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Mourning Diary

by Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (Translator)

4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 · rating details · 271 ratings · 46 reviews

A major discovery: The lost diary of a great mind—and an intimate, deeply moving study of grief

The day after his mother’s death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society’s dismissal of grief. These...more

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published October 12th 2010 by Hill and Wang (first published 2009)

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Apr 29, 2009 Delphine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

En août dernier, nous étions passés à Urt sur la tombe de Roland Barthes et de sa mère, Henriette Binger.

Le hasard veut que le Seuil, avec la coopération de l'IMEC, publie aujourd'hui le Journal de deuil que le fils a tenu à la mort de sa mère en 1977, et ce pendant deux ans.

Brèves notes sur la douleur pour la plupart, les textes de Barthes abordent abordent parfois, mais très en surface, les oeuvres sur lesquelles l'écrivain travaillait à l'époque. Barthes s'interroge aussi sur la douleur, su...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Michael Palkowski rated it 3 of 5 stars

The existence of this book is interesting ethically at least because its invasive reproduction of a writer's own private scribblings on index cards sutured together for the sake of commercial ends. Ethics aside, the content is really staggeringly aphoristic, infinitely quotable and full of concise instantiated grievance. The observations however require a specific frame of mind to read and the fragmentary nature of the notes does mean that a linear reading is almost fruitless, except if reading...more The existence of this book is interesting ethically at least because its invasive reproduction of a writer's own private scribblings on index cards sutured together for the sake of commercial ends. Ethics aside, the content is really staggeringly aphoristic, infinitely quotable and full of concise instantiated grievance. The observations however require a specific frame of mind to read and the fragmentary nature of the notes does mean that a linear reading is almost fruitless, except if reading purely for chronology. What is clear is that his mother's death leads Barthe to contemplate and deliriously inspect his own mortality. The whole world is sucked into this state, the rain becomes a 'momentary palpitation' and life becomes "mourning in layers", which is a "cruel country".

What we get is an author who treats his own suffering much like a mathematician does with numbers. He is self aware of the therapeutic nature of his notes as he always relates to his mourning in third person, it's always exterior to him and he doesn't accept it. It's suffering, not mourning. He uses a classification schema, a taxonomy of sorts to help him deal with the implication of "forever [being] my own mother". A staggeringly well put observation is when he remarks that he feels as though he has lost his daughter, since he in effect was mothering his own mother for such a long time before she died. The lack of consistency, the lack of form and the lack of meaning truly scares and terrifies Barthe as he feels it in the most simple of things (like hunger pains) to more complicated understandings. The essence of Barthe's conundrum is Kierkegaard's point (which he refers to)

"Once I speak, I express generality and if I refrain from speaking, no one can understand me"

This impossibility to elaborate and fully articulate the suffering he faces leaves him emotionally abandoned (See Note from Jan. 16 1978). What enters is melancholic musings and sad reflections. These points offer a character study more of Barthe, than anything specific about the relationship he had with his mother. Most mourning seems to take on this specific narcissism in which one must face their own death and the inability to grieve for others. To become the subject of dying shows a definitive end to the neutral that Barthe talks about in his lecture series. A problem of course with the book is that the reader is forced to psychoanalyze the disposition and points being made without clarification or elaboration from the author himself, it's therefore a series of calculations and attempts at clarifying what Barthe himself states endlessly that he cannot. The richness of the material therefore depends wholly on the reader's ability at putting the pieces together as one of the more poignant and brilliant aphorisms in the book puts it: we all have our own rhythm of suffering. This is something that time doesn't cure for Barthe as time only "makes the emotivity of mourning pass".

The book itself is also wasteful, with single lined notes sometimes taking whole pages, giving the illusion of content when the manuscript is very small. Indeed a lot of the observations he makes could be coupled or pasted together with other documents or ideas he had at the time including in the neutral where he gives lectures dealing with these issues and reflecting on his mother's death. It does present another side to the stern and verbose literary critic though as he is not filtered through a certain style or presentation here, it's more raw and real. It shows a humanism, a gentleness and someone who deeply cared for his mother.

(less)

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Jan 29, 2013 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Brian by: Proustitute

2013 is the ten year anniversary of my mother’s death.

