It’s the second part, of course, that touched me most: everything regarding your mother. A few months ago I wrote a text on a photo session with my mother, and I’ll send it to you, it should speak to you.177 I’ll also send you the texts that were at the exhibit (a true exchange of writing, if you agree to it, since I have just absorbed yours).…
I hope you’re doing well, with love,
Hervé
P. S. Let’s not forever keep putting off the plan to have dinner together again; I’ll call you some morning. And thank you, too, for your earlier response.
P. S. 2. I couldn’t find the text on my aunts, and it’s also because I really don’t want to overload you, the envelope would have been too heavy.…
“Vita Nova”
How far back does the “Vita Nova” project go, that is, the plan to move to entirely fictional, novelistic, creative writing? It goes back to the very beginning, one could answer, since, for example, by the time of Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, the work was starting to take shape as a utopian idea, as a future work that had to be seized in the moment, an undertaking that involved one’s entire life, one’s entire existence organized around the “preparation of the novel,” as Barthes’s last course at the Collège de France indicated as well, in which he proposed a kind of “simulation” of the work in the process of being made.
Its genesis, like any genesis, is hard to reconstruct in detail. We can offer a few stages and a few signs. In 1979, the project crystallized around this title, as is evident by the eight outlines that Barthes drafted between late August and mid-December, evident at well by the countless “file cards” or “pages” that he filled at the time. But as early as 1969, we can see the first concrete gestures toward writing that moves away from even the freest forms of the essay and is organized around the word Incidents. On a file card from the time (November 1969) offering no other details, that term is associated with Raymond Queneau, no doubt the Queneau of Le Chiendent (Gallimard, 1933) where the word appeared in a cover letter, but Queneau uses the word elsewhere as well. This is the term Barthes later chose in 1978–79 as a title for the collection of fragments he wrote on Morocco during his stay there in 1970–71, only one chapter in the vast collection that “Vita Nova” was meant to be. Initially, nevertheless, “Incidents” designated all the microfictions of reality, notations, and events that are offered as events in the structure of the novel. Moreover, it was in this same period that Barthes used the term in L’Empire des signes.178 Here it names the mode of fiction of haiku that he would later construct in La Préparation du roman as the model of the event suited to the work he planned to write.
The term incident is undoubtedly essential but not sufficient to encompass the project that from then on, in 1969–70 and the years following, would be associated with other names and other titles, like “Our France,” which points the work toward the mythologies, “Restaurant Phrases,” or more generic terms like novel (in 1974 for example) or fiction (in 1975). Sometimes at the top of a page we find terms like “Dream,” or “Novel: Incident,” “Novel: Text,” or what might appear to be chapter titles: “Futile Evenings” (on this topic see “Soirées de Paris,” which Barthes was writing at the same time as the “Vita Nova” outlines, between late August and mid-September 1979),179 or “Anamnesis,” for which he offered a foretaste in Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, a book that as a whole and like L’Empire des signes may appear to be one of the prodromes for “Vita Nova.” Other titles were published in the mid- and late 1970s: “Notre littérature,”180 “Scènes,” “Le Roman impossible,” “Mémoire,” “Stromates,” “La splendeur de passé.”
Throughout this file we find “production notes,” instructions Barthes wrote to himself for the future composition of the work that he was in the process of putting together. For example, in October 1977, even though he was also “keeping” his “Journal de deuil”181 tied to the death of his mother, he wrote on one page, “Maybe insert here and ventilate the Journal of grief.” Or again, we see appearing a plan for a more classical, narrative novel titled “The Conspirators,” which at times recalls André Gide’s Les Faux-monnayeurs, and which Barthes ties to current events; thus, in a file titled “Supports for the conspirators,” dated August 18, 1979, he includes the project for the “Mesrine theft,” a reference to the famous gangster shot by the police that same year, on November 2, 1979. The project is occasionally altered with a competing title, the “Dispensers of Justice novel” (September 26, 1979). In October, we find many hypothetical titles: “Confession of a writer,” “Dictionary of my life,” “History of my perversions.” We also find present or future titles in the plans for “Vita Nova,” like “Futile evenings,” previously cited, “Maetri e Autori,” and “Patricians and Plebeians.”
“Vita Nova” never took form definitively enough for Barthes to imagine the transition from notes to overall writing, but in fact some of his chapters had already been written at the time of his death. These are, in short: “Incidents, au Maroc naguère …,” “Soirées de Paris,” “Journal de deuil,” to which we may add the last two courses at the Collège de France on the preparation of the novel, which were offered as one uninterrupted course, a kind of endless speech for which the key word is that rare term that Barthes exhumed from the decadent Latin of Sidoine Apollinaire, scripturire, which names in a dead language the “desire to write,” the endless craving to write more. Le Chambre claire, the last part of a kind of trilogy that begins with Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, followed by Fragments d’un discours amoureux, constituting three treatises on the Self, love, and death, is not the “Vita Nova.” It is like one of its sources, one of its insights, or one of its prefaces. The epilogue lies elsewhere.
