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Lacan, the Devil
ANNAËLLE
LEBOVITS-QUENEHEN

Life of Lacan
J-A MILLER

Lacan, Music
JUDITH MILLER
DIEGO
MASSON

How Lacan
BENOÎT JACQUOT

Lacan's Smile
FRANÇOIS CHENG

Lacan
PHILIPPE SOLLERS

The Reverse
of a Postscript
JEAN-CLAUDE MILNER

Lacan the Poem
FRANÇOIS REGNAULT

Lacan on the Spot
CATHERINE CLÉMENT

Lacan, Red Lights
ADRIAN DANNATT

The Split Collector
GÉRARD WAJCMAN

Lisa Yuskavage
CL INTERVIEWS JA



          

Lacan, Music
[excerpt]








Judith Miller

Diego Masson

translated by Asunción Alvarez


 

[...]

Judith Miller: For Doctor Lacan, the time of day was of no concern when he wanted to know something. I remember Strehler's formidable staging. It struck all of us who knew the Marriage very well… thanks to the Aix Festival: we were all struck by that exceptional staging.

Diego Masson: There was also a formidable singer, Gundula Janowitz.

So Lacan arrived at eight in the morning and told me: "What I have been trying to explain in my Seminars for twenty years without being able to make myself understood—why is it so clear when you listen to The Marriage of Figaro?" I found this magnificent, except that he told me: "Explain this to me." So we took the score: I played and we slowly read the words, the detail of the puns and divergences between the music and the libretto text which are so frequent in Mozart. I remember, for example, that we dwelt for a long time on the famous passage in the third act in which Suzanne arranges a rendezvous with the Count in the evening, in the thickets. As you know, it's the Countess that turns up. Suzanne has no intention of going up until the point when the Count tells her: you will come; she says: yes; he says: you will not fail to appear; she says: no; he says: you will come; she says: no…. He says no to her and she says yes, obviously. But when she says Yes! for the last time, it's a note, a phrase that is so charged with desire and seduction that Jacques told me: "See, one understands it very well, but it's not the text or the scenario. It is thanks to the music alone that one understands very well that she actually desires the Count."

[...]

Nathalie Georges-Lambrichs: If we listen to The Marriage of Figaro instead of reading the Seminar because it's "clearer," what will become of us?

D.M.: It's not "clearer," it's "so clear," these are his words; I will never forget them. Jacques always took things very seriously.4 When I listened to music, he listened seriously and analyzed much better than music critics. Even if he didn't know the music technique, he perceived things in his own way, both personal and always very acute.

 





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