Pre-dawn, Las Vegas, August 17. “I’m sorry to wake you,” my sister’s voice through the receiver, “but Mom died last night.”

C.S. Lewis: No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Barthes’ book; this diary. Words are wrenched from suffering. A day’s events are distilled and filtered through the lens of loss. Every ache, an intensity that wounds anew. Barthes: At each “moment” of suffering, I believe it to be the very one in which for the...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

For the first time since beginning 10-10-12, the book I chose for my “short” category was actually… short. Roland Barthes’ diary of his mourning of his mother spanned 250 pages, but each page includes only one or two sentences, reflecting on his grief and sense of loss.

I found the diary self-indulgent, which shouldn’t be surprising given that it’s a diary a genre necessarily preoccupied with the self, but somehow the book read as grotesquely self-indulgent. It sets up as its premise the affectiv...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Jeremy Allan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french, theory-criticism-and-philosophy

I began reading this journal on the eve of a difficult break-up and was amazed at how appropriate Barthes' expressions and ruminations on grief were to me at the time. Finishing the collection months later, it is hard not to see the writings as slightly histrionic and over-wrought. To read this when happy is almost to find it unrelatable; to read it while in grief, well that is to find many degrees of resonance.

I think this journal is of value, though, even for the reader who is happily exempt...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Kristīne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, no-darba, non-fiction

''1978.gada 9.jūlijs

Pirms braukšanas uz Maroku, jau ejot ārā no dzīvokļa, es izmetu ziedus, kas stāvēja vietā, kur mam. gulēja slimības laikā, un mani no jauna sagrābj šausmīgas bailes (par viņas nāvi). - Sk. Vinikotu, cik patiesi - bailes no tā, kas jau noticis. Bet dīvainākais ir tas, ka - tas vairs nevar atkārtoties. Un tā mēs nonākam pie galīgā definīcijas.''

Dienu pēc mātes nāves, Rolāns Barts sāk rakstīt Sēru dienasgrāmatu. Kas par Bartu līdz šim nav dzirdējuši, iepazīties var šeit. Mana pa...more ''1978.gada 9.jūlijs

Pirms braukšanas uz Maroku, jau ejot ārā no dzīvokļa, es izmetu ziedus, kas stāvēja vietā, kur mam. gulēja slimības laikā, un mani no jauna sagrābj šausmīgas bailes (par viņas nāvi). - Sk. Vinikotu, cik patiesi - bailes no tā, kas jau noticis. Bet dīvainākais ir tas, ka - tas vairs nevar atkārtoties. Un tā mēs nonākam pie galīgā definīcijas.''

Dienu pēc mātes nāves, Rolāns Barts sāk rakstīt Sēru dienasgrāmatu. Kas par Bartu līdz šim nav dzirdējuši, iepazīties var šeit. Mana pazīšanās ar kungu ir bijusi pavisam īsa, augsskolas laikā ar piebildi es šito gandrīz saprotu!, bet ieraugot Sēru Dienasgrāmatu veikala plauktā, no nosaukuma bīstoties, bet novērtējot autoru, izcēlu palasīt.

Palasīšana varbūt nav tas pareizākais apzīmējums šīs grāmatas būtībai, bet pārsteidzošā kārtā, lasīt bija viegli. Rakstu forma ir kompakta, lapas skrien viena pēc otras, jo bieži vien sērām veltīts tikai teikums dienā. Bet ar vienu teikumu dienu no dienas pietiek, lai saprastu, ka katru dienu zaudējuma sāpes ne sarūk, ne pieaug, tās ir te, un tās ir tur, bet dzīve turpinās, un kāpēc tā?

