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Laclos' Purloined LettersAuthor(s): Françoise MeltzerReviewed work(s):Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1982), pp. 515-529Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343263 .

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Laclos' Purloined Letters

Franvoise Meltzer

The advantages of laying before the reader, in the words of the actors themselves, the adventures which we must otherwise have narrated in our own, has given great popularity to the publication of epistolary correspondence, as practised by various great authors, and by ourselves in the preceding chapters. Nevertheless, a genuine correspondence of this kind (and Heaven forbid it should be in any respect sophisticated by interpolations of our own!) can seldom be found to contain all in which it is necessary to instruct the reader for his full comprehension of the story.

-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Red Gauntlet

Scott points here to both the alluring and the problematic aspects of the

epistolary novel: on the one hand, its ability to convey an immediate or

spontaneous action, while remaining close to the reader by means of its confessional tone; on the other, its absence of a general narrator who, with his particular vision, ties together the events of the novel. Scott believes such a narrator is necessary in order "to instruct the reader for his full comprehension of the story." The reader is to be instructed within a tacit system of values ("genuine," "great authors," "inter-

I am indebted to my graduate seminar at the University of Chicago on the epistolary novel, and to Jeff Rider in particular, for the inspiration of this paper. I am equally grateful to Harry Harootunian and to a study group at the University of Chicago on

psychoanalysis and literature, the members of which have guided me in my readings of Lacan and Derrida: Richard Eldridge, Lorna Gladstone, Stephen Melville, Andrew Parker, and Bernard Rubin.

? 1982 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/82/0803-0004$01.00. All rights reserved.

515



516 Francoise Meltzer Laclos' Purloined Letters

polations") which are to be fully comprehended whenever possible from the content of a given novel. For Scott, without the guidance of the "sophisticated" general narrator, it is difficult to instruct the reader di-

rectly and effectively. I will view the novel of letters, however, from outside its traditional

measuring line. "Measuring line," or rule, from the Greek kanne ("rod"), yields the modern word "canon," which in literature has come to mean a

catalog of officially accepted works. But the word has a secondary and more intriguing meaning: a canon is a standard used in judging, a criterion. Slyly linked to content (the Latin contentus-"to hold, keep together"), canon is also that which is contained on the inside. Canon and content are then the back and palm of the same hand. Canon is the surface that marks containment, whether it be the canon of a corpus or the criterion used to judge where a given work begins and ends. These limits are imposed and expected; everything else is apocrypha, relegated to outside the contents, outside the canon. Scott's vocabulary in the passage cited is in itself a manifestation of such literary givens.

The concept of containment in the epistolary novel is particularly unsatisfactory, although most critics have continued to view the content of the letters as canon. The majority of studies of the epistolary form are devoted to historical poetics-to how such a novelistic order advances the history of narrative fiction, including such considerations as tempo- rality, absence-presence, and reflexivity.1 Reflexivity, or that charac- teristic of a work which points the finger back at itself by consciously alluding to the tools of its medium, is apparent in the epistolary genre in its direct allusions to ink, paper, pens, writing desks or the lack thereof, waiting for the mail, asking for new addresses, and so forth. The finger

1. For a good bibliography and list of English epistolary novels, see Charles E. Kany, The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel in France, Italy, and Spain, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 21, no. 1 (Berkeley, 1937), and Frank Gees Black, The Epistolary Novel in the Late Eighteenth Century (Eugene, Oreg., 1940). Jean Rousset's Forme et signification: Essais sur les structures littiraires de Corneille & Claudel (Paris, 1962) is a brilliant analysis of the epistolary form. For further discussions of Les Liaisons dangereuses, see Peter Brooks, The Novel of Wordliness (Princeton, N.J., 1969), and Dorothy Thelander, Laclos and the Epistolary Novel (Geneva, 1963). And finally, see Epistolary Literature of the Eighteenth Century, L'Esprit createur 17 (Winter 1977).

Franpoise Meltzer is an associate professor of Romance languages and literatures and of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Her previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Color as Cognition in Symbolist Verse" (Winter 1978) and the translation of Christian Metz's "Trucage and the Film" (Summer 1977). She is presently working on the relationship between rhetoric and psychoanalytic ter- minology.



