Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts by Roland Barthes
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.
As for Leroux, don’t be fooled by his coolness, all the same. Be extremely careful. At the first small warning, charge, defend yourself to the hilt. I’m going to send you everything that I have on him, put it into the file.
Do not talk too much, even to make small talk. Please, David, control yourself on this point, curb your tongue. It’s your first and last weakness. Overcome it and you’ll be worth ten times more than all the fellows who might impress you. (The more I see of them—the Mossers, charming but cold;91 the Villiers, immodest; the Poulains, idiotic; the Urbains, childish, etc.—the more I appreciate—judging not with my heart but with the steel of my intellect—how much more you have to offer than they do in every respect.) So, David my friend, do not talk too much, do not get carried away, do not lose your bearings, endure the silence, the weapon of the strong. Besides, in talking there’s always the risk of spilling secrets or making gaffes (I shudder when I think of everything you told me the first nights at Saint-Hilaire). For those who have known you to be more quiet, this excess draws attention to you, which flusters you, etc. (Difficult to write between the records Van Humbeeck and the general’s daughter are playing while they pass the time talking as you know; she just asked me for news of you, like everyone does here, and they all speak so kindly of you.) You don’t want me to lecture you and tell you to do this or not to do that; I’m doing what I would do if you were here beside me (a sentence I cannot write without getting those butterflies in my stomach, you know what I mean).
Your letter arrived just at the right time to comfort Mosser. He is now radiant and infinitely grateful to you. Since your next-to-last letter, he has only written drafts of letters to his uncle and has only talked about that to me. He read them to me, but I am frightened. It’s the kind of paranoid dialectic that’s found in Leroux. Oddly, that has left me thinking about Mosser for the last two days.
You must have received my letter by now in which I told you that my operation is to be decided. I hope I didn’t cause you too much worry, my friend. You must excuse me when I’m a bit cold; it’s because if I get emotional I’m afraid I’ll lose my courage. God knows that I think of you at the very moments when anything directly affecting me occurs. You know that I live with this disease by virtue of Maman and you. You must have also received my
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excuse me for leaning on you in these moments. I don’t do this with anyone else, you know, and you know that I take a certain pride in not showing my distress, but the unique mark of our friendship is that I cannot put on an act for you. To bolster my courage, I have adopted a kind of method (you will recognize me there, of course). I begin with this principle: one’s intelligence must be in proportion to one’s sensitivity; when one is not sure of the first, the second must be decreased. If my intelligence doesn’t allow me to overcome a difficult situation, I’m going to try to lessen my sensitivity a bit, reduce the flame. This is all to let the mind retain control; to do that I must avoid certain temptations so they do not destroy me: the image of the Mother and the image of the Lover. I’m trying hard not to be forever thinking of you both. I know that you are always extraordinarily present, but I’m trying not to let myself be monopolized by your images. It’s simply because otherwise I lose control and that results in days like last Wednesday. You will understand, David. I am expressing myself badly today. This is a bit of a girlish, slapdash letter I’m writing you; it makes me think of the letters from M. L. Translate everything I say into my usual form and you will see what I mean.
I stayed in bed for two days because of an insufflation reaction (which may be the reason for my depression). It does me good to walk, to go for strolls alone. There are moments of splendid nostalgia this fall. The other day I played piano duets with Perlemuter.93 Yesterday Mosser and I went to see a stupid play at the theater and stopped at the patisserie on the way back. You see, the same routines but without you, my friend, and I suffer a thousand times a day. I am absolutely cold to Van Humbeeck; he must be disappointed but he has certain traits that get on my nerves. I’m having a lot of trouble working. In short, my friend, I am bored […]94
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[Leysin,] Thursday evening, [October 25, 1945]
My friend,
This morning I returned to Alexandre. This afternoon listened to a Bach concerto. From my emotion at hearing this first music, I could measure the shock of that operation and these last two weeks.95 It was amazing the effect that music had on me; my soul was carried away. I had played that concerto arranged for four hands with Perlemuter six days before entering Miremont.96 I recall so well that icy autumn day, my loneliness on the Leysin road in the wind, dreaming of that music and thinking of you.
