Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts

by Roland Barthes

  Until soon, I hope. Is there anything you need here that we can do for you?

  Warm regards,

  Barthes

  * * *

  Friday, [May 18, 1956]

  Thanks, my old man, for your note. I’m still so sorry to have missed your call. Don’t give up, try me again; I would like to come have lunch or dinner with you one day next week.

  I’m still doing very badly! And that leads me miserably into laziness. I have only one idea in mind: to produce my collection of mythologies. But even that is very hard and I’m working completely in the dark, with the feeling that I have no justification for what I’m doing. I have the impression of persisting in publishing them against all. Probably that’s what it means to write.

  Awaiting your call, and sending my best,

  RB

  * * *

  Sunday, [mid-September 1956]

  I was happy to get your news; don’t forget to keep me updated. I just spent a month in Hendaye, total solitude and absolute work; you see that we are even beyond the superlative! But truly, whatever daily panic there was over the point of my work, I retain a happy memory of that month that contrasts so sharply with the bogged down, indecisive intellectuality of the last year. I did nothing but write my theoretical text on the mythologies.13 It’s finished, except for a few edits. Sadly, I myself haven’t gotten away from it, or rather, I haven’t gotten myself out of it, as I had hoped; but, from an intellectual perspective, I don’t think that it’s insignificant for me. I believe I’ve taken a step forward in daring to confront the notion of formalism, beyond the Marxist taboos.

  Since returning to Paris, I haven’t done anything much. And I’m leaving again in a few days for Zurich with Nadeau to meet the Russian literati there.14 Then I may go to Italy for a bit. I’ll return to Paris about October 15.

  Won’t we see you in Paris at all this winter? If I get three days and a car, I’ll try to come for a bit to share your sardines and see the country that I know nothing about.15

  Yours truly, my dear Georges,

  Roland

  * * *

  December 9, 1956

  My dear friend,

  Won’t we see you for a little? Come for a bit to restore the sanity of all these Paris intellectuals with your wisdom; they’ve gone completely mad. As for me, I’m resisting it as best I can with a great influx of sociology (it’s very quietist), and minor desertions. Seriously, when are you coming? I would really love to see you.

  Roland

  * * *

  Saturday, [January 26, 1957]

  I would really love to see you, my old man. To end procrastinations, I’ll propose to you Thursday, January 31, at 6:30 PM at l’Arche.16 We can get a quiet drink.

  If that suits you, no need to respond, and see you Thursday. If not, give me a call, Danton 95–85.

  Till very soon,

  Your friend,

  R. Barthes

  * * *

  La Spezia,17 [Italy, August 26, 1957]

  My old man, tied up here for the last month with a friend, Olivier, who broke two vertebrae.18 A very hard month in all respects. But health is improving. We’re returning to Hendaye. Drop me a line there to let me know if you’ll be in Paris early September.

  Faithfully yours,

  Roland

  Etchetoa

  Hendaye-Plage BP

  * * *

  Sunday, [September 22, 1957]

  Dear Georges,

  I do nothing but look at the sea, but I really ought to do more and I am dry.19 It’s crazy that I have to be damp to be so unhappy about being dry.

  I’m returning to Paris soon and will get in touch immediately. We can really work on something for the piano.

  Roland

  * * *

  Wednesday, [October 23, 1957]

  Dear Georges,

  Hardly back, and off again! With this bronchitis, I’m leaving for Milan—because of something to do with publishing, or for nothing! I don’t know.

  I’ll be back Thursday, the 31st. Be in touch?

  Your friend,

  Roland

  * * *

  [Hendaye,] Friday, [January 1958?]

  Dear Georges, I have the impression that I left you with many worries. Where are you? At home? TNP? Brittany? I would really love for you to come here. But when? Maybe my next trip? I’m going back soon, even though my work is only beginning to take off. If I could still believe in the obscure work of laziness! But, with my kind of writing, that hardly holds. The weather continues to be wonderful. Till soon. Faithfully. RB

  * * *

  Hendaye, Sunday, [April 27, 1958]

  I’m returning next week after a good month of work that has hardly made a dent in my agenda nevertheless. Be in touch? I’ll no doubt be leaving Paris again about May 15 to return here to finish my classwork. I leave for America June 17.

