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Your faithful friend,
Roland
* * *
[February, 1979]
Maurice, a sign of my negligence, I can no longer find your telephone number, I don’t have one for La Quinzaine, and my phone books are out of date! Thus this note: I’d like to ask you if we can change our Wednesday, February 21 appointment. I was able to get out of two meetings (on Thursday and Friday) in such a way that I have a few free days to go away a bit, a miracle during the term because I can no longer do that. If I reclaim Wednesday, I would be able to leave Tuesday evening and come back the following Monday. Can you call me (just not Friday morning) so we can arrange another time? And then I can get your telephone number.
Thanks.
Your friend,
Roland
2. Roland Barthes to Jean Cayrol
Jean Cayrol (1911–2005) is undoubtedly the contemporary writer on whom Barthes wrote the most. Their first contact was in January 1951, regarding texts from Le Degré zéro de l’écriture that Barthes had published in Combat in 1950 and that Cayrol had read.28 But Barthes had already written his first article on Cayrol, which also appeared in Combat, a review of Lazare parmi nous (La Baconnière, 1950), regarding Lazarian man brought back from the dead, returned from Nazi concentration camps—Cayrol had been deported to the Mauthausen camp in 1942. Barthes’s last significant text on Cayrol dates from 1964, a postscript to Les Corps étrangers (Seuil, 1959) titled “La Rature.”
* * *
Monday, [July 1953] c/o [Pierre Guiraud,]29 Groningen, Netherlands
Dear Jean, having just arrived I had the chore of writing a hurried article for Voisin’s theater review (biannual obligation, monthly check) and I am now emerging.30 We’re very happy with our stay here; I think we’re all getting a good rest and I have the impression that Maman is happy, my brother is in excellent spirits, Lux the dog very busy. The car is serving us well; we take little outings in the afternoon. Yesterday we drifted along in the wind and sky toward the fantastic North Sea, leaden and cold, something like Van Gogh’s bisters, with no more sun. For me, it’s only in the evening that I feel caged in, because the very rural town discourages roving about, at least the superurban kind that’s of any use to me. Intellectually, I’m completely blocked; I had a terrible time writing my ten pages on tragedy (absolutely cranked out in this happy country without spirituality) and I watched with horror as my sentences took on the density of Dutch cheese or a peaty polder.31 So I’m afraid of starting on Michelet; I’m afraid of seeing it develop a red rind despite my efforts, whereas in Paris it might be more effervescent.32 But all that is probably an illusion and I must shake it off. I have only been reading Le Monde and the Hachette guidebook here. I think that you’re just about to leave Seuil and I hope these last days haven’t been too difficult.33 Let me repeat, you may come here whenever you like, on the condition that you understand the place can only offer you rest and nothing else, except perhaps, thanks to the auto, this sky, which is truly very beautiful, very big, very human, not vertical as in the East, but amply circular like large, loose folds.
I’m thinking of making the short trip to Hamburg or Amsterdam, but not for too long and I don’t know when. For a weekend no doubt. The weather is not very good and I still have not executed my plans to exercise and lose weight.
Send my news of your vacation and Saint-Chéron.34 In any case see you soon.
Your friend,
Roland
Come if you can.
c/o Guiraud, Van Ketwich Verschuurlaan
Groningen, Netherlands
Tel: 32–588
* * *
Wednesday, [after 1954]
My dear friend,
First of all I must thank you for your book and for what you added there in your own hand, which touched me and made me happy.35 I read it quite quickly because, as I told you, despite the “ingratitude” of your creatures—as in “ingrate,” at an awkward age—there is in everything you do a kind of incantation, that gift for the continuous, pressure, tempo, “momentum” as Sainte-Beuve called it.36 So that even before the reader wonders about their content, these books succeed, and one reads quickly, carried by the tension of an actual duration. I don’t want to do a standard critique of your new book; I’m only formulating ideas slowly. I think that if I had to speak of it in the same vein—both thematically and genetically—as I spoke of your earlier novels in Esprit, I would try to show how this time you have organized material specific to the novel with a duration that comes close to the kind of concentration and then explosion in Time specific to the stream-of-consciousness novel.37 I’m expressing myself badly, but it’s certain that, whereas in Je vivrais …, as I said and as you had mentioned on the cover, the duration was a unilateral given, still incapable of concentration and superimposition, which was tragically striving toward the easier, more constructed, and thus more social Time of the Novel, here we have this specifically novelistic or historic Time, the definition of which is always the organization of a past beginning from a present.38 Moreover I think that, on this level, if the novel is assumed from the first, it is to obey the main line of your work in general, work past and probably to come, which is to begin from a Vertigo-Time to discover the problem of the other. As Time is organizing, creatures reveal themselves; you must make this double movement felt, which is both the uneasiness and the glory of man (you know that in the Gospel, to glorify means to manifest in essence, at least according to Karl Barth).39 I’m jumping around here and in bad philosophical form, but finally, if I actually had to talk about your novel, I think I would talk this time, more explicitly than the first time, about sociability or charity. I’m struck—even affected—by the ingrate nature—I’m repeating this word—of your characters; they are not amiable, and I think that is essential. All novels generally think of humans as a source of appeal; the novel chooses desirable, successful, interesting, passionate creatures, models of Evil or Good, in short, select human material that makes us dream. Thus, in other novels, there is generally no human problem other than the one of passion, which is basically erotic. Here, there are whole other relationships; beings are neither ugly nor beautiful. This is not a human anthology, a preparation for that apotheosis of sensual delight that crowns every novel. The human material of your novels introduces a sociology or a theology, that is to say, an order in which the human entirely absorbs the person. There’s an almost monastic gaze, in any case one that is very absolute—if that word can take the superlative. That’s why, despite the extraordinary everyday matter of your account, despite that specific sensitivity to phenomena that so often approaches irony, your novel—even more clearly than earlier ones—points to a kind of transcendence. I’m sure it’s full of symbols, understanding the symbol to be a naturally figurative form of thought, “never being a translation, neither can it ever be translated” (this is Jean Baruzi speaking of Saint John of the Cross.)40
[…]41
Saint-Chéron; the train arrives at 12:16. Till Saturday, then (a week from Saturday).
