Roland Barthes is having a lovely time and wishes you were here:

in the dentist's waiting room @barthesstudies.bsky.social

Bought a secondhand copy of a Helene Hanff book that turns out to have been withdrawn from a Kent public library this summer. Amazed to see that they’re still using rubber date stamps. I’ve been to Kent only once, but, to quote Barthes, ‘it is quite simply *there* that I should like to live’.

Roland Barthes wishes everyone a good morning:

All Roland Barthes wants is ‘a notebook that can be speedily taken out of a pocket’, and don’t try telling him that an elegant cashmere pullover will do the trick:

If you’re planning to write something today, Roland Barthes would like to remind you that you will be in the realm of jouissance:

Today’s système de la mode is le discours amoureux:

The career that never was — Roland Barthes, psychiatrist:

If you’re looking for words for your new t-shirt/coffee mug/tattoo/tea towel/bumper sticker, everything you need is here:

A post by @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social points out that Maurice Blanchot was born on this day. Here’s how Barthes inscribed a copy of Sade, Fourier, Loyola to Blanchot in 1971:

Maurice Blanchot, born on this day, “offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates.”

Roland Barthes is confused by the number of hair salons in French villages:

I’m about to start my last full week of a month of sponsored walking for charity, so I’m going to post one final link to the separate Bluesky account where I’m charting my progress. There’s also a link to donate there. @nbwalks100km.bsky.social

Roland Barthes just wants ‘a little cosmos’ inhabited only by you and him:

Roland Barthes (from THE NEUTRAL) — talking about the demands of being a public intellectual — but I think this applies to so many things (being a parent, being “nudged” continually by notifications and pings on your phone, endless emails pouring over the transom)

Roland Barthes is having problems talking about the nice weather:

Quelle heure est-il? It’s exactly two months until this year’s volume of Barthes Studies is published.

Roland Barthes encourages you all to adopt Schopenhauer’s schedule for the working day:

A new piece from Kate Briggs with translated excerpts of Bassette’s writing about ‘the Poetic Novel’ (& Barthes makes an appearance)!! #AContinuation25 (cc: @ofbooksandbikes.bsky.social)

A text message from @wendycaitlin.bsky.social reminds me of this line in Barthes’s essay on Réquichot. Never mind modernity; I’m simply finding it a very good description of being 54.

Fine weather and errands — Roland Barthes has all he needs in life:

Roland Barthes sends Philippe Sollers his ‘top, top secret’ new phone number because things had become unbearable with the old one:

Roland Barthes says it’s the weekend and you can nap if you want to:

17 April 1974 — Roland Barthes draws an acupuncture needle in his notebook:

Roland Barthes is struggling to send his condolences:

Roland Barthes is comin’ to town, riding on a donkey:

A sign advertising a sign. (Jean Baudrillard, thou shouldst be living at this hour.)

If Jacques Derrida had been a builder:

Roland Barthes says that you can stroke, savour, and groom language, but, hey, no bleaching:

Annie Ernaux is 85 today, I learn from a post by @sevenstories.bsky.social. Here’s a Barthesian moment from Simple Passion (trans. by Tanya Leslie) — a book that has Barthes for its epigraph:

On the first day of National Translation Month, here’s Richard Howard remembering how Roland Barthes approached having his work translated into English:

New book - free open access pdf - elliptically exploring Roland Barthes' crucial question, "How to live together?", using the example of Jean Vigo’s beautiful 1934 film L’Atalante. punctumbooks.com/titles/barge...

Roland Barthes is not keen on the in-flight service:

Reading Roland Barthes regularly makes life better.

Was just listening to this episode last week and I love how the presenter and guest (and this listener too) are in awe after this section is read: www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...

Roland Barthes is eating tempura:

Roland Barthes tells us what’s in a name:

Roland Barthes on Proust's madeleine moment: #AContinuation25, The Neutral

'The Eloquent Picture' Barbara Burns talks to Andy Stafford, whose book 'Photo-texts From Below: Collectivist Dispatches from the 21st-Century French Margins' has just been published in Legenda’s Visual Culture series. 👉 www.mhra.org.uk/news/2025/08...

Ingrid Bergman was born on this day in 1915. Here’s Roland Barthes (also born in 1915) writing in his Mourning Diary about her appearance in Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn:

Roland Barthes wants you to stop asking him to pass you the cheese and start remembering the ‘pleasure of language that is of the same—silky—substance as erotic pleasure’:

All of Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse is summed up on this train intercom:

My version of Daniel Boudinet’s enigmatic photo that adorns early versions of Barthes’s La Chambre Claire. I can see why I never had a career as a photographer (taken overlooking the sea in Alexandria - for extra Barthesian flavour! Barthes spent 1949 here as a lecteur!)

Tonight’s the night — Roland Barthes has blown his nose in bed and is now building a whole theory upon the episode:

Barthes being timely — ‘We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense’:

Roland Barthes knows that these are dark, dark times but wants you to keep an eye out for ‘flashes of desire’ and ‘thrilling possibilities’:

Roland Barthes says it’s all fun and games down at the Mythology Information Office:

Barthes on friends.

Roland Barthes is looking at Cy Twombly and putting himself ‘in the hand’s footsteps’:

Roland Barthes wants you to be able to find your way to Proust’s apartment on boulevard Haussmann: