The secret according to Heidegger and The

Purloined Letter by Poe

Rudolf Bernet

Continental Philosophy Review

ISSN 1387-2842

Cont Philos Rev

DOI 10.1007/s11007-014-9298-9

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 Author's personal copy
Cont Philos Rev
DOI 10.1007/s11007-014-9298-9

The secret according to Heidegger and The Purloined

Letter by Poe

Rudolf Bernet

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Heideggers lecture course on Parmenides (1942/1943) lays strong

emphasis on the dimension of lethe in truth (aletheia). Such a withdrawal belonging
to unconcealment should not be confused with a dissembling or hiding (pseudos). A
concealment pertaining to the presence of a thing can be illustrated by means of a
phenomenological description of oblivion, anamnesis, the rare, the gift and the
secret. Especially Heideggers account of an open secret lends itself to a philo-
sophical interpretation of Poes The Purloined Letter. Dupin recurrently medi-
tates on the right way of keeping a secret and mocks the police for confusing lethe
with pseudos. Incidentally, stealing is shown to be no less a form of unconcealment
than the gift. Poes description of how and where The Purloined Letter is openly
present in the ministers study sheds light on how a thing can remain secret by
giving way to other things.

Keywords Aletheia
Lethe
Pseudos
Secret
Gift
Oblivion

As far as I know, Heidegger never commented on the short story entitled The
Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe, a masterpiece of world literature, and there is
no evidence that he ever read this American author. Not so for Lacan, Derrida
and Deleuze, although their commentaries on The Purloined Letter owe much to
Heidegger. Rather than summarizing and commenting on these comments, my
objective is to reread Poes text anew in the light of a text by Heidegger which was
not available to Lacans, Derridas and Deleuzes now old readings. This text is a
course of the winter semester 19421943 entitled Parmenides edited by M.

Translated from French by Dominique Poncelet.

R. Bernet (&)
University of Leuven, Louvain, Belgium
e-mail: rudolf.bernet@hiw.kuleuven.be

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S. Frings and first published in 1982 (Heidegger 1982, 1992). In this course
Heidegger in fact speaks as much about Plato as about Parmenides; Homer, Hesiod,
Sophocles and Pindar are summoned, besides Heraclitus, Anaximander and
Aristotle, as well as Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Herder, Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Spengler and Rilke. The Roman Empire, the Curia of the
Roman Catholic Church, and Germany wrestling with its destiny and its demons are
also convened in a reflection on the history of Western thought and civilization, a
reflection that wants to be conscious of its own historial responsibility.
These scattered reflections find their center of gravity in a short meditation on the
essence of secret, on its particular mode of manifestation as well as on its
misunderstanding by our culture of a universal visibility. By ascribing to the secret
an essential role in the event of truth in the sense of aletheia or unconcealment
(Unverborgenheit), Heidegger granted the being of any thing a part of mystery. The
recognition of this mysterious component part in the Being of beings, the Being of
being which was familiar to the early Greek thinkers, progressively vanished in the
course of the history of metaphysics. Mystery has become an enigma to solve,
concealment which is constitutive of aletheia has been brought down to the status of
a truth slyly hidden by some ill-intentioned subject, the respect for secret has been
replaced by an incitement to denunciation. It is now the task of the police and the
spy satellites to promote the revelation of the truth. But Heidegger also wants to
show that concealment as constitutive of the truth is characterized by a profound
ambiguity, which was recognized by the first Greek poets and thinkers. Contrary to
the moderns, they did not consider the threat of truth to be in mystery and secret, but
rather in their dissimulation. In Greek, it is not from the lethe that aletheia could
suffer, but from the pseudos. It is thus highly important not to confuse
concealedness (Verborgenheit) and concealment (Verbergung), which are consti-
tutive of unconcealment, with a dissembling (Verstellen), distorting (Entstellen) or
even with a hiding (Verhehlen) which hinder the manifestation of truth.
The weight of a secret truth and of its guard or concealment, the ambiguity of any
manifestation of such a truth and its displacement in places both public and
mysterious, the police searching for conspiracy and hiding places are also at the
center of Poes text The Purloined Letter. Before my re-reading of The Purloined
Letter I shall offer a brief synopsis of the phenomenological analysis of oblivion
and memory as well as of the gift and the secret, as Heidegger presents it in his course
on Parmenides. I will focus exclusively on the paradoxical mode of the phenom-
enalization of these singular phenomena which present themselves to us by escaping
our grasp and protecting themselves against this incisive mode of vision that well
deserves the name of inspection. There is an enigmatic attraction exerted by a
virtuality of meaning that will never become a possibility of subjective understand-
ing, by the mystery of a withdrawal of the gift, by a secret at the same time open and
shielded, stolen and kept, as well as by the event of an oblivion that makes itself
forgotten while putting its seal on an anamnesis which saves the unconcealment of
the beings. Such an enigmatic attraction will remain at the core of our questioning
during this meditation. My reading of Heidegger will lead us to the threshold of the
question raised by Poes text: Is the fate of this open secret of The Purloined
Letter not the fate of any thing in the ambiguity of its manifestation?

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1 Concealment, oblivion, and anamnesis