Ar tuva cilvēka zaudējumu nelepojas, un nelepojas ar to, ka tāds zaudējums vēl nav piedzīvots, bet dzīve mani ir lutinājusi, un uz bērēm nav nācies doties bieži (latvietis manī trīs reizes tfu tfu tfu), tomēr es spēju izprast Barta kā cilvēka - sāpi, vientulību, irracionalitāti - kas nolasāmas dienasgrāmatas rindās. Mūsu pasaulei ar neregulāru regulāritāti pienāk mikro beigas - zaudējam draugus, darbus, dzīves jēgu, pārceļamies, utt - vienā vārdā - piedzīvojam pārmaiņas. Un kas cits ir nāve, kā visgrūtāk pieņemamā pārmaiņa, jo ir galīga un nemaināma? Es pati rakstu dienasgrāmatu, un kaut visbiežāk dusmojos un nesaprotu, kas notiek ar mani un pasauli, ko darīt, un kāpēc es nedarīju, pierakstot savu frustrāciju, saskatu līdzību ar Sēru Dienasgrāmatu. Pirmkārt, tāpēc, ka Dienagrāmata pēc formas - intīms, tikai pašam domāts teksts; Otrkārt - tāpēc, ka es nezinu, jo es nezinu, kas notiek, kāpēc, kāpēc es... un citi mūžīgie jautājumi.

Lasīt - ja gribi sajusties ne-vientuļš savās skumjās.(less)

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Nov 26, 2011 Lesley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Barthes recorded his experience of mourning on little slips of paper over the two years following his mother's death. He expressed so many things exactly as I've thought them -- the existential shock of her sudden nonexistence, the confusion over the present tense, the fear of the catastophe that has already happened and CANNOT happen again, the confusion of finality in the midst of your own numbing, ongoing-ness, the agony and guilt of symbolic rebirth, the sudden marking of before and after, a...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Krista Stevens rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: grief, non-fiction, memoir

Barthes, a French philosopher, writes some raw and compelling lines about the death of his mother. These were not meant for publication (much like Hammarskjold's Markings), but his aphorisms are still eloquent and ring true. Having said that, Barthes' writing isn't exactly approachable, example "Indeterminacy of the senses" - What? Also, Barthes' has no faith to comfort him. The writing is pretty desolate.

Here are my golden lines:

*I know now that my mourning will be chaotic.
*What I find utterly...more

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May 28, 2012 John E. Branch Jr. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: journals-diaries

One is told by the publisher's description that this book illuminates themes that Roland Barthes tackled in his other work. I can't judge the extent to which that's true; I've read very few of his other books. But it also reveals him to have been a man much like other men (rather, as American propriety suggests we should say, a person much like other persons) in his susceptibility to suffering over the loss of one he loved: his mother. No knowledge of Barthes's work is called for; no interest in...more One is told by the publisher's description that this book illuminates themes that Roland Barthes tackled in his other work. I can't judge the extent to which that's true; I've read very few of his other books. But it also reveals him to have been a man much like other men (rather, as American propriety suggests we should say, a person much like other persons) in his susceptibility to suffering over the loss of one he loved: his mother. No knowledge of Barthes's work is called for; no interest in semiotics, structuralism, or even literature is needed.

For each of us, the experience of such a death abounds in contradictions, many of which are reflected here. There is nothing one can say about it; one can speak of it almost without end. We already knew we were mortal; we had no sense of our mortality to compare to what's driven into our hearts when a loved one dies, especially a parent. The world goes on, the tasks of one's life go on, apparently little is different; something essential has changed. The better thing has happened, for to die first would've brought unendurable pain to one's parent; the worst thing has happened.

Possibly one could include the contradiction with which Beckett ends The Unnamable, "I can't go on, I'll go on." But that, I think, is false to the experience; it has the air of a final declaration, an end to the matter at hand, and in a sense mourning doesn't end, though one may cease talking about it. Or else Beckett's line is a statement one might make if one were able to stand outside oneself in a particular way, which Barthes never does. He does seem unable to continue, and it seems that he does, but that's true only within limits. The book reaches no conclusion; it shifts gears a couple of times--after the dated entries come a few undated ones, then a short section presenting notes on his mother--before coming to a halt. Even the final sentence of his dated fragments is unfinished: "There are mornings so sad…"

Nor did Barthes himself go on for long. He didn’t long outlive his mother (she died in 1977, he in 1980), a fact that invites speculation. I wonder whether the acedia (the word he uses, which denotes a deep non-caring) reported here contributed to his decline. Being unacquainted with his biography and unwilling to rely on the results of an Internet search, I'll say no more on the question. Certainly, in the midst of mourning, one doesn't feel like living, but as Barthes says in a late note, "How would I know I don't suffer any more, if I'm dead?"

