Lacan and Claudel: Desire and "The Hostage" Author(s): Mohammad Kowsar Reviewed work(s): Source: Theatre Journal,

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Lacan and Claudel: Desire and The Hostage

Mohammad Kowsar

Lacan and Claudel, a curious combination. Nothing in their respective authorial projects and reputations would suggest a body of common concerns and preoccupations. Claudel who died in 1955, still looms in the general literary imagination as the dramatist whose poetic and densely dialogued dramas represent chiefly the trials of faith, an author whose Pascalian concerns depict solely Christian profiles captured in the states of moral epiphanies and spiritual ecstasies. Appositives, "majorauthor" and "writer of modern classics" attached themselves to the name of Claudel almost without controversy, describing a literary engagement spanning the first decades of our century. A generation younger than Claudel, and a late bloomer in fame, Lacan struggled against great odds to establish his own personal school of Freudian studies.1 Through gradual collection and diffusion of his writings, and even slower publication of the texts of his annual seminars, the once-renegade psychoanalyst eventually exerted a profound influence in all areas of cultural studies. His works and ideas, endlessly controversial while he was alive, received wider acceptance and favor after his death in 1981. Presently, the infrequent release of each heretofore unpublished seminar engenders new debates, colloquiums, and special conferences. It is no secret that Lacan's inclusive curiosity extended to readings and discussions of plays; widely known are his commentaries on Oedipusat Colonus2 Hamlet.3 and The 1986 publication of SeminarVII4(convened originally in 1959-1960) and the 1991 publication of Seminar

Mohammad Kowsar is AssociateProfessorin the TheatreArts Departmentof San FranciscoState articlesare reprinted The Critical Panopticon: Essays in the Theatre in University.His collected and Contemporary Aesthetics, publishedbyPeterLang.

de See ElisabethRoudinesco,Labataille centans:Histoire la psychanalyse France, vols. (Paris: de en 2 Editions du Seuil, 1982, 1986). Volume 2 charts the rise of Lacan and Lacanian theory as the momentous event of Frenchpsychoanalysis. 2See "Desire,life and death"in TheSeminar Jacques Lacan. II: Book TheEgoin Freud's and of Theory in the Technique Psychoanalysis 1954-1955,ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (New of York:W. W. Norton & Co, 1991),221-34. 3See"Desireand the Interpretation Desirein Hamlet," Literature Psychoanalysis: Question of in and The ed. no. Otherwise, S. Felman,YaleFrench Studies, 55-56 (1977):11-52. of Reading: de 4See LeSeminaire Jacques LivreVII:L'ethique la psychanalyse de text established Lacan, (1959-1960), Miller(Paris:tditions du Seuil, 1986).See also my essay, "Lacan's A by Jacques-Alain Antigone: Case 42 Ethics,"Theatre Journal (March1990):94-106. Study in Psychoanalytical Theatre 46 Journal (1994)79-93 ? 1994by The JohnsHopkins UniversityPress

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VIIh (convened in 1960-1961) further document Lacan'ssustained interest in dramatic texts, with entire chapters devoted to the discussion of Sophocles' Antigone and Claudel's trilogy (comprising The Hostage,Crusts,and The Humiliationof the Father)6 respectively. Sophocles-archetypal, atemporal, universal-has yet to release his hold on the psychoanalytical imagination. Paul Claudel? In comparison the Frenchauthor exhibits only limitations-insular, hermetic, much too topical. Lacan's choice of Claudel, after Sophocles, was perhaps motivated by his penchant to shock and provoke. But not altogether. Claudel as anomalous subject of critical and analytical inquiry proves disorienting only for an instant. Indeed, the sure manner in which Lacan proceeds to discover the verification of his own theories in Claudel's trilogy is also a function of a very real and fortuitous presence of shared thematics in the works of both authors. Lacan wants us to believe that what separates the two of them-in their seemingly incompatible ideologies-is born from general misconceptions and misreadings. Lacan is convinced that there is, in fact, a way of releasing the Claudelian text from the forced reverence which relegates it to the ghetto of religious drama, one that can locate it instead at the site of a compelling psychoanalytical, linguistic, and structural discourse. This would be a Lacanian reading which proceeds by the accumulation of signifying details and isolation of contra-indications within the text. Here, Claudel will not only yield surprise and revival of interest, but also, quite often, the evidence of a thorough refutation, rather than confirmation, of faith. Lacan treats the plays of the trilogy as autonomous creations, linked however, by their differential methods of defining modern tragedy. In this paper I will expose and interpret only Lacan's comments regarding The Hostage (the first play in the trilogy). Focusing on a single dramatic text will, I expect, allow me to concentrate upon a critical language that is both quintessentially Lacanian and useful to theatre studies. Claudel's protagonist, Sygne de Coufontaine, is for Lacan the chief agent who propels the action of the play throughout. "Sygne," Lacan alerts us, is a strange and unique name, one that sustains "ambiguity" at an "orthographical"level. in to Theword startswith an S, and it is therelike an invitation recognize it a sign. There of the substitution the y for the i, where one can moreoveran imperceptible is, change, of of in recognize thissuperimposition the mark... [an]imposition the signifierupon [the individualwhich]is at the sametime thatwhichmarksand disfigures... [her]. 352] [S.VIII, Lacan will find the last words of Sygne, her dying utterances, equally notable and germane to a linguistic analysis. After physically intercepting a bullet intended for her despised husband, Sygne repeatedly responds with an emphatic "No" to her priest's offers of comfort and efforts of absolution. This "No" of Sygne emanates, as we shall see, from an aporia native to what is, in Lacanian terms, the "self's radical ex-

5 See Le Seminaire Le LivreVIII: transfert de Jacques (1960-1961),text establishedby JacquesLacan, followed by page number.All reference S.VIII, Alain Miller(Paris:tditions du Seuil, 1991),hereafter to this work are in my own translation. 6See Paul Claudel,Three trans.John Heard Crusts,TheHumiliation TheFather, of Plays:TheHostage, in to all JohnW. Luce,1945).Hereafter, references TheHostage this editionwill be indicatedby (Boston: page number.

