A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. 'I shall be yours,' she told him, 'when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool,… - Roland Barthes

"هذا الصباح (في الريف)، يخيم طقسٌ ضبابيٌّ. آلم (مما أجهل سببه). تراودني فكرة الانتحار، خالصة من أيّ ضغينةٍ (من غير أن أبتزّ أحداً). إنها فكرة باهتة، لا تُحطِّم شيئاً (لا "تكسر" شيئاً) بل تتماشى مع لون هذه الصبيحة و(سكونها، وخُلوِّها)."

Absence is the figure of privation; simultaneously, I desire and I need. Desire is squashed against need: that is the obsessive phenomenon of all amorous sentiment.

Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual. We never encounter a state where man is separated from language, which he then elaborates in order to 'express' what is happening to him: it is language which teaches the definition of man, not the contrary.