O Prazer do Texto

by Roland Barthes, Eduardo Prado Coelho (Prefácio), Maria Margarida Barahona (Tradução)

What is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes's answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism . . . not only a poetics of reading . . . but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading . . . . Like filings which gather to form a figure in a magnetic field, the parts and pieces here do come together, determined to affirm the pleasure we must take in our reading as against the indifference of (mere) knowledge." --Richard Howard

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Literary Criticism, Essays, France, Writing

116 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1973

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

[فرشاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

‫"می‌خواهید این کتاب را بخوانید؟ من قبلا آن را خوانده ام." این جمله‌ای است که بنا بر نظر رولان بارت، زیربنای نقد ادبی کلاسیک را تشکیل میدهد. بارت که خود را به عنوان یک منتقد پست مدرن معرفی میکند، گونه ای دیگر از کلاسه‌بندی متن را ارائه میدهد‫.

بارت متن‌ها را به دو گونه تقسیم‌بندی می‌کند. دسته ای که در خواننده ایجاد لذت میکند و دسته‌ی دوم که در خواننده ایجاد سرخوشی می‌کند. سرخوشی گونه ای از لذت است که با نوعی فقدان همراه است. متن‌هایی مانند نوشته‌های تولستوی که خواننده را عمیقا در جریان روایت باقی نگه میدارد و خوانش آسانی به همراه می‌آورد در دسته متن های لذت بخش قرار میگیرند. آن نوشته های غالبا پست مدرن که مخاطب را به چالش میکشد و بر دوش خواننده سنگینی میکند در دسته متن های سرخوشی بخش جا میگیرد‫.

بارت در تمایز قائل شدن میان لذت و سرخوشی میگوید لذت بر خلاف سرخوشی قابل بیان شدن است. و منتقد با لذت سر و کار دارد زیرا لذت مسئله ای مربوط به گذشته و آینده است در حالی که سرخوشی مربوط به حال است‫.

کتاب سختی که شاعرانه هم هست‫.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Pleasure and the Text, Barthes distinguishes between texts that give pleasure to the reader and texts the provide bliss to the reader. To make this distinction, Barthes goes about separating his subject text into two types - readerly/readable and writerly/writeable. He writes with a clever parallelism between sexual pleasure and reading pleasure, with its climax translated as bliss.

He also raises the interesting observation that concerns the difference between classic writing and it's modern counterpart as resulting from the speed of reading.

While readerly texts can derive pleasure, writerly texts can derive bliss. The difference between a readerly text and a writerly text is the reader’s position within that text. Texts that maintain readers as a subject are strictly readerly texts while texts that challenge convention, literary codes or cultural positions can be writerly texts which, in turn, drive a sense of bliss. A writerly text is one that allows the reader to leave his or her subjective position. A writerly text allows the reader to extend past one's conscious mind and even language to understand the text as something beyond any of those things, but which is also reflective of the self and of each of those things too.

Additionally, a writerly text allows the reader to commune, in a way, with the author in such a way that their minds meld together as if in union. This union, however, is perhaps more blissful than physical, as it transcends space and time as a result of the text. The text, via this union, becomes the product of their experience – a sort of offspring of their collective joining.

I admit, this essay, the forth I have read now in a matter of a few weeks, had me lost here and there making it hard to fully penetrable, and ideally he isn't the sort of writer I would read over the festive period due to alcohol consumption, late nights and tired headaches, but Barthes pulled me out of a slumber with another thought-provoking read.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as poetry it's beautiful (that's where the four stars come from). As philosophy it's vague and blemished. As literary theory it's highly questionable.

I'd need a quick refresher to get more detailed. It's been over five years since I read it. I just hesitantly raised it from a three star rating to a four. The operative word there being hesitantly.

In a fairly recent interview, John Searle--a contemporary and now elder philosopher--makes a great couple of points about academic writing in general, which happens to sum up the form my above-mentioned hesitation takes:

"It [writing] has enormous meta-cognitive implications. The power is this: That you cannot only think in ways that you could not possibly think if you did not have the written word, but you can now think about the thinking that you do with the written word. There is danger in this, and the danger is that the enormous expressive and self-referential capacities of the written word, that is, the capacities to keep referring to referring to referring, will reach a point where you lose contact with the real world. And this, believe me, is very common in universities. There's a technical name for it, I don't know if we can use it on television, it's called "bullshit." But this is very common in academic life, where people just get a form of self-referentiality of the language, where the language is talking about the language, which is talking about the language, and in the end, it's hot air. That's another name for the same phenomenon."