Critical Inquiry Spring 1982 517

is pointed, then, not only at the act of writing itself but at the progress and reception (in both senses) of the letters. Many of these novels even in-

corporate instructions on how to write letters; the example most fre-

quently cited is Mme de Merteuil's letter to Cecile de Volanges in Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, which admonishes the latter to tend more to her style. Such self-consciousness is historically grounded in the letter manuals which flourished in the sixteenth, sev- enteenth, and eighteenth centuries. Spillage into fiction was thus almost inevitable, the most notable case being Samuel Richardson's Pamela. That novel began when its author, then a printer, was commissioned to write a book which would serve as a model for country readers. But in

writing Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, Richardson became in-

trigued with the possibilities of answering his own model letters. The role of the reader is central to the epistolary genre because the

letters anticipate a reader within the novel's framework. There is the letter's intended recipient (destinataire), the occasional interceptor, the invented publisher and/or editor who organize(s) the collected correspondence, and the extrafictional reader who reads the collection in its

entirety, including the disclaiming or condemning prefaces which pre- cede it. The epistolary form, however, with so many layers of readers, considerably complicates the issue of reader response. If we share, for

example, Stanley Fish's assumption that "literature is in the reader," the

epistolary novel apparently reverses the formula: the reader is in the literature.

And yet it is in the novel of letters that the reader, the fictional reader, most clearly creates the text. Let us return to Merteuil's ad- monishment to Cecile: "Voyez donc '

soigner davantage votre style.... Vous voyez bien que, quand vous ecrivez a quelqu'un, c'est pour lui et non pas pour vous: vous devez donc moins chercher a lui dire ce que vous pensez, que ce qui lui plait davantage."2 If a reader's response to a given sentence is colored by the previous one, the epistolary novel achieves the same effect within a larger unit: each letter is determined by the one which precedes it. In this sense the letter is a grammatical unit, a

larger sentence. Moreover, a letter-novel presents the possibility of an architectural as well as conceptual interruption. That is, whereas in- sufficiencies in a first- or third-person narrative must consist of circum- locutions, repetitions, and exclusions of information, the letter-novel can create a concrete insufficiency by a lost, suppressed, stolen, or inter- cepted letter. In such cases the letter must function without its precedent

2. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (Paris, 1961), letter 105, p. 247; all

subsequent quotations are taken from this edition and will be identified by letter and page number in the text. "Therefore attend more to your style.... You must well know that, when you write to someone, it is for him and not for you: you must therefore seek less to tell him what you think, than what pleases him more"; here and elsewhere my translation.




since the destinataire remains empty-handed. Thus, the epistolary novel has a great capacity for mise en abime.

Both inside and outside the narrative, there always is a destinataire; and even if he is the wrong one in the context of the recit, he is the intended one for the histoire.3 In any case, the extrafictional reader is the final destinataire and holds a privileged position. And yet, he too is subject to interruptions: here the editor rears his head by claiming in footnotes that a letter is lost, too damaged to decipher, or so boring or obscene that he has seen fit to exclude it; these footnotes are the only "letters" addressed to and meant for us. At this point the editor removes his mask but remains on stage. Apart from such tricks, however, we do read every letter available, each of which is addressed to another reader, a system of the once removed or of the "letter in sufferance." Or, loosely interpret- ing Jacques Lacan, a purloined letter means that a letter always arrives at its destination.4

That declaration marks the conclusion of Lacan's seminar on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter." And Jacques Derrida follows with a rebuttal: "Not that the letter never arrives at its destination, but part of its structure is that it is always capable of not arriving there. .... Here dissemination threatens the law of the signifier."5 Although this famous debate has nothing to do with the epistolary novel, portions of Lacan's discussion on Poe can be fruitfully applied to Laclos' work as can portions of Derrida's comments on the same tale. We shall see that the letter in the epistolary network does not always arrive within the ricit, but it must always arrive in the histoire.

Lacan is interested in the fact that we never learn the contents of the momentous letter in Poe's "Purloined Letter." Lacan's argument, as Barbara Johnson notes, runs as follows: "Thus, it is neither the character

3. I am using the French terms of Gerard Genette to avoid confusion caused by English equivalents. "Ricit" is often translated as discourse, plot, narrative, subject, narra- tion' "histoire" as story, events, myth, and so forth.

4. See Jacques Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,' " trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Yale French Studies 48 (1972): 38-72; all further references to this work, abbreviated as "SPL," will be included in the text. The final sentence reads as follows: "Thus it is that what the 'purloined letter,' nay, the 'letter in sufferance' means is that a letter always arrives at its destination." What Lacan means by this statement has to do with the language of the unconscious, or of unconscious Desire. Each individual sends his own message of "truth" of

identity. Earlier in this passage Lacan says: "The sender, we tell you, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form." ("Lettre" has for Lacan two meanings: epistle and typographical character.)