At the beginning of his course on Parmenides Heidegger suggests that even the most
ordinary things could very well have their part of secret and that the concealment
which characterizes truth for the first Greeks is familiar to us through our most
everyday experiences:
In some way or other we surely do know the likes of concealing (Verbergen)
and concealedness (Verborgenheit). We know it as veiling (Verhullung), as
masking (Verschleierung), and as covering (Verdeckung) but also in the forms
of conserving (Aufbewahrung), preserving (Behutung), holding back (Zur-
uckhaltens), entrusting (Anvertrauens), and appropriating (Ubereignung). We
also know concealedness in the multiple forms of closing off (Verschliessung)
and closedness (Verschlossenheit). (Heidegger 1982, 19; 1992, 13)
Our everyday experience also teaches usbetter than everything we learned
from modern philosophythat the concealment of things is never, purely and
simply, the result of a subjective activity consisting in hiding, dissimulating or
camouflaging these things. Things themselves are hiding at least as often as they
offer themselves to us by appearing into the light of evidence. The event of such a
concealment of things, in its multiple forms, is not only irreducible to a subjective
action; it is also so fundamental that any voluntary act of dissimulation is in turn
irremediably affected by it. If we want a proof of this, all we have to do is to think
about all the things that, since childhood, we put away in a secured location and
were unable, in spite of insisting and repeated efforts, to retrieve. In the same way,
what Freud calls repression would be totally incomprehensible if what had been
repressed by subjects remained at their disposal. This is why Freud says that the
repression of a representation is as much a question of subjective repression as a
question of attraction by the unconscious. Thus one has to conclude that things
withdraw as much as we hide them: both a concealing (Sichverbergen) of things
and a concealing of this concealing occur in an interplay (ineinanderspielen)
through us (Heidegger 1982, 23; 1992, 16). Of this Poes The Purloined Letter
gives a sharp and enlightening illustration.
For the early Greeks, these two modes of occultation could not, strictly speaking,
be conjugated and mixed, since they were one. Ignoring the distinction between
concealment as a subjective activity and as an ontological event, and little inclined
to make of concealment the opposite of appearing, they dedicated, on the contrary,
all the efforts of their minds to the antagonism between the proper concealment of
the lethe and the improper concealment of the pseudos. Quoting and literally
translating a fragment of the Odyssey, Heidegger explains that, for Homer, it is not
Odysseus who decides to hide his tears from his companions, but that it is the tearful
Odysseus, or even more precisely, the tears of Odysseus which are withheld from
their gaze. This does not amount to denying that the watering of the eyes is an action
but to emphasizing that any action draws its meaning from an ontological event of
concealment or unconcealment. It is thus one and the same event of concealment
which surrounds human behavior and the things to which it is related: The being
sinks away into concealment in such a manner that with this concealment of the

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being I remain concealed from myself. Moreover, this concealment is itself

concealed (Heidegger 1982, 36; 1992, 24). Since any concealed being and
behavior partake of an ontological event of occultation, they cannot therefore be
assimilated to a nothing or even to a pure absence. But if the Greeks characterize the
concealment and the concealed by a certain positivity, it follows that the appearing
understood as unconcealment can never be an appearing ex nihilo. Far from being
opposed to the concealment as to its negation, the unconcealment bears in itself its
part of concealment. The conflict between concealment and unconcealment is thus
not a fight that would oppose two adversaries who would be alien to each other; to
the contrary, this conflict owes its virulence to the intimacy of the link which
embraces the two fighters. No one, according to Heidegger, better understood this
internecine quarrel between unconcealment and concealment than Heraclitus and no
one misjudged it more famously than Hegel. For Heidegger, the failure of the
Hegelian dialectics stems precisely from its inability to think the unconcealment
other than in the guise of a negation of concealment and to think the concealment
other than in the guise of an annihilation of unconcealment.
Relying on the Greek language Heidegger sees in oblivion a remarkable form of
this concealment which is the distinctive attribute of the lethe. His phenomeno-
logical analysis of oblivion exemplifies his refusal to assimilate the concealment to
a form of untruth or non-unconcealment. This analysis also allows him to show the
extent to which a phenomenology of intentional consciousness and transcendental
subject remains incapable to think the fatal phenomenon of oblivion. Not because
oblivion would not affect subjects in their relationship to things, but on the contrary
because it affects them as an event which totally escapes their initiative and control.
In other words, the event of oblivion strikes subjects just as well as the things to
which they relate, because it affects both of them at once in their indissoluble
entanglement. In forgetting a thing, subjects forget themselves in their relationship
to that thing:
Something similar does indeed occur when we forget this or that. In forgetting
(das Vergessen) not only does something slip from us, but the forgetting slips
into a concealment (Verbergung) of such a kind that we ourselves fall into
concealedness (Verborgenheit) precisely in our relation to the forgotten.
(Heidegger 1982, 36; 1992, 24)
To forget is thus not a transitive verb: things make themselves forgotten and
cause human beings to forget themselves in their opening to these things. This is the
reason why the oblivion of things is always also an oblivion of oblivion and why
oblivion is only a particular form of this event of concealment which, as Heidegger
emphasized in a previous quotation, is itself concealed. Oblivion, as a mode of
concealment, is thus, strictly speaking, the event of a forgetting or an
obliteration (Vergessung) (Heidegger 1982, 106; 1992, 72. Translation modified)
and not the result of a subjective activity that would consist in wanting to forget. A
human being who wants to forget will always remember both his will to forget and
what he wanted to forget.
There is no better illustration of the essence of concealment and oblivion than the
final myth of Platos Republic, which will be the focus of Heidegger later in his

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course on Parmenides. In this myth, concealment is presented as a demoniac place

(called Lethe) which deeply disrupts the life of the souls of the deceased by
erasing from them the appearing of all things. Everything separates this sinister
and desert place where absolute concealment reigns from the familiar place of the
polis where the livings gather around the unconcealment of things from a phusis
which makes things emerge in the bright light of the day. And as if he wanted to
emphasize even more the abyss that separates these two places, Plato adds to the
concealment of the Lethe the oblivion caused by the consumption of the water of
this strange River Carefree (Ameles) which crosses the desert of the Lethe. All
of Heideggers efforts consist, once more, in showing us that the two places are
not in opposition, that their difference cannot be reduced to a mutual negation or
exclusion, but that Lethe and phusis are on the contrary bound to one another by
the link of their conflict. In this nearly Heraclitean interpretation of Platos myth,
the conflict dividing the two places ends up propagating and expanding in the
midst of each one of them with the result that, eventually, the luminous presence
of the things of the phusis in the midst of the polis and the barren absence of an
unconcealment of things in the midst of the Lethe (as well as the oblivion caused
by River Carefree of every care for their emergence), are marked by this same
conflict. Returning to earth and opening themselves to the unconcealment of
things, human souls will not have forgotten everything of the concealment that
reigns in the midst of the Lethe. And if they remember it, it means therefore that
this concealment was not nothing.
Let us dwell a little longer on these decisive moments of Heideggers
demonstration: the more-than-nothing of the concealment of the Lethe, the only
partial forgetting operated by the consumption of the water of the Ameles River and
the traces of Lethe and Ameles in the midst of a human anamnesis which cares about
the unconcealment of the things of the phusis.

