Yours faithfully. I received the Queneau.143
R. Barthes
* * *
November 10, 1965
Dear friend,
In very great haste, before leaving for Morocco. I don’t want you to have the impression that I’m neglecting Critique’s hospitality toward my response. God knows it’s as important to me as our friendship. But as I’m anxious to respond to Picard in a tract, as a way of having a bookstore presence, I can’t issue multiple responses (that would be to make the opposite mistake!). If we could find someone to show Critique’s solidarity with regard to the attempt of Racine, that would be perfect, but you see I can’t be the one to do it.144 This note is especially to tell you (better to write this than to say it) how deeply comforted I was by your kindness.
Until soon,
R. B.
* * *
[August 27, 1966]
Dear friend,
I add to my guilt by being so slow to respond to your letter. My summer is more proletarian than the rest of the year because all my deadlines come now and I can’t stop working. I read your wonderfully tantalizing list; many upcoming items are appealing: the Wetherill (who is this?)145, the Todorov,146 the Kempf, the Lourau,147 the Batany,148 the Deguy,149 the Attal,150 the Le Bot,151 the Bleman152 (I’m naming my “first choices”). You see I would be an excellent subscriber to the Critique. It all looks very good to me and I admire your ingenuity in eliciting the necessary texts. As far as I’m concerned, I beg you with all my heart not to be discouraged. For about two years now I’ve been trying to resolve a much-too-busy work situation, to deal with very old commitments, complicated—although I can’t do anything about it—by professional (Hautes Études) or money-making (like Enquêtes) tasks. I’m patiently working away at it. You have no idea all the things I turned down in the last six months; I’m no longer accepting anything. When my accounts are settled, four or five months from now, I’ll adopt a new rhythm, which I absolutely need at this time in my life, and then I assure you that: first, I’ll give you texts regularly; and second, I’ll give you more help with editing. What I’m telling you here is not some kind of trite—or thoughtless—stalling tactic. My connection with Critique is tied for me to more freedom to work—and so it shall be done!
You know my whole summer; I’m doing nothing but work, which fortunately I can do very quietly here. I don’t think I’ll return before the end of September and we should be able to see each other then (I’m going to the USA from October 15 to 30).153
I hope you’re doing well. With regard to everything I just wrote to you, I send you my faithful affection.
R. Barthes
* * *
Monday, [early 1967]
Dear friend,
In thanking you again for the lovely evening the other day, I’m sending you Badiou’s text.154 It’s long and difficult and unappealing to me personally.155 But the exceptional quality of the thinking is clear and it seems to me beyond doubt that it must be published—with the reservation about the note on Foucault, which, for me, would present no problem but for which the imprimatur of the affected party must be obtained.156 If Foucault doesn’t respond, really doesn’t, I think the text must be published all the same.
All my best wishes,
R. Barthes
* * *
Paris, May 11, 1967
Dear friend,
On rereading it, I really find Girard’s text remarkable, not only worthy of publication, but requiring it.157 So the only problems are the ones you saw: its length (but Girard, I believe, is willing to shorten it) and its relationship to Lacan, which is too vague for it to pass as a review of his book—a review nevertheless necessary. An issue loosely centered on psychoanalysis (Lacan) would clearly be an excellent solution; or else putting Girard in that anticipated issue on criticism …? (an issue on something a little broader than criticism would be better: the theory of literature, literature and symbolism, etc.). I return from Italy May 20. Let’s get together then?
Yours,
R. Barthes
* * *
[June 27, 1968]
Dear friend,
Thanks for your note. I understand the idea of doing an issue on the university. I agree but, if I may say so, under very specific conditions: that it’s not an analysis of events and even less a body of testimony (every review is taking this route these days and I’ve been asked ten times to give … the same text—which can only be the same text; and again: very difficult to do, lacking distance), but truly imagining what the desired university would be. Because this much is clear: in everything that’s done and written, the incompetence is the most distressing thing (for my part, I’m convinced that this incompetence is not improvised: in fact, the “movement” aims, profoundly, to eliminate any university, and targeted by both the “revolutionaries” and the “technocrats,” there’s little chance that it will survive!).
I’ll be in Paris for three days beginning Monday, the first. Can you call me (maybe Monday about noon)? Let’s try to see each other—maybe with the others; that would make me happy.
Best to you,
R. Barthes
* * *
[July 25, 1968]
Dear friend,
Allow me to send you, for Critique, an excellent text by Todorov on Benjamin Constant.158 It was first anticipated for the Langages review, but it didn’t fit with the whole; it’s not linguistic enough—which would be an asset for Critique, on the other hand. See what you think; of course, ask the others; but I think it would be good, it would be a text on literature, which is always invaluable. And I believe Todorov would agree to it.
My health is forever unstable, fragile, and sometimes that’s depressing. I hope you at least are enjoying a few days of vacation as you said you’d planned.