We are presenting here eight outlines of “Vita Nova” previously reproduced at the end of Oeuvres complètes.
Transcription and Translation of “Vita Nova”
Translated by Kate Briggs
“Vita Nova” comprises eight sheets of paper in 21 x 29.7 format. The first seven pages were written on typewriter paper, the eighth on squared paper. The pages were filed in a red cardboard folder marked VITA NOVA in capital letters. The first draft was written in ink; additions were made in black or red pencil.
Abbreviations Used
< > word crossed out
{} interlinear addition
Italics indicate additions made in black pencil, bold indicates those made in red pencil.
The square brackets [] are Barthes’s.
21 VIII 79
Vita Nova
Meditation. Taking stock
Morality with no hope of application.
Prologue – Bereavement182
I. The World as a contradictory object of spectacle and indifference [as Discourse]
—Archetypal objects: —[Evil?]
—The Militant
—Bad Faith
I. (a) “pleasures” are impervious to …
—Music
II. —The decision of April 15, 78183
—Literature as a substitute for love
—
—Writing
III. Imagining a V.N.
—Regimes
IV. Literature as disappointment (it was an Initiation)
—Done already: the Essay
—The Fragment
—The Diary
—The Novel
[—Humor?]
—Nostalgia
{compact}
V.
{philosophical Doing Nothing}
Epilogue: The Encounter
22 VIII 79
9 a.m.
Vita Nova
Make more dialectical
Plan too edifying
Meditation. Taking stock
too disappointing
Morality with no hope of application
Prologue
—Bereavement
—The vital prob
lem of Action (with respect to what ensues: what to do? how to act?)
I. Amorous acedy
—What came after RH184
—Half-hearted pursuits
II. “Pleasures” are impervious to force
—Music Cruising
—Giving up painting
—Derisory things: Knitting, Komboloï185
III. The World as a contradictory object of spectacle and indifference. Analysis and Typology of Discourses “Evil”? The Militant. Bad faith.
IV. The decision of April 15, 1978. Literature as a substitute,
V. Imagining a V.N.
Regimes.
VI. Literature: is only an initiation? Disappointments, incapacities?
— Done already: the Essay.
— The Fragment. The Diary. The Novel.
— Humor.
— Nostalgia
VII. Pure Idleness: “philosophical doing nothing.” (The Neutral. Tao / the Heap).
—Friends (Fantasy of devoting myself entirely to them)
—The Return to former positions. Carrying on. No V.N.
Epilogue: The Encounter
August 22 79
10 a.m.
Prologue — Bereavement
—
—To live, to act, to invest, to desire Fields, Circles, crossings
→ Quest
The “Return__________Loss of the true guide, the Mother
to Childhood” —Maestri e Autori*
(without Mother)
Cruising Futile Evenings
Masters of—The Writer (Never was a philosopher
Discourse my guide)
—The Gigolo – as Other—Ordinary People the Baker
—The Friend
—the unknown young man
—Figures – Woman – as Irritation
Anti-
Discourse
? – the Militant – as Other-Priest
? —The decision of April 15, 1978 Maestro Tolstoy takes the place of Proust?
Lit.
?
? — VN
? — The absence of a master
The Moroccan Child
from the Zenrin
Poem188
Pure Idleness
? Epilogue
The Encounter
Index of people and places (e.g., the Flore)
*Inferno II 139–42189
23 VIII 79
Prologue – Bereavement
—The Loss of the Guide (the Mother)
—To live, to act, to desire, to fantasize
—Quest: what force, what form, what discourse in order to write?
—Anti-Discourse:
—Woman as Irritation
—The “Scholar”
—The Militant (Priests of Power)
—Mediators: “Maestro et Autore”
—The Gigolo
—The unknown Young Man
—The Friend
—The Writer → Vita Nova
—The (Moroccan) child: the Guide-less
Idleness
VN
26 VIII 79
-Prologue
Mam.190 as guide
Futile Evenings
+ Politics (Le Monde at the Flore?)191
“This is how I spent my evenings”
? –Quests192
Journeys, Circles Dialectic: —Evil and Good Mingled
Guides —Positive and Insufficient
—Fantasies where every journey is a success. Talent to the very end
—The gigolo
—The unknown young man
—The Friend
—The writer
—Mam. still the guide
Decision of April 15, 1978
—VN
—“I’m withdrawing from the world to begin a great work that will be an expression of … Love”
I didn’t know
whether I was
withdrawing
do to this or ≠
its
opposite the (Moroccan) child the Guide-less
Idleness
Apology
Sept 2 79
-Idea of Poikilos,193 of the Romantic Novel, of the absolute Novel. See notes for the 79–80 Lecture Course # p. 11
Forms:
—Narrative, account of an (intellectual) quest cf Photography
—Account of my evenings (endless, futile diachrony)
—The Frgmts of a “great work” (cf Pascal’s Pensées) # observations, aphorisms
Frgmts: like the remains194 of an Apology for something
—Fake dialogues (would be good for Politics, which is interminable contestatory hair-splitting)
[VN]
Sept 3, 79
[Reading Pascal] Desire to:
—
—The Frgmts: would bear out the theory of Poilikos, of the Romantic Novel, of the Absolute Novel: densely written, elliptical even, always very “intelligent” (a tight watch to be kept on this) → Slow, unremitting labor—not only of the Form but also (new for me) of the Thinking.
