Published in Psychoanalytical Notebooks, 37/38, December 2021.

Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent (December 2021)

Availability of references
_______________________________

A Map of Lituraterre : Richard Klein

NOTE This essay appears to be extracted and partially modified from the Seminar XVIII (1970‐1971) D’un discourse qui ne serait pas du semblant, the session of 12 May 1971. For a comparison of the two, see http://www.valas.fr/Lituraterre,031. An internet translation of Patrick Valas’s Introductory note:

Opposite: [En vis à vis :}

The written version of Lituraterre, first published in the journal “Littérature”, Larousse n°3, October 1971, on the theme “Literature and psychoanalysis”, then in “Other Writings”, Seuil 2001, and finally in the seminar “On a discourse that would not be a semblance”, Champ Freudien, Seuil 2006.

The transcribed version of Lituraterre, from the recording of the lesson of May 12, 1971, of the seminar “On a discourse that would not be a semblance” (ELP version?).

***

A Map of Lituraterre : Richard Klein

Perhaps a tentative map of the text might be something like this:

PARAGRAPH

1‐10 Letter‐‐>litter; Joyce; civilization=rubbish

11 As for psychoanalysis

12‐22 Écrits; Poe, letter in sufferance , always arrives

27‐39 Letter—littoral; letter is not primary

40 Lituraterre = litura (erasure) + terre (earth)

41‐48 Trip to Japan

48‐53 Ruissellement (trickling, raining down)‐‐‐>rature/litura

53‐56 Rupture of semblant; Ravinement (erosion of signified); taking a name

57‐61 Return trip from Japan

62‐66 Interpretation should ‘rain down’

67 Avant‐garde literature not from semblant

68‐71 lituraterrir

72‐72 Japanese Language, effect of writing, kun‐yomi/on‐yomi

74‐79 Letter vs. signifier

79‐85 Japan, empire of semblants; bunraku

86 It is written & sexual relation

From p1 of of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations ), probably by Richard Klein

**

Personal Note on the translation of Lituraterre : Julia Evans

Jack W. Stone’s translation has been consulted since April 2010, when I first downloaded it. Therefore, I read this translation of Lituraterre with an air of familiarity. In tracing Éric Laurent’s references, the 4 translations with the original French available at www.Freud2Lacan.com were checked. Jack Stone’s translations are used in the following as they consistently seemed closer to Jacques Lacan’s original French. However, there remain difficult passages – see especially Footnote 19 & 35 where the translation probably needs reviewing. Éric Laurent’s text is a close reading of Lituraterre, therefore I have attached these notes on references to the pdf, as what Jacques Lacan is actually conveying matters. The original French text is also included.

Julia Evans – June 2022

_______________________________

References & their availability

P47, Footnote 1 (Laurent)

1 Lacan J.,”Lituraterre”, Autres Écrits, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 11, trans B. Khiara-Foxton & translated by A. Price, Hurly-Burly, No 9, France, Laballery Press, 2013, p.29.

TN: Translation modified to accentuate an allusion to the verb répartir as separating out or redistribution. There is a nod perhaps to what of the linguistic material detaches itself and gets redistributed in the stake of a writing that the letter is, and thus similarly a nod to the Lacanian operation of separation later foregrounded by Eric Laurent in this text.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan, see this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

Lacan : To depart [partir] here is to separate out or redistribute [répartir).

From p2/3 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

The French : Ce dictionnaire (qu’on y aille) m’apporte auspices d’être fondé d’un départ que je prenais (partir, ici est répartir) de l’équivoque dont Joyce (James Joyce, dis‐je) glisse d’a letter à a litter, d’une lettre (je traduis) à une ordure.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : This dictionary (let one go to it) brings me an auspice from being founded on a departure I took (to depart, here is to répartir [1]) from the equivoque by which Joyce (James Joyce, I say) slips from a letter to a litter [English in the original], from a lettre (I translate) to a piece of trash.[1] TN To divide up or distribute.

_______________________________

P47, Footnote 2

2. ibid

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P47 The first conception of the letter that he rubs up against is that of Joyce, who “slips from a letter to a litter, (English in the original) from a letter […] to a piece of trash.”2

See quote in Footnote 1 above

_______________________________

P48 Footnote 3

[3] Ibid., p.30

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P47-48 Is what makes literature “a matter of collocating in written form (l’écrit)”[3] what is first sung or spoken?

From p7 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : est affaire [11] de collocation dans l’écrit de ce qui d’abord serait chant, mythe parlé, procession dramatique.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : is an affair of a collocation in the written of what first would be song, spoken myth, dramatic procession.

_______________________________

P48 Footnote 4

4 Ibid., p.31.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P48 : The circuit of the letter produces effects by being separated from any message. “The tale consists in the vanishing act of the message, whose letter goes wending off [y fait péripétie] without it.” [4]

From p10-11 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Puisque le conte consiste en ce qu’y passe comme

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Since the story consists in the message vanishing in it like a conjurer’s ball from which the letter makes its peripeteia without it.

_______________________________

P48 Footnote 5

5 ibid.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P48 : The message about the letter that Lacan wants to put at the point of departure of his text, is that the letter notes the “hole”[5] that it operates in the speech that precedes it, …

From p12-13 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Pour moi si je propose à la psychanalyse la letter comme en souffrance, c’est qu’elle y montre son échec. Et c’est par là que je l’éclaire : quand j’invoque ainsi les lumières, c’est de démontrer où elle fait trou.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : For me, if I propose to psychoanalysis the letter as in sufferance, it is because it shows there its failure. And it is by this that I shed light on it: when I thus evoke the lumières, [3] it is to demonstrate where it makes a hole.

[3] TN – In an early version of this écrit presented in Seminaire XVIII [see Seminar XVIII, On a discourse that might not be a semblance (1970-1971) : from 13th January 1971 : Jacques Lacan, this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19710113 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts ] : ”D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant” (“of a discourse that would not be of the semblant”) (unpublished) on May 12, 1971, this passage reads

“It is by this that I shed light on it, psychoanalyisis. And one knows, one knows that I know, that I thus evoke–it is on the back of my volume–the lumières. For that I shed light on it by demonstrating where it makes a hole, psychoanalysis.”

Lacan is alluding here to the notes on the back cover of the French edition of the Écrits (Seuil, 1966) in which lumières– which can also be translated as “insights” or “lights”–seems to refer to Les Lumières, the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The notes in question read as follows: It is necessary to have read this collection, in its length, to feel that a single debate is being pursued in it, always the same, and which, if this need appear to be given a date, is recognized to be the debate of the lumières. It is a domain where the sunrise itself tarries: that which proceeds (va) from a prejudice of which psychopathology is not cleared, based on the false evidence from which the ego entitles itself (se fait titre) to strut forth (parader) from existence. The obscure passes in it for an object and flowers from the obscurantism that rediscovers in it its values. No surprise therefore that one resists even the discovery of Freud there, a term extended here from an amphibology: the discovery of Freud by Jacques Lacan. The reader will learn what is demonstrated there: the unconscious arises from pure logic, in other words, from the signifier. Epistemology will always fail here, if it does not take its departure from a reform, which is a subversion of the subject. Its advent can only be produced really and at a place that psychoanalysts hold at present. It is to transcribe this subversion, from their most everyday experience, that Jacques Lacan has worked for them for fifteen years. The thing has too much interest for everyone, for there to be no rumour of it. It is so that it might not come to be diverted by cultural commerce that Jacques Lacan has made of these écrits a call to attention.

_______________________________

P48, Footnote 6

6 Ibid., p.32.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P48 : The letter, always in the singular, draws “the rim of the hole in knowledge”.5

From p19 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Le bord du trou dans le savoir, voilà‐t‐il pas ce qu’elle dessine. Et comment la psychanalyse, si, justement ce que la lettre dit « à la lettre » par sa bouche, il ne lui fallait pas le méconnaître, comment pourrait‐elle nier qu’il soit, ce trou, – de ce qu’à le combler, elle recoure à y invoquer la jouissance ?

Jack W. Stone’s translation : The edge of the hole in knowledge, is that not what it sketches? And how could psychoanalysis, if precisely what the letter says “literally” (“à la lettre”) with its mouth, it did not have to be misrecognized, how could it deny that it is, this hole—since to fill it, it returns to invoking jouissance?

_______________________________

P49, Footnote 7

7 Lacan, J., “Instance of the Letter or Reason since Freud”, 1957, Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English, trans. B. Fink, New York/London, Norton & Co., 2005.

Notes & information The Agency (Insistence or Instance) of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud (Sorbonne, Paris) : 9th May 1957 : Jacques Lacan, this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19570509)

P49 : The two uses of the letter, the literary use, and the mathematical use, are distinct, and occasionally enter into opposition. According to Lacan, the dit-mansion of the letter implies a certain instance) a certain insistence, a certain forcing in order to be included in the signifying weft, and the significations that are deduced from it. The instance, highlighted in the text “Instance of the Letter,” 7

P 163 of Alan Sheridan’s translation, Section title : The Meaning of the Letter

P169 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : Through this, one sees that an essential element of the spoken word itself was predestined to flow into the mobile characters which, in a jumble of lower-case Didots or Garamunds, [14] render validly present what we call the ‘letter’, namely the essentially localized structure of the signifier.

With the second property of the signifier, that of combining according to the laws of a closed order, is affirmed the necessity of the topological substratum of which the term I ordinarily use, namely, the signifying chain, gives an approximate idea : rings of a necklace that is a ring in another necklace made of rings.

Such are the structural conditions that define grammar as the order of constitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the level of the unit immediately superior to the sentence, and lexicology as the order of constitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the verbal locution.

For the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning by unfolding its dimension* before it.

[14] Names of different type-faces [Tr.]

* JE notes, This is almost certainly a translation of Lacan’s neologism ‘dit-mansion’ – literally, said-mansion/building

_______________________________

P49, Footnote 8

8 Lacan, J., “Lituraterre”, p.32.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P49 : designates in the letter “that which, in having to insist, is not there by rights however imbued with reason it is ventured.” 8

From p17 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : N’est‐ce pas désigner assez dans la lettre ce qui, à devoir insister, n’est pas là de plein droit si fort de raison que ça s’avance. La dire moyenne ou bien extrême, c’est montrer la bifidité où s’engage toute mesure, mais n’y a‐t‐il rien dans le réel qui se passe de cette [13] médiation ? La frontière certes, à séparer deux territoires, en symbolise qu’ils sont mêmes pour qui la franchit, qu’ils ont commune mesure.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Is it not enough to designate in the letter that which, in its duty to insist, is not fully entitled there to be as reasonable as is advanced? The word (dire) mean [or average], or else extreme, is to show the bifidity in which all measure is engaged, but is there nothing in the real which dispenses with this mediation? The frontier, certainly, in separating two territories, symbolizes what they are even for whoever crosses it, that they have a common measure.

_______________________________

P49, Footnote 9

9 lbid., p. 34.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P49 : Lacan starts from his Japanese experience, from what he felt as the eminent affectation of the Japanese language by way of writing. This is what demonstrates, Lacan does not say shows, “in its wedding the letter […] in the form of calligraphy”.9 Lacan goes on to play out his demonstration as an operation of separation and a traversal of the aesthetic experience, in order to bring it back to its real core.

From p28 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Sans doute ce trop tient‐il à ce que l’art en véhicule : j’en dirai le fait de ce que la peinture y démontre de son mariage à la lettre, très précisément sous la forme de la calligraphie.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Without doubt this too much is owed to what art brings: I would say the fact of what the painter demonstrates there of his marriage to the letter, very precisely in the form of calligraphy.

_______________________________

P50, Footnote 10

10 ibid.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P49-50 : This operation of separation takes place in the course of a development, as might be expected in Lacan, organised in logical time. First, the instant of seeing. On his return journey, flying over the Siberian plain, the streaming (flow) of the great rivers over the deserted plain appears to him, emerging “between the parting clouds” like a great cursive writing. “So appeared to me, invincibly, this circumstance is no small matter: between the parting clouds, the streaming of waters, the only trace to appear, effectuating more than indicating its relief at that latitude, on what of Siberia forms the plain, a plain desolate of any vegetation but luminous shine, which pushes into the shade whatever does not glisten back”. l0

From p31 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Tel invinciblement m’apparut, cette circonstance n’est pas rien : d’entre‐les‐nuages, le ruissellement, seule trace à apparaître, d’y opérer plus encore que d’en indiquer le relief en cette latitude, dans ce qui de la Sibérie fait plaine, plaine désolée d’aucune végétation que de reflets, lesquels poussent à l’ombre ce qui n’en miroite pas.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : As appeared to me invincibly, this circumstance is not nothing: the between‐the‐clouds, the streaming (ruissellement), only trace to appear, operating there to do more still than indicate relief in this latitude, in that which of Siberia makes a plain, a plain desolate of any vegetation but reflections, which push into the darkness what does not shimmer.

_______________________________

P50, Footnote 12

12 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book III, The Psychoses, 1955-1955., trans R. Grigg, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, P. 261.

Notes & Information : see Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19551116 or 19560606 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

P50 : But above all, this streaming from between the parting clouds comes to echo the diagram presented by Saussure, in which other types of flow and flux[l2] were represented between clouds.

Seminar III 6th June 1956, p261 of Russell Grigg’s translation : The opposition between the signifier and the signified lies, as you know, at the basis of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic theory. It has been expressed in the famous schema of the two curves.[5][5 Course, 112]

At the upper level Saussure locates the series of what he calls thoughts – without the slightest conviction, since his theory consists precisely in reducing this term to that of the signified insofar as it is distinct from both the signifier and the thing – and he insists above all upon the aspect of amorphous mass. It’s what, for our part, we shall provisionally call the sentimental mass of the current of discourse, a confused mass in which appear units, islands, an image, an object, a feeling, a cry, an appeal. It’s a continuum, whereas underneath is the signifier as a pure chain of discourse, a succession of words, in which nothing is isolable.

How can I show you this through an experience?

_______________________________

P50, Footnote 13

13 ibid. p.262

Notes & Information : see Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19551116 or 19560606 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

P50 : Lacan spoke in this way in his 1956 seminar, when he established the “quilting point” in the fundamental sliding of the flow of the signified beneath the flow of the signifier: “Saussure tries to define a correspondence between these two flows that would segment them […] his solution is inconclusive, since it leaves the locution and the whole sentence problematic.”13

Seminar III 6th June 1956, p262 of Russell Grigg’s translation : A step forward has to be taken in order to give what is involved here a sense that is really usable in our experience.

Saussure tries to define a correspondence between these two flows that would segment them. But the sole fact that his solution is inconclusive, since it leaves the locution and the whole sentence problematic, clearly shows both the sense and limitations of his method.

Well then, I think to myself – What does one start with?

_______________________________

P50, Footnote 14

14 ibid. p.261

Notes & Information : see Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19551116 or 19560606 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

P50 : These traits pass through clouds of sorts coming to represent the “amorphous mass”14 of the signifier with the amorphous mass of significations in order to momentarily segment the current.

Seminar III 6th June 1956, p261 of Russell Grigg’s translation : The opposition between the signifier and the signified lies, as you know, at the basis of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic theory. It has been expressed in the famous schema of the two curves.[5][5 Course, 112]

At the upper level Saussure locates the series of what he calls thoughts – without the slightest conviction, since his theory consists precisely in reducing this term to that of the signified insofar as it is distinct from both the signifier and the thing – and he insists above all upon the aspect of amorphous mass. It’s what, for our part, we shall provisionally call the sentimental mass of the current of discourse, a confused mass in which appear units, islands, an image, an object, a feeling, a cry, an appeal. It’s a continuum, whereas underneath is the signifier as a pure chain of discourse, a succession of words, in which nothing is isolable.

How can I show you this through an experience?

_______________________________

P50, Footnote 15

15 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book V, Formations of the Unconscious, 1957-58, trans. R. Grigg, Polity Press, 2017, p7

Notes & Information : Seminar V The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958) : from 6th November 1957 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19570606)

P50 : Lacan also evokes “Ferdinand de Saussure’s famous schema in which you see the double parallel flow of signifiers and signifieds, distinct and destined to perpetually slide over one another.” 15

Seminar V 6th November 1957 : p5 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com : This relation of the signifier to the signified, so visible, so palpable in this dramatic dialogue, is something that I brought forward in referring to the famous schema of Ferdinand de Saussure: the flux, or more exactly the double parallel stream – this is how he represents it to us – of the signifier and the signified as being distinct and destined to slide perpetually one over the other. It was in this connection that I constructed the images of the technique of the upholsterer, of the buttoning point, since it is necessary that some point of the fabric of one should attach itself to the fabric of the other. So that we are able to grasp at least something about the possible limits of the sliding, the buttoning points allow some elasticity in the links between the two terms. This is the point that we will take up again when I have evoked for you the function served by the fourth year of the séminaire, when I will have shown you in a way that is parallel and symmetrical to this – and it was at this point that the dialogue between Joad and Abner culminated – that there is no true subject who can sustain himself, unless he speaks in the name of the word, in the name of speech. You will not have forgotten the plane on which Joad speaks:

“Here is how God answers you through my mouth.”