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centricity,"7and is related to a language frequently expressed in tragedies where characters suffer a loss of self. Sygne's "No," of course, is anticipated by Claudel's the stage directions: "Throughout [third]act Sygnehas a nervoustwitchingof the head from side to side, as thouqhsaying 'No"' (63). It is important to convey to the reader that the nervous tic which Lacan also calls a "grimace"is (until the fatal shot that will kill her) the only aberration in Sygne's bearing, speech and composure. And to bring these first considerations to a close, Lacan notes that Sygne's appearance onstage is rendered significant by virtue of two stage props that dominate the theatricalspace in acts 1 and on 2 of the play: ". .. afragmentof brightlycolored the tapestry, whichis embroidered coatwith the motto:'COUFONTAINE ADSUM'" (act 2) and "a large of-armsof Coufontaine, woodencrosswith a bronzeCrucifix.Thebodyis mutilatedand has aforbiddingappearance" (11). Sygne's singular name, her final words, her nervous facial tic, and the strange objects with which she surrounds herself are salient components of a complex puzzle which Lacan attributes to Claudel's genius response to the exigencies of "modem tragedy." Simply stated, Lacan's methodology is to scrutinize a behavior (Sygne's) as a continuous action fundamentally motivated by desire. But even though Sygne's desire is foregrounded as matter of inquiry in The Hostage,Lacan forewarns us not ever to assume a genetive relationship between a subject desirer and the act of desiring. Rather, desire is an expression of the subject's status in terms of being (as opposed to having), a structuring mechanism that defines the subject's position in the world. Subject and desire (rather than a subject's desire)-they elude each other at the "scene" of their conjunction, and the tension emanating from their mismatchment establishes an agonic relationship, evoking something like a drama. Crossroads, locations, sites-evocation of topoi is integral to Lacanianthinking. Placement guarantees virtual scenes where splits occur, meanings slide, knots appear and unravel. Now desire in its complex manifestation eludes the subject at the crossroads, leaving, nevertheless, an imprint, a mark, a telltale sign. From such indicators we become aware that desire has searched its subject through whom it wants to introduce itself. Symptoms and words are the residual effects of such missed linkages, and as such, they carry a) the burden of the entire ambassadorial message of incommensurability (between desire and a subject), and they do so b) by bearing witness to their own inadequacy, to wit: "I am not what I seem, I am merely standing in the place of that which I represent" (symptom); and "the word spoken here is only the inadequate support of a lost contention" (language). For Lacan, "symptom is a metaphor," and desire, inevitably expressed in relation to language "is a metonymy,"8implicating a contiguous association of signifiers, words leading to words, barred throughout from the signifieds, hence, postponing the moment of arrival at a meaning.

7 Expressing the truthof the decenteredsubjectin unequivocaltermslies not only at the heartof the Lacanianproject,but also is, for Lacan,a faithfulreadingof Freud:"Butif we ignore the self's radical ex-centricityto itself with which man is confronted,in otherwords, the truthdiscoveredby Freud,we shall falsifyboth the orderand methodsof psychoanalytic we mediation; shallmakeof it nothingmore than the compromiseoperationthat it has, in effect,become,namely,just what the letteras well as the trans.Alan Sheridan spirit of Freud'swork most repudiates."See JacquesLacan,lcrits: A Selection, (New York:W. W. Norton & Co., 1977),171. 175. 8Lacan,mcrits,

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The status of the subject in terms of "being" and in relation to desire is searchingly expressed in the form of a topographic displacement: in to The'being'referred is thatwhichappears a lightningmomentin the void of the verb .... cannotcometo theplace for 'tobe'... it poses its question the subject sincethesubject of that whereit is posed,butit posesit inplace thesubject, is to say,in thatplaceit poses the as questionwiththe subject, one poses a problemwitha pen. .. .9 Concurrently, desire, characterized by a certain motility, by dint of lacunaes that it opens in relation to language, indicates its presence through absence: Desireis a relationof beingto lack.... lackof beingwherebythe being exists .... Being of as comesintoexistence an exactfunction thislack.Beingattainsa senseof self in relation of to beingas a functionof thislack,in the experience desire.In thepursuitof thisbeyond,
which is nothing ... 10

And finally, how does this being insert itself within a chain of signifiers, if not through a loss and a kind of perdition. Lacan explains: "I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realized in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming."1 What Lacan finds in keeping with his own views in Claudel's text is not just the destiny of a desire, but also the companion concept that haunts it eternally, namely nomos(law). Law, of course, articulates and regulates prohibitions and is so intimately attached to desire as to be the inverse to the latter's obverse. Desire can be imagined to have given birth to itself parthenogenetically,but law is forever joined to its ur-model as the universal incest prohibition. Furthermore, to explain desire outside of articulated prohibitions (or signifiers) is to indulge in fiction. Desire and law are to be taken in tandem or not at all. Having said this, it remains to be asked what happens when desire aspires to go beyond the law? In a manner of speaking, it is very much the destiny of desire to situate itself beyond the law (of course, tragic desire dramatizes this fact openly) in a positioning operation that roughly corresponds to desire's own "beyond" status vis a vis "need" and "demand." Although sustained by the same dynamics immanent to need and demand, desire will always stand in excess to that which passes differentially as a subject's need or demand. Need, presumably, implicates the subject biologically, and can, for the most part, be satisfied. Demand is already a matter of psychology and language; it issues from a subject's "call" for reciprocal acknowledgment. For instance, in the matter of love, it seems that the demanding subject alerts the beloved of a personal lack, an emptiness that can be filled only by the object of desire's reciprocalattention;here, demand insists that the beloved also acknowledge an emptiness, a lack, that can be fulfilled only by the subject.At this as juncture, wanting love and wanting-to-be loved appear as the horns of a dilemma, as amorous. Desire in this model is that which is left overwhelmmuch ontological been ingly unsatisfied in the dialectic of demand, after the requirements of need have

9Lacan,gcrits,168. Book 223-24. Lacan. The II, 10Lacan, Seminar Jacques of 1 Lacan,tcrits, 86.