A note on Richard Howard's translation: Throughout, it employs the French word maman instead of substituting an English term. A recent New Yorker blog entry discusses the question of how and whether to translate that word and makes the same decision that Howard does here: it has no English equivalent--it's more intimate than "Mother," not as childlike or casual as "Mom"--and should be allowed to stand. By coincidence, that entry is about the beginning of Camus's L'Étranger, which reports the death of the narrator's mother.(less)

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Dec 23, 2010 Jon Cone rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reading this collection of fragments that Roland Barthes wrote following the death of his mother in October of 1977, one is lead to conclude that the bond between a gay son and his loving mother is the profoundest of familial relationships. ("My Roland, my Roland.") Ultimately, however, this book provides only a hint of a much greater testament to that love that Barthes never had the chance to write. He died in 1980, barely three years after his mother's death, with whom he lived more or less hi...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

His daily short notes about his mother in the year or two following
her death. "No more reason to live, because now there's nobody alive who
would die if I did." "...death is now domesticated for me, not just a
borrowed concept..." (to paraphrase him). And he repeatedly quotes somebody
who talked about the continuing and irrational"fear of something that has
already happened" and cannot happen again. He lived only a year or so after
his mother's death, thinking constantly about how to keep her f...more

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Mar 10, 2011 M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Commentary over here:
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/good-mou...

November 10

Struck by the abstract nature of absence; yet it's so painful, lacerating. Which allows me to understand abstraction somewhat better: it is absence and pain, the pain of absence--perhaps therefore love?

November 21

Always that painful (because enigmatic, incomprehensible) wrench between my ease in talking, in taking an interest, in observing, in living as before, and the impulses of despair. Additional suffering: not to be mor

...more

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Jan 23, 2013 HM rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: great-translations

رولان بارت پس از مرگ مادرش دست نوشته هایی به نام سوگ نامه باقی گذاشته که ژرفای رنج و دردش را نشان می دهد.
او سال ها تنها با مادرش زندگی می کرد وعشق دیگری نداشت. چنان که در "اتاق روشن" نیز، همگامِ تحلیل عکس ،عشق به مادر را روایت می کند

نویسندگان و بزرگان زیادی مانند شاهرخ مسکوب (کتاب : در سوگ مادر) آثاری در شرح فراق و مرگ مادر دارند اما بارت از درد و رنج و اندوه و سوگ فراتر رفته و دیگر دلیلی برای زندگی ندارد

:
بیست اکتبر 1978
"روز سالگرد مرگ مادر نزدیک می شود. در هراسی افزونم، انگار در این روز - بیست...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Theryn Fleming rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, read-in-2013, read-in-2010s

Consists of the notes Roland Barthes took after the death of his mother, Henriette. She was widowed (via WWI) when he was a baby and they lived together most of his life. The notes are transcribed as they were written, one note to a page. There's a center insert with family photographs and scans of a few of the diary notecards. It's likely the notes would have become the basis for a book but Barthes died (he was hit by a truck and succumbed to his injuries) only months after the diary stops. So...more

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Oct 29, 2012 kissmyshades rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, french, biographical, non-fiction

Much less meditative than I thought it would be - was expecting something more akin to Lewis' A Grief Observed - but it was still really affecting...

"There is a time when death is an event, an adventure, and as such mobilizes, interests, activates, tetanizes. And then one day it is no longer an event, it is another duration, compressed, insignificant, not narrated, grim, without recourse: true mourning not susceptible to any narrative dialectic."

"...that this death fails to destroy me altogether...more

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Apr 18, 2012 hirtho rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: barthes

Begun and set-aside 1/14/12
Returned to and completed 4/18/12

This was very good. It's a diary RB kept after his mom died and each page varies from a phrase or sentence to a couple paragraphs. Footnotes situate us within the references he makes to his own works as well as works he was writing at the time or in between the dated entries as they grow farther and farther apart as he apparently comes out of the mourning he initially sees no end to.