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Otherwise, I got a warm welcome.98 The sisters bustling about the very sick ones, Mother Morel breaking through with a bottle, a can of sardines, and a pack of cigarettes, Klein truly overjoyed and charming.99
As for my health, basically I think that you no longer need to worry. So I can tell you, my friend, that I still feel terribly tired, absolutely not relaxed, my stomach hurts, I can’t sleep, my head aches and my heart is as clenched and heavy as ever with my wounded love. I still have a slight fever because of that nasty fluid. But my friend, you are not allowed to worry. You know that all that is normal two weeks after the operation and if I tell you about it, it’s to keep you up to date on my condition, my coenesthesia. And anyway it’s more nervousness than weakness. Do not worry. (My handwriting is bad because these famous tables that I always envied are too high and of course not adjustable.)
My friend, I’m sending you this short note, despite having received nothing from you since your letter and my letter of Tuesday, just because you must know that I’m thinking of you with courage and faith. Don’t worry too much about my letters and my suffering; there’s nothing more authentic and the substance always remains there, unchanged. But always ends in lingering over the feeling of your friendship and the certainty that you will come to my aid. That will help me until I can see you again.
I think of you as you can imagine, afraid of your next letter and even more afraid of receiving no letter at all. Don’t give up on me; life is unstable at the moment. I am summoning all my willpower. Write.
Roland
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[Leysin,] Thursday noon, December 20, [1945]
My friend,
Why do our famous psychologists waste their time on contrived topics like Will, Attention, etc., instead of studying the only important thing in modern psychology: Mood? Mood is basically the contemporary form of ancient Fate, that irrepressible power that makes someone different from one day to the next, that turns one day’s gain into the next day’s loss, that makes one night sufficient to reduce what was enthusiastically created into something nauseating, that for a succession of such days makes it impossible for us to use certain words, of […]100 the treachery that approaches, even though deep within our hearts we have not changed: (this we is a polite form of you?), so that finally our depressions, our changes, our entire inner coenesthesia no longer resemble a clavier with its very limited, very even and mechanical notes by which one can shift very clearly from willingness to laziness, from gaiety to melancholy, etc., but rather a ramp with no steps, a cottony cloud in which minuscule external variations create subito opacities, flights, knots (oh, these “knotted” natures of the modern age!), or clarifications. All that is Mood. Mood, the new deity, the new psychology of Modern Man, a kind of symbol in opposition to classical Passion, the engine of contemporary philosophies, Sartre’s novels, Barthes’s days (although, even through his discouragement, he risks the unique and totally classical permanence of passion), the engine of David’s letters, which, although now arriving in regular and frequent convoys (profound thanks to him for this reliable happiness), still cros
I’m shaken by many things these days. But I feel a certain discouragement in telling you all about that with any excitement. Always the vertigo of these letters that do not really connect, from this person who talks less about himself.
I have so many things to tell you; my letters do not suffice; and no, a one-way correspondence, very heavy and full of confidences on one side, very light and receptive on the other, is not possible. You can understand that I do not dare, that it is unbearable for me, given my genuine humility, to go on about myself for eight pages every two days without knowing what effect it has on you. I’m going through a few very hard days. Sartre’s manifesto taught me nothing but articulated it well.101 Then I reread my little pieces in Existences, so quaint, so bad, and then Sartre’s latest novel (which I read in one day).102 All of this threw me into violent thoughts about my life and my character, not encouraging thoughts, as you can imagine. Why aren’t you here, my old man? How much good you would do me. I feel that basically, each according to his own temperament, we’re at the same point and we’re suffering from the same thing. You can understand how distressing these thoughts—let’s call them anarchistic—are at this moment. They are raising grave questions about my work on Michelet.
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[Leysin,] Wednesday noon, January 9, 1946
My friend,
Here is my faithful little midday note, the house being almost quiet, the others having lunch. I don’t know why today especially I longed for a letter from you. Last night I could not sleep, I thought of certain memories involving you, and I tried to re-create your image exactly. I managed it, but in a truly uncanny way, not so much through memory, which absolutely refuses, as you know, to return to us the loved one’s features in full, but more through a kind of reviviscence of certain complete moments, of certain total seconds, that is to say face + bearing + walk, etc. I wonderfully recalled some of your expressions, your gait, not slow but meandering, each part of which has a very determined air, but the whole of which nevertheless has a charming imprecision above all, a dreamlike quality.
