Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

Does truth waken up people or put them to sleep? That depends on the tone inwhich it is said. Spoken poetry is soporific. I take advantage of this to show thething that François Cheng thought up. In reality he is called Cheng Tai-tchen. Heput in François like that, as a way of being reabsorbed into our culture, which hasnot prevented him from maintaining very firmly what he says. And what he says,is L’écriture poétique chinoise (Chinese poetic writing), which is published by Seuiland I would really like you to follow the grain of it, follow the grain of it, if you area psychoanalyst, which is not the case for everyone here.If you are a psychoanalyst, you will see that these forcings by which apsychoanalyst can make something else ring out, something other than sense, forsense, is what resonates with the help of the signifier; but what resonates, doesnot go very far, it is rather flabby. Sense deadens things, but with the help ofwhat one can call poetic writing, you can get the dimension of what one could callanalytic interpretation.It is quite certain that writing is not that by which poetry, the resonance of thebody is expressed. It is all the same quite striking that the Chinese poets expressthemselves by writing and that for us, what is necessary, is that we should holdonto the notion, in Chinese writing, of what poetry is, not at all that all poetry – Iam talking especially about ours – that all poetry is such that we can imagine it bywriting, by poetic Chinese writing; but perhaps, you will sense something in it,something which is different than what ensures that Chinese poets cannot dootherwise than write. There is something that gives the feeling that they are notreduced there, the fact is that they sing, that they modulate, the fact is that thereis what François Cheng enunciated before me, namely, a tonic counterpoint, amodulation which ensures that that it is sung, for from tonality to modulationthere is a slippage. That you are inspired eventually by something of the order ofpoetry to intervene, is indeed why I would say, it is indeed something towardswhich you must turn, because linguistics is all the same a science that I would sayis very badly orientated. If linguistics raises itself up, it is in the measure that aRoman Jakobson frankly tackles the questions of poetics. Metaphor, andmetonymy, have an import for interpretation only insofar as they are capable of115