The Sinthome: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII

"Ten times, an elderly grey-haired man gets up on the stage.Ten times puffing and sighing. Ten times slowly tracing out strange multi-coloured arabesques that interweave, curling with the meanders of his speech, by turns fluid and uneasy.A whole crowd looks on, transfixed by this enigma-made-man, absorbing the ipse dixit and anticipating some illumination that is taking its time to appear. Non lucet. It’s shady in here, and the Théodores go hunting for their matches.Still, they say, cuicumque in sua arte perito credendum est, whosoever is expert in his art is to be lent credence.At what point is a person mad? The master himself poses the question. That was back in the day. Those were the mysteries of Paris forty years hence. A Dante clasping Virgil’s hand to be led through the circles of the Inferno, Lacan took the hand of James Joyce, the unreadable Irishman, and, in the wake of this slender Commander of the Faithless, made with heavy and faltering step onto the incandescent zone wher