  Yours,

  RB

  * * *

  Battell North, Middlebury College, July 6, [1958]20

  You know the type? I’m having my little metaphysical crisis here. But New York, what a wonderful city! In a few hours, I was at home there; 12 million people all to oneself and freedom. Thinking of you.

  RB

  * * *

  [New York, August 19, 1958]21

  I think of you often. Terribly rough stay inland. I hope that, despite myself, I have registered the—astonishing—surface of things regardless. I’m returning soon. I need to catch my breath.

  Faithfully,

  R. B.

  * * *

  Hendaye, Friday, [autumn 1958?]

  Yes, my dear Georges, it’s true, I’m guilty, as they say. Nevertheless I did ask Voisin for your address as soon as I got back from America.22 You see that I had good intentions.… I came back from there in excellent shape; loads of personal problems seemed to get straightened out—not all by themselves, because I had bad moments over there, but that itself worked like some kind of excellent purgative. I’m still doing well, but obviously bad conditions mounted again in Paris, and the machinery is a little blocked again. Still overall it’s going well. I came here alone, though the family arrives this evening—to have a go at this Racine—infamous, like all the things I don’t do—for the Club Français du Livre.23 I am now very far into it; but it’s endless and basically I would rather be doing something else, coming back to more mythological, lighter takes on things. This Racine is really an exorcism of self, with all the bad faith it takes to beat up on a fellow who, in one sense, just resembles me too much (I mean the core, not the art). I’m thinking of returning to Paris about November 10, but I have all of November with him. After that, it would be good to do a little sociology since they persist in giving me grants.24 The trouble is I don’t know when we’ll see each other. I suppose you’re in Brittany for the winter. I might be able to swing by there in December when I come back here for Christmas. Why not? The sea here—even today when the weather’s bad—outdoes any spectacle. Maybe yours is dreamier.

  I think of you with all my faithful affection.

  Roland

  * * *

  [Paris, January 28, 1959]25

  Be in touch? Racine is finished.26

  Roland

  * * *

  Hendaye, Thursday, [April 1959?]

  My dear Georges,

  I haven’t worked as well as I would have hoped or thought. It’s idiotic, one never thinks that the work has its internal stops. It’s crazy that there is still inspiration in all that. And finally, in short, always at the heart of my difficulties, always believing in exerting the intellect and only ever managing to take orders from the subjective.27 I really worry over all that; I keep writing only through will, stubbornness, and it’s not good. For some time, I’ve been afraid to fool around. I’m searching for something new and I can’t find it. I’m afraid of losing the old—which is always a kind of security: the approval of my friends, etc.—and finding myself all alone and completely foolish at the end of this beautiful path. Fi
nally: etc. Don’t abandon me.

  I return—we return—late Sunday probably. Try to be in touch during the week. I had my piano brought from Paris and I was finally able to get my fill of playing it. But in the end I think I only like Romantic music (though not Chopin), it’s funny.

  Your friend,

  Roland

  * * *

  [Dubrovnik,] Saturday, May 2, [1959]

  I’m plagued with a sprain that happened the second day and the trip has lost a bit of its spice; I have to take care of myself. But on the human side, as they say, there’s boundless sympathy: a lively people and yet no drama! I believe that’s a profound quality.

  Faithfully yours,

  Roland

  * * *

  Hendaye, Saturday, [July 4, 1959?]28

  Finally the weather is fine. I’m working hard but I’m going in circles; it’s like a problem that I can’t find the solution to. First time in my life that I’ve done a summary—and it’s killing me.

  Till soon,

  Roland

  * * *

  Thursday, [September 1959?]