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met. In this sense, desire resides beyond need and demand, and as a condition of excess it functions beyond any satisfaction, and beyond any pleasure. Desire's mode of expression usually appears, but is not lodged, in the extreme instances of excessive pain, superhuman suffering, exemplary martyrdom, madness, and of course, death. Accordingly, desire's relation to the law is fated to manifest itself in transgression, where limits and taboos are crossed. Still, that aspect of criminality that confronts the subject with the unstable ordinances of common social life remains largely irrelevant to the Lacanian notion of desire. But whenever a crime seems to affect the subject's "being" so profoundly that the very coordinates of law and desire have to be reevaluated, then, Lacan's attention becomes transfixed. Eros and nomossustain their antinomy and violent interdependence throughout the analytic experience, but it is in the discussion of ethics, aesthetics, and the tragic, that Lacan successfully locates a radical beyond the law that can animate desire, towards an "impossible" (S.VIII,322) freedom and liberation, something that can be said arising "ex nihilo,"12 prior to any law, and going beyond mere death to an absolute alterity. If the subtextual target of Lacan's interest in Claudel is to demonstrate the dramatic confrontation of desire and law, his expository remarks relative to his reading of the playwright recapitulate formulas that in a distilled form represent the fundamental challenge he was trying to pose to traditional psychoanalysis: ... manis marked, is troubled all thatis calledsymptom... it is this thatlinkshim he by to his desires.
[S.VIII,313] ... the desire of the subject is essentially ... the desire of the Other with a capital O. [S.VIII,314] The Desire of the Other-this genetive is at once subjective and objective. Desire in the place where the Other is, desire for being able to be at this place-and desire for some

alterity.
[S.VIII,314]

to To satisfya searchfor an objective, know what this otherwho comesto find us desires ... ... we lend it there,to the functionof the subjective to represent... not at all the object but the desiretargets, the signifier. must be able to locatetherethe lackingsignifier.
[S.VIII,314-15] ... it is necessary to know how to fill its [the void's or lack's] place, in as much as the subject [S.VIII,315]

A great deal of Lacan, of course, is present in these cryptic, almost formulaic statements, which nevertheless, he feels he must repeat in order to explain the dynamics of the Claudelian text. Of course, the theatre of Claudel does not function as a simple analogy to Lacanian precepts, but stands for an operation that goes beyond these principles comparable to the centrifugal thrust of desire itself. Desire, as the desire of the Other is conceived here in terms of shifting topoi and within language. To coincide with the desire of the Other is also to occupy its same place, but this essentially mobile place (an elsewhere) is imbued with the paradoxical capacities of existing differentially,subjectively and objectively.Consequently, satisfaction of desire (aimed at an object) will invariably miss the object for its signifier, the latter being only

12Lacan, Le Seminairede JacquesLacan, Livre VII, 252.

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a partial representation. Lack, therefore, arises from the inadequacy of the signifier, and is intimately linked to the subject's quest; it marks the subject in his/her very being. Accordingly, Claudel paints, suggests Lacan, a portrait of desire in TheHostage that is substantially sympathetic to the complex definition of it put forth by the psychoanalyst. Following observations explicit in Lacan's reading of Claudel, we find in Sygne a characterwho is presented to us as one who has been engaged in an ambitious labor (physically and symbolically) which is none other than reclaiming the patrimony of her noble lineage. One aspect of her efforts has to do with restoring lands, fields, and edifices parcelled out by the Napoleonic regime, an attempt to restore the material integrity of her family heritage. That she identifies with holdings associated with feudal ownership, as one whose political beliefs are wholly partisan, even as her commitment to recoup the family possessions with painstaking and exacting effort is total, goes without saying. She is equally obsessed on another plane, for linked to the material exigency is, of course, her identification with the Coufontaine name. And in this respect we find her aspirations more auricular, if equally intense. As the sole keeper of the flame, Sygne is engaged in making certain that the Coufontaine name persists, to be preserved in history as a continuation vitalized not only by memory and solemn oaths, but also through the protection of privileged relics that beyond their material value exemplify the unique authority invested in the family name, now subject to mortal assault. If the entire tragic movement of Claudel's text is embodied in Sygne's desire, her expository declarations to her cousin Georges de Coufontaine articulate the strongest expression of an ethos soon to be questioned: I studiedthe value of eachfield and of eachcomerof eachfield, and the value of wheat, and and of wine, and of buildingstone, of lime, and of wood, and the daily wage of men knewhis cards as and women,untilat lastI knewtheold property well as ourgrandfather and aftera night'splay .... At last I had gathered fittedtogetheragainthe whole estate, exceptour manor,whichhad been tom down. Bitby bit I boughtbackour china;volume on our by volumeI retrieved books,boundwith ourcoat-of-arms thecovers.... Ourcastle but has been destroyed, the Houseof God still stands.... the old house,raisedfromthe groundby faith,the mysticalhousebuilton the sacredBodyand Blood,still stands. [20-21] What Sygne has to say with respect to her diligence in reclaiming the integrity of the Coufontaine territories, in Lacan's view, cannot be disassociated from the complex coordinates which point to a sign system: ". . . this pact with the land, for the two characters, and equally for the author who makes them speak, is identical with the consistency, and the value of nobility itself" (S.VIII,319). In other words, what has transpired between the land itself and the principles of nobility is part of an originary agreement, a primordial law endorsed by the Coufontaine fathers. It is not that recent history has witnessed merely the bleeding and suffering of the earth, but that the earth itself is vociferous. What does this mean other than a personification of the earth and attributing a pathos to it? Well, a unified estate in the Coufontaine scheme of values is highly symbolic. As enumerated, Sygne's recuperative labors guarantee a return to legitimacy. And the collection of the china, the books, and the family emblems, the production of the bread and wine, and the appraisal of lime and wood are so many "statements" forming a signifying chain leading to the conjunction of name and land

