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But I know—I have experienced it—that is a mistake. One must not complain—ever. Except to you, maybe, since if that earns me the expression of a difference of opinion that leaves me even more lonely, it also earns me very beautiful letters and the example of a firm, affectionate tone—which I so stupidly abandoned in my last letter and which you call me back to with all the greatness of your nature.
There, my dear Canetti; those are very grand siècle compliments. How else to write true things? Those who are ill only have speech for expressing themselves. If we were healthy and free, we could experience friendship in silence, as in certain American novels. I truly believe that as long as I’m sick, I will inevitably be saddled with this academicism that weighs on me so heavily that sometimes I go for weeks without writing to avoid assuming the burden of the only habit I have at the moment.
You speak to me of speleostomy.76 Basically—I mean despite the disproportionate paragraphs in my letter—that is what interested me most in your own. I have heard talk of miracles resulting from this method: Hillairet and Rocheblase regaining weight and occupations again, etc.c But what concerned me is if you’ll be going to Châteaubriant and will have to remain there for some time. In which case, it will be a long time before we see each other again.
And then, less selfishly, I am also thinking of you. No, my old man, you do me wrong to imagine I’m thinking better of Saint-Hilaire. It is not true. First of all, do you think I feel I am healed? I have never considered it a privilege to be here. There are often many open spots. Surely there still are. But you know that certain people didn’t want to come here.…
Don’t force yourself to answer me immediately, but do not let me down. I think of you often and I need you.
Your friend,
Roland Barthes
Do not do it, I’m not leaving here yet. I will talk to you about it when the time really comes.
* * *
[Leysin,] Thursday, December 20, [1945]
My dear friend,
I take such pleasure in receiving your letter, and moreover it comes at exactly the moment when all other work bores me, so I’m responding immediately that I would like to be with you. Let’s not speak of the good it would do me, that is all too clear. But also it would distract me. I have never known anyone as diverting as you; there’s never a dull moment either with you or with your letters. You always lead one toward conviction, so that one ends up seeing the world as you do, shedding tons of bad thoughts, and telling oneself that, before sinking into some small stupidity or misery, one must always consult you, you alone. It may wound one’s pride a bit, but the benefit is one’s salvation.
Michelet has been going for badly for two days due to the combined effects of three random events: reading Sartre’s manifesto in the first issue of Temps présents;d77 rereading my little pieces in Existences;78 and reading (all day yesterday) Sartre’s latest novel.79 Don’t worry, I am not turning to Sartrism—although the talent of this man is enormous and truly penetrating. But admit it, given the strange roundabout ways for approaching Michelet—and I make use of them—to bring Sartre and Michelet together in the same week, that’s a funny sort of chemistry; the second loses many of his properties there. (Surely chemistry could provide a good image here, but I know that you categorically disapprove.) Thus I left him in the lurch again today. Nevertheless, before this, it was going fairly well. I have quite a lot of ideas on this surprising man whose portrait you may not know. Maybe you see him as only the slightly foolish apostle of democracy and secularism. On this point his face is reassuring: no lips, the face of a tough, wicked old witch, and in those hard, crooked, haggard features a kind of black flame, a hell fire that lights up the eyes with unbearable pleasure. Here’s an extraordinary man with furious intelligence, an intelligence with errors that I love. His work, which is truly modern through its mythological, anti–nineteenth century, anti-Romantic nature (anti-Taine, Renan, Guizot, and other nuisance scientists), includes strange pockets that are exhilarating to discover and assemble. If I come to believe a little in the interest of these discoveries, perhaps I will be able to do something not too boring on Michelet. Of the men of the past, this one suits me very well. It’s not a passion (because he makes shameful slips) but a very fertile alliance of reason. Moreover, in a marriage of reason, one can still get carried away with certain qualities in one’s wife, at least I assume.