1. The concealment that is rife in the barren plain of the Lethe undoes the
appearing of things. However this does not mean that it bears no relationship
with a possible unconcealment of things since it consists precisely in its
withdrawal, removal, emptying (evidement). Consequently, the disappearing of
things is inseparable from the appearing of this void characteristic of Lethe. The
void is thus precisely the mode of presence in which concealment appears as
concealment:
() the away (weg) of the withdrawn (des Entzogenen) comes into
presence (west an) itself in the essence of the withdrawal (im Wesen des
Entzugs). The away of what is withdrawn and concealed is surely not
nothing, for the letting disappear (Verschwindenlassen) that withdraws
everything occurs (begibt) in this place in this place alone and presents
itself (dargibt) there. The place is void (). But the void is precisely what
remains and what comes into presence there (das Bleibende und Answesende).
(Heidegger 1982, 176; 1992, 119)

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2. By swallowing the water of the River Carefree, the souls of the deceased
internalize an oblivion that, from now on, will be a part of their very own being.
But it does not mean that this oblivion constitutes all of their own being. The
souls who drank this water with measure will not forget everything of their
sojourn in the plain of Lethe and they will keep a certain familiarity with the
concealment when they return on earth. However, for those who drank the
water of the River Carefree immoderately, life on earth will only be a sub-
human life, ignoring everything about the care for an unconcealment of the
things of the phusis. Things will be presented to them deprived of their depth,
withdrawing, and secret. For the one who got drunk with the water of the River
Carefree to the point of forgetting everything of his sojourn in the Lethe will not
care at all for the event of the emergence of things. The presence of things for
him will be reduced to their flat and immediate availability for the satisfaction
of his needs and he will behave toward things like animals do:

Complete, measureless oblivion, i.e., concealment, would exclude the least

ground of the essence (Wesensgrund) of man (Menschenwesens), because such
oblivion would allow no disclosure (Entbergung) and would deny unconceal-
edness its essential foundation. Conversely, we see from this that a measure of
withdrawing concealment belongs to the possibility of unconcealedness
(Heidegger 1982, 183; 1992, 123).

3. Every specifically human life thus owes its ontological meaning to its
relationship to the truth, that is the event of an unconcealment of beings. Even
though it is not the human being who initiates of this unconcealment, the event
of this unconcealment demands a free contribution from her part. This
contribution consists in an active solicitude for the unconcealment of beings. It
is a caring solicitude which the German term used by Heidegger (Werben) links
to the attitude of the suitor who seeks the favor of his beloved. This is the
meaning Heidegger attributes to the Platonic anamnesis:

() the saving (Retten) and conserving (Behalten) of the un-concealed (Un-

verborgenen) is necessarily in relation to concealment, understood as the
withdrawal (Entzug) of what appears in its appearing. The conserving is
grounded in a perpetual saving and preserving (Bewahren). This preserving of
the unconcealed comes to pass in its pure essence when man strives freely for
the unconcealed (frei um das Unverborgene wirbt) and does so incessantly
throughout his mortal course on earth. () In Platos sense, i.e., thought in the
Greek way, the relation to the Being of beings is therefore anamnesis.
(Heidegger 1982, 184; 1992, 124)
If this anamnesis still deserves to be linked to a memory, this memory thus erases
neither the forgetting nor the concealment, but rather preserves them. Not only do
mortals keep a memory of the forgetting and Lethe once they are back to life on

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earth, but this relationship to concealment is part and parcel of their care for the
unconcealment of beings in the event of their original emergence. Therefore, for the
mortals who deserve to be called human, there is no more presence without
relationship to concealment than there is a relationship to the concealment without
an unconcealing presence. Concealment without unconcealing presence is the
business of the deceased souls and presence without concealment is the business of
animals. By contrast, for human mortals any presence comes from a concealment,
goes back to the concealment, and remains dependent on the concealment at the
heart of its dazzling unconcealment. However, this concealment that governs their
whole life never appears to them in its purity; it remains concealed to the human eye
even when it manifests itself. The concealment as pure concealment and lethe as
pure lethe only appear in slipping out of this appearance; they only give themselves
by withdrawing.
Heidegger summarizes in a few sentences what is at stake for the Greeks in
concealment and unconcealment, forgetting and its recollection:
What is counter (Gegenhaftige) to aletheia is neither simply the opposite
(das Widrige), nor the bare lack (Mangel), nor the rejection (Abkehr) of it as
mere denial. Lethe, the oblivion of withdrawing (entziehende) concealment, is
that withdrawal by means of which alone the essence of aletheia can be
preserved (behalten) and thus be and remain unforgotten. () For the Greeks,
the withdrawing and self-withdrawing concealment is the simplest of the
simple, preserved for them in their experience of the concealed and therein
allowed to come into presence (zur Anwesung). (Heidegger 1982, 189; 1992,
127)

2 The rare, the gift, and the secret

The fact that a pure concealment remains necessarily concealed to mortals cannot
therefore mean that concealment does not appear to them at all. Thus, in addition to
the unconcealment of the beings, there must exist something like an unconcealment
of the concealment itself. Or, more precisely, there must exist an unconcealment of
beings such that it lets the concealment of their being come to presence. This
paradoxical demand requires that at least some privileged beings not content
themselves to have come to appear through an event of unconcealment, but that they
bring to appearance this concealment, constitutive of their deepest being. Thus the
paradox consists very precisely in making apparent the inapparent or in making it
the case that a being appear while withdrawing for the sake of the appearing of the
concealment of its being. When you think about it, the paradox of this demand is
none other than the one that constitutes the possibility of a phenomenological
reduction in which the presence of a being leads us to the presence of its being. It is
clear that not all the beings lend themselves to such an explicit unconcealment of the
concealment of their being and that the event of this unconcealment will keep a
paradoxical character. Instead of calling upon Dasein and its questioning power in
order to accomplish this phenomenological return to the unconcealing of the

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concealment of Being, Heidegger prefers in his 19421943 course on Parmenides to

draw our attention to other privileged beings. Such a deliberate choice can be
explained especially by the conviction that human beings do not hold the main part
in these exceptional events of a revelation of concealment. The course on
Parmenides gives us three examples of the paradoxical experience of a being whose
unconcealment lets appear the concealment constitutive of its being: the rare, the
gift, and the secret.
The paradox of the rare consists in remaining available for anyone, the paradox
of the gift consists in not giving or yielding its treasure, and the paradox of the secret
consists in revealing itself without being noticed. The paradoxical character of the
unsheltering that these exceptional phenomena manifest demands from the human
being who welcomes them exceptional as well as paradoxical qualities. In order to
preserve the concealment in the unconcealment of the rare, one must be able to
leave it in peace. In order to take in the concealed treasure of the gift, one must give
up any desire for ownership and use. In order to keep the secret, one must leave its
mystery alone and be able to remain silent.