There is no subject other than in a reference to that Other. This is symbolic of what exists in every word worthy of the name.

_______________________________

P52, Footnote 18

18 Lacan, l., The Seminar, Book IX, Identification, lesson of 6 December 1961″, unpublished’

Notes & Information : Seminar IX Identification (1961-1962) : from 15th November 1961 : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19611115)

P51-52 : It is throughout his Seminar on identification that Lacan turns the trait of the One into an isolated sign. He takes a diversion into prehistory and to the notches on the bones, carved by Magdalenian hunters. He contrasts the trait with the things in the world that it comes to mark. “The relationship of the sign to the thing must be effaced. This One of the Magdalenian bone, it would be a shrewd man indeed who could tell us what it was the sign of […] This One as such, in as much as it marks pure difference, is what we will refer to in order to (designate) the diverse ways of effacing […] from which the signifier comes into the world.”18

Of course, in “Identification”, Lacan speaks of the signifier and not of the letter, but the process of isolating the One from the signifier, separated from all signification allows us to better understand this way of effacing to the second power, where the bar comes to mark the effacement of signification in order to only designate the trace of the experience of jouissance, there where the subject gets effaced.

Seminar IX 6th December1961 : pIV 36 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com , : The first definition that one can give of a someone is: someone who is accessible to a sign. It is the most elementary form, if one can express oneself in that way of subjectivity; there is no object at all here yet, there is something different: the sign, which represents this something for someone. A signifier is distinguished from a sign first of all in this which is what I tried to get you to sense: the fact is that signifiers only manifest at first the presence of difference as such and nothing else. The first thing therefore that it implies is that the relationship of the sign to the thing should be effaced:

sign [OR sign/someone]

someone

something S, these ones of the Magdalenian bone, it would be a very clever man could tell you what they were the sign of. And someone we, thank God, are advanced enough since Magdalenian 4 [Ben Hooson gives ‘Fourth Magdalenian’] for you to perceive the following – which for you has the same sort no doubt of naive obviousness, allow me to tell you that “A is A”, namely that, as you were taught in school, you cannot add up oranges and apples, pears with carrots and so on, is a complete error; this only begins to be true when one starts from a definition of addition which supposes, I assure you, a number of axioms which would be enough to cover this whole section of the blackboard.

pIV 36 : … it is a question of 1 very exactly in what one calls the element of sets. This is not sufficiently remarked on in the text to which I allude for a celebrated reason: it is because precisely this reflection on what a 1 is is not well elaborated even by those who in the most modern mathematical theory nevertheless make of it the clearest, the most manifest usage.

This 1 as such, in so far as it marks pure difference, it is to it that we are going to refer to put to the test, at our next meeting the relationship of the subject to the signifier. It will first of all be necessary for us to distinguish the signifier from the sign and for us to show in what sense the step taken is that of the effaced thing: the different “effaçons” if you will allow me to use this formula, in which the signifier comes to birth, will give us precisely the major modes of the manifestation of the subject.

_______________________________

P52, Footnote 19

19 Lacan, J., “Lituraterre”, P. 34.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P52 : … in order to only designate the trace of the experience of jouissance, there where the subject gets effaced. The cluster “of the first trait and of what effaces it”,19 inscribes the relation of the One of the letter with the experience of jouissance.

From p31-32 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Le ruissellement est bouquet du trait premier et de ce qui l’efface. Je l’ai dit : c’est de leur conjonction qu’il se fait sujet, mais de ce que s’y marquent deux temps. Il y faut donc que s’y distingue la rature.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : The streaming is the bouquet of a first stroke (trait) and of what effaces it. I have said this: it is from their conjunction that the subject is formed, but from that which is marked by two times. It is thus necessary that the erasure [rature] is distinguished therein.

_______________________________

P52, Footnote 20

20 ibid., p.35.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P52 : After having conversed with us about the apparition of the streaming, having introduced us to the new operation of the bend [viragel and the gullying effect [effet de ravinement), Lacan continues his journey. “Later from the aeroplane other traces were beheld, for being sustained in isobars, even if caused to veer by embankments, which were in line with those whose supreme relief gradient was watercoursed [se marquait de cours d’eau].”20

From p37 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Plus tard de l’avion se virent à s’y soutenir en isobares, fût‐ce à (8)obliquer d’un remblai, d’autres traces normales à celles dont la pente suprême du relief se marquait de cours d’eau.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Later the plane swerving to sustain itself in isobars, as if it were slanting from an embankment, from other normal trails to those for which the supreme inclination of relief was marked by waterways.

_______________________________

P53, Footnote 21

21 ibid., p.36.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P53 : At the end of this paragraph, Lacan comes back to an experience of vision, in which the traces of nature and those of relations outside-nature are conjugated, where the Osaka motorways settle atop one another “like gliders come down from the sky”, and at the same time, with a movement lifted from birds spreading then folding their wings, “becoming a wing for beating down from a bird” .21 This then is what Lacan calls his “vision of streaming” of the One. It is a conjunction in which the letter and the world separate, but in order to better converge.

From p37-38 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : N’ai‐je pas vu à Osaka comment les autoroutes se posent les unes sur les autres comme planeurs venus du ciel ? Outre que là‐bas l’architecture la plus moderne retrouve l’ancienne à faire aile à s’abattre d’un oiseau.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Have I not seen in Osaka how the highways are posed one over the other like gliders come from heaven? Elsewhere than there the most modern architecture rediscovers the ancient to make itself a wing felled (á s’abattre) from a bird.

