I will never be a man of letters, because I have neither the talent nor the taste for it (or rather I have a distaste for it). But, for want of love, one has […].61 At the same time, I love matters of the intellect, I love the substance of knowledge, as unreasonable, intellectual, and conventional as that is. Even knowing Michelet well (and I am smiling at myself, saying something so blatantly laughable) offers a kind of freedom, joy, and justice when, taking a break between La Sorcière and Les Jésuites, you go for a walk, all sense of the animal and superiorly ignorant life aside, in search of a beautiful face, or you play—with much feeling, as you know, believe me, you have told me so yourself—on the admiration or curiosity of someone you could desire, as you please, depending on your momentary wish for risk or for rest.
In this regard, I’ve led a more or less conjugal life (you understand that “more or less”) with my roommate, the exquisite being I told you about in Paris.62 Entirely occupied with the problems of method (no, I’m not playing Valéry), but I need a method for escaping the intellectual mire, the sniveling where so many unfulfilled desires held me for three years. I think that gradually I’m arriving at it. That does not mean that I’m happier, as you know. What one seeks is only a feeling of strength, fate, toughness, unity. If I’m telling you this, it is for a reason that involves you very specifically, because your example and your advice about the necessity of work (all proportions strictly maintained between the significance of your work and the uselessness—except personally—of mine) have aided me enormously. And why not say that they got me moving again?
But the counterpart of all this is the birth of a feeling a bit foreign to me, and which is not far from being called hatred. Many things in life and in people fundamentally revolt me; it’s beginning to show and since I am very inept about it, this is leading to major changes in my everyday life. I live in a state of revolt, nausea, and a constant desire for revenge. The ugliness of the landscape, the lack of physical beauty (nothing is beautiful here, I swear this to you with no pessimism), the dullness and mediocrity of my comrades, the stench of the Swiss, the baseness of nations, all that sickens me, gets me worked up, sharpens my wit, my anger, my repartees. With a few exceptions, I am no longer very well liked among my comrades, whom I antagonized with a few outbursts (I have to say most of them are stupid); I am absolutely not appreciated by the Swiss, unlike that unfortunate Deschoux and his emasculated philosophy, but I congratulate myself on that. I delight in my obscurity, from where I judge them in all their horror. I am amassing unbelievable examples of stupidity and self-importance, two vices that you know make a person ridiculous. I will tell you all about that. There are a few exceptions—but not in Leysin—a charming fellow from Zurich who is writing to me, a socialist and unfortunately a citizen of such a stupid country.
I see no one here; the native fauna is colorless and therefore invisible. As for the French fauna, sputtering noncoms with cigarette butts, or your colleague Rist, stupid optimist, I absolutely do not see them.
My dear friend, do not assume from my virulence—disagreeable perhaps because it’s not my style—that there is nothing in me but bile. Hating certain people, enduring other people and things, you know, that’s what gives flight and purity to our images of those we truly love, the things we respect and love.
Don’t hold it against me if my letter is not what you would wish; but you cannot deny me the deep friendship I have for you. I need you deeply. Write to me.
Your friend,
R. Barthes
Continue to give me news of your health.
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Clinique Alexandre, Leysin, Vaud, October 8, 1945
My dear friend,
I would be happy to have news of you; besides your letters always giving me so much, I always wonder if you are doing well when I have no letters from you.
I’m writing you a brief note in much haste for the following reason: they are performing an extrapleural on me next Wednesday.63 My tomographies showed that my cavity was not closing up by itself. This has been the story of my life, compelled to struggle along, to loaf around, not allowed to do anything I want to do in life, etc. I have accepted it: my general state of health is excellent and so is the surgeon here. If everything goes as usual, it should be fine.
Before those worrisome days I will have to go through, I am thinking especially about my life; I tell myself—and I am telling you—that if I’m fighting for it, it is in fact for the pleasure and—let us assume—the fullness of knowing certain beings now or to come, among them you, my dear Canetti. There it is, good-bye, my dear friend, write to me, do not forget, you know that I’m thinking of you.
R. Barthes
Would you be good enough to inform M. Cohen and add to this news my faithful regards. I don’t want to write right now, but I haven’t forgotten.
Write to me by airmail, that takes two days.
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[Leysin,] Friday, [October 26, 1945]
My dear friend,
I received your last letter two days after my operation. That did not prevent me from savoring it fully and taking much pleasure in it. I felt in it a little more sadness than usual, but personally I like it better when you are not eternally optimistic because I’m so often unhappy that I feel alone when I see you so full of spirit.