  My dear Georges,

  At last, to have—I won’t say your news (I got a vague and essential version of that through friends)—at least your address.29 I wanted to write to you, to tell you, if only in a note, that I’m here, and to ask if there’s anything I can do, whatever it is! Would you like a bit of money—we can work things out later. I maintain that friends are there for that, to make a flow of goods, a circulation of means, possible. And what else? You say nothing about returning. Could we, the rest of us, arrange for that in one way or another?

  Things are going well for me, uneventful. I did a lot of work this summer on clothing, doing frenzied structuralism. All that is disturbing, and despite my rage for work, I fundamentally doubt my efforts, I can’t calm down, and I’m not even sure of being able to write up these kinds of methodological imaginings. It’s uninspired madness, Fourier without the genius. I’m without a position; they’ve—vaguely—promised me things.30 I can hold out for three months, if I can settle into this suspended sentence. January 1, I’ll decide; if nothing’s come through, I’ll say good-bye to the university, to science, and I’ll go back to teaching high school and work on the essay evenings and Sundays.31 Basically, it’s that sort of simplicity that tempts me. I’ve seen very little of people, and that’s why, despite everything, I’m not doing badly.

  Be in touch, tell me if you want anything at all.

  Yours,

  Roland

  * * *

  Sunday, [November 29, 1959]

  My dear Georges,

  With so many difficult things, I know that Gérard Ph.’s death must have added to your sorrows.32 I’m sorry that you are so far away; it all makes more sense when you can talk about it; otherwise, isn’t it absolutely absurd?

  We continue to be in rather a fix here; my brother has not recovered. Everything is uncertain, the diagnosis, the prognosis; we’re demoralized. He has never been sick and doesn’t bear it very well, with that terrible fragility of the physically strong. This problem has practically become my whole life, nothing gives me pleasure, and I hardly leave the house. Like everything else the weather is dismal.

  Give me your news. I can’t wait for you to come back.

  Yours,

  Roland

  * * *

  Sunday, [December 13, 1959]

  My dear Georges,

  Your note made me happy. We’re always talking about you with Pierre K[lossowski], but in fact we only say one thing: how much we want to see you return. I must go play a little piano at their place this week—which makes you envious, I know—I’ll try to offer a bit of Schubert, I’d like to. Nothing much is new; we’ve been troubled by my brother’s mysterious disease, two episodes of it. No one knows what he had, so, they say, it can come back. And we are worriers; we don’t do well with this sort of thing.

  I’m still making no progress in my clothing—and I’m at a standstill because I can’t imagine more destructive work. Sometimes, rarely, I tell myself that it’s great, but most of the time I see the impasse where I am cornered, and I panic. And maybe this will only ever be a subject that I can talk—but not write—about; that will all become clear in a few months. Moreover, it’s making me withdraw intellectually; I’m reading even less than before, I never go to the theater, neither Sartre nor Genet.33 Except the lamentable Crapaud-Buffle, what a pretense of goodwill.34

  We await you.

  Roland

  * * *

  Hendaye, December 28, 1959

  My dear Georges,

  Here I am again in Hendaye for a few days. It’s deserted and wet, but it’s much more beautiful than summer. I’m recuperating a bit, what a lousy term. It ended in spades; my brother relapsed for the fourth time (it seems to be over for now), and I had to leave suddenly for Switzerland to help my advisor and friend Georges Friedmann, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to get over a severe depression.35 It’s the first time I’ve been responsible for a problem of that kind. I was worried sick about it; what a fright! As Mother Courage says, such is the world, need it be so?

  Saw Klossowski and Butor; we talk about you, want you to come back. Can’t we do anything to hasten it, arrange for it? I’m returning to Paris at the very beginning of January and I’m thinking of staying there right through until Easter. It’s crazy that after all these disruptions and derangements I want—stupidly—order, regularity, reason, friends without problems and conflicts, in short, soundness—all those horrible words. I’m still working on clothing and nothing else; but I think what I’m doing is infantile.

  I think of you very much.

  Roland

  * * *

  February 7, 1960

  My dear Georges,

  You must be cursing me for my silence. But in short, I’m a little out of practice writing letters, my pen goes much more slowly than my mind, and all that I have to tell you, all that I need to tell you (because friendship is so self-centered) will be very quick: in short, a conversational rhythm includes silences. I have only two bits of practical news for you: I’m now established in this new position as “head of work” at the École des Hautes Études.36 There is no work and I am head of nothing. I continue my idle life, worried about never working enough, tortured by what I believe to be dissipation, etc.

  The only service asked of me is to contribute a little to the history review Les Annales.37 A few reviews, occasional breaks from this interminable linguistics of clothing, strange masterpiece that I doubt I will ever complete. I see Pierre and Denise, superbly indifferent to any piano later than Mozart.38 Michel, I saw before he left; I’ve begun Degrés and that makes me happy (but I think it’s because I’m teaching).39

  One more note, and you must forgive this entirely practical assault of mine. Picon, the editor of Arts et Lettres, has money to help writers and asked me to help him make use of it.40 Will you allow me to direct him toward you? The money is anonymous, very much so, not even photos as for America; in short, ideal patronage. (I can’t take advantage of it because I get a stipend from the State.)

  Your friend,

  Roland

  * * *

  [Hendaye,] Saturday, [April 9, 1960]

  My dear Georges,

  I’m in Hendaye, as planned, and in a now classic situation for me, here, in this dense crowd of swimmers and strollers, and here I am shut up inside my work as in a kind of schizophrenia. My rage for work moreover essentially stems from my desire to be finished with this futile book that I talk about all the time and that never seems to get done. All the same, I’m organizing my index cards one last time before drafting it, which will begin about August 10, because I have to take a break in eight days to go to Besançon to give three summer classes; and still it’s down to the wire; if I don’t finish this Système de la mode before I return to Paris in October, I’ll be out of time.41 A thousand other tasks await me next year, and the need to come up with a subject more human
that this mad abstraction about the most “futile” of subjects. If all goes well, I should say, if all goes miraculously, so that I’m almost out from under by the end of summer, I’ll try to come see you before starting a new year. I’m considering it, rest assured; but, like all weaklings, I only work by plunging in; without that madness, how to find the courage to write?

  You see, always these same struggles: timing, torments of work, in short, all difficulties that undoubtedly undercut, quite simply, a dream of power, of inspired ease, etc. Nevertheless, this Clothing is important for me, it’s a way of exorcising, of eliminating that internal abstraction that is something like my utopia. But what an outrageous prospect!

  I beg you not to be discouraged by my silences. You know that nothing is interrupted by them. Start sending me letters again, you always make me very happy.

  Faithfully yours,

  Roland

  * * *

  Hendaye, Monday, [April 1960]

  My dear Georges,

  Well, I read the Papiers collés in one sitting, more quickly than any book I’ve read for a long time.42 It’s extraordinary what can be captured with only the imagination. But, finally, what you write is always intermediary between dream and thought, and that’s what makes you inimitable—so profoundly different from Valéry, whom you admire but to whom you owe so little. What you have here is very distinctive; it is, if you will, thought disappointed, the object, through the literary function’s sort of sly emphasis, of a de-ception, in Latin to render the release of literature’s hold over reality. You know too well how convinced I am that herein lies the very ontology of writing, so you can have no doubt with regard to the writing that I am profoundly by your side. It’s true that, if I were to take some of your facts at their word, I would debate them, at the gut level. But it’s for that very reason that you are—wonderfully and incurably—a writer; with you, it’s the movement that’s true, not the element. Hence the famous mediation that makes good literature. And then naturally, beyond that function, is also that inimitable something, like a good spice, that is you, and that makes your book essentially friendly, simultaneously beyond you and greater than you, increasing your friendships.43 You know all that. What remains to be seen is what you’re going to do now: begin again? That’s not possible, it’s never possible.