Yours faithfully,
R. Barthes
* * *
[March 19, 1969]
Dear friend,
The fellow who wrote me the good (in my opinion) text on Cocteau-Derrida would like to do an article—for Critique—on the Buñuel film Le Voie lactée.159 Maybe this offer would be an opportunity to introduce a text on film from time to time—so as to abolish, at least in principle, the traditional separation between text and film? What do you think? I didn’t give him the go-ahead before getting your opinion. Write me a quick note on this, if you can.
Yours friend,
R. Barthes
6. With Claude Lévi-Strauss
Relations between Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) were complicated: Lévi-Strauss’s refusal to direct Barthes’s thesis, his bittersweet mocking tone with regard to S/Z,160 but in contrast, Lévi-Strauss’s support during the violent attacks in Le Monde at the time of the quarrel with Picard regarding Sur Racine, and especially, even more essentially, his support during Barthes’s election to the Collège de France. For his part, even while constantly paying homage to one of the founders of structuralism in France, Barthes was able to distinguish himself from Lévi-Strauss, and especially from the tendency toward positivism in Lévi-Strauss’s work and toward binarism with which he is associated, through Barthes’s thinking on degree zero and the neutral.
Roland Barthes to Claude Lévi-Strauss (BNF)
Paris, October 3, 1961
Dear Sir,
When you agreed to meet with me a few months ago, I spoke to you of my work on Fashion.161 I have now finished that work, at least a certain form of that work, because I can still see many corrections and additions to make.162 At least I have a sufficiently coherent manuscript to offer now for criticism. I would like very much to show it to you. I am worried about taking up your time, but it seems to me that it is precisely your perspective it now requires. If you agree, I could deliver the manuscript to you.
Please forgive my indiscretion and accept my expression of respectful and deep friendship.
R. Barthes
11, rue Servandoni, Paris VIe
Dan. 95–85
Cl
aude Lévi-Strauss to Roland Barthes
October 4, 1961
Dear Sir,
I am ashamed to answer you with an equivocation, but it is not a quick, casual glance that you want from me, and in the present circumstances, it would be impossible for me to offer any more than that. I have just returned a small book to the printer, I have to finish another more important one before the end of October, and then I have to concentrate on preparing my classes.…163 All that leaves me without respite. I regret this all the more because I very much look forward to your book. The study that you published in a recent issue of Annales shows you in full possession of a method that I find promising, especially as you apply it to unexplored subjects.164
Please accept, dear sir, my most cordial wishes.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Roland Barthes to Claude Lévi-Strauss (BNF)
Urt, December 24, 1965
Dear friend,
Returning from traveling, I found both the page from Le Monde and the clarification, of which you sent me a copy.165 I find ample consolation in the second for the first, and I am deeply touched that you took the trouble to write these lines to J. Piatier.166 Although, to tell you the truth, I do not know if she will publish them. Their relentlessness in this affair is both so incomprehensible and so implacable. But what matters to me is not being wrongfully separated from what you do; wrongfully: I mean, by someone other than you or me. That is why your intervention is so important to me.
I thank you for it and convey my warmest wishes.
Roland Barthes
Claude Lévi-Strauss to Roland Barthes
January 16, 1966
Dear friend,
I have launched into Critique et vérité, in all innocence moreover, having not read Picard’s pamphlet. To be frank, I am not at all sure I completely agree with you. First, because in defending “nouvelle critique” in general you seem to cover many things that hardly warrant it, in my view. And then, because of an eclecticism that is demonstrated in too much indulgence for subjectivity, affectivity, and, let us use the word, a certain mysticism with regard to literature. For me, the work is not open (a conception that opens it to the worst philosophy: that of metaphysical desire, of the subject justly denied, but in order to hypostatize its metaphor, etc.); it is closed, and it is precisely that closure that allows an objective study to be done on it. In other words, I do not distinguish the work from its intelligibility; structural analysis consists, on the contrary, of turning intelligibility in on the work. And, unless you want to fall into a Ricoeurian kind of hermeneutics, it seems to me you must distinguish, more radically than you do, the inherently and objectively determinable forms (which are the only ones that interest me) from the insignificant content that humans and centuries may pour into them. Please see in these quick thoughts only the effect of an immediate reaction that leaves me not in the least insensible to your always-impeccable form and to so many profound and accurate remarks. I will be thinking about your text for a long time and I am grateful to you for raising these questions.
Very cordially,
Lévi-Strauss
Roland Barthes to Claude Lévi-Strauss (BNF)
Paris, January 14, 1967
Dear friend,
I have two big thank-yous for you: for being kind enough to send me your second Mythologiques167—which I have begun with great impatience and already very great joy—and for agreeing to accept me into your research laboratory, as Greimas has just informed me, which makes me very happy and will facilitate many things, I believe.
Thanks again and best wishes,
R. Barthes
Claude Lévi-Strauss to Roland Barthes
January 17, 1967
Dear friend,
You have always had a rightful place in the research lab—a reserved pew like the manor lord at his village church!—and please know, if I have never mentioned it, it is solely out of respect for a certain idea of your independence that you have been able to create. I say “a certain idea,” because that independence itself cannot be questioned. Moreover, what the laboratory can do to assist you amounts to hardly anything, as you know, but by agreeing to add your name to our staff, you bring us additional prestige, and I am the one who should be thanking you. At least this mystical union gives me hope that we will have a few additional occasions to chat.
