Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

It is very difficult not to waver on occasions. There is a choice to be madebetween actual infinity which can be circular, on condition that there is noorigin that can be designated, and the enumerable knot, namely, finite.There are many possibles in this which means that one interrupts the way ofwriting – that is my definition of the possible – one only continues it if onewishes; in fact one gives up, because it is always possible to give up,because it is even impossible not to really give up. What I call theimpossible, is the Real, limits itself to non-contradiction. The Real is theimpossible to simply write, or in other words, does not cease not to bewritten. The Real, is the possible waiting to be written.And I should say that I had a confirmation of this, because I don’t knowwhy, something got into me, I went to Saclay, more exactly I askedsomeone to drive me there. It is someone called Goldzahl, it is amusing thathe should have this name which means golden number; he brought me into alittle room where there were traces – because Saclay is immense, it isabsolutely enormous, you cannot imagine the number of people who arescribbling on paper inside it, there are 7,000 of them, all they do moreover isto scratch on paper, except for the few people who are there in this littleroom and thanks to which, there is seen, what bears witness to thefunctioning of most of these apparatuses – as a result of which one can seethe undulating trace of what represents – of course it was necessary to set upthe apparatuses in such a way that this functions, that it should berepresented – of what represents the magnetism of the principle magnets.One sees on other apparatuses there being displaced, because one canqualify as displacement what goes from the left to the right and what issupported by a point; a point at the end of a line, that makes a trace and inthis little room, one sees nothing but these traces whose structure it is inshort conceivable to symbolise by something which goes around in the formof a circle each of these points, each of these points which represents aparticle, a particle which therefore is articulated with all of the apparatusesof which it is quite certain that the totality of these apparatuses, is what iscalled psi, in other words what Freud could not prevent himself from98