed of a radiant angel soon grows sick of that celestial couch and runs to filth.”

Incidentally, this is a poor translation; it should say, “Thus vice, though linked to a radiant angel.”

What “radiant angel” is this? If it is a “radiant angel” who introduces vice into this fallen relationship of love, where the entire burden is placed on the other, could it be—here more than anywhere else—that the one who comes to bear eternal witness to the injury suffered has nothing to do with it? This, of course, is the key that can never be turned, the secret that can never be unveiled.

But does something not point us toward the word under which we must understand?
Well, here as elsewhere, it is fantasy.

For the eternally unresolved enigma, no matter how primitive we may assume—rightly—the minds of Shakespeare’s contemporaries to be, still presents a curious choice: the vial of poison poured into the ear of the ghost who is the father, who is Hamlet’s father—let us not forget, for both are named Hamlet.

On this, analysts have scarcely ventured. Some have suggested that perhaps some symbolic element ought to be recognized.

Yet there is something that, in any case, can be situated according to our method in the form of the block it constitutes, the gap it creates, the impenetrable enigma it forms. There is no need—I have already done so—to emphasize the paradox of this revelation, including its consequences. What is important is this: here we have not only a fantasized structure that fits so well with what happens—namely, that if there is anyone poisoned through the ear, it is Hamlet. And here, what functions as poison is his father’s words.

From then on, Shakespeare’s intent becomes somewhat clearer: what he first shows us is the relationship between desire and this revelation. For two months, Hamlet remains under the shock of this revelation. And how does he gradually recover the use of his faculties? Precisely through a work of art. The players arrive just in time for him to use their performance as “the test of the conscience of the king,” as the text tells us.

What is certain is that it is through this trial that Hamlet will be able to return to action, an action that will necessarily unfold from the first of its consequences. This consequence is, first and foremost, that this character who, after the paternal revelation, wished solely for his own dissolution:

• “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (I, 2, 129–130)

…by the end of the play, is gripped by an intoxication that has a very precise name: that of the artifex. He is mad with joy at having achieved his worst effect; he can no longer be contained, and Horatio barely manages to hold him back from an exuberance that is too great.

When Hamlet says:

• “Could I not now drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on?” (III, 2, 263)

Horatio responds: “Half of that would suffice.” He knows what is at stake. Indeed, everything is far from being resolved in this matter. It is not because Hamlet is an artifex that he has yet found his role, but it is enough to know that he is an artifex to understand that the first role he finds, he will seize. He will carry out what, in the end, is commanded of him. I will read this passage in its original text to you another time.

Once the poison is ingested by the rat…
and you know that the rat is never far from all these affairs, especially in Hamlet…
it brings on a thirst, the very thirst that will kill it, for it will completely dissolve within it the deadly poison initially inspired in Hamlet.

Something more adds emphasis to what I have just said. An author once remarked on something that every spectator should have noticed long ago: that Claudius remains so unmoved by the events leading up to the play-within-a-play—the scene where Hamlet stages the reenactment of Claudius’s crime.

There is a sort of prologue in the form of a pantomime. Before the long scene of the comedic queen’s protestations of fidelity and love toward the comedic king, and before the act of pouring poison into the ear in the very context of the orchard or garden—this occurs practically right in front of Claudius, who does not react in the slightest.

Entire lives have been devoted to this point.
One scholar claimed that the ghost was lying—God forbid, I do not say so!
Another has written extensive works to explain how it is possible that Claudius, so obviously guilty, did not recognize himself in the reenacted scene. They have constructed all sorts of meticulous and logical arguments, suggesting that if Claudius did not recognize himself, it was because he was looking elsewhere.
This is not indicated in the staging, and perhaps, after all, it is not worth a lifetime of work.

Could we not suggest that, undoubtedly, Claudius is complicit in this?
He admits it himself; he proclaims it to the heavens in a dark tale that shook not only the marital balance of Hamlet’s father but much more:

• His very life,
• And indeed it is true that: “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven.” (III, 3, 36)

Everything indicates that, at a certain moment, Claudius feels deeply struck, pierced to the core. He reacts sharply when Hamlet tells him:

• “The one who enters the stage now is Lucianus; he is going to poison the king. He is the nephew.” (III, 2, 231)

We begin to understand that Claudius has sensed for some time that something is amiss, an air of sulfur, so to speak. He even asks:

• “Is there no offense in it?”
• “None at all,” Hamlet replies.

At that moment, Claudius feels the situation is being pushed too far. In truth, ambiguity remains total: if the scandal is general, if the entire court begins to view Hamlet as utterly impossible, it is undoubtedly because they have not recognized Claudius’s crime in the performance.

For no one knows, and no one has ever known until the end—
except Hamlet and his confidant—
how Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father.

Thus, the function of fantasy here seems to be something other than a “means,” as they say in detective novels. This becomes much clearer if we consider—as I hope to show you—that Shakespeare has gone further than anyone else. His work is The Work itself, where we see mapped out a sort of cartography of all possible human relationships, marked with the indelible stigma of desire as the point of contact, designating irreducibly its being, and through which, miraculously, we find a kind of correspondence.

Does it not seem absolutely marvelous to you that someone whose work, intersected at every point, presents this unity of correspondence—someone who was undoubtedly one of the beings who ventured the furthest into this realm of oscillations—would himself have undoubtedly lived an adventure, the one described in the Sonnet, which allows us to pinpoint precisely the fundamental positions of desire? I will return to this later.

This extraordinary man passed through the life of Elizabethan England, undeniably not unnoticed, with his some forty plays and with something of which we still have some traces, I mean certain testimonies.

But read a well-crafted book that summarizes nearly all the research currently available on Shakespeare. There is something absolutely astonishing: apart from the fact that he surely existed, we can say nothing definitive about him—about his connections, about all that surrounded him, his loves, his friendships. We truly cannot say anything.

Everything has passed, everything has disappeared without leaving a trace. To us analysts, this author presents himself as the most radically enigmatic figure—forever vanished, dissolved, and disappeared—that we can point to in our history.