The weather is superb, flawless sunshine, but you’ll be surprised to learn that I no longer want to go outside for the cure, for fear of confronting the memory of the long, long days we spent outdoors, in which I was happy.104 You never talk to me of the past, never of the future, and I still wonder what it is you are made of, what goes on inside your brain and heart. What are you thinking? That harmless question, generally asked without waiting for a response, takes on, in your case, the dimensions of an essential interrogation into nature, and you both answer through the same cloud of mystery.
I’m spending some fairly bad days preoccupied with my health, with that feverishness returning as it did two months ago. I think I will have to go for an X-ray today. Health is stupid. It is essential and yet we can only talk about it in a dull way. And others also are very bad at talking about it to us. For me, it has been four years and I am still not resigned to being sick.
I’m also having difficulties related to my work. Not with Michelet strictly speaking, but those two or three articles that I faithfully attempted (on this subject, send me back the one on Camus)105 showed absolutely clearly that I’m incapable of writing. That has not affected me deeply because I have known for a long time that I’m not a writer, but it bothers me with regard to my practical life because it jeopardizes a potential source of income. My only hope is to be able to write on what I know well, regardless. Thus, more than ever, I must forge ahead with Michelet. I came to a stop these last few days, before tackling—with no great courage—the six volumes on the Middle Ages. How long all that is! Never has life been so long for me, in all its forms.
My dear, I will leave you with only four pages. Believe me, it’s not from lack of subject matter. I would like to tell you about Michelet’s good page on Rousseau, tied in knots and then unraveled by women, I would like to harp again about this separation that tortures me, the reunion that I live for each second, but I am literally worn out, my friend. You can see by my handwriting, my arm hurts. No doubt I will have a letter from you tomorrow, and you will have your eight pages in response. I know that you cannot hold it against me. I am writing you almost every day and I think of you all the time. It’s just that today I ask your pardon for my bad shoulder. My friend, let me tell you of my joy at having you for a friend.
Until tomorrow,
Roland
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[Leysin,] Wednesday morning, January 23, 1946
My friend,
I had a day yesterday that broke up the monotony a bit. Mosser returned to spend the evening with Villiers and me. We had quite a good dinner in my room. Mosser slept in Van Humbeeck’s bed, who left for good that morning. Today I’m writing to you in the messiness and hubbub of changing rooms. No doubt I’m going to be cursed in the daytime with a sturdy Dutchman, ugly, fat, thickset, who loves the cold and laughs too loudly. That will add to my ingratitude for the life here and will make me more eager, if that is possible, to extend my wings and fly. But in that regard, I can say nothing. Alas, besides my inner fears, which I told you about in my last letter, I feel so weak when I stand up and when I walk. It worries me to be so very feeble, and, I must say, without making progress. Well, all that is really of no importance.
I digressed. I wanted to continue with last evening, as I am doing now. During the conversation, which was painful as long as Solliers was there because of his growing mythomania (vanity), then more relaxed when I was alone with Mosser, I thought of you intensely many times. I talked to Mosser about passion (in an absolutely general way, adopting that proverbial tone I love). I surprised myself with the power of the hypothesis on love that I constructed. I reconsidered, reexperienced, and reaffirmed that vocation of passion which is my own and which I understand better and better—without knowing where it is leading me—this is part of it. Some elements that I have often mentioned to you appeared forcefully to me: the dialectical logic of Love, which is one of the most astonishing things I know.106 One is taken with a surge of emotion at seeing this power of thought that makes no act indifferent, that makes a telegram or letter an eternal sign, transforming everything, absolutely everything into the absolute. It’s exhausting, but it is undeniably great, this sacredness upon which, in Love, one bases each movement, like a gold medal in a foundation (Michelet). I thought again—but I’ve already explained this to you—precisely of that discovery of the sacred (I cannot find a better word) that prompts passion. I sense the degree to which, for example, the vocation of passion and that of revolution are identical. It is an engagement of the same nature. Through that similarity, one can easily understand the chemical formula of the absolute, the eternal. It would be a kind of indissoluble compound—indissoluble for having become a truly living body—of suffering and of loving-suffering, of the horror and the love of love. Amori et dolori sacrum.107 That chemical formula of the absolute, that theoretical body of the
I was also thinking—in my efforts toward intelligence and wisdom—that one can say all this only when it is a friend whom one loves. I imagine that, with regard to a woman, a whole other metaphysics applies, not at all inferior, that was not my thought. Because the degree of otherness one finds in a woman is entirely different, and that leads to experiencing the issue in an entirely different way. But that, my poor David, is a dangerous direction for the moment.