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as a core symbol, one which voices the restoration of parental authority. The earth evokes through the language of nobility "a mystical link" (S.VIII,319) with those who owe allegiance to it. The values implicated by the language of the cousins (even as they alternately grieve the past and call up courage for the travails of the present and the future) are supported by a "certain form of speech" (S.VIII,319) expressive of the burden of nobility. This is to say, following the logic of Lacan,that land and lineage are not silent partners where the Coufontaine cousins are concerned. Land and lineage speak through the highborn subjects, reactivating in an articulated form a desire that is responsive to the memory of an original pact, one that was first drawn between a mythic founding Father (of the family) and his male heirs. In Sygne's case there is no difference between her devotion to the laws of her forefathers and her submission to the Christian faith. For her, nobility and religion work hand in hand, generating spiritual truth in the shape of subservience to God and Church. And her belief in the legitimacy of the Bourbons conforms to traditionally held convictions supportive of a close alliance between state and church. It is in conformity with these certainties that Sygne, early in the play, negotiates a "spiritual marriage"with Georges. The latter's faith has been severely tested. When in exile with his King in England, he witnessed the sudden deaths of his wife and two children, victims of an epidemic "fever" afflicting London. But misfortune has also been accompanied by scandal. Georges' wife, unbeknownst to him, had had an extended love affair with the Dauphin, a truth revealed to the hapless husband only after her untimely demise. The entire affair has left him utterly disconsolate. Grief, desolation, and sense of family obligation, therefore activate the mutual promise of a lifelong devotion exchanged by Sygne and Georges: COUFONTAINE:... You,who are the last survivingwomanof my lineage,takewhat oath.youwill, and acceptfromyouroverlordthe pledge of faithafter the ancientcustom.Coufontaine, receivemy glove! (Hegivesherhis glove.)
I take it, George; and never shall you take it back. (A long pause.) [26]

SYGNE:

This ceremony represents, for Lacan, the conditions of an "impossible" marriage, because it will prohibit consummation, but is deemed binding "before God" (S.VIII, 322) in all other respects. Moreover, the memory of a conjugal infidelity transpiring during the nadir of the cousins' fortunes seems to call for a solemn pact capable of stitching the rent in the ethical fabric of their existence. It is no longer necessary to insist that the words of this nuptial oath is in strict conformity with and in the order of the language of the original pact with the land. Suffice it to say that against all dangers of inclement fortune and possible loss, the pact reaffirms the subjects' identification with the land as an expression of ontological certainty. No doubt Claudel would be a poor playwright had he had not envisioned the inherent futility of a covenant such as the one binding Sygne and Georges. And Lacanian analysis is well positioned to identify the limits of this agreement, for even though the Other (the laws of the fathers, masters, authority, religion, etc.) speaks in the name of the subject's desire, it fails at every turn to fulfill desire's objectives, leaving the subject invariably wanting and alienated. The alpha and omega of the Other's relation to the subject is this inevitable letdown at the level of satisfaction.

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Claudel's text speaks succinctly to this dilemma. The truth of ancestral devotion as something symbiotically connected with faith is suddenly under question. Indeed, the patriarchalvalues of nobility and church have seriously eroded by the time Sygne is ready to champion them. Her resolve is blind to the crack registered in the composition of the Other. From her position of limited knowledge Sygne is subject to extraordinary vulnerability, her full resolve undermined by the confusing and paradoxical messages emanating from the field of the Other. Accordingly, Claudel's plot complications will force upon Sygne radical and wrenching decisions. The Pope (Pius VII) is at this very time a fugitive, and the nouveaurichecharlatans, precursors to the modern bourgeoisie, are preparing to feed on the rotting corpse of the aristocracy.And moments after their mutual oath, Georges confesses to Sygne that the stranger with whom he has been travelling is none other than the Pope (the literal hostage of the title). Georges, profiting from the general disarray reigning in France as a result of the Emperor's disastrous Russian campaign, has singlehandedly obtained the release of the Pope from a provincial prison and has secretly conducted him to the relative safety of the Cistercian monastery where Sygne resides. The image of a beleaguered Pope with his diocese used as a pawn in worldly schemes, expresses, no doubt, a fundamental crisis of authority in the Church. But it is perhaps possible to justify the necessity for such a crisis as part of that endless challenge faith will place in the path of true believers. What follows as a result of the fugitive Pope's presence at the monastery, however, transcends any test conceivable by the faithful subject. Complying with the role of host to so august a figure as the Pope immediately makes Sygne susceptible to the blackmailof a powerful machiavellian character,Toussaint Turelure,Prefect of the Marne.The latter has risen to high position during the Napoleonic years, leaving behind the most humble of backgrounds. The bastard child of a servant, domestic to the Coufontaines, and a father reputed to have been a sorcerer,Tureluregrew up adopting republican sentiments, before embracing Bonapartism at the opportune moment. His exercise of power in the Marne has included a murderous and vindictive policy directed against the Coufontaines. Now, alerted to the Pope's secret presence, he declares outright that the price of his silence will accommodate only Sygne's hand in marriage. The natural revulsion displayed in response to the marriage proposal by Sygne cannot be disassociated from the fact that Turelure's mother had served as her wetnurse. In analyzing a text where the actual mother of the protagonist is conspicuously absent, and the presence of a surrogate mother is presented in cryptic terms, the status of mothers in relation to the formation of desire must be clarified. Prior to the well documented transition from the "imaginary" to the "symbolic," the child, according to Lacan, was happy to "be" or identify with the very substance of the mother's lack. But the child was barred from the mother by the father's explicit and violent interdiction. The paternal "no" occasioned the child's rebirth into the symbolic order (language and culture), but not before overseeing the child's death in the imaginary realm. Desire, of course, will carry forever the imprint of that passion play where the reciprocal attraction between mother and child was thwarted. And despite the complicity of the mother in the act of symbolic infanticide-executed as Oedipal drama-the substance of her original incestuous desire will leave an indelible impression upon the reborn subject. Very soon Sygne must cope with something like a desire for death, but in the beginning, her adherence to paternal dictums corresponds to staving off scandal and impropriety.

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Whereas her symbolic marriage to Georges is upheld by the self-sacrificing resolve of mutual chastity, marriage to Turelure would be doubly contaminating, for he is a professed enemy of the family, and as alien brothernourished by the same milk, bearer of the stigma of incest. Sygne takes her case to the Curate Badilon, the priest who serves the Cistercian monastery and who has been the family confessor to the Coufontaines. It is Badilon's considered opinion that saving the Pope is the higher Christian good, and that Sygne should accede to Turelure's revolting proposal. Lacan considers the substance of the dialogue between Sygne and Badilon of enormous consequence. During "the major scene," Badilon acts as "the vehicle of the request to which Sygne de Coufontaine will cede .. ." (S.VIII,321). As "Sygne's confessor," Badilon "appeals to ... her weakness." The priest "shows her . . . the chasm of this acceptance," whereby Sygne "must renounce ... her very being," by overriding "the pact that links her... to her family," the proposal "to marry the exterminator of this family.. ." (S.VIII,321-22). Turelure's demand is very real. What he asks is a monstrous capitulation to be conducted at the level of her body and ethos-both sexual acquiescence and recognition of the class enemy (the other) as an equal. The language of nobility itself would recoil at the prospect of so radical a renunciation. And renunciation it is, precisely because Sygne must now break the promise of spiritual marriage to her cousin-the pact that has guaranteed the fusion of the two wounded beings into a single ethical entity. Now the Church itself wants her to commit perjury,to declare herself a willing bride, which is tantamount, for her, to criminal behavior. Such a demand, "the sacrifice of that which, for her ... is worth more than her life ... but in which she recognizes her very own being" (S.VIII,322) means nothing less than a going beyond the very limits that define her as subject. At the level of "being" she must become other to herself. Moreover, her self-alienation is not instigated at this point by her lack of faith, but paradoxically enough by the contradictory message emanating from the field of the Other. Following Lacan's argument, what Sygne is asked to sacrifice is her being. Accordingly, Anika Lemaire, a Lacan scholar, considers sacrifice as a structuring principle in the formation of the ego, a line of thinking that Lemaire correctly attributes to the Levi-Straussian influence on the French psychoanalyst. The original sacrifice occurred as the "precondition for the transition to the symbolic order. And what a subject sacrifices here in order that [s]he may designate ... and situate himself [or herself] by entering into the symbolic order is incest."13 Complying with the LeviStraussian formulation, this is an entry into culture. Interestingly enough, the borderline spectre of incest is evoked by the original mutual pledge officiated by the Catholic cousins. But it is not in the tenor of safeguarding against any breath of incest that a new demand is put forth by Badilon. It is, rather, an ordinance characterized by its innate cynicism: it urges (through Badilon's advice) Sygne to enter alliance with a person heretofore considered undesirable-born out of wedlock, an agnostic, and a self-declared libertarian-and moreover, she must find the reason for so doing not as exemplary response to the dictates of any religion that would, or could, conceivably sanction such an act, but in the private desert of her own heart. In this situation,

13 Anika Lemaire,Jacques trans.David Macey (London:Routledge& KeganPaul, 1977),62. Lacan,

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Sygne's initial reaction reflects a strongly articulated sense of self: ". . God gave me my life, and I am ready and anxious to give it back to Him. But the name is mine, and my woman's honor is mine, and mine alone" (54). Badilon's strategy is to disavow external pressure: "I do not ask; I do not demand; I merely stand and look at you, and wait, as Moses watched the rock after he had smitten it" (56). The dialogue progresses in the spirit which Lacan associates with tragedy. Sygne declares, "Icannot go beyond the limit of my powers," and Badilon appeals to her heart, "Child, what says your heart?" (59). And having asserted that he is invoking not her "strength,"but rather "herweakness" (60), Badilon reminds Sygne that no visible sign from God will appear to guide her in this choice, no comfort, nothing tangible-she must, in Badilon's reiteration, "takecounsel with [her] own heart" (62). Sygne will say "yes" to Turelure's hand in marriage, and it is Lacan's belief that her consent signals her first death, precisely because she must abnegate at the level of her being. This death is metaphoric, but the depth of alienation registered in Sygne's psyche is consequential to the destiny of desire. When we pick up the events of the play two years later, we are in the outskirts of Paris, where Turelureresides as the Prefect of the Seine. At this time, Tureluremakes an exchange offer to the Coufontaine cousins that will entail guarantee of the Bourbon restoration. For the price of Sygne's willingness to transfer the entire deeds and entitlements of the Coufontaine legacy to their son born from their unhappy marriage, he will betray his Bonapartist allies. The child is to be consecrated as inheritor of the Coufontaine name on this day of baptism. Georges, unaware of the original motive of Sygne's capitulation, is now doubly horrified by the Prefect's morally insensate conditions for supporting the BourbonKing, terms that would wrench the Coufontaine name from its noble source and bequeath stewardship privileges to an outsider. A botched version of a duel, pistol shots exchanged between Georges and Turelure follows: the bullet intended for the latter is received by Sygne who throws herself in front of her husband. Georges, in turn, hit by Turelure'sbullet dies, and Sygne is asked by Badilon to submit to a deathbed confession. She dies, however, unrepentant, refusing to make peace with God. Her penultimate words, preceded by truncated phrases expressive of delirium and pain, clearly state "No" to all offer of reconciliation with heaven. Moreover, a nervous twitch she has picked up since her marriage to Turelure-an involuntary shaking of the head-seems to corroborate, in these final moments, her unwillingness to receive absolution. It is in the nature of Badilon's deathbed offer and Sygne's refusal that Lacan recognizes in exemplary fashion the presence of modern tragedy. Native to tragedy, according to Lacan, is a sojourn between death and "a second death" (S.VIII,322), a concept borrowed from Marquis de Sade who illuminated with cruel precision the extent to which death as an objective activates the principle of desire. In his Juliette,14Sade allows one of his characters,Pope Pius VI (the exquisite coincidence of presenting two Popes, historically so close in time, as fictional and alternative spokespersons for the disparate authors, Claudel and Sade, should not be lost to the reader),to put forth an amoral and murderous vision of Nature. Without actually using Sadean statements as analogy for his own vision of desire, Lacan suggests that there is an "orientation"in Nature, as explained by Sade, which is applicable also to desire. With respect to Nature, Pius VI declares:
14

Marquis de Sade, Juliette, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1988).

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resultant To serve her betteryet, one would have to be able to preventthe regeneration from the corpseswe bury. Only of his firstlife does murderdeprivethe individualwe smite;one would have to be ableto wrestaway his second,if one were to be moreuseful she it to Nature; 'tisannihilation seeks,by less she is not fullysatisfied, is not withinour for power to extendour murdersto the point she desires.15 In the preceding statement, Sade is saying that Nature's relation to this second death is one that seeks an objective beyond even the cycle of death and rebirth. In tragedy, Lacan asserts, desire also embarks on a journey that aims to a point beyond oblivion. Lacan weaves his interpretive argument through Claudel's text by treating it as a species of "contemporary" or "modem tragedy" (S.VIII,317). For Lacan, tragedy is what qualifies the itinerary of desire perhaps in its most paradigmatic sense. To go beyond is the key to the tragic operation; a Lacanian reading of Aristotle's "by way of Needless to say it terror and pity" reads, "having crossed beyond all terrorand pity."16 is the complex movement of desire that is being charted here, and not the life of this or that particular affect. Ancient tragedy, according to Lacan, was an outreach effort fueled by desire, encompassing death and annihilation, but constitutive of a response to the chthonian demands of Ate. In other words, catastrophe (or universal misery) was very much in the business of settling scores, but outside of any conceivable court of law devised by god or man. Ate expressed its demands as part of that kinship ab(err)ation that first instituted the incest taboo at the foundation of culture. Such, after all, is the substance of Antigone's relation to the Ate governing the House of Labdacus. Antigone willingly assumes upon herself her family Ate, beyond human reason, and beyond divine laws of justice. Consequently,Antigone achieves at one and the same time the highest grace by assuming the fullest responsibility for her family disgrace. Embodying the objectives of desire, Sophocles' Antigone is visibly situated in the space of between-two-deaths. She is, in a manner of speaking, not of this world from the moment she appears onstage, knowingly bent on a course of action that will culminate in her death, and at the same time she is responsible to the letter to the chthonian demands of Ate, and in this sense she allows the desire of the Other (the family curse born of maternal incest) to coincide with her own desire. In the process, she is pushed to the limit of the second death, that is annihilation, but one that is substantiated by whatever structuring principle death-bearing Ate brings to the life of desire. In other words, Ate penetrates the fiber of Antigone's being, implicating destiny as both a necessary and necessitated desire, rooted in the primordial aporia of its death declaring imperative, but allowing destiny and desire to converge on the "yes" that she says to Ate, and the death beyond. Claudel's protagonist, like Antigone, enters the realm of between-two-deaths, but, and this is Lacan's central contention, Sygne says "No" to anything that presumes to give meaning to the prospect of the second death. For Lacan, the hallmark of "modern" or "contemporary" tragedy is

15 772. who showsthatLacan alwaystakenFreud's has Sade,Juliette, See also Richard Boothby notionof the "deathdrive"very seriously, it, havingincorporated in fact,fully withinhis three of the and in (the interdependent registers humanexperience "imaginary," "symbolic," the "real"):
Deathanddesire: in returnto Freud(New York:Routledge,1991). psychoanalytic theory Lacan's et la touteterreur toutepitiefranchies" et observes Lacan '6 Not "par terreur parla pitie,"but "a travers (S.VIII, 326).

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implicit in Claudel's strategic positioning of Sygne in relation to her desire. "Sygne" is "brought to the limits of the second death" and subsequently it is "demanded of the heroine to cross them" (S.VIII,322), believing absolutely that nothing can render her second death meaningful. The metaphoric nature of a living-death becomes somewhat clearer if we desist from privileging the inanimate quotient in favor of the "going beyond" process. Antigone is already beyond this life at the play's start; Sygne enters this comparable realm at the sacrificial moment of consenting to marriage with the family enemy, and the statuses of both protagonists are defined at the level of what they must denegate and what they must subsequently identify with, above and beyond their temporary situation in the space of between-two-deaths. In this space, an observant critic remarks, the subjects seem to step out of their beings and look at their personal subjection to horror, a veritable theatre of blood (typical setting for Sadean characters),as if the events were happening to someone other than themselves.17 The balance of what Lacan has to say with respect to Sygne's tragic situation is to explain how in terms of language, law, and historical precedence, modern tragedy establishes a rupture with ancient tragedy, and particularly, how the trajectory of Sygne's desire arcs toward a radical nothingness unbreached by either the ancient, and later, the Christian belief systems. Accordingly, navigation through the contradictions of faith and an implicit recognition of the dissatisfaction engendered by the conjunction of nomosand logos (in Christianity) is necessary for the appreciation of a moder desire that can be nothing if not essentially atheist. For Lacan, Ate of ancient tragedy "is misfortune, the thing ... that never exhausts itself, the calamity that is behind all tragic adventure .. ." (S.VIII, 133). Paraphrasing Homer, Lacan offers: "Ate, swift, indifferent, striking and dominating as always, lowering heads and rendering men insane" (S.VIII, 133).18 But because Sygne is not a carbon copy of Antigone, the Sophoclean scheme is not altogether applicable to the study of Claudel. Despite what it shares with ancient tragedy, Claudel's TheHostage(as modern tragedy) presents a kind of postapocalyptic vision that leaves the dead certainties of Ate behind, reaching towards the meaningless signifier. The Christian version of tragedy is a mixed message, one that despite its insistence on coherence and justice is innately flawed. Why? Because as it will presently become clear, Christian tragedy, in Lacan'sview, responded to an ethos that proceeded to bind its subject to law, not by dint of indisputable ordinance, but by fostering a regime of culpability accountable to a shifty Father. As the rule of the Father unfolded, it guaranteed only one certainty, desire's permanent captivity. For Lacan, the governance of the Father is elevating the Name of the Father,and in no way different from the authority invested in the Word of the New Testament.On this latter point, Lacan is forcefully clear: "TheWord is for us incarnated.It came into the world, and contrary to the word of the Evangelist, it is not true that we did not recognize it. We recognized it, and we live in the aftermath of this recognition. We are in one of the consequential

18 Statementmade by Agamemnonin Book nineteen of Homer's TheIliad:"Thisblindness is Ate, eldest daughterof Zeus, the accursedgoddess who binds all men. Her feet are soft-she does not walk on the ground, but she treads across men's heads bringing folly to mankind,and ensnaringone or other of them";trans:MartinHammond(Middlesex,England:Penguin, 1987),326.

17 Jonathan The Lacan Press,1990),131. ScottLee,Jacques See (Amherst: Universityof Massachusetts

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phases of this recognition" (S.VIII,354). Two moments, then: The revelation of the Word, and the instance of recognition. When faith is substantiated negatively by the recognition of debt, a post-revelation crisis occurs. In other words, the "God of Destiny" (S.VIII, 354) surges, promotes, regulates, and rewards according to an economy of vice and virtue, imbuing suffering with the value of a "divine comedy." In the "consequential phases" of Christian faith, the second moment, the subject discovers that the entire burden of being has shifted to the individual, for the God of destiny has disappeared. The recognition of the Word has been fatal: "The Word is not simply for us the law wherein we insert ourselves, each carrying the charge of the debt that makes our destiny. It opens for us the possibility, the temptation from where it is possible to damn ourselves, not only as a particular destiny, as life, but as the way itself where the Word engages us, and as meeting with the truth" (S.VIII,354). The residue of this truth, that there may be no truth at all, merely a debt, is, for the subject, cataclysmic: "We are not only on the brink of being guilty of the symbolic debt. It is having the debt in our charge which in the closest sense of the word would be held as a reproach to us" (S.VIII,354). Lacan speaks for the modem subject directly when he says that in the wake of God' s absence we are "Hostage" (S.VIII,355) to an old debt, and our desires are structured by the "debt itself where we have placed ourselves, which can ravish us, and it is there that we can feel ourselves totally alienated from ourselves" (S.VIII,354). Lacan suggests that Claudel, contrary to his religious reputation, at the crepuscular moment of modernism, has declared a "God is dead" (S.VIII, 355) statement in keeping with the causes and realities of modem neuroses. Such a conviction is fully supported by Lacan's linguistic analysis, honed to converge on Sygne's "No." Previously, Lacan had found complicity of words in the example of Oedipus (at Colonus) whose suffering he found expressed (in his translation) as ce puisse-jen'etre pas (could that I had not been); Lacan interprets this as n'etrepas ne" (not have been born).19Sygne's "non" like Oedipus' n' is another signifier "where precisely the
19 is worth It at following the historyof Lacan'scitationof words attributedto Oedipus (in Oedipus In Lacan. Book Lacanquotes Oedipus: Colonus). the lectureof 11 May 1955(in TheSeminar Jacques II), of "Am I made man in the hour when I cease to be" (214).Soon after,in the lectureof 18 May 1955,he evokes the same statementtwice and correctlyimputes to the Chorusthe following words: Say what you will, thegreatestboonis not to be;/ But, life begun,soonestto end is best,.. ." (230).In the French translationof Robert Pignarre,the statement of the Chorus reads: "Mieuxvaut centfois n'etrepas ne . .."; see Sophocle, Theatre (Paris:Flammarion,1964 ), 294. Lacan'sslight variation to Complet ne n'etre de II: Livre Le vaut,enfin decompte, Lacan, jamais . ." in LeSeminaire Jacques Pignarreis "Mieux moidansla theorie Freud dansla technique la psychanalyse de et de text (1954-1955), establishedby JacquesAlain Miller(Paris:tditions du Seuil, 1978),269.A few yearslater,in his 1959-1960lectureson Ethics, Lacanascribesthe Greekmephunai("notto be") to Oedipus,ratherthan to the Chorus(in LeSeminaire deJacques LivreVII,353).Obviously,by this time for Lacan,Oedipus' "in the hour when I cease Lacan, to be" has convergedwith the Chorus'"notto be." Recently,PatrickGuyomard,in his lecture-essay, "Surl'eclatd'Antigone," contribution the College International Philosophiepublication,Lacan his to de avec les philosophes (Paris:Editions Albin Michel, 1991), noted Lacan'sslippage with the me phunai' "... qu'ilmetd 'ailleurs dansla bouche mais dite (64). d'Oedipe, quise trouve parle choeur" Guyomarddoes not acknowledgeLacan'soriginallycorrectattribution mephunai the chorusin 1955.In the 1960of to 1961 lectures, Lacan continues introducingslight variations to "n'etre ne," including "puiss6-je pas "ne and "nefus-je" n'etre," sois-je," (S.VIII, 354), as articulatedexpressionsof Oedipus' self-alienation. The logic of Lacan'soperationwith languageremainsconsistenteven as he ascribesthe words of the Chorus to Oedipus. His analysis of the function of negations in language as variant signifiers that

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direction of desire shows itself-not exactly the subject of the utterance (enonce), that is the I, the one who actually speaks, but the subject where enunciation (enonciation) originates from" (S.VIII,354). The signifier in this case sustains the condition of a negation-the original prohibition being the Father's "no"to the desire of the child for the Mother-the inverse side of which is the subject's introduction to culpability. If birth into the world is equivalent to being born into debt (as obligation to the Word, the Father,the Law), a subject's being is characterized by a permanent being-in-debt. This is to say that imposed upon the subject, in the very assumption of self, is the introjected guilt of forever being "in default on a promise" (S.VIII,353). Exemplary sacrifice and suicide are structural moments defining entry into the symbolic system of culpability, and not at all payments on a debt which, in any case, acknowledges no satisfactory payment. What we also learn from Lacan is that the symptomatic twitching of Sygne is not to be read only as the substitute expression of recoil in the presence of he who has ravaged her, but as the inverse impression of the Other's discourse subjecting the flesh to spasms. The grimace speaks (metaphorically) of how the Other bound her to the law, and then abandoned her at the very moment she had sought fulfillment of the desire of the Other in her own being. The grimace (symptom) "is itself, through and through, signification, that is to say, truth, truth taking shape," and as such, "symptom It is the inverse side of a discourse."20 bears witness to Sygne's history of becoming her "No" inside of a language, not as some variant other, and in this capacity supports repelling capacity of the organism outside the system of articulation. This grimace is waiting in the wings, rehearsing the sign of the "No" to be delivered, not to Turelure, but to the Other, as gesture of radical defiance. The grimace and the "No," furthermore, shed light on all which at the end of the story represents resolution in terms of the play's intrigues, including the return to status quo politics and power. Lacan observes the introduction of the farcical and the "caricatural"in what seems to be one of the "two endings" (S.VIII,324) of the playthe "Restoration"of the Bourbons through the machinations of a Talleyrandfigure like Turelurewho is subsequently elevated to the ranks of the nobility in recompense for his duplicity, so effective in the Bonapartist defeat. And throughout, Lacan observes Claudel's depiction of the supposed champions of faith as worldly politicians subject to moral amnesia. Claudel's "absolute derision" (S.VIII,325) of social and political opportunism is heightened by the ambivalent presence of the two stage props, the bronze crucifix and coat-of-arms with inscription. The latter bears witness, not to its or proud proclamation, "am present" ("adsum" "mevoila,"in Lacan's translation), but to its historical inefficacy even as all that is associated with the Coufontaines undergoes disintegration. Lacanian considerations, so tuned to the significance of words, find in this heraldic message yet another example of how original and transindividual ordinances inscribe themselves within language itself. As for the other stage prop, restored through the efforts of Sygne-"The bronze figure was in many

upset the stability of "being"itself remains perfectly sound. Anecdotally,taking what others (the not Chorus)say in place of (and for)the subject(Oedipus)is the kind of parapraxis foreignto enigmas favoredby Lacanhimself.
20 Lacan, The Seminar of JacquesLacan. BookII, 320.

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pieces ... I found bits of it here and there .... The legs were broken .... The body was a blacksmith's anvil when I found it .... the head I discovered in a baker's oven .... I brought Our Lord home ..." (22)-it, too, can only bear passive testimony to the profane nuptials uniting Sygne and Turelure. The sparagmos associated with the bronze figure will be repeated, not purposefully, but senselessly in the tortures in store for Sygne. And how the metaphoric aspect of the family logo reneges on its imperial command and is subsequently subsumed in a language of desire gone awry is apparent in the following interchange: BADILON: ... Sygne,in the momentwhen you areaboutto go beforeGod,tell me that a ShallI have your child gesture.) you have forgivenhim. (Shemakes negative gesture.) Sygne,do you hearme?Yourchild? broughtto you? (Negative Her No. SYGNE: (in a clear voice). (Silence. death agonybegins.) Deathdrawsnear.Oh,Christian his with me BADILON: (risingfrom knees). soul,perform ritesof hope and charity! ... a SYGNE: (makes negative gesture) BADILON: Sygne,soldierof God!Standup! Standup! Theend has come!Standup! SYGNE: I have exhaustedall. I have no moreto give. ADSUM! BADILON: COUFONTAINE SYGNE: All is given;all is exhausted. [80] In this penultimate scene of the play, Badilon's further persuasions elicit only silence. Claudel's stage directions verify something like a final spasm on the part of Sygne: she "suddenlysits straightup, stretchesher arms out in the shapeof the Cross,and then,falling backupon the pillowsgives up the ghost with a flood of blood"(81). The second ending of the play, the one that interests Lacan, is included in Sygne's flight toward a beyond even of the "second death," and as such it is marked by a categorical refusal that posits "blasphemy" (S.VIII,327), no longer as an ongoing agon with God, but as an arrival at a "there is nothing to say anymore" born of absolute conviction that God simply does not exist. Here, derision no longer takes to task essences and substances. Here, Lacan says, Claudel allows Sygne's "No" to push things "to the point of deriding the signifier itself" (326), in a manner that only can be construed as a radical epistemological rejection. Sygne's journey beyond the "second death" is one that scrambles the codes of epistemic foundations, reaching for an impossible realm, toward a "nothing" yet conceived which is the hallmark of modern atheistic tragedy.