Michelet is right for being different from me, opposed, surely, but not symmetrically, and that’s the great thing. He represents an almost perfect degree of otherness. And then, as one says half foolishly, half rightly, it is too much! All the same, there’s less resounding inanity in the study of a powerful humanist than in that of a poet or novelist. Michelet the Romantic historian is, by all evidence, neither historian nor Romantic and, I would add, hardly French. This erroneous labeling is already an excellent starting point. The big question that’s worrying me right now is this: Is he (that is to say, is studying him) modern? Can one work on Michelet and remain in our world of 1945? That is essential. It’s no good leaving our epoch out, it’s the only one we have to live in. For two days I have been a bit deflated. If reconciliation is not possible—or too artificial—I will mercilessly drop the old goat. But that would make me sad, especially since, despite everything, it is not lightheartedly that all alone one enters the hard flame of “today.” Yes, it’s really true, two thousand years of Christianity (and more, Plato was already corrupted) must be recovered. And not by retracing our steps. The terrible thing is the necessary destruction of the Church—of the Churches—because the Church is the world’s vice and it is exactly the kind of condenser and revealer of all moral vices that creates instincts for vices. The annihilation of the Church still means nothing more today than a sort of secular, communist crusade of the Chevalier de La Barre. Where would you like us to stand in this debate? We must be very careful. Thus we must declare aloud that we are not taking sides, neither one nor the other. Atheistic materialism is just as nauseating as Catholicism. What we must create is a pagan world, neither theist nor rationalist. After all, this could be a very fine task for the men of our epoch. I am more and more set on it. You yourself see how much that Christian poison is still active in the veins of this world, of this France: MRP;80 Messiaen at Saint-Hilaire (as I surmise and understand from you!);81 here the blundering clergy, the very caricatures of Jesuits, lurking around confessions, turning youth into morons, shamelessly clinging to the most puerile—and unpoetic—state of childhood through boy scout rubbish, the appearance of principles, etc. I can no longer have any relationship with those beings, with that corrupt world. And believe me, it’s a blight that infects even the so-called independent minded. There’s a way of thinking, of reasoning, that even without being sectarian is Christian (Socratic) and is nauseating because of its emasculation of passion, its slack objectivity (Jesuit perfidy, what Michelet calls—brilliantly, admit it—the vaccine of truth,)82 that way of constructing all human fact on the “undoubtedly.… but nevertheless.” We have good examples of that rot here.
Your lectures on Greece make me envious. Here we have the same old thing: Pierre Emmanuel, Siegfried (not stupid though).83 Moreover, I am in bed and the lectures are not held here. I have not heard any for a long time. I live between the radio and Michelet. Two or three intelligent fellows, that’s it. No one handsome, without lowering one’s standards. No friend here. Solitude is often fortifying, sometimes it overwhelms me. All these spineless, mediocre boys with their old flesh that I have known for two or three years, from every angle (so to speak!), what game would you like me to play with them? There are thirty-five of us, replenished every six months. This is not a nursery like Saint-Hilaire, it is deadwood. Never so poor an environment for affairs.
No news from the California fruit.84 He must be secretly fretting over some failed exam among five or six other misfortunes. Here there are not even any California fruits; there are only good little French apples, a bit wrinkled, worm-eaten, and
very bland, the kind that desserts are made from during the six months of winter.
You did not even mention your health to me. Maybe it’s not a problem for you at the moment, but don’t forget that it’s always a question for me, dear friend.
Mine is not bad. They want me to go out a little. But I cannot be bothered. And I hate snow and empty roads where you run into some filthy old peasant every fifteen minutes. And my Athenian tableau from the other day, shall I tell you about it? First a little overrated, and then you know what happens. After having salivated for three bedridden months over some lavish feast, only to go out and meet a sly seminarian and a fat, bloated soldier. It’s crazy that it takes so much trouble, so many relationships, outings, intrigues, to connect with one or two slightly desirable people. What a stupid waste, what rubbish and dross! The danger is compromising the quality of one’s desire; not being able to match desire and beauty, creating the illusion of the second in order to experience the first all the same. It must remain very lofty.
Don’t wait too long to write. Because I am really in need of your letters. I am never quite strong enough to get along without them. A terrible victim of Mood. Why haven’t our famous psychologists studied this queen of all the faculties yet, instead of wasting their time on Will, Attention, etc.?
Do not forget me, my friend. With all my affection,
Roland Barthes
* * *
[Leysin,] February 21, 1946
My dear friend,
I know that you’re about to leave. In fact you may have already left. Doctor Bernou came to see me when he passed through Leysin, sent by Brissaud. It is a true prizewinner, this speleostomy. Tell me soon how you have settled in and where you are.
I’m returning to France in eight days. I’ve been caught up lately in this departure and have not been able to write to you. Now I’m just sending you a quick note to tell you that I’m thinking of you. I will write you a real letter from Paris.
I am returning to France:
1) for the reason you know;
2) because Brissaud agrees;85
3) because in a few weeks those from the first convoy that arrived a year ago are going to be sent back to make room for others.86 This is very serious; I should have been sent back in April.
I’m going to spend a few months at home resting. After that, I will see. My health has much improved in the last month.
That is the main news. But naturally there’s an infrastructure of feelings. Well, for the moment, I am profoundly happy to be returning home.
I tell myself that if I’m well enough this summer, which is very possible, I’ll come to Châteaubriant for a few days to see you. I hope that by then you too will be on the other side of all your worries.
Send me quick word of your news. With my faithful and deep affection,
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
Danton 95–85
And if you’re passing through Paris when I arrive? That would be great. I get there February 28.
