Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts by Roland Barthes
The letters we found between Barthes and Blanchot mainly involve the “Revue internationale” project, begun in 1960 and reaching its height between summer 1961 and summer 1963. This review, with its provisionary title of Gulliver, and its very ambitious plans for revitalizing writing practices and bringing together writers and intellectuals, especially Germans, Italians, and French ones, failed. Barthes evokes the memory of it in an interview in 1979, speaking very warmly of Blanchot.173
Roland Barthes to Maurice Blanchot
May 12, 1962
Dear friend, thank you for your book and the personal words you included with it.174 The work I’m doing at the moment on this semiology of Fashion, which I’ve madly embarked upon, sometimes makes me so unhappy (even though it’s a necessary enterprise for me nevertheless) that your book arrived as a true consolation; each time I read a “dose” of it, it’s as though I’m rediscovering a true language, of which I’m very much deprived right now. I’d like to talk to you about all this some day soon. I don’t know if you’re usually in Paris, and if you would agree to it, but it would make me happy.
Yours,
Roland Barthes
* * *
Thursday, [June 18, 1962]
Dear friend,
Could we see each other briefly before my departure (I think I’ll leave Wednesday)? On the off chance, let me propose next Monday, June 25, at 7 PM to you, at the Café de la Mairie, on the corner of Rue des Canettes and Place Saint-Sulpice. If that doesn’t work for you, could you call me (Danton 95–85); otherwise, until Monday?
I’m looking forward to seeing you.
Yours,
R. Barthes
* * *
Tuesday, [1962?]
Dear friend,
Thank you for your note. I’m leaving for a slightly extended weekend but I think I’ll be here toward the middle of next week. I’ll drop you a line immediately to suggest a date.
Until soon, then, yours,
R. Barthes
* * *
Arguments
Saturday, [July 1962]175
Dear friend,
I tried to call you, without success. Maybe you’re not in Paris? I simply wanted to tell you that I’m back and would be happy to see you again.
Yours,
R. Barthes
Maurice Blanchot to Roland Barthes
Paris, 48 rue Madame, July 31, [1962]
Dear Roland,
I called you several times, I myself having been gone several times. I’ll be back again sometime during the month of September. If, at that time, I mean when you return, you could let me know, I would appreciate that, as I’d like to see you, if only for disinterested conversation.
This note, then, only to express to you kind regards.
M.
* * *
Paris, 48 rue Madame, Bab. 14–12, September 28, [1962]
Dear friend,
You’ll recall our conversation and how happy I was that you agreed to take part in the organization and development of the planned review.176 The German and Italian editorial staffs are ready to begin work, so we must get ready to begin our own.177 And we’ve decided, as least as long as we don’t have our own office, to meet every Wednesday at 2 PM at Dionys Mascolo’s (5, rue Saint Benoît, third on the left).
We all hope very much that you can participate in these work sessions and each of us (all of those to whom I’ve spoken) appreciate how useful your presence would be, particularly in these early stages when a plan is ready to take shape but remains malleable and modifiable.
The editorial difficulties are, in principle, resolved (with Gallimard as the sole publisher of the French edition, as Suhrkamp will be in Germany and Einaudi in Italy).178 Budgetary negotiations are still underway.
I hope to see you. Let me express to you my strong feelings of friendship.
Maurice Blanchot
It’s true, I don’t know if you’re in Paris at the moment.
Roland Barthes to Maurice Blanchot
Monday, [October 1, 1962]
Dear friend,
I’ve just returned. I’m still very much on board with your venture. The problem is that I’m not sure I can attend your sessions each week. In any case, this Wednesday (October 3) is unfortunately not possible. Let me know if there’s definitely a meeting the following Wednesday, October 10. What can we do to maintain regular contact without these weekly meetings, on my part? I’ll have a clearer picture in November when the schedule for my Hautes Études seminar will be determined.
Faithfully yours,
R. Barthes
* * *
Sunday, [November 1962]
Dear friend,
What to do about these Wednesdays. It’s now certain, with the academic year being organized, that I will be tied up every Wednesday, since that’s the day the Centre des Communications de Masse, which I am part of, meets. And that begins next Wednesday, which means I can’t meet with you even once, as I had hoped. It would be best, I think, if we could see each other, just the two of us one day (when you wish); you could explain to me where we stand and later, when we have an office, I could join you in a more improvised way, as you suggest.
Kind regards,
R. Barthes
Dan. 95–85
According to Roland Barthes’s diary, he participated in many meetings in fall and winter 1962 at the home of Dionys Mascolo, Rue Saint-Benoît, which was also the home of Marguerite Duras: Tuesday, October 16; Friday, October 26; Thursday, November 8; Friday, November 16; Tuesday, November 27; Tuesday, December 4; Friday, December 14. On December 2, 1962, he wrote the fragment on the “dialogue” (“Les Trois dialogues”) for the “Revue internationale.”179
Roland Barthes was present at the big meeting in Zurich, Saturday, January 19, to Sunday, January 20, 1963, with the German, Italian, and French participants.
