Incidente

by Roland Barthes, Iolanda Vasiliu (Translator)

„Cred ca scriitorul este destinat acestui vestibul al stiintei si al analizei: mai mult constient decat competent, constient de chiar interstitiile competentei. De aceea copilaria este calea regala care ne ajuta sa cunoastem cel mai bine un tinut. De fapt, nu exista alt Tinut decat acela al copilariei.“

Genres: Memoir, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, 20th Century, Philosophy, Essays

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 1992

About the author

Roland Barthes of France applied semiology, the study of signs and symbols, to literary and social criticism.

Ideas of Roland Gérard Barthes, a theorist, philosopher, and linguist, explored a diverse range of fields. He influenced the development of schools of theory, including design, anthropology, and poststructuralism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_...

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see on Amazon.com that a hardcover of Bringing Out Roland Barthes by DA Miller is going for a cool $851.90 (R15 650.85), while the paperback of Incidents is a more palatable $17.67. At a mere 70-odd pages, this is a slim yet curiously weighty volume in terms of its themes and the insight it gives the casual reader into Barthes as a human being.

Consisting of four vastly different essays, this collection was published posthumously in 1987 by François Wahl, Roland Barthes’s literary executor. Three of the essays collated herein were published previously: ‘La Lumiere du Sud-Ouest’, a rather random musing on the South West of France, the Adour and Bayonne regions; ‘Au Palace Ce Soir’, an amusing description of a fashionable theatre-house in Paris and how it frames its occupants; and ‘Soirées de Paris’, a rather eye-opening diary from August to September 1979.

The latter is particularly sad and dark as it sees Barthes starkly confronting his “insatiable cruising”, and the fact that “… one of these days I’ll have to explain myself about the rejected aspects of my sexuality (in this case, sadomasochism) …”

Barthes also comments that an “excellent method to erase desire” is “a long-term contract; it drops of its own accord”, and concludes that: “Nothing will be left for me but hustlers.” This diary ties in with the essay ‘Incidents’, an account of the author’s travails (as opposed to travels) in Morocco.

One gets the feeling that Barthes is perhaps the happiest in this environment, despite having to deal constantly with hustlers, con artists and an array of disappointments. He later reflects on his own despair at “not feeling at home either in Paris or here or traveling: no real refuge …”

There are some delightfully droll moments, as when Barthes comments that ultramodern music sounds like rabbit turds, or on a new book recommended to him: “… wondering what I could say and finding – though it was nicely written and sympathetic – no more than ‘yeah, yeah’ …” Ouch. We also get to see a side of Barthes that seems light years away from his rightful place as intellectual bastion: “Always this notion: suppose the Moderns were wrong? What if they had no talent?”

I wonder if the fact that ‘Incidents’ was not published meant that Barthes intended for it to be kept private. On the other hand, given his growing status, he must have realised that everything he wrote would ultimately see the light of day. Or is this presumptuous on the part of the modern reader?

I think anyone who has read Barthes – and, indeed, struggled to come to grips with his sinuous thinking – will enjoy this much more vulnerable and private look at the great man “… eager to clear my life of all these messes.” Or does it detract from that intellectual achievement?

I suppose there will be a handful of literary critics who will raise an eyebrow in horror at the high jinks described in ‘Incidents’ in particular. Shouldn’t the Master have been devoting all of his time and energy to his inner intellectual life, rather than chasing random sexual encounters?

And shouldn’t that life’s work stand and be judged on its own, instead of having books like these thrown into the mix? I honestly think that both Barthes the scholar and the man should be celebrated equally, and that books like these play a vital role in bringing him to life as a fully-rounded figure.

[Siv30 · Rating 5 out of 5]

"השוק במרקש: שושני בר במגשים של מנטה (52) "