_______________________________

P54, Footnote 23

23 Lacan, J., “Lituraterre”, P. 36

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P54 : This vision conjoins the letter and the signifier thanks to a forcing of the relations between the two dit-mensions. Lacan notes them thus because these two dimensions inhabit language: “[…] writing like surveying are artefacts for inhabiting only language. How could we forget this when our science is only operative by dint of a streaming of little letters and graphics combined?”.23

From p38-39 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Il n’y a de droite que d’écriture, comme d’arpentage que venu du ciel. Mais écriture comme arpentage sont artefacts à n’habiter que le langage. Comment l’oublierions‐ nous quand notre science n’est opérante que d’un ruissellement de petites lettres et de graphiques combinés ? [17]

Jack W. Stone’s translation : There is no straight line except in writing, as if from a surveying come from heaven. But writing like surveying is an artifact only to inhabit language. How could we forget this when our science is only operant from a streaming of little letters and graphics combined?

_______________________________

P54, Footnote 24

24 ibid., p. 6 (TN: translation modified)

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P54 : The originality of Lacan’s vision in its conjunction of scientific writing and the signifier is all the more striking if we compare it to other attempts to conjoin science and literature. Lacan then measures himself against avant-garde literature, which claims, “in its ambition to land on lituraterrain [lituraterrir), that is to be organised around a movement it calls scientific”.24

From p42 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Ce à quoi semble prétendre une littérature en son ambition de lituraterrir, c’est de s’ordonner d’un mouvement qu’elle appelle scientifique.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : This to which a literature seems to aspire in its ambition to lituraterrir, is to order itself from a movement it calls scientific.

_______________________________

P55, Footnote 26

26 Lacan J., “Lituraterre”, p. 30.

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P55 : This first movement corresponds to what Lacan emphasises at the beginning of his text, in order to extricate himself from misunderstandings about the “promotion of the written word” and the importance (of the fact) “that it is only today that Rabelais is finally being read, (which) reveals a shift of interests which suits me better”.26

From p8 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : Ici mon enseignement a place dans un changement de configuration qui s’affiche d’un slogan de promotion de l’écrit, mais dont d’autres témoignages, par exemple, que ce soit de nos jours qu’enfin Rabelais soit lu, montrent un déplacement des intérêts à quoi je m’accorde mieux.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : Here my teaching has a place in a changing of configuration which is posted as a slogan for the promotion of the written, but of which other evidences, for example, that it is beginning in our day that finally Rabelais is read, show a displacement of interests to what agrees with me better.

_______________________________

P57, Footnote 32

32 l.acan J., “Lituraterre”, p.35,

Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

P57 : Writing does not trace or reproduce [décalque] the signifier, but it includes the jouissance-effect. After having been deposited, the letter tries to name itself. “Writing only returns to it on taking a name therefrom, just as happens to these effects amongst those things that the signifying battery denominates for having enumerated them”.32

From p36-37 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations )

French : C’est du même effet que l’écriture est dans le réel le ravinement du signifié, ce qui a plus du semblant en tant qu’il fait le signifiant. Elle ne décalque pas celui‐ci, mais ses effets de langue, ce qui s’en forge par qui la parle. Elle n’y remonte qu’à y prendre nom, comme il arrive à ces effets parmi les choses que dénomme la batterie signifiante pour les avoir dénombrées.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : It is from the same effect that writing is in the real the furrowing of the signified, which has more of the semblant insofar as it makes the signifier. Writing does not trace (décalque) the signifier, but its effects of language (langue), what is forged by whoever speaks it. It only climbs back in taking a name there, as happens in those effects among things that the signifying battery names (dénomme) to have them numbered (dénombrées).

_______________________________

P57, Footnote 33

33 Lacan J., “Lettre à Francis Ponge”, 11 December 1972, La Cause du désir, No. 106, Novembre 2020, p10-14.

Note : this is now reproduced at Lettre à Francis Ponge : 11th December 1972 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721211)

P57 : We had a recent example of this with the publication of an epistolary exchange between Ponge and Lacan, which dates back to a year after the publication of “Lituraterre” .33

Cher Ponge.

C’est Lacan.

Il n’y a que vous qui pouvez répondre à une question urgente que m’a posée Jakobson à midi.

Appelez-moi si vous le pouvez soit avant 20 heures aujourd’hui soit après 21h30. Ou demain matin au plus tard.

La question est la suivante. Y a-t-il quelque exemple de poésie en français où se dénote une insistance sur la violation de l’accord grammatical, disfonction du singulier et du pluriel, du genre, postposition de la « préposition », etc.

Tous procédés qu’un Cummings a délibérément, je crois, employés en anglais.

J’avoue, moi, qu’en français je donne ma langue au chat.

Bien sûr, si vous me dépannez, vous en rendrai-je hommage auprès de mon interlocuteur.

Votre

J Lacan

Ce 11 12 72.

.

Cher Lacan.

Votre pneu me parvient ici, avec trois ou quatre jours de retard… bien au-delà, par conséquent, du délai que vous me fixiez pour répondre à la question posée à vous par Jakobson (« Exemple y a-t-il, en français, de violation systématique de l’accord grammatical » ?)

Je suis d’autant moins savant en de telles matières que vous semblez, cher ami, le supposer. Cummings en anglais, ou, bien sûr – et il faudrait donc chercher, chez les expérimentateurs français, du côté de Dada (qui a, certainement, influencé Cummings). Pour cela, interroger Sanouillet ? ? Je ne le connais pas, mais je vais interroger Butor, qui est son collègue à l’université de Nice… À l’occasion, j’en parlerai aussi à Ribemont-Desaigne…

.