Then he participated in many meetings at Mascolo’s apartment in 1963: Thursday, April 18; Friday afternoon, April 19, and Saturday morning, April 20; as well as Friday, May 17. There were a few more meetings in 1963, one on Wednesday, October 23, and one on Friday, December 13, which is the last to be noted by Barthes in his diary.
During that year, he met alone with Maurice Blanchot twice: Friday, June 14, 1963, and Wednesday, July 17, 1963.
Maurice Blanchot to Roland Barthes
Paris, 28 rue Madame, Thursday, [May 1963]
Dear Roland,
I believe Dionys told you that I was going away for a few days (a week at least). Before leaving, however, I wanted to thank you for your book.180 It was a friendly greeting I much needed after those hours that were hard for me, why hide it?181 What is your feeling at present? Do you think something may still be possible and in what direction? You know that, for me as well as my close friends, your opinion will be a deciding factor. I don’t say that to burden you with an unpleasant responsibility, but rather to invite you to share your thoughts in complete freedom and without hesitation.
Yours with all my heart,
Maurice
* * *
Friday, [May-June 1963]182
Dear Roland,
With Dionys about to make a weeklong trip to Italy, mainly to Milan, it seems that through his intermediary, we must examine one last time with Vittorini, Leonetti, and Calvino the possibilities for an international effort, albeit reduced to our two languages, envisioning a Franco-Italian review with an editorial committee that could include, besides French and Italians, a German writer, an English writer, and a Spanish-American writer. If the Italians turn down the project or even accept it reluctantly, because they are tempted by Enzensberger’s solution183 or for other reasons, then we would be free—both in heart and mind—to turn to the Other project. That one, which I think involves radically questioning all forms of publication and writing envisaged until now, needs to be considered completely by itself.
I believe it’s now clear that Maurice Nadeau 1) will agree to participate in a French-Italian review, if it com
I’m leaving for a couple weeks and then I hope we can see each other sometime. Not long ago I caught a glimpse of you on Rue de Rennes a few steps away from me, but separated by a stream of cars. It was touching to see you like that, so close and completely inaccessible.
I am sending you, dear Roland, all my best wishes,
M.
Roland Barthes to Maurice Blanchot
Postcard showing a painting by Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist (Kunstmuseum, Basel, 1609)
Urt, September 4, [1965]
Dear Maurice, your note touched me deeply. I’m worried about your health. As soon as I return toward the end of September, I’d like to telephone you—or at least Dionys, to get your news. I wasn’t able to see Leonetti in Italy; he seems inexhaustible.184
Until soon, I hope, dear Maurice,
Your friend,
Roland B.
Maurice Blanchot to Roland Barthes
Saturday, [March or April 1966]
Dear friend,
I’d like to thank you for the happiness that reading your book gave me, through the truth of its language and its constant invitation to us to call things into question.185 It seems that this disruption—the disruption that precedes a new form—despite your infinite discretion in proposing it must be, for some, a kind of personal wound. It must be that research applied to “writing,” in whatever form, thwarts our ease, disturbs our complacency, and threatens our safety. Already we have seen the violent manner in which our poor project was received. It’s beginning again. There’s something very instructive in this, I think.
And nevertheless, knowing that a deep inquiry is underway, feeling linked to it and aided by it, how that lightens life.
To you, with all my heart, dear Roland,
M. B.
* * *
Paris, May 11, [1967]
Dear Roland,
For such a long time now I’ve been thinking of you continually, regardless of the circumstances or because your writings bring me back to the center of my thinking. They have often aided me, not just as intellectual resources but by maintaining their orientation in those obscure regions where the somber mind governs.
For all that, thank you.
For some time now as well, having half returned to the real world, I’ve been thinking it would be good if we could reconnect. But when communication no longer corresponds with daily events, that’s difficult. There must be a medium. Please forgive me for sending you the attached text partly as pretext for providing the possible occasion.
One word on this text. It was prepared with friends whom you know. But in submitting it to you, I’m not simply or exactly asking for your approval, but rather to consult a kindred spirit on this issue of rupture. Naturally we all know how intellectual and aesthetic activities in all our societies are continually and necessarily threatened by the play of cultural powers. But the general problem cannot serve as an alibi for the other, more present one, evoked by the text. But is this text possible? Would you like to think about it and consider what could be changed or added here to make it more accurate? And when you have the time, would you like to share your thoughts with me?