What I can still say with some confidence is that the book is a very short and rather breezy read, which is written as a gorgeous, oft-erotic, mid-20th-century-French-intellectual-style love letter to the The Written Word.

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do we enjoy from the text? This question must be asked, if only for a tactical reason: we must affirm the pleasure of the writing against the indifference of science and the puritanism of ideological analysis; it is necessary to claim the enjoyment of the text against the flattening of the literature to its simple approval.
How to ask this question? It turns out that the peculiarity of satisfaction is that it can not be said. It was thus necessary to rely on an inordinate succession of fragments: facets, keys, bubbles, phylacteries of an invisible design: a straightforward staging of the question, unapproachable consequence of the textual analysis.

[Miss Ravi · Rating 5 out of 5]

نباید انتظار داشته باشید آدم با یک‌بار خواندنِ کتاب‌های رولان بارت بتواند ریویویی برای‌اش بنویسد. فقط می‌دانم که باید عاشقش باشم. به‌خاطر سختیِ جمله‌هاش و آن احترام بی‌اندازه‌ای که برای متن و خواننده قائل است. می‌دانم که باید چقدر بالغ‌تر از این باشم که بتوانم هرچیزی را که نوشته، بی‌واسطه درک کنم.

*کتاب معنا را می‌آفریند، معنا زندگی را. -از متن کتاب

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Sigmund Reads…

I definitely have to re-read this essay in French – besides wondering all along how some sentence had been formulated originally I had the strange feeling that some point was missed in translation (and not at all because it is a bad translation, far from it, but because the study juggles with many a French language subtlety).

That being said, I would like to emphasize that The Pleasure of the Text is exactly about what the title announces: pleasure, literally speaking, that is, a clever parallelism between the sexual pleasure and the reading, with its climax ☺, translated as bliss.

The references to Freud are always explicit in Barthes's essay: the relationship between the text and the reader is initiated (although never controlled) by the writer, called the Father of the text (whose death would symbolize the death of storytelling, which could be identified with the loss of one’s origins):

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).

Thus, the text is perceived as a body, in its scientific aspect (the pheno-text of the grammarians, critics, commentators, philologists) but also in its sexual connotations (body of bliss, of erotic relations):

The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas – for my body does not have the same ideas I do.

Furthermore, there is an Oedipal relationship between the reader and the text, issued from some perversion of reading: like the child who simultaneously does and doesn’t believe that his mother has a penis, the reader does and doesn’t believe that the text is only words, and this phenomenon is obvious when reading tragedy: I know the end but I act as though I don’t.

Another perversion (I liked this!) is reading criticism – the voyeuristic observation of the pleasure of others.

A very interesting observation concerns the difference between classic and modern writing as resulting from the speed of reading:

Read slowly, read all of a novel by Zola, and the book will drop from your hands; read fast, in snatches, some modern text, and it becomes opaque, inaccessible to your pleasure...

The book is organized around some dichotomies of the text:

• pleasure/ bliss: pleasure can be expressed in words, bliss cannot – criticism deals only with texts of pleasure;

• canonical language/ death of language: fiction is supported by a social jargon (sociolect), that fights for hegemony. “Paradox: the writer suppresses this gratuitousness of writing (which approaches, by bliss, the gratuitousness of death). “

• Novelty (a condition for orgasm – Freud again!)/ repetition (an eccentricity of the modernism): both are opposed to stereotype, an attribute of the mass culture;

• figuration/ representation: figuration is the way in which the erotic body appears. There is a figure of the text necessary for the bliss of reading. Representation is “… embarrassed figuration, encumbered with other meanings than that of desire: a space of alibis (reality, morality, likelihood, readability, truth, etc.).”

Therefore, a Freud-style approach (interestingly mixed with some Nietzsche) of an “amor intellectualis” viewed as an eroticism of reading, whenever the reader connects intimately with a text capable of giving him pleasure and/ or bliss.

[Heba]