1. Let us start by what Heidegger calls the rare (das Seltene).

There is also, however, a kind of concealment that does not at all put aside and
destroy the concealed but instead shelters (geborgen) and saves (gerettet) the
concealed for what it is. This concealment does not deprive us of the thing, as
in cases of dissembling (Verstellen) and distorting (Entstellen), withdrawing
(Entziehen), and putting aside (Beseitigen). This concealement preserves
(bewahrt). It is characteristic, e.g., of what we call, in a notable sense, the rare
(das Seltene). () But what is truly rare is available (vorhanden) precisely
always and for everyone, except that it dwells (west) in a concealment
harboring (verwahrt) something utterly decisive (Entscheidungsvolles) and
holding in readiness (bereit halt) high claims on us. The proper relation to the
rare is not to chase after it but to leave it at rest (Ruhenlassen) by
acknowledging the concealment. (Heidegger 1982, 92; 1992, 62)
This fragment first reminds us of the fundamental distinction made by the Greeks
between the concealment as a pseudos (dissembling, distorting, withdraw-
ing, putting aside) and as lethe (preserves, harboring, and saving). The
latter form of the concealment can be called positive not only because it is not
nothing, as we already mentioned, but especially because it positively contributes to
the event of unconcealment, i.e., truth understood as aletheia. Its contribution is
positive precisely because this concealment preserves, harbors, saves and keeps in
its withdrawal the lethe that the untruth overlooks by dissembling it. In order to lead
us to the truth, the presence of the being should not substitute itself for the
concealment (as it is the case for the pseudos), but the being should preserve the
concealment of its being at the heart of its unconcealment. The being should not be
simply available in an evident manner in lending itself to an inspection or making
itself useful but, in its evidence, it must keep in its unconcealment that secret part of
its being of which a human being cannot dispose. This is rare because, in
everyday life, modern people rush at things in order to put them to use. In general,

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the rarity of a thing for us amounts to the difficulty we feel to take hold of it. To this
physical rarity of a natural resource, to this economic rarity of a merchandise,
Heidegger opposes the holding in readiness high claims on us by what eludes our
grasp not by making itself rare and desired, but by refusing itself to us. What gives
itself while refusing itself to us has no price and deserves our greatest respect. We
respect it, Heidegger says, when we leave it at rest, i.e., while leaving to it what it
does not want or cannot give us.
Even if Heidegger does not mention it explicitly, it is clear that the rarity of such
an event depends as much on us as on things themselves. Does this mean that for the
Greeks, every coming of a thing into presence was equivalent to an experience of
the rare, i.e., of the concealment in the unconcealment, i.e., the aletheia? This would
not take into account the ruses of the pseudos which, without suppressing the truth,
is superposed on it or substituted for it. Thus, what is rare is the fact that the truth
happens without dissembling itself. The Homeric illustrations of the pseudos
Heidegger gives in his text make it very clear that human behavior is not the only
element involved in the untruth. One must thus believe that being itself likes not
only sheltering itself (as Heraclitus says in fragment 123) but also dissembling
itself. Because the unconcealment of being is an enigmatic and ambiguous event;
because in it the true runs the risk of being mixed with the untrue to the point of
being sometimes confused with it, the receiving of a pure aletheia by human beings
is rare and only happens when meeting rare beings.

2. But what is a being that is rare in itself and not because we lack it to satisfy our
needs? What are these rare beings that give themselves to us by offering us
without detour the constitutive concealment of their Being? If the gift, as well
as the secret, are, for Heidegger, such rare beings, what constitutes the rarity of
the gift?
The essential type of bestowal and bequest (Schenkung und Stiftung) is in each
case a concealment (Verbergung), and indeed not only of the bestower but of
what is bestowed, insofar as the bestowed does not simply surrender its
treasures (seinen Schatz nicht preisgibt) but only lets this come into
unconcealment (ins Unverborgene): namely that in it a richness is lodged
which will be attained to the degree it is protected against abuse (Vernutzung).
(Heidegger 1982, 92; 1992, 62)
Our contemporaries (Derrida, Marion) taught us that the gift does not belong to
the donor who parts company with a thing to offer it and whose offering needs as
much to be accepted as to be offered. They also had no difficulties persuading us
that the gift does not belong to the donee either, who remains indebted to the donor
of this present. But Heidegger goes even further, suggesting that the gift is an event
and not a being and that it is thus awkward to wonder to which subject it could
belong. The bestower, as well as what is bestowed, stay concealed at the heart
of the event of the bestowal. A person can give a thing to another person, but she
cannot give her the giving which makes of that thing a gift. That is why, at the heart
of their appearing, neither the gift nor the donor give themselves to the donee. In the
thing we give or receive, the giving is not included, but, Heidegger says, remains

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concealed or put in reserve. The more we give and receive things, the more the
non-given treasures or richness of these gifts grow sheltered in these
exchanges. There thus exists neither a reserved gift without a thing effectively
given, nor a given thing without secretly kept richness. Far from being opposed to or
distinct from the non-given gift, the given thing gives itself rather as the token of a
concealed gift which the given thing contributes to save in order to keep the gift
protected from human coveting. Instead of insisting upon its ontological difference
with the being of the giving and of imposing itself as a subsisting being, the given
thing puts itself entirely to the service of the event of giving.
Giving is therefore a concealed event, the concealment of which is preserved
by the way given things present the giving. For these given things reveal the
giving which constitutes their being with discretion and restraint, i.e., without
doing violence to the withdrawal of their giving. Given things reveal themselves
as gifts only provided that they renounce their status of autonomous subsisting
beings and give way to the unconcealment of the event of their giving. The real
offerings are thus those that take the least place and attract the least attention. It
is enough for them to make a sign in direction of the concealed richness they
shelter instead of substituting themselves for this richness. Their visibility gives
way to an invisible the invisibility of which they respect. The giving of the true
gifts is made without emphasis on the person of the donor or the obvious value of
the gift. These gifts are thus indeed exceptional beings, excepted from the
normality of the appearing and the use of things. The things given can fulfill their
mission of causing the invisible event of their giving to come to presence, i.e.
what makes of them gifts, only insofar as their exceptional and rare character is
respected not only by the donors but also by the donees. Any use of a gift as a
simple good circulating among multiple owners is an abusive usage (Vernutzung)
that destroys the being of the gift by focusing exclusively on the ontic value of
the given being.