4. Roland Barthes to Robert David
Little is known about Robert David, with whom Barthes was passionately in love. Born in Rennes on March 3, 1923, David was twenty years old when they met at the Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet sanatorium in 1943. David left Saint-Hilaire for a first postcure Paris at the very beginning of December 1944; he rejoined Barthes in Leysin in February 1945 when a certain number of patients from Saint-Hilaire were transferred to Switzerland. But he returned to Paris for postcure on September 17, 1945, where he began his studies in political economics. He later taught history. They reconnected in Paris when Barthes returned in February 1946. The bond between Barthes and David continued after the war, as is evident by the appearance of his name as a “student” enrolled in Barthes’s seminar at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1962–63.87 The letters from Roland Barthes arrived to us through Bertrand Poirot-Delpech, to whom Robert David had entrusted a very large bundle of photocopies of letters from Barthes that he had saved. The poor quality of the photocopies often makes it impossible to reproduce them in full. The ones published here represent a fairly limited selection.
* * *
[Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet,] Thursday, December 8, 194488
My dear friend,
I still have a fever; I’m very tired and I’m worried about not being able to write you the letter I would like and that you are no doubt waiting for; just as you came to my room hoping for some spiritual nourishment and you found only vague thoughts and a very weak heart; just as you undoubtedly imagine I’m going to write to you of beautiful things, ethics, systems that will make you think, and you are going to be very disappointed. I have had a fever since you left, I live in darkness and only come to you as a weak man who has lost even the use of beautiful language.
Since Sunday my soul has suffered much, and never has the feeling of a noble cause and the impossibility of really serving it weighed so heavily upon me. I struggle in the night, thinking of you, because it is always the David of the day that I believe I will find; I imagine that he will renounce the David of the night and that he will confront me with his coldness, his morals, his certitude, as in this little quote from Pascal that the David of the evening sent me.
[…]89
Since all the requirements for a predetermined confession seem empty to me, incomprehensible beside the deep life of my soul, I would even say beside the truth of a certain absence (at least of words) where finally I sense no deception—if I weren’t afraid of being misunderstood by your honest heart, your avid intelligence for formulated truths, because your extremely straightforward and delicate soul has something Hegelian about it that tells it the ineffable is nothing but the imaginary, and even if you acknowledged the mystery, you would only do so within the framework of your own confession.
Only if you love me—or when you will love me or if you have loved me—you will be able to understand that my consciousness can only breathe beyond all theology, in that place where God himself is unformulated. […]90
Love illuminates for us our imperfection. It is nothing other than the uncanny movement of our consciousness comparing two unequal terms—on the one hand, all the perfection and plentitude of the beloved; on the other hand, all the misery, thirst, and destitution of ourselves—and the fierce desire to unite these two such disparate terms and to fill the void of one with the plenitude of the other. The miracle happens, perfection descends upon us when the beloved gives himself, lets his plenitude freely, generously, answer the thirst of the lover. Lovers consider denying one another out of humility, not understanding what is being asked of them. They do not see that it’s much more arrogant to bring up questions of value; the value of a being is an extremely fiduciary notion. Without playing on words, it is a market value: your worth is that I love you; that’s what must be understood. Only love truly creates; a being who is not loved is worth nothing, has no existence, is an element in the scenery and that scenery is a desert. I believe that a being’s moral progress means understanding that and consenting—if only timidly at first—and entering the flaming circle of love in order finally, truly, to be born. And then, how distant grow all the intellectual and moral values of character, etc., how they shrink and shrivel up! How many intelligent beings are nevertheless dead, useless, cold, hard, etc. There is a miracle, there is a life, there is a flame that struggles to emerge between us, a sign that, once raised, would endow us both with our true value, our eternal value, would shower us both with serious things. Having consented to the ultimate weakness of love, we will find ourselves truly strong. But you still do not really see all that; you see it sometimes with the eyes—always so penetrating—of night. At night, when we looked at one another and our hearts swelled, we were truly worth something. You were ecstatic over the miracle that there was no more of the intellectual pontiff in me, and yet, at seeing your joy, your joyous surprise, wasn’t that when my value was the greatest? And you too, wasn’t it in that nocturnal fire that you were wor
th the most? Did you have a single moment of doubt about your own value? As though we left all of that far behind! But, come day, I could see in the way you would not look at me that you had gone back to those things that, not being part of love, can only be part of pride. Infernal self-pride, and that’s why I suffer, even as I am sure of being right, even having already been enriched a thousandfold, just as Pascal suffered and yet.… But neither for you nor for me can I continue this comparison.
I have no news about leaving for Switzerland. I am basically staying in bed, my fever is not going away, although it’s nothing serious, do not worry. I’m longing to know if you are home and if you are happy there. Please let me know about your projects and your plans. Write to me, my friend, my life took refuge with you. As I go on, the more I feel that I love you without deception, the more I sense my salvation in this feeling. Do not be too severe. My joy is in you, relent a little.
Your friend,
Roland Barthes
* * *
[Leysin], Friday evening, [September 28, 1945]
My friend,
I received your letter from the 25th. Thank you for writing to me, for thinking of me. I am not just saying these things, we are beyond all that now, you know what I think. I am moved by what you are to me.
Let’s see what I have to tell you.
First of all, so I don’t forget it, I received the 96 francs from the Red Cross; I paid Morand and that leaves me 6 francs.