هذا نص يستحيل ترجمته ، هذا ما صرح به السيد " منذر عياشي" الذي أراد ان تكون الترجمة مطابقة للأصل ولكن "رولان بارت" نفسه لا يملك الأصل ، هذا النص هو صورة الغياب 🙃
لذا عمد الى ترجمة النص ترجمة قارىء ، هنا توقفت عند مهمة المترجم ، هل يمكنه ان يقف عند مفترق طريقين ، يختار أيهما يسلك مع العلم انه لا سبيل للعودة..
اما ترجمة قارىء أو ترجمة المترجم ؟ هو يرى ان الترجمة قراءة في نص ولكن ألا نكون ازاء عمل جديد وفقاً لتأويل المترجم للنص والتماهي فيه ؟
وجدت المقدمة تثير قضية هامة وتستحق ان تطرح في كتاب مستقل بذاته ..
نأتي للنص ، وان استعصى عليّ استيعابه ، لكن في الحقيقة انه منغلق منطوي على ذاته ، تشعر بالالتباس الذي لا ينفك عنك ، تناقضات وتقابلات تتخذ مجراها بداخل النص، تعجز عن القبض على الانسجام ، ما ان يتراءى لى انه يتشكل ليتخذ صورة ما حتى يتلاشى ، من غير المجدي ان يجهد المرء نفسه فى محاولة تثبيته ، نزعة هدمية محبطة للقارىء ..🤕🤕
هذا بالاضافة الى الانزعاج الشديد الذي اصابني لتشبيه النص الأدبي بالجسد ، مما احال علاقة القارىء بالنص الى علاقة تشهد موتها عند لحظة ميلادها ...
دعني يا سيدي اخبرك ما هي لذة النص ببساطة ، ترى عندما تقرأ نص ما ، ويبتلعك ، واذ بغتة ترفع رأسك لوهلة شارداً ، تتوقف عن القراءة ، تفكر ما الذي ينتظرني هنا ؟
وسرعان ما تعود للعالم التخييلي مسلوباً من واقعك ، تلك اللحظة تشهد لذة النص وهى ما يستعصى على اللغة ان تعثر لها على توصيفاً دقيقاً محكماً ...
ولكي اكون منصفة ثمة جملة وحيدة توجز الحكاية " نصوص القراءة هى بدايات مفتوحة تكتب وتقرأ ، ولكنها لن تبلغ كمالها كتابة ولا تمامها قراءة " ....

[CivilWar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was looking forwards to this, I was. I like language, I like literature, and I was excited to see how this world-renowned semiotician would analyze the pleasure that language itself can give us. The problem is, Barthes doesn't do any of that shit.

Instead, we have here 67 pages of completely and utterly typical word salad, the type that is synonymous with French academia at the time and has been, in retrospective, widely mocked. Instead of any explanation of the pleasure and sensuality of language, Barthes gives us nonstop pointless ramblings in an adolescent stream-of-consciousness prose style which probably sounded very profound and avant-garde to him as he wrote it, but is inane and dull in actuality.

For some examples, now. At one point, Barthes speaks of Nihilism, in a short section. The following is the entire section:

"Nihilism: "superior goals depreciate." This is an unsta­ble, jeopardized moment, for other superior values tend, immediately and before the former are destroyed, to prevail; dialectics only links successive positivities; whence the suffocation at the very heart of anarchism. How install the deficiency of any superior value? Irony? It always proceeds from a sure site. Violence? Violence too is a superior value, and among the best coded. Bliss? Yes, if it is not spoken, doctrinal. The most consistent nihilism is perhaps masked: in some way interior to institutions, to conformist discourse, to apparent finalities."

Ok, so, did you get that? Do you agree, do you disagree? Can you tell me what this is about? Have we learned anything of significant about nihilism here? Do we even fucking know what Barthes means by nihilism here, considerably how rambly and unformalized this is?

No, we don't, we can't agree with it, much less criticize it, because it's said in the most vague, word salad language possible. If Hegel or Kant or whoever fucks up, we can tell why he's wrong. Same for any philosopher that wrote in any intellectually honest way. This type of writing though, which was so codified by French academic hackfrauds, is impossible to poke holes in, because it's impossible to understand anything except vague broad strokes notions that the writer then mindlessly rambles at us for the complete duration of the text.

A few other examples. This one is on emotion:

"Emotion: why should it be antipathetic to bliss (I was wrong when I used to see it wholly on the side of sentimentality, of moral illusion)? It is a disturbance, a bordering on collapse: something perverse, under respect­ able appearances; emotion is even, perhaps, the slyest of losses, for it contradicts the general rule that would assign bliss a fixed form: strong, violent, crude: something inevitably muscular, strained, phallic. Against the general rule: never allow oneself to be deluded by the image of bliss; agree to recognize bliss wherever a disturbance occurs in amatory adjustment (premature, delayed, etc.): passionate love as bliss? Bliss as wisdom (when it manages to understand itself outside its own prejudices)?"

What, can't make sense of it? Well about about this bit about boredom?

"It can't be helped: boredom is not simple. We do not escape boredom (with a work, a text) with a gesture of impatience or rejection. Just as the pleasure of the text supposes a whole indirect production, so boredom cannot presume it is entitled to any spontaneity: there is no sincere boredom: if the prattle-text bores me personally, it is because in reality I do not like the demand. But what if I did like it (if I had some maternal appetite)? Boredom is not far from bliss: it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure."

