Volume 10, Number 1
June 1977
Textual Analysis of a Tale
By Edgar Poe
Roland Barthes
Translated by Donald G. Marshall
University of Iowa
Editorial Note
This essay is the third in our current series of translations sampling contemporary European responses to Poe (see Poe Studies,
9 119761, 1-6, 33-39). “Analyse textuelle d’un conte dEdgar
Poe” originally appeared in SImiotique nawotiue et textuelle, ed.
Claude Charbrol (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1973), pp. 29-54.
The translation is published by permission of the author and
Librairie Larousse.
Translator’s Note
I think Poe would have thoroughly enjoyed Roland Barrhes’
essay. Its elaborate and playful rationalism is quite in the
vein of the “PMasophy of Composition.” Barthes has
more formal schooling (in dassics and theater) than Poe
had,but is also something of a polymath and autedidact,
well-read in linguistics, semiotics, mass culture, and psychoanalysis. His suuctural Freudian study of Racine precipitated a heated controversy,and he has written on authors
as diverse as Rabbe-Graet, Breclmt, Loyola, Fourier, Sade,
a d Michela Now firmly entrenched at the frcole Pratique
des Hautes Etudes, he remains essentially a man of letters,
rather than an academic With immense curiosity and immense style, he combines an admirable capacity for and
ability to communicate a sympathetic pleasure in texts.
Any French critic w d his salt writes on Poe sooner or
later (though Barthes says his conscious motive in choosing ‘Vddemat” was m e d y pedagogic). But anyone with
a sense of Poe’s own diverse interests and lively intelligence
may suspect a deeper affinity (and Barthes admits his
unconscious may have done the choosing).
erudition functions like Poe’s
For one thing, B&
“science.” This essay deploys--neither superficially nor
incorrectly-terms and notions from the linguists Roman
Jakobson and Bmile Benveniste, from philosophers as different as Jacques Derrida and J. L Austin, and from a
range of disciplines including psychoanalysis, medicine,
mathematics, and dassical rhetoric. As with Poe, the erudition is aimed at an effect: in Barthes’ case, pleasure. This
idea has figured in his critical thinking from the beginning
and takes stage center in The Pleaswe of the Text ( 1973).
We shodd remember, I think, that Barthes’ work aims
at pure pleasure, at playing the game. We might think
of the recreation in ingeniously constructed detective
stories or of those vastly intricate conventions of description which help the love-struck poet concentrate intently
on his (or her) beloved’s minutest particularity. Perhaps
Barthes was inspired by classical philology-his very typography may recall the commentaries and afpratus
critic11s of textual editing, though these blossom here
under the warm double sun of semiotics and psychoanalysis. Certainly, the true philologist’s devotion to detail
is directly proportionate to his passion for the text. The
reader in a hurry may find this frustrating, but to the
text’s true lover it is mpdt and drink.
Poe was similarly fasdnated with detail: the “Marginalia’’ on punctuation were not written merely to fill
space. Such fascination is, in fact, the mark of the artist.
No one ever wrote a poem or novel vaguely. Poe may
be the earliest of American authors who confounds our
distinction between critical intelligence and creative imagination. He insisted his writings were not produced in an
unconscious trance of inspiration, but resulted if anything
from a hypertrophy of self-consciousness.Barahes similarly
argues that the distinction between writer and critic, between writer and reader, is artificial. The critic reads a
writing, but he writes his reading. It is notable that Barthes
transcribes Poe’s text absolutely literally, line by line,
without any of the selection or rearrangement by which
a literary critic customarily d e s a text fit his interpretation, subordinating it to the coherence of his own thought.
Barthes’ commentary is interlinear: he writes his reading
“between the lines” (the “lexias”). We m y object that
criticism is of course a parasitic discipline, that the writer’s
text is already there, a prodm of original creation. But in
the “Longfellow Wars” that followed his charge of plagiarism, Poe himself concluded that the liability to borrowing
was in direct ratio to the poetic sentiment: “for the most
frequent and palpable plagiarisms, we must search the
works of the most eminent poets.’’ Barthes locates the
borrowing in “codes.” These are structured collection~of
citations which seem, “intuitively” as we say, to make
sense. We could pick out the sentences of a story which
carry the plot (“actional” code); those which rouse or
satisfy the reader’s interest (code of the “Engima”); sentences, phrases, or words which resonate with symbolic
overtones; those which draw on particular knowledge
(“cultural code”); ob those which shape the implicit relation of narrator to reader (“code of communication”).
A text “weave together” all these codes and C,but
does not invent them. Similarly, we unconsciously use the
grammar of English in speaking; we-didn‘t invent that
grammar and m o t consciously change it, though pa”doxically, with myriad s e e r s over long periods of time,
it changes. So with the codes of mass culture, of fashion,
and of literature. Bathes’ criticism aims to catch the fleeting moment of reading, when the actual text meshes with
the alreadyanstituted codes according to which we read
it and make sense out of it.
Barthes would readily admit that his own writings are
also constituted by codes; he does not intend to disguise
the fact, but to revel in it. If he does not explicitly name
other writers he borrows from or dudes to, it is because
the game is played, he assumes, before an audience of
cognoscenti. He expects them to recOgnize the references
and appreciate his subtle variations on them. Consider
the essay’s final observation: writing o a x r s when we can
no longer say exactly who speaks, but only that “there begins to speak.” In French, the phrase is ga commence b
fader. “Gal’ translates Freud‘s “id.” Implicitly, it is the
unconscious which speaks in writing. But the codes too
are unconscio-e
the unconscious. (In translating, I
tried to suggest “Here beginneth . . . ,” the formula that
introduces liturgical readings.) Thus a vetsion of what we
recognize as the “intentional fallacy” becomes for Barthes
(as for recent French criticism generally) not just a mgative principle (“do not inquire into the author’s m i n d ) ,
but a positive theory of the nature and origin of the text.
I would not, however, want to leave the impression that
B a d m is playing a hermetic game based on the peculiar
pleasure of manipulating esoteric knowledge. He neither
attempts to lay down the “definitive” interpretation nor
to impose himself as an “authority” whose comments
must be dutifully registered in all future Poe criticism.
He immensely enjoys his reading and finds that dissecting
it minutely increases the pleasure. But he is also generous
with his own reader. He does not want to tell you what
to think, but rather set your thinking in motion; not put
words in your mouth, but be midwife to your own speaking. Barthes’ eminence among recent French critics is due
in large part to the fact that however much or little one
may know about the specialized fidds he delights in,
his writings are immensely entertaining and thought-provoking. The measure of his success is the productivity of
his writing, its desire to nourish the continuous expansion and supplement of critical reading and writing, rather
than the fixed reproduction of the “correct” reading.
A final word about the translation. I have tried to be
accurate, but have sometimes yielded to the temptation to
express an idea, as the phrase goes, in the way I think
Barthes might have said it had he been writing in English.
I have twice added a quotation from Poe’s text where
Barthes’ words were dose to hudelaire’s translation, but
the allusion might be lost in the English. “Significance”
is throughout translated “signifying.” I aimed at the active,
verbal sense of the English present participle, and assumed
Barthes did not use “signifiant” because that word had
already become a technical term in linguistics (normally
translated “signifier”) . I translate “science” as “systematic
knowledge” or “systematic study,” because the overtones
of the English “science” seem to me quite different. The
French reflexive verb is somewhere between the English
active and passive. When, for example, Barthes says the
text “constructs itself,” he should be understood in this
“middle” voice.
D. G.M.
2
Textual Analysis
Structural analysis of narrative is currently in the process
of being fully worked out. All the studies have a single
scientific origin: semiology or the systematic study of significations. But already (and this is good) they show
divergences from each other, according to the critical view
each takes of the scientific status of semiology, that is, of
its own discourse. These (constructive) divergences can be
grouped under two main trends. According to the first,
analysis, confronting all the narratives in the world, tries
to establish a nartztiue model (formal, of course), a structure or a grammar of Narrative, beginnkg from which
(once it is found) each p r t i d a r narrative will be analyzed in terms of deviations. According to the second
trend, the narrative is immediately subsumed (at least
when it lends itself to being so) beneath the notion of
“Text,” space, process of significations at work, in a word,
signifying ( I will return to this word at the end), which
one observes not as a finished, closed product, but as a
production in pmess of making itself, “plugged into”
other texts, other codes (this is intertextuazity), thereby
articulated with society, History, not along paths fixed
in meaning, but c i t a t i d . It is necessary, then, in a certain
manner, to distinguish structural analysis from textual analysis, though I do not here wish to declare them antagonistic. Structural analysis properly so-called is especially
applicable to oral narrative (to myth). Textual analysis,
which I will try to practice in the following pages, is applicable exclusively to written narrative.’
