What is Hidden to the Subject and the Sacred Pact with the Great Other

PORTELA MAGALHAES Antonia

I start by the engenderment of the subject, i.e., by the way it constitutes itself, which reveals the unconscious. Thus, I intend to situate a difference between the very thing that is presented as destiny in relation to the way the subject structures itself and the turnarounds that one needs to make, discoursively, during the process of an analysis so that the very thing that is, due to its structure, destiny and that constitutes the very destiny as tracing can come to situate itself along with another tracing.

At first I would like to situate a pact which is established with the Other, and that is
thus a symbolic pact, which ultimately is the essence of the human drama. Such pact is situated for there are strings and knots in it, ties and knots where human beings are interconnected due to commitments that determine their location, their name and their essence (Lacan, Sem.II).
The fact is that this pact is also related to veiling the truth, which can be situated in
terms of what is veiled and unveiled, of what is shown and hidden, of what is robbed and denounced, of what is possessed and dispossessed, of what is kept in secret and is revealed… When working with Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Purloined Letter, Lacan thoroughly situates this play between the characters, according to the different positions they occupy, i.e., what he shows us is how the unconscious, as far as the letter is concerned, with all its consequences, in every moment of the symbolic circuit, makes the man an other, according to the position he occupies in relation to the letter, as a signifier.

In his paper The Purloined Letter Lacan situates two main scenes that are expanded
besides the accessory scenes: the scene of the stolen letter and the scene of the recovered letter.In the scene of the stolen letter, the Queen indifferently throws the letter on the table so that the King would not notice the presence of the letter. In this case the Queen plays with the King's blindness. At this moment enters the Minister, a man of high lineage whom the King and Queen trust sees the Queen's embarrassment in trying to dissimulate to her partner the presence of this something, which is the letter, on the able. The Minister immediately realizes from the envelope the meaning of the letter-it is a secret letter. The lynx-eyed Minister observes everything from this movement and takes a similar letter out of his pocket, handles it and carelessly throws it on the table. Afterwards, taking advantage of the main character's -the King-distraction, he picks up the Queen's letter, puts it in his pocket. Not a single detail of the scene has escaped to the Queen's eyes. She does not manage, however, to do anything about it but accepting to see the compromising document leave before her eyes. The Queen calls the Police in search of the letter.

In the scene of the recovered letter there is an expansion of the first scene of the stolen letter and there is still another expansion, which has to do with the fact that when Dupin finds the letter does not return it immediately, there is consequently an interval. The Chief of the Police who wanted advice on how to act had contacted dupin. Dupin tells the Chief of the Police to go on looking for the letter but the Police go round in circles since they have been made to find nothing. In this interval, in both meetings with The Chief of the Police, Dupin goes to the Minister's house where he sees the letter in the Minister's apartment, in the most evident place, within reach of the hand, visible but just disguised. The disguise was just folding it again to the other side, inside out. It also consisted of substituting the noble's tall handwriting emphasizing top and bottom loops for a feminine handwriting that addresses the letter to the Minister himself. The feminine handwriting makes the letter have a feminization effect over the one who possesses it who, in this second scene is the Minister. Such a transformation of the letter is something that has to do with the Minister's subjective behavior.

In this paper Lacan states that the effect of this feminization has the effect of an illusion, illusion that veils the truth once it is only possible to have something hidden in what concerns the truth. It is therefore the truth rather than the letter what is, in fact, hidden. The addressing with a very thin feminine handwriting becomes the one of the Minister himself. The same happens to the signet changing from the red of the passion, which was the previous signet, to the black of his mirrors. It passes the mark to the mark of the Minister himself, placing a singularity on the letter, that one of being marked by the addressee's signet. The invention engendered by the Minister at this point is amazing and it is strongly articulated in the récis of the short story. Lacan points that this invention is not nonetheless pointed out not even by Dupin throughout the discussion he submits the letter to. There is consequently a voluntary or unintentional omission that surprises in the arrangement of a creation the rigor of which one can observe: that the letter the Minister addresses to himself is the letter of a woman as if it were a phase through which a natural convenience of the signifier had to pass. This is significant in both cases.Dupin sees the letter due to a certain negligent look from the part of the Minister, which even seems to be softness, everything seems to have been planned so that the character whom all the purposes girded with all virility traits exhales at his appearance the most peculiar scent of female. Dupin therefore only sees the letter because the Minister himself gives away his secret once the letter lies throughout the Minister's private office as a huge female body, in the same way it was the Queen who, in fact, showed the Minister the letter.

