ABSTRACT

When Lacan gave a year-long Seminar on “Joyce the Symptom” in 1975–1976, he wrote the word symptom as it used to be written in French—“sinthome”—introducing thereby the enigma of a translin-guistic equivocation. We hear in it the English words “sin” and “home,” as well as the French words saint (saint) and homme (man).” This playing with the mother tongue sets the tone. We must try to estimate the importance of the possible effects of this way of handling the letter. But don’t think that this is a literary question. Rather, we will see that it is an analytic question. Moreover, it will come as no surprise to you that this question concerns the psychoanalyst, for the agency of the letter can be found in the unconscious, as Lacan put it back in 1956. Here, in fact, we have a question: how is psychoanalysis allowed to speak of a work of art, here of literature?