Warmly and faithfully,
R. Barthes
11, rue Servadoni, Paris VIe
* * *
Saturday, Bordeaux, [early April 1956]
Yes, my dear Jean, I’m sending this note from Bordeaux, where I’ve come for two days with a friend, Olivier de Meslon, whom you saw once outside the [Deux] Magots, and who is from the area.42 You’re wondering if I may have forgotten you here. I wasn’t able to call you before I left, and it seems to me, too, that it has been a very long time since I’ve seen you. I’m spending a night in Paris but leaving again immediately for a week in Annecy at Vinaver’s to try finally to write that famous mythological preface there—which, for the moment, is all the more mythic.43 I’ll be in touch immediately when I return, about April 13. Dear Jean, can you rest a bit during this vacation? I’m thinking of you with all my affection and finally want to say—because this is why I began writing to you—how touched I was by your words in L’Expre
ss, touched and overwhelmed, because I feel so weak. All your responses were very beautiful; only you can be direct and nevertheless so reticent.
In much haste, dear Jean,
Your friend,
Roland
My kind regards to your mother.
* * *
Thursday morning, [January 14, 1965]
My dear Jean, I’m taking the train in a minute but how not to tell you that we (François B[raunschweig] and me) were overwhelmed by your film.44 What power, what beauty, what mystery, and what clarity as well; it’s heartrending and nevertheless I left it with the courage to live; it’s ambiguous but without compromise. With what joy, we are profoundly for; I will say this wherever you want. Convey all this as well to Claude Durand, who I really feel gave the Cayrolian voice—inalienable, recognizable throughout—a place all its own. I’d like to talk to you about it, as soon as I return.
To you Jean with my gratitude—and my affection,
Love to you,
Roland
The acting is remarkable. No comparison to the latest “nouveau” films; finally a serious work that says what matters to us, and not only what matters to the history of the cinema.
* * *
[After 1977]45
Jean, your book is very beautiful (I just finished it).46 What writing, smooth, noble, shimmering—fragile as well, so much the opposite of the rising wave of vulgarity. Thank goodness you’re writing! And I was happy and moved by our lunch. I’m less deaf now; my ear is getting better. To be continued soon. Call me before coming.
Your faithful friend,
Roland
3. Roland Barthes to Alain Robbe-Grillet
In his conversation with Roland Barthes during the Cerisy Colloquium in 1977, Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008) portrayed Barthes as a novelist and a writer, and, moreover, he revealed that his film Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974) was an adaptation of Barthes’s commentary on La Sorcière by Michelet. That appreciation is no doubt indicative of their relationship, in which Robbe-Grillet considered Barthes’s important talks on his novels to be less commentaries or critiques than a work in progress, parallel to his own.
* * *
June 8, 1953
Dear Sir,
Please forgive me if I’ve been slow to thank you for having sent me your book.47 Jean Cayrol told me about it; moreover I’d been alerted in passing by a certain type of critic (Coiplet) whose incomprehension is almost always the sign of an important work, which proves the critic serves some purpose after all.48 For my part, I believe I recognize in your book the major themes (I’m using this word because I’m writing very quickly) of a new literature: time as destiny (that is, as tragedy); the absorbing power of the object (which is also a very new, still very clandestine form of tragedy); and finally, space itself as destiny, in the form of the circular-city, the city moreover representing symmetrically the circulus of time. I’m saying all this very badly, but if I had had to do a critique of Gommes, I would certainly have not talked about Simenon but rather Greek Tragedy.49 One word more on the writing in your book, which seems to me wonderfully aware of the problems of contemporary literary language, and which resolves them—almost (this “almost” not dependent on you and perhaps constituting a sort of fourth tragedy, diacritical to your work).
I myself would be very happy to meet you. If you live in Paris, maybe we could get together sometime with Cayrol at Seuil.
Let me repeat that I have the very highest regard for your book, what confidence it gives me, and how sure I am that this is an important book, avant-garde, in a word successful (and I’d like to give that word a deeper meaning than that of success, a kind of historical meaning).
Please accept my cordial admiration.