Textual analysis does not try to describe the structure
d a work. It does not aim to record a m c t u r e , but rather
ta produce a moving structuration of the text ( a structuration which displaces itself from reader to reader throughout the length of History). It aims to remain within the
signifying volume of the work, within its signifying.
Textual analysis does not seek to know what determines
a text (what brings it together as the final term of a
c a d i t y ) , but rather how it breaks out and disperses itself. We shall therefore take a narrative text, and we shall
read it, as slowly as necessary, stopping as often as necessary (ease is a capital dimension of our labor), attempting
to mark and to class without rigor not all the senses of the
text (that would be impossible, for the text is open to
infinity: no reader, no subject, no systematic study can
stop the text) but the forms, the codes, according to which
the senses are possible. We shall mark the aflroaches of
sense. Our aim is not to find the sense, nor wen a sense
of the text, and our labor is no kin to literary uiticism of a
hermeneutic type (which seeks to interpret the text according to the truth it thinks is kept concded in it), such
as for example Marxist criticism or p s y c h d y t i c uiticism. Our god is to come to conceive, imagine, live the
plural of the text the opening of its signifying. What is
at stake in this labor is not limited then, I think, to the
academic treatment of the text (even were it overtly
methodological), nor even to literature in general. It concerns a theory, a practice, a choice which find themselves
taken up in the struggle between men and between signs.
In order to proceed to the textual analysis of a narrative, we shall follow a certain number of working procedures (let us speak of elementary rules of manipulation,
rather than methodological principles; the latter word
would be too ambitious and in particular ideologically
debatable, to the extent that “method too often postulates
a positivist result). We shall reduse these prxedures to
four steps set out in summary fashion, preferring to let
the theory run h g within the analysis of the text itself.
We shall say for the moment just what is necessaty to
begin as quickly as possible the analysis of the tale which
we have chosen.
1. We shall cut up the text which I propose we study
into contiguous and in general very short segments (a sentence, a partiopl of a sentence, at mmt a group of three or
four sentences). We shall number these fragments beginning with 1 (for a dozen pages, there will be 150 segments). These segments are unities of reading, hence I
have suggested calling them lexirPS.2 A lexia is evidently
a textual signifkr. But since OUT aim here is not to observe
signifim (our task is not stylistic), but sense, the cutting up need not be theoretically founded. Since it lies
within discourse and not within langaage, we need not expect an easily perceived homology between signifier and
signified. We do not know how one corresponds to the
other, and consequently we ought to be willing to cut up
the sigdfier without being guided by the underlying segmentation of the signified. In sum, the Pgscelling out of the
narrative text into lexias is purely empirical, dictated by
convenience: the lexia is an asbiuary product, it is simply
a segment in the interior of which oite observes the division of senses. It is what surgeons would call an operating
field: the useful lexia is one through which there passes
only one, two, or three senses (superposed within the volume of the piece of text).
2. For each lexia, we shall observe the senses which it
sets in motion. By sense we evidently do not mean the
sense of the words or groups of words such as the dictionary or grammar, in short acquaintance with the French
language, would sufficiently account for. W e mean the
connotations of the lexia, h e secondary senses. These senses
of comotation can be associations. For instance, the physical description of a character, stretching over several sentences, may h v e only one connotative signified, namely,
the “nervousness” of the charaner, although this word
does not appear at the lwd of denotation. Connotations
can also be relations that result from connecting two places
in the text, sometimes oms very far apart (an action begun
here can be c q l e t e d , finished below, v e q much further
on). Our lexias will be, so to say, sieves as fine as possible,
thanks to which we shall “skim off” the senses, the COMOtations.
3. Our analysis will be progressive: we shall go through
the length of the text step by step, at least in theory, since
for reasons of space we shall be able to give here only
two fragments of analysis. That means we shall not seek to
disengage the large (rhetorical) masses of the text. We
shall not construct a map of the text, and we shall not seek
its thematic. In a word, we s h d not do an explication of
the text, unless we give the word “explication” its etymological sense, to the extent that we anfold the text, leaf
through its layers. We shall leave to our analysis even the
pacing o f the reading: simply, this reading will be, as
it were, filmed in slow motion. This way of proceeding is
important for theory: it signifies that we do not aim to
reconstitute the structure of the text, but to follow its
s t r l l c N a t h , and that we shall consider the suucturation of
the reading as more important than that of the composition
(the latter being a rhetorical and classical notion).
4. Finally, we shall not worry ourselves out of measure
if in our survey we “forget’’some senses. The forgetting of
senses forms in some sort part of the reading: what matters
to us is to show the depdrtures of senses, not the arrivals
(at bottom, is sense anything other than a departing?).
What founds the text is not an internal, closed, accountable structure, but the issaing of the text onto other texts,
other codes, other signs. What makes the text is the intertextual. We begin to glimpse (by mmns of other systematic studies) that research ought little by little to become a c c u s t o d to the conjunction of two ideas which
for a very long time have passed for contradictory: the
idea of structure and the idea of combinatory infinity.
The reconciliation of these two postulations h~ itself
on us now because language, with which we are beginning
to be better acquainted, is at once infinite and structured.
These remasks are enough, I believe, to begin the analysis of the text (it is always necessary to cede to the impatience of the text, never to forget, whatever may be the
imperatives of the study, that the pleasltre of the text is
our law). The text which has been chasen is a short narrative by Edgax Poe, in the translation by Badlaire: “The
Facts in the Case of M. Valdem~t..”~
My choice--consciously, at least, for it is perhaps in fact my unconscious which
has chown--has
been governed by two pedagogic considerations: I needed a very short text to be able to master
entirely the signifying surface (tihe succession of lexias) ;
and one symbolically very dense, so that the analyzed text
would concern us continually, beyond any idiosyncrasy:
who would not be cmerned by a text af which death is
the explicit “subject”?
I ought to add, frankly, this: analyzing the signifying
of a text, we voluntarily abstain from treating certain
problems. One will not speak of the author, a
g
a
r Poe, nor
of the literary history of which he forms part. One will
take no account of the fact that the labor will be carried
out on a translation. W e shall take the text such as it is,
such as we read it, withaut worrying ourselves to know if
within a university department it belongs to English rather
than to French or philosophy. That does not necessarily
mean that these problems will not come up in (xu. analysis.
On the mntra.ty, they will come up in the proper sense of
the term: analysis is a crossing over the text; these problems can be pointed out under the heading of cultural
citations that set out from a code, not from fixed meanings.
One last word, by way perhaps of conjuration, of exorcism: the text which we shall analyze is neither lyric
nor political, it speaks neither of lave nor of society, it
speaks of death. That is to say that we must remove m e
particular censure: that which is attached to the sinister.
We shall do so by persuading ourselves that weq censure
counts equally for others: to speak of death outside all
religion is to lift at once the religious and the rationalist
interdiction.
3
Analysis of lexias 1 to 17
(1) The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
(2) Of cowse I shall not pretend to consider it any
matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M . Valdemur has excited discussion. I t would have been a miracle
had it not-especially under the cucumstances. ( 3 )
Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the
affair from the public, at least for the pesent, or until
we had farther opportunitks for investigation-through
ow endeayors to effect this-(4) a garbled or exaggerated accownt made its way into society, and became the
source of “ a n y unpleasmt ntisrepresentations, and, very
aaturally, of a great deal of disbelief.
(5) I t is now rendered necessary that I give the facts
-as far as I compehend them myself. ( 6 ) They are, JUGcinctly, these:
(7) My attention, for the last three years, had been
repeatedly druwn to the subject of Mesmerism; ( 8 ) and,
about nine months ago, it occurred to me, quite suddenly,
that in the series of exeeriments made hitherto, ( 9 ) there
have been a very r e w k a b l e and most unaccountable omission: (IO)-no person had as yet been mesmerized in
articulo d s . ( 1 1 ) I t remained to be seen, (12) f h t ,
whether, in such codition, there existed in the patient
my susceptibility to the magnetic influence; ( 1 3 ) secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased
by the condition; ( 1 4 ) thwdly, to what extent, or for how
long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the fwocess. (15) There were other points to be
ascertdned, (16) but these most excited my curiosity ( 1 7 )
-the last in especial, from the immmsely important
character of its consequences.
(1) “The Truth in the Case of M. Valdemar” [Baudelaire’s title; tr.].
The function of titles has not been thoroughly studied,
at least from a structural point of view. What one can say
immediately is that society, for commercial motives, needing to turn the text into a commodity, a piece of merchandise, has need of operators that murk the brand. The title has
as function to mark or brand the beginning of the text,
that is to constitute the text as merchandise. Every title
therefore has many senses at once, among them at least
two: 1 ) that which it sates, tied to the contingency of
what follows it; 2 ) the very announcement that a piece
of literature will follow (that is to say, in fact,a piece of
merchandise). Otherwise put, the title always has a double
function: enunciative and deictic.4
a ) To announce a truth is to stipulate that there is
an enigma. The p i n g of the enigma results (on the level
of signifiers) : from the word “truth” [Poe: “facts”; tr.];
from the word “case” (that which is exceptional, hence
m k 4 hence signifying, and consequently that the sense
of which must be found); from the definite article the
(there is only one truth, hence the whole labor of the text is
necessary to enter in at this strait gate); from the cataphoric5 form implied by the title: what follows will actualize what is announced, the resolution of the enigma is
already announced; note that the English says: “The Facts
in the Case . . .”: the signified envisioned by Poe is of the
empirical order, that envisioned by the translator into
4
French (Baudelaire) is hermeneutic: the truth refers therefore to the exact facts, but also perhaps to their sense.
However that m y be, one will code t h i s first sense of the
lexia: Enigma, posing (the enigma is the general name of
a code, the posing is only one of its terms).
b ) One could speak the truth without announcing it,
without d i n g reference to the word. If one speaks about
what one will say, if one doubles language into two layers
so that the first caps the second in some way, one does
nothing orher than have recourse to a meta-language.
Hence the ma-linguistic code is present here.
c ) This meta-linguistic announcing functions like an
“appetizer”: the point is to give the reader an appetite
(a procedure akin to ‘‘suspense”). The natrative is a commodity, which is brought forward after some “puffery.”
This “puffery,” this “appetizer,” is one term from the narrative code (rhetoric of narration).
d ) A proper name ought always to be questioned carefully, for the proper name is, so to say, the prince 04 signifiers. Its social and symbolic connotations are rich.
One can read into the name Valdemsw at least the two
following comotations: 1 ) presence of a socio-ethnic
code: is it a German name? Slavic? In any case,not AngloSaxon. This little enigma, which is here implicitly formulated, will be resolved at no. 19 (Valdemar is Polish);
2 ) “Valdemar” is “the valley of the sea”;oceanic abyss,
m i n e depth is a theme dear to Poe: the gulf refers to
what is doubly outside nature, beneath the waters and
beneath the earth. Hence, from the point of view of analysis two codes leave their trace here: a mio-ethnic code
and a (or the) symbolic code ( I will return to these codes
a little later).
e ) To say “M(onsieur)Valdemar” is not the same thing
as to say “Valdemar.” In many tales, Poe uses simply first
names (Ligeia, E l m Morella). The presence of this
Monsieur carries an effect of social reality, of the historically real: the heto is socialized, made part of a definite
society, in which he is provided with a civil title. We must
therefore write: social code.
(2) “Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any
matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M.
Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a
miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances.”
a ) This sentence (and those which follow immediately) evidently function to stimulate the reader’s expectation, and it is for that reason that they are apparently
insignificant: what one wmts is the solution of the enigma
posed by the title (the “truth”). But one delays even the
statemem of this enigma. This must then be coded: delay
in posing the enigma.
6) Same connotation as in ( 1 ) c : the point is to excite
the reader’s appetite (Narrative code).
c ) The word “extraordinary“ is ambiguous: it refers
to what departs from the norm, but not necessarily from
nature (if the case remains “medical”). But it can also
refer to what is supernatural, has passed over into transgression (it is the “fantastic” in the tales-precisely “extraordinary” ones-which Poe recounts). The ambiguity
of the word here signifies: we are concerned with a horrible tale (beyond the limits of name) and nevertheless
one covered by the scientific alibi (connoted here by “discussion,” which is a word used by l m e d persons). This
alloy is in fact d t u r a l : the mixing of the strange and
dw scientific had its apogee in this part of the nineteenth
century to which Poe roughly belongs. One was stimulated
20 observe the supernatural scientifically (hypnotism,
spiritism, telepathy, etc.). The s u p e r n d took a scientific, rationalist alibi. Such is the cri da coew o f this positivist age: if only one could believe scientifically in immotcality! This cultural code, which, in order to simplify,
I have called scientific code, will have a major importance
in che whole narrative.
(3) “Through the desire of all parties concerned, to
keep the affair from the public, at least for the present,
or until we had farther opportunities for investigation
-through our endeavors to effect this-[.
.]”
.
a ) Same scientific code, resumed by the word ”investigation” (which is also a word pertaining to a policeman or
detective: one knows the fortunes of the detective novel
in the second half of the nineteenth century, starting, precisely, from Poe;what matters, ideologically and structurally, is the conjunction of the code of the detection enigma
and of the code of science-of scientific discourse-which
proves chat srmctural analysis can work together very well
with ideological analysis).
b ) The motives of the secret are not stated. They can
p r d from two different codes, present together in the
reading (to read is also, silently, to imagine what has been
left silent) : 1) the scientific-deontologicalcode: the doctors and Pue,out of loyalty, prudence, do not wish to make
public a phenomenon which has not been scientifically
elucidated; 2 ) the symbolic code: there is a taboo on living Death: one keeps silent because it is horrible. It must
be said immediately (although the point will be stressed
in what folluws) that these two codes are andecidable
(one cannot choose one over the ocher), and that it is this
very undecidability which makes a good narrative.
c ) From the point of view of narrative actions (this is
the first we shall meet), a sequence is here enticingly
initiated: “to keep hidden” implies in effect, logically (or
pseudo-logically) , consequent operations (for example:
uncovering). Here must then be posed the first term of
an a c t i d sequence: t o keeF hidden, whose sequel we
shall find later.
( 4 ) “[. . .] a garbled or exaggerated account made its
way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally, of a
great deal of disbelief.”
a) The demand for truth, that is to say the enigma,
has already been posed twice (by the word “truth” and by
the expression “exuaordinary case”).The enigma is here
posed a third time (to pose an enigma means in structural terms: to state: there is an enigma), by adducing
the error to which it has given rise: the error, posed here,
retroactively justifies the title (“The truth about . . .”)
by anaphora. The redundance brought about by the pOJilZg
of the enigma (one repeats in many ways that there is at1
enigma) has its value as an “appetizer”: the point is to
excite the reader, to procure customers for the narrative.
b ) In the actional sequence “To hide,” a second term
appears: the effect of the secret, distortion, false opinion.
the charge of mystification.
( 5 ) “It is now rendered necessary that I give factsas far as I comprehend them myself.”
a ) The emphasis placed on “the facts” presumes the
entanglement of two codes, between which, as in ( 3 ) b,
it is impossible to decide: 1) the law, scientific deontology
subjects the scientist to servitude, the obbserver to the fact;
the opposition of fact to rumor is an old mythic theme.
Invoked in a fiction (and invoked in emphatic fashion
by a word in italics), the fact has the structural function
(for the real import of this artifice dupes no one) of
authenticating the rate, not to make believe that it r d y
happened, but to keep the discourse to reality, and not to
fabling. The fact is thus grasped in a paradigm in which
it is opposed to mystification (Poe recognized in a private
letter that the tale of M. Valdemar was a pure mystification: it is a mere hoax). The code which structures the
reference to fact is then the scientific code, with which we
are already acquainted, 2 ) however, any more or less highsounding recourse to Fact can also be considered as the
symptom of a conflict between the subject and the symbolic. To clamor aggressively in favor of “Fact pure and
simple,” to clamor for the triumph of the referent, is to
bring into doubt signification, is to mutilate the signifier
which diJ$jaces fact, is to refuse the other scene, that of the
unconscious. By repressing the symbolic supplement, the
narrator (even if in our eyes he does so by a narrative
feint) takes on an imaginary role, that of the scientist.
