Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 - March 26, 1980)
This is the second time in a very short space of time that I've had to talk to you about Roland Barthes. A few years ago, when I proposed to welcome him among you, the originality and importance of a work that had been pursued for more than 20 years with recognized brilliance, allowed me not to have recourse, to support my request, to the friendship I had for him. I didn't have to forget him. I could ignore it. The work was there. This work is now alone. It will speak again; others will make it speak and speak about it. So, this afternoon, allow me to dedicate myself to friendship alone. A friendship that, along with death, which it hates, should at least have the similarity of not being talkative. When you elected him, you knew him. You knew you were choosing the rare balance of intelligence and creation. You were choosing – and you knew it – someone who had the paradoxical power to understand things as they are and to invent them with a freshness never seen before. You were aware that you were choosing a great writer, by which I mean a writer at all, and an astonishing teacher, whose teaching was for those who followed it not a lesson but an experience. But I believe that more than one of you, in the course of these few interrupted years, discovered in this man, who paid for his brilliance with an involuntary share of solitude, qualities of soul and heart that promised friendship. Let me tell you just one thing. He was friendly with you. At first, he was intimidated by you. Old wounds, a life that had not been easy, an academic career made difficult by circumstances, but also by stubborn misunderstandings, had made him fear institutions. Yet he had been struck, and seduced – I can say this because he told me so – by the welcome you had given him: sympathy, attention, generosity, a certain way of respecting one another. He loved the serenity of this house. He was grateful to you for introducing him to it, and for knowing how to maintain it. He was grateful – particularly to Mr. Horeau – and to each and every one of you. To the entire administration too, I'd like to stress, and to all those who, in whatever capacity, work here and with whom he was in contact. It's true, he had a friendship for you, for us. As fate would have it, the stupid violence of things – the only reality he was capable of hating – put an end to all that, and on the threshold of this House where I had asked you to admit him. The bitterness would be unbearable, if I didn't know that he had been happy to be here, and if I didn't feel entitled to carry, from him to you, through the grief, the slightly smiling sign of friendship.
Michel Foucault, 1980.
Reference
Printed
Foucault M., "Hommage à Roland Barthes (12 novembre 1915 - 26 mars 1980)", L'annuaire du Collège de France, Paris, Collège de France, n° 80, 1980, p. 61-62.