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
* * *
June 12, [1953]
Dear Sir,
I wrote to you yesterday at Éditions de Minuit, but today I was given your Paris address. I believe Cayrol has spoken to you about our plan for a quarterly publication at Seuil, and we would be very happy to have you as a contributor.50 Could we meet with you soon to discuss it? Would you be good enough to call me—or Cayrol—so that we can arrange a time for the three of us? As soon as possible would be best.
With warm and cordial wishes,
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
Danton 95–85
* * *
Thursday, [June 1953]
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry that you left Paris before we were able to see you, especially since I don’t anticipate a visit to your area.51 But please let me insist that you send us those short texts you mentioned as soon as you possibly can, which, according to what I know of you and what you yourself told me in one sentence, would correspond exactly to what I’m seeking for the part of the publication that falls to me.52 As for the rest, it seems to me that, despite your misgivings, you must send them to Cayrol.
No one understands better than I do your need to write slowly and not very much. That rhythm of sedimentation is part of the very nature of what you say. I’m simply asking you to think of it positively, no longer as just a plan, but as something we are expecting from you and for which we are counting on you for the first or second issue.
I thank you in advance and ask you to accept my warm and cordial wishes.
R. Barthes
It’s not because I write for Les Lettres nouvelles that I know about the critical notes they get, as you may imagine. As for giving them one myself on your book, that’s very feasible, but in terms of timing I read your book too late. But Les Gommes is not going to vanish like that.…
* * *
Henday, September 23, 1953
My dear friend,
I read the texts that you sent to Cayrol. As with everything that comes from you, I found them important, and by definition the object of criticism, that is to say, literature in question. I don’t know yet how we will present them in the review—where there are still structural issues to settle. What I do know is that your texts correspond ideally to the idea we have for this publication, and we thank you for them very much.
Moreover we can discuss all this if you’re coming to Paris. I’m returning there in a few days. May we see you as soon as you arrive?
I’d like to talk to you about that critique of Les Gommes that Piel, of Critique, had me write.53 I’d like to explain to you my reasons for hesitating to undertake it; it’s because I am not a critic. In criticism I see only impasses, and the question for me would be finding a method. Also I feel I’m only authorized to speak of criticism but not books. Any criticism involves a method and that goes a long way.
We need to think about it, to talk. So, I repeat, let’s get together.
And thank you for what you took the trouble to write about my book.54 It was very nice of you to respond.
Until soon, I hope, and kind regards to you,
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
Danton 95–85
* * *
[Paris, October 14, 1955]
Dear Alain, thank you for your note, it was really a relief to me. Everyone is in such disagreement with me over this subject that you remain my only hope that this paper was at least written for someone. How lucky that person is the author in question.55 But we’ll talk about all this again.
Your travels are very mysterious. Let me know when they’ll be over. And try to go to the Moulin Rouge some Thursday evening about 11 o’clock (entrance 300 francs, coat and tie required + 500 francs food and drink) to see (make no mistake about this!) an amateur strip-tease competition, infinitely richer than the Apollo!56 There you’ll see the relationship between awkwardness and eroticism.
Warmest wishes and until soon,
R. Barthes
* * *
Hendaye, Friday, [March 20, 1959]
My dear Alain,
I’ve devoted the myth
ology that will appear in Les Lettres nouvelles on Wednesday, March 25, to the Round Tables and particularly those that the Nouveau Roman tirelessly holds.57 Nothing new for you, since we’ve already talked about it. All the same, I think you’re going too far! You’re burning through your cards too quickly and increasingly so, I tell you. The next time, this will be a letter to Robbe-Grillet! Well, what, more publicity! That said, I’m looking forward to reading your opening, as promised.
Your friend,
Roland
* * *
[Paris,] December 20, 1961
My dear Alain,
I’ve been wanting to see you for a long time—and you too, I think—first and generally, out of friendship, second and specifically out of my concern to set right the kind of extended dispute that has mutually distanced us, from Velan’s Je to Marienbad.58 Weeks have gone by and I haven’t gotten in touch with you because I’m tied up in a university affair (regarding a thesis) and because I only want to return to your work really fully and at depths; wanting to do it well, for the moment, I can do nothing. But that shouldn’t stop us from seeing each other again. If you’d like, it could be after the holidays, in January, after the fifteenth. I’ll call you then and you can invite me some Sunday afternoon for a cup of tea! How does that sound?
In the meantime, happy New Year, my old man, and my warm and faithful wishes,
R. Barthes
* * *
Paris, December 7, 1970
My dear Alain,
We are passed the time for complimenting one another (and moreover I never paid you any insincere ones!), but nevertheless I have to tell you what admiration I have for your Projet de Rév … .59 It’s so perfect a construction that there is in that perfection a kind of very beautiful fidelity to yourself, to what you have always wanted to do, a kind of theoretic secret to your art. In some way you’ve created the model (in Leibniz’s sense) for your whole opus; hence the great power of the swarm (you’re going to be widely copied, if that’s not happening already). A movable model: what a beautiful idea. In short, I thank you for this work (even if Freud is absent from it, which distinguishes me a bit from you).