What, that's wank too?

The entire book is wank, is my point. Wank of the typical pretentious French artiste, wank of the sort that sounds "deep" when being written down and is nothing but trite and tired when read by anyone else. There is a single good paragraph in the entire book:

"So-called "erotic" books (one must add: of recent vintage, in order to except Sade and a few others) represent not so much the erotic scene as the expectation of it, the preparation for it, its ascent; that is what makes them "exciting"; and when the scene occurs, naturally there is disappointment, deflation. In other words, these are books of Desire, not of Pleasure. Or, more mischievously, they represent Pleasure as seen by psychoanalysis. A like mean­ing says, in both instances, that the whole thing is very disappointing."

It still has the terrible style and is at most decent, but it's something, I can get Barthes' point, it's an interesting point. And it's the only salvageable part of the book, this piece of shit small paragraph, which isn't even the entire section.

As philosophy, it's garbage. As literary criticism, it's questionable to the extreme at best and useless wankery at worst. Wikipedia mentions that very few people have made use of Barthes' categories that were introduced in this book - considering that this is an academic text on literary criticism with 4,522 ratings on Goodreads, I'd say that's quite an achievement in uselessness, considering how well known and apparently beloved it is.

Because of that, some people, as the writer of the intro, suggests that this is merely an attempt to write an erotics of language and should be read for pleasure due to how scrumptious and "erotic" is is. However, I am afraid to say, that if this is meant to be "erotic" then it is only to the coprophile because it is nothing more than verbal diarrhea soup. It is word waste. For such a well-known author to release such a thing and to have it be this widely read is a complete and utter embarrassment, but only one in the very long list of embarrassments in French philosophy.

[Parnian · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب بی‌نظیری بود. توی هر جمله و هر پاراگراف می‌شد خلاصه‌ای از چندین نظریه درباره ادبیات رو دید.
برای من سینه‌فیل اینکه بارت نظر آرتو درباره بیان و صدا رو به سینما پیوند می‌ده و اینطوری کتاب رو به پایان می‌رسونه، خیلی خوشایند بود.
برخلاف چیزهایی که شنیده بودم، ترجمه اصلا ضعیف نبود. فکر می‌کنم ناآگاهی خواننده نسبت به بحث‌های مربوط به ادبیات در قرن بیستم و پساساختارگرایی، متن رو سخت می‌کنه. این ایراد ترجمه نیست. شاید بهتر باشه با شناخت بیشتری سراغ همچین متن‌هایی بریم.

[Narjes Dorzade · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب خوب و دقیقی بود . به خصوص برای شعر و داستان . ترجمه یک مقدار سخت ش کرده بود . اما در کل خوب بود.
چون تقریبا جمله به جمله اش خوب بود نمیشه انتخاب کرد کدوم رو این جا گذاشت .
.
ممنون آقای رولان بارت

[°•.Melina°•. · Rating 3 out of 5]

نمیدونم چی باید بگم😃این چی بود من خوندممم.کلا ۳۰٪شو فهمیدم و حتما یه مدت بعد دوباره میام موشکافانه میخونمش چون همون چندتا جمله‌ای که ازش فهمیدم دیگه هیچوقت از ذهنم نمیره.لعنتی، آقای بارت تو این کتاب سخت‌خوان با قلم بسیار فرانسویش برداشته لذت خوندن و نوشتن رو به یه احساس اروتیک تشابه داده! و خیلیم درست کارشو انجام داده😭 خیلی جالب بود. حس میکنم خیلی دوستش داشتم و ازش یادگرفتم(فقط کاش ترجمه‌ش واضح تر و بهتر بود که بشه خوند💔) اما زیادی از من باهوش تر بود و چندسال دیگه برمیگردم سراغش. همین.

[Javad Azadi]

خوندن لذت متن برای من سخت بود. نمیدونم چقدرش بابت سخت‌نویسی نویسنده یا مترجم یا کم‌سوادی من بوده اما، به نظرم این کتاب واقعا متن ساده‌ای نداشت. علارغم این موضوع، از بعضی قسمت‌هاش خیلی لذت بردم.

[Seyed Hashemi · Rating 3 out of 5]

اسامی و اقتدار؛
اسطورهٔ مولف و تبادل اقتدار.


0- قطعا بدترین کتاب برای آغاز مواجه با یک متن دست اول از بارت، این کتاب می‌‌تواند باشد.
اما برای من انتخاب خوبی بود. توضیح می‌دم.