The lexia’s signified is then the asymbotism of the subject
of the enunciation: I presents itself as asymbolic; the denial
of the symbolic evidently forms part of the symbolic code
itself.
b ) The actioml sequence “To hide” unfolds: the third
term states the necessity to rectify the distortion marked
in (4) b. The rectification counts as: to wish to discloJs
(what was hidden). This narrative sequence “To hide”
evidently constitutes a stimulus to narrative. In one sense,
it justifies it, and by the Same token alludes to its value
(its comting-for), in fact a commodity: I relate, says the
narrator, in exchange for an exaction of counter-error, of
truth (we are in a civilization where truth is a value,
that is to say a commodity). It is always very interesting
to try to disengage a narrative’s coanting-for: in exchange
for what does one relate? In the Thoasmd and One Nights,
each tale counts for a day of survival. Here, we are apprised
that the tale o f M. Valdemar counts for truth (presented
first as a counter-distortion) .
c ) The I appears explicitly for the first time-it
was
already present in the we of “our endeavors” ( 3 ) ! The
enunciation carries in fact three Z’s, that is to say three
imaginary roles (to say I is to enter into the imaginary) :
1) an I who is a narrator, an artist, motivated by calculations of effect; to this I corresponds a Y o u which is that
of the literary reader, he who reads “a fantastic stoq by
the great writer Edgar Allan Pee”;2 ) a witness I, who
has the capacity to witness to a scientific experiment; the
corresponding Y o u is that of a jury of scientists, of serious
opinion, of the scientific reader; 3 ) an Z who acts, an experimenter, he who will hypnotize Valdemar; the YOU
is then Valdemar himself. In the two latter cases, the motive of the imaginary role is “truth.” W e have here the
three terms of a code we shall call, possibly provisionally,
the code of commmzication. Without doubt between these
5
three roles there is anothex language, that
of the uncon-
scious, which expresses itself neither irt science nor k
literature. Rut that language, which is literally the language
o f iter-dictionl does not say I : our
with its three
persons, is never directly that of the unconscious.
my
(6) “They are, succinctly, these :”
a ) To announce what follows returns to meta-language
(and to the rhetorical code) ; it is the border which marks
the debut of a tale within the tale.
b ) “Succinctly” conveys three mixed and undecidable
connotations: 1) “Have no fear, this will not be too long”:
in the narrative code, this is the mode o f the phatic
(marked out by Jakobsm),’ whose function is to hold
amention, to maintain contact; 2 ) ‘This will be brief because I will stick striatly to the facts”; it is the scientific
code which permits the statement of the scientist’s “denudation,” of the superiority of the daim of fact aver the claim
of ,3 ) to plume oneself on speaking briefly is
in a certain fashion to lay a daim against @ng,
to limit
the supplement of discourse, that is to say the symbolic;
it is to speak the code of the asymbolic.
(7) “My attention, for the last three years, had been
repeatedly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism;”
a) In any narrative, it is necessary to keep an eye on
the chronological code. Here, in this code (“the last three
years”), two values are mingled. The first is in some sort
naive. One notes one of the temporal elements of the experiment which is going to be conducted: the time of its
preparation. The second has no diegetic, operating .function (this is evident from the proof by commutation: if
the narrator had said seuen years instead of three that
would have had no impact on the d e ) . The point then
is to give a pure effect of reality: the number emphatically
connotes the truth of the fact: what is precise is adjudged
real (an illusion, moreover. since there exists, well recognized, a delirium of numbers). We note that linguistically
the word “last” is a “shifter,”8 a coupling-gear: it refers
to the situation of the speaker in time; it therefore reinforces the presentness of the testimony which will follow.
b ) Here begins a long anional sequence, or at very
least a sequence well furnished with terms. Its object is
to get an experiment under way (we are under the alibi
of experimental science). This getting under way, structurally, is not the experiment itself. It is an experimental
program. This sequence counts in fact as the formulation
o f the enigma, which has already been posed repeatedly
(“these is an enigma”), but which has not yet been formulated. In order not to overburden the report of our
analysis, we shall code the “Program” separately, it being
understood that the whole sequence, by proxy, counts as
F e term in the code of the Enigma. Within this sequence
“Program,” we have here the first term: p i n g of the
scientific field of the experiment, mesmerism.
c ) The reference to mesmerism is drawn from a cultural code, one very prominent in this part of the nineteenth century. Following Mesmer (in English, “hypnotism” can be called “mesmerism”) and the Marquis Armand de Puys6gur, who had discovered that hypnotism
could induce sleep-walking, hypnotists and societies for
hypnotism multiplied in France (around 1820). In 1829,
one had been able, it seems,to remove a tumor painlessly
6
under hypnosis. In 1845, the year of OUT story, Braid of
ManChester systematized hypnosis in che form of inducing
a nervous fatigue by the contemplation of a shiny object.
In 1850, at the Mesmeric Hospital of Calcutta, painless
deliveries were achieved. Subsequently Charcot classed the
hypnotic states and delimited hypnotism from hysteria
(1882), but since then hysteria as a clinical entity has
disappeared from hospitals (starting from the moment
when o m stopped observing it). 1845 marks the summit
of rhe scientific illusion: it was believed that hypnosis had
a physiological reality (moreover, Pm, pointing to the
‘‘nervousness’’ of Valdemar, can let the subject’s hysteric
predisposition be understood).
d ) Thematically, hypnotism mmaes (at least at that
epoch) an idea of flztid: something parses from one subject to the other. There is a “said-between” (an hterdiction) between the narrator and Valdemar: this is the code
of communication
(8) “and, about nine months ago, it occurred to me,
quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made
hitherto, I. .]”
a) The chronological code (“nine months”) falls under
the same remarks as those made in (7) 4.
b ) Here is the second term of the sequence “Program”:
a domain has been chosen in ( 7 ) b, hypnotism; it is now
divided up: a ptuticular problem will \beisolated.
.
(9) “1. . .I there had been a very remarkable and most
unaccountable omission :”
a ) The structure of the “Program” continues to be
stated: here is the third term: the experiment which has
noa already been d-d
hence, for any scientist concerned with research, is to be done.
b) This lack of experinvent is not a simple “forgetting,”
or at least (this fargetting is extremely significant: it is
quite simply the forgetting of Death. There had been a
t a b (whioh will be lifted, in the most profound horror).
The connotation belongs to the symbolic code.
(10) “-no person had as yet been mesmerized in a&culo mortis.”
d) Fourth term of uhe sequence “Program”: the content
of the lacuna (evidently this sets up in advance the relationship between the asentian of the lacuna idits definition, within the rhetorical code: to announce/to state precisely).
b ) Latin (iarticdo ntortis)),the language of law and
medicine, produces an effect of scimtificity (scientific
code), but also, by the intermediary of a euphem,ism (to
say in a little known language something one dares not
say in everyday language), designates a m b (symbolic
code). It seems that in Death what is essentially taboo is
the passage, the threshold, the “dying.” Life afld death are
states classed relatively. Moreover, they come into paradigmatic opposition, responsibility for them is taken by
sense, which is always soothing. But the transition between
the two states, or more exactly, as will be the case here,
their encroachmefit, undoes sense, engenders horror: there
is a transgression of an antithesis, of a classification.
“It remained to be seen,”
Details of the “Program” are announced (rhetorical
code and actional sequence “Program”).
(11)
(12) “first, whether, in such condition, there existed in
the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence;”
lo) In the sequence “Program,” this is the first coin
minted fram h e announcement made in ( 11): what is in
question is a first problem to elucidate.
b) This first problem itself gives a title to an organized
sequence (or subsequence of the “Program”). We have
here its first term: formulation of the prablem. Its object
is the very being af hypnotic communication: daes it exist,
yes ar no? (the affirmative reply will come in [78): the
very great textual dismce which separates the question
from ahe reply is determining for narrative structure: it
stuthcrrizes and even obligates us to construct sequences
carefully, each of them being a strand interbraided with
its neighbors).
(13) “secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired
or increased by the condition;”
a ) In the sequence “Program,” here occurs the second
problem (note that problem 11 is tied to problem I by a
logic o f implication: if yes , , then; if no, the whole
mle will cohpse; the alternative, in accordance with the
claim of the discowse, is therefore dodged).
b ) Second subsequence of “Program”-this is problem
11: the first prablem concerned the being of the phenomenon; the second co~lcettls its measurement (all this is
very “scientific”). The reply to the question will be given
in (82). Susceptibility is increased: “In such experiments
with this patient Z had never perfectly succeeded before
, . btlt to my artonishment, 1. .).”
