When I was a small child my mother used to listen to a Radio Serial called "When a Girl Marries:For all those in Love and For All who can Remember"If we can leave aside all bourgeois and stereotype interpretations of this , I would say that this is not too bad an interpretation of Barthes book,and I am thinking of the "And all those in Love and for all those who can remember" bit!
Leaving aside the bourgeois and stereotype bits IS important as this book is the work of a learned man who loves nuances, who catches the tail of experiences as they pass by! it is a difficult book to review because, among other things, too discursive a treatment would miss one or more of the glorious aspects of this work.
So, how am I going to introduce this book?First let me say the book is WONDERFUL! it is a sheer delight and not least in its "economy"; I say economy because each fragment is worth a couple of hours or so reflection! This work takes you to the "depths"; to the depths of what? This book is an "ultrasound" of the psycho-amorous;an XRay of the fall into love,and insofar as it does such it avoids all binaries such as homosexual/hetrosexual, male/female and most if not all other stereotyped binaries to boot. Well for me, the title which I have given to the work says it for me. Let me try to make myself clear.
There are those who find the Amazon Jungle fascinating, its unity and its diversity, its astounding beauties and the elements which produce "fear and trembling". All this is not to leave aside the CHALLENGE, with the accompanying realization that those who venture therein may even find suicide a real option.For these and other reasons I find a great similarity between the Amorous and the Amazon;what we are looking at here is the conquest involving the HUMAN in both instances.
The Amorous journey,for some strange reason,nay, for many strange reasons, appears to involve a struggle(for most)in the innermost psychic jungle which is just across the river of complacent, normally respectable human beings. On the surface there is a flow; underneath there is the lurking FLUX! falling in love for many, if not most, is a fall into the ABYSS.
Roland Barthes reports( I do not say "explores") the delights and, to use a Postmodern word, the deconstructions of that abyss. Like the Amazon, there is the HYPNOTIC (Cf.p189), the fascination with the image(ibid.), the "ravishment",the instantaneous capture(p.197). I AM IN LOVE!
Then comes the entrancing EXPLORATION of the image;the familiarizing of oneself with the ,yes, the EXOTIC. Dates, interlocutions (personal and telephonic) little trips here and there;literary correspondences and plunges into Intimacy. The exploration into the labyrinthine jungle of the libidinal life has commenced. One becomes satiated with sight and sonority.The Amazonian delights evoke eternity."Lord, let me stay here, this place/space is perfection itself";we have returned to the Platonic prenatal paradise. This Roland Barthes tells us is "The sweetness of the beginning"(p.197). AND SO IT IS!
Now comes what we do not want to hear and we do not want to experience,however, it seems we MUST, at least more often than not! THE SEQUEL.this sequel appears as a " downspiraling ", an entropic PULL, a pull back towards the postnatal forgetting. The Amazon begins to 'fight back';it refuses to be taken for granted,it is not only there for our would-be amusement and delights!We succumb to WOUNDS; (sudden inattention of the Loved Object, even momentary; disturbing fraternities ; unanswered calls which bring eternity into time:unavailability ... all ego-destroying). Even one wound ,intentional or not, can begin the depleting of amorous resources of expectations; elements of uncertainty begin to make the trek incipiently questionable.A new psychic companion arises, ANXIETY. It ,of course, is anything but welcome but it seems not to care!
The Amorous explorer had exhausted linguistic possibilities in the use of the word ADORABLE(p.18),it was the summit of description, a verbal clasping of the ineffable; the amorous subject surrenders to holism; Spinoza's cosmos resides in this image. But now, feeling states turn Postmodern and seek to mercilessly deconstruct the explorer's vocabulary,all is not rosey( as at the beginning)in the lush undergrowth! leeches appear and psycho-malarial infection exacerbates the debilitation of first love.
DESPAIR, Werther-like despair enters and the thought (if not final as with Werther ) of not going on, of putting oneself out of the struggle(p.218) suggests itself.With the delirium of defeat which explorers of the Amazon/Amorous experience ,irrationality inserts itself into the thinking equation.
The sky that was so blue between the trees, symbols of nutritional ravishment , but now there are clouds of 'darkening moods"(p.169). if one is not to take Werther's suicide seriously then one MUST go on, even if more of the same lies ahead. There is no going BACK, there is no not going ON one must go AHEAD.
Beware "all ye who would enter here", but I know you will not heed this warning. Such is the allure of THIS jungle of twisted vines, predators galore and heartbreaking disappointments. it seems that going into it we must!
This review has sought to give a glimpse(poor as it is)of the sort of thing you will find in this wonderful book. The review does no justice to Barthes's brilliant language or the enormous and engaging NUANCES of the work.A full treatment would require a full-blown monograph, and then such would fall short of the task. Exploring such is a delight that awaits the one who "picks up and reads"!
CLAUDIUS CLEAR.
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Very disappointed.
This book was mis- printed but I didn't realize it until after the return window had closed. Very disappointed.
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