Yours, dear Roland, with warm regards,
Maurice Blanchot
The attached text by Maurice Blanchot:
Brought into power by a military coup, claiming historical legitimacy that he holds according to his judgment alone, and appealing to the populace only if it reinforces his designs, having imposed a Constitution that is monarchic in nature, having imposed it in a period of unrest when events offered him Algerian colonels for allies, that is to say, the repeated threat of civil war, and then not even caring about respecting that Constitution, but making it more authoritarian year after year, to the point that it exists only through him and to legalize his individual intentions, de Gaulle has established a regime that bears his name and signifies that name only, bearing no relationship at all to the democratic tradition of this country!
A regime of social regression, serving the privileged class, with equal participation for all in restoring “grandeur” as the only measure of justice, that grandeur being nothing but a nationalist aberration here. A regime of political repression whose entire philosophy consists of this: first, to put an end to parliamentary democracy, then to suspend all meaningful civic life, political decisions belonging only to one individual and the law itself embodied in one individual.
Like all dictatorships, this strangely regressive regime has lasted only by linking itself with danger and exalting danger. But the time has come when that very power appears to be the true danger. No longer passing for a power that saves, it reveals itself to be the expression of the most unjust violence, which is the essence of all nationalism and which prevails every time popular sovereignty finally fails to express itself through the institutions and the laws.
That is where we are: at this turning point. The recent elections are evidence of it. And the result of those elections is that, far from speaking as he always has—wrongly—for an entity called “France,” dangerously glorified to enhance his own glory, de Gaulle is only in a position to respond to the demands of the wealthy powers, finding his support only in them, as a group plainly determined to unite political power with financial power. This is now abundantly clear, and it is clear that this regime must vanish. First of all, the circumstances are favorable, and the citizens of this country have the means to hasten this end.
In our position, the moment has come for us as well, through our own powers, to take an actual part in a decision now pending. We could not exercise those powers any better, with any more rigorous exactitude, than by implementing the possibility inherent in them for rupture, which goes much further than protest. Our power lies in this possibility for rupture, and it is the only power that we can still exercise freely.
We must face the truth: to maintain appearances, necessary for concealing its true nature, the Gaullist regime needs the intellectual class. It cannot do without it and has continually relied on it, flattered it moreover, and used it for its own gains through the honorable means of cultural events. How to end this relationship that, if we accept it, cannot help but become a form of complicity? What to do so that this power no longer succeeds in diverting and using for its own ends even our criticism, even our rejection, which is always too indeterminate? Maintaining a distance is not enough. We are in its society, we live among institutions that it controls, and, however much we have behaved as a foreign body there, it has treated us as its possession, its national possession, it goes without saying, and, however subversive, as material for “national” prestige. Any words already uttered, even a single word, can therefore reinforce the state of things that we want to end.
In order to terminate these relationships that make us allies of the regime, we call on all men of thought, writers, scholars, journalists, to refuse to support the services, organizations, institutions, and forums controlled by the government and lacking true autonomy, such as ORTF, and to forbid them the use of their words, writing, works, and names. These institutions are not public services; no citizen maintains the illusion of communicating through their intermediary with other citizens. Having become the property of power, they serve it, they serve it alone, and they serve it all the more by occasionally letting a few words of protest be heard.
Let the truth, so constantly duped about the actions and real needs of men (those of workers, to cite only the most striking example, never mentioned, or, worse, minimized, misrepresented), at least become perfectly obvious as a complete lie. When not one of us will let some semblance of discourse enter into the game of real propaganda, that propaganda will have to reveal itself for what it is and, in losing its liberal appearance, will lose the
Even though it is already in effect for some of us, this rupture must now be declared openly. We are doing so here. And we are inviting all intellectuals to declare it with us.
Roland Barthes to Maurice Blanchot
May 22, 1967186
I found your letter when I returned from Italy and I’m responding to you with a word on the text that you sent me. The political analysis that it implies does not seem very accurate to me. It makes everything dependent on De Gaulle whereas, it seems to me, it is the opposite accusation that must be made, beginning with the classes, the economy, the state, the technocracy.187 And if the analysis is not accurate, it inevitably involves false gestures. It seems to me that in wanting to treat Gaullism as a dictatorship pure and simple, without nuance (as if there were some advantage in entering a stereotyped intellectual situation), there is the risk of denying oneself the means to combat it. I confess moreover that I’m a bit shocked that this text totally ignores the global situation, although henceforth it is, to my mind, the only political matter that concerns us and everything must already be related to the United States’ future war against China. And finally, given my disposition, which you are aware of since it has already come between us, once, at a more serious moment than this one, I always feel repugnance toward anything that could resemble a gesture in the life of a writer.188 Such gestures occur outside one’s writing but nevertheless give credence to the idea that writing, independent of its actual substance and somehow institutionally, is capital that lends weight to extraliterary choices. How does one sign, in the name of a work, at the very moment when we are attacking from all sides the idea that a work can be signed?