.
.
.
(14) “thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period,
the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the
process.”
a ) This is problem I11 posed by the “Program.”
b) This problem I11 is, like the others, formulatedthis formulation will be reasserted emphatically in ( 17).
The formulation implies two subquestions: 1) up to what
point does hypnosis permit life to encroaoh on death? the
reply is given in (110): ap to the point which still inchdes langaage; 2 ) for how long? This q d m will not
be replied to directly: the encroachment of life on death
(the survival of the hypnotized dead man) will cease at
the end of seven months, but this will be by the arbitrary
intervention of the experimenter. One can then suppose:
infinitely, or at very least, indefinitely within the limits
of observation.
(15) “There were other points to be ascertained,”
The “Program” mentions under a global farm other problems that can be appropriately posed to the anticipated experiment. The Sentence is equivalent to et cetera. Valhry
said that in nature there was not et cetera. We can add:
neither is there in the unconscious. In fact et cetera belongs only to seeming discourse: on the one hand it seems
to play the scientific game of the grand program of experimentatian, it is an operator of the pseudo-real; on the
other hand by glossing over, by ducking the other problems, it reinforces the sense of the questions previously
stated: the strongly symbolic has been pronounced, the
rest is, under the claim of the discourse, only a trifle.
(16) “but these most excited my curiosity,’’
Within the “Program,”the point is to recall globally the
three problems (“recall” or “r6sum6,” like “announcemnt,”
are terms of the rhetorical code).
(17) “-the last in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences.”
a ) Emphasis (term from rhetorical code) is put on
problem 111.
b) Again two undecidable codes: 1) scientifically,
what is at stake is recoil from a biological fact, death; 2 )
symbolically, this is the transgression of the sense which
opposes Life to Death.
Actional Analysis of lexias 18 to 102
Among all the cmnotations we have encountered or at
least marked in this opening of Poe’s tale, w e were able
to define e d n ones as the progressive term of narrative actions. I will r e w n at the end to the different codes
that have been put into play by the analysis, in particular
to the actional code. But before undertaking ,chiis theoretical
chifiation, we can isolate these sequences of actions and
make use 0f them to account economically (while nevertheless preserving the structural import of our remarks)
for what follows in the d e . In fact, it will be understood,
it is not possible to analyze minutely (still less exhaustively) the whole of Poe’s tale: that would take too long. We
intend, however, to take up again the textual analysis of
same lexias from the canclusion of the work (lexias 103110). To join the fragment which we have analyzed and
that which we shall analyze, on the plane of intelligibility,
it will suffice that we indicate the principal actiond sequences which arise and develop (but do not necessarily
terminate) between lexia 18 and lexia 102. Unhappily,
we cannot, for reasons of space, give the text of Poe which
separates our two fragments, nor even the numbering of
the intermediate lexias. We give only the actional sequences (moreover without even being able to set out
the details term by term), to the detriment of the other
codes, which are more numerous and certainly more interesting, essentially because these sequences coastimte, by
definition, the anecdotal armature of the tale ( I shall make
a negligible exception for the chronological code, by indicating by an initial or final notation the p i n t in the
narrative where the outset of each sequence is situaied) .
I. Program: the sequence began and largely unfolds in the analyzed fragment. Problems posed by the projected experiment are
recognized. The sequence follows its course and closes with the
choice of the subject (of the patient) needed for the experiment:
this will be M. Valdemar (the proposing of the program occurs
nine months before the moment of the narration).
11. Hypnotizing (or rather, if this very heavy neologism be
permitted: hypnotizability). Before choosing M. Valdemar as
subject for the experiment, P. has tested his hypnotic susceptibility.
It exists, but the results are nevertheless deceptive: M. V.’s
obedience carries some resistances. The sequence enumerates the
terms of this test, which is made before the experiment is decided
upon and whose chronological situation is not stated precisely.
111. Medical deabb: actional sequences are most often stretched
out, interlaced with other sequences. By informing us of the bad
state of health of M. V. and of the fatal prognosis reported by
the doctors, the narrative cuts up a very long sequence which
runs the whole fength of the tale and will be finished only with
the last lexia ( 150), with the liquefaction of M. V.’s body. The
episodes (of this sequence) are numerous, interspersed, but nonetheless scientifically logical : ill health, diagnosis, condemnation,
deterioration, agony, mortification (physiological signs of death)
7
-it
is at this moment of the sequence that our second textual
analysis will be situateddisintegration, liquefacation.
IV. Contract: P. proposes to M. Valdemar to hypnotize him
when he arrives at the threshold of death (since he knows he is
condemned to it) and M. V. accepts. There is a contract between
the subject and the experimenter: conditions, proposition, acceptance, articles of agreement, decision to execute, official recording before the doctors (this last point constitutes a sub-sequence).
V. Catdepsy (seven months before the moment of narration,
a Saturday, at 7:55 am.): the last moments of M. V. having
arrived and the experimenter having been apprised by the patient
himself, P. begins the hypnosis in articulo mortis, conformably
to the Program and to the Contract. This sequence can be titled
Catdepsy. It includes, among other terms: hypnotic passes, resistances by the subject, signs of the cataleptic state, checking by
the experimenter, verification by the doccors (the actions of this
sequence take up three hours: it is 10:55).
VI. Intessogatiofi I (Sunday, 3 a.m.): P. interrogates M.
V a l d w under hypnosis four times. It is pertinent to identify
each sequence of interrogation by the reply the hynotized M.
Valdemar makes. I n this first interrogation the reply is: I am
sleeping (the sequences of interrogation contain canonically the
announcement of the question, the question, the delay or resistance
to replying, and the reply).
VII. Interrogation 11: this interrogation closely follows the
first. M. Valdemar then replies: I am dying.
VIII. Interrogation III: the experimenter interrogates anew
the dying and hypnotized M. Valdemar (“do you still sleep?”).
He replies by tying together the first two replies he has already
made: I am sleeping, I am dying.
1X. Interrogation IV: P. tries to interrogate M. V. a fourth
time. He repeats his question (M. V. will reply to it beginning
from lexia 105, cf. infra).
We arrive then at the point in the narrative where we shall
take up again the textual analysis, lexia by lexia. Between
Interrogation 111 and the beginning of the analysis which
will follow there intervenes an important term in the sequence “Medical death”: this is the mortification of M.
Valdemar (101-102). M. Valdemar, under hypnosis, is
henceforth dead, medically speaking. We know that recently, occasioned by organ transplants, the diagnosis of
death has again been put in question: today the testimony
of electro-encephalography is needed. To attest the death
of M. V, Pce himself gathers up (in 101 and 102) all
the clinical signs which at his epoch attest scientifically
the death of a patient: eyes opened and rolled up, cadaverous &in, extinguishing of the hectic spots, fall and slackening of the lower jaw, black tongue, general hideousness,
which causes the assistants to step far back from the bed
(note once more the interbraiding of codes: all these medical signs are also elements of horror; or rather, horror is
always given beneath the alibi of science: the scientific
code and the symbolic code are actualized at the same time,
in an undecidable way).
M. Valdmar being medically dead, the narrative will
have to end: the death of the hero (except in the case of
religious resurrection) closes the tale. The fresh thrust of
the anecdote (setting out from lexia 103) appears then
at once as a narrative necessity (in order for the text to
continue) and a logical scandal. This scandal is that of
the sspplement: in order that there may be supplementing of the narrative, there must be supplementing of life:
once more, narrative coz~tztsfor life.
Textual Analysis of lexias 103 to 110
(103) “I now feel that I have reached a point of this
narrative at which every reader will be startled into
8
positive disbelief. It is my business, however, simply
proceed.”
a) We know that the announcement of a discourse to
come is om term of the rhetorical code (and of the maslinguistic code). We also recognize the “appetizer” value
of this connotation.
6 ) Daty (“it is my business”) to state the facts, without being concerned about disagreements, form part of
the code of scientific deontology.
c ) The promise o f an incredible “real” forms part of
the field of narrative considered as a commodity. That
raises the “price” of the narrative. We have here, then,
in the general code of communication, a sub-code, that of
exchange, of which every narrative is one term, cf. ( 5 ) b.
to
(104) “There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality
in M. Valdemar; and concluding him to be dead, we
were consigning him to the charge of the nurses, 1. .]”
In the long sequence of “Medical death,” .which we
have signaled, mortification has been noted in ( 101) :
it is here confirmd. In ( 101), the state of death of M.