1- معمولا اسامیِ بزرگ در هر حوزه‌ای، آغشته‌شده به یکسری شرح و متن توضیحی اند‌؛ چگونه فلانی را بخوانیم، فلانی به زبان ساده، فلانی برای فلان‌فلان‌شده‌ها و دیگر انواع فلانی‌نامه‌ها.
یعنی یکسری دلسوز آمده اند تا متفکر را برای ما راحت‌‌الحلقوم کنند. آیا کار خوبی است؟ بدیهی است خوب است، اما الان صرفا می‌خواهم نقد کنم این‌گونه متون رو. .
چه می‌شود یک متفکر در تاریخ می‌ماند؟ مسیرهای مختلفی مفروض است، روی یک مسیر تاکید می‌کنم: جسارت در مواجه با مسئلهٔ بغرنج. یعنی مسئله‌ای که در ذهن ما هست به صورت ناخودآگاه، یک متفکر آن را بیان می‌کند، تلاش می‌کند آن را صورت‌بندی کند. قبول دارید مسئلهٔ بغرنج، بغرنج است؟ احتمالا انتظار ندارید زندگی، در کلی‌ترین معنای ممکن را یک چند خط سیاه‌بازی (سیاه کردن کاغذ با جوهر) یک نویسنده برایتان حل کند، پس انتظار بی‌جایی است که ارسطو را ساده بفهمیم، کانت را ساده بفهمیم، بارت را ساده بفهمیم.

2- این کتاب را خواندم و نهایتا ثلث مباحث را یه چیزهایی فهمیدم. بارت برایم رازآلود شد و پیچیدگی‌اش را فهمیدم. متفکری شد که بتواند هماورد کشتی‌گرفتن باشد، پس این تصمیم اشتباه پیامدی خوب داشت (پیامد ناخواسته).
فهمیدم بارت که پر رو بوده است و با مسئله کلنجار می‌رفته، و مسائل سختی داشته پس رس وجودی می‌کشه از آدم برای فهمش.

3- تبادل اقتدار و اسطورهٔ مولف هم موضوع جالبی برای تامل می‌تونه باشه که الان چون سر کلاس هستم حال ندارم در موردش یه چیزایی قلمی کنم.


امیدوارم بعدا کمتر مثل زنبور در گلِ بارت گیر کنم.

در ضمن کتاب جالبیه :))

[Eman Alshareef · Rating 3 out of 5]

هناك مقولة ساخرة عن النقاد سمعتها في فلمين: الفلم الحائز على الاوسكار لعام
2014
Birdman
وفلم
Finding forster
المقولة هي أن من لا يستطيع أن يكون فناناً فإنه يصبح ناقداً، المقولة غير دقيقة ومجحفة في حق النقاد، لإنه بإمكان النقد أن يكون ابداعياً كما يكون فعل القراءة في حد ذاته فعلاً إبداعياً، وهما عملان متلازمان، وجود أحدهما يلزم وجود الآخر.
جبرا ابراهيم جبرا في كتابه الفن والفعل والحلم، الكتاب الذي ركز في مجموعة مقالات على العملية الإبداعية في الفنون، وكان النقد جزء لا يتجزأ عن الفنون التي عرفتها الإنسانية على مر العصور، حتى جبرا نفسه كقارئ وناقد للأدب قد يكون أكثر إبداعاً منه ككاتب للأدب ( مجرد رأي شخصي)
ميلان كونديرا وهو الذي قادني للبدء بقراءة بارت، قارئ متمكن في أساليب الكتابة والنقد، وابداعه في الأدب على قدم المساواة مع إبداعه في تحليل البنية القصصية أو الأسلوبية.
عندما بدأت بقراءة لذة النص كنت متأكدة أن رولان بارت سيتطرق لهذه النقطة بالتحديد التي قدمت لها، وهي أن النقد جزء لا يتجزأ من العملية الإبداعية، وبالفعل ذكرها في نهاية الكتاب الذي هو الجزء الأول من ثلاثية بارت المعنونة بالأعمال الكاملة ( لذة النص – مدخل إلى التحليل البنيوي للقصة – نقد وحقيقة)
في هذا الكتاب لم يتعرض بارت لنقد النص و إنما للمرحلة السابقة له وهي الإستمتاع بالنص وتذوقه، فرّق الكاتب بين مصطلحين لذة النص ومتعة النص والربط الجميل الذي أقامه بين لذة النص ولذة الجسد بالرغم من عدم وجود رابط مباشر بينهما.
الكتاب في الغالب عبارة عن ملاحظات متفرقة وغير مترابطة عن الموضوع، وهو صعب القراءة لغير المتخصص لذا من المؤكد أنني سأرجع إليه مستقبلا

