This is why, without looking any further, I have taken my example from the very story in which we find the dialectic of the game of "even or odd," from which we very recently gleaned something of importance. It is probably no accident that this story proved propitious for the continuation of a line of research which had already relied upon it.
As you know, I am referring to the tale Baudelaire translated into French as "La lettre volee." In it we must immediately distinguish between a drama and its narration as well as the conditions of that narration.
We quickly perceive, moreover, what makes these components necessary and realize that their composer could not have created them unintentionally.
For the narration effectively doubles the drama with a commentary with-out which no mise-en-scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, strictly speaking, invisible to the audience — aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of what-ever meaning it might have for a listener. In other words, nothing of the drama could appear, either in the framing of the images or the sampling of the sounds, without the oblique light shed, so to speak, on each scene by the narration from the point of view that one of the actors had while playing his role in it.
There are two such scenes, the first of which I shall immediately designate as the primal scene, and by no means inattentively, since the second may be considered its repetition in the sense of the latter term that I have been articulating in this very seminar.
The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal boudoir, such that we suspect that the "personage of most exalted station," also referred to as the "illustrious personage," who is alone there when she receives a letter, is the Queen. This sense is confirmed by the awkward situation she is put in "by the entrance of the other exalted personage," of whom we have already been told prior to this account that, were he to come to know of the letter in question, it would jeopardize for the lady nothing less than her "honor and peace." Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptly dissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entrance of Minister D — . For at that moment the Queen can do no better than to take advantage of the King's inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table turned face down, "address uppermost." This does not, however, escape the Minister's lynx eye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen's distress and thus to fathom her secret. From then on everything proceeds like clockwork. After dealing with the business of the day with his customary speed and intelligence, the Minister draws from his pocket a letter similar in appearance to the one before his eyes and, after pretending to read it, places it next to the other. A bit more conversation to pull the wool over the royal eyes, whereupon he picks up the embarrassing letter without flinching and decamps, while the Queen, on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervene for fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, who is standing at her elbow at that very moment.