5. Jacques Derrida, "The Purveyor of Truth," trans. Willis Domingo et al., Yale French Studies 52 (1975): 66. My approach is meant to be neither a Lacanian analysis of Laclos nor, conversely, a Derridiste attack or rereading of Lacan. A Lacanian or Derridiste will justly view this undertaking as both improper and impossible, for I intend to extract formula- tions and assumptions from texts which by definition function only within their own

teleology. For both Derrida and Lacan, the power of the letter involves the concept (directly or indirectly) of the phallus: disseminating for the former, revealing for the latter.




of the individual subjects, nor the contents of the letter, but the position of the letter within the group, which decides what each person will do next." The letter is a pure signifier in that story because it "does not function as a unit of meaning (a signified) but as that which produces certain effects (a signifier)."6 The orientation of the subject or actor in the

story is determined by the position of the signifier. In the words of Lacan, "The letter was able to produce its effects within the story: on the actors in the tale, including the narrator, as well as outside the story: on us, the readers, and also on its author, without anyone's ever bothering to worry about what it meant."7

Now obviously, the very act of the epistolary novel is the opposite of this: the letters are written to be read, and read in a manner often more

layered and complex, as noted previously, than in other kinds of novels. In fact, the network of readers is an integral aspect of the letter-novel; this is the opposite of the Poe story which consists of a network of holders of the letter, not knowers. Critics of the epistolary form understandably have concentrated on content, on modes of narrative discourse as well as on architectural considerations of juxtaposition and intercalation. (It is

significant that although Lacan sees the letter as extending outside the text to the readers, he still maintains the system of inside-outside in a manner presupposing text as containment.) From a strictly Saussurean

point of view, the letter is sign-a near perfect Saussurean egg contain-

ing signifier (letter) and signified (contents). Lacan, who has said more than once that the unconscious is structured like a language, changes the Saussurean diagram by abandoning the egg altogether and then by re-

versing the positions of signifier-signified.s As Anthony Wilden has noted, the signifier seems, in Lacan's writings, to take over the role of Saussure's sign. For Lacan the letter is, among other things, the mate-

riality or substance of the signifier. The signifier divides but cannot itself be divided.

Thus, while the contents of the letters in Les Liaisons dangereuses are of primary importance-creating the action and intrigue of the novel-the letters themselves, I am arguing, can also be regarded as signifiers in the way, the most superficial way, Lacan describes. Because the epistolary novel centers on the discourse and is, in fact, the language of reportage, it is easy enough to overlook the letter as function. There are times in the novel when thefact of the letter is able to affect the actors or subjects within the story as well as those outside the story, without regard for what the letter says. That the letter is can be far more weighty than what it means, and the letter's very itinerary can generate action.

6. Barbara Johnson, "The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida," Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977): 464.

7. Lacan, quoted and trans. Johnson, ibid.; her italics. 8. See Lacan, "L'Instance de la lettre dans l'inconscient; ou, La Raison depuis Freud,"

La Psychanalyse 3 (1957): 53.



520 FranCoise Meltzer Laclos' Purloined Letters

Examining this significant aspect of the epistolary novel can add a good deal to our understanding of the system of signals which comprise the novel of letters. And there is another benefit to such an examination. We have noted that the letter often appears without the one which preceded it. The partial definition of the Lacanian signifier which I am using here allows for tracing an itinerary which need not depend on linearity. The letter in the epistolary novel, when viewed as a signifier, localizes events as it is displaced. We shall see that the letter refuses, even destroys, containment and that it may become a material shifter which can run the

gamut from silence to the most explicit of commentaries. Derrida has accused Lacan of avoiding crucial problems by resort-

ing to ellipses, of being blind to the disseminating power of the signifier within the text, and of assuming a stance of revelation or of unveiling: "Moi, la verite, je parle."9 But to ignore the power of the letter as letter in the epistolary form is in itself an ellipsis, and it has been the insistence

upon content and the disseminations of the letters' meanings which may have blinded us to their source. The divisibility (and dispersal) of the letter is only initial, and it will be shown that the letter itself becomes the "remainder" which is, finally, the aggregation or sum of those disseminations.

The final maneuver and control lie with the in(di)visible narrator who may be seen as directing the process in every epistolary novel.1o He is as well the implied director who helps the extrafictional reader to

organize (or, significantly, to be organized) and may be seen as a linguis- tic metaphor: the letters are signal first, and the context into which the editor chooses to put them is a type of semantic field which allows the reader to grasp the signification of their order and placement.