לגשת לטקסט של גדולי ההוגים זו לא משימה פשוטה: ראשית, כי תמיד קיימת היראה הזו מהתכנים שאני עשויה למצוא בספר. תכנים כל כך חכמים, שיתכן ולא אצליח להבינם. שנית, תמיד יש סיכוי לשיעמום מסויים שיתקוף אותי ואמצא את עצמי נוטשת את הספינה מבלי שסיימתי את הקריאה. זו מעין חרדת נטישה הפוכה, שבה הנחרדת זו גם הנוטשת. לכן, אני נגשת לטקסט ביראת כבוד הראויה. מדובר במין טקס חניכה להכרת שבילי הספר והסופר לפני שאני קוראת אותו. פעולת ריכוך עצמית שנועדה להבטיח את הקריאה עד סופה. אני הופכת את הספר מצד - לצד, ובוחנת את הכריכה שלו. מה היא יכולה לספר לי על התכנים של הספר. לפעמים יש לבחירה בכריכה מסר חזק מאוד לקורא העתידי. אני קוראת בעיון את דבר העורך בכריכה האחורית ומרפרפת על הדפים. פה ושם עיניי קולטות איזו מילה, משפט שבריר של רעיון שמפתה אותי לשקוע בספר. מריחה אותם. כן, אולי משהו מהגדולה הזו תדבק בי. ואז לאט, כמקלפת תינוק מבגדיו, אני קוראת את הפרק הראשון. קוראת את הפרק האחרון, ואת זה שלפני האחרון וחוזרת וקוראת את הספר מההתחלה ועד הסוף ברצף. אז תבינו, כשמדובר בספר שיש בו אלמנטים אישיים אוטוביוגרפיים, של רולאן בארת, אחד מההוגים הגדולים של המאה ה- 20, היה מדובר ביראה כפולה. רצו לי במח מילים כמו סטרוקטורליזם, פוסט-סטרוקטורליזם, תיאוריה הקווירית ועוד מונחים מעולם ביקורת הספרות. ניסיתי להבין אם בכל אצליח להבין. זו היתה הדיספוזיציה הנפשית שלי כהתחלתי לקרוא את האור של סוד ווסט מעין יראה אלוהית כמעט, ממה שאני עלולה למצוא ברשימה קטנה, נוסטלגית, מוצפת בשביבי וזהרורי אור, על האופן שבו בארת זוכר את המקום שבו נולד וגדל. חיפשתי, חפרתי, האם אני מפספסת כאן איזו גדולה בלתי נראית. והגעתי למסקנה שלא, ממש לא. נאנחתי בתוככי, כמעט מעונג, הנה אני מתמודדת היטב עם רולאן בארת!! תבינו רולאן בארת הגדול! שכתב בסך הכל רשימה קטנה, אישית, על האור שנופל על הזיכרון. המשכתי לקריאת תקריות טקסט המתעד את שהותו במרוקו. הייקו`ס שאוחזים בפיסת מציאות. אני אוהב את אוצר המילים של אמידו: לחלוב ולהתפרץ במקום לקבל זיקפה ולגמור. בלהתפרץ יש משהו אורגני, רטוב, מתפשט; בלגמור יש משהו מוסרי, נרקסיסטי, סגור (44, ההדגשות במקור) ואז טראח, לפנים: הקריאה בטקסט ממריאה לשחקים: ממש להתפרץ ולגמור. מצאתי את עצמי מרוגשת מעצם הקריאה וההצצה האינטימית שהתאפשרה לי. מהר מאוד,תקריות הופכת מתיעוד מפגשים אישיים, תרבותיים ורב תרבותיים של בארת עם החברה המרוקאית, אותם מפגשים המעמתים תפיסות, מחשבות, הגיגים ופרשנויות פסיכולוגיות, התנהגותיות, סוציולוגיות, לתקריות אישיות בין הקורא לבארת. הקורא מוצאת את עצמו מופתע מגילוי הלב, הנקי והחד של בארת. גילוי לב שתפס אותי לא מוכנה למה שאמצא. תנועה בין פריצות לעונג, בין שיעמום לחיות, בין פורנו לארוטיקה, בין עידון להגזמה הפורצת את גבולות הטעם הטוב. למרות זאת אין די בחופש כדי ליצור מרחב טוב. ניסויים הוכיחו שעכברים מגלים סימני חרדה כשמכניסים אותם לתוך זירה ריקה, נטולת נקודת אחיזה (65) ובגראנד פינלה, ערבי פריז, יומן שנכתב מספר חודשים לפני מותו. הסקרנות לא יודעת שובעה מהאדם שמשתקף מהמילים. התודעה עולה מהאינטימיות וכואבת את הבדידות הזועקת של אחד האינטלקטואלים הגדולים במאה ה- 20. הספר השאיר אותי עם רצון לעוד. אצתי רצתי לבדוק בספרייתי האם התרגומים עמדים ומחכים לי. הלב מתפקע ועולה על גדותיו רק מהמחשבה על מה שאמצא ב "שיח אהבה", מיתולוגיות והנושא הקרוב ביותר כרגע לליבי מחשבות על צילום. אני חייבת לציין את התרגום הנהדר של דרור משעני, שניכר כי אוהב אהבת אמת את הטקסטים ואת האדם שניבט מהם. ערבי פריז, רולאן בארת הוצאת ידיעות אחרונות, 2004, 127 עמ

