I am reading Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. In his introduction he writes: '...the lover's discourse is today of an extreme solitude. This discourse is spoken, perhaps, by thousands of subjects (who knows?), but warranted by no one (...). Once a discourse is thus driven by its own momentum into the backwater of the "unreal", exiled from all gregarity, it has no recourse but to become the site, however exiguous, of an affirmation.'

I was thinking about this as I, a couple of nights ago, was re-watching The Dead and apart from the fact that, given a choice, one should always readThe Dead, this is a lovely film and ever so faithful to the text.
That said, Joyce's characters (in their own streams of consciousness) never love passionately - they lust, they doubt. Perhaps this doubt, this lust, is not a symbol of lack of love, but a symbol of its presence? Perhaps the loneliness and alienation of Gabriel Conroy is not a sign that he never loved Gretta, but merely a sign that he is less passionate a lover than Michael Furey?

Do I have a point?
No. I've spent the day being taught how to change a fluent, fruity language into something antiseptic and neutered. And so I'm off to cut out my tongue, so I can neither write nor speak.

However:
Dubliners gave me the will to read.
Ulysses gave me the will to study.

But that is an entirely different story.
posted by charlotte at 17:42 - comment