Valdemar had been described (through a catalogue of
indices) ; here it is asserted by means of a ma-language.
.
(105) “when a strong vibratory motion was observable
in the tongue. This continued for perhaps a minute.
At the expiration of this period, I.
a) The chronological code (“a minute”) underpins two
effecxs: an effect of reality-precision, cf. ( 7 ) a, and a dramatic effect: the laborious rising up of the voice, the delivery of the cry, recalls the combat between life and
death: life tries to extricate itself froan the lime-twig of
death, it struggles (or rather here it is death which does
not manage to extricate itself from life: let us not forget
that M. V. is dead: he has to hang on to not life, but
death).
b ) A little before the moment we have reached, P.
has interrogated (a fourth time) M. V.; and before he
replies, he is clinically dead. However, the sequence Interrogation IV has not closed (it is here that the supplement of which we have spoken comes in): the movement
of the tongue indicates that M.V. is going to speak. The
sequence must therefore be constructed thus: pestion
(100) / (medical death) / effort to reply (the sequence
will continue further).
c ) From all evidence, there is a symbolism of the
tongue. The tongue is the word (to cut the tongue is to
mutilate language, as we see in the symbolic ceremony of
punishing blasphemers). More, the tongue has something
visceral (of the interior) and at the same time phallic.
This general symbolism is here reinforced by the fact that
the tongue which moves is opposed (paradigmatically)
to the black and swollen tongue of medical death ( 101).
It is then visceral life, profound life which is assimilated
to the word, and the word itself is fetishized under the
specific case of a phallic organ which starts to vibrate in
a kind d pre-orgasm: the minute-long vibration is the
desire of enjoyment and the desire of speaking: it is the
movement of Desire to arriue at something.
. .]”
.
(106) “1. .] there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a voice, [. .]”
a ) The sequence Interrogation IV continues little by
little, with a great detailing of the global term “Reply.”
.
Certainly, the delaying of reply is well known from the
grammat of Narrative. But it has in general a psychological value. Here, the delay (and the details it brings with
it) is purely psychological: it is the rising up of the voice,
filmed and recorded in slow motion.
b) The voice comes from the tongue ( 105), the jaws
are anly gates. It does not come from the teeth: the voice
which is setting itself ready is not dental, external, civilized ( s t r d dentalism in pronunciation is a sign of “distinction”), but internal, visceral, muscular. Culture values
the dean, skeletal, distinct, dear (the teeth). The voice
of the dead sets out fmm the “thick’ and pasty, from the
internal muscular magma, from depth. Structurally, we have
here one term of the symbolic code.
.
(107) “1. .] -such as it would be madness in me to
attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or three
epithets which might be considered as applicable to it
in part; I might say, for example, that the sound was
harsh, and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole
is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar
sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity.”
a) The meta-linguistic code is here present, by a discourse on the difficulty of maintaining a discourse. Whence
the use of frankly meta-linguistic term: epithets, to define,
to describe.
b ) The symbolism of the Voice is deployed: it has two
characteristics: internal (hollow) and discontinuous (harsh,
broken): this prepares a logical contradiaion (guaranty of
the supernatural): the contrast between the broken and
the gltltinotls (1081, even though the internal authorizes
a sensation of distance (108).
( 108) “There were two particulars, nevertheless, which
I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as
characteristic of the intonation-as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first
place, the voice seemed to reach our ears-at
least
mine-from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern
within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me
(I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make myself comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters
impress the sense of touch.
I have spoken both of ‘sound’ and of ‘voice.’ I mean
to say that the sound was one of distinct-f
even
wonderfully, thrillingly distinct-syllabification.”
a) Here here are many terms of the mem-linguistic
code (rhetorical) : the announcement (“two particulars”),
the resume (“I have spoken of’) and the oratorical precaution (“I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make
myself comprehended”).
b ) The symbolic field of the Voice spreads, by taking
up again the in pmt af lexia 107: 1) the distance (absolute distance): the voice is distant becawe/in order that
the distance between Death and Life is/may be total (the
becawe implies a motive belonging to the real, to what
is “behind’ the paper; the in order that refers to the
necessity of discourse which wants to continue, to survive
insofar as it is discourse; in the notation because/in order
that we accept the twisting together of two claims, that
of the real and that of discourse, we attest the structural
duplicity of all writing). The distance (between Life and
Death) is affirmed in wder to be better denied: it permits
the transgression, the “encr-nt,”
the description of
which is the very object of the tale; 2 ) the stlbterranean:
the themtic of the Voice is in geneml double, contradictory: sometimes it is a light thing, the bird-thing which
flies away with life, sametimes it is a heavy thing, cavernous, which comes from below: it is the attached voice,
anchored like a rcxk; the latter is an old mythic theme:
the chthonian voice, the voice from beyond the grave (this
is the case here); 3 ) discontinuity is the foundation of
language; there is then a supernatural effect in understanding a gelatinous, glutinous, p t y language; the notation has double value: on the one hand, it underscores the
strungmess of this language which is contrary to the very
structure d language; and on the other hand it sums up
the discomforts, the dy~phoria:~
the riven and the sticking,
the gluing (cf. the suppuration of the eyelids at the moment when the dead man is led back from hypnosis to
waking, that is to say is going to enter into true death,
133) ; 4 ) the distinct syllabification constitutes the proximate speech of Death as a language full, complete, mature,
as an essence of language, and not as a language that is
stammering, approximative, babbling, a childish language,
encumbered with nm-language; whence the frightful and
the terrible (“wonderfully, thrillingly distinct”) : there is
a gaping contradiction between Death and Language;
the contrary of Life is not Death (that is a cliche), but
Language: it is undecidable if Valdemar is living or dead;
what is sure is that he speaks, though one cannot refer his
speech to Death or to Life.
c ) W e note an anifice which belongs to the chronological code: “I thought then, and still think’; three temporalities are here co-present: time uf history, of the diegesis’O (“I thought then”), time of writing (“I think at
the moment I am writing”), time of reading (carried along
by the present of writing, we ourselves think at the mment we read). The combination produces an effect of
reality.
(109) “M. Valdemar sPoke-bviously
in reply to the
question I had propounded to him a few minutes before.
I had asked him, it will be remembered, if he still
slept.”
a ) Interrogation IV is still in course: the question is
here recalled (6.
loo), the reply is announced.
b ) The speech of the hypnotized dead man is the
reply precisely to problem 111, posed in (14): g p to
what point can hypnosis arrest death? Here is the reply
to this problem: tcp to the point of langgage.
(110) “He now said: ‘Yes;-no;-I
have been sleeping
-and now-now-1
m
z dead.’”
From the structural point of view, this lexia is simple:
it is the term “reply” (“I a m dead”) to Interrogation IV.
Nevertheless, beyond the diegetic structure (presence of
the lexia in an actional sequence) the connotation of the
word (“I am dead) has an inexhaustible richness. Certainly there exist numerous mythic narratives where death
speaks; but that is in order to say: “I am alive.” There is,
here, a veritable &ax of narrative grammu, a staging of
a speech that is impossible insofar as it is speech: 1 am
dead. Let us try to unfold some of its connotations:
1 ) We have already taken up the theme of encroachment (of Life on Death). Encroachment is a paradig-
9
matic disturbance, a disturbance of sense. In the paradigm
Life/Death, the bar is normally read “against” (verstvs).
It would suffice to read it “over,” in order to produce
enuoachment and destroy the paradigm. That is what
happens here. There is an undue nibbling of one space on
another. The interesting thing is that the encroachment
comes here at the level of hguage. The idea that death
might continue to act once dead is banal. That is what the
proverb “The dead seizes u p n the living,” that is what
the great myths of remorse or of posthumous vengeance,
say. It is what the witticism of Forneret says comically:
“Death teaches incorrigible people how to live.” But here,
nhe action of death is a pure action of h g u a g e and, what
is an acme, this language serves for nothing, it does not
come with a view to action on living persons, it says
nothing if not itself, it designates itself tautologically. Before saying “I am dead,” the voice says simply “I speak.”
It is a little like an example of grammar which refers
to nothing other than language. The uselessness of the
utterance is p t of the scandal: the p i n t is it affirms
an essence which is not in its place (the displaced is the
very form of the symbolic).