3. Like the richness of the gift, the mystery of the secret is hard to attend to. This
difficulty is all the more great in that the secret in its apparent simplicity runs
the risk of remaining unnoticed to the eyes of those who are on the look-out for
the spectacular and sensational. One can thus pass by a secret as much
inadvertently as by trying relentlessly to shed light on something hidden. For a
thing does not need to hide in order to keep its secret. It can, on the contrary,
offer itself openly as the guard of a concealed mystery. Poes Purloined
Letter provides us with an instructive example. The story told by Poe perfectly
illustrates Heideggers analysis that a secret is ignored in its essence, when it is
apprehended as the property of a thing and not as the event of the concealing of
a mystery of which this thing is the discreet messenger.
The mystery in the secret (das Geheime des Geheimnisvollen) is a kind of
concealment, characterized by its insignificance (Unscheinbarkeit), in virtue
of which the secret is an open one (offenes Geheimnis). () The open
secret in the genuine and strict sense, on the contrary, occurs (waltet) where
the concealing (Verbergung) of the mysterious is simply experienced as

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concealedness (Verborgenheit) and is lodged in a historically arisen reticence

(Verschwiegenheit). The openness of the open secret does not consist in
solving the mystery (entratselt), thus destroying it, but consists in not touching
the concealedness of the simple and essential and letting (belassen) this
concealedness alone in its appearance. (Heidegger 1982, 93; 1992, 63.
Translation modified)
By associating the phenomenon of the secret with the event of the appearing of
a concealment, this quote lies within the scope of what we have already said about
the paradoxical character of the unconcealment of the concealment. The opening
of this concealment, which characterizes the mystery of the secret, is opposed,
according to Heidegger, to a flat opening that would destroy the secret by
suppressing its concealment as well as to a voluntarily closed concealment which
would make of the secret something hidden or unexplained. In reality, such a flat
opening and closed concealment are one and the same, for if the secret were
something hidden or unexplained, one should shed light on and explain it in order
to dissipate its mystery. The secret would therefore be comparable to the residue
of an arithmetical operation which demands a more refined (and maybe infinite)
analysis in order to be reduced. If the secret remained in spite of everything, it
would simply be that it is (still) inexplicable (das Unerklarliche) for a human
intelligence. The secret would therefore still be mysterious quoad nos and never
quoad se. Through a closer examination, this fallacious way of understanding the
secret (typical, Heidegger says, of science and technology as well as American
ideology) amounts to depriving the secret of any essential and positive relationship
to the truth understood as aletheia: the mystery of the secret would pertain to a
conspiracy (Verschworung) which should be denounced, of a dirty little
secret (Versteckens) that should be brought to light, of a covering-up and of a
deception (Tarnung und Tauschung) that should be unmasked (Heidegger 1982,
92 ff; 1992, 62 ff.) That is to say that in the improper conception of the secret, the
secret would always wear one mask or another among those numerous ones the
pseudos uses in order to dissimulate and conceal the event of an unconcealment of
the truth.
The true opening of a secret which consists in unconcealing its constitutive
concealment is thus not an opening forced by human inquisition, but one that is
offered by the mysterious thing itself. The discreet character of this opening of the
secret is opposed to a spectacular and destructive opening as well as to the flat
opening which is typical of these trivially accessible secrets we call open secrets.
The unconcealment of the concealment which is typical of the true secret, the
coming into presence of what stays necessarily unapparent in the secret can only be
realized under the form of an appearance that goes almost unnoticed or, as
Heidegger says, that is characterized by its insignificance (Unscheinbarkeit). The
same holds true for the mysterious thing and the given thing: it is given as the carrier
of a secret it does not deliver to us. The welcoming of this givenness by someone
consists, here again, in letting the mysterious thing accomplish the unconcealment
of the concealment of its secret. We saw that the event of the giving could be
accomplished and manifested through the given thing only insofar as this thing

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would shed its autonomy as a subsisting being and would elude a purely economic
usage. The same holds true for the secret: it can only be saved if one renounces
using the mysterious thing for ones personal profit. In order to keep the secret of
this thing, one must, Heidegger says, keep silent. Only silence preserves the secret,
only silence respects the simplicity and the Unscheinbarkeit with which the secret
offers a glimpse of itself through a thing which, by withdrawing for the sake of its
mystery, runs the risk of going unnoticed. (We will see how, in Poes narration, the
Purloined Letter openly standing in the ministers card-rack goes unnoticed by the
police who are looking for it in a hidden place. And we will also see that it is only in
keeping silent on the content of this letter that the same minister preserves to this
letter its power of revelation).

3 The Purloined Letter and its open secret

What is, briefly summarized, the content of this short story Poe tells us in The
Purloined Letter (Poe 1993)?
Once upon a time a queen, surprised while reading a compromising letter
(addressed to her by a male hand) by the unexpected coming of her noble husband,
furtively put this letter face down on a table. This stratagem did not escape the
attention of the minister who was present and who immediately understood the
advantages he could draw from this letter if he managed to take hold of it. Taking
advantage of the attention the king was giving to his report on the affairs of the
State, the minister negligently drew from his pocket a similar letter, put it next to
the letter addressed to the queen, and put in his pocket this other letter instead of
his before taking his leave. Understanding that she was from now on at the mercy
of the minister and exposed to ignoble blackmails, the queen wanted to recover the
letter at any price. She thus entrusted the prefect of police with the task of
retrieving the purloined letter as fast as possible and promised him a royal reward.
The prefect put all his men on the case and, taking advantage of the nocturnal
absences of the minister, his officers searched his entire apartment. After having
searched the whole place inch by inch without finding anything, they started
sawing the legs of the chairs and the beds, piercing all the armchairs with thin
needles, etc.without further results. The letter remained impossible to find, the
hiding place imagined by the minister turned out to be too ingenious. End of the
first and second acts. I take advantage of the pause to draw attention to the fact that
we still do not know anything about the content of the letter and that it is enough
for the minister to keep hold of it and to remain silent in order to blackmail the
queen.
At the beginning of the third act, the vexed police chief explains his troubles to a
friend in the presence of Monsieur Dupin. Attracted by the big reward promised by
the prefect of police, Dupin commits himself to find quickly the purloined letter. He
declares, in advance and with assurance, that the police had probably botched the
search and forgotten that the minister was not only a skilled chess player and a
distinguished mathematician, but also a poet. Dupin, himself an occasional poet,
will know how to thwart the ministers ruses. Perhaps the mystery is a little too

