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"As Narrative (Novel, Passion), love is a story which is accomplished, in the sacred sense of the word: it is a program which must be completed. For … - Roland Barthes
"As Narrative (Novel, Passion), love is a story which is accomplished, in the sacred sense of the word: it is a program which must be completed. For me, on the contrary, this story has already taken place; for what is event is exclusively the delight of which I have been the object and whose aftereffects I repeat (and fail to achieve). Enamoration is a drama, if we restore to this word the archaic meaning Nietzsche gives it: "Ancient drama envisioned great declamatory scenes, which excluded action (action took place before or behind the stage)." Amorous seduction (a pure hypnotic moment) takes place before discourse and behind the proscenium of consciousness: the amorous "event" is of a hieratic order: it is my own local legend, my little sacred history that I declaim to myself, and this declamation of a fait accompli (frozen, embalmed, removed from any praxis) is the lover's discourse."
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About Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Roland Gérard Barthes
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Additional quotes by Roland Barthes
"الأكثر من ذلك أن النص أبخس حتى من خُفّ! لأن الخُفَّ صُنِعَ لقدميك (لمقاسك، ومتعتك)، كذلك تم صنع قالب الحلوى، أو اختيارُه على ذوقك: ثمة بعضُ التطابق بين هذه الأشياء وشخصك. أمَّا الكتابة فلا تتهيّأ لها هذه المحاباة. الكتابة جافّةٌ، بليدةٌ، إنها نوع من مرداس، تمضي غير آبهة، وبفظاظة، وبدلاً من أن تنحرف عن حتميّتها (اللغزية على كلّ حال)، قد تقتل "الأبَ، الأم، المحبوب". عليّ حينما أكتب، أن أعود إلى هذه البديهية (التي تمزّقني، بحسب ما أتخيّل): لا رفقَ في الكتابة، بل، بالأحرى، رعبٌ: تخنق الآخر، الذي يقرأ فيها، وهو بعيد عن أن يدرك فيها العطاء، تأكيدَ السيادة، والقوّة، والمتعة، والعزلة. ومن ثَمَّ مفارقة الإهداء القاسية: أريد، بأي ثمن، أن أقدِّم لك ما يخنُقك."
You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...
Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my desire.
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished, for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation; for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: I have been fulfilled (all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction).
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