There's a couple times where he makes references to mo...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Isla McKetta rated it 4 of 5 stars

The day by day snippets of mourning in this book are a wonderful complement to Didion's Year of Magical Thinking. Written in the moment by a thoughtful man, the book reveals the rawness and unpredictability of the mourning process in ways that we edit out through revision. Each note is presented on its own page in a way that invites response and reflection. Still, I at times craved the wrap-up and the edit, the summarization and bringing together, perhaps in the vain hopes that death can be expl...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

Mourning's discontinuous character. Imagining Barthes writing these short, elliptical, private notes each day after his mother's death. Having to be in the world and in his sadness at the same time. In his grief he continued to work, teach, write; and to the outside world he was not so consumed that he could not carry out these activities, but consumed nonetheless.

p29: moments when I'm distracted (speaking, even having to joke) - and somehow going dry - followed by sudden cruel passages of feel...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Ana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-and-biographies, non-fiction, favorites, short, philosophy

“…that this death fails to destroy me altogether means that I want to live wildly, madly, and that therefore the fear of my own death is always there, not displaced by a single inch."

“Solitude = having no one at home to whom you can say: I’ll be back at a specific time or who you can call to say (or to whom you can just say): voilà, I’m home now."

"Mourning: a cruel country where I am no longer afraid."

“As for death, maman’s death gave me the (previously quite abstract) certainty that all men are...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Masanaka Takashima rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this in Japanese translation. I felt through pages various pains of loss coming to my heart one after another. They were acute, numb, residual, surficial, deep, abstract and tangible... The author crystallised the time of mourning for his mother with his pure and polished words. You can't turn its pages without felling a pang if you have ever lost someone precious before.

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Feb 23, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is rather like Mallarme's "For Anatole's Tomb." The short fragments are emotionally anguished, poetically repetitive. Barthes describes mourning as "a painful availability." The basic irreconcilability of death turns at the core of this journal, but Barthes' intelligence, honesty, lucidity make its bleakness somehow consoling.

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May 03, 2013 Rachel Aucoin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A thought provoking read at a time when it was most needed in my life. So many sage thoughts about mourning and death that I can not relate all that resonated with me. Anything I say would just be redundant to the many other better worded reviews of this book - so in brief I will say to read it as soon as possible.

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Aug 22, 2011 aya rated it 3 of 5 stars

As a short form diary taken in the form of short notes to himself, Barthes goes from intensely affecting to banal and back to illuminating from one entry to another. This should be expected--it was unintended for publication and completely unedited by the author. He recognizes and allows the banality and the egoism in suffering, which is where both the most affecting and boring parts of the diary stem from. There is much to be learned from such unfiltered grief.

* "in taking these notes, I'm trus...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read2011

A quick read of the notes Barthes made to himself the two years after his mother died. He died not long after in an unfortunate accident, and I wish he had a chance to compile his thoughts. They are scattered, they are long-lasting, a very good capture of what mourning is really like.

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Jul 28, 2011 Roger rated it 1 of 5 stars

Aargh...I'm congenitally incapable of stopping a book once I've started it but this is one of those once in every three years situations where I just couldn't, 40 pages in, go on any more. Whiney, self-evident and altogether off-putting.

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Nov 24, 2012 Alnoory. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was beautiful and difficult. Stages of grief, crippling depression, lulls of nothingness, better days, some distraction, nostalgia, worse days, more crippling depression and so on. It touched me greatly. I loved it all.

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Oct 05, 2012 Merlincito rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you lost someone and you know what is to mourn, hold yourself because you can feel the pain and feel the tears in the pages of this book. I read some pages and walk away from the book for a bit, because there is some strong relationship between the descriptions and what you can feel. Amazing though.

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Mar 22, 2013 Laura Mulry rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. That's some raw unfiltered writing by an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful man. A must read for anyone who has suffered a loss. Will make you feel better.

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Oct 07, 2012 Roxane rated it 5 of 5 stars

For writers grief is either a blessing or a curse because they are able to articulate with exacting detail, the nature of their sorrow. This is a lovely book.

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Feb 14, 2013 Kasey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: journal

My first Barthes (I am a little scared of him in general)--and so appealing to me, both because of its general moving-ness and fragmentary nature.

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About Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. Barthes' work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism.

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“Don't say mourning. It's too psychoanalytic. I'm not mourning. I'm suffering.” — 5 people liked it

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