Among the Argonauts who populate Canto XII of The Odyssey, Butes – the cowherd – is not so well known. His untimely leap into the sea will be taken-up by Pascal Quignard1 to point out a particular boldness in that gesture, that of being the only one to throw himself towards the most radical Other, having, with the ship, skirted the irresistible melody of the sirens. If Ulysses had himself tied to the mast so as not to deviate from his epic journey—his destiny— and if Orpheus took it upon himself to distract from the abduction with his lyre, by appealing to his music, his meter, his well-ordered and melodious harmony; then Butes simply plunges into the resonante-profundo [extempore],2 at the risk of losing himself. In turn, that risk earns him rescue by Aphrodite, a contingency that leads him into sensuality and love.
That which is enjoyed [jouit],3 in its ungraspable nature, is it perhaps in the detail of what the eight verses of the siren song fail to capture, where not everything in the voice lends its substance to the superego? Is it in that—which ex-ists as an untranslatable moment—that is a counterpoint to the universal fondness for language?
Is it in the exploration of the coastline, the interregnum,4 the voice of the water on which Butes swims in his rapture? Or perhaps in Quignard's own pen? In his way of being in language by remaining silent,5 pushing bodily emptiness into writing, rehearsing again and again the interval, the intimate and secret silence of the letter.
[1] Quignard, P., (1994) Butes, España, Narrativa Sexto Piso, 2011.
[2] Cf. Joyce, J., Ulysses, Penguin, London, 2000, p. 773.
[3] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XX, Encore, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink, New York/London: WW. Norton & Co., p. 23.
[4] Mallarmé, S., "Letter to Paul Verlaine" (16 November 1885, Paris) in Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé, ed. and trans. R. Lloyd, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 84–86.
[5] Quignard, P., "Posfacio de Carmen Pardo y Miguel Morey", in Butes, op. cit., p. 89.
