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The nickname “Gongora of psychoanalysis” that Lacan gave himself in his writings involves a metaphor and thus a creation of meaning. The Spanish Baroque poet Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) was criticized, in his time and later, for being abstruse and obscure, almost beyond understanding. Lacan received similar criticism. The arguments of each man’s defenders were somewhat similar. For Lacan and Góngora, obscurity stems from a material depth, not from an ideal of profundity. Both take into account, at every step of their discourse, the stratified thickness that every element of language owes to the unique peculiarity of its history.