A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Barthes's fascination with Structuralism is abundant in this examination of the terms that could perhaps summarize the incomplete thoughts of an anxious lover. He asserts that the thoughts and words of a lover remain suspended-- they show themselves as thin representations of the truth that lurks in the the lover. Sentences trail off, remain unfulfilled, and are swallowed by frustration. Reading this, it is easy to say, "No kidding! I'm so glad that someone could put this into words!" And that is the torture of his paradox. The words are weak-- the thesaurus will forever be incomplete. The text is a work of metafiction, if ever there were one. Easy to read; yet compelling, Barthes is the essence of the bittersweet.

A personal favourite. Captures admirably the absurdity of it all. Contains gems like `Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so.' Also has what is probably the best paragraph ever written on jealousy: `As a jealous man, I suffer four times over: because I am jealous, because I blame myself for being so, because I fear my jealousy will wound the other, because I allow myself to be subject to a banality: I suffer from being excluded, from being aggressive, from being crazy and from being common.'

This is a most wonderful, erudite exploration. It is best in French but the English version is quite scrupulous. An excellent means to understand your own sufferings in love, it provides an anatomy of its stages. The best gift you can give to the suffering, lovers and people you are fond of.

Some readers may find this book difficult. Barthes never attempts to give us a uniform narrative about love. Instead, as the title implies, he provides us with fragments--some of which come from literature and some from his own philisophical musings--of a lover's point of view. Since childhood, we are taught to think of love as a singualar entity. Whether it is God's love, marriage, passion, or patriotism, we are taught to think of love as a unique, and exclusive prize. But as Barthes' points out, love is built upon fragments, many of which are mundane. The most compelling part of "Lover's Discourse" is Barthe's dissection of the phrase, "I love you". Drawing upon literary examples and common sense, Barthes asks us what we mean when we state that we love someone. Do we love what they do for us? Do we love how they make us feel? Do we love the idea of them? Are we in love with love itself? This concept is born out by the protagonist Merseault, in Camus' novel, "A Happy Death". The first thing Merseault says to his lover when she wakes up in the morning is, "hello image". "Lover's Discourse" extracts love from ideology and examines it under a microscope. We may be confused by what we see, and we may not like it, but the view contains more than a glimmer of reality.

Very, very difficult to read. Not because it is hyper-intellectual and most everyone will need a dictionary on each page. This book is so difficult because it taps into the heart of the crazy abyss of love. It seemed at times as if the book could only be understood by someone in the madness of love as s/he reads it. Having loved before is not enough: the details and precision applied to this insanity are too exact, too punishing, too passionate for me to believe that this book can make the same sense for those in love as for those out of it. By the same token, to read this while in love can be a demolishing experience. To know that this passion has been felt and analyzed so well by someone of towering intellect is little solace to the solitude one feels reading these words. A brilliant and disturbing book.