Warm wishes,
Claude Lévi-Strauss
* * *
Paris, April 5, 1970168
Dear friend,
Returning from the country, I find your letter and L’Empire des signes, and I do not want to be slow in thanking you. The book produced by your fertile pen touched me all the more deeply because at the age of six I was transformed into a Japanese art fanatic by a gift I received of a Hiroshige print. I spent my whole childhood and adolescence playing the little collector to the point that I became almost an expert for a time. And perhaps it is to preserve Japan as a myth that I have never been able to bring myself to go there. So I was delighted to visit it with you as a guide, since you declare your intention from page one to treat Japan as a myth.…
Since my last letter, I have come up with a bundle of additional arguments.169 Zambinella being physically present in the story in the guise of an old man, the symbolic genealogy is read from the bottom up, the actual genealogy from the top down. So only the second level remains invariant. Now, par[agraph] 433, Mme de Lanty inverts Zambinella, and Mme de Lanty is “brotherless” whereas (407) Zambinella asks Sarrasine to come fill that position, left empty in actual genealogy. Following the same logic, the first level of the symbolic genealogy must correspond to the third level of the actual genealogy, that is to say that (sarrasin—“Sarrasine”) < (Filippo—Marianina). Now it is remarkable that the lexical item (sarrasin = Arab from Spain), totally absent in the text and that I postulated to balance the system, is implied in the patrilineal filiation of Filippo, who can only get from his father, “dark as a Spaniard,” (24) his “olive complexion, thick eyebrows, fiery velvet eyes” (22). The system is thus closed by the transformation of the maximum space (Filippo—Marianina), that is an oblique 1st/3rd level relationship, into a minimum space (sarrasin—Sarrasine) where, subject to inflexion, the space becomes minimum (“Incestuous”) between two terms rendered perfectly “horizontal.”
No need to respond to these last remarks, to which I attach no more importance than they merit.
Cordially,
Lévi-Strauss
P.S. On the subject of inversion (Zambinella/Mme de Lanty), there would also be something to say about the endogamy of the first (who can accept a brother, not a husband) and the exogamy of the second, who has no brother, but does have a husband whose exotic-exogamic nature is stressed by the text and reinforced by the story of Jaucourt, the type of lover coming from outside “to a strong woman, full of energy and passion,” comp. (21) and (443).
* * *
Paris, January 5, 1972
Dear friend,
Thank you for your note, but there was nothing to worry about. The mail has not been reliable these last few months, especially in my neighborhood … and many letters did not reach me. I was only asking because I wanted to make sure the distribution of review copies had been done correctly.
During the last vacation, I read and really liked your Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Unfamiliar with the last one (and already knowing the text), I am more taken with the other two and especially with Sade, about whom you speak excellently, it seems to me. I have always thought that it was by way of logic and the combinatory that he could best be approached. And you demonstrate that with incomparable perception and grace.
Warmest wishes,
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Roland Barthes to Claude Lévi-Strauss
Paris, June 10, 1973
Dear friend,
Only yesterday I received the card from Plon inviting me to the June 4 reception.170 I am sorry; if I had received it sooner, you know, of course, that I would have come to give you my best
wishes and tell you how delighted I am with this (ritual) “passage” of your book into a new milieu.
Please forgive my involuntary absence and accept my faithful friendship.
Roland Barthes
* * *
Paris, November 9, 1975
Dear friend,
In thanking you for your double book on Masks, I promise you that I am not simply performing a gesture of gratitude, however sincere.171 In reading you, I found a kind of exhilarating pleasure; for the first time I think, something is truly revealed about that enigmatic and fascinating object, because the illustrations take one’s breath away. I experienced this book as an extraordinary structuralist lesson in the presence of the object itself. It achieves a perfect balance, which the Skira collection makes possible.
So I thank you for sending this book that I cherish—and assure you of my respectful and faithful friendship.
Roland Barthes
* * *
Paris, February 18, 1976
Dear friend,
I have learned that the Literary Semiology chair has just been declared vacant at the Collège de France. I am applying for the position and would like to thank you again for your support.
Yours ever,
Roland Barthes
* * *
[Paris,] December 3, 1975 (sic! 1976)
Dear friend,
I was going to send you a note to convey to you my deep gratitude for your support and your friendship. My presence at the Collège, in many respects, would have been unthinkable for me, without you.
Thus thank you with all my heart.
R. B.
7. With Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) devoted two major texts to Roland Barthes. As early as 1953, he was one of the first to recognize the importance of Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, which may have provided him with the missing signifier for his own thinking—the Neutral. He paid just as much tribute to Mythologies in 1957.172 The period when they saw each other most often was in the early 1960s during the “Revue internationale” venture in which Blanchot enlisted Barthes. Political differences must have played a role in their growing apart beginning in the 1970s, but the extreme proximity of their thinking no doubt separated them as well. Blanchot powerfully reentered Barthes’s thoughts during his last course at the Collège de France on the preparation of the novel.