My operation was very successful, exceptionally well performed by Rham. I have the impression that it resembles nothing that is done in France. Now I have the inevitable complication of fluid, which is giving me a bit of a fever and fatigue. There’s nothing to do but wait for it to pass. I was only in discomfort for eight hours (I will not say in pain, but a thousand miseries: nausea, shortness of breath, sleepless nights, etc.). None of that is unexpected, as you know, and life slowly resumes.
But I experienced a strange mental suffering: my brain did not go to sleep. There was no break, no drowsiness, no absorption in the pain, none of those gestures of healthy and profound egoism by which one sends the world away and asks only not to suffer. The more my discomfort grew, the higher my brain soared,
[…]64
present are very great since the departure of my friend David. I feel a terrible clarity. It seems to me I am the type to feel everything right up to the moment of death. Everything affects me, nothing ever knocks me out. I was counting on this operation to distract me for a few days from the pain of existing as I am. I only succeeded in superimposing two kinds of suffering. You will certainly understand me, Canetti, and you will understand how the discovery of this strange power—or powerlessness—is major for me; it’s a bit like a path to damnation, especially since you know what unhappiness—and what beauty—bracket my life.
My dear one, I learned yesterday through the horrible wave of arrivals from Saint-Hilaire among which—aside from your news that this girl
[…]65
truly odious. I learned that you entered the little kitchen of initials. The CED has you!66 Luckily I saw you were joking about your schemes to get me mixed up in that kind of thing! But they will not have me. I am counting on leaving here as soon as I can put one foot in front of the other.
As to my inner state, as they say, maybe that will be for another letter. Today is for giving you my news.
And to ask you for yours, as a friend. Not only is it so important to me that you are recovering, but also I do not want you to be suffering too much in your present life. It is much more serious for you than for me to be ill, because you are following a path in society and you are needed. I would very much need […]67
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[Leysin,] November 12, [1945]
My dear friend,
Your letter annoys me, your advice is the opposite of what I want; to take my health seriously, which I do not care about a bit, and not to be serious about the rest, which is much closer to my heart.
First of all, you can be sure that, if my arrangements do not change, I will be leaving Leysin as soon as I can (what is more, it’s ridiculous to talk about it now when I am st
ill worn out). I have never thought of going to Saint-Hilaire, even if there were ten Canettis there! Your CED philosophy does not persuade me one bit. And then, I’m very sure you’re embellishing it, with much art, I can see, but with even more […].68 Making a witty lesbian69
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that will never make me smile. And then, seeing M. Cohen again, the first floor mess tins, the medical care, etc., I would rather kick the bucket in a hospital. No, Canetti, I repeat, you must leave that Saint-Hilaire, which pleases you so and gives you a worrisome philosophy that I do not like at all. You must come to Leysin. It is understood, the French group is a complete failure because M. Cohen dumped all the Saint-Hilaire ruminants here, the Deschoux, the Seinteins, the Fressanges, the Hulots, etc., who are once again making France into an odious, lamentable subject. But there are the Belgians, heavy, puerile, but some of whom have such tragically pale eyes; there are the Swiss, uninteresting of course, but some with skin that is—or at least, alas, seems—as fresh and innocent as that of scouts; there are the Yugoslavians
[…]71
paths, trees, tramway, patisseries, where all that passes, stops, meets. If I were not in love elsewhere, I would stay here.
I will not go into a Douady house either.72 And in any case, I will surely not go to Neufmoutiers, with its poisoned air, to play Rudolphe between an innocent priest and a Bovary household.
What I would like is to return home, to my old room, my friends, and my friend. Swear to me that you yourself never did anything as mad as this. Well, mad anyway, let us not exaggerate; and here at the moment, I am living filled with bile, impatience, rage, and constraints.
