Translated by Cormac Gallagher
pV 2 to V 29 of 20th January 1976 at www.LacaninIreland.com /Translations /Seminars / Joyce and the Sinthome Part 1

Translated by Adrian Price
Published
p149-165 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XXIII, Polity 2016
Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors by Date or Authors A-Z (Aubert)

Published in French:
1) Joyce Avec Lacan (Paris: Navarin éditeur, 1987)
2) an updated version, in Jacques Lacan : Le séminaire livre XXIII : Le sinthôme: Paris , Seuil 2005 : edited by Jacques-Alain Miller

Further information
See Seminar XXIII The Sinthome or Joyce and the Sinthome (1975-1976) : beginning on 18th November 1975 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19751118 or 19760120 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

References

P153 Aubert refers to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, So, at a certain level there is the fact that the role of Hamlet was very often played by women. It turns out that one Anglophone critic had the fanciful idea of analysing Hamlet precisely in terms of transvestism, taking the impersonator seriously in some sense and saying: Ophelia committed suicide because she realized that Hamlet was in fact a woman. I’m not mentioning this critic for the sake of it, in the name of my Shakespearian and Joycean knowledge, but simply because this implication appears elsewhere in Ulysses,
The statement ‘Why Ophelia committed suicide?’ is equivocal.
It’s both Why did Ophelia commit suicide? and Was this the reason she committed suicide? Clearly this doesn’t make it through in the French translation, and it’s worthwhile pointing that out.

P160 Aubert quoting James Joyce’s Dubliners, [Then comes a little Shakespearian aside:] And in the porches of mine ear did pour. [Hamlet.]

P157-158 Aubert on definitions of ‘Epiphany’ & St Thomas Aquinas, . Joyce defined epiphany once only, in Stephen Hero, and of course what he said has been slightly twisted. Here is the definition:
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation. whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.
This is a definition that is polished, didactic, and redolent of Aquinas

P161 Aubert, Moses and the Holy Bush, Exodus Chapter 3-The Bible, One can grasp the resonance that this carries in relation to newspaper literature: art founds, in law, the bearer of the Law, Moses

P162 Aubert, Another thing concerning the bush: the eloquent Bushe, in speaking of Moses, is also speaking about a Holy Bush, the Holy Bush in the Bible. The Lord says to Moses ‘that the place whereon thou standest is holy ground’, the ground before the burning bush. The holy bush turns out to have a certain relationship with the ‘fox’.

P165 Aubert, Aristotle, What is foremost in my mind, which imposes itself upon me through and beyond what Aristotle said about praxis in his Poetics (which gave Joyce pause for thought), is Lacan’s definition: ‘a concerted action on the part of man [. . .] that puts him en mésure, in a position, to deal with the real through the symbolic.