[Pooya Kiani · Rating 5 out of 5]

از کتاب‌هایی که هر نویسنده باید بارها بخونه. بوطیقای باز نوشتن و باز خوندن و نمرده نوشتن و نمرده خوندن و تصویرکننده‌ی ی�� نظام ادبی قدرتمند که نه از شخص و نه از فکر یا ایدئولوژی یا تز و آنتی‌تزهای لحظه‌ای و لمحه‌ای، که از زبان و تاثیرگذاری و تاثیرپذیری و جریان سیال هنری‌ادبی قدرتی فزاینده و زاینده و نمیرا به دست میاره. ترجمه‌ی آقای یزدانجو الحق بد نبود ولی ای کاش ایشون به جای پرکاری، رو به وسواس‌های موندگار می‌آورد.

[Manny]

[پیمان عَلُو · Rating 2 out of 5]

ترجمه اگه خوب بود یه چیزی حالی‌مون میشد!

[Cvi * · Rating 5 out of 5]

Изначалното удоволствие на един текст идва от обикновената нужда за писане. За Барт цепките по дрехите разголват най-интимното, еротичното, съблазнява с умишленото си "появяване-изчезване", едно интелектуално удоволствие, едипово. Докато авторът пише своите текстове с привидно удоволствие, читателят е онзи, който съди и употребява текста. Прескача безнаказано, съблича набързо целия текст, все неща, които авторът никога не би искал да види - красивия си текст разголен, непосредствено пред чуждите очи.

За Барт тази възбуда, която читателят изпитва, не идва от бързането да стигне до края, а от полагането на едната ръка върху другата, защото текстовете в своята първичност, не са създадени да бъдат универсално удоволствие. "Днешните автори трябва да четем не като ги разкъсваме и поглъщаме, а като отхапваме по малко, гризем старателно, без да бързаме - както са чели хората едно време: така ще бъдем аристократични читатели."

"Удоволствието от текста е моментът, когато тялото ми ще следва своите собствени идеи - защото тялото ми няма същите идеи като мен".

Зад философията на Барт се крие една магическа притегателна сила, необходимостта да изчетеш тези редове поне по няколко пъти, почти ненаситно е усещането да обходиш думите му, мантра на езика.

Удоволствието от езика не е в писането, не е дори и в говоренето, което е ограничено от дискурса, а от четенето, онази интимна среща с думи, които очите ти обхождат, емоционалното обвързване с героите, с речта, с всичко, което авторът преди теб е говорил. Стоиш и слушаш, "удоволствието е нещо неутрално", лично и дори малко демонично. И трябва да се прави разлика между еротични книги, които ограничават своята същност до желанието, които впечатляват с възбуждащо сцени, които не носят никакво истинско удоволствие, "такова, каквото го вижда психоанализа".

Ролан Барт вече е задължителна част от моите скромни книги, които стоят близо до бюрото, до речниците по немски, които небрежно отварям, защото няма нищо по необятно от възможностите за удоволствие и манипулация на езика.

"Книгата прави смисъла, смисъла прави живота."

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

So French. Even translated into English, so very, very French.

[Andrei Bădică · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nu m-a prins.

"Textul de plăcere: acela care mulțumește, umple, dă euforie; acela care vine din cultură, nu rupe cu ea, este legat de o practică confortabilă a lecturii. Textul de desfătare: acela care te pune în starea de pierdere, acela care descurajează (poate pînă la o anumită plictiseală), care face să se clatine temeiurile istorice, culturale, psihologice, ale cititorului, consistența gusturilor sale, a valorilor și a amintirilor sale, pune în criză raportul său cu limbajul."

"Plăcerea textului. Clasici. Cultură (cu cît va exista mai multă cultură, cu atît plăcerea va fi mai mare, mai diferită). Inteligență. Ironie. Delicatețe. Euforie. Măestrie. Siguranță: artă de a trăi. Plăcerea textului se poate defini printr-o practică (fără nici un risc de represiune): loc și timp de lectură: casă, provincie, prînzul aproape, lampă, familia acolo unde trebuie, adică la depărtare și nu departe (Proust în cabinetul cu miresme de stînjenei) etc."

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

No me gusta ponerle estrellitas a mis lecturas académicas (¿Qué criterio utilizaría para ello?), pero aquí estamos hablando del placer del texto, ¿no? Así que me permito juzgarlo únicamente en base a mi propio disfrute. ¡Viva la literatura, el más hermoso y más cercano de los imposibles!