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plain (Poe 1993, 495),1 says Dupin, perhaps the mystery has escaped the finest
sleuths of the police just as these signposts or titles written with letters so big that
they escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious (Poe 1993, 508). In
other words: the police officers, little gifted for poetry and philosophy, as is well
known, have confused the secret of the letter with a hidden thing. They looked for a
hidden letter and thus missed the letter with a mysterious content that the sly
minister had openly put at their disposal in his card-rack. Dupin is the only one to
understand that the minister would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity
(Poe 1993, 507) of which Heidegger tells us that it is especially suited to the
appearing of a secret. Fourth act and end of the comedy: Dupin finds the letter that
the minister had simply turned back, dirty, half-torn and addressed to himself with a
handwriting not masculine but feminine. Dupin takes hold of the stolen letter and
replaces it with a false letter which, in its external appearance, is a faithful copy of
the real letter, but the content of which is completely different and openly mocks the
minister. Let us add that, before the fall of the curtain, the essential point at the end
of the story is not that the stolen letter is once again in the hands of the queen, but
that she knows (what the duped minister ignores) that her enemy holds a false letter
the content of which would ridicule him if he were to make it public. In order to
bring down the tactless minister, it is thus sufficient for the queen to remain silent
and wait for the minister to break his silence by making public the secret that he still
thinks he keeps. What causes the ministers downfall, in spite of the familiarity that
as a half-poet he entertains with the secret in general, is the fact that the secret that
he kept silently in sheltering it openly, has been replaced by an open secret, trivially
open and of which, contrary to the purloined letter, we know the content.2 It is no
less ridiculous to keep such a false secret in silence than to hope to draw a personal
advantage from its revelation.
Without worrying about a proper literary approach to this text, let us try now to
see what this story can teach us on the nature of the secret and what in Poes
narrative concurs with Heideggers phenomenological analysis.
First, with regard to the presence of the letter with a mysterious content, we
already noted the simplicity of its presence among the other objects composing the
home of the minister. This simplicity which, according to Heidegger, suits
particularly well the keeping of a secret, is the sign of a modesty or restraint that is
proper to a thing that does not surrender itself, while being offered to the eyes.
Therefore, one should not confuse the too great evidence (a little too self-evident)
of the stolen letter with a spectacular presence which would catch the eyes. The eyes
do not stop over the letter because the letter sends them back to the other things that
surround it and with which it makes a whole. The letter makes itself forgotten by
diverting the inquisitive gaze toward a set of things with which the letter merges.
The purloined letter only manages to keep its secret by becoming quite ordinary and
simple. Instead of attracting attention, the letter presents itself as a simple thing

1
The current German translation says, almost in Heideggerian terms, Vielleicht liegt das Geheimnis ein
bisschen zu offen am Tage.
2
The content is the following verse from Atree by Crebillon fils, that Poe quotes in French: Un dessein
si funeste/Sil est digne dAtree, est digne de Thyeste.

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among the other things composing the surrounding world (Umwelt) of the ministers
residence. This simplicity of appearance of the purloined letter suggests to us that
many other things, in this little world, might also carry secrets which escape a
hurried overall gaze. We will see that such a generalization of the secret of things is
indeed what Heidegger intends to show and this will lead us to wonder whether the
story of the purloined letter is really as extraordinary as Poe apparently wants us
to believe.
I have said repeatedly that the purloined letter calls for a poetic gaze in order
to be noticed and in order to show that it is carrying a secret. That is the reason why
a policeman who can only imagine complicated stratagems of dissimulation is
unable to find the letter. The minister, who isPoe saysboth mathematician and
poet, has at his disposal this poetic sensitivity that is suitable for the frequentation
of secrets, but he abuses it in a calculated manner in order to deceive the polices
vigilance. This strategy works wonders for him until he meets a poet such as Dupin,
who knows how the appearing of a secret presents itself. But how can we
characterize this poetic approach to a thing and its secret that the minister abuses
and that Dupin uses in order to thwart the cleverness of the ministers mathematical
mind? For Heidegger, it must be an attitude respecting the unconcealing presence of
the thing and thus favoring the coming of the event of its truth. This means that
those who arelike the police officersdeprived from a poetic sense, not only
confuse the concealing with a cheap hiding, but are also inclined to take the
concealing constitutive of the truth for a mark of falsehood in the sense of pseudos.
For them, there exist neither true secrets nor secret truth. For the police, all that is
not immediately present in the sense of being offered without reservation to the
inspection of anyone, must be drawn from its hiding place and made present.
Confining themselves to what we have called a flat presence of the things, i.e., a
presence without concealment, Poes policemen look like those sub-humans or
animals who, according to Heideggers interpretation of Platos myth, live on earth
without a single memory of the field of Lethe.
But Heidegger is not content to suggestas Poes does explicitlythat a
calculating mind, which objectivizes things in the way natural sciences do, takes the
risk of confusing the concealment with a dissembling, i.e., the secret with an
enigma, and finally truth with falsehood. Heidegger pursues his phenomenological
questioning of this secret which is at the heart of every truth by questioning the kind
of evidence which characterizes the giving of such a truth. What is for Poe too self-
evident in the presence of the purloined letter, becomes, for Heidegger, an
opening of the thing. How are we to understand this opening of a thing which is
constitutive of the truth of its secret and which makes of any true secret an open
secret? How can a secret be at the same time invisible and visible, concealed and
open? Open on what and open for whom?
I already said that, in its excessive evidence, the purloined letter was open on the
other things surrounding it and toward which it directs the eyes while withdrawing
in front of them. Far from putting itself forward and claiming among these things a
noticeable mode of presence, the letter gives way to them. Its opening is thus
opposed to a mode of closing in which a thing would attempt to captivate the gaze
by substituting itself to other things. This closing, in which a being is substituted for