Via Google translate

Dear Ponge.

It is Lacan.

Only you can answer an urgent question Jakobson posed to me at noon.

Call me if you can either before 8 p.m. today or after 9:30 p.m. Or tomorrow morning at the latest.

The question is this. Is there any example of poetry in French where there is an insistence on the violation of grammatical agreement, dysfunction of the singular and the plural, gender, postposition of the “preposition”, etc.

All devices which e.e. cummings deliberately, I believe, employed in English.

I admit, me, that in French I give my tongue to the cat.

Of course, if you help me out, I will pay homage to my interlocutor.

Your

J Lacan

This 11 12 72.

.

Dear Lacan.

Your tyre [pneu???] reaches me here, three or four days late… well beyond, therefore, the deadline you set for me to answer the question posed to you by Jakobson (“Example is there, in French , systematic violation of grammatical agreement”?)

I am all the less learned in such matters than you seem, dear friend, to suppose. Cummings in English, or, of course – and one would therefore have to look, among French experimenters, on the side of Dada (which certainly influenced Cummings). For that, interrogate Sanouillet? ? I don’t know him, but I’m going to ask Butor, who is his colleague at the University of Nice… Occasionally, I’ll also talk to Ribemont-Desaigne about it…

_______________________________

P58, Footnote 34

34 ibid., p.14.

P57-58 Laurent : Lacan relays to Ponge a question from Jakobson: “Is there any example of poetry in French where there is denoted an insistence on the violation of grammatical agreement, a disfunction of singular and plural (forms), of gender, of postposition of ‘prepositions’, etc?”34 In conveying the question, Lacan formulates it in terms evoking “the insistence” of the poetic letter, in order to infringe syntactic regularities. Lacan does not shy away from underlining the aggression and violence done to syntax by the letter, by speaking of the “insistence on violation”. What interests Lacan is poetic writing as an islet of infraction and irregularity. The reference to the work of the American avant-garde poet e. e. cummings, highlights this resolve.

See Footnote 33 or this is now reproduced at Lettre à Francis Ponge : 11th December 1972 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721211)

_______________________________

p57-58 Laurent : According to Lacan, the vision of the streaming of the One is that of the letter which comes to be added to the world, by disturbing it. In this vision “blotting-out dominates”, which can equally well take the form of isobars, or motorways resembling gliders from the sky, like a violation of natural rules. In everything in the world and in language Lacan sees irregularity and equivoque. He will give a radical development of this, two years after “Lituraterre”^, in the Seminar “Encore”^^ and in “L’Étourdit”: “A language, amongst others, is no more than the integral, the complete series [l’intégrale] of the equivoques that its history has let persist in it.”35 This definition of language is brought in as foundation of the possibility of this particular act of saying that is the psychoanalyst’s: interpretation. It only holds up by forcing the equivoque.

“Lituraterre”^, – Notes & information, Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

Seminar “Encore”^^, – Notes & Information, Seminar XX Encore (1972-1973) : from 21st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721121 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

P58, Footnote 35

35 Lacan J.,”L’Etourdit”, Autres Ecrits, Paris, Seuil, p.490. Notes & information Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan at this site /(19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’ texts)

***

“Lituraterre”^

P57 : a) In this vision “blotting-out dominates”, which can equally well take the form of isobars, or motorways resembling gliders from the sky, like a violation of natural rules.

See also Footnote 19,

p35 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: Lituraterre—4 translations)

French : Ce qui se révèle de ma vision du ruissellement, à ce qu’y domine [16] la rature, c’est qu’à se produire d’entre les nuages, elle se conjugue à sa source, que c’est bien aux nuées qu’Aristophane me hèle de trouver ce qu’il en est du signifiant : soit le semblant, par excellence, si c’est de sa rupture qu’en pleut, effet à ce qu’il s’en précipite, ce qui y était matière en suspension.

Jack W. Stone’s translation : What is revealed by my vision of the streaming, inasmuch as the erasure dominates it, is that in producing itself from between the clouds, it conjoins itself to its source, that it is indeed in the clouds Aristophanes hails me to find what concerns the signifier: that is, the semblant, par excellence, if it is from its rupture that it rains, the effect inasmuch as is precipitated from it, what was matter in suspension.

Beatrice Khiara-Foxton and Adrian Price’s translation : What is revealed from my vision of the streaming, in that the blotting‐out dominates therein, is that in being produced through parting clouds, it is conjugated at its source, …

***

“Encore”^^

p58 Laurent – in the Seminar “Encore”^^

Seminar Encore : Notes & Information Seminar XX Encore (1972-1973) : from 21st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19721121 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

There follow a number of possible references & there are more!

-9th January 1973 Seminar XX, p36 of Bruce Fink’s translation, quoted from pIV 15-16 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, The letter is radically an effect of discourse. What is good, is it not, if you will allow me, what is good in what I tell you, is that it is (15) always the same thing. Namely, not of course that I repeat myself, that is not the question. It is that what I said formerly, the first time as far as I can remember that I spoke about the letter, I brought that out I know longer know when, I didn’t look for it, I told you, I have a horror of re-reading myself, but it must easily be 15 years ago, some time at Sainte-Anne. I tried to point out this little thing that everyone knows of course, that everyone knows when they read a little – which is not the case for everyone. That someone called Sir Flinders Petrie, for example, believed he had noticed that the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were to be found well before the time of Phoenicia on tiny pieces of Egyptian pottery where they served as trademarks. Which means simply the fact that the market, which is typically an effect of discourse, is where the letter came out first, before anyone dreamt of using letters to do what? Something which has nothing to do with the connotation of the signifier but which elaborates it, which perfects it.

Things should be taken of course at the level of the history of each tongue. Because it is clear that the Chinese letter, the one that disturbs us so much that we call it, God knows why, by a different name, character, namely, it is manifest that the Chinese letter emerged from very ancient Chinese discourse, in a completely different way to the way our letters emerged. Namely, that in short the letters I bring out here have a different value. And different as letters, because they come out of analytic discourse, to what can come out as a letter for example from set theory. Namely, from the use that is made of it and which nevertheless – this is what is of interest – is not without having a relationship; a certain relationship of convergence, to which I will certainly, have the opportunity in what follows, to contribute some developments.

The letter as effect, any effect of discourse whatsoever, is good in that it constructs a letter (which makes a letter).

– 16th January 1973 Seminar XX, p44 Bruce Fink, Quoted from pV 9-10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, Language is such, the tongue forged by philosophical discourse, language is such that at every instant, as you see, when I put forward anything whatsoever about what can be established from this analytic discourse, you note that at every moment I cannot but slip back into what? Into this world, into this supposition of a substance which, all the same, is impregnated with the function of being. And that to follow the line of analytic discourse tends towards nothing less than to break up again, to inflect, to mark by its own incurvation, and an incurvation which could not even be maintained as being that of lines of force, which produces as such the flaw, the discontinuity, the rupture which suggests that we should see in the tongue what, when all is said and done, breaks it up so well that nothing seems to better constitute what may be the horizon of analytic discourse. This use made by mathematics, this use made of the letter, as being singularly what, on the one hand (10) reveals in discourse what not by chance is called grammar, the thing in language which is only revealed by the written – but it is not either, except by chance, it is also not without necessity. The fact is, the fact is that if grammar is what is only revealed in language by the written, it is because beyond language this effect, this effect which is produced by being supported by writing alone, which is assuredly the ideal of mathematics, this is something around which what is involved in language is revealed. Namely, that to set one’s face in any way against the reference to writing, is also to prohibit for oneself what of all the effects of language, can manage to be articulated. And to be articulated in this something that we cannot make not to result from language, namely, something supposed on its hither side and beyond.

-16th January 1973 Seminar XX, p47-48 of Bruce Finnk’s translation, quoted from pV 13-14 Cormac Gallagher’s translation, There is a lot to be learned here, not in carrying out research on the pebbles of the Mas-d’Azil, nor even in doing what I do like that, for my dear audience, at one time, an audience of analysts, a good while ago. I explained the unary trait, the notch, that was within their range of understanding. But it would be better to look more closely at what mathematicians do with letters, and specifically since in contempt of a certain number of things, and in the most well grounded way, they set about, in the name of set theory, noticing that one could approach the One in a way other than intuitive, fusional, loving, in short. We are but one. Everyone knows, of course that it has never happened that two have never become one, is that not so. But anyway, we are but one.

-16th January 1973 Seminar XX, p47-48 of Bruce Fink’s translation, quoted from pV 14-15 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : When I say: there are as many Ones as you like, I do not mean that there are as many individuals as you like. Because that means nothing, it is simply counting. There are as many Ones, as One, the Ones of the first hypothesis of Parmenides, these Ones are characterised by in no way resembling each other.

What constitutes the irruption, the intrusion of set theory, is precisely to posit that. Let us speak about the One, in that what is at stake are things which have strictly no relationship with each another. Namely, let us put into it what are called objects of thinking or objects of the world, all of that, each counts as one and if we assemble these absolutely heteroclite things we give ourselves the right to designate this collection (assemblage) by a letter. This is how it is expressed, at the beginning of set theory, for example, by the one whom the last time I put forward under the title of Nicolas Bourbaki.

You pass over the fact that I said – as moreover is written, as is published, as is published in the aforesaid Theory of sets – that the letter designates a collection.

From Wikipedia, Nicolas Bourbaki (French: [nikɔla buʁbaki]) is the collective pseudonym of a group of mathematicians, predominantly French alumni of the École normale supérieure (ENS). Founded in 1934–1935, the Bourbaki group originally intended to prepare a new textbook in analysis. Over time the project became much more ambitious, growing into a large series of textbooks published under the Bourbaki name, meant to treat modern pure mathematics. The series is known collectively as the Éléments de mathématique (Elements of Mathematics), the group’s central work. Topics treated in the series include set theory, abstract algebra, topology, analysis, Lie groups and Lie algebras.

-20th March 1973 Seminar XX, p97-98 of Bruce Fink’s translation, quoted from pIX 12-13 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation. There is thus deduced from the fact that knowledge is in the Other that it owes nothing to being except for the fact that this has carried its letter. From which it results that being can kill where the letter reproduces. But never reproduces the same, never the same being of knowledge.

I think that you sense here, the function that I give to the letter with respect to knowledge. It is one that I beg you not to slip too quickly onto the side of so-called messages. The one that makes it analogous to a germ cell. A germ cell that we ought so severely, if we are in the line of molecular physiology, that we ought so severely separate from bodies to which it conveys life and death all together.

***

Footnote 35 Lacan J.,”L’Etourdit”

L’Étourdit : Notes & Information L’Étourdit : 14th July 1972 : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19720714 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

p57 Laurent b) In everything in the world and in language Lacan sees irregularity and equivoque. He will give a radical development of this, two years after “Lituraterre”, in the Seminar Encore and in “L’Étourdit”: “A language, amongst others, is no more than the integral, the complete series [l’intégrale] of the equivoques that its history has let persist in it.”35 This definition of language is brought in as foundation of the possibility of this particular act of saying that is the psychoanalyst’s: interpretation. It only holds up by forcing the equivoque.

