1986 - Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading. Poe, Borges, and The Analytic Detective Story. Also Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson

Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story;
Also Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson

Author(s): John T. Irwin
Source: MLN, Vol. 101, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1986), pp. 1168-1215
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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MysteriesWe Reread,Mysteries
ofRereading:
Poe, Borges,and theAnalytic
DetectiveStory;Also Lacan, Derrida,
andJohnson*
JohnT. Irwin
I
Let me startwith a simple-mindedquestion: How does one write
analyticdetectivefictionas high art when the genre's basic structure,its central narrativemechanism,seems to discourage the unlimited rereading associated with serious writing?That is, if the
point of an analyticdetective storyis the deductive solution of a
how does the writerkeep the achievementof thatsolution
mystery,
from exhausting the reader's interestin the story?How does he
writea work that can be reread by people other than those with
poor memories? I use the term "analyticdetectivefiction"here to
distinguishthe genre invented by Poe in the Dupin tales of the
1840s from stories whose main character is a detectivebut whose
main concern is not analysis but adventure, stories whose true
genre is less detective fictionthan quest romance, as one of the
mastersof the adventure mode, Raymond Chandler, implicitlyacknowledged when he gave the name Malloryto an earlyprototype
of his detectivePhilip Marlowe. For Chandler, the privateinvestigator simplyrepresentsa plausible formof modern knight-errant.
* A shorterversion of this essay was delivered at the annual meetingof the Poe
Studies Association in 1981 at the kind invitationof Kent Ljungquist and Ben
toa Solution:Poe, Borges,and
Fisher. The essay is part of a book entitledTheMystery
theAnalyticDetectiveStorypresentlybeing completed.

M L N
1169
In his essay "The Simple Art of Murder," he says that a detective

storyis the detective's"adventure in search of a hidden truth,and
it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for
adventure."' The emphasis in Chandler's remarks,as in his fiction,
is on the detective'scharacterand his adventures,withthe revelation of a hidden truthsimplyservingas a device to illuminatethe
formerand motivatethe latter.But in the pure analyticdetective
storythe matteris otherwise.As a character,Dupin is as thinas the
paper he's printed on. As for his adventures,theyamount to little
more than reading newspaper accounts of the crime and talking
with the Prefect of police and the narrator in the privacyof his
apartment.What gives the analyticdetectivegenre its special appeal is that quality which the Goncourt brothers noted on first
reading Poe. In an 1856 journal entrytheydescribed Poe's stories
as "a new literaryworld" bearing "signs of the literatureof the
twentiethcentury-love givingplace to deductions . .. the interest
of the storymoved fromthe heart to the head. .. fromthe drama
to the solution."2Preciselybecause it is a genre that grows out of
an interestin deductions and solutions rather than in love and
drama, the analyticdetectivestoryshows littleinterestin character,
managing at best to produce caricatures-those monstersof idiosyncrasyfrom Holmes to Poirot. In its purest form it puts all its
eggs in the basket of plot, and a specialized kind of plot at that.
The problem is that this basket seems to be one that can be emptied in a single reading.
Related to this difficultyis another. If the writerdoes his work
properly,if he succeeds in building up a sense of the mysterious,
of some dark secret or intricatelyknottedproblem,then he has to
face the fact that there simply exists no hidden truth or guilty
knowledge whose revelationwill not seem anticlimacticcompared
to an antecedent sense of mysteryand the infinitespeculativepossibilitiesit permits. Borges, one of the contemporarymasters of
in his tale
the analyticdetectivestory,acknowledges this difficulty
"Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari,Dead in His Labyrinth."He says thatone
of his characters, "steeped in detective stories, thought that the
solution of a mysteryis always less impressive than the mystery
itself."3But if in the analyticdetectivestorythe solution is always
in some sense an anticlimax that in dissipating the mysteryexhausts the story'sinterest for us, an interestin speculative reasoning which the mysteryempowers,then how does one writethis
kind of storyas a serious, that is, rereadable, literaryform?How

1170
JOHN T. IRWIN
does one both present the analyticsolution of a mysteryand at the

same time conserve the sense of the mysteriouson which analysis
thrives?
Given the predictable economy of a criticalessay, I think the
reader is safe in assuming that if I didn't consider Poe's Dupin
storiesto be, on the one hand, archetypesof analyticdetectivefiction, and on the other, serious literaryworks that demand and
repay rereading, there would be no reason for my evoking at this
length the apparent incompatibilityof these modes and thus the
writer'sproblem in reconcilingthem. All of whichbringsme to the
task of uncrumpling that much crumpled thing "The Purloined
Letter" to consider the way that this problem of a mysterywitha
repeatable solution, a solution that conserves (because it endlessly
refigures)the sense of the mysterious,lies at the veryoriginof the
analyticdetectivestory.
II
My approach to "The Purloined Letter" will be along what has
recentlybecome a well-wornpath. I want to look brieflyat three
readings of the storythat form a cumulative series of interpretations,each successive reading commentingboth on the storyand
on the previous reading(s) in the series. They are Jacques Lacan's
"Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" (1957), Jacques Derrida's
"The Purveyor of Truth" (1975), and Barbara Johnson's "The
Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida" (1978). Each of these
essays presents a lengthy,complex argument in which "The Purloined Letter" is treated as a pretext,which is to say, read as a
parable of the act of analysis. However, I am not so much interested here in followingthe convolutionsof their individual argumentsas in isolatinga thread thatruns throughall three,a clue to
conduct us through labyrinthinepassages. And that thread is the
positionthateach essay takes on what we mightcall the numerical/
geometricalstructureof the story.
Let us begin with Lacan. He says that the storyconsistsof "two
scenes, the firstof which we shall straightwaydesignate the primal
scene, and by no means inadvertently,since the second may be
considered its repetition."4The firstor primal scene takes place in
"the royal boudoir"(p. 41), the second scene in "the Minister'soffice" (p. 42). And according to Lacan, each of these scenes has a
triangularstructure:each is composed of "three logical moments"

M L N
1171
(p. 43) "structuringthree glances, borne by three subjects,incarnated each time by differentcharacters":
The firstis a glancethatsees nothing:theKingand thepolice.
The second,a glancewhichsees thatthe firstsees nothingand deludesitselfas to thesecrecyof whatit hides:theQueen, thentheMinister.
The thirdsees thatthefirsttwoglancesleavewhatshouldbe hidden

Dupin.
and finally
exposedto whoeverwouldseizeit: theMinister,
(p. 44)
Thus in the royalboudoir, the King does not see the incriminating
letter which the Queen in her haste has hidden in the open,
leaving it withits address uppermost in plain sighton a table. And
the Queen, seeing thatthe King doesn't see the letter,mistakeshis
blindness for the letter'sconcealment,thus leaving herselfvulnerable to the Minister who sees both the King's glance and the
Queen's and realizes that the letter can be seized before the
Queen's very eyes preciselybecause she dare not do anythingto
attractthe King's attentionto it. Similarlyin the second scene, at
the Minister'sresidence, the letter,having been turned inside out
and readdressed in a female hand, is once again hidden in plain
sightin a card rack on the mantelpiece. And this time the police,
who have searched the Minister'squarters repeatedlywithoutnoticing the letter,represent that firstglance which sees nothing;
while the Minister,who mistakesthe blindnessof the police forthe
concealmentof the letter,representsthe second glance, and Dupin
representsthe third glance that sees what the firsttwo miss, i.e.,
that the letterhidden in the open is his for the taking.The figure
who participates in both these triangular scenes is the Minister,
and his shiftingfromthe position of the thirdglance in the initial
scene to thatof the second glance in its repetitionexhibitsthe special vulnerabilityto self-delusion,to a blind spot, whichthe possession of the letterconveys.
Consider, now, Derrida's critique of this reading, keeping in
mind that in his essay "The Purveyorof Truth" Derrida is motivated less by an interestin Poe or "The Purloined Letter"than bya
desire to score pointsoffLacan. As Johnsonpointsout, Derrida, in
a lengthyfootnoteto his book Positions,sketchesthe argumentthat
will become "The Purveyor of Truth" and cites in this context
Lacan's multiple "actsof aggression"against him since the publicain Critiquein 1965.5 Obviously,Derrida
tion of De la grammatologie
takes the case of "The Purloined Letter" for one of the same

1172
JOHNT. IRWIN
reasons that Dupin did-the Minister once did Dupin "an evil
turn" (Poe, 3: 993) at Vienna, and Dupin sees the affairof the
letteras an opportunityto get even. The witof Derrida's essay lies
in the way that it uses Lacan's reading of "The Purloined Letter"
against itself,for if Lacan believes that with his interpretationof
the storyhe has, as it were, gained possession of Poe's "Purloined
Letter,"has made its meaning his own, then Derrida willshow him
that the possession of that letter,as Lacan himself pointed out,
brings with it a blind spot. In his essay Derrida sets out to repeat
the encounter between Dupin and the Ministerwithhimselfin the
role of Dupin and Lacan in the role of the Minister.
Derrida attacks Lacan's reading of the story on a variety of
points,but the one that concerns us has to do withLacan's notion
of the triangular structureof each of the two scenes in the tale.
Derrida agrees thatthe storyconsistsof two scenes, but not the two
on which Lacan focusses. He points out that the scene in the royal
boudoir and the subsequent scene at the Minister'sresidence are
two narrated scenes within the framingartificeof the story,but
that the storyitselfconsists of two scenes of narration-the first
scene being the Prefect's initial visit to Dupin during which the
Prefectrecounts the events in the royal boudoir, and the second
scene being the Prefect'ssubsequent visitduring which Dupin recounts the events at the Minister'sresidence. While the narrators
of the two narratedscenesin the royalboudoir and at the Minister's
residence are respectivelythe Prefectand Dupin, the narratorof
the two scenesofnarrationat Dupin's lodgings is Dupin's unnamed
companion. Thus, according to Derrida, Lacan reduces the foursided structureof the scene of narration-what Derrida calls "the
scene of writing"-to the three-sided structureof the narrated
scene "by overlooking the narrator's position, the narrator's involvementin the contentof what he seems to be recounting."6In
ignoring the presence of the narratorof "The Purloined Letter,"
Lacan cuts "a fourth side" out of the narrated figure "to leave
merelytriangles"(p. 54). And he does this,says Derrida, precisely
because as a psychoanalyst,Lacan projects upon Poe's storythe
structureof the Oedipal triangle in his desire to read "The Purloined Letter" as an allegoryof psychoanalysisor "an allegoryofthe
(Johnson, p. 115).
signifier"
Now since in his critique of Lacan's interpretationof "The Purloined Letter" Derrida aims to get even with Lacan by being one
up on him, and since Lacan in his reading of the numerical struc-

ML N
1173
ture of the tale has already played the numbers one, two, and
three (the tale is composed of two scenes, the second of which,by
repeating the triangularstructureof the first,creates a sameness
or oneness between the two), then being one up on Lacan means
playing the next open number (four); and that is what Derrida
does in arguing that the structureof the scenes is not triangular
but quadrangular. However, whetherDerrida arrivesat this quadrangular structureby adding one to three or by doubling two is a
problematicpoint, a point on whichJohnson focusses in her critique of Lacan's and Derrida's readings of the tale's numerical
structure.
As Johnson notes, Derrida objects to the triangular structure
whichLacan sees in the repeated scenes because thisstructure,derived fromthe Oedipal triangle,representsin Derrida's opinion a
characteristicpsychoanalyticattemptto dismiss or absorb the uncanny effectsof doubling, a doubling which Derrida maintainsis
everywherepresent in the tale. Doubling tends, of course, to be a
standard element of the analyticdetectivestory,in that the usual
method of apprehending the criminalinvolvesthe detective'sdoubling the criminal'sthought processes so as to anticipate his next
move and end up one jump ahead of him. And, of course, the
number associated with doubling is usually four rather than two,
forwhat we referto as doubling is almost alwayssplittingand doubling. Which is to say, the figure of the double externallyduplicates an internal division in the protagonist'sself (but with the
reversed),so
master/slavepolarityof thatdivisioncharacteristically
thatdoubling tends to be a structureof four halves problematically
balanced across the inner/outerlimit of the self rather than a
structure of two separate, opposing wholes. Thus in the first
Dupin story,"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the narratorsays
thatwhile observingDupin in the exercise of his "peculiar analytic
ability,"he entertained"the fancyof a double Dupin-the creative
and the resolvent"in accordance with "the old philosophyof the
Bi-Part Soul" (2: 533). And in "The Purloined Letter" the Minister,as both poet and mathematician,is representedas havingthis
same dual intellectualpower. In matchingwitswith the Minister,
Dupin firstdoubles the Minister's thought processes-a mental
operation that Dupin illustrates by telling the story of the
schoolboy who always won at the game of even and odd-and he
then replays, that is, temporallydoubles, the scene in which the
Ministeroriginallyseized the letter,but with himselfnow in the

1174
JOHNT. IRWIN
Minister'srole, thus shiftingthe Ministerinto the role played by

the Queen in the original event and evoking the destabilizingreversal-into-the-opposite
inherentin doubling.
As Johnson notes, Derrida thinksthat "the problem with psychoanalytical triangularity. . . is not that it contains the wrong
number of terms,but that it presupposes the possibilityof a successful dialectical mediation and harmonious normalization, or
Aufhebung,
of desire. The three terms in the Oedipal triad enter
into an opposition whose resolution resembles the syntheticmoment of a Hegelian dialectic" (p. 122). But thatsyntheticmoment,
thatsuccessfuldialectical mediation of desire, is preciselywhat the
uncannydestabilizingeffectof doubling constantlysubverts,forin
the Oedipal triangle each of the three positions functionsas one
pole of a mutually constitutiveopposition with one of the other
positionsand thus each positionis subject to being reversedinto its
opposite. There exists in the Oedipal triangle,then,no privileged
position that is above or outside the uncanny effectsof doubling,
no exempt, objective position fromwhich to mediate or regularize
the subjectiveinteractionof the other two positions.
As withDerrida's reading of Lacan, the witof Johnson'sreading
of Derrida lies in the way that she doubles Derrida's own insights
back upon themselvesto make them problematic.Thus in dealing
with Derrida's attempt to be one up on Lacan by playing the
number four to Lacan's three,Johnson assimilatestheir opposed
readings of the numerical structureof the tale to the game of even
and odd, the game which Dupin proposed as an illustrationof the
way that one doubles the thought processes of an opponent in
order to be one jump ahead of him. Derrida opts for a quadrangular structure,thatis, he plays the even number four,in order to
evoke the uncanniness,the oddness of doubling; while Lacan opts
for a triangular structureby playing the odd number three, in
order to enforce the regularizingor normalizingeffectof the dialectical triad. In this game of even and odd, Derrida and Lacan
end up as reciprocalopposites, as specular doubles of one another:
Derrida asserts the oddness of evenness, while Lacan affirmsthe
evenness of oddness. Given the destabilizingreversal-into-the-opposite inherentin doubling, Johnson sees the opposition between
Derrida's and Lacan's interpretationsas an "oscillation"between
the former's"unequivocal statementsof undecidability"and the
latter's"ambiguous assertionsof decidability"(p. 146).
As to Johnson's own position on "The Purloined Letter," her

ML N
1175
reading of Lacan and Derrida is meant to free her fromhaving to

take a position on the numerical structureof the tale, or more exactly,to free her from having to take a numericalposition on that
structure.She does not intend,for example, to play the next open
number (five); for since she has reduced Lacan's and Derrida's
readings of the numerical structureof the storyto the specular
game of even and odd, there exist only two numerical positions
that one can take on that structure-even or odd-and these,
Johnsoncontends,have already been played by Derrida and Lacan
withoutany clear conclusion.Johnson's strategyis to call into question the whole concern withnumbers. At one point she asks, "But
can what is at stake here really be reduced to a mere numbers
game?", and a bit later she answers, "Clearly, in these questions,
the very notion of a number becomes problematic,and the argument on the basis of numbers can no longer be read literally"(p.
121). As Johnson sees it, takinga position on the numerical structure of the tale means, for Lacan and Derrida, takinga numerical
position,choosing a number, but that means playing the game of
even and odd, the game of tryingto be one up on a specular, antithetical double. And playing that game means endlessly repeating the structureof "The Purloined Letter" in which being
one up inevitablyleads to being one down. For if the structure
created by the repeated scenes in the tale involves doubling the
thought processes of one's opponent in order to use his own
methodsagainst him-as Dupin does withthe Minister,as Derrida
does with Lacan, and as Johnson does with Derrida-then the
very method by which one outwitsone's opponent, by which one
comes out one up on him, is the same method that will be employed against oneself by the next player in the game, the next
interpreterin the series, in order to leave the preceding interpreterone down.
Is it possible, then, to interpret"The Purloined Letter" without
duplicating in the interpretiveact that reversal-into-the-opposite
inherentin the mechanism of seizing the letteras that mechanism
is described in the tale? Is it possible to generate an insightwithout
a blind spot in it, a flaw that allows the insightsubsequentlyto be
turned against itself? Clearly, the desire for such an invulnerable
insightis at work in Johnson's essay and accounts for the at times
disconcertinglevel of self-consciousnesswhich she tries to maintain regarding her own methodologicalstance, her own criticalassumptions.For Johnson the refusalto take a numericalpositionon

1176
JOHNT. IRWIN
the structureof the tale, i.e., to play the next open number, is an
effortto avoid the game of tryingto be one up by adding the
number one to the opponent's numerical position,as Derrida does
in playing the number four to Lacan's three; for that game will
simplyturn into an oscillation between even and odd running to
infinity.But is it possible forJohnson to avoid becoming involved
in this numbers game simply by refusing to choose a specific
number with which to characterize the geometrical/numerical
structureof the tale? Doesn't the very form of her essay-as a
critiqueof Derrida's critiqueof Lacan's reading of "The Purloined
Letter"-involve her in the numbers game? In situatingher essay
as the third in a series of three criticalreadings,Johnson places
herselfin that thirdposition which,in the structuregoverningthe
wandering of the purloined letter,is the position of maximum insight,but also the position in which the observer is subject to mistakinghis insightconcerningthe subjectiveinteractionof the other
two glances for an objectiveviewpointabove such interaction.And
indeed, how are we to describe the relationshipbetweenJohnson's
interpretationand those of Lacan and Derrida? Are theylinked in
a triangularstructurein which Lacan and Derrida face off as antitheticaldoubles, while Johnson, by refusingto become involved
in the game of even and odd, occupies a position of "successful
dialectical mediation" above them, a Hegelian synthesisof their
positions? Or are they involved in a quadrangular structurein
which Lacan and Derrida are reciprocal halves of one pole of a
mutuallyconstitutiveopposition (i.e., the pole of tryingto be one
up on a specular double), whileJohnsonoccupies the other pole of
this opposition by doubling back Lacan's and Derrida's methods
against them in order to avoid this game of one up? Indeed,
Johnson's final comment on her own methodology invokes the
image of Derrida's quadrangular frame: ". . . my own theoretical
'frameof reference'is precisely,to a verylarge extent,the writings
of Lacan and Derrida. The frame is thus framed again by part of
its content; the sender again receives his own message backward
fromthe receiver" (p. 146).
Johnson's essay is at odds with itself,as she is the firstto acknowledge. Indeed, it is preciselyher strategyto present the opposed aspects of her essay-such as its explicitrefusal,on the one
hand, to take a numerical position on the structureof the tale,
coupled with its implicitassumption, on the other hand, of a numerical position in representing its own relationship to the two

M L N
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earlier critical essays, a numerical position that reinscribes the

question of a triangularversus a quadrangular structurepresentin
the tale-precisely her strategyto present these opposed aspects
of her essay as an aporia, as a trope of undecidabilitynot unlike
the one which Paul de Man describes in the passage Johnson uses
the book whose
as the epigraph to her book The CriticalDifference,
final chapter is her essay on Derrida and Lacan. In that epigraph
de Man evokes the aporia between grammarand rhetoricby citing
as an example the case in which Edith Bunker asks her husband
Archie if he wantshis bowlingshoes laced over or laced under-to
which the irascible Archie replies, "What's the difference?" In
termsof grammar Archie's reply asks for the differencebetween
two alternatives,but in terms of rhetorichis reply means "Whatever the differenceis, it's not importantenough to make a difference to me." De Man remarks, "The same grammaticalpattern
engenders two meanings that are mutually exclusive: the literal
meaning asks for the concept (difference)whose existence is denied by the figurativemeaning" (Johnson, p. v). It is in this same
vein thatJohnson at the end of her essay, after having described
the opposition between Derrida's and Lacan's positions as "the
oscillation between unequivocal statementsof undecidabilityand
ambiguous assertionsof decidability,"concludes, "'Undecidability'
can no more be used as the last word than 'destination'..... The
'undeterminable' is not opposed to the determinable; 'dissemination' is not opposed to repetition.If we could be sure of the difference between the determinable and the undeterminable,the undeterminable would be comprehended within the determinable.
What is undecidable is whether a thing is decidable or not" (p.
146).
Now what are we to make of these words? By which I mean not
just what do these words say grammaticallybut what do they
convey rhetorically,for what purpose are they being said in this
context.I thinkthe key lies in Johnson's statementthat " 'Undecidability'can no more be used as a last word than 'destination.'" At
the point she says this,Johnson is nearing her own destination,the
end of her essay, and is faced with the formal requirement of
saying a last word and thus with the question of whether a last
word can be said in the oft-renewedcritical discussion of "The
Purloined Letter." Having to say a last word, she says in effect,
"The last word is thatthere is no last word." This typeof statement
whichsays one thinggrammaticallyand means itsopposite rhetor-

1178
JOHNT. IRWIN
ically occurs again and again in her essay. As we noted, it is the

strategyat workwhenJohnson refusesto take a numericalposition
on the structureof the tale at the same time that she implicitly
assumes a numerical position in relation to the two earlier critical
readings which her own essay retrospectivelygroups into a series
along with itself.It is at work again when she turns Derrida's insightson doubling back upon themselvesto tell Derrida that it is
impossible to be one up on his specular double Lacan, for though
what she says on a grammaticallevel is that it is impossible to be
one up in such an encounter,the rhetoricaleffectof her statement
is to leave her one up on her specular double Derrida. And this
strategy is at work once again when she decisively concludes,
"What is undecidable is whethera thingis decidable or not."
These instances of an aporia between grammar and rhetoric
occur in statementsthat are in one way or another self-reflexive,
statementsthat are themselvesincluded in the class of things to
which theyrefer.A simple example of such a self-includingstatement would be the sentence "All statements containing seven
words are false." Preciselybecause the sentence is itselfa statement
made up of seven words,we are faced witha paradox: if thisstatement is true, it is false, and if it is false, it is true. Similarly,in an
aporia between grammar and rhetoricwe are faced, as de Man
notes,witha single grammaticalpatternthatengenders two mutually exclusive meanings. By very reason of the fact that they include themselvesin the class of things to which they refer,these
statementsdouble back upon themselvesand exhibitthatuncanny
inherentin doubling. One thinksin this
reversal-into-the-opposite
connectionof Russell's paradox. Distinguishingbetween two kinds
of classes (those which do not include themselvesas membersand
those which do), Russell calls the firstclass "normal" and the
second "non-normal" and he then doubles back upon itselfthis
distinctionbetween nonself-includingand self-includingclasses by
asking whether theclass of all normalclassesis a normal or a nonnormal class. By definition the class of all normalclassesincludes
withinitselfall normal classes. Consequently,if it is itselfa normal
class, it must be included in itself.But self-inclusionis the distinguishingcharacteristicof a non-normalclass. Theclassofall "normal
classes"is, then,a concept whose formand contentare at odds: the
concept involves,on the one hand, a formalnotion of classas absolutelyinclusive,which is to say, as ultimatelyself-inclusive,that is
contradicted,on the other hand, by the content,by the specific

M L N
1179
definitionof the "classes"whichthe formeris to include completely

withinitself.As a result the class of all normal classes is normal
only if it is non-normal,and non-normalonly if it is normal. Part
of the infinite fascination of paradoxes of self-inclusionis, of
course, that theyseem to reflectin the facingmirrorsof language
and logic the mysteriousnature of self-consciousnessas thatwhich
seeks to include whollywithinitselfan exact representationof that
whichby its veryessence cannot whollyinclude itself.
At the very startof her essay Johnson sets the tone for all the
self-includingstatementsthat are to followwhen she remarksthat
in Poe's tale, Lacan's reading, and Derrida's critique,"it is the act of
analysiswhich seems to occupy the center of the discursivestage,
and the act of analysis of the act of analysis which in some way
disrupts that centrality. In the resulting asymmetrical,abyssal
structure,no analysis-including thisone-can intervenewithout
transformingand repeatingother elementsin the sequence, which
is thus not a stable sequence, but which neverthelessproduces certain regular effects"(p. 110). The key phrase, of course, is "no
analysis-including this one." It has about it the brisk American
qualityof Mark Twain's "No general statementis wortha damnincluding this one"-a general statementworth a damn only if
general statements aren't worth a damn. The very fact that
Johnson makes an analyticstatementthat includes itself,which is
to say,an analysisof her own analysis,in the sentence immediately
followingher statementthat it is the act of analysis of the act of
analysis that skews analysis in Poe, Lacan, and Derrida is her way
of announcing her strategyat the start.It is not thatJohnson will
do anythingdifferentin her essay from what Lacan and Derrida
have done in theirs.Indeed, it is not clear thatshe thinksthatanything differentcan be done at this point inasmuch as Lacan and
Derrida have already replayed the structureof the tale in a critical
registerby acting out the game of even and odd in theiropposing
positions. What will be differentin her version is that these positions will be repeated witha complete awareness of theirimplications, a total critical self-consciousnessthat aims to create an insightwithouta blind spot; for what is at issue here is not so much
whetherone's criticalargument is logicallytrue or false, or one's
reading of the tale perceptiveor dull, but whetherone's interpretive stance is methodologically self-aware or methodologically
naive. In its translationfromfictionto criticism,the projectof analyzingthe act of analysis becomes in effectthe program of being

1180
JOHNT. IRWIN
infinitelyself-consciousabout self-consciousness.Or put another

way, if the structurethat we find in "The Purloined Letter" involves doubling an opponent's thoughtprocesses in order to turn
his own methods against him,then the onlydefense againsthaving
the same strategyrepeated against oneself by the next player is to
produce an insight or take a position that is already self-consciously doubled back upon itself,as is the case with the type of
self-including statement that says one thing grammaticallybut
conveysits opposite rhetorically.For a position that knowinglyincludes itselfand its opposite seems to leave no ground on whichit
can be undermined.
III
The commitmentto an increasinglyself-consciousanalyticposture
thatanimates thiscumulativeseries of interpretationsproduces at
last a kind of intellectualvertigo,a not uncharacteristicside-effect
of thought about thought-the rational animal turningin circles
to catch itselfby a tale it doesn't have. And certainlyno one enjoyed creatingthis vertiginouseffectmore than did Poe, an effect
thathe imaged as dizziness at the edge of a vortexor on the brink
of a precipice. That the giddy, self-dissolvingeffectof thought
about thought-what Johnson calls the "asymmetrical,abyssal
structure"of analyzing the act of analysis-forms the continuing
theme of the Dupin storiesis announced in the opening sentence
of the firsttale, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The story
begins withthe narrator'slengthyprefatoryremarkson the nature
of the analyticalpower, remarks that conclude by presentingthe
detective storyas a "commentaryupon the propositionsjust advanced" (2: 531). But those prefatory remarks start with this
curious proposition: "The mental featuresdiscoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis" (2:
527). Now inasmuch as this statementinitiatesthe narrator'sown
briefanalysisof the analyticalpower, it is self-reflexive:as an anaof analysisto being anlyticstatementabout the non-susceptibility
alyzed, the statementis included in the class of thingsto which it
refers,but what the statementsays in effectis that analyticstatements cannot wholly include themselves. In analyzing the act of
analysis, self-consciousthought doubles back upon itself to discover that it cannot absolutely coincide with itself.This insight
about the nature of thought is, of course, at least as old in our
traditionas the philosophies of Zeno and Parmenides and as new

M L N
1181
as G6del's proof and Borges's (and Carroll's and Royce's) map of

natural size. It is the paradoxical insightthat if one considers the
act of thinkingand the contentof thoughtas two distinguishable
things-as it seems one must in dealing with self-consciousness,
with thought that is able to represent itselfto itself,able to take
itselfas its own object-, then the attempt to analyze the act of
analysis,to include whollythe act of thinkingwithinthe contextof
thought, will be a progression of the order n + 1 to infinity.
Which is to say that there will always be one more step needed in
order to make the act of thinkingcoincide with the content of
thought.
Since the self-includinggesture of analyzing the act of analysis
involvesa doubling back in whichself-consciousness,attemptingto
be absolutelyeven with itself,finds that it is originallyand essentiallyat odds with itself,it is not surprisingthat Dupin, in illustratingthe way thatone doubles the thoughtprocesses of an opponent,givesas an example "the game of 'even and odd'" (3: 984). In
this game "one player holds in his hand a number" of marbles
"and demands of another whetherthat number is even or odd. If
the guess is right,the guesser wins one; if wrong,he loses one" (3:
984). Dupin then tells the storyof an eight-year-oldboy who was
so good at this guessing game that he won all the marbles at his
school. The boy's "mode of reasoning" involved "an identification
of the reasoner's intellectwiththat of his opponent" (3: 984), and
thisdoubling of the opponent's thoughtprocesses was achieved by
a physical doubling of his appearance. The boy explained to
Dupin: "I fashion the expression of my face, as accuratelyas possible, in accordance with the expression" of the opponent "and
then wait to see what thoughtsor sentimentsarise in my mind or
heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression" (3:
984-85). The narrator comments that "the identificationof the
reasoner's intellectwith that of his opponent, depends, . . . upon
the accuracy with which the opponent's intellectis admeasured"
(3: 985); and Dupin, agreeing withthisobservation,adds that"the
Prefectand his cohort fail so frequently,first,by default of this
identification,and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather
throughnon-admeasurement,of the intellectwithwhich theyare
engaged. They consider only theirownideas of ingenuity;and, in
searching for anythinghidden, advert only to the modes in which
theywould have hidden it ... but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character fromtheirown, the felon foils
them,of course. This always happens when it is above theirown,

1182
JOHNT. IRWIN
and veryusually when it is below. They have no variationof principle in theirinvestigations"(3: 985).
Now what is going on here? Dupin cannot be the close reasoner
that he is reputed to be and not realize that what he has just said
undermines his use of the game of even and odd as an illustration
of the way one doubles the thought processes of an opponent in
order to be one up on him. Firstof all, if "the identificationof the
reasoner's intellectwith that of his opponent, depends, . . . upon
the accuracy with which the opponent's intellectis admeasured,"
then it cannot be thatthe Prefectand his men fail,"first,by default
of this identification,and, secondly,by ill-admeasurement,or ...
non-admeasurement," for if the identificationfollows from admeasurement, the Prefect's firstfailure would have to be in admeasuring the opponent's intellect.And if the reason thatthe Prefectand his men fail so frequentlyin this admeasurement is that
"theyconsider only theirownideas of ingenuity,"thattheyare unable to imagine or conceive of the workingsof a mind "diverse in
character from their own" (always the case when the level of the
mind is above their own and usually the case when it is below),
then is there anything that occurs in the rest of Poe's tale that
would lead us to believe this observation of Dupin's about the
reason for the Prefect'sfailure?Which is to say, if the Prefectand
his men can only catch felonswhose minds are similarto theirown
and if what they need in this case is the ability to imagine the
workingsof a mind radicallydifferentfromtheirown, then does
Dupin's method of outwittingthe Ministerprovide us withany evidence that this abilityto imagine a mind radicallydifferentfrom
one's own really exists? In fact,isn't all of the tale's emphasis on
the resemblance between Dupin and the Minister,on their pospower, part of a plot line
sessing the same dual creative/resolvent
in which Dupin outwitsthe Ministeronly because theirminds are
so much alike? Isn't it preciselybecause the Ministerhas hidden
the letterat his residence in the same way thatthe Queen hid it in
the royal boudoir-by turning it over and leaving it out in the
open-that Dupin already knows where to look for the letter
when he visitsthe Minister?And doesn't Dupin recover the letter
by replaying the same scenario by which the Ministeroriginally
stole it?
Isn't all this simplya device to make us realize that it is impossible to imagine or conceive of a mind whose workingsare radically differentfromone's own? We don't have any directaccess to
another's thoughts.Our ideas of the workingsof another person's

M L N
1183
mind may be derived fromwhat thatperson saysor does or tellsus

he is thinking,but our ideas of another's mind are stillourideas, a
projection that we make of another mind's othernessto one's own
based on the only immediate experience that one's mind has of
psychicotherness,the self's originalothernessto itself,thatdifference that constitutes personal identity. In his story "Morella"
(1835) Poe quotes Locke's definitionof personal identityas "the
sameness of a rationalbeing" (2: 226). But one immediatelythinks,
"Sameness as opposed to what?" For in differentialterms,it makes
no sense to speak of the rational being's continuingsameness with
itselfunless there is also a sense in which the rationalbeing is continually differentfrom itself. In "Morella" Poe says, "Since by
person we understand an intelligentessence having reason, and
since there is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking,
it is thisconsciousness which makes everyone to be that which he
calls 'himself'-thereby distinguishinghim fromother beings that
think,and givinghim his personal identity"(2: 226). It is thisdifferenceof thoughtfromitself-which Poe evokes here as the difference between thinkingand "a consciousness which always accompanies thinking"-that enables the rationalbeing to recognize
its sameness with itself and thus recognize its difference from
others,distinguishitself"from other beings that think."It is preciselybecause the self's thoughtof another mind's othernessto it
reflectsthe othernessof thoughtto itselfthatthe effortto imagine
the thought processes of an opponent produces a specular, antitheticaldouble of the self,the self's own projectionof psychicdifference. And consequently, for all that "The Purloined Letter"
purports to be about the way in which one effects"an identification of the reasoner's intellectwith that of his opponent," it is in
fact about that psychic differencewhich permits thought to be
identifiedwithitself,that differencewhichconstitutesself-identity
but which prevents thought from ever absolutelycoinciding with
itself,indeed, which constitutes self-identityprecisely becauseit
preventsthought frombeing absolutelyeven withitself.And it is
this difference, this condition of self-conscious thought's being
originallyand essentiallyat odds withitself,that Poe evokes at the
verystartof the Dupin storieswhen he says that the "mental features discoursed of as the analyticalare, in themselves,but little
susceptibleof analysis."
As is oftenthe case in his fiction,Poe, using the picturelanguage
of radicals, emblematizes this latent meaning on the level of etymology,a level to which he explicitlydirectsour attentionin "The

1184
JOHNT. IRWIN
Purloined Letter" when he has Dupin, in arguing against those

who equate analysis withalgebra, remark,"If a term is of any importance -if words derive any value from applicability-then
'analysis'conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus'ima set of honorhonesti,'
'religion,'or 'homines
plies 'ambition,''religion'
able men" (3: 987). Since in each of these examples an English
word has a meaning differentfromthatof itsLatin root,the inference seems clear: in "The Purloined Letter" "if a term is of any
importance,"we should submitthattermto philologicalanalysisto
see if the root from which it derives has differentor additional
meanings compared to its English form, meanings that might
alter, reverse,or deepen the significanceof the passages in which
these words appear.
Let me apply this principle suggested by Dupin's remarkto two
interlockingpairs of words in the tale. On his firstvisit,the Prefect
introduces the affairof the letterlike this: "The fact is, the business is verysimple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can
manage it sufficientlywell ourselves; but then I thought Dupin
would like to hear the details of it,because it is so excessivelyodd."
To which Dupin replies, "Simple and odd" (3: 975). Dupin's emphatic repetitionof the words is meant to fixthemin our minds so
that later when he describes the game of even and odd, we hear
the echo and link the pairs. And to make sure that we don't miss
the connection,Dupin, immediatelyaftermentioningthe game of
even and odd, says, "This game is simple" (3: 984).
Simple, even, odd-what are their roots? The word "simple"
comes from the Latin simplex,meaning "single," "unmixed," "uncompounded."7 The word "even" derives from the Anglo-Saxon
efne, meaning "flat," "level," and ultimatelyfromthe Indo-European base *im-nos-,meaning "what is the same," and containing
the adverbial base *im-,meaning "just like" (p. 503). The word
"odd" derives fromthe Old Norse oddi,meaning a "point of land,
triangle, hence (from the third angle) odd number" (p. 1017).
Three words and at the root of each a number-simple, single,
one; even, thingsjust alike, two; odd, a triangularpoint of land,
three.And these three words are grouped into two pairs-simple/
odd, even/odd-that contain, as it were, four syntacticplaces between them which the three words fillby having one of the words
repeated. The doubling of the word "odd" links the two pairs; it
gives them their element of sameness, evoking that condition of
being at odds with itself,that differencewithitself,which constitutesthe sameness of a rationalbeing (a conditionof being at odds

M L N
1185
with itselfthat is most clearly perceived when thoughttries to be

absolutelyeven withitself). The three words-both throughtheir
meanings and through the way that theyare paired and linkedare an emblem of the numerical structurethat governs the tale,
whichis to say, of the numerical steps or geometricalpatternsthat
self-consciousnessgoes through in tryingto analyze itself.
Dupin says that the game of even and odd is simple, and
throughout the Dupin stories Poe associates simplicitywith the
highest,purest form of ratiocination.It is in this vein that Dupin
suggeststo the Prefecton his firstvisitthat"the verysimplicity"of
the affairof the letterconstitutesits oddness: "Perhaps the mysteryis a littletoo plain .. . A littletoo self-evident"(3: 975). And
later Dupin says that the Minister,in hiding the letter,"would be
if not deliberatelyindriven, as a matter of course, to simplicity,
duced to it as a matter of choice" (3: 989). As in that "game of
puzzles ... played upon a map" (3: 989), the Minister would
choose a hiding place that would "escape observation by dint of
being excessivelyobvious," relyingon the fact that "the intellect
suffersto pass unnoticed those considerationswhich are too obtrusivelyand too palpably self-evident"(3: 990). But what is that
simple thing whose very simplicitymakes it so odd, that thing
which is so mysteriousbecause so obvious, hiding out in the open
"immediatelybeneath the nose of the whole world" (3: 990)? What
but self-consciousness,that condition of being at odds with itself
thatconstitutesthe sameness, the singleness,the simplicityof a rational being?
By definitiona number is odd if when the number is divided by
two, there is a remainder of one. And by that definitionthe first
odd number is three. In that simple game of even and odd in
which self-consciousness analyzes itself, the question inevitably
arises as to whether,when the mind's desire to be absolutelyeven
withitselfis divided into the mind's essentialconditionof being at
odds with itself,the one that is always leftover is the same as the
number one that precedes two, that is, the same as that mythic,
original, undivided unity prior to all paring/pairing.Or put another way, when the mind tries to make the act of thinkingcoincide absolutelywiththe contentof thoughtonly to find that there
is always one more step needed to achieve this coincidence, is the
infiniteprogression that results simplythe mirrorimage, the antitheticaldouble, of a Zenonian infiniteregression which, by dividing a quantityin half, then dividing the half in half, then diseeks a lower limit,
viding the quarter in half and so on to infinity,

1186
JOHNT. IRWIN
a part that cannot be halved again, a thing so small that, being

indivisible,it representsan undivided unity,an originalone? Poe is
too good both as philosopher and philologistnot to know thatthe
simple thing that is self-consciousnesscould never be as simple as
that. Indeed, if the mind were ever able to make the act of
thinkingand the content of thought coincide absolutely so that
there was no difference between them, then self-consciousness,
that self-identityconstitutedby thought's differencefrom itself,
would simply go out like a light. Such an undifferentiatedone
would be indistinguishable from zero. Though the root of the
word "simple," the Latin simplex,means "single," "unmixed," "uncompounded," the roots of the word simplex-the Latin words
semel,meaning "once," "a single time,"and plico, meaning "to fold,
fold together"8- make it clear that to be unmixed or uncompounded does not mean to be undifferentiated.For in the picture
language of these radicals we can see that a thingwhich is singlefold is something-like a sheet of paper, a letter-that in being
folded a single time is doubled back upon itself.That the image of
self-consciousnessas a simple fold doubling an inscribed surface
back on itselfwas in Poe's mind when he plotted the folding/refoldingof the purloined lettercan be inferredfroman 1845 poem
on folding money called "Epigram For Wall Street" attributedto
him:
I'll tellyoua plan forgainingwealth,
Betterthanbanking,tradeor leasesTake a banknoteand folditup,
And thenyouwillfindyourmoneyin creases!
This wonderfulplan,withoutdangeror loss,
Keeps yourcash in yourhands,wherenothingcan troubleit;
And everytimethatyoufolditacross,
'Tis as plainas thelightof theday thatyoudoubleit!
(1: 378)
The infiniteprogression implicitin the analysis of the act of
analysis is evoked at the end of "The Purloined Letter" with the
revelationof Dupin's revenge on the Minister,forthisattemptby a
mastermindto get even withhis specular double clearlyservesas a
figureof the analyticmind's attemptat mastery,its attemptto be
absolutelyeven with itself.Knowing that the Minister"would feel
some curiosityin regard to the identityof the person who had
outwittedhim" (3: 993), Dupin leaves him a clue by substituting
for the purloined letter one containing a quotation from Cre-

M L N
1187
billon'sAtreecopied out in Dupin's own handwriting,a hand with

which the Minister "is well acquainted" (3: 993). In signing his
deed, Dupin marks it as revenge, which is to say, he insures that
the Ministerwill interprethis actions not simplyas the paid interventionof a giftedamateur sleuth or a duel of witsbetween two of
the cleverest men in Paris, but as a repayment for the evil turn
whichthe Ministerdid Dupin at Vienna. For I take it thatthe satisfactionof revenge requires-except in those cases where it is carried out on a substitute-a moment of revelationin which the object of revenge learns by whom, and for what, he is being paid
back, a point that Poe underlines by having Dupin choose his quotation-signaturefromjust such a revelatorymoment in an eighrevenger'stragedy.And yetfromwhat we know of
teenth-century
the Minister it is inconceivable that once he learned of Dupin's
revenge he would let the matter rest there-and equally inconceivable that his double would not know this. For though it might
seem that withDupin's revenge the score between them is even at
one apiece (one bad turn at Vienna repaid by one bad turn at
Paris), if the Ministerallows Dupin's trickto go unanswered, then
Dupin will have had the last turn; and as proverbial wisdom assures us, the last word or the last laugh is notjust one word or one
laugh like any other. The power to say the last word or have the
last laugh, the power to bring a series of reciprocal actions to an
end, like the power to originate,involvesthe notion of a one thatis
simultaneouslymore than one. Consequently,we are leftwiththe
paradoxical situationin which Dupin's outwittingof the Minister
will constitutean evening of the score between them at one apiece
only if the Ministerdoes not allow Dupin's trickto end the series,
does not allow it to be that one last turn which in its finalityis
alwaysmore than one. It is not so much thatone bad turndeserves
another as thatone bad turn demands another if it is to be experienced as simply one turn. All of which emphasizes the mutually
constitutivecontradictorinessof seeking togetevenwitha specular
double bybeingone up on him.
In using the affairof the letterto even an old score, Dupin gives
up his "objective," fourth position as an apparently disinterested
observerof the triangularstructureof King, Queen, and Minister
described by the Prefect in order to insert himselffor personal
reasons into the third position of an analogous trianglein which
the police and the Minister occupy respectively the first and
second positions. Similarly,in describingthis triangularstructure

1188
JOHNT. IRWIN
in which Dupin shiftsthe Ministerfrom the third to the second

position, Lacan would himself appear to occupy an "objective,"
fourth position as a disinterestedobserver outside the triangle.
Yet to a supposedly more objective observer of Lacan's position
such as Derrida, Lacan's descriptionis not disinterestedat all, but
simplya psychoanalyst'simpositionof the structureof the Oedipal
triangleon a double story,an impositionthat,though it seems to
be made froman objectivefourthpositionoutside the triangle,has
the effectof insertingLacan into the thirdpositionof a trianglein
which the psychoanalyst's"objective" unmasking of the personal
motive that lies behind Dupin's "disinterested"involvementin the
affairof the letter shiftsDupin into the second position and his
double the Ministerinto the first.Or so says Derrida froma fourth
position outside Lacan's triangle,a fourthposition that will itself
be shiftedin turn. This mechanism by which the shiftingfromthe
third to the second position withinthe triangleis extended (as a
supposedly more objective point of view is assumed fromwhich to
observe the subjective triangle), and thus becomes the shifting
from a fourth position outside the triangle to the third position
withinit,evokes the infiniteregressionthat,in thisquest for absolute self-consciousness, accompanies infinite progression as its
shadow image. For while the progressiveseries moves in one direction in its flightfromsubjectiveinvolvement,in its termlesssearch
for an absolutely objective point of view from which to examine
the self,it only existsas a seriesbecause of the regressivemovement
of consciousness, because of the retrospectivegaze that keeps all
the earlier termsof the series in view so that theyare perceived as
related, as serial in character.Thus the mental step thatone takes
in order to separate the self from itself,to distinguishabsolutely
the observer from the observed, is always a backward step, a step
in the opposite directionfromthe one in which we are looking.
IV
In the sardonic name of simplicitylet me add one more, final (or
else one, more final) element to this discussion. So far we have
looked at three analytic readings of "The Purloined Letter" by
Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson and then gone back to consider Poe's
own self-consciousthematizingwithinthe storyof the numerical/
geometrical structureenacted in its interpretation.I would now
like to look at a literaryreading of Poe's tale that antedates the
earliest of the three analyses we have considered by some fifteen

M L N
1189
years: the reading that Borges gives of "The Purloined Letter"

when he rewritesits numerical/geometricalstructurein his own
detective story "Death and the Compass" (1942). In the story's
opening paragraph Borges explicitlylinks the tale to Poe's Dupin
stories, remarking that his detective Erik Lonnrot "thought of
himself as a pure logician, a kind of Auguste Dupin" (p. 65).
"Death and the Compass" concerns a series of murders. All the
obvious clues suggest that the number in the series will be three,
but all the less than obvious clues-the kind that police inspector
Treviranus would miss, but Erik Ldnnrot wouldn't-suggest that
the number of murders will be four. We learn at the end of the
story that the series of crimes has been planned by Linnrot's
archenemy, the criminal Red Scharlach, who, seeking to lure
Lonnrot unawares to his own destruction,has counted on the fact
that the detective would solve the arcane clues which Inspector
Treviranus missed and that Lonnrot's intellectual pride would
blind him, would make him thinkthat because he was one jump
ahead of the police, he was one jump ahead of the criminalas well.
In effectBorges reworksthe triangularstructurefrom"The Purloined Letter." He has Scharlach create a situation in which
Lonnrot's apparent solution to the crimes constitutesthat second
glance whose observation of blindness in the firstglance (Treviranus's apparent misreading of the clues) becomes itselfa blind
spot in the observer by convincinghim that he sees everything.In
the meantime Scharlach occupies the position of the third glance
(hidden at the fourthpoint of the compass), seeing the blindness
of the firstglance, the blind spot in the second, and the fact that
the object he seeks-L6nnrot's life-is his for the taking.
Lonnrot and Scharlach are, of course, doubles of one another,
as theirnames indicate. In a note to the English translationof the
tale Borges says, "The end syllable of L6nnrot means red in
German, and Red Scharlach is also translatable,in German, as Red
Scarlet" (p. 269). Elsewhere Borges tells us that Ldnnrot is
Swedish, but neglects to add that in Swedish the word lbnnis a
prefix meaning "secret," "hidden," or "illicit."Thus Lonnrot, the
secretred, pursues and is pursued by his double, Red Scharlach
(Red Scarlet), thedoublyred.Scharlach's motiveis revenge. In their
final confrontation,Scharlach reminds L6nnrot that three years
earlier the detective had arrested Scharlach's brother in a gambling dive and thatin the ensuing shootoutScharlach had escaped,
as he says, with "a cop's bullet in my guts" (p. 75). In hiding,delirious with fever for nine days and nights,"I swore," says Schar-

1190
JOHNT. IRWIN
lach, "by the god who looks with two faces and by all the gods of
fever and of mirrorsthat I would weave a maze around the man
who sent mybrotherto prison" (p. 76). I take it thatthiselaborate
revenge on "a kind of Auguste Dupin" for the arrestof a brother
is an allusion to the fact that in "The Purloined Letter" the Minhas a brother with whom he is sometimes conister D
fused because they "both have attained reputation in letters"(3:
986). Since Dupin gets even withthe Minister,are we to see Scharlach's revenge on Ldnnrot as an attemptto even the score for that
earlier revenge on a brothercriminal?
The maze that Scharlach weaves around the detective begins
withthe murder of Rabbi Marcel Yarmolinskyon the thirdof December at a hotel in the north of the city.Yarmolinskyis a Talmudic scholar,and among his effectsthe police find"a treatise...
on the Tetragrammaton" (p. 67) and a sheet of paper in his typeoftheName has beenuttered"
writerbearing the words "Thefirstletter
(p. 67). The second murder occurs on the nightofJanuarythirdin
the west of the city.The victim,Daniel Simon Azevedo, is found
lyingon the doorstep of a paint store beneath "the shop's conventional red and yellowdiamond shapes" (pp. 68-69). Chalked across
oftheName has
the diamond shapes are the words "The secondletter
beenuttered"(p. 69). The thirdmurder occurs on the nightof Februarythirdin the east of the city.The victim,whose name is either
Gryphiusor Ginzberg,telephones Treviranus offeringto give him
informationabout the murders of Yarmolinskyand Azevedo, but
the call is interruptedby the arrival of two men who forciblyremove Gryphius-Ginzbergfrom the sailor's tavern where he has
been staying.It is Carnival time and the two men are wearing harlequin "costumes of red, green, and yellow lozenges" (p. 70).
Tracing the interrupted phone call, Treviranus arrives at the
tavernto find scrawled on a marketslate in front"The lastletterof
and in Gryphius-Ginzberg'sroom "a startheName has beenuttered"
shaped spatter of blood" and "a 1739 edition of Leusden's Philowiththe followingpassage underlined: "the
logusHebraeo-Graecus"
Jewish day begins at sundown and ends the followingsundown"
(p. 71). On the night of March firstTreviranus receives a sealed
envelope containing"a lettersigned by one 'Baruch Spinoza' " (p.
72) and a map of the city.The letterwriterpredicts that on the
thirdof March there will not be a fourthmurder because the locationsof the three previous crimesin the north,west,and east form
"the perfectsides of an equilateral and mysticaltriangle"(p. 72), as
demonstratedby a triangledrawn in red ink on the map.

M L N
1191
Appropriately,the letterpredictingthat only three men will be

killed is sent to Treviranus, the firsttwo syllablesof whose name
recall the Latin words for "three" and "man"-tres, vir. The Incapitales, a
spector's name probably alludes as well to the tresviri
over
control
"exercised
general
who
three
magistrates
group of
the city police" in republican Rome. According to the Eleventh
Edition of the EncyclopaediaBritannica,"Caesar increased their
number to four,but Augustus revertedto three. In imperial times
vimost of their functionspassed into the hands of the praefectus
gilum"9 an etymological-historicallink between Borges's Treviranus and Poe's Prefect.Not to mention the fact (which Borges
must have noticed) that the emperor who restoredthe number of
the tresviricapitalesfrom four to the original three also gave his
name to the detectiveC. (Cesar) Auguste Dupin. In "An Autobiographical Essay" (1970), Borges reports that he used part of the
proceeds from a literaryprize he received in 1929 to acquire "a
Britansecondhand set of the Eleventh Edition of theEncyclopaedia
nica" (p. 233), by no means an insignificantdetail in the life of a
writerobsessed withthe image of the encyclopaedia, a writerwho
says thatsome of his earliestmemoriesare of "the steel engravings
Encyclopaediaand in the Britannica"in his father'sliin Chambers's
brary (p. 209). It is worth noting that in the Eleventh Edition of
occurs on the page facing the
the Britannicathe entryfor tresviri
entryfor GottfriedReinhold Treviranus (1776-1837), a German
naturalist.Not unpredictably,Inspector Treviranus'sfirstwords in
the storypoint to the numerical image thatlies at the Latin root of
his name: "'We needn't lose any time here looking for threelegged cats,' Treviranus said, brandishingan imperious cigar. 'Everyone knows the Tetrarch of Galilee owns the world's finestsapphires. Somebody out to steal them probablyfound his wayin here
by mistake. Yarmolinskywoke up and the thiefwas forced to kill
him" (p. 66). The only historicalTetrarch of Galilee, as the entry
in the Britannicainformsus, was Herod Antipas-the
for tetrarch
Herod of the gospels-whose reign (4 B.C.-39 A.D.) began under
the emperorship of Augustus Caesar (hence Treviranus's "imperious cigar") and bracketed the life of Christ. At the death of
Herod the Great in 4 B.C., his realm was divided among his three
sons: half went to Archelaus, with the titleethnarch; a quarter to
Philip,withthe titletetrarch;and a quarter to Herod Antipas,with
the same title.As with Treviranus's initialimage of a four-legged
animal with only three legs, his referenceto the Tetrarch of Galilee-with its historical resonance of a quadripartite realm di-

1192
JOHNT. IRWIN
vided among three people by doubling the portionof one of them

-evokes the numerical structure that governs the tale. That
Borges intends the historicalallusion (and intends for us not to
miss it) seems clear from an exchange between Lonnrot and the
editor of a Yiddish newspaper at the scene of Yarmolinsky's
murder: " 'Maybe this crime belongs to the historyof Jewish suthe editor from
perstitions,'Lonnrot grumbled. 'Like Christianity,'
theJudischeZeitungmade bold to add" (p. 67). Need I add thatthe
in the Eleventh Edition of the Britannicaoccurs
entryfor tetrarch
on the page facing the entryfor Tetragrammaton.
Treviranus sends the map with the red triangle and the letter
suggestingthat the number of murders will be three, to Lonnrot
who now has, he believes, the final clue needed to capture the
murderer.Since the lettersin the Tetragrammatonare fourrather
than three,and since theJewishday begins at sundown so thatthe
threemurderswere committednot on the thirdbut the fourthday
of each month,and since in both the second and thirdmurders a
diamond shape is prominentlydisplayed, Lonnrot concludes that
the series of murders is not threefoldbut fourfoldand that the
shape which the locations of the crimesdescribe on the map is not
a trianglebut a diamond. Using a pair of dividers and a compass,
Lonnrot pinpoints the location of the planned fourthmurder in
the south of the city,"the deserted villa Triste-le-Roy"(p. 73); and
he arrivesthere well in advance, so he thinks,of the murderer to
catch him in the act. But, of course, at the villa of Triste-le-Roy-a
building of intricatedoublings, a kind of House of Usher designed
by Zeno the Eleatic-Scharlach is already lyingin wait and easily
captures Lonnrot. Completing his triumph,Scharlach explains the
maze to his prisoner. "The firstterm of the series came to me by
pure chance," says Scharlach. He and some of his associatesamong them Daniel Azevedo, the second victim-had planned to
commita jewel robberyat the hotel where Rabbi Yarmolinskywas
staying.Double-crossing his friends,Azevedo tried to committhe
robberya day early,got into Yarmolinsky'sroom by mistake,and
killed the rabbi when he tried to ring for help. From the newspaper accounts of the crime, Scharlach learned that Lonnrot was
seeking the key to Yarmolinsky'sdeath in the rabbi's writings,and
so he planned the series of murders to encourage Lonnrot's belief
thatYarmolinskyhad been sacrificedby a group of Hasidic Jewsin
search of the secret and unutterableName of God, a ruse to keep
Lnnrot looking in the wrong directionwhile being led to his own
destruction. Appropriately, the second victim was the double-

M L N
1193
crosser Azevedo, while the third murder was simplya ruse with
Scharlach himself doubling as the victim Gryphius-Ginzberg.
Borges gives us a clue to the type of cabalistic design on which
Scharlach's labyrinthis based when he tells us that among the
books writtenby Yarmolinskyand found in his room at the timeof
ofRobertFludd" (p. 67),
his death there was "a StudyofthePhilosophy
the seventeenth-centuryEnglish physician and Christian cabalist
whose work on geomancy ("a method of divinationby means of
markingthe earth witha pointed stick"[Poe, 2: 420]) Poe had included a centuryearlier in his catalogue of Roderick Usher's favoritereading (Poe, 2: 409). In Fludd's major work,Utriusquecosmi
physicaatque technicahistoria
majorisscilicetet minorismetaphysica,
(1617-19), we find the followingdiagram illustratingthe mirrorimage relationshipbetween God and the universe:10
AAA
8;
1*
At the center of the upper triangle (whose angles represent the

three persons of the Trinity) is the Tetragrammaton,and along

1194
JOHNT. IRWIN
one side a Latin legend reading "That most divine and beautiful
counterpartvisiblebelow in the flowingimage of the universe" (p.
83). In the lower triangleare "the three regions of the universeempyreal,ethereal, and elemental" which correspond to "the triangular formof the trinitariandeity,"and along one side of thisis
the Latin legend: "A shadow, likeness,or reflectionof the insubstantial triangle visible in the image of the universe," the lower
triangle being "a projection of an idea" in the divine mind and
thus a mirror image of the deity (pp. 83-84). Surrounding both
trianglesis a flamelike effulgencesuggestingat once the radiant
nature of thisPlatonic projectionor emanation,the symboliccharacter of the deityas fireor pure light(i.e., as mind), and the traditional imagisticassociation (going back at least to the Egyptians)of
the triangle with the tip of a flame (pyramid and obelisk being
stone flames above a grave) and thus with eternal life. Since
Scharlach knows fromthe newspaper accounts thatLbnnrotbegan
his investigationof the murders by reading Yarmolinsky'sworks
on cabalism, and since one of these is a study of Robert Fludd's
mysticalphilosophy,it seems likelythat the typeof schema shown
above was the model for Scharlach's labyrinthand that it is this
cabalisticdesign which Lonnrot believes he is tracingon the landscape when in his initial surprise at finding Scharlach waitingat
the fourthpoint of the compass he asks, "Scharlach, are you after
the Secret Name?" (p. 75).
Realizing that he has been outwittedand that he is about to be
killed, Lonnrot tries to have the last word by finding a flaw in
Scharlach's maze. Using a favoriteploy of mathematiciansand logicians-that Scharlach's plan, though successful, violates the
principle of economy of means-Lonnrot says, "In your maze
there are three lines too many.... I know of a Greek maze thatis
a single straightline. Along this line so many thinkershave lost
theirway that a mere detectivemay verywell lose his way. Scharlach, when in another incarnation you hunt me down, stage (or
commit) a murder at A, then a second murder at B, eight miles
from A, then a third murder at C, four miles from A and B,
halfwaybetween the two. Lay in wait for me then at D, two miles
fromA and C, again halfwaybetween them. Kill me at D, the way
you are going to kill me here at Triste-le-Roy"(p. 78). In his note
to the tale, Borges identifies "the straight-linelabyrinthat the
story'send" as a figure taken from "Zeno the Eleatic" (p. 269).
This closing image of infiniteregressionas the endless subdivision

M L N
1195
of a line inverts, of course, the figure of infinite progression

evoked in the tale by the movement from a triangularto a quadrangular maze, which is to say, the figureof infiniteprogression
as the endless addition of sides to a polygon-the figurethatsymbolizes the attempt to integrate the process of thinkinginto the
content of thought as the attempt to incorporate an "objective"
point of view outside a structure(e.g., the fourthpoint fromwhich
one views a triangle) into a more inclusive, more self-conscious
formulationby making that viewpointanother angle of the structure (e.g., the progression from triangle to quadrangle). As we
noted earlier, in the mind's quest to comprehend itselftotally,to
be absolutely even or at one with itself,infiniteprogression and
infinite regression represent reciprocal paths to the idealized
ground of the self,to its original,essentialunity-infiniteprogression pursuing an absolute unityfiguredas totality,infiniteregresPart
sion pursuing an absolute simplicityfigured as indivisibility.
of the numerical mysteryof individual self-consciousnessis that
though it is only one thingin a world of many things,for its individual possessor it is one thing that is everything.And this absoluteness of individual self-consciousnessfor its possessor not only
underlies the absolute means employed in quest of the self's origin
but also projects itselfnatu(i.e., infiniteprogression/regression)
rallyinto the quest for a universal origin figuredas a personified
Absolute Consciousness, thatInfiniteBeing whose consciousnessis
the one thingthat is everythingfor everything.Translated into a
religious context, infiniteregression and infiniteprogression,as
reciprocalmodes of seeking an ultimateorigin conceived as either
a lower or an upper limitof consciousness,suggestthe via negativa
and the via positivaof mysticaltheology. In the via negativaone
seeks an unmediated encounter with the divine origin by subtractingattributesfrom,by denying affirmativepredicates to, the
idea of God untilone finallyachieves a personal experience of the
transcategorialnature of Being. Of this method Borges remarks,
"To be one thing is inexorablynot to be all the other things.The
confused intuitionof that truthhas induced men to imagine that
not being is more than being somethingand that,somehow, not to
be is to be everything."'"In the via positivaone takes the opposite
path, constantlyadding affirmativepredicates to the concept of
God until that concept becomes an absolute totality;though what
one experiences in this path is once again the transcategorialnature of Being. In his essay "From Someone to Nobody" in which

1196
JOHNT. IRWIN
he sketchesthe historicaloscillationsof the concept of theJudaeoChristianGod, Borges describes the reciprocal characterof these
two methods as "magnificationto nothingness"(OI, p. 147).
Given Borges's interestin the way that the classical pursuitof a
microcosmicand a macrocosmiclimitbecomes the religiousquest
for the origin and end of all things,it is not surprisingthat as
Lonnrot gets caught up in the quest forthe sacred and unutterable
Name of God, the meeting at the fourthpoint of the compass (a
prolepticfigureof infiniteprogression) comes to seem like a faceto-faceencounter withthe one, infinite,divine originof all things.
And inasmuch as Ldnnrot willdie at thatfourthpoint,it does turn
out to be the place where he will meet his maker (his mental
double). Agreeing to Ldnnrot's request that he trap him in a
straight-linelabyrinthin their next incarnation,Scharlach takes a
step back and shoots the detectivewithhis own gun-shoots him
in the head, one would guess, the rightspot to drop a pure logician. In his note to the tale, Borges says, "The killerand the slain,
whose minds work in the same way, may be the same man.
Lonnrot is not an unbelievable fool walking into his own death
trap but, in a symbolicway, a man committingsuicide" (p. 269).
What withthe presence of the color red in the names of slayerand
slain and theirtalk of repeating theirduel in another incarnation,
one is reminded of Emerson's poem "Brahma" (whichBorges cites
in his 1947 essay on Whitman):
If thered slayerthinkhe slays,
Or iftheslainthinkhe is slain,
They knownotwellthesubtleways
I keep,and pass,and turnagain.
Far or forgotto me is near;
Shadowand sunlightare thesame;
The vanishedgods to me appear;
And one to me are shameand fame.'2
One question, however,stillremains to be settled.Does Borges,
in rewritingthe numerical/geometricalstructure of "The Purloined Letter" in "Death and the Compass," see that structureas
threefoldand triangular(as does Lacan) or fourfoldand quadrangular (as does Derrida)? CertainlyScharlach's labyrinthseems to
be fourfoldand diamond-shaped. But inasmuch as the murder of
Gryphius-Ginzbergwas a ruse in whichthe criminaldoubled as the
victim,there were really only three crimes,and these three-the

M L N
1197
murders of Yarmolinskyin the north, Azevedo in the west, and

Lonnrot in the south-form a triangle on the map. And if the
labyrinthis reallythreefoldand triangular,then all the obvious, all
the simple clues indicatingthat there would only be three crimes
are the correctones. But if the correctnumber is three,then what
becomes of the name that is being uttered letterby letter?If it is
not the four-lettername of God that Borges means to evoke, then
is it the three-lettername of Poe, the creator, the origin, of the
detectivegenre?
Before deciding, however, that the structureis threefoldand
triangular,we should recall that there finallyturn out to be three
crimesonly because one of the doubles correctlyinterpretsall the
arcane clues and presents himselfat the fourthpoint at the expected moment. Is the numerical structurethat Borges rewrites
from "The Purloined Letter," then, that of the two interlocking
pairs of words (simple/odd,even/odd),a structurein which three
thingsare made to fillfour spaces by doubling one of them-and
all as part of the mind's quest for an original undivided one, for a
mythic absolute simplicity? Inasmuch as Lonnrot's search for
God's "Secret Name" (p. 75) at the fourthpoint of the quadrangle
symbolizesthisquest for an original undivided one, it is significant
that the Tetragrammaton,"God's unspeakable name" (p. 68), has
the same structure in all its various spellings (JHVH, IHVH,
IHWH, YHVH, YHWH) as that of the two interlockingpairs of
words in "The Purloined Letter," which is to say that three differentlettersare made to fillthe four spaces of the name by doubling one of them (H). It is also worth noting that in the case of
both the sacred name and the interlockingpairs of words the repeated letteror word occupies the second and fourthspaces-the
numbers characteristicallyassociated with doubling. (One might
also note, given the quadrangular aspect of Scharlach's maze, that
two is the only number for which doubling and squaring are the
same operation.)
Borges's rewritingof the numerical/geometricalstructure of
"The Purloined Letter" in "Death and the Compass" assumes an
even greater significance when we realize that it was part of a
larger project in which he set out to double Poe's three Dupin
storiesa centurylater with three detectivestoriesof his own. But
withthis difference:where Poe's detectivesolves the mysteryand
outwitsthe culprit, Borges's detectivesor pursuers are outwitted
by the people they pursue, are trapped in a labyrinthfashioned

1198
JOHNT. IRWIN
from the pursuer's abilityto follow a trail until he arrives in the

chosen spot at the expected moment. (We should note, however,
that in these stories Borges consistentlyundercuts the notion that
the culprit'striumph,his being one up on his opponent, ultimately
makes any real difference."And one to me are shame and fame"
mightalmost be the motto of these encounters.) The firstDupin
story,"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," was published in 1841;
Borges's firstdetectivestory,"The Garden of the ForkingPaths,"
was published exactlyone hundred years later in 1941. As the historian of the detective genre Howard Haycraftnotes, there were
"several events which marked the Centennial of the Detective
Storyin 1941": one was the firstissue of ElleryQueen'sMystery
Magazine, another was the publication of Haycraft'sown magisterial
Murderfor Pleasure: The Life and Timesof theDetectiveStory.'3And
yet another, it seems certain,was the publicationof Borges's first
detective story,which, he recalls, "won a second prize in Ellery
Queen'sMystery
Magazine" (Aleph,p. 273). The second Dupin story,
"The Mysteryof Marie Roget," firstappeared in 1842-43 in serial
form; while Borges's second detectivestory,"Death and the Compass," was firstpublished in 1942. This storywas also submittedto
ElleryQueen'sMystery
Magazine but, as Borges ruefullynotes, "was
flatlyrejected" (p. 273). The third Dupin story,"The Purloined
Letter," was published in 1844, but Borges's third story, "Ibn
Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth,"was not published
until 1951. In his note to the storyBorges accounts for thisbreak
in the pattern, commenting that after his "firsttwo exercises of
1941 and 1942" his thirdeffort"became a cross betweena permissible detectivestoryand a caricature of one. The more I worked
on it,the more hopeless the plot seemed and the strongermyneed
to parody" (p. 274). It is as if in reaching the third term of this
series Borges realized that his effortto double Poe's three analytic
detective stories-perhaps with the idea of going one up on the
inventorof the genre-had gone awry and that he was himself
trapped in the triangular/quadrangularlabyrinththat Poe had
constructed in "The Purloined Letter." Certain it is that in
Borges's final detective story the allusions to "The Purloined
Letter" are numerous, culminatingin an explicitreference.In the
tale, two friends,Dunraven and Unwin, tryto decipher the mysteryof Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari'sdeath in his own labyrinth.At one
point Unwin says, "Don't go on multiplying the mysteries.... They should be kept simple. Bear in mind Poe's pur-

M L N
1199
loined letter, bear in mind Zangwill's locked room." To which

Dunraven replies, "Or made complex.... Bear in mind the universe" (p. 116). I assume that the name "Dunraven" is an allusion
to the author of "The Raven," as the name "Unwin" is to the unwinnable game of tryingto be one up on a double, assumptions
supported by the factthatDunraven is a poet and Unwin a mathematician. These occupations recall as well the discussion of the
in "The Purloined
dual character of the Minister D
Letter." Thinking that they have confused the Ministerwith his
brotherwho has also "attained reputationin letters,"the narrator
identifiesD
as "a mathematician,and no poet." To which
Dupin replies, "You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As
poet and mathematician,he would reason well; as mere mathematician,he could not have reasoned at all, and thuswould have been
at the mercyof the Prefect"(3: 986). As we noted earlier,the Minister's dual character as poet and mathematician mirrors that
"double Dupin" whose reciprocal powers ("the creativeand the resolvent") reminded the narrator in "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue" of "the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul" (2: 533).
Borges echoes this reciprocal relationship between the creative
and the resolventwhen he has the poet Dunraven suggesta mathematical solution to the mysteryof the labyrinthand the mathematician Unwin counter with a poetic one. Dunraven asks
whether,in tryingto solve the mystery,Unwin has considered "the
theoryof series" or "a fourthdimension of space," and Unwin replies, "No . . . I thought about the labyrinthof Crete. The labyrinthwhose center was a man with the head of a bull" (p. 123).
Borges adds that Dunraven, "steeped in detectivestories,thought
that the solution of a mysteryis always less impressivethan the
mysteryitself.Mysteryhas somethingof the supernaturalabout it,
and even of the divine; its solution,however,is always taintedby
sleightof hand" (p. 123).
Since the minimumnumber needed to constitutea seriesis three
(even if there are only two itemsin a series, the idea of theirserial
relationshipis already a third thing), Dunraven's question about
whether the solution might involve "the theory of series" or "a
fourthdimension of space" suggests in effectthat the key to the
mysteryturns upon choosing between the numbers three and
four. And this implied oscillation between three and four, combined withthe image of the labyrinth,returnsus to the triangular/
quadrangular maze of "Death and the Compass" and to its origin

1200
JOHNT. IRWIN
structureof "The Purloined Letter"

in the numerical/geometrical
-in much the same way that Borges's remark about the solution
always being less impressivethan the mysteryitselfreturnsus to
the simple-mindedquestion thatbegan thisinquiry.For by now it
should be clear that that question was, in the spiritof the genre,
framedso as to contain a clue, in reverse,to itsanswer. Which is to
say, the question about how one writesthe analyticdetectivestory
as a rereadable form was, like Scharlach's maze, a device to focus
attentionin one directionwhichleading us in the opposite, leading
us to the point where that simple-mindedquestion about the unlimitedrepeatabilityof a formbecomes an endlesslyrepeatable because constantly reformulated question about the simplicityof
mind, a question always about to be answered because it requires
only one more step to complete the analysis. Poe's genius in the
inventionof the genre was preciselyto understand that the analyticsolution of a mysteryalwaysleaves us at the end withthe mysteryof an analyticsolution,the mysteryof thatsolvingpower that
catches a partial glimpse of itselfin the achievementof a deductive
conclusion but that,maddeninglyenough, cannot gain a complete
view of itselfno matterhow often it repeats the analyticmoment,
cannot totallycomprehend itselfsimplybecause in doubling back
to effectan absolute coincidence of the self withitselfit findsthat
it is based on an original non-coincidence.This paradox of a (non)
self-includingself-that if the process of thinkingand the content
of thoughtever absolutelycoincided, theywould vanish in a condition of no-difference,taking with them the differentialentity
that is the self-lies at the heart of the detectivegenre which Poe
invented.And withinthe dynamicsof the text,thisultimatecondition of no-difference(the imaginativelyprojected goal of the self's
attemptto be absolutelyeven withitself)makes its presence feltin
that ceaseless oscillationof differentialpoles associated withspecular doubling, that continual reversal of a signifyingterm into its
opposite which,in its fluctuatingequation of opposing terms,produces a differentiationthat seems to make no difference.
V
What tends to be overlooked in readings of "The Purloined
Letter" that treatit as a pretextfor examining the analyticact in a
specificdiscipline such as psychoanalysis,or thatmake it the more
or less naive startingpoint for an agon of ever-increasingmethodological self-awareness,isjust how self-consciousPoe was about the

M L N
1201
interpretiveeffect produced by a literarytext ("The Purloined

Letter") that includes withinitselfa symbolictext (the purloined
letter)whose attributesare clearlythose of the literarytextitself"The Purloined Letter" presentingthe purloined letterwhichrepresentsin turn "The Purloined Letter" in an endless oscillationof
containerand contained, of outer and inner (like thatprojected by
the turningof the letterinsideout withinthe story).Indeed, what
tends to be ignored in such readings is how self-consciouslyPoe
thematizedin the storyitselfthe reader's interpretiveinteraction
with the storyand then proceeded to make the discoveryof that
thematization a further form of interaction with the reader, a
subtler game of hide-and-seek,of clues and solutions. Thus, for
example, the solution to the mysteryof the purloined letter(the
mysteryof its concealment in the Minister'shouse so thatthe Prefectcannot find it) is that the Ministerhas turned the letterinside
out and hidden it in the open; but that trick of reversing the
missing object and leaving it in plain view is also the solution to
Poe's concealment, withinthe text of "The Purloined Letter," of
the solution to the purloined letter'sconcealmentin the Minister's
residence. On his firstvisitto Dupin the Prefectpresentsus with
the mysteryof the purloined letter,which is to say, the manner of
its theftand the fact of its continued non-appearance despite his
repeated searches. But thatstandard scene in the analyticdetective
story(the presentationof the mystery)is in effectturned inside
out by Poe, for in describinghow the Ministertook the letter,Poe
simultaneouslyshows us the secret of the letter'ssubsequent concealment, indeed, hides it in plain view, by givingus the detail of
the Queen's turningthe letterover and leaving it in the open on a
table to conceal it from the King. Similarly,in Dupin's open presentationof the game of even and odd as a figureof the attemptto
be one up on a specular double, Poe again hides in plain sightthat
other, subtler game of simple/odd,even/odd-the game figuring
the reader's battle of witswiththe author as a specular encounter
in which the reader plays or tries to avoid playing the game of
even and odd with Poe through the author's opposing masks of
detectiveand criminal.Poe hides thisgame in plain sightby having
Dupin pointedlynote thatthe game of even and odd "is simple,"a
verbal gesture that directs us back to his earlier emphatic repetitionof the Prefect'sclaim thatthe mysteryof the letterwas "simple
and odd." If one were to representin a geometricfigurethe opposing players in this game of simple/odd, even/odd, the basic
formof the figurewould look like this:

JOHNT. IRWIN
1202
Poe
Dupin
Minister
Reader
It is only throughthe battleof witsbetween Dupin and the Min, through their fictiveencounter in the story,that
ister D
the reader can engage in a battleof witswithPoe, can tryto outwit
the author for the interpretive possession of "The Purloined
Letter, (much as Dupin outwitsthe Ministerfor the physicalpossession of the purloined letter).Because the reader cannot directly
confronthis adversaryPoe (the man who concealed the purloined
letterwithin"The Purloined Letter," as he concealed "The Purloined Letter" withinthe purloined letter),he has to confronthim
indirectlythrough his opposing masks in a triangularstructureof
reader, Dupin, Minister. And in a similar manner Poe can only
confrontthe reader indirectlythrough these same masks in a triangular structureof author, Dupin, Minister.Poe and the reader
square off, then, as specular doubles, each meaning to outwit a
self-projectedimage of the other, withina quadrangular figure
composed of two triangleswhose verticespoint in opposite directions (Poe and the reader) but whose bases are a single line linking
the opposing positionsof Dupin and the Minister.
In thisstructurethe reader is obviouslyat a disadvantage,for in
having to match witswithPoe through the game of even and odd
played by Poe's adversarial masks he is in effect playing Poe's
game. Yet the wish to avoid this game played throughsurrogates,
in favor of a direct confrontationwith the author, also seems to
leave the reader playing Poe's game. For if, withinthat quadrangular figurerepresentingthe indirectconfrontationof author and
reader through the direct one of criminaland detective,we were
to tryto bring togetherthe positions of Poe and the reader for a

M L N
1203
direct confrontation (like that between the specular doubles

Lonnrot and Scharlach at the fourthpoint of the compass), if we
were to tryto make the upper and lower verticesrepresentingthe
opposing positions of author and reader coincide, then we would
see that this figure is formed by a mirror-fold.To visualize this,
imagine the quadrangular figure as a flat surface like a sheet of
paper that can be folded and unfolded along the horizontal line
formingthe base of the two triangles:folded, the figureis a triangular shape composed of two identical triangles hinged at their
base, withone doubled back on top of the other so that theirverticescoincide; unfolded, the quadrangle whichwe have described.
Not surprisingly,it is a form of this same operation-the geometric projection of a triangle (whose vertex points downward)
from the base of a triangle (whose vertex points upward)-that
Ldnnrot uses in "Death and the Compass" to discover the location
of the fourth point in Scharlach's maze, the point at which the
doubles will confronteach other face to face. Using a pair of dividers,Lonnrot measures the length of one side of the equilateral
triangleinscribed in red ink on the citymap sent to Treviranus.
Maintaining this same length, he swings an arc downward from
each end of the triangle'sbase line, and where the arcs intersecthe
discovers the villa Triste-le-Roy.It is as if the red triangleon the
map were flipped downward, were unfolded one hundred and
eightydegrees, to produce a double, an invertedmirror-image,of
itself.Appropriatelyenough, this quadrangular maze (composed
of two identicaltrianglesjoined at theirbases by a mirror-foldand
with their vertices facing Janus-like in opposite directions) was
conceived by Scharlach during that period of delirious convalescence at Triste-le-Roywhen he "swore by the god who looks with
two faces and by all the gods of fever and of mirrors" that he
would "weave a maze around the man" who sent his brother to
prison (p. 76). And it is also appropriate thatwhen Ldnnrotarrives
at the villa one of the firstthings he sees is the statue of a "twofaced Hermes" which casts "a monstrous shadow" (p. 74)-the
single mirror-fold of doubling that produces the two-faced
Hermes (the god of mirrors)being doubled again by its shadow
image to produce the fourfold.
Like Scharlach's diamond-shaped maze (whichis indebted to it),
the quadrangular figure representingthe indirectconfrontation
of author and reader through the direct one of criminaland detective in "The Purloined Letter" involves a mirror-fold that

1204
JOHNT. IRWIN
doubles identical triangularshapes back upon themselves,and as

such it serves as a geometric representation,an emblem, of selfidentity.Which is to say, the figure represents the differential
of specular self-consciousnessas
unity,the sameness-in-difference,
a simplicity,a single fold, that in doubling an entityback upon
itselfcalls it into existence as a self-consciousunit by introducing
withitselfis by no
into it a differencewithitself.But thisdifference
means a divisionwithinitself,for as distinguishedfromthe material
(i.e., divisible)body, the ground of self-consciousness(mind,spirit,
soul) is understood withinthe traditionin whichPoe operates to be
indivisible,to be a simple substance. And we can see from this
figure,whichis three-sidedwhen folded back upon itselfbut foursided when unfolded, why the oscillation between the numbers
three and four (between the first odd number and the even
number associated withdoubling) lies at the heart of the game of
simple/odd,even/odd, that game in which three words derived
fromnumbers (simple [one], even [two],odd [three]) are made to
fillfour spaces by doubling one of them (odd). For of course what
thisgame of numericallyrooted words evokes is the doubling of a
four-sidedfigureback upon itselfto produce the coincidence,the
evenness, of two three-sidedfigures,two identical shapes created
as it were by the simplicityof a mirror-fold-the oscillation between three and four symbolizingthe folded and unfolded states
of thisgeometricrepresentationof self-consciousness.
Having thematized in the geometricalstructureof the game of
simple/odd,even/odd, the indirect confrontationof author and
reader through the direct one of criminal and detective, Poe
makes the discoveryof this thematizationa furtherformof interaction with the reader by planting in the textclues to that oscillation between three and four that evokes the mirror-foldof the
quadrangular figure. I will cite but two of the several instancesof
thisin the tale. In the veryfirstsentence of "The Purloined Letter"
the narratorgives us the complete streetaddress of Dupin's residence in Paris, a level of specificitythat in the economy of a Poe
storyusually signals the encryptionof significantinformation,particularlywhere numbers are concerned. The address is "au troisieme,No. 33, Rue Dunot,FaubourgSt. Germain"(3: 974). Now we
already know from the firstDupin storythat the house is located
in the Faubourg St. Germain, an authentic section of Paris. The
street name, however, is Poe's own invention and is perhaps an
appellation that,in echoing the sound of an elided "don't know,"is

M L N
1205
meant to suggest,like Samuel Butler's Erewhon, the non-existent

(forreasons that
characterof the place it names. More significantly
will be apparent in our second example), the name of the street
begins withthe letterD. The crucial information,however,which
at "No.
Poe provides in thisaddress is thatDupin lives "au troisieme"
33." No annotated edition of the tale ever fails to point out that
the French "au troisieme"
(le troisieme etage), the third floor, is
what Americans call the fourth floor. Dupin resides, then, in a
numericallyambiguous spot-on a floor that in France is called
the thirdbut in America the fourth.And it is onlyappropriate that
thisthird/fourth
floor should be located in a building whose street
number is 33, for in the foldingback upon itselfof thatquadrangular figure symbolizingspecular self-consciousness,the doubled
figurethat resultsis three-sided,a doubling of a triangularshape
that is paralleled in the game of simple/odd,even/oddby thatdistributionof three words in four spaces achieved throughthe doubling of the word "odd," the word whose root is the Old Norse
oddi,a triangle.
That Borges understood the clue hidden in the detail of Dupin's
residing "au troisieme"at "No. 33" can be seen from a detail in
"Death and the Compass." The murder of Rabbi Yarmolinsky,the
firstin the series, takes place at the Hotel du Nord in the rabbi's
"room on floor R, across from the suite occupied . .. by the Tetrarch of Galilee" (p. 66). Now since the name of the hotel is
French, one assumes that the designation of its floors followsthe
French custom and that the R of "floor R" is the firstletter of
rez-de-chaussee (much as in thiscountrythe letterM in a building
directory stands for mezzanine or B for basement). The first
murder occurs, then,on a floor which the French call the ground
floor and Americans call the first floor, a difference in the
of the firsttermin a series thatgives rise (and
naming/numbering
in thiscase is certainlymeant to allude) to the numericalambiguity
of Dupin's residence "au troisieme."It is only appropriate, of
course, that Yarmolinsky's murder on floor R (the firstfloor)
should initiatea series of events that ultimatelybrings L6nnrot,
who thinksof himselfas "a kind of Auguste Dupin" (p. 65), to that
fourthpoint of the compass where the thirdmurder will occur as
the two doubles who "may be the same man" confrontone another. And appropriate as well that the firstmurder in this series
was the chance result of the jewel thiefAzevedo's mistakingYarmolinsky'sroom for "the suite occupied ... by the Tetrarch of

1206
JOHNT. IRWIN
Galilee," for as we noted earlier the titleTetrarch of Galilee derivesfromthe historicaldivisionof a realm into four partsin order
to distributeit among three persons, two of whom each received a
quarter while the thirdreceived a half.
The second instance that I would cite of Poe's plantinga clue in
oscillationfiguringthe mirror-foldof speca textto thisthree/four
is
ular self-consciousness the naming of Dupin's rival,the Minister
. In a tale entitled"The Purloined Letter"any manipuD
lation of a letter,such as the substitutionof an initialfor a name,
should attractour attention.Since Dupin and the Ministerare antitheticaldoubles, it is only fittingthat the Minister'sname begins
withthe same letteras Dupin's, and more fittingstillthatthe Minister'sinitialis also the firstletterof the word "double." There is,
however, even more at work in Poe's choice of this letter. If we
were to examine the letter'sroots (as we did those of the words
"simple,""even," and "odd"), we would find thatthe shape of our
capital D derives from the shape of the capital delta(A) in Greek,
which is to say, froma triangle.In the Greek alphabet, deltais the
fourthletter,as D is in ours; but in Greek delta(A) also serves as a
sign forboth the cardinal and ordinal formsof the number four.14
The initialof the Minister'sname derives,then,froma triangularshaped Greek letter that stands for the number four, the same
floor at
initialas that of his double who lives on the third/fourth
No. 33 Rue Dunot. We should also note in this connection that
fromthe
deltais the root of the Greek word deltos,"a writing-tablet,
letter A (the old shape of tablets)" (Lexicon,p. 178), the letter D
thus being a doubly appropriate designationforthe purloinerand
the recoverer of the letter (themselves characters composed of
letters)in this drama of inscribedsurfaces.
That Borges spotted the clue concealed in the Minister'sinitial
can be judged from Ldnnrot's parting flourishin "Death and the
Compass." Trapped in Scharlach's quadrangular labyrinth,
Lonnrot makes one last attemptto best his enemy intellectuallyby
proposing a simpler,a more economical labyrinthcomposed of "a
single straightline" (p. 78). But Lbnnrot's ploy is a trick,his labyrinth'svaunted economy more apparent than real. For what is at
issue here is not the number of lines in a geometricfigurebut the
number of steps in a mental operation. And just as there are four
steps in Scharlach's labyrinthdesignated by the four points of the
compass, so there are four steps in Ldnnrot'slabyrinthdesignated
by the firstfour lettersof the alphabet. In Scharlach's maze the
doubles confronteach other at the fourthpoint of the compass in

M L N
1207
the south; in Lonnrot's proposed maze they are to meet at the

fourthletter of the alphabet. Lonnrot says, "Lay in wait for me
then at D, two miles fromA and C, again halfwaybetweenthem."
L6nnrot's suggestion that their specular duel will be replayed
again in a futureexistenceis simplyBorges's implicitacknowledgement that this meeting of doubles at the letterD (A, four) has already been played in a previous incarnation.
VI
That Borges deciphered the game of simple/odd, even/odd in
"The Purloined Letter" and then reencryptedit in "Death and the
Compass" seems beyond doubt. What stillremains to be noted in
closing the circle of this essay is the distinctpossibilitythat it was
Borges's tale which originallydirected Lacan's attentionto the numerical/geometricaldimension of the story and thus suggested
"The Purloined Letter"as an ideal text for an analysisof psychoanalysis that would project the structureof the Oedipal triangle
onto the reciprocityof blindness and insightin the psychoanalytic
encounter. The evidence of this influence is circumstantial,but
certainlyno psychoanalystshould object to that. One of the first
promoters of Borges's work in France was Roger Caillois, the
noted criticand sociologist whose writingsinfluenced Lacan. In
his biography of Borges, Monegal notes that Borges's friendVictoria Ocampo had invited Caillois to lecture in Argentina on the
eve of the Second World War and thatCaillois remained there for
the duration. With Ocampo's help, he started a magazine in
Buenos Aires called Lettres
Franpaises,and in itsOctober 1944 issue
he published French translationsof two Borges stories,"The Babylon Lottery"and "The Library of Babel." The relationshipbetween Caillois and Borges, not an entirelyfriendlyone, turned in
part upon their mutual interestin the detective genre. Monegal
notes that Borges wrote "a rather cattyarticlein Sur (April 1942)
reviewing one of Caillois' pamphlets, on the detective novel.
Against Caillois' statementthat the detectivestorywas born when
Joseph Fouche created a well-trainedpolice force in Paris, Borges
observes that a literarygenre invariablybegins witha literarytext
and pointsout thatthe textin question is one of Edgar Allan Poe's
stories. An exchange of notes ensued, and the relationship between Borges and Caillois cooled considerably.That did not affect
Caillois' admirationfor Borges's writing.He continued to promote
Borges unflinchingly."''5In 1951 Caillois published in Paris a

1208
JOHNT. IRWIN
translation(by P. Verdevoye and Nestor Ibarra) of Borges's Ficciones, the collection that contains both "The Garden of the
Forking Paths" and "Death and the Compass" (Monegal, p. 420).
There was, then,a translationof "Death and the Compass" widely
available in France under the aegis of Caillois some fiveyears before the publication of Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined
Letter'. " And given Caillois' interestin the detectivestoryand his
ongoing promotion of one of the genre's most distinguished
modern practitioners,and given the influence of Caillois' writings
on Lacan and the psychoanalyst'snaturalinterestin analyticdetection, it seems hard to believe that Lacan had not read "Death and
the Compass" sometime in the early 1950s. Such a knowledge of
the storyon Lacan's part would at least go a long way toward explaining the extremelyodd referencewhichhe makes to Borges in
a footnoteto the "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'."
In presenting the purloined letter as a model of the Lacanian
floatingsignifier,Lacan points out the letter'sproperty(as the signifier of an absence) of simultaneously being and not being
present in a particularplace, adding that "between letterand place
existrelationsforwhichno French word has quite the extensionof
the English adjective: odd" (p. 53). He asks, "Must a letterthen,of
to use a term
all objects,be endowed withthe propertyof nullibeity:
which the thesaurus known as Roget picks up from the semiotic
utopia of Bishop Wilkins?"(p. 53). To which question he appends
this curious note: "The very one to whichJorge Luis Borges, in
works which harmonize so well with the phylum of our subject
[dans son oeuvre si harmonique au phylumde notre propos], has
accorded an importance which others have reduced to its proper
June-July1955, pp. 2135-36
proportions. Cf. Les Tempsmodernes,
and Oct. 1955, pp. 574-75" (p. 53). The citationof the June-July
issue of Les Tempsmodernesrefers us to the opening pages of a
French translationof Borges's "The AnalyticalLanguage of John
Wilkins" (one of a group of six short essays by Borges in that
issue), while the citationof the October issue refersus to a letterto
the editor from an M. Pobers commentingon Borges's essay. In
"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" (1941), Borges describes the universal language proposed by the seventeenth-centuryEnglishman Wilkins,Bishop of Chester and firstsecretaryof
the Royal Society,in his book An Essay towardsa Real Characterand
a PhilosophicalLanguage (1668). Borges notes that in thislanguage

M L N
1209
"each word defines itself": "Wilkinsdivided the universeinto forty

categoriesor classes, whichwere then subdivisibleinto differences,
subdivisiblein turninto species. To each class he assigned a monosyllable of two letters; to each difference,a consonant; to each
species, a vowel. For example, de means an element; deb,the first
of the elements, fire; deba, a portion of the element of fire, a
flame" (OI, p. 102). In his letter to the editor commenting on
Borges's essay, M. Pobers points out that this philosophical language, which replaces arbitrarywords and expressions with a
systemof lettersand syllableseach having a particularsense, was
not original withWilkins.It had been inventedby another Oxford
scholar, George Dalgarno, and Wilkins's work simplycompleted
and perfectedthe project presented in Dalgarno's 1661 treatiseArs
SignorumvulgocharacteruniversalisetLingua Philosophica.
Now it is always nice to learn new things simplyfor their own
sake, and yet one cannot help but wonder what it is exactly that
Lacan's footnoteto Borges is meant to note. There is, according to
Lacan, this special propertypossessed by a signifier(the present
sign of an absence) of simultaneouslybeing and not being present
in a particularplace, an odd relationshipbetween letterand place;
and to evoke this propertyhe has found the perfectword "nullibeity" (the condition of being nowhere existent), a word which
Roget's Thesaurus tells him was first used in a work by John
Wilkins. And oh by the way, says Lacan, this is the same John
Wilkinswhose universal analyticlanguage Borges has discussed in
an essay that "harmonizes so well withthe phylumof our subject."
Is the point of this footnote,then, simplyto note a mere coincidence, thisfootnotewhich Lacan has appended to an essay he considered importantenough to place at the startof theEcrits?Or is it
meant to acknowledge (though it does not say so) some debt of
influence to, or sense of priorityof, Borges as regards a knowledge of Wilkins's work? Perhaps, for example, Lacan, in discovering from Roget's Thesaurusthat the word "nullibeity"had originated with Wilkins,recognized who Wilkins was because he had
read Borges's essay. Such a debt would have been minor, easy
enough to acknowledge, and yetin the last analysisno less triviala
matterthan the noting of a coincidence. So why did Lacan go to
the troubleof includingthisfootnote?Though the propertywhich
the word "nullibeity"designates is importantfor Lacan's notion of
the signifier,the word itselfis not thatimportant;he has described

1210
JOHNT. IRWIN
this propertyof the signifieroften and withother words as good.

Still less importantand less obvious is the word's connection with
Wilkins,and least importantand least obvious of all is Wilkins's
connectionwithBorges-both of which Lacan goes to the trouble
of pointing out to the reader. Clearly, there is something odd
about this footnote,an uncanny feeling that the author has gone
out of his way to emphasize a point at once gratuitousand trivial,
the kind of uncanny feeling that is usually the aura of an unconscious mechanism,of a repression and a return.For while it is not
at all clear thatBorges's essay on Wilkins"harmonizesso well" with
the subject of Lacan's "Seminar" thatit was worthcalling attention
to that essay in a footnote,it is quite clear that another work of
Borges's harmonizes only too well with the subject of Lacan's
"Seminar," and it is that work, the detectivestory"Death and the
Compass," of which,I would suggest,the essay on Wilkinsreminds
Lacan at crucial moments. We can see just such a moment in the
passage quoted above in which Borges illustratesWilkins'sanalytic
language by constructingthe word for flame, deba. He startswith
the two-letterroot de, an element; then in the second step adds the
consonant b to specifythe element fire; and in the thirdstep adds
the vowel a to specifya portionof thatelement,a flame-a threestep process to produce a four-letterword that cannot help but
remind us of the way that the successive murders in "Death and
the Compass" each add, as part of a supposed cabalisticrite,anotherletterto the spellingof a four-lettername composed of three
differentletters,the Tetragrammaton. The resemblance between
essay and story in this regard seems even more strikingwhen
Borges remarksthatin "the words of John Wilkins'sanalyticallanguage ... every letter is meaningful, as the lettersof the Holy
Scriptures were meaningful for the cabalists," the analyticallanguage being "a universal key and a secret encyclopedia (OI, p.
103). One recalls the cabalistictextsthatLonnrot read in tryingto
solve the mysteryof the murders: a work on "the magic and the
terrorof the Tetragrammaton,whichis God's unspeakable name,"
another on "the doctrine that God has a secret name in which (as
in the crystalsphere that the Persians attributeto Alexander of
Macedonia) His ninthattribute,Eternity,may be found-that is to
say, the immediate knowledge of everythingunder the sun that
will be, that is, and that was. Tradition lists ninety-ninenames of
God; Hebrew scholars explain thatimperfectcipher by a mysticfear
ofevennumbers;the Hasidim argue thatthe missingtermstandsfor

M L N
1211
a hundredth name-the Absolute Name" (p. 68, italics mine).

This Absolute Name, which is "the immediate knowledge" of everythingthat is, was, or will be, is in effect"a universal key and a
secretencyclopedia"; it is the apotheosis of thatlinguistictotalityof
representationwhich Wilkins sought in his analytical language,
and as such it confrontsus with the paradox of self-inclusionon
the cosmic level. For the Absolute Name, like "the crystalsphere
that the Persians attribute to Alexander" or that other crystal
sphere that Borges named the Aleph, is a faithfulrepresentation
of everythingin the universe,but it is also one of the thingscontained in that universe. Consequently, any Aleph-likeobject, as a
representationof all the thingsin that universe of whichit is itself
one minute part, must contain withinits compass a faithfulrepresentationof itself,and that representationmust contain withinitselfanother,and so on, Aleph withinAleph, in an infiniteprogression of representationsthat is also an infiniteregressionas each
successive representationis reduced in size to maintain the proportionalrelationshipbetween the original representationand the
universe. This ultimatevanishingof significationin the infiniteas
one pursues an absolute coincidence between the cosmos and its
self-containedimage probably accounts for the cabalists' "mystic
fear of even numbers," the fear that the secret Absolute Name of
God, that hundredth name representinga symbolicapotheosis of
evenness, invokes the condition of zero difference,the condition
where ubiquityand nullibeityare the same.
Given the several resemblances between "Death and the Compass" and "The AnalyticalLanguage of John Wilkins,"one can see
that Lacan's reference to the Wilkinsessay may indeed represent
the returnof a repressed content,which is to say, the surfacingof
Lacan's sense of how much his own reading of "The Purloined
Letter" either owed directly to, or was anticipated by, Borges's
of the Poe storyin "Death and the Compass."
reading/rewriting
if
And certainly Lacan had any misgivings,any anxietyabout the
originalityof his reading, such misgivingscould not help but have
been increased and given focus by M. Pobers' "letter"to the editor
pointingout that the analyticallanguage which Borges attributed
to Wilkinsdid not originatewithhim but was the inventionof another man. Might another Pobers writea letterpointingout that
Lacan's reading of "The Purloined Letter" did not originatewith
him, a letter arguing that Lacan's reading had either been influenced, or at the very least anticipated, by Borges's reading/

1212
JOHNT. IRWIN
rewriting,so that Lacan's reading, like the purloined letteritself,

was out of place, not the firstbut the second instanceof thisparticular interpretationof the tale? If thisoriginalityanxietyexisted for
Lacan, then his footnoteto Borges would be the trace of an inner
division,the visible mark of his inability,on the one hand, to acknowledge
consciously
a debt of influence to, or the simple priority
of, Borges in a matterso central to his interpretationof Poe's tale,
and of his equal inability,on the other hand, not to acknowledge
unconsciously
his sense of thisdebt or priority.Or perhaps it is less a
matterof Lacan's unwillingnessto acknowledge Borges as a precursor than of his reluctance as a psychoanalyst,which is to say,as
a scientist,a writerof non-fictionprose, to acknowledge an interpretiveinfluence or priorityoriginatingin a work of fiction,since
such an acknowledgement would seem to undermine the privileged, "scientific"status of Lacan's reading of Poe by suggesting
the imaginative (not to say, fictive)component of psychoanalytic
interpretation.If thiswere the case, then the footnotecould be an
unconscious compromise that lets Lacan acknowledge Borges not
by citingone of his stories but by referencingone of his analytic
essays,a non-fictionwork whose veiled resemblanceto "Death and
the Compass" allows it to serve as a screen figure for the tale. In
either case-originality anxiety or the privilegingof psychoanalyticdiscourse-the resultwould be the same: the oddly gratuitous
footnotepointingout a trivialcoincidence.
That the structuresof specular self-consciousnesselaborated in
Borges's "Death and the Compass" and in Lacan's "Seminar on
'The Purloined Letter' " involve essentially the same geometric
configuration-a figure formed by the mirror-doublingof a triangle-can be seen quite clearlyin a diagram thatLacan included
as part of a commentaryon the "Seminar" in his Ecrits.Discussing
"the dialectic of intersubjectivity"'16presented in the "Seminar,"
Lacan identifiesits centralmechanismas thatreciprocalimaginary
objectificationof self and Other found in the Lacanian mirror
stage. According to Lacan, the mirror stage in human development occurs between the sixth and the eighteenthmonths when
the child, lacking motor control of his body, "anticipateson the
imaginarylevel the future acquisition and masteryof his bodily
integrity."This "imaginaryintegration... broughtabout through
identificationwiththe image of a similarbeing . .. as a total form
... is illustratedand realized in the concrete experience in which
17 To illustratethe
the child perceives his own image in a mirror."

1213
M L N
in the "Semspecular nature of "the dialectic of intersubjectivity"

inar," Lacan uses the followingdiagram:
- -
(Es) S--
SCHEMA
L:
O'utre
?utre
(moi)a
(Ecrits,1:66)
This figure representingthe mirror-doublingof two trianglesis

the reciprocal of the geometric shape that Borges uses in "Death
and the Compass" to figure the face-to-facemeeting of the two
men "whose minds work in the same way" and who "may be the
same man." The differenceis that Borges representsthe mirrordoubling of a triangularstructureas the projectiondownward of a
second trianglefrom the base of the first,while Lacan represents
thissame mirror-doublinginherentin "the dialecticof intersubjectivity"as the projection upward of a second triangle from the
vertexof the first:
XI

JOHNT. IRWIN
1214
VII
Since the self-includingstructureof "The Purloined Letter" has
vortexany inthe effectof drawing into its progressive/regressive
terpretationof it, I am resigned to my part in the casual comedy,
ready to feign astonishmentshould some futureinterpreterpoint
out thatjust as Lacan and Derrida in reading the tale replayed the
game of even and odd in the criticalregister,so I have in reading
the tale replayed Lonnrot's geometrical response to Scharlach's
quadrangular maze. Which is to say that in writingan essay about
Poe's "Purloined Letter" and the readings of it by Lacan, Derrida,
and Johnson (i.e., in observing the quadrangular hermeneutic
figureformed by the literarytextand a cumulativeseries of three
interpretations),I have in effectadded one more side to thathermeneutic figure,a fifthside adumbrating an infiniteprogression
of interpretations,while at the same time I have, like Lonnrot with
his regressivestraight-linelabyrinth,introduced between points A
and B in the hermeneutic figure, i.e., between Poe's tale and
Borges's "Death and
Lacan's reading, another story/interpretation,
the Compass," that adumbrates an infiniteregression of influin the interpretivetraditionof the analyticdetective
ence/priority
genre. In pursuing this regression,one could, for example, introduce between "Death and the Compass" and "The Purloined
(1892); and between
Letter" Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery
Borges and Zangwill, H. G. Wells's "The PlattnerStory" (1897);
and between Zangwill and Poe, Lewis Carroll's ThroughtheLooking
Glass (1872), and so on endlessly. But that is another task for a
differentwork. For the presentI stand ready,should someone unmask my replaying of Lonnrot's maneuver, to slap my forehead
with the palm of my hand (like Clarence Day on reading in his
morning paper that there had been another wreck on the New
Haven) and exclaim, "Oh gad!"
TheJohnsHopkinsUniversity
NOTES
Fiction:Crimeand
1 Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder," in Detective
eds. Dick Allen and David Chacko (New York: Harcourt Brace JoCompromise,
vanovich, 1974), p. 398.
2 Edgar Allan Poe, CollectedWorksofEdgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott,
3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1969-78), 2: 521n. All
subsequent quotations from Poe are taken fromthisedition.

M L N
1215
3 Jorge Luis Borges, "Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth,"in The
Alephand OtherStories,1933-1969, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New
York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), p. 123. All subsequent quotations fromBorges's fiction are taken fromthis edition.
4 Jacques Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'," trans.JeffreyMehlman,
Yale FrenchStudies,48 (1972), p. 41. Unless otherwisenoted, all subsequent quotationsfrom the "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter' " are taken fromthisedition.
5 Barbara Johnson, "The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida," in The Critical Difference
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1980), p. 118.
All subsequent quotations fromJohnson are taken fromthisedition.
6 Jacques Derrida, "The Purveyorof Truth," trans.W. Domingo, J. Hulbert, M.
Ron, and M.-R. Logan, Yale FrenchStudies,52 (1975), p. 100. All subsequent
quotations fromDerrida are taken fromthisedition.
7 Webster's
New WorldDictionaryof theAmericanLanguage, College Edition (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1964), p. 1359, "simple." The etymologies of "even" and "odd" are also taken fromthisedition.
8 D. P. Simpson, Cassell'sLatin Dictionary(New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 556,
"simplex."
9 The EncyclopaediaBritannica,Eleventh Edition, 29 vols. (New York: The Encyclopaedia Britannica Co., 1911), 27: 254.
10 S. K. Heninger,Jr.,The Cosmographical
Glass:RenaissanceDiagramsoftheUniverse
(San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1977), p. 83, fig. 52b. All
subsequent quotations referringto Fludd's diagram are cited from Heninger.
This diagram was brought to my attentionby my studentJames Boylan.
11 Jorge Luis Borges, "From Someone to Nobody," in OtherInquisitions,
1937-1952,
trans. Ruth L. C. Simms (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), p. 148. All
subsequent quotations from Borges's essays are taken from this edition, designated OI in the text.
12 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The CompleteWorksof Ralph Waldo Emerson,ed. E. W.
Emerson, 12 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-04), 9: 195. See also
Borges, OtherInquisitions,
p. 69.
13 Howard Haycraft,MurderFor Pleasure: The Life and Timesof theDetectiveStory
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984), p. xxi.
14 An Intermediate
Greek-English
Lexicon(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1980), p.
171.
15 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, JorgeLuis Borges: A LiteraryBiography(New York:
E. P. Dutton, 1978), p. 382. All subsequent quotations fromMonegal are taken
fromthis edition.
16 Jacques Lacan, Jcrits,2 vols. (Paris: tdition du Seuil, 1966), 1: 66.
17 Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, "Mirror Stage (Stade du miroir)," trans.
Peter Kussell and JeffreyMehlman, Yale FrenchStudies,48 (1972), p. 192.


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does one both present the analyticsolution of a mysteryand at the

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The thirdsees thatthefirsttwoglancesleavewhatshouldbe hidden

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This content downloaded from 77.105.51.80 on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:32:16 PM

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Minister'srole, thus shiftingthe Ministerinto the role played by

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reading of Lacan and Derrida is meant to free her fromhaving to

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This content downloaded from 77.105.51.80 on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:32:16 PM

earlier critical essays, a numerical position that reinscribes the

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ically occurs again and again in her essay. As we noted, it is the

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definitionof the "classes"whichthe formeris to include completely

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infinitelyself-consciousabout self-consciousness.Or put another

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as G6del's proof and Borges's (and Carroll's and Royce's) map of

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mind may be derived fromwhat thatperson saysor does or tellsus

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Purloined Letter" when he has Dupin, in arguing against those

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with itselfthat is most clearly perceived when thoughttries to be

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a part that cannot be halved again, a thing so small that, being

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billon'sAtreecopied out in Dupin's own handwriting,a hand with

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in which Dupin shiftsthe Ministerfrom the third to the second

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years: the reading that Borges gives of "The Purloined Letter"

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Appropriately,the letterpredictingthat only three men will be

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vided among three people by doubling the portionof one of them

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At the center of the upper triangle (whose angles represent the

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of a line inverts, of course, the figure of infinite progression

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murders of Yarmolinskyin the north, Azevedo in the west, and

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from the pursuer's abilityto follow a trail until he arrives in the

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loined letter, bear in mind Zangwill's locked room." To which