You tell me that I am no longer twenty; that I know, even better because just today, November 12, I turned thirty. You see that in your own way you wished me happy birthday. But, my dear friend, that kick in the pants no longer works. I am fully of age to love
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to talk about all these things, in theory. All I can say is that love’s power of anarchy is the only thing that allows me to live in world. As for the rest, we are the ones who see most clearly the grandeur of all that, everything you say so well and accurately, on all that I agree with you. I’ve still been thinking about it these last few days with regard to Michelet, who revealed to me some grand ideas. Not that he was a homosexual, the poor man. But I discovered—listen to this—that he was a lesbian. I will prove all that, if I ever write something on Michelet and the Woman-World.74
No, Canetti, my very dear friend, who knows how to write me such beautiful and such useful letters, do not write me any more like the last one. You are not yet sixty years and able to look at the world without being burned. The flame is immeasurable. You find my “sadness” ridiculous; you say that I am discreet and my sadness is only the outer reflection of my passion. […]75
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[Leysin,] Wednesday, November 21, [1945]
I had gotten as far as the Recovation of the Edit of Nantes when I received your letter. I had a bad conscience after mine and you were good to write to me immediately. I have one specific regret: having spoken ill of M. Cohen and risking upsetting you. You know that I don’t think at all badly of M. Cohen; you know that I think all the good things you say about him. You must not hold it against me if I inserted him into a wave of impassioned oratory. His (poetic) image is associated with bad memories for me. As is all of Saint-Hilaire. At the moment I share a room with a fellow who, historically, temporally, realistically, if you will, I would have no reason to dislike, and nevertheless I would speak of him in the darkest terms. Must I condemn myself to silence? M. Cohen is sometimes the victim of an unfortunate extension of depression. Does this explanation seem contrived to you? No, it’s true. And it’s an excuse. Do not forget that Géo—always very kind to me, of course—never left the legend, unlike me, never went outside the walls of Saint-Hilaire. You know the man, you can reconcile his reality and his poetry. As for me, like anyone at Saint-Hilaire, I only knew the second—and through you, no doubt, had glimpses of the first. Even so, that’s why I’m afraid of having saddened you and mainly why I’m writing you, and why I’m acknowledging that I was wrong.
What good does it do to drag out the Socratic debate on Love? I do not deny any of what you tell me. I am even very sympathetic to it because it’s appealing. Perhaps that even troubles me. But truly, is it so opposed to what I do? You only see the sadness in my attitude, the stupor, as you say. Really, isn’t a total passion only that? Perhaps the surrounding darkness serves to better protect its flame. I mean that the beloved must be questioned; maybe he would say to you—without sharing anything—that the spectacle of so total a passion to which one attributes, even while lying, the ring of eternity is one of the strongest, most agile, most alive things that he has ever seen; that the pressure, the heat, the transport of a passion that is logical to the end stupefies him, forces him, and obliges him to yield, that for the first time in his life, through this contact with what you call an absurd illusion, he has experienced what was only theater, and perhaps what was only a man. If you accuse me of sadness, exhaustion, stupor, he will laugh. That is exactly the opposite of what he knows of me: ecstasy, hope, despair, revolt, the implacable domination of physical events like the elimination of others, separations, etc., an agile and subtle intelligence that analyzes and explains all situations, draws consequences from them, violates cold logic and substitutes for it the superior logic of passion, and forces him, the healthy one, to yield to the mad one, the possessed one (because how could we be so vain as to believe that this transformation is not the effect of a possession?).
Can one play the game halfway? For me that makes no sense. It is and it is not an act. One must risk everything and at the same time one risks nothing. It is an extraordinary sleight of hand and I’m sure the Greeks offered us an example similar to it in their way of believing—and not believing—in the gods. We know very well that through love we enter a universe where the concepts are no longer the same, where truth itself becomes amphibologic, etc., and what troubles us is finding in history, civilizations, literature, religion, etc., reflections of this reversed world that therefore no longer seems to us completely illusory; and that comforts us and confirms our thinking, our surmising that Love is only a myth in a system of fraternal myths pursued for so long by the historical world, and which return very often to tempt it through the impetuousness of their dream, through their truth, if you like.
This is becoming philosophy and not very good philosophy, no doubt. My excuse is that I am living it. For me there is no possibility and no sense whatever in not committing myself to the utmost. I do not see the dangers you point out. And I am stubborn to the point of saying to you: maybe you see them, you, looking at me—you see me sad, on the path to stupor, to exhaustion, a victim of illusion. Well, even if you see me that way, I do not believe I am that way. Only the being I love can see me. To the judgment of others, I grant only one point of truth: I am suffering. But what good is discussing it? There’s no need to argue over a point so natural and necessary from both perspectives.
Moreover this is all idiotic. It’s one of thousands of possible defenses. I let myself be dragged into it even though I really feel that what divides us has no meaning, neither actually nor rightfully. It should be enough that I’ll complain a little less—even if I’m suffering just as much—so that we don’t feel we’re in conflict. It’s a question of discipline that divides us. I was wrong to be strident—verbally. A false—and lazy—dialectic always convinces me that bravery is a very pharisaical virtue. I feel no shame at bemoaning what I lack. It’s not the desire for comfort that leads me to air my feelings, but rather a compulsive mistrust of striking a pose, and the illusion that one will see through my weakness—which is irresponsible of me—to what I feel to be there of strength and grandeur.