[nizar · Rating 3 out of 5]

qui hagués dit que he estat tan de temps desconeixent aquesta faceta de barthes

“A la platja de Tànger (famílies, ties, nois), uns vells obrers, com insectes molt antics i molt lents, netegen la sorra.”

“Ramadà: la lluna apareixerà molt prest. Cal esperar una mitja hora per fer l’amor: «Començ a somiar. —Això, és permès? —No ho sé».”

“Després li he donat comiat, dient que tenia feina, sabent que s’havia acabat i que més enllà d’ell qualque cosa havia acabat: l’amor d’un noi.”

[archive ☄ · Rating 3 out of 5]

took a train into the city + tucked this in my bag, went to the art museum, saw some cézannes. sat in the gallery café for a couple of hours and read this book in its entirety, sitting in a sage green chair the same color as the inside cover design. drank an iced coffee, looked at some more cézannes. outside: grey skies and reddish-golden leaves, the same color of the apples in his paintings. bliss!

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incidents is an unsettling book, especially the essay that gives the volume its title. An incident, for Barthes, is not a piece of Imagism, as many reviews claim, it is closer to the punctum in his work on photography. It is an instant, a mental polaroid, that captures a brief perception that punctures the mundane. The method is not new. It can be found in Fragments of a Discourse on Love and Barthes on Barthes. And because of this reviewers have accepted the method without actually looking at the subjects included-- and these are young Arab boys picked up for sex. The cultured gloss, however, should not hide major issues of Gide-style "immoralism".

'Three young Shleuhs, on the cliff, ask for a French lesson. "How do you say...?" Answering them, I realise the sexual apparatus exists in an occlusive paradigm: cull/con/queue. The boys, instant philologists, are amazed.'

A sophisticated pick-up line.

