Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

see, does not see too great an inconvenience in that, I mean by that thatspeech can be at the same time full of sense, it is full of sense - because itstarts from this duplicity drawn here – it is because the word with a doublesense, which is S 2 , that the word sense is itself full. When I spoke aboutTruth, it is to sense that I refer; but what is proper to poetry when it fails, isprecisely to have only a meaning, to be a pure knot of one word to anotherword. It nevertheless remains that the willingness for sense consists ineliminating the double sense, which can only be conceived by realising, as Imight say, this cut, namely, to ensure that there is only sense, the greenoverlapping the red on this particular occasion.How can a poet realise this tour de force of ensuring that one sense isabsent? It is, of course, by replacing this absent sense, by what I calledmeaning. Meaning is not at all what foolish people believe, as I might say.Meaning is an empty word, in other words it is that which, in connectionwith Dante, is expressed in the qualification given to his poetry, namely,that it is love poetry. Love is nothing but a meaning, namely, that it isempty and one can see clearly the way in which Dante incarnates thismeaning. Desire has a sense, but love as I already pointed out in myseminar on Ethics, as courtly love supports it, is only a meaning.There you are. I will be content to tell you what I told you today, sincemoreover I do not see why I should insist.108