Joyce’s Jouissance, or a New Literary Symptom

Before systematically engaging with the last writer to be commented upon at some length by Lacan — Joyce — it might be useful by way of introduction to return briefly to Gide — an author for whom Lacan had a peculiar fondness and tended to see as Joyce’s French counterpart. In April 1975, at a time when he was immersed in a spate of critical work on Joyce following an invitation to open the June 1975 International James Joyce Symposium in Paris, Lacan quoted Gide’s ironical novel,

Paludes

:

It is worth giving all its due to the proverb translated and glossed by André Gide in

Paludes — Numero deus impare gaudet

, which he translates as ‘Number two is happy being odd’ (

‘Le numéro deux se réjouit d’être impair’

). As I have said for some time, this is quite right, since nothing would realize the two if there was not the odd, the odd that begins with three — which is not obvious immediately and makes the Borromean knot necessary.

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