Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

163whether the line should be read metonymically (as the internal boundary between twohalves of a whole—splitting) or metaphorically (as the external boundary between twosimilar wholes—doubling). (156)In Irwin’s analysis of the “constitution of both a polar opposition and the condition of mediation"(182), opposition is linked to doubling while mediation tends toward suspension. Irwin’s brilliantanalysis of Poe’s investment in doubling applies perfectly to Melville’s psycho-poetics ofdoubling and the missed encounter.By this logic, identification is the absolute effect of repetition and trauma. Letter writing,too, or at least a certain type of letter writing, inscribes the reader and the narrator in a symbolicalrelationship of exchange: “But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness isbut a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael” (195). In thischapter and in many other situations, the narrator and reader exchange roles, thus doubling andre-doubling the scenes of writing and reading. In his correspondence with Hawthorne, Melvilleresponds to Hawthorne’s appreciation of Moby-Dick, “I felt pantheistic thenyour heart beat inmy ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me thismoment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feelspotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me” (Correspondences 212; emphasis mine).Here Melville articulates the encounter with Hawthorne in erotic bodily terms. This encounter isoccasioned by a literal exchange of letters. The letter, however, either unites or distances thewriter from the reader. As I shall explain in this chapter, this duality, albeit described in literalcorporeal terms, is negotiated through the duality of desire and fear or narcissism and death. Suchduality displays the ego’s plunge in the abyss of regressive narcissism. In other words, between