Incidents is a richly produced book with truly evocative photographs by Bishan Samadaar, photographs that lift the book and add weight to the Barthesian narrative.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roland Barthes represents a genuine benchmark in twentieth century critical thought and in writing more generally, his books MYTHOLOGIES, PLEASURES OF THE TEXT, A LOVER’S DISCOURSE, and CAMERA LUCIDA having especially influenced me personally. We might be inclined to call Barthes’ work literary theory as long is it is understood that we are talking not of theory concerning literature but rather theory that is itself literary. The writer he prized above all others was Proust, and even if Barthes was a semiotician allied to some extent with Structuralist contemporaries such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Jacques Lacan, the profound elegance of Barthes’s prose and the element of surprise inherent to many of his basic percepts cannot help but set him apart. Element of surprise? The power of idiosyncrasy, the determinedly individual mind pursuing its passions, finding itself happily adrift of precedent, doing so as a matter of habit. He was profoundly alert to the culture’s capacity to signify, and sought to enchantingly transcribe the messages he saw all around him, whether in Proust or advertisements for laundry detergent. His influence can be detected in many districts and subdistricts. To a certain extent I have often though that the mole-like deconstructive performances of Jacques Derrida, his burrowings and depth operations, owe almost as much to Barthes as they do Heidegger’s pursuit of the concept of Being to every possible extremity and limit. When Susan Sontag, who wrote appreciatively of Barthes and on the subject of his influence, insists in the famous essay “Against Interpretation” that “erotics” should have primacy over “hermeneutics” in the field of critical enterprise, one senses the legacy of Barthes insinuating itself. INCIDENTS purports to present Barthes in a pared-down and unguarded form. It was originally published in France shortly after his accidental death in 1980, and is comprised of four short sections, the first and third of which are abbreviated and essentially essayistic, the second and fourth of which suggest alternate approaches to the diaristic, aspiring as such to qualities of intimacy and immediacy. Those two words, intimacy and immediacy, may indeed give an ideal sense of the book’s character. They may also succeed in making the book seem attractive to those in search of something like a quality of proximity. I should not imagine that communicants of that stripe will be disappointed. Certainly not by the writing itself. The Seagull Books edition containing Teresa Lavender Fagan’s English translation of the four texts is accompanied by a great many photographs, taken primarily in Morocco and India only in the very recent past, by Brishan Samaddar. At first I had some misgivings about this basic methodology, which you will note neither the “Translator’s Note” nor François Wahl’s “Publisher’s Note to the French Addition” address even in passing. The photographs at first seem somewhat arbitrary. Only one of the four sections in INCIDENTS, that which shares the collection’s name, involves Morocco, the rest take place in France. The writing collected in INCIDENTS doesn’t deal with India at all. However, I did gradually come to appreciate very much the pas de deux between Barthes' words and Samaddar’s images, speaking as this relationship does to efforts toward communication, fumbling seductions, disembodied connection, moments seized from the passing human parade (there is of course this notion of ‘incidents’ and ‘instance’), landscapes traversed, time ever slipping away. INCIDENTS begins, in a sense, at the beginning. The opening piece, ““The Light of the South West,” begins some July 17th, the weather gorgeous, Barthes sitting on a bench repeatedly blinking one eye after the other "to change the perspective." The body itself as site of the mediation of experience. What does Barthes see? Most immediately: “a daisy in the garden, flattened against the field on the other side of the road.” But immediately beyond the immediate he sees France as a country of “complex proportions” and his own origins there, opened-out, open-ended. He goes on to tell us that there are three South Wests. In part it is merely a quarter of France, in part it is a trajectory of personal experience, in part it is simply Bayonne, the town where he spent his childhood and later vacationed as a teenager, the legacy of a childhood. His South West is a living dynamism, fundamentally experiential; “a continuous show (the Adour is a very beautiful, little known river) and the memory of an ancient practice, that of walking, of slowly and rhythmically advancing into the landscape, which then assumes different proportions, occur simultaneously […] which is fundamentally the power of this land to escape the immobility of postcards: don’t try to photograph it: to judge it, to love it; you have to come and stay, so you can experience the range of places, seasons, weather and light.” In this introductory piece Barthes presents us with the body, alive with memory, flung into history, “those paradoxes of History,” and alert to “cracks in experience.” The second section, written in Morocco in 1969 and made up of stark impressionistic fragments, is the longest and that from which the collection takes its name. It is also the section in which Samaddar’s photographs, though taken many years after 1969, are most obviously consonant. Morocco, a red geranium placed in a glass of water by a train’s bartender, "the sound of people singing announces the arrival of a funeral procession—which then appears.” There are some passing observations about the politics of hairstyles, the semiotics of how a cigarette is ashed, a child in a corridor sleeping in a cardboard box. “An old blind man with a white beard, wearing a djellaba, is begging: his is stately, impassive, ancient, Sophoclean, classically tragic, while the teenage boy who is doing the actual begging for him reveals the expressive weight of such a situation on his face: his features are tortured, drawn down by a perpetual frown, showing suffering, poverty, injustice, fate: Look! Look! the boy’s face says, Look at this man who can no longer see.” Barthes notes a black teenage boy who “has picked up a girl but makes public sacrifices to a crazy Western god.” Subsequently: “A young black man, wearing a crème de menthe-coloured shirt, almond-green pants, orange socks and, obviously, very soft red shoes.” The King’s Cousin explains what it takes to be a philosopher: “(1) a degree in Arabic (2) to travel a lot (3) contact with other philosophers (4) to be far from real life, on a beach, for example.” So on and so on. “Mustafa adores his cap: ‘I love my cap.’ He won’t take it off when he makes love.” Yes, the sly insinuation of sexual encounters, they will begin to predominate amidst “dusty rose-coloured Spanish onions,” “a tray of stale cakes,” “a sky-blue sweater with a lovely orange stain of the front.” Occasionally they insinuate themselves forcefully: “I like Amidou’s vocabulary: ‘to dream’ and ‘to burst’ for ‘to have an erection’ and 'to ejaculate’. ‘To burst’ is vegetal, splashing, dispersing, disseminating; ‘to ejaculate’ is moralistic, narcissistic, bloated, closed-up.” Barthes was not the only notable white man who found himself in Morocco during the period in question. We may think of William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Bowles. We ought not skirt the issue: what in large part attracted these prestigious individuals about Morocco was the opportunity it afforded to have regular sexual interactions with young men and boys. To the current sensibility this may strike us as problematic in the extreme, but there can be no denying the basic fact of it. It is by virtue of this fact that we have to understand the literary-critical-sensorial erotics of Barthes’ writing in Morocco as fundamentally informed by erotic encounters in the stricter sense, often as not with young Arab sex workers. The third section of INCIDENTS, “At Le Palace Tonight,” finds Barthes back in Paris and in a nominally essayistic mode, meditating on the popular night spot named in the piece’s title. “I admit I am incapable of being interested in the beauty of a place, if there aren’t people in it (I don’t like empty museums); and, conversely, to find interest in a face, a profile, an article of clothing, to savour the encounter, I need for the place where the encounter occurs also to be of interest and to be savoured.” Hence Le Palace: “there I find the old power of true architecture, which is meant simultaneously to enhance the moving dancing bodies within, and to give life to spaces and structures.” Barthes sees himself as a kind of removed aristocratic observer. It is this sense of being removed, something like a species of decadent alienation, that introduces a pallor of melancholy present throughout INCIDENTS, even if it is a highly-stimulated variety of melancholy. “Wherever I take up my position, I have the amusing impression of occupying a sort of imperial box from which I rule the games.” Barthes writes of the primacy of light in the art of the everyday, the etymology of the word ‘theatre’ (its connection to Greek and to sight), the club as Festival rather than Distraction. And, again, a station of aristocratic elevation: “I seem to rediscover, transported into the modern, something I had read in Proust: that evening at the Opéra, when the theatre and the boxes, in the impassioned eyes of the young Narrator, formed an aquatic scene, softly lighted by egrets, glances, jewels, faces, gestures sketched like those of marine deities, in the midst of which reigned the Duchess of Guermantes.” Metaphor and memory, the charms of “the fictions of our culture.” The body in and of history. In the final section of INCIDENTS, “Evenings in Paris,” written in the Paris of August/September 1979, not long before he would die in the aftermath of having been struck by an automobile, Barthes tries his hand at a more conventional sort of diaristic inventory than he had experimented with in Morocco a decade earlier. The pallor of melancholy has come to dominate, a quality of debilitating fatigue has set in. Exhaustion with milieu, exhaustion with people, exhaustion with certain seemingly inalienable impasses. These inalienable impasses primarily relate to romantic love. Relationships no longer seem to work. Take Saul: “But I didn’t desire him any longer, I was tired, without the energy even to resolve things. I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either, of course. After all, that was the double response. An excellent way to erase desire: a long-term contract; it falls away all by itself.” Not just Saul. A., R., J.-L., P., Michel D., R. L., B. M., B. H. A catalog of dead ends, a testament to exhaustion. I find it fascinating that a funereal kind of acceptance is not where “Evenings in Paris” begins, but rather the conclusion it reaches. One senses that Barthes did not consciously know why he had started writing it and stopped once it became clear. What exactly becomes clear? What precisely is the nature of this lamentation? Barthes no longer believes he can ever be desirable to the young men he desires. The era of love affairs, says the author of A LOVER’S DISCOURSE, is over. Barthes has concluded that all future intimate relations of a physical nature will be conducted with sex workers, with “gigolos.” We meet a few of these Parisian gigolos. They can be gruff, impudent. One turns over a café table in the midst of a tantrum. On the subject of communicating with another: “Otherwise, a typical gigolo conversation: that is, a chaste dialogue during which the thing is never mentioned.” I have myself reached a point in my life where I no longer have romantic relationships. Sometimes I joke that I put out a kind of pheromone “back off” menace. Mostly, in truth, I am just aware of my own codependency, the perils of amorous intensifications, I have ingrained bodily memory of the dangers of sex and love. I am, in short, skittish. Still, no denying it, there has very much been a pervasive absence of the necessary instigating fission. It is hardly tragic. I am rich in my populated solitude, with the books, and the cinema, and the music. But I sometimes think of sex workers, considering that option. I know what it really means: not only using a service, a service provided by a person who most likely has surveyed her terrain, weighed her options, and made cogent decisions about how to live and earn accordingly; I also know that transactional sex is very much about paying for a kind of truncated intimacy, a human connection. I have not yet gone down that road. At any rate, I very much take interest in the fact that right near the end of “Evenings in Paris,” Barthes goes to see a Maurice Pialat film (I adore Pialat), what can only be PASSE TON BAC D’ABBORD, which he acknowledges as “perfect” and deserving of the praise it has received. Still, it rubs him the wrong way on a number of fronts, its being “abusively hetero” for one thing, as well as its representing a kind of cult of youth. Meditating on the matter: “I don’t like this very current type of message where you’re supposed to sympathize with the downtrodden (the limited horizon of the young, etc.), whose entire universe is stupid: the arrogance of the downtrodden, that’s our era.” This too is fatigue. It is an exhaustion. There is also no mistaking that this choler is that of an aristocrat. That is another thing I am always quasi-joking about. I am always calling myself an aristocrat. But you know what? This populous solitude I mention above? My populous solitude? It is a heaven. It really is. Not that I entirely deflect all my defeats. Or not that I always defeat them in a way that is decisive. It is hardly a matter of everything being satisfactory. And certainly I know what it is for one’s encounters to become a trial.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A selection of four texts, two essay/memoir, one travel fragments, and one series of journal entries highlight Barthes' powers of observation and open a door into his longings away from theoretical design. Very moving. Accompanied in this edition from Seagull Books by photographs by Bishan Samaddar. For my full review please see: https://roughghosts.com/2016/05/20/im...

