mourning

Finally I've caught up and read last week's New Yorker,

especially moved by Roland Barthes' grief notes,

which he started writing after the death of his 84-year-old

mother, Henriette. Perhaps these became the stuff of his

final book, Camera Lucida, which is a kind of tribute

to his 'maman' as he ruminates on photography

and memory and loss.

But these sweet, diary fragments are raw, made before theory,

in the middle of mourning. Translated by Richard Howard, Barthes'

notes capture that sense of upheaval that stalks you after loss.

Barthes lived with his mother all of his life. He died three years

after his mother.

I love the photo of them -- his long

legs, her long skirt, the sandy road.

In the sentence "She's no longer suffering,"

to what, to whom does "she" refer?

What does that present tense mean?

~~

Sometimes, very briefly, a blank

moment--a kind of numbness--which

is not a moment of forgetfulness.

This terrifies me.

~~

The desires I had before her death

(while she was sick) can no longer

be fulfilled, for that would mean it is her

death that allows me to fulfill them--her

death might be a liberation in some sense

with regard to my desires. But her death

has changed me, I no longer desire what

I used to desire. I must wait--supposing

that such a thing could happen--for a new

desire to form, a desire following her death.

~~

A strange new acuity, seeing (in the street)

people's ugliness or their beauty.

~~

I don't want to talk about it, for fear

of making literature out of it--or

without being sure of not doing so

--although as a matter of fact

literature originates within these truths.