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the other beings in stealing their unconcealing presence, is precisely what

characterizes the evidence of the pseudos. Unmasking the pseudos is looking for
what it is hiding; but this is not, Heidegger says, finding the truth constitutive of the
secret. For a real unconcealment of the secret to take place, it is not sufficient for
one thingsuch as the purloined letterto let the other things become present; it is
also necessary that while doing so, the thing does not erase the concealing
constitutive of their truth. In its unconcealing opening, the mysterious thing refers to
other things in respecting and keeping their concealed truth.
Poes narrative is particular insofar as the things present and the things concealed
toward which the purloined letter refers are different things. The excessive self-
evidence or openness of the letter in the midst of the other things present in the
residence of the minister only reinforces the concealment of the absent things about
which it is silent. The unconcealing presence of the purloined letter in the card-rack
of the minister stays silent on its secret content as well as on the social order that the
secret content might shatter. The things that are absent, toward which the purloined
letter secretly refers in withdrawing in front of the present things, belong to a world
quite larger than the world of the ministers residence. This world secretly evoked
and the persistence of which is threatened by the mysterious content of the letter, is
the entire world of the French monarchy, of which the minister and even the king
and the queen constitute only minuscule fragments or small interdependent parts,
depending themselves on other social bodies that are just as essential.
What constitutes the proper being of the purloined letters secret is thus nothing
else than its cross-reference to the things that are present and to the things that are
absent. This means that this being, proper to the letter, does not fold this letter on
itself but on the contrary consists in nothing else than its differentiated and essential
reference to other things. This being is thus as proper as it is improper to it because
the purloined letter is a something the being of which is formed by the pure
reference to other things and, through them, to the world. One can only conclude
that the ontological difference between this thing (the purloined letter) and its
proper being gives way to a being which is pure opening to the other things which
are present and absent. When Heidegger tries to think of being as Ereignis (see
Franck 2004), this may very well be a way of going beyond the question of the
ontological difference.
However that may be, there is no doubt that Poes purloined letter is a sort of
messenger that crosses the difference between two worlds both separated and deeply
interwoven. Its being is thus characterized by the fact that it lacks a place proper to
itself, i.e., belonging only to itself. That is the reason why the letter can be stolen so
easily and transported with such ease from the royal palace to the private residence
of the minister. But while being displaced from one place to another, the letter
carries its secret and preserves it along all its peregrinations. Wherever it isin the
shaking hand of the queen or on the table of the reception room, in the ministers
pocket or in the card-rack in his private study, in Dupins pocket or once again in the
hands of the queenthe letter always refers to a place somewhere else, to a world
that can never match the confined space where it is. The diverse places where the
letter is transferred look very much like the earthly dwellings of mortals about
which Platos myth tells us that they are forever haunted by the memory of Lethe.

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The reference to the absent and concealed world, i.e., the totality of the symbolic
system forming the social order, constitutes the true secret and the secret truth of the
unconcealing presence of the letter. Thus the transfer of the purloined letter with its
secret content from one place to another should not be confused with Dupins ruse
which consists in replacing the purloined letter with a false letter the content of
whichknown by Poes readeronly refers to the duped minister. This is so not
only because the substitution, belonging to the order of the pseudos, is essentially
distinct from a displacement of the event of an unconcealment, but also because the
opening, which constitutes the character of truth of the purloined letters secret, has
nothing in common with the pseudo-secret, trivially open, of a false letter which
only refers to a restricted number of known things.
The opening belonging to the unconcealment of the purloined letter and its
mysterious presence also remind us what Heidegger taught us on the memory of the
oblivion and on the giving of a gift. This suggests that the nature of the thefts that
Poes narrative tells us about does not differ essentially from the nature of a giving.
Like the gift, the stolen letter preserves its secret richness only insofar as no one
uses it in a way that would destroy its concealed meaning. He who would make
public the mysterious message of the letter would immediately deprive it of its
secret truth, which consists precisely in a concealed reference to a world which,
although not basically absent, is nonetheless never contained in the content of the
letter. In order to preserve the secret truth of the letter, the thief has to be content
as do the minister and Dupin, both poetic thievesto steal the letter without taking
away its mystery. As the true donor, who gives one thing without appropriating the
meaning of her donation, the good thief keeps silent on the ontological meaning of
the stolen thing. The example of the minister tells us that this does not necessarily
mean that the thief keeps hidden or secret the stolen thing as well as her theft. For
she does not keep silent on her gesture as a thief but on the truth mysteriously
revelatory of the stolen thing itself, which is openly present. Once again, like the
donor who attributes to herself neither the meaning of her gift nor the meaning of
her giving, the thief respects, without appropriating it, the concealed truth of the
letter. When coming back to the Heideggerian analysis of the gift, we understand
better now that the treasures that the gift does not surrender are not limited to the
event of its giving, but also include the manner in which the thing offered refers to a
symbolic totality of which the given thing, the donor and the donee are only
mutually interwoven parts. However, different from the world of the purloined
letter, the world to which the gift belongs is not a pre-given world, but a new world
which the event of the giving opens for the first time.
Our analysis of things which are present and absent, toward which the
unconcealing presence of a gift or a secret creates an opening at the same time
differentiated and discreet, remains nonetheless insufficient. For it is not enough to
have shown on what this unconcealing presence of the secret was opened in order
to understand to whom its opening was addressed. As far as this last question is
concerned, our reading of The Purloined Letter makes us think that the
unconcealment of a secret is addressed to anyone. It is true that, originally, the letter
was addressed to the queen and Poe even specifies that it was addressed to her by a
male hand. One can thus surmise that it was a love letter which not only

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compromised the queen toward the king, but that the suspicion of infidelity on the
queen could also disgrace the entire royal family as well as the social system it
guarantees. One can also surmise that these consequences never entered the
intentions of the author of the letter who, undoubtedly, only thought about securing
the favors of the queen. But it is no less true that, as soon as this letter left his hands,
the meaning of its content immediately escaped its authors control. The same is
true for its addressee, the queen: her husbands unexpected arrival and the vigilant
eye of the sly minister immediately deprived the letter of the meaning it could have
for her (even though it was expressly addressed to her). There is nothing surprising
about this, for a letter is made to circulate and, as soon as it circulates, the message it
contains and transports eludes any appropriation by a particular personwhether
this person is the author, the addressee or the keeper of the letter. The proper
meaning of a letter thus consists very precisely in becoming improper to any
subjective attempt to acquire it as a legitimate property. That is the reason why this
meaning keeps, for any individual, its part of mystery and that is why the letter lends
itself to theft. This allows us to understand even better that the real impact of the
purloined letter remains unaffected by the ministers ruse which changes its external
appearance (or flat appearance) by addressing it to himself rather than to the
queen and replaces the masculine handwriting of the first address by a feminine one.
Although the author and the receiver of a letter always belong to either one gender,
the same does not hold for its secret which, because it does not belong to an order
instituted by one subject or the other, can only be indifferent to gender difference.3
One should not conclude that the unconcealment of the letters secret is self-
sufficient and that it could dispense with any subjective or simply human
contribution. But it remains true that any subjective approach and any human
behavior with respect to this secret remain ordered by the way the letter presents
itself in unconcealing its secret. Thus it is not a subjective intention but the mode of
opening of the secret which finally decides the way a subject can and must
apprehend its truth. We saw that, for Heidegger, the opening constituted by the
event of the unconcealment of the secret demandsjust as the unconcealment of the
rare and of the gifta correlative opening in the human behavior that is related to it.
Only an attitude of respect which leaves at rest, preserves, and keeps silent
(Verschwiegenheit) is appropriate to the unconcealing opening of the secret. Only
silence can preserve the withdrawal of a mute presence, only the one who does not
own a thing can preserve to the event of its unconcealment its free availability, only
the respectful preservation can shelter the virtuality, made of promises and threats,
of the meaning of a letter. This silence, this renouncement to a destructive use and
this preservation which save the concealment particular to the unconcealment
remain however ordered by the simplicity of the opening of the thing itself.
Anyone who chases after what remains concealed in the unconcealment, who
abuses (Vernutzung) (Heidegger 1982, 92; 1992, 62) its secret richness and who
solves the mystery (entratselt), closes himself to this opening of the secret in

3
Therefore one cannot claim, as Lacan seems to do, that in changing hands, the stolen letter also changes
gender. For the Lacanian interpretation of The Purloined Letter, see Lacan (1966), 1141, as well as
Lacan (1978), 228240.

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closing himself up in his subjective desire and personal capacities. He replaces the
discreet preservation of the withdrawal of the secrets meaning by a subjective
intrusion aiming at drawing the meaning of the secret from its shelter and
discovering its enigma in order to deliver it to a verifying inspection. Is the subject
mainly responsible for these improper behaviors toward the secret? Yes and no.
Yes, because he does not respond to an invitation addressed to him by the event of
an unconcealment which is available precisely always and for everyone. No,
because this unconcealment is such that, in its insignificance, in its Un-
scheinbarkeit, and in its simplicity, it lends itself to such a misappreciation. The
event of an unconcealment, which constitutes the true presence of a thing and also
the mode of presence of its truth, is thus such that it can mislead human beings. If
the policemen in the narrative of The Purloined Letter confuse the concealment
constitutive of the truth with a dissembling, i.e., with an untruth in the sense of
pseudos, it is not only because they are too stupid (like the animals in Platos myth)
or deprived of poetic sense (as Poe suggests); it is essentially because the
concealment as concealment has not yet been unconcealed for them. For it is not
from their own resources but only from the event of the unconcealment itself that
this subjective capacity that they lack could come to them.
All this means that for Heidegger, the opening of unconcealment is the only event
able to open human beings to the event of its coming. And this also means that the
nature of this event of the unconcealment is such that it runs the risk of remaining
unnoticed. Poes narrative also tells us that this absence of opening in the policemen
is not nothing, but on the contrary translates into an intense subjective activity in
which the subject only relies on his own capacities. By ignoring everything from the
unconcealment of a secret, the policemen a fortiori ignore that the investigative
activity in which they are excellent, still pertains to a deficient mode of
unconcealment. The flat presence and the hidden presence which guide their search
are at first a mode of the unconcealment of things before being translated into a
mode of human behaviors and subjective anticipations. If the policemen are
insensitive to the open and simple unconcealment of the purloined letter, it is thus
because the concealment, which constitutes the secret of this unconcealment, made
itself forgotten to them. As we know, this oblivion of the unconcealment by human
beings is, for Heidegger, the consequence of a destiny of being itself. Our analysis
above of the way in which, for Heidegger, any human oblivion originates from the
ontological event of a forgetting, thus needs to be complemented by the observation
that the oblivion of the being as unconcealment and as Ereignis always includes a
historial dimension.
The exceptional character of the rare, the gift, and the secret thus comes from the
fact that the presence of these phenomena continues, in the midst of our times
marked by the oblivion of the being, to preserve something of the forgotten
unconcealment. It is in their manner to present themselves to us in promising always
more then they want to give us, that these exceptional phenomena can still open us
to the mysterious and reticent manifestation of the concealment constitutive of the
unconcealment. These phenomena are thus not exceptional in themselves, if we may
say so, but only exceptional in an epoch which suffers in its full force the destiny of
the oblivion of the being. At the time of the Greeks, as Heidegger imagines them,

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the appearing presence of any thing must have been surrounded by the mystery of
concealment. Any thing the opening of which referred to the presence of other
things as well as of the entire world must have kept for them its part of secret. Poe
seems to agree with Heidegger in thinking that in our epoch, poets and thinkers are
the only ones left who have not forgotten everything about the essence of the secret.
Are they able, however, to open themselves to the secret that preserves itself not
only in a purloined letter or in a gift, but in any thing? Is any thing for them, by its
mode of unconcealing presence, a gift endowed with secret richness? Are these
poets the guardians of a bygone history or are they the prophets of new times? Does
it belong to humans, however exceptional their capacities may be, to open for us
new times when all the present things would freely speak to us while keeping their
secret, as in the times of the first Greeks? Heidegger seems to doubt it and he calls
for the coming of a new saving god. The message that Poe entrusts to Dupin, this
thief-poet, is more direct, for he does not care much about the legend of being. Poe
is content to remind us that we are all thieves of symbolic signifiers and he exhorts
us not to attribute to ourselves and not to appropriate all the richness we constantly
draw from the mysterious treasure of our culture.

References

Franck, Didier. 2004. Heidegger et le christianisme: Lexplication silencieuse. Paris: Presses Univers-
itaires de France.
Heidegger, Martin. 1982. Parmenides, ed. Manfred Frings. GA 54. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 1992. Parmenides, trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Lacan, Jacques. 1966. Ecrits. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Lacan, Jacques. 1978. Seminaire II. Le moi dans la theorie de Freud et dans la technique de la
psychanalyse. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Poe, E.A. 1993. Tales of Mystery and Imagination, ed. J.M. Dent. London: The Everyman Library.

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