2 ) Another scandal of the enunciation is the turning
of the metaphoric back into the literal. It is in effect banal
to utter the phrase “I am dead!”: that’s what a woman
says who has spent the whole aftemam shopping at Bloomingdale’s, who has gone to her hairdresser, etc. The reversal of metaphoric into literal, for just that metaphor,
is impossible: the utterance “I am dead,” strictly literally,
is precluded (even though “I am sleeping” remains literally possible within the field of hypnotic sleep). The point
here then, so to speak, is a scandal of language.
3) The point is also a scandal of the structure of
language (and no longer of discourse). In the ideal sum
of all p i b l e utterances in the language system, the coupling of the first person (I) and of the attribu’te “dead” is
precisely what is radically impossible: it is the empty
poin’t, the blind spot of language structure which the tale
will occupy very exactly. What is said is nothing but this
impossibility: the phrase isn’t descriptive, it isn’t constative,ll it yields no other message than its own utterance:
one can say in a sen.se that it’s a matter here of a performative, but of a kind, surely, that neither Austin mr Benveniste foresaw in their analyses (let us recall that the
performative is the made of utterance according to which
what is uttered refers only to the fact of its being uttered:
I declare war; performatives are always, by necessity, in
the first person, otherwise they slide toward the constative:
he declares w a r ) . Here, the infelicitous phrase performs an
impossibility.
4) F m a properly semantic point of view, the phrase
“I am dead’ asserts two contraries at the same time (Life,
Death): it is an enantioSeme,’2 but once again, itself
unique: the signifier expresses a signified (Death) which
contradicts its utterance. And nevertheless, it is necessary
to go yet further: it isn’t a matter of a simple negation,
in the psychoanalytic sense, “I am dead” meaning then
“I am not dead,” but rather an affirmation-negation: “I
am dead and not dead.” There is here the paroxysm of
transgression, the invention of an unheard-of category: the
trile-false, the yes-no, the death-life is thought as a whole:
indivisible, uncombinable, non-dialectic, for the antithesis
10
implies no third term. It isn’t a two-faced entity, but a
new and single term.
5 ) On the “I am dead,” a psychoanalytic reflection is
still possible. I have said that the phrase effected a scandalous return to the literal. That means that Death, as primordial repressed, erupts directly into language. This return is radically traumatic, as is shown by the image a
little further on of the explosion (147: “amid ejaculations
of ‘dead!’ ‘dead!’ absolutely bllrsting from the tongue and
not from the lips of the sufferer . . .”): the speech “I am
dead’ is an exploded t a b . Now,if the symbolic is the
field of neurosis, the return of the literal, which implies
that symbols are precluded, opens the space of psychosis:
at this moment in the short story, every symbol ceases, as
does every neurosis. It is psychosis which enters into the
text, by the spectacular precluding of the signifier: the
extraordinary of Poe is very much that of m0dne~s.l~
Other commentaries are possible, notably that of
Jacques Derrida. l4 I confine myself to what can be drawn
from structural analysis, trying to show that the unheardof phrase “I am dead” is not at all an unbelievable utterance, but much more radically an impossible uttering.
Before Coming to some methodological conclusions, I
shall recall, on the purely anecdotal level, the end of tbe
story: Valdemar remains dead under hypnosis for seven
months; with the agreement of the doctors, P. then decides
to wake him; the (mesmeric) passes succeed and a little
color returns to Valdemar’s cheeks; but while P. tries to
accelerate the subject’s waking by intensifying the passes,
cries of “dead! dead!” explode on his tongue, and at one
stroke, his whole body shrinks, crumbles, rots beneath the
hands of the experimenter, leaving no more than a “nearly
liquid mass of l a t h s o ~ detestable
f
putridity.”
Methodological conclusions
The remarks which will serve to conclude these fragments
of analysis will necessarily not be “theoretical.” Theory
is not abstract, sperulative: the analysis itself, although
bearing on an accidental text, was already theoretical, in the
sense that it observed (that was its g a l ) a language in
process of forming itself. That is to xiy-or to recallthat we have not proceeded to an explication of the text:
we have simply tried to seize the narrative insofar as it
constructs itself ( which implies simultaneously structure
and movement, system and infinity). Our suructuration
does not go beyond what reading accomplishes spontaneously. The point here then is not, by way of conclusion, to
yield up the “structure” of Poe’s tale, still less of every
narrative, but only to return, in a freer way, less attached
to the progressive unrolling of the text, to the principal
codes which we have marked.
The word code itself ought not to be understood here
in the rigorous, scientific sense of the term. The codes
are simply associative fields, a supra-textual organization
of notations which i m > pa certain idea of structure. The
occurrence of the code is for us essentially cultural: codes
are certain types of dbjd-vtv, of already seen, already read,
already made: the code is the form of this already which
is constitutive of the writing of the world.
Although all the codes are in fact cultural, nevertheless there is one of those we have encountered which we
shall call preferentially cicltilral code: this is the code of
knowledge, or rather of human knowing, of public T i n ions, of culture such as is transmitted by the book, by
teaching, and in a more general, more diffuse way, by the
whole of society. This code has as its reference knowledge,
i d a r as this is a body of rules elaborated by society. W e
have met many of these cultural codes (or rather sub-codes
of the general cultural code): the scientific d e , which
tests (in our tale) at once on the precepts of experimentation and on the’?principles of medical dmtology; the
rhetorical code, which gathers up all the social rules of
saying: coded forms of narrative, coded foms of discourse
(annauncemat, summary, etc. ) ; meta-linguistic statement
(discourse speaks a b u t itself) forms part of this code; the
chronological code: the “dating” which today seems to us
n a n d , objective, is in fact a highly cultural p r a c t i c e
which is normal since it implies a certain ideology of time
(“historical” time is not the same as “mythic” time); the
ensemble of chronological points of reference constitutes
then a strongly cultural code (an historical manner of
cutting up time for the ends of dramatization, of scientific
appearance, of the effect of reality); the socio-historical
code permits the mobilization, within the utterance, of the
whole innate knowledge we have of our time, our society,
OUT country (the fact of saying M. Valdemar-and
not
Valdemm-we recall, has its place here). One must not
be disturbed by the fact that we might constitute as codes
utterly band notations: it is on the contrary their banality,
their apparent insignificance which predisposes them to the
code, as we have defined it: a body of rules so worn with
use that we take them for natural features; but if the narrative departs from them, it would very quickly become
unreadable.
The code of cammunication could also be called the
code o f the destination. Commmication should be understood in a restricted sense. It does
cover all the signification in a text, still less its signifying; it designates
only every relation which, in the text, is uttered as an
address (rhis is the situation with the “phtic” code, which
bears the burden of accentuating the relation between
narrator and reader), or as an exchange (the narrative is
exchanged for truth, for life). In sum, communication
should here be understood in an econ~micsense (communication, circulation of commodities) .
The sym8bolic field (“field’ is here less rigid than
“code”) is, to be sure, very large; just as we here take the
word “symbol” in the most general possible sense, without
burdening ourselves with any of its habitual connotations.
The sense to which we refer is close to that of psychoanalysis: the symbl is in s u m that feature of language
which displaces the body and lets another scene than
that of the utterance “be glimpsed,” so that we believe we
are reading it. The symbolic armature in Poe’s tale is
evidently the transgression of the taboo of Death, the disturbance of classification, what Baudelaire translated (very
well) as the encroachment of Life on Death (and not,
banally, of Death on Life). The subtlety of the tale comes
in part from the fact that the utterance seem’s to begin
from an asymbolic narrator, who has donned the role of the
objective expert, riveted on facts alone, a stranger to the
symbol (which does not fail to return forcefully in the
short story).
What we have called the code of actions supports the
anecdotal armature of the narrative. The actions, or the
statements which denote them, are organized into sequences.
The sequence has an aeproximatiue identity (one cannot determine its contour with rigor nor in an unexceptionable
way). It is justified in two ways: because one is drawn
spontaneously to give it a generic name (for example a
certain number of notations, bad health, deterioration,
agony, mortification of the body, its liquefaction, are naturally grouped under a stereotyped idea, that of “Medical
Death’), and then because the terms of the a c t i d sequence are tied to each other (from one to another, since
they succeed a h other throughout the length of the mutative) by an appearance of logic. We mean by that the
logic which institutes the actional sequence is very impure
from a scientific point of view. It is only a semblance
of logic, which comes not from the laws of formal reasoning, but from our habits of reasoning, of observing:
it is an endoxal logic, cultural (it appears “logical” to us
that a merely correct diagnosis follows the assertion af a
bad state of health). Moreover this logic is confused with
chronology: what comes after appears to us as calcsed by.