Merely to accept a letter in Laclos' novel is already a loss of power and the beginning of an ineluctable chain. Valmont writes to Merteuil about the woman he wants to seduce, the Presidente de Tourvel: "Je ne fus pas tres etonne qu'elle ne voulit pas recevoir cette lettre, que je lui offrais tout simplement; c' ut ite deja* accorder quelque chose, etje m'attends a une plus longue defense [I was not very surprised that she did not wish to receive this letter, one which I offered her in all simplicity; acceptance would have already been the concession of something, and I expect a longer defensive action]" (34, p. 69; emphasis mine). But he tricks the Pre- sidente into accepting a letter much as the Duc de Nemours tricks the

9. Derrida, Positions (Paris, 1972), p. 117 n. All of n. 33 (pp. 112-19) is devoted to Lacan.

10. In Forme et signification, Rousset writes that the form of a work functions as the

metaphor of its signification. The form of Les Liaisons dangereuses for him represents "l'art de la manoeuvre," while its subject is "precisement la manoeuvre des uns par les autres" (p. 96). Brooks adds to this view about the actors in that novel: "They have elaborated a

personal system of knowledge and control, and the question of the uses and misuses of the

system is in fact the profound subject of the novel" (The Novel of Wordliness, p. 175).




Princesse de Cleves into allowing him to rob her of her portrait: refusal would cause an even greater scandal. The analogy is not accidental; what is explicit robbery on the level of both action and character in the text of Mme de Lafayette becomes implicit robbery in the world of Laclos. For the Presidente to accept Valmont's letter begins the purloining of her good name and the erosion of her dbfense. What appears on the level of recit to be an offering is in fact in the histoire the beginning of a d&robade (in every sense of the word-"escape," "evasion," "theft," "concealment," "undressing"). As Lacan says of the Poe story, "It remains that the letter is the symbol of a pact, and that, even should the recipient not assume the pact, the existence of the letter situates her in a symbolic chain foreign to the one which constitutes her faith" ("SPL," p. 58).

The issue is where the power lies, and this Valmont knows only too well. The fact of sending a letter, of insisting upon sending letters even if they are returned unopened, is a powerful source of signaling and ma- nipulating. In hot pursuit of the Presidente, Valmont (who like Lovelace wants not only to seduce and possess his Clarissa but also to demand that she surrender herself to him: "Je veux qu'elle se livre") writes to Merteuil that he has sent the Presidente a fourth letter. But he adds:

J'ai peut-etre tort de dire la quatrieme; car ayant bien devine des le premier renvoi qu'il serait suivi de beaucoup d'autres, et ne voulant pas perdre ainsi mon temps, j'ai pris le parti de mettre mes doleances en lieux communs, de ne point dater, et depuis le second courrier, c'est toujours la mime lettre qui va et vient; je ne fais que changer l'enveloppe. [110, p. 258; emphasis mine]11

The same letter is sent back and forth for it is important only that the Presidente accept it, not that she read it. The continual presence of a letter in itself finally forces the poor woman to accept one "pour eviter le scandale," and she is further reduced to hiding Valmont's letters as she accepts them.

The liaison between Valmont and the Presidente falls outside the laws of the society and is thus dangerous. This is true, of course, of a great many of the relationships in the novel. The more a relationship of this sort is taboo, the more the letter begins to function as signifier, the purer the signal. What adds to the complexity of Les Liaisons dangereuses is that it contains liaisons sanctioned as well as those condemned by the world. In addition, those letters generated by the former relations em- phasize the content of the letter, the signifieds, in direct proportion to the extent to which the liaison is permissible. And yet it is precisely at the

11. I am perhaps wrong in saying the fourth; for having easily guessed with the first returned letter that it would be followed by many others, and not wish- ing so to waste my time, I chose the course of phrasing my complaints in platitudes, and of never dating a letter, and since the second mail delivery, the same letter has been going back and forth; I merely change the envelope.



522 FranCoise Meltzer Laclos' Purloined Letters

level of sanctioned liaison that the presence of the letters are of little interest for the intended receiver, who concentrates on content, and yet the content is of little interest to the extrafictional reader because the

intrigue rarely lies there. The contents of a letter in a sanctioned liaison are phatic for the extrafictional reader.

When Cecile first emerges from her convent, she, because there is

nothing to hide, writes daily to her friend Sophie Carnay. The editor purloins most of this correspondence, commenting in a note, "Pour ne

pas abuser de la patience du lecteur, on supprime beaucoup de lettres de cette correspondance journaliere [In order not to try the patience of the reader, we are omitting many letters from this daily correspondence]" (7, p. 20n). So too, when the Presidente is as yet unmoved by the en- treaties of Valmont, her correspondence with the self-righteous and moralistic Mme de Volanges flourishes, but as the younger woman be-

gins to succumb to Valmont's advances, her letters to her former confidante dwindle and finally stop altogether. Valmont writes to Merteuil, "J'ai decouvert pourtant que la legere personne a change de confidante. ... il n'y est venu aucune lettre d'elle pour Mme. de Volanges . .. la

petite honte de revenir vis-a-vis Mme. de Volanges sur un sentiment si

longtemps desavoue, [a] produit cette grande revolution [And yet I have discovered that this fickle person has changed confidantes .... no letter from her arrived for Mme de Volanges ... the slight shame, in facing Mme de Volange, caused by harking back to a subject so long disavowed, (has) resulted in this great upheaval]" (110, p. 258).12 As Cecile, the Presidente, and Danceny all change confidantes in the novel, so too in direct correlation do their letters, their liaisons dangereuses, become pure signifiers-active rather than static, emphatic rather than phatic; the letters also become entangled in the system of hide-and-seek and finders-keepers-losers-weepers. Thus, the mere sight of Danceny's letters to Cecile makes Mme de Volanges suspicious and paralyzes her daughter, who sees that her mother has seen, with fear. Or, conversely, when Valmont returns an incriminating letter from Danceny to Cecile, he does so in the middle of the salon in full view of everyone but without anyone seeing either the letter or, by extension, the liaison it signals: "Quand il m'a rendu la lettre de Danceny, c'etait au milieu de tout le monde, et

personne n'en a rien vu" (75, p. 152; emphasis mine). As in Lacan's reading of the Poe story, the position of the signifier

12. Tzvetan Todorov, in "The Two Principles of Narrative," Diacritics 1 (Fall 1971), describes a function clearly akin to this in his third rule on a narrative organized by ideology: "Given two actors, A and B, and that B is the confidante of A. If A becomes the

subject of a proposition generated by the first rule [that is, if A loves C he will act so as to be loved by C], he changes confidantes (the absence of a confidante representing the ultimate in confidence)" (p. 42). Unlike Todorov, we are less engaged here in delineating the

ideological imperatives of this narrative universe than we are in examining the path of the

signal-the letter-which generates it.




determines the sequence of events. Implied in the system of letters is that

they must not be displaced in a liaison dangereuse. That they are marks the downfall of most everyone in the novel: Cecile, Danceny, Merteuil (who has her own dangerous alliance and letters with Valmont), Valmont, and the Presidente. At the beginning of the novel, Cecile writes excitedly to her friend Sophie, "Je t'ecris

' un secretaire tres-joli, dont on m'a remis la clef et oui je peux renfermer tout ce que je veux [I am writing to you from a very pretty desk, of which I have been given the key, and where I can lock up anything I want]" (1, p. 7). This is the place to be marked by the signifiers, and when that place is violated, when the package of letters is displaced, the actions of all the actors are dictated by the position of those signifiers. For despite what Cecile is told initially, the hiding place with its key is permissible so long as it hides nothing. When Mme de Volanges suspects her daughter of a liaison with Danceny, Cecile writes to Sophie in despair that her mother

me demanda la clef de mon secretaire, et le ton dont elle me fit cette demande me causa un tremblement si fort. . .. Je faisais semblant de ne las pas trouver: mais enfin il fallut bien obeir. Le premier tiroir qu'elle ouvrit futjustement celui oii 'taient les lettres du chevalier Danceny. . . quand elle me demanda ce que c'etait,je ne sus lui repondre autre chose, sinon que ce n'etait rien..... Elle a emporte toutes les lettres de Danceny. [61, pp. 121-22]13

That the letters exist, hidden in the false hiding place, is far more serious than what they contain. In the Poe story, the Minister hides the letter not by hiding it but by putting it in a place so obvious that no one thinks to look there. But what Cecile has been led to think of here as the most private, inviolable hiding place is, in fact, a place which reveals the clandestine, even controls it. As soon as the mother suspects her daughter, she goes directly to the place of hiding: any bundle is suspect by virtue of being there. The passage refers to the letters, in fact, in a manner which objectifies them: "elle me demanda ce que c'itait," to which Cecile responds, "ce n'etait rien." Cecile knows that the displacement of the letters signals the apparent end of her relationship with Danceny: "Quandje songe queje ne verrai plus Danceny [When I think that I shall not see Danceny again]," she says in concluding the same letter to

Sophie, "je voudrais etre morte [I wish I were dead]." In this sense content exists only as a scaffolding to make possible the necessary ero-

13. asked me for the key to my desk, and the tone which she used in making this request caused me such great trembling. ... I pretended not to find it: but in the end I had to obey. The first drawer she opened was precisely the one containing the gentleman Danceny's letters .... when she asked me what it was, I did not know what to answer, save that it was nothing.... She has taken away all of Danceny's letters.




sion of containment. It is this systemic proposition which marks the movement of the intrigue.

As the letters are removed from their proper position, the system of

strategy and manipulation within the novel is destroyed. At the end, when all is in the open and the letters have all passed into the wrong hands, Mme de Volanges sends Mme de Rosemonde a "cassette" of letters, and the note tells us, "Cette cassette contenait toutes les lettres relatives a son aventure avec M. de Valmont [This cassette contained all the letters concerning her affair with M. de Valmont]" (165, p. 375 n). In another letter we learn that Valmont, to wreak vengeance on Merteuil, has revealed "une foule de lettres, formant une correspondance re- guliere qu'il entretenait avec elle [a stack of letters, comprising a regular correspondence which he maintained with her]." Danceny, meanwhile, indignant, "a livre ces lettres a qui a voulu les voir [has relinquished these letters to anyone who has asked to see them]" (168, p. 379). Once the

itinerary of the signifier becomes common knowledge, once it is shifted from place to place, it is the extrafictional reader who holds the cassette and who discovers that his response has been as much manipulated by the position of the letters as has been the response of the destinataire. This is the final coup of the novel. What Mme de Volanges says to Mme de Rosemonde is as much addressed to us as to her: "Lisez, si vous en avez le courage, la correspondance que je depose entre vos mains [Read, if you have the courage, the correspondence which I place in your hands]" (169, p. 382). And the editor, tightening the chaine secrete, adds, "C'est de cette correspondance . .. qu'on a forme le present recueil [It is from this correspondence . . . that the present collection has been made]." Read, yes, but what marks the authenticity of the letters, Mme de Volanges goes on to say, is not what they contain but their very vol- ume: "La quantite de lettres qui s'y trouvent en original parait rendre

authentiques celles dont il n'existe que des copies [The quantity of letters to be found there in the original seems to authenticate those of which

only copies exist]" (169, p. 382). L'et(t)re is still paraitre, and the repetitive action has extended outside the narrative to us.

Repetition begins at a concrete level and has a palimpsestic nature: Valmont forges or dictates letters so that the generating text and

signature-his-underlie the apparent text and author. The primary signature, that of Valmont, is thus concealed, lying like a watermark under the a posteriori overt text which will dupe the destinataire. In-

versely, Valmont copies an unsigned missive, which Merteuil quotes in one of hers, and sends it to the Presidente with his signature on it. He then writes proudly to Merteuil, "je ne sais sij'ai mal lu ou mal entendu, et votre lettre, et l'histoire que vous m'y faites, et le petit modele epis- tolaire qui y 6tait compris. Ce que je puis vous dire, c'est que ce dernier m'a paru original et propre a faire de l'effet: aussi je l'ai copie tout simplement, et tout simplement encore je l'ai envoye a la celeste Pre-




sidente [I don't know if I misread or misunderstood both your letter and the story you tell in it, with the short epistolary model it included. What I can tell you is that the latter seemed original to me, and certain to be effective: I thus quite simply copied it, and again quite simply sent it to the heavenly Presidente]" (142, pp. 334-35). When we are left at the end with the cassette, the signatures are mixed, overlapping both physically and cognitively. The authenticity of the letters, we have seen, remains

suspect, as does the editor's subjective reordering or suppressing of the letters afterward. But the true signature is the trace left by the itinerary of the letter-signifier, moving as it does to join its duplicates, or doubles, until its disseminations are regrouped into the remainder: the cassette. It is in this sense that the remainder is also the sum of the dissemination: the cassette contains the immixture of all the letters, while the subjects are left disseminated on the canvas of the novel.

Repetition continues at another level in the novel like a round robin:

Danceny sends Cecile her mother's billet to him with his comments attached; Valmont sends the letters of the Presidente to Merteuil, or copies them, with his protestations of indifference attached; Merteuil responds to Valmont's threat of war with "He bien! la guerre" written at the bottom of Valmont's own letter and returned to him.14 More intriguing, however, is the fact that the entire novel becomes a round robin: the

polyphonic construction creates, ultimately, a single long letter (which, as we have seen, regroups itself at the end into the cassette which is then placed in our hands) with comments added by each person in turn. In this way, then, the signifier passes from person to person (again, both inside and outside the narrative) without itself ever changing. Despite the change in content with each person's comment, the letter on the level of morphology retains its unity: to return to Lacan, the letter-signifier cannot be divided, it only divides as it positions, as it marks and situates

places of difference.15 There is indeed a canon in Les Liaisons dangereuses in another

sense--canon as round, as a composition in which there are exact repetitions of a preceding part in the same or related keys. For Les Liaisons

dangereuses, like the Poe story, contains not only what Lacan calls a "modulus of repetition" but an extended sequence as well. The dictio-

14. The second section of Johnson's "The Frame of Reference" is entitled "Round Robbin" and lists the American Heritage Dictionary's four definitions for the term. The third is most applicable here, but all four are of significance to my reading: "(1), A tournament in which each contestant is matched against every other contestant. (2), A petition or protest on which the signatures are arranged in the form of a circle in order to conceal the order of

signing. (3), A letter sent among members of a group, often with comments added by each

person in turn. (4), An extended sequence" (p. 459). 15. See Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter' ": "the displacement of the

signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate" (p. 60).




nary meanings of "extend" and "sequence" point to the disseminating power of the system of repetition: for "extend," Webster's says, "to en- large in area, scope, influence, meaning"; "sequence" refers, in a card

game, to three or more cards of the same suit in consecutive value. Both words, then, apply to amplification as well as to repetition; that is, a

sequence means repetition which is not random but is a mathematical augmentation which extends, even reaches out, to checkmate the extrafictional reader.16

The letter's power is augmented in the novel as it moves from the lowest players on the chessboard-Prevan, Belleroche, Danceny, Cecile, the Presidente-toward the highest, the two "kings," Valmont and Mer- teuil. In each case, as the letter is discovered, stolen, or displaced, these characters are undone. The repetition lies in that what they think is hidden is always seen by Merteuil and Valmont, then by the editor and, of course, by the reader. They, who have been apparently omniscient in this game, are undone in the same way (and undo each other). At the end, Merteuil, whose glance has been everywhere, significantly loses an

eye. Her name is function: she destroys the vision of others until hers is

destroyed-L'oeuil mort, meurtre d'oeuil. The sequence continues: the editor, who receives the cassette of

letters, condemns the collection-its style is bad, its morals poor. He had wanted to make changes which "n'aurait pas suffi sans doute pour don- ner du merite a l'ouvrage, mais lui aurait au moins 6te une partie de ses defauts [would have no doubt been insufficient to give any value to the work, but at least would have removed some of its flaws]" ("Preface du Redacteur," p. 3). Such disclaimers are not solely explained by the convention of verisimilitude. The editor, continuing the system of augmented sequence in the novel, has the letters revealed to him and exiles, from both his moral and literary standards, their authors. Despite the moral usefulness which he claims to see in the recueil (repetition here too-Mme de Volanges sees moral purpose only in reading the letters of Merteuil and Valmont), he adds, "en partant encore de cette supposition favorable, son succes ne m'en parait pas plus assure et il me semble

toujours qu'il doit plaire 'a peu de monde [Even if we assume this felici- tous supposition, the (work's) success seems to me no more assured, and I continue to think that it must be pleasing to few]" (p. 6). The pious will

16. See Colin Martindale, "Structural Balance and the Rules of the Narrative in Les Liaisons dangereuses," Poetics 5 (March 1976): 53-73. Martindale, using Todorov's rules of narrative, has tried to sketch a sequence in Liaisons comprised of aggregating triangles. His thesis is that every narrative searches for a structural balance. Thus, when Merteuil re-

sponds with antipathy to Valmont's love for the Presidente, a new figure is needed to balance the exchange: Merteuil will be drawn toward Danceny whom Valmont will dislike, and so on. Such a sociopsychological approach, however, makes the system of power in the novel entirely dependent upon character.




be shocked, the young corrupted, the lascivious confirmed in their evil

ways, the intellectuals bored. But the editor's preface is preceded by the publisher's notice (or,

significantly, warning, the other meaning of "avertissement"). Mutatis mutandis: the publisher too has been given the cassette, the letters have thus been revealed to him, and he proceeds to condemn all those before him, including the editor! Thus the latter, whose efforts to alter the text have been thwarted by the publisher, complains in his preface, "mais je n'etais pas le maitre, etje me suis soumis [but I was not the master, and I submitted]" (p. 4). Who then is the master: the publisher? His notice

amplifies the sequence on all levels, not only by its general condemnation but by its reiteration of the problem of authenticity raised by Mme de Volanges near the end of the novel. But the publisher's comments cast suspicion not only on the author of a given individual letter but on the nature and author of the entire collection, thus impugning the editor:

Nous croyons devoir prevenir le public que, malgre le titre de cet ouvrage et ce qu'en dit le redacteur dans sa preface, nous ne garantissons pas l'authenticite de ce recueil, et que nous avons meme de fortes raisons de penser que ce n'est qu'un roman."7

With this mise en abime we, the extrafictional readers, are handed the cassette; the letters are thus revealed to us. Given that we, like everyone else in the sequence, will choose to judge for ourselves, we must of

necessity begin by condemning the publisher, whose disclaimer negates every convention of verisimilitude by telling us that he strongly suspects this to be merely a novel.

