The Pleasure of the Text Quotes

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“…the book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“...what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface: I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again. Which has nothing to do with the deep laceration the text of bliss inflicts upon language itself, and not upon the simple temporality of its reading.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas—for my body does not have the same ideas as I do.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Boredom is not far from bliss: it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Cinema captures the sound of speech close up and makes us hear in their materiality, their sensuality, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips, a whole presence of the human muzzle (that the voice, that writing, be as fresh, supple, lubricated, delicately granular and vibrant as an animal's muzzle), to succeed in shifting the signified a great distance and in throwing, so to speak, the anonymous body of the actor into my ear: it granulates, it crackles, it caresses, it grates, it cuts, it comes: that is bliss.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Text of pleasure: the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading.
Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain
boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.

Now the subject who keeps the two texts in his field and in his hands the reins of pleasure and bliss is an anachronic subject, for he simultaneously and contradictorily participates in the profound hedonism of all culture (which permeates him quietly under the cover of an "art de vivre" shared by the old books) and in the destruction of that culture: he enjoys the consistency of his selfhood (that is his pleasure) and seeks its loss (that is his bliss). He is a subject split twice over, doubly perverse.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Any demand is frigid until desire, until neurosis forms in it.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teachers, writers, parents -- this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Mõnutekst: tekst, mis rahuldab, täidab, tekitab eufooriat; mis tuleb kultuurist, mis ei keeldu sellest, on seotud mugava lugemispraktikaga.
Naudingutekst: tekst, mis paneb puudust tundma, mis häirib (võibolla isegi teatava igavustundeni), kõigutab lugeja ajaloolisi, kultuurilisi, psühholoogilisi tugesid, kõigutab tema maitse, hinnangute, mälestuste püsivust, tekitab kriisi lugeja ning tema keelepruugi vahel.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“La neurosis es un mal menor: no en relación con la "salud" sino en relación con ese "imposible" del que hablaba Bataille ("La neurosis es la miedosa aprehensión de un fondo imposible", etc.); pero ese mal menor es el único que permite escribir (y leer).”
― Roland Barthes, El placer del texto: Lección inaugural de la cátedra de semiología lingüística del Collége de France, pronunciada el 7 de enero de 1977 (Teoría)

“Forma bastardă a culturii de masă este repetarea ruşinoasă:se repetă conţinuturile,schemele ideologice,ştergerea contradicţiilor,dar se variează formele superficiale:mereu alte cărţi,emisiuni,filme noi,fapte diverse,dar întodeauna acelaşi sens”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“Mă interesez de limbaj pentru că mă rănește sau mă seduce.”
― roland barthes , The Pleasure of the Text

“το βιβλίο δίνει το νόημα, το νόημα δίνει τή ζωή.”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“El texto que usted escribe debe demostrarme que me desea. Esa prueba existe: es la escritura. La escritura es esto: la ciencia de los gozos del lenguaje, su kamasutra (de esta ciencia no hay más que un tratado: la escritura misma).”
― Roland Barthes, El placer del texto y lección inaugural de la cátedra de semiología literaria del Collége de France

“No entanto, a narrativa mais clássica (um
romance de Zola, de Balzac, de Dickens, de
Tolstoi) traz em si mesma uma espécie de mimese
enfraquecida: não lemos tudo com a mesma
intensidade de leitura; um ritmo se estabelece,
desenvolto, pouco respeitoso em relação à
integridade do texto; a própria avidez do
conhecimento nos leva a sobrevoar ou a passar
por cima de certas passagens (pressentidas como
“aborrecidas”) para encontrarmos o mais depressa
possível os pontos picantes da anedota (que são sempre suas articulações – o que faz avançar a revelação do enigma ou do destino): saltamos impunemente (ninguém nos vê) as descrições, as explicações, as considerações, as conversações; tornamo-nos então semelhantes a um espectador de cabaré que subisse ao palco e apressasse o strip-tease da bailarina, tirando-lhe rapidamente as roupas, mas dentro da ordem, isto é: respeitando, de um lado, e precipitando, de outro, os episódios do rito (qual um padre que engolisse a sua missa). A mimese, fonte ou figura do prazer, põe aqui em confronto duas margens
prosaicas; ela opõe o que é útil ao conhecimento
do segredo e o que lhe é inútil; é uma fenda.
surgida de um simples princípio de funcionalidade; ela não se produz diretamente a estrutura das linguagens, mas apenas no momento de seu consumo; o autor não pode prevê-la: ele não pode querer escrever o que não se lerá. No entanto, é o próprio ritmo daquilo que se lê e do que não se lê que produz o prazer dos grandes
relatos: ter-se-á alguma vez lido Proust, Balzac,
Guerra e Paz, palavra por palavra? (Felicidade de
Proust: de uma leitura a outra, não saltamos nunca
as mesmas passagens).”
― Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text