—Give up playing the Foolish game, the scare quotes, the refusal to assume a position in relation to the enunciation (excuse of the Novelistic, of the diversity of my ego). Without Self-indulgence. No Pretence.
—Which law? the absolute law of mam.
[The Neutral? at any rate: firm and brave]
—No more I. At any rate, no more than Pascal.
—That will be difficult: he could say:
—Organization? “Sheafs”: indecipherable plan that’s still ordered.
—The idea about the Circles, Mediators, e.g.
—“Pensées” in which, References to the Scriptures (quotations)
[would be replaced by References to literature (quotations)
—All of this would mean giving up the childishness of the Vita Nova Narrative: those efforts of the frog who wished to make itself as big as …196
VN
12 XII 79
or [-Bereavement]
at the end
—Acedy
—Life hypotheses
[Virgil]
—Cruising. Bolge197
Gig.
—Encounter. Celebration
The unknown ym
—Struggle (G198 Politics etc.)
Militant
—Charity
The friend JL199
—the Heap
The Moroccan child
—Music Painting Retreat
—[Mam. as guide]
Journal of Mourning200
—‘The Circle of my possible’* = Lit.
—Decision of April 15, 78:201 Literature
*See Heidegger quotation in the lecture § on Idleness.202
aRheingold obsession! [Barthes spells reins (kidneys) with an “h” (rheins). Hence this is a pun, alluding to the prologue of Wagner’s Ring (see the preceding letter).—Ed.]
NOTES
Foreword
Epigraph: Maurice Blanchot, L’Écriture du désastre (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 183.
1. The letters from Barthes to Frédéric Berthet are found collected in Frédéric Berthet, Correspondances, 1973–2003 (Paris: La Table ronde, 2011).
2. Leyla Perrone-Moisés, Com Roland Barthes (Sáo Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2012).
3. Roland Barthes, La Plus déchirante des fêtes, followed by À propos de Roland Barthes, with original drawings by Josef Nadj (Paris: Archimbaud, 2001).
4. L’Amitié de Roland Barthes (Paris: Seuil, 2015).
Death of the Father
1. The c
hapter in this book, Sur les bancs de Flandre (Les éditions de France, 1927), was reprinted by Antoine Compagnon in his anthology La Grande Guerre des écrivains: D’Apollinaire à Zweig (Paris: Folio, 2014). See also (identified by Antoine Compagnon [Romantic Review, January-March 2014]) Louis Dours, “Les Marins bayonnais tombés à l’ennemi,” Bulletin de la Société des sciences, lettres et arts de Bayonne 3–4 (1917): 14–20.
2. Baron Antoine Exelmans (1865–1944) was the descendant of an illustrious French military family, the grandson of the Marshal of France, Rémy Joseph Isidore Exelmans (1775–1862).
Chronology
1. See Le Théâtre antique à la Sorbonne (Paris: L’Arche, 1961).
2. Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 29–32 (henceforth OC).
3. According to his diary, Barthes returned to Leysin in 1972 to revisit these places while he was staying in Geneva.
4. Roland Barthes would publish all of his work with Seuil—with the exception of La Tour Eiffel (Delpire, 1964), Élements de sémiologie (Denoël-Gonthier, 1965), L’Empire des signes (Skira, 1970), and Alors, la Chine? (Christian Bourgois, 1975).
1. From Adolescence to the Romance of the Sanatorium
1. A reference to texts read during the awards ceremony for the 1931–32 school year. The Prince of Conti (1611–68), after having been Molière’s supporter, turned against him, assuming a pious stance, notably in the Traité de la comédie et des spectacles (1666), in which he attacks his former protégé.
2. An allusion to the three “Fragments du Narcisse” by Paul Valéry, collected and published in Charmes in 1926.
3. This phrase appears in “Pour le latin,” La Vie littéraire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1925), 281 (first series published in 1888–92).
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