[Jila R · Rating 1 out of 5]

ترجمه‌ی بد و بی‌انسجامی داشت که لذت متن را زهر کرد به کامم

[Ρένα Λούνα · Rating 3 out of 5]

Τα αναγνωστικά ταξίδια με τον Ρολάν Μπαρτ είναι σαν ποιητικός πονοκέφαλος. Δύσκολα, αλλά αδύνατο να μην γοητεύσει με το μυαλό του, έστω και λίγο, τον αναγνώστη.

«Η γλώσσα που μιλώ μέσα μου δεν είναι του καιρού μου· είναι εκτεθειμένη, από τη φύση της, στην ιδεολογική υποψία· πρέπει λοιπόν με τούτη να παλαίψω. Γράφω γιατί δεν δέχομαι τις λέξεις που βρίσκω: γράφω αφαιρετικά. Και ταυτόχρονα, α υτή η προτελευταία γλώσσα είναι η γλώσσα της απόλαυσής μου: διαβάζω βραδιές ολάκερες Ζολά, Προύστ, Ιούλιο Βερν, τον Μόντε Χρίστο, τις Αναμνήσεις ενός περιηγητή και καμία φορά και τον Julien Green. Αυτή είναι η απόλαυσή μου, όχι όμως και η ηδονή μου: ετούτη δεν έχει πιθανότητα ναρθει παρά μόνο με το καινούριο απόλυτο, γιατί μονάχα το καινούριο τραντάζει (εξασθενίζει) τη συνείδηση (εύκολο; Καθόλου: εννιά φορές στις δέκα το καινούριο δεν είναι παρά το στερεότυπο του νεοτερισμού)».

Ο Μπαρτ παρατηρεί (στον εαυτό του) και αναλύει τον ερωτικό χώρο που δημιουργεί ο συγγραφέας, ανάμεσα στο απολαυστικό κείμενο και το ηδονικό κείμενο, αυτό που προκαλεί έρωτα και πλήγωμα στον αναγνώστη τον οποίον και ο συγγραφέας αναζητάει, μιας και γράφει πριν βρει τον αναγνώστη. Διακρίνοντας την ευχαρίστηση και την ηδονή, ο Μπαρτ διαχωρίζει ότι η απόλαυση μπορεί να εκφραστεί, σε αντίθεση με την ηδονή. Ο κριτικός ασχολείται με την απόλαυση γιατί η ηδονή είναι υπόθεση του παρελθόντος και του μέλλοντος, ενώ η απόλαυση είναι υπόθεση του παρόντος. Μιλάει για την απόλαυση του κειμένου ως αξία φτασμένη στο λαμπρό ύψος του σημαίνοντος. Είναι μάλιστα έξυπνος ο παραλληλισμός μεταξύ σεξουαλικής απόλαυσης και αναγνωστικής απόλαυσης. Από την αγόρευση της αρχαιότητας μέχρι τη μεταμοντέρνα κριτική του κειμένου, ο Μπαρτ βρίσκει κοινό έδαφος με τον αναγνώστη στην ίδια κοινή ιδιότητα: στη θέση, στην ευφορία της ανάγνωσης.

Η μετάφραση του κειμένου σίγουρα θα ήταν μια ενδιαφέρουσα πρόκληση και κάπου μέσα στις έννοιες «λιγόνομαι», «σαλιαρίζω», «λογόσφαιρα» και το προσωπικό μου αγαπημένο «σταυροειδούς στροφέα», μπορούν να δημιουργηθούν κενά, αλλά όπως και να έχει το συνολικό μήνυμα περνάει.

ΥΓ. Αναγνώστη, εάν σε ενδιαφέρει το «Η απόλαυση του κειμένου» του Μπαρτ, μπορείς να το συνοδεύσεις με το «Η λογοτεχνία και το κακό» του Μπατάιγ.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this while studying for my MA many years ago, and when I saw a copy in a bookshop [here on holiday in Stockholm], impulsively bought it to read it again; at barely 70 pages, it was quick enough to do so on the metro.

Now I am older, perhaps not wiser, and Barthes' joyous celebration of the pleasure of reading is as enticing as ever (especially in an increasingly digital age). Of course, as others have pointed out, this is more a serious of vignettes than an elucidation of a cogent literary theory.

I think what Barthes wanted to achieve, and he does this admirably, is to get people interested in, and excited about, what gives them pleasure from reading, and what this pleasure is. That this pleasure can be erotic, or even orgasmic, may seem far-fetched, but Barthes does a masterly job of seducing the reader and introducing him/her to textual bliss. (I have always said I would love to learn French if only to be able to have Barthes seduce me in his native tongue).

