The "Letter" and the play of the correspondence

Abstract

The present essays has as it bottom line the short story “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Alan Poe and the respectives analysis done by Jacques Lacan in “O Seminário A carta roubada” (Escritos, 1998) and by Jacques Derrida in “O carteiro da verdade” (O cartão-postal, 2007), beyond the reading by Nancy and Labarthe in O título da letra and also Rene Major in Lacan com Derrida, with the wager at the potency of the significant letter/lettre that has a double meaning as “carta” and as “letra”, with its potency, as letter, as possible literature. The present work concern aswell with another readings, about epistolography, by Josefina Ludmer, Emile Cioran, Juan José Saer, Liliana Heer, Silviano Santiago. The present work approaches aswell the reading by Michel Foucault in “A escrita de si” (O que é um autor?, 1992) arguing that the correspondence as a way of “escrita de si”, despite it is destinated, in principle to an other. The present essays has as principle objective to think the proceeding of correspondence between artists/poets as a play of ambivalent positions, and not as how a static share between the remitter and the receiver.