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/lp/uni-neb/what-apos-s-fragile-is-always-new-the-truth-of-literature-in-roland-1EXlexHoix
- Publisher
- University of Nebraska Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © symploke
- ISSN
- 1534-0627
Abstract
“WHAT’S FRAGILE IS ALWAYS NEW”: THE TRUTH OF LITERATURE IN ROLAND BARTHES’ THE PREPARATION OF THE NOVEL RUDOLPHUS TEEUWEN All theorizing is fl ight. —Iris Murdoch (1977, 80) On February 16, 1980, Roland Barthes tells the auditors of his Collège de France seminar The Preparation of the Novel II that the summer before, on August 29, 1979, he read Pascal on the plane to Biarritz (near Urt where he had a summer house). He feels “transported” by Pascal’s text and thinks to himself, to love literature is, from the moment you start reading, to chase away all possible doubt as to its presentness, its timeliness, its immediacy, it’s to believe, it’s to see that there’s a living man speaking to me as if his body were here, next to mine, more real to me than Komeini or Bokassa; it’s Pascal fearing Death, or being overwhelmed by it to the point of vertigo, it’s discovering that those old formulations (for example, “Wretchedness of Man,” “Concupiscence,” etc.) perfectly express the present-day things that are within me, it’s not feeling the need for another language → In fact, the present = notion distinct from the topical; the present is alive (I’m in
Journal
symploke – University of Nebraska Press
Published: Nov 24, 2020