A book like this might seem rather irrelevant in the age of the Kindle and Twitter, but moreso than ever, I think, we need to engage with texts / books as physical / fetishised objects, in order to remind us that being human is messy, frustrating and often downright puzzling.

There are so many moments of madness and brilliance in this short book:

"As institution, the author is dead: his civil status, his biographical person have disappeared."

"Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes?"

"Boredom is not far from bliss: it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure."

"Ideological systems are fictions ... Every fiction is supported by a social jargon."

"I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me."

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Que livro delicioso! Com uma escrita descomplicada e de fácil compreensão - li numa sentada, Barthes vai alinhavando psicanálise e o papel dialético do escritor/leitor em seu prazer dual. Meu único porém quanto a esta edição é que o tradutor preferiu traduzir jouissance como fruição e não como gozo, este que seria mais pertinente ao conteúdo da obra que busca dialogar com a psicanálise.

[Nahid]

باید دوباره بخونمش. خوب نفهمیدم. سخت بود. به قول خودش یه زخمه هایی زدم یا شایدم متن یه زخمه هایی بهم زد.ه

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Devil’s Dictionary sort of exercise, but for those plugged into abstruse French theory.

‘Pleasure’ or ‘bliss’ or jouissance here gets much attention—but it is through counterintuitive pronouncement, often unwarranted. Writing is for instance “the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra” (6):

The pleasure of the text is like that untenable, impossible, purely novelistic instant so relished by Sade’s libertine when he manages to be hanged and then to cut the rope at the very moment of his orgasm. (7)

I would accordingly like to know precisely what Barthes has been reading.

He draws a distinction between pleasure and bliss insofar as the former involves a euphoria, a comfort—whereas the latter creates a crisis (14); it is a matter of wanting a “consistency of selfhood” but also seeking the loss of self, a diremption of sorts. Another diremption: pleasure of the text is “when my body pursues its own ideas—for my body does not have the same ideas I do” (17). Further, pleasure "can be expressed in words, bliss cannot” (21). However “boredom is not far from bliss: it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure” (26). (I know, right.) Pleasure suspends “the signified value” (65)—so certainly a linguistics, even though it is not always obvious if the discussion concerns textual jouissance.

We must later recall that ‘perversion’ “shields bliss from the finality of reproduction” (24) when Barthes states that pleasure “does not prefer one ideology to another” but “this impertinence does not proceed from liberalism but from perversion: the text, its reading, are split” (31). Perhaps this is why “no object is in a constant relationship with pleasure” (37). Further, “no significance (no bliss) can occur, I am convinced, in a mass culture” (38); bliss has an “asocial character” (39). In fact, “the new is bliss,” wherein “novelty always constitutes the condition for orgasm” (41).

Pleasure “of the sentence is to a high degree cultural” however (51)—“unless for some perverts the sentence is a body?” In this connection, “perversion does not suffice to define bliss; it is the extreme of perversion which defines it” (52)—disgust always already marked by desire, perhaps.

He waits until the end to state the purpose: “what we are seeking to establish in various ways is a theory of the materialist subject” (61), a plausible lefty project. Perhaps no need to be so oblique about it, however.

[hayatem · Rating 4 out of 5]

يستغرق بارث هنا في الطواف حول مبادئ الاشتغال اللغوي متجاوزاً التحليلات السوسيو إيديولوجية، متصادماً بالريبة الإيديولوجية؛ باحثاً عن مكان اللذة في نظرية النص. عبر تفكيك وتحليل بنيات اللغات الظاهرة والخفية لحظة استهلاكها + رصد متخيلات اللغة. مع عنايته بمهام اللسانيات في السياق، و ماتثيره الألفاظ كوحدة قياسية من نتوءات، صدوع أو خدوش في هيكله . مع استشعاره في مشهد النص لأدوات التحليل النفسي/ النفاذ ل-سيكولوجية اللغة، والغرق في استهاماتها المغرية + كسر تابوهات الأنظمة الناظمة للمعنى بتجاوز الصورة النمطية؛ لأخرى جديدة نافرة من الهوس بالضبط اللغوي وجنون الوصف، لتحقيق أكبر قدر من المتعة الحسية في القراءة بتذوق النص . فلذة النص كما يصفها بارث "ممارسة لفسيولوجيا مغايرة."

رولان بارث قارئ ملهم!

[Ahmed Oraby]

قارنتها مع ترجمة البقاعي، ولم أقرأها كاملة، وفصلت ترجمة البقاعي عليها. لي تعليق على الترجمتين، وتعليق آخر على ترحمات منذر عياشي، وتعليق أخير على الكتاب. بعد عشر سنوات، أكون قريت كل الكتب اللي أحال إليها بارت

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa.