Issue 41 (Summer 2009) Pages-133-140

The following paper, translated into English by Cormac Gallagher, was read by Charles Melman during a two-day conference in 2003 on the themes of Christian Fierens‟ book Lecture de L‟Etourdit. Lacan 1972, Paris: L‟Harmattan, 2002.

I got to know Fierens‟ book through Jean-Pierre Lebrun who sent it to me and I immediately found that it was an amazing work and that even if I was not necessarily in agreement with the reading that he gave of this text, it was one of the most stimulating and successful works to be met in our domain.

I am saying this all the more because I have with this text of L‟Etourdit Ŕ I told Christian Fierens about it yesterday Ŕ a rather particular relationship. Because, I will pass over this very quickly, Lacan had given me this text for me to publish in Scilicet 4. I had given it back to him telling him that it was an absolutely unreadable, impossible text; that no one would ever understand anything in it; and that the sense of such a publication seemed to me to be absolutely not obvious. Which he did not take very well…..