Friday, April 11, 2003

 

Guo Xi’s watercolor technique (circa 1000-1090): “After the outlines are made clear by dark ink strokes, use ink wash mixed with blue to retrace these outlines repeatedly so that, even if the ink outlines are clear, they appear always as if they had just come out of the mist and dew.” (Linquan gaozhi [Lofty ambitions in Forest and Streams])

posted by Open Mouth 5:34 PM

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

 
I finally understand what makes "discourse" discourse. Discourse is impossible to summarize, to have its sentences cut up, without decontextualization. One must quote entire paragraphs to give a sense of the thought.

A discourse is something to be chased, to be followed, to trace. It is not right to swallow discourse in bite sizes, especially when each figure of movement under which Barthes organizes his discourse is utterly illuminating.

All this gives the effect of speechlessness on my part: Barthes says it all for me. I have nothing more to add; he leaves no remainder. Should I have the space to speak, I have no real content beyond that of the quote:

Barthes gives another name to compassion: delicacy. "So I shall suffer with the other, but without pressure, without losing myself." A healthiness, a lightness, as the passage ends with "(Ate is the goddess of madness, but Plato speaks of Ate's delicacy: her foot is winged, it touches lightly.)" (58, italics in original)
posted by Open Mouth 2:58 AM

Monday, April 07, 2003

 
Under the figure of agony, Barthes compares a lover's anxiety to a clinical breakdown--what I would call trauma: both derive from "the fear of a mourning which has already occurred," which, for the lover, occurs "at the very origin of love, from the moment when I was first 'ravished.' Someone would have to be able to tell me: 'Don't be anxious any more--you've already lost him/her.' " (30)

Moreover, "the lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits." (40, italics in original)
posted by Open Mouth 5:11 AM

 
Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse, Fragments, trans. by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978).

How to read this while on the edge of falling in love? To hear Barthes trace the work of the lover through his words while keeping myself pulled back? I relent and hope that I will find my way back to safety.
posted by Open Mouth 1:37 AM