65 Before dropping them, as everyone drops a preface, or before exalting them as the properly instructive theoretical concepts, the truth of the story, I will lift out, somewhat at random, several propositions. Which are not necessarily the best ones. One also would have to recall each word of the title, and again the epigraph on the name of Achilles when he hid himself among women. "The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis . . . the analyst glories in that moral activity which disentangles [dont la fonction est de débrouiller ]. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics . . . Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other . . . I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess [la laborieuse futilité des échecs ] . . . To be less abstract--Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings ["draughts" in French is le jeu de dames , and Baudelaire's translation here speaks of four dames , not kings], and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement [tactique habile ], the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation . . But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule [les cas situés au-delà de la règle ] that the skill of the analyst is evinced [se manifeste ] . . . Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game . . ." (Poe, pp. 139-41 passim ). Etc. the entire passage must be read, and in both languages. I have allowed myself to do some cooking based on Baudelaire's translation, which I do not always respect.
Meryon had asked Baudelaire if he believed "in the reality of this Edgar Poe." and had attributed his stories "to a society of very adept, very powerful litterateurs, up to date on everything." This society does not specify, therefore, if the ''things external to the game" border a game recounted in the text or constituted by the text, nor whether the game which is the object is or is not (in) the story. Nor whether seduction seeks its prey among the characters or the readers. The question of the "narratee," and then of the addressee, which is not the same thing, never arrives at itself [ne s'arrive jamais ].