[Christopherseelie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A selection of diaries primarily focused on the author's unfulfilled relationships with younger men. Written with an imagist attention to detail and delivery. It is almost a introduction to eroticism, by that I mean, a mode of sensuality that is devoid of physicality. This is a romance of interiority. I was quite surprised to read Barthes in a non-Theory way. This books was beautiful.

[belisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

şimdi yer yer sıkıldım, yazarı Barthes olmasaydı (Barthes'ın beynimi uyuşturan metinlerin yazarı olarak hayatımda bir yeri olmasaydı) bitiremezdim bile belki;
gündelik hayat hakkında içten bir tavır ve yaşama dair notlar söz konusu...
bu kitabından çok derin şeyler beklememek lazım...

[jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

sweet, melancholy roland... if only i could go back in time...

[Carrie Callaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

he’s just like me for real

[Felicia Caro · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Incidents” by Roland Barthes is a book containing excerpts of deeply personal journal entries written by the French philosopher in Morocco and France during the 1960s and 1970s. They were published posthumously, and provide unique insight into the uninhibited mind of this thinker. His work is mostly academic, but “Incidents” reminds us that he was not only a theorist, but he was human, too.

Barthes - *you creep* - ran through my head many times as I read this – for all his looking he doesn’t seem to feel shame at watching others either, particularly others who may not have as sharp faculties as he had. That being said, I never once felt awkward or uncomfortable reading “Incidents”. Perhaps he did feel, if not shame, than a frustration at his addiction to watching, to yes, I would even say judging, people by their actions as well as appearances – this one dirty, this one handsome, this one knew what he was talking about, this one lying… keep in mind that Barthes was “studying” – with a very, very sharp eye - what some may call the oppressed. But - I will admit that many, many parts made me smile wide and laugh, like an active participant in his actual life:

“The ‘head accountant’ (a sweet-looking teenager), in a serious tone, declares: ‘Civilization is when people know their rights and are aware of their duties.’ After which, like all of us, he bursts out laughing.”

And this, I definitely laughed at this:

“The little Marrakesh schoolteacher: ‘I’ll do anything you like,’ he says effusively, his eyes full of kindness and complicity. And this means: *I will fuck you*, and nothing else.”

And it is laughter all the more sweet because it is tinged heavily with sadness. My favorite parts of “Incidents” were the rare, keen descriptions of objects and place, and even people, but not his interactions with them. Barthes struggles with his almost uncontrollable homosexual desire. And it seemed to me that Barthes had a deep fear of being alone, so when he did write about scenes without people there was something very clarifying about it.

I’ll end with something he wrote in the chapter: “The Light Of The Southwest” (France):
“I believe the writer exists in this vestibule of knowledge and analysis: having more awareness than experience, aware of the very cracks in experience.”

Also:

“…don’t try to photograph it: to judge it, to love it; you have to come and stay, so you can experience the range of places, seasons, weather and light.”

