The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning…For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at truth.
- Abelard, (Pierre) Peter, French Scholastic Philosopher and Logician
The love letter: (This figure refers to the special dialectic of the love letter, both blank (encoded) and expressive (charged with longing to signify desire).
Like desire, the love letter waits for an answer; it implicitly enjoins the other to reply, for without a reply the other’s image changes, becomes other. This is what the young Freud explains so authoritatively to his fiancee: “Yet I don’t want my letters to keep remaining unanswered, and I shall stop writing you altogether if you don’t write back. Perpetual monologues apropos of a loved being, which are neither corrected nor nourished by that being, lead to erroneous notions concerning mutual relations, and make us strangers to each other when we meet again, so that we find things different from what, without realizing it, we imagined.
The Dedication (any episode of language which accompanies any amorous gift, whether real or projected; and, more generally, every gesture, whether actual or interior, by which the subject dedicates something to the loved being).
The amorous gift is sought out, selected, and purchased in the greatest excitement — the kind of excitement which seems to be of the order of orgasm. Strenuously I calculate whether this object will give pleasure, whether it will disappoint, ot whether, on the contrary, seeming too important, it will in and of itself betray the delirium — or the snare in which I am caught. The amorous gift is a solemn one; swept away by the devouring metonomy which governs the life of the imagination, I transfer myself inside it altogether. By this object, I give you my all. It is for this reason that I am mad with excitement, that I rush from shop to shop, stubbornly tracking down the “right” fetish, the brilliant, successful fetish which will perfectly suit your desire.
I have this fear: that the given object may not function properly because of some insidious defect: If it is a box, (selected very carefully), for example, the latch doesn’t work (the shop being run by society women; and moreover, the shop is called because I love. Is it because I love that the latch doesn’t work?). The delight of giving the present then evaporates, and the subject knows that whatever he gives, ge does not have it.
…The object I give is interpretable; it has a meaning greatly in excess of its address.
~~Benjamin says: (10:12:51 AM)
how is THIS for WEIRD!!
~~Benjamin says: (10:13:01 AM)
my favourite colour has seriously changed
~~Benjamin says: (10:13:07 AM)
I am fairly sure hey
~~Benjamin says: (10:13:18 AM)
from blue or green, to YELLOW
~~Benjamin says: (10:13:20 AM)
:O
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