P114 of www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (182. AUTRES ÉCRITS: – L’étourdit—bilingual—3 translations)

French text : Ce dire ne procède que du fait que l’inconscient, d’être « structuré comme un langage », c’est-à-dire lalangue qu’il habite, est assujetti à l’équivoque dont chacune se distingue. Une langue entre autres n’est rien de plus que l’intégrale des équivoques que son histoire y a laissé persister. C’est la veine dont le réel, le seul pour le discours analytique à motiver son issue, le réel qu’il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel, y a fait dépôt au cours des âges. Ceci dans l’espèce que ce réel introduit à l’un, soit à l’unique du corps qui en prend organe, et de ce fait y fait organes écartelés d’une disjonction par où sans doute d’autres réels viennent à sa portée, mais pas sans que la voie quadruple de ces accès ne s’infinitise à ce que s’en produise le « nombre réel ».

Jack W. Stone’s translation (October 2007) : This dire only proceeds from the fact that the unconscious, from being structured like a language, which is to say thelanguage (lalangue) it inhabits, is subjected to the equivoque by which each is distinguished. A language among others is nothing more than the integral of the equivoques that its history has let persist. This is the vein by which the real, the only one for analytic discourse to motivate its issue, the real that there is no sexual rapport, has made a deposit there in the course of ages. This in the currency (espèce) that this real introduces to the one, that is, to the unique of the body which from it takes an organ, and from this fact makes organs distanced by a disjunc­tion whereby without doubt other organs come into its reach, but not without the quadruple path of these accesses infinitizing themselves inasmuch as is produced there the “real number.”

Citation

– Transmissions of ‘Bits of Real’ in a Lacanian Criminology Workshop (LRO 312) : 29th September 2021 : René Raggenbass, see this site /4 Authors A-Z (Raggenbass)

a) Raggenbass : To inscribe them in a social bond by means of a “historization of the real” implies, like Éric Laurent writes, a certain “forcing” of the real of jouissance in the field of language [3.]

3. Éric Laurent, « Une vision du ruissellement de l’Un », La Cause du Désir n° 107, Mars 2021, p. 62-69. [A vision of the streaming (trickle-down) of the One]

P49 of Laurent, On the other hand, he introduced a quasi-mathematical use of the letter to note functions that would move away from the reading of Freud, and thus guide this reading. The two uses of the letter, the literary use, and the mathematical use, are distinct, and occasionally enter into opposition. According to Lacan, the dit-mansion* of the letter implies a certain instance) a certain insistence, a certain forcing in order to be included in the signifying weft and the significations that are deduced from it.

NOTE dit-mansion literally translates as ‘said-house/mansion’ and derives from dimension.

Laurent uses this neologism again in Éric Laurent : Interpretation : From Truth to Event : 2nd June 2019 (Tel Aviv). See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Authors’ texts), quote, On the most radical horizon of this new perspective, Lacan will be led to base the very possibility of interpretation on a new dit-mansion*, a heterogeneous mixture of signifier and letter. It is this new dimension (as a specific contribution of psychoanalysis that adds to language functions unperceived by linguistics, even by Jacobson, who was so sensible to the poetic function) that links interpretation to the definition of the symptom as a body event. Interpretation thereby becomes an event of saying, which can be raised to the dignity of the symptom or, according to Lacan’s cryptic expression, extinguish it. It is this line of development that I will be exploring in this article.

From The Agency (Insistence or Instance) of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud (Sorbonne, Paris) : 9th May 1957 : Jacques Lacan, this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19570509), P169 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : For the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning by unfolding its dimension* before it.

* This is almost certainly a translation of the neologism ‘dit-mansion

***

– b) Raggenbass : Finally, the human condition that we can deduce in Lacan is that of a significant addition to a surface without traces: “The vision of the flow of the One according to Lacan is that of the letter which comes to be added to the world, disturbing it. In this vision, the erasure dominates, which can equally well take the form of isobars, or highways which are like gliders from the sky, like a violation of natural laws. In all things of the world and of language Lacan sees the irregularity, the equivocation” [7].

7. Éric Laurent, « Une vision du ruissellement de l’Un », La Cause du Désir n° 107, Mars

2021, p. 68-69.

In the notes to Laurent’s text is a reference to Lituraterre, which is the published version of Seminar XVIII 12th May 1971. The following is the nearest quote in Seminar XVIII.

See Seminar XVIII, On a discourse that might not be a semblance [semblant] (1970-1971) : from 13th January 1971 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19710113 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

pVII 13014, 12th May 1971, of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, Well then, what is evoked in terms of enjoyment because of the fact that a semblance is broken, this is what in the real – this is the important point – presents itself in the real as furrowing (ravinement). This defines for you the way in which writing can be said to be in the real the furrowing of the signified, in other words the amount of semblance that has rained down in so far as it is what makes the signified. Writing does not trace out the signifier. It only goes back to it be taking a name, but exactly in the same way as this happens to all the things that have been named by the signifying battery after it has numbered them. Since, of course, I am not sure that my discourse is being understood, I am going, all the same, to have to pin it down by an opposition. Writing, the letter, is in the real, and the signifier, in the symbolic. Like that, this can act as a little jingle for you.

I come back to a later moment in the aeroplane. We are going to advance a little like that: I told you that it was on the return journey. So then there, what is striking is to see them appearing. There are other traces that one sees for their part being sustained in isobars; obviously, traces that are of the order of an embankment, anyway, in general, isobars. This makes them normal to those whose slope, one could say, stands out in the clearest relief, and is marked by curves.

Where I was, it was very clear, I had already seen at Osaka how the auto-routes seemed to come down from the sky, that is the only place that they were able to set them up like that, one above the other.