"Jurnal de deuil" de Roland Barthes

Mi-ar fi plăcut să-l citesc în franceză, pentru că traducerea nu exprimă cuvintele exacte pe care le-a scris autorul, mai ales cînd vine vorba de sentimente, iar aceasta este, mai cu seamă, o carte cu puternică forță emotivă, așa că am rămas la varianta în engleză, pentru că nici măcar cea în română nu era de găsit online.

Jurnal de deuil, adică jurnal de doliu, de Roland Barthes conține fișe cu notițe scurte datate din 26 octombrie 1977, precedată de moartea mamei sale, pînă la 15 septembrie 1979. O spune și titlul - starea generală a cărții e o stare de profundă suferință acompaniată de o gravă disperare existențială.

Cartea e o probă care justifică cu emoție că raportul dintre Barthes și mama sa a fost unul foarte strîns, iar pentru un cititor ca mine, adică tanatofobic, e de-a dreptul teribilă.

Suferinței proprii lui, Roland Barthes i-a dat o definiție specială care mi-a plăcut tare mult: 

·        Suffering is a form of egoism. I speak only of myself. I am not talking about her, saying what she was, making an overwhelming portrait (like the one Gide made of Madeleine). - Suferința e o formă de egoism. Vorbesc doar despre mine însumi. Nu vorbesc despre ea, spunînd ce a fost sau făcîndu-i un potret copleșitor (așa cum a făcut Gide cu Madeleine).

• People never speak of mother intelligence, as if that would diminish her affectivity, distance her as a mother. But intelligence is everything that permits us to live superlatively with another person. 

• If someone is to be born, that will not be blank, but a moral being, a subject of value – not of integration.

• - “Never again, never again!” 

- And yet there’s a contradiction: “never again” isn’t eternal, since you yourself will die one day. “Never again” is the expression of an immortal. 

• For me, the Monument is not lasting, not eternal (my doctrine is too profoundly Everything passes: tombs die too), it is an act, an action, an activity that brings recognition. 

• Why is it that I no longer bear traveling? Why is it that I keep trying, like a lost child, to “get back home” – though maman is no longer there? […] To travel is to separate myself from her – still more now that she is no longer there – that she is no more than the most intimate expression of the quotidian. 

• As for death, maman’s death gave me the (previously quite abstract) certainty that all men are mortal – that there would never be any discrimination – and the certainty of having to die by that logic soothed me. 

• Since maman’s death, no desire to “construct” anything – except in writing. Why? Literature=the only religion of nobilty (as maman was noble). 

• I was not like her, since I did not die with (at the same time) her. 

• - I am unhappy, sad at Urt. 

– Then am I happy in Paris? No, that is the trap. The contrary of a thing is not its contrary, etc. I left a place where I was unhappy and that did not make me happy to leave it. 

• Suicide. How would I know I don’t suffer any more, if I’m dead?