Temporality and causality, although in the narrative they
are never pure, seem to us to f a d a sort of naturalness,
intelligibility, readability of the anecdote: they permit us
for example to slcmwrize it (what the ancients called
the argument, a word at once logical and narrative).
A final code has traversed (from the beginning) our
tale: that of the Enigma. W e have not had occasion to see
it at work, because we have analyzed only a very small
part of Pce’s story. The code of the Enigma gathers the
terms by the linking of which (as a narrative sentmce)
one poses an enigma, and after some “delays,” which give
all its spice to the narration, one reveals the solution. The
terms of the enigmatic (or hermeneutic) code are highly
differentiated: it is necessary to distinguish, for example,
the posing of the enigma (any notation whose sense is
“there is an enigma”) from the formulation of the enigma
(the question is put forward in its contingency). In our
tale, the enigma is posed in the very title (the “facts” are
announced, but one doesn’t yet know on what question),
formulated from the opening (in the scientific exposition
of problems linked to the projected experiment), and
even, from the opening, delayed: every narrative evidently
has an interest in delaying the solution of the enigma
which it poses, since this solution will sound its own
death insofar as it is a narrative: we have seen that the
narrator uses a whole paragraph to delay putting the case,
under cover of scientific precautions. As to the solution of
the enigma, it isn’t here of a mathematical order. It is in
sum the whole narrative which replies to the question at
the opening, the question of the facts (these facts can
however be condensed to two pints: the uttering of the
“I am dead” and the abrupt liquefaction of the dead man
at the moment of his hypnotic awakening). The facts
are not here the object of a revelation, but of a revulsion.
Such are the codes which have traversed the fragments
which we have analyzed. W e voluntarily do not structure
them any more than this, voluntarily do not attempt to
distribute the terms, within each code, according to a
logical or semiological schema. For us the codes are only
the points of departwe of the already-read, the enticing
beginnings of inter-textuality: the lcnravelled character
of the codes is not what contradicts structure (as, it is
believed, life, imagination, intuition, disorder contradict
11
system, rationality), but is on the c0m.ta.q (this is the
fundamental affirmation of textual analysis) the integrating part of structtlration. It is this “unravelling” of the
text which distinguishes structure-the object of structural
analysis properly speaking-from structuration-the object
of the textual analysis which I have tried to practice here.
The textile metaphor which I have just employed is
not haphazard Textual analysis insists in effect on representing the text as a tissue (this is moreover the etymological sense), as a braid of different voices, of multiple codes,
at once interlaced and unfinished. A narrative is not a
tabular space, a plane structure, it is a volume, a stereophony (Eisenstein laid mudl stress on counter-point in his
mises-en-dne, thus intriguingly taking the lead in identifying film and text) : there is a field of hearing of a written narrative; the Ilkode of presence of the sense (except
perhaps for the actional sequences) is not development,
but outbreak: calls for contact, for communication, p i n g s
of contract, of exchange, outbreaks of references, of gleams
of knowledge, duller, more penetrating strokes that come
from “the orher m e , ” that of the symbolic, discontinuous
with the actions which are attached to a single sequence,
but in a cowardly way, ceaselessly interrupted.
This whole “volume” is drawn forward (in the direction of the end of the narrative), thus provoking the reader’s impatience, under the influence of two structural procedures: a ) distortion or twisting out of shape: the terms
of one sequence or af one code are separated, braided with
heterogeneous elements; a sequence seems to be abandoned
(for example the deterioration of Valdermu’s health), but
it is taken up again later, often very much later; an expectation is created; now we can even define sequence: this
floating micro-structure which constructs not a logical
object, but an expeatation and its resolution; b ) irreversibility: despite the floating character of structuration, in
the classic readable narrative (such as a tale by Poe) , there
are two codes which maintain a vectored order, the actional
code (founded on a logico-temporal order) and the code
of the Enigma (the question crowned with its solution);
thus the narrative is made irreversible. It is evident that
modernist subversion will bear down on this point: the
avant-garde (to stick to a useful term) tried to render
the text reversible from part to part, to expel the logicotemporal residue, to attack the empirical (logic of behaviors, actioml code) and the truth (code of enigmas).
However, we must not exaggerate the distance which
sqmates the modern text from the classical narrative. We
have seen, in Poe’s tale, that a single phrase very often
refers to two codes at once without our being able to
choose which is the “true” one (for example, the scientific
code and the sym8boliccode) : what is peculiar to the narrative, from the moment it attains to the quality of a text,
is to constrain us to the undecidability of the codes. By
what authority would we decide? In the name of the author? but the narrative gives us only a speaker, a performer who is caught in his own production. In the name
of this or that criticism? all are open to objections, swept
away by history (which does not mean that they are useless: each participates, but for one uoice only, in the volume of the text). Undecidability is not a weakness, but a
structural condition of narration: there is no univocal determination of the utterance: in an utterance, many codes,
many voices, are there, without prevalency. Writing is
12
precisely this loss of origin, this loss of “motives” to the
profit of a volume of indeterminations or overdeterminations: this volume is precisely signifying. Writing arrives
just exactly at the moment when speaking ceases, that is
to say sets out from the instance when one can no longer
point out who speaks and when one only asserts that there
begins to s+eak.
TRANSLATORS NOTES
I have attempted the textual analysis of a whole narrative (this
will not be possible here, for reasons of space) in my book
S / Z (Seuil, 1970) [Barthes’ note. S/Z has been translated by
Richard Miller (NewYork: Hill and Wang, 1974)].
For a stricter analysis of the notion of lexia, as also of the working procedures which will follow, I must refer to S/Z [Barthes’
note].
3 Histories extraordinaires, tr. Charles Baudelaire (Paris: NRF,
Livre de Poche, 1969), pp. 329-345 [Barthes’ note. All quotations
from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” are given here from
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Po@,ed. James A. Harrison
(1902;rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1965) VI, 154-1661.
4 The technical term derives from a Greek word meaning “to point
out, to point out by words, show, prove.”
5From a Greek word meaning “to carry along”; Barthes’ phrase
following the colon explains the technical term.
6 “I” appears for the first time in Baudelaire’s translation. though
not in the English text.
7 “Phatic” messages establish, prolong, or discontinue communication. They are therefore directed at the person addressed. See
Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Style in Langwge,
ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964),
pp. 355-356.
8 A word whose meaning is determined in relation to the message
in which it occurs. For example, the “last three years” means the
three years preceding the uttering of the sentence in which occurs
the phrase “last three years.”
9 Medical term, “state of uneasiness or anxiety.”
1OOriginally a Greek rhetorical term for the nawatio or “relation
of facts” in a judicial speech; recently current in film criticism.
The “diegesis” is the world or events reported in the fiction;
hence, a f i c t i o d world treated by the story as if real.
11 “Performative” and “consmtive” are terms taken from “speechact” analysis in philosophy. See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things
With Wordr (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965) and John
R. Searle, Speech Acts: A n Essay in the Philosophy of Language
(Cambridge: University Press, 1970).
12“Enantiosis” has three main meanings: in grammar, a kind of
antithesis; in philosophy, each of the ten oppositions, which, according to the Pythagoreans, were the source of all things; in
medicine, treatment by contraries. The suffix “-erne” here designates a unit in an analytic system based on significance.
‘3Barthes’ terms are from Jacques Lacan, an influential and sometimes idiosyncratic interpreter of Freud. “Primordial repressed”
is that initial repression which establishes the unconscious. That
repression has the character of a negation, a lack or absence, of
which “Death” is obviously exemplary. The “symbolic” is a
realm of mental phenomena structured like a language, the structure reflecting the congruence between the unconscious and the
social systems within which the “individual” emerges. By maintaining the difference of words and ideas from things, this realm
permits symbolic representation, along with the deviations or
substitutions of symbols (words and ideas) which characterize
neurosis. The psychotic, Freud asserted, confuses words and things,
treating words as things. In this sense, psychosis is a kind of
literal-mindedness. See Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self:
The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, tr. with commentary by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press,
1968); and French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoandysis, ed.
Jeffrey Mehlman, Yale French Studies no 48 (1972). especially
pp. 151-63 and the excerpts from Vocabulary of Prychoadysis
by Lacan’s students J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis.
14 Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phbnombne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), pp. 60-61 [Barthes’ note. Derrida
analyzes the expression “I am mortal,” not Poe’s tale].