Now we must continue the sequence which we have already begun, as soon as we turn the page on the publisher and press on to the editor. We continue it as we condemn Merteuil and her ruses, Valmont and his rules for seduction. More important, as we read we respond to and

lengthen the chain of the signifiers because the power of the letters is

already working on us. Like the editor, we may say, "We are not the master, and we submit." Lacan says about the Word what we will say of the letter: "There is no Word without a reply, even if it meets no more than silence, provided that it has an auditor."s18 There is, in the world of Laclos, no letter without a reply, even if it meets with silence, provided

17. We feel we must warn the public that, despite the title of this work and despite what the editor says in his preface, we cannot guarantee the authenticity of this collection, and we even have strong reason to believe that it is merely a novel.

18. Lacan, "The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis," The Language of the Self, trans. Anthony Wilden (New York, 1968), p. 9. Again, I am extracting from context. Lacan refers here to his Parole ("Word"), the unconscious truth revealing the individual's language of Desire ex-centric to him.




that it has a reader. It is in this sense that we, as reader, continue the chain, extending the sequence. We not only partake in the dissemination of the signifier, we add to its amplification. While the signifier divides, marks the positions, and moves (positioning us as well), we are left at the end of this relay race with no one to whom we can pass on the cassette. On the one hand, we cannot be condemned; on the other hand, however, we are left in the position of having no reader to whom we can address our reply (unless such studies as this be viewed as reply), precisely because this canon has refused containment.

Containment in epistolary novels refuses itself even in the form of

beginnings and endings. The curiously unsatisfactory endings of the letter-novel can in part be explained by the nature and importance of the act of writing, by the continuing amplification of its signifier, the letter. In a polyphonic novel of letters, after the apparent end, there always remain several writers who could easily continue the chain. Jean-Jacques Rousseau'sJulie; ou, La Nouvelle Hiloise and Les Liaisons dangereuses both end with other writers commenting on the dead, the departed, or the exiled writers. Similarly, it is formally problematic to insist upon an end for such a novel; despite the "Great Voice" tones which both novels assume at their imposed conclusions, we are not entirely taken in. In Laclos, the editor adds to the open-ended aspect by informing us at the conclusion of the work that there is indeed more to be had: "Des raisons

particulieres et des considerations que nous nous ferons toujours un devoir de respecter, nous forcent de nous arreter ici. . . . Peut-etre

quelque jour nous sera-t-il permis de completer cet ouvrage [Particular reasons and considerations which we will always feel it our duty to re-

spect, compel us to stop here. ... Someday we will perhaps be permitted to complete this work]" (p. 395 n).

The master is the letter-system whose extending power is reflected in the editor's language: "ferons respecter," "devoir," "forcent." Since the novel is based on necessary displacement, it follows that the sequence cannot be arrested. To return to Lacan, "It is the realist's imbecility, which does not pause to observe that nothing, however deep in the bowels of the earth a hand may seek to ensconce it, will ever be hidden there, since another hand can always retrieve it, and that what is hidden is never but what is missing from its place" ("SPL," p. 55; emphases mine and Lacan's respectively).

In Les Liaisons dangereuses the letter exists prior to the subject- reader's response, prior to the subject himself, who always receives and who becomes the signifier for another subject. He will be positioned by the letter. And as the final reader is extrafictional, it follows that we too are localized by the letter, our positions and responses determined by it. The system of epistolarity is thus traced not in the contents of the letter, which never change, but in the envelope which will display the address of the hand that retrieves. What the epistolary novel says lies in the




words of Valmont: "c'est toujours la meme lettre qui va et vient; je ne fais

que changer l'enveloppe." Seen in this light, the final reader-you and I-is the subject of the

letter if taken ' la lettre, subject to the letter, and therefore inscribed upon the letter's "outside." Between the letter and its place is the subject's meconnaissance, refusing him, as Scott says, a "full comprehension of the

story." To interpolate in mathematics means to insert intermediate terms in a series according to the law of the series. And of the epistolary novel Scott writes: "Heaven forbid it should be in any respect sophisticated by interpolations of our own!" There is, finally, little danger of such a

possibility, for on the narratological level the order of the letters seems at first glance aleatoric but gradually insists upon its law. Allowing for no center but its own, the letter refuses the sovereign self and de- personalizes all subjects until it is subject as well as master.

The letter always arrives in the epistolary; its "possibly-not-arriving" (to use Derrida's phrase) torments us only by reminding us of the inevitable triumph of its advent, the letter extending as it does even to the extrafictional reader.19 For the reader into whose hands the letter falls is in the hands of the letter.

19. Derrida, "Purveyor of Truth," p. 107. The full quotation reads: "a letter does not always arrive at its destination, and since this belongs to its structure, it can be said that it never really arrives there, that when it arrives, its possibly-not-arriving ["son-pourvoir-ne- pas-arriver"] torments it with an internal divergence."



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