[sevdah]

reread in 2020: Reading my first review of this after rereading the book and, well, to put it mildly I've changed my mind. It's mainly lists of boys he's slept with or friends he's dined with, with some walking home at night here and there and short accounts of what he's reading before bed. That's pretty much it. Reading my first reactions to Barthes' diary, you'd think it's some of his best work. It's not.

first read in 2016: Extremely beautiful, graceful, exquisite, and bringing acute, almost physical pleasure (like anything Barthes has written).

[Clara Martin]

Maybe this shouldn't have been the first full Barthes book I read, but it was wonderful. Barthes writes : “Leaving the theatre… a girl says something just like what I had been hearing in the film. The film is ‘true’ since it continues in the street” (72). This book is "true" since it continues even now - I saw traces of it on the street just today.

[DB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barthes' observations, so succinctly tuned to the particular. This detail, and that. Recalling Morocco, Paris. And this edition! The photographs! Modernity! The very paper it's printed on!

[Ramona Chirica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Obsesiv, repetitiv, plictisitor. Dacă ar fi postat fragmentele ca statusuri pe Facebook, nu numai că nu ar fi meritat nici un share, dar după primele 5 i-aș fi dat și unfollow.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The memory of an ancestral practice, that of walking, of the slow and rhythmic penetration of the landscape, which then assumes different proportions; here you return to what I was saying earlier, which is basically the power this country has of evading the immobility of postcards: don't try too hard to take photographs: to judge, to love it, you must come and stay, so that you can savor the variegation of sites, seasons, weather, and light."
—
"I enjoy Amidou's vocabulary: ‘dream’ and ‘burst’ for ‘get an erection’ and ‘have an orgasm.’ Burst is vegetal, scattering, disseminating, not moralistic, narcissistic, closed off.”
—
“Little I. brings me flowers, a real country bouquet: a few heads of geranium, a spray of red briar roses, two roses, four sprigs of jasmine. He has had this impulse after the great pleasure I have given him: typing his name several different ways on a piece of paper that I presented him (flowers in exchange for writing)."
—
"Would Proust have liked it? I don't know: there are no duchesses anymore. Yet, leaning down over the dance floor of Le Palace throbbing with colored beams and dancing silhouettes, divining around me in the shadow of levels and of open loges an entire ebullition of young bodies busy in their unsuspected circuits, I seemed to recognize, transposed to the modern, something | had read in Proust: that evening at the Opera, where the house and the boxes form, under the young Narrator's impassioned eye, an aquatic milieu, gently illuminated by aigrettes, by glances, by jewels, by faces, by gestures suggestive of those made by undersea deities, amid which sat enthroned the duchess of Guermantes. Nothing but a metaphor after all, traveling from far back in my memory and arriving to embellish Le Palace with a final charm: the one that comes to us from the fictions of culture."
—
“Yesterday, Sunday, Olivier G. came for lunch; waiting for him, welcoming him, I had manifested the solicitude that usually indicates that I am in love. But as soon as lunch began, his timidity or his remoteness intimidated me, no euphoria of relation — far from it. [...] A sort of despair overcame me, I felt like crying. How clearly I saw that I would have to give up boys, because none of them felt any desire for me, and I was either too scrupulous or too clumsy to impose my desire on them; that this is an unavoidable fact, averred by all my efforts at flirting, that I have a melancholy life, that, finally, I'm bored to death by it, and that I must divest my life of this interest, or this hope. Nothing will be left for me but hustlers. (But then what would I do when I go out? I keep noticing young men, immediately wanting to be in love with them. What will the spectacle of my world come to be?) — I played the piano a little for O., after he asked me to, knowing at that very moment that I had given him up; how lovely his eyes were then, and his gentle face, made gentler by his long hair: a delicate but inaccessible and enigmatic creature, sweet-natured yet remote. Then I sent him away, saying I had work to do, knowing it was over, and that more than Olivier was over: the love of one boy."

[Alessio]

Yeah hmm certainly not my favorite Barthes, but if you want to see a different side of Barthes and read about his prolific encounters with hustlers, this is the book for you. "Incidents" was sort of like Barthes's Eclogues, but with Morocco as his locus amoenus. I was a little more partial to "Soirées de Paris" because I'm in COVID purgatory and I would very much like to be sipping wine, reading Pascal's Pensées, and inhaling second-hand smoke at Café de Flore. I found Ross Chambers's reading of this autobiographical text through the lens of Barthes as an off-duty intellectual-cum-"(forgetful) gay male cruiser" quite interesting. Here's a case in point, the structuralist and sex tourist incarnated in one inimitable Roland Barthes:

"A demonstration of phonological pertinence: a young vendor (with an appealing glance):
tu/ti (you/yuh: non-pertinent) veux tapis/taper (want a rug/want to fuck: pertinent?)"

And another non-eventful, ambient, gossipy yet saturnine diary entry from "Soirées":

"10 September 1979

Yesterday, late in the afternoon at the Flore, I was reading the Pensées; at the next table, a thin boy with a very pale, glabrous face, good0looking and strange, unsensual (fake leather trousers), busy copying phrases and diagrams from a notebook onto loose sheets; couldn't tell if it was poetry or mathematics. The hustler Dany, black eyebrows and red sweater, came over and sat down beside me, drank a lemon juice and water, he says his stomach is bothering him, eating too much fast-food -- and sometimes not eating at all, during the whole day; he still has no place to live; his heavy hands are moist. Outside the sky is stormy, there are drops of rain--and no taxi, of course. With Saul T., not at all eccentric tonight, a grey suit, a red shirt, we decide against Bofinger and go to the little Chinese restaurant in the Rue de Tornon. Saul seems depressed and the evening lags, I'm bored enough to be interested in our neighbors: an opulent black girl at whom the little Vietnamese waiter makes an abrupt pass, two Frenchmen, one of whom is quite handsome; he has set his wallet and keys down on the table beside him; the other man goes downstairs to the toilet twice; they talk about tennis, pronouncing with a strong French accent the words Flushing Meadows, Wimbledon, and are drinking rosé. Yet it was the evening when the proposition made in July was to be settled, Saul was to give me his answer. But I no longer desired him, I was tired, and without even the energy to finish the matter. I said nothing about it, as did he, of course. After all, that's what a double answer is. Excellent method to erase desire: a long-term contract, it drops of its own accord. In bed, finished Renucci's Dante; awful! I got nothing out of it."

Side note: too tedious and boring to highlight the dreamy Orientalism here, save to point it out. "A clumsy, half-mad shoeshine boy always hurls himself on me, insistently offering: 'Me, shine, Chinese' (the adjective of perfection)." Lol ok, I'll take it.

[Alfredo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This is an unavoidable fact, averred by all my efforts at flirting, that I have a melancholy life, that, finally, I'm bored to death by it, and that I must divest my life of this interest, or this hope. (If I consider my friends one by one—except for those who are no longer young—it has been a failure each time. Nothing will be left for me but hustlers."

After all, Barthes was a son of melancholia, like all intellectuals.

[Christian Montedoro]

"La luce del Sud-Ovest" carino, "Incidenti" okay, un po' razzista ma contestualizziamo, "Al Palace stasera..." okay, "Serate di Parigi" decisamente la sezione più interessante. Una lettura forse più per amanti di Barthes per completarne la bibliografia e io non posso definirmi tale, avendo letto solo una sezione di Miti d'oggi, ma mi aveva incuriosito perché qui l'autore parla della sua omosessualità. Tornando indietro darei priorità ad altro di suo

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La fanciullezza è la via regia attraverso cui conosciamo al meglio una terra. In fondo, non c'è altra Terra che quella dell'infanzia." (La luce del Sud-Ovest, p. 15)

[Shashwat Dutta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a book that's only for the feels.

[Fabrizio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La chambre sombre de Roland Barthes.

[In-gyeong Jeong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Noteworthy sentences at times. But overall, unimpressive.

[Elena K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful- accompanied by photos by Bishan Samaddar

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and surprisingly sexy. Barthes’ journals on the pleasures of cruising are welcome detractors from those who would separate the body from the mind.

[Federico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Err:509

[matheus v. · Rating 3 out of 5]

vamos ver quantas vezes eu consigo reclamar das coisas totalmente comuns que não gosto e tentar dar um tom intimista ao resmungo...
mas gostoso de ler

[antónio · Rating 3 out of 5]

to reread only the last few entries

[Trent Osmantis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rezalet