Dupin sees the letter but does not recover it immediately. There is another expansion here in two moments: the moment when he sees the letter, which I have already commented, and the moment when he takes the letter. The following day Dupin returns to recover the letter after setting a trap and preparing another letter to replace the purloined letter, deceiving the Minister. For the trap he sets, he finds someone to shot a gun in front of the Minister's house, making him go to the window to see what had happened. Meanwhile Dupin gets the letter and puts in its place the one he had prepared with the following saying: Such a doleful designation, if not worthy of Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes.
The Chief of the police comes back to talk with Dupin once the Police goes on searching to find nothing since the truth does not matter to them, there is only reality for them. Dupin already possesses the letter and he silences in the same way the Queen and The Minister who also possessed the letter had silenced too. The meaning of this is that the truth goes on moving. The three are silent in different moments but they are silent as possessing a letter that threatens the fundamental pact. The Queen is silent because in the letter there is a truth which is not convenient for publishing, the Minister is silent and does nothing about the knowledge he has concerning the truth about the pact because the power the letter can give him lies in the fact that he sustains the letter undetermined, that is why he does not give the letter any symbolic sense at all and plays with a reciprocal fascination between him and the Queen, a dual relationship between master and slave. And it is sure that Dupin for keeping the letter must also be embarrassed for whom can he talk to? Dupin mentions to the Chief of the Police, who goes to him for the second time that the honoraria would be most welcome. So the Chief of the Police immediately volunteers to pay and Dupin tells him that the letter is in his drawer. He gets the money and leaves the scene.

The medical story about the honoraria that Dupin tells the Chief of the Police is a
background for the transparency of his reasons which let him leave the scene: he gets the dough and scrams. Lacan says that all the time the analysts are also functioning as bearers of all the patient's purloined letters and that their honoraria are a bit high. If we, the analysts, did not charge, we would be in the Atreus' and Thyestes' drama, which is the one of all the subjects who trust their truth to the analyst, once they are about to tell them their truth. If we did not charge, we would be in the sacred and in the sacrifice category, once money is not only meant to buy objects seen that the prices are estimated as precisely as possible in our society in order to play the role of cushioning something which is infinitely more dangerous than paying cash. This opens two ways to us, i.e., paying cash is at the same time much more than merely buying objects; it is also that thing that can leave out something which would be dangerous and which would owe someone something, in the sense of the symbolic pact.

In the scenes there are always four main characters, the fourth being always the letter, which puts three times into the play, which are arranged through three looks sustained by three subjects. The first time is the one from a look that sees nothing, which belongs to the King and to the Police; the second time is the one from a look that sees that the first one sees nothing and is deceived in seeing veiled what it hides- it belongs first to the Queen and then to the Minister; the third time is the one from a look that sees what they have left unveiled -and which is to be hidden- to the one who wants to take possession of it, which belongs to the Minister and then to Dupin.

Whoever possesses the letter comes into the cone of a shadow, which makes the question concerning its addressee a necessary one: whom is it addressed to? To the King who would be the one to whom it may be concern? It will end up in the King's hands but it would not reach him as Dupin tells in his imaginary story, i.e., that the Minister when he loses his power will threaten to use the letter and will be surprised when taking it out by the fact that the letter is no longer the same. It is not, thus by means of this imaginary story that the letter reaches the King. But it in fact reaches the King, once the King is the Subject, however as the King he sees nothing. Something important happens concerning the position of the looks from the second to the third time: it is that the character of the King has changed in this interval, i.e., the Minister who changing his place had become the Queen and it is he who is now the King. It is a third phase when the Minister takes over the King's place, but he has the letter: no longer the same letter. In fact he thinks that he possesses the letter but the letter has been passed on to the Chief of the Police in exchange for his honoraria. So the odyssey of the letter does not finish here in Dupin's imaginary story since what the Minister has got now is a new form of the letter, the one he was given by Dupin and which is a tool of destiny in relation to the pact with the Other, rather a pact of destiny of what Poe shows us given that in a certain point he omits.

The Minister, who thinks that he possesses the letter he does not and he does not possess it because Dupin has replaced it for another one, giving it to the Chief of the Police in exchange for his honoraria, is now in the position of the King, the one who does not see for what he sees is that the Police looks for the letter in order not to find it. And what he forgets is the essential because he does not believe that someone will work things out better than the Police, in the case, Dupin. What belongs to destiny, to the sacred pact with the Other, this is what remains, according to Dupin's story and that, according to Lacan, is somewhat imaginary: that the Minister, when unfolding the paper, will read the lines that slap him, will eat his children. This is one version. And so it is possible that the analyst too may be getting paid for this, which has to do with scramming, with beating it, as Dupin did but putting destiny into play.

Lacan says that the story, however, can be a different one although it can also be the one that Dupin imaginarily supposes. What should be necessary for that story to be another and not only destiny reading? If, by any chance, this letter is opened, one will have nothing to do but to suffer the consequences of his/her own acts and, like Thyestes, eat his/her own children, once it is exactly with this that one deals day after day for it is one's acts that come towards him/her. But it is also possible that one finds an analyst and that one's acts, coming towards him/her, the huge feminine body that extends itself everywhere and that surprises Lacan for having being omitted by Poe in his récis, which is so precise, may find payment which is not the one of cushioning: that in order to escape destiny one is able to desire.

(From Práxis Lacaniana / Formação em Escola
Niterói - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil)