Such a notion of the crypt follows from Derrida's reading of Abraham and Torok's claims concerning the Wolf-Man: "'Le secret est de rigeur,' d'où la crypte, comme lieu caché, dissimulation effaçant les traces de la dissimulation, lieu de silence" (Derrida 1976, 18). Derrida sees an affinity with Abraham and Torok's work in that they have modulated the Freudian "primal scene" into a linguistic and trans-phenomenal register-into primal words. The essay is thematized around certain questions of linguistic borders raised by Mallarmé's quantal lists of primal words in Les mots anglais: perhaps "language" as such is a crypt, a cryptic reserve awaiting exscription. As Mallarmé wrote in "Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe," the crypt is a "Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un désastre obscur / Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne / Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur" (OC: 189; ll.12-14).