If we were to generalize the lesson of “La Chevelure,” we would say: the objects of our sexual desires are fantasy objects. If sexual desire is inseparable from fantasy, then it is always already an interpretative movement, and any originally exciting object or event gets lost in the very excitement which it produces. The work of fantasy in desire makes impossible the historical tracings of desire of presumed sources of desire [ . . . ]. Sexual excitement would be identical to a psychic movement which submits reality to the passionate interpretations of desire. This is dramatically illustrated in Baudelaire’s “La Chevelure” by the total absence of the woman from the fantasies evoked by her presence. If the pleasure which she has given the poet has always been inseparable from the operations of his desiring fantasies, the woman is best remembered when she is continuously being forgotten. The objects of desire are not objects; they are creative processes. In a sense, this liberates memory from time. More precisely, desiring fantasies are by no means turned only toward the past; they are projective reminiscences. This is suggested in “La Chevelure” by the fact that the references to memory enclose several stanzas in which the dominant tense is, either explicitly or implicitly, the future. © 2023 by Brown University.
