Valéry used to speak of those people who die in an accident because they are unwilling to let go of their umbrellas; how many subjects repressed, ref… - Roland Barthes

فالشكل يتراءى معلقا أمام الأنظار وكأنه موضوع . وهو مستنكر كيفما كان إن كان فخما بدا زيا قديما وإن كان فوضويا بدا غير إجتماعي ومتميزا بالنسبة إلى العصر أو الناس وعلى أي وجه بدا فهو عزلة

I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it, according to its caprice (apology of this mortiferous power: certain Communards paid with their lives for their willingness or even their eagerness to pose on the barricades: defeated, they were recognized by Thiers's police and shot, almost every one).

It is not true that the more you love, the better you understand; all that the action of love obtains from me is merely this wisdom: that the other is not to be known; his opacity is not the screen around a secret, but. instead, a kind of evidence in which the game of reality and appearance' is done away with. I am then seized with that exaltation of loving someone unknown, someone who will re-
main so forever: a mystic impulse: I know what I do not know.