Franzi reads Roland Barthes

It’s 1998. The lecture has just ended and Franzi’s favourite professor asks her to wait for a moment. Once the other students have left the classroom, he pulls Roland Barthes’ A Lovers Discourse: Fragments out of his bag. He had two copies on the shelf and thought of her, it’s one of his favourites. He pays meticulous attention to detail, and you end up finding yourself in the text again and again. The professor smiles at Franzi and runs his fingers along the spine of the blue paperback before placing it in her hands. Franzi blushes, but thanks him very matter-of-factly.

The professor writes books, takes part in panel discussions, organizes academic conferences in theatres and pop conferences at the university. Jens tells his students to call him by his first name, insists they converse as equals. In his work he considers his own positionality and makes sure to acknowledge the limitations of his position. For him, everything is political. He tries to approach every situation ethically, even when it makes things difficult for others. In conversations with students, he’s longwinded and intense, but at the same time he gives whomever he’s talking with his full attention. Nothing is taken for granted. During panel discussions he often speaks in English so as not to exclude anyone, but uses words that nobody knows. He doesn’t notice that barely anyone understands him. The sheer determination of his efforts is impressive, even if his efforts don’t always come to fruition, as far as Franzi can tell. But in spite of—or perhaps because of—these strenuous efforts, he leads a life in the midst of artists and intellectuals. He personally knows Isa Genzken, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kerstin Grether, Christian Petzold, Rainald Goetz und Diedrich Diederichsen, and he’s prepared to show this world to Franzi, at least in theory, and in book form. For example, he introduced her to the work of Judith Butler, Donna Haraway und Gilles Deleuze, but above all: Klaus Theweleit and Slavoj Žižek, whom Franzi devoured. Theweleit and Žižek’s work is smart and depressing, and explains to Franzi why certain things go wrong: why male artists are dangerous, which types of collaborative art-making projects fail, and why the oppression of minorities is necessary for the existence of capitalism. They explain to Franzi the conditions in which she lives and the conditions in which she will make art. Much of what she reads immediately resonates. The doom that Theweleit and Žižek write about is entirely believable, and this doom belongs to the world of adults in general, but in particular to the world of art. Franzi races towards this world with all of its doom as quickly as she can. Maybe Žižek and Theweleit can keep Franzi from underestimating capitalism, being destroyed by creative men, or from making exploitative art herself. Even if she doesn’t know exactly what that could look like.

If Roland Barthes is as incredible as Theweleit and Žižek, then he’ll be able to tell her how romantic love can go wrong and how to imagine it in a friendlier way. She’s very interested in that. But even more so, she’s interested in what kind of love Jens thinks highly of, and if by chance the book has a conscious or subconscious message from Jens, she’s interested in that most of all. At home she immediately climbs into bed with Roland Barthes and begins to read. Barthes examines the structure of love. Each fragment is only a few pages long, organized under headings like “Inexpressible Love” “The Ghost Ship,” “No Answer” …Franzi starts with the most alluring titles first, for example “Waiting”:

“Am I in love? – Yes, since I’m waiting.” The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try busy myself elsewhere to arrive late; but I always lose this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover’s fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits.

Now Franzi proceeds systematically, reading each fragment, one after the other, and as she does so, becomes more and more impatient. Love itself never begins. Someone is always falling madly for someone, but Barthes’ lover is alone in his loving. He voluntarily makes himself crazy. Sometimes he’s happy for a moment, but mostly he’s unhappy. He’s always the one who loves more, who waits more. Usually everything ends before it’s even started, rarely does it ever even make it to sex. Never is there an actual relationship. Meanwhile Roland Barthes refers frequently to Goethe’s Werther. Franzi had never liked The Sorrows of Young Werther: Werther strikes her as too impressed with himself and his good heart. He’s constantly complaining about small-minded and grumpy people, but in the end, he kills himself, which is a terribly bad-tempered thing to do. For Franzi, Werther is a narcissist, whose image of himself as the Grand Lover is five times more important to him than what happens to Lotte. But apparently Roland Barthes likes Werther and thinks that he represents the archetypal lover.

The last few hours Franzi only skim-reads, and by 9 p.m. she’s finished the book. She feels exhausted and makes herself a bowl of vanilla ice cream with poached pears, which ends up not tasting especially good. Then she calls Patrick. They’ve been together for five years, but at the moment they live in different cities. Franzi immediately dives in and tells him how dumb she thinks Roland Barthes is, and how strange that Jens is so moved by him, which would indicate that he himself loves in the way that the book describes, which would be very, very strange. It would mean that Jens, who in every other context was so responsible and political, gave into the imaginary when it came to love, and took no responsibility for anything. Was that possible? That he believed love just happened to you and you can’t defend yourself? And that it’s a good thing to get lost in your fantasy, to the point where you can’t even see the other person? That just doesn’t sound like him. Franzi keeps going: Theweleit, for example, would entirely reject Barthes’ ideas as a healthy depiction of love. Or Žižek: although he would possibly acknowledge the existence of this awful dynamic, he definitely wouldn’t idealize it. She knows that Jens isn’t some self-awareness hippy type, but she didn’t expect this. Depicting this type of essentially abusive relationship as the paradigm of love seems violent, backwards, the opposite of liberating! Or at the very least, it’s incredibly sad. Patrick doesn’t say much, he hasn’t read Barthes. Perhaps he also thinks that Franzi talks about Jens too much. And so, Franzi leaves it at that and asks about Patrick’s day. He tells her about band practice and the newest development in the argument between the two guitar players, while Franzi lets out a quiet, inaudible sigh. But then she asks genuine follow-up questions. After they’ve thoroughly discussed the details of the conflict between his bandmates, Patrick gets out his guitar and sings his newest song over the phone, which is, in fact, lovely.

That night, Franzi can hardly sleep. It’s such a shame that the book is the way it is, and even more so that Jens is the way he is. She keeps forgetting how difficult it actually is for the two of them to communicate, how recently he was beaming when he told her that the title of an article she had written shouldn’t be “We are in order!” but rather “We are not in order!” She was shocked, but he was very pleased with his idea. It’s depressing how badly he understands her, but in a way, it also achieves a kind of balance. Jens knows infinitely more about theory and art than she does, but in his encounters with Franzi he’s not very perceptive, doesn’t notice how different they are from each other, doesn’t even notice that the other students in the class, including some of the guys, figured out a long time ago that he likes Franzi and have been teasing her about it. In an unexpected way, the fact that Franzi and Jens each know more in one area than the other adjusts the power dynamic in their relationship such that they can speak with each other on equal footing.

Obviously, it’s a good thing that Roland Barthes is such a disappointment. Now Franzi can stop thinking about Jens. She’s in no way interested in Barthesian love, which means that she won’t make Patrick sad by falling in love with someone else. If she were to embark on a relationship with Jens, she would be fulfilling the pattern that Theweleit described somewhere: find a partner who’s smarter and more experienced than you, learn from them until becoming their equal, and then after two to four years move on to a new, even smarter and more successful partner and continue climbing from there. Franzi has to admit that she’s drawn to powerful men whom she can overtake bit by bit. Patrick, who’s six years older and was much smarter and more capable than her at the beginning of their relationship, fits this pattern precisely. But she doesn’t want to be this way. And anyway, Jens is too old for her, even if maybe not by that much. Besides, if Barthes’ style of love is really what he’s into, then she would much rather have the kind of love that she and Patrick share. By comparison their love seems more mature, kinder. It’s based on an ideal of mutual regard and avoiding fantasies as much as possible. They agree that in relationships—and life in general—the whole point is being present in the moment, and fantasizing makes being present in the moment impossible. Patrick and Franzi aren’t chasing the biggest thrills, but trying to feel whatever is happening in that particular moment. Tantra, not porn. On every level. They’ve agreed to be generous and honest, even while accepting that every functional relationship is also transactional. Patrick is very aware of this kind of thing, and Franzi has learned a lot from him. This kind of non-hysterical, grounded-in-the-present love isn’t even in the realm of possibility for Roland Barthes, even if he is into Zen.

A few weeks later, everything is as before between Franzi and Jens, back to pre-Roland Barthes. They can’t help but grin as soon as they see each other. They continue having long conversations during his office hours in which he misunderstands her but which she nevertheless enjoys immensely. She continues working harder for his seminar than for any of her other classes and still reads everything he recommends. Sometimes, before she falls asleep, she imagines that Jens, like the most blinded-by-love of Barthes’ lovers, is so irrepressibly infatuated with her that he can’t hold himself back and the next time they see each other he’ll pull her towards him and confess his love. Even if she has no idea if that would feel good or what she would do if that happened. But she prepares herself in vain—the moment never comes.

*

It’s 2010. Franzi is thirty-seven and back in bed with Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments. It’s Saturday, the sun is shining and the window is open, but she hasn’t left her bed all day. She’s lovesick. The man she loves, she can’t have. He, an architect, lives in a city 900 kilometres away and doesn’t call. He loves her from a distance, he adores her more than any other man ever has, he wants to take pictures of her, to film her, to record her voice, but—and this astounds her—it doesn’t mean he wants to live with her. Now Franzi reads A Lover’s Discourse because what Roland Barthes writes about pertains to her. Now it’s her drama, and she has to admit that in many of his observations, he’s right. Yes, it is exactly like that. It’s awful. It’s so sad that now at thirty-seven she sees herself reflected in these ridiculous Barthes’ characters. She and the man whom she loves, who in some way also loves her, are two foolish Barthesian lovers. The architect is in fact just like Goethe’s Werther: he thinks highly of his good heart. He’s pleased with how quickly it beats and how deeply he feels. Meanwhile, he believes that his infatuation doesn’t affect Franzi, that it’s his own private pleasure. For him it’s enough to be so in love and in awe, which strikes him as pure and innocent. And even though he tells her very directly that her presence would be too much for him, it takes Franzi a long time to realize that she actually disturbs his revery. When she does visit his city, he immediately comes down with a high fever. He even says to her that he would become stupid with desire if they were in the same room, which he finds beautiful and profound. He says he has no intention of resisting his infatuation, but even if he wanted to, it wouldn’t work. When he says this, he sounds proud. In his mind, the fact that there’s another woman in his life has nothing to do with Franzi. All of which sounds precisely, terribly, like what Barthes describes.

But Franzi herself is even closer to what Roland Barthes depicts: she’s the one who can’t stop waiting, who interprets everything, who loves more and can’t help it. For many weeks Franzi and the architect have been writing each other long emails in which they explain themselves. They try to be kind and honest, and yet everything is without hope. Even though Franzi knows this, she refuses to believe it, because he loves her, and because the life which she could have with him and only with him infinitely lures her. It pains her to see how ridiculous they are, two decent people who are smart and creative but can’t manage to treat each other well, or at least give the impression of being mature adults. He doesn’t return calls, doesn’t keep his promises, postpones visits and travel plans at the last minute. She gets angry at him, then takes it back, then launches more accusations. The longer it goes on, the more panicked she becomes. All of this, and he’s not even her type. He has a scraggly beard and an awkward relationship with his body, and his constant gushing and extravagant enthusiasm gets on her nerves. Even their attempts at having sex are awkward, they get too nervous to let their bodies act naturally with each other, and so Franzi can’t even say for sure if it feels good to touch him. The only thing she knows for certain is that she likes him a whole lot and would very much like to live with him. But that’s no reason to fall so stupidly in love. Clearly, Franzi is less evolved now than she was ten years ago. This love has little do with actually knowing the other person, and Franzi can see that she’s getting caught up in projections. But she can’t find her way out. She can’t let go of the image-repertoire, which is not only awful but also narcissistic. She thinks about Jens and his enthusiasm for Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, and how he recognized himself in it. Maybe the obsessive infatuation that Barthes describes isn’t the territory of adolescence—as she thought at the time—but belongs to the realm of mid- to late-30s, her age now and Jens’ age then. Perhaps the passing of time makes it more difficult to keep oneself from fantasizing. Could it be that a person doesn’t become better at love with time, but more warped and ridiculous?

Franzi can do nothing but lie in bed and weep and read Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes is kind to her. Again and again, he tells her that this is just the way it is. He thinks that what she’s experiencing is within an existing structure and that she’s fulfilling a pre-ordained role, all of which he describes in great detail. Barthes’ language is lovely, she hadn’t noticed that on her first reading. Through his language he connects Franzi’s dumb love with something beautiful, and seems to find her lunatic obsession, for which she berates herself, relatable and even likeable. This comforts Franzi a bit, even though she’s certain that she brought this lunacy on herself by not paying enough attention to what she actually felt in the architect’s presence. She hadn’t believed him when he warned her about himself, and even though she could recall precisely what he said, she had still allowed herself to fantasize endlessly. She felt guilty while doing it, knew that it was wrong, but didn’t stop. With Roland Barthes that was the only kind of love: full of fantasy and narcissism. Franzi is sure that this isn’t right.

In the evening, under the heading “Exiled from the Image Repertoire” she finds instructions for how to kill love. She almost missed it. Roland Barthes likely wasn’t aware that he was writing instructions, but that’s what they are. It’s about taking every small what a shame! inside yourself and destroying it. Because every it’s such an incredible shame is about the fantasy life that Franzi could have with this man and this man only. It names the cursed and grandiose delusion of finally being able to be herself in this very particular, special way that only the architect awakens in her, a version of herself that she very much wants to be. Her imagination runs wild, because this unique and heavenly existence seems so painfully close. That’s why she can’t let it go, because she would only need to reach her hand out a little further. But she’s not close. Franzi has to learn this. She needs to kill every last what a shame inside herself, because inside each one there’s the hope that somehow in some way, they could still get this life. Now Franzi’s work is reminding herself every time this intoxicating energy takes hold of her that this imagined life wouldn’t be good, for the simple reason that she can’t have it. What she can have is more waiting and maybe a little sex. But it would be sex that would leave her feeling alone and in despair. So, it’s not a shame that she can’t have what she wishes for, because it doesn’t exist, even though it could exist, if only the architect were to change the tiniest bit. But he won’t change.

For the rest of the evening Franzi lies around and eats pears and chocolate and bread with butter and Emmentaler and Brie. She drinks a lot of water. Occasionally she reads another bit of Barthes. Mostly she just lies around and waits for more instances of what a shame! to arise within her. And they do. Often, they’re fantasies of life as part of an artist couple, of conversations and collaborative art projects, in which Franzi could be a different person than she is on her own. Even as she kills off each hopeful longing, she can feel how she’s desperately trying to leave a back door open. But each time she destroys one of these beautiful imaginary existences, the back door closes a little more.

On Sunday Franzi is calmer. No more crying. It seems she effectively rid herself of every what a shame! the night before, in any case none speak up. Something is really over. She returns again to “Exiled from the Image Repertoire”:

Mourning for the image, insofar as I fail to perform it, makes me anxious; but insofar as I succeed in performing it, makes me sad. If exile from the Image-repertoire is the necessary road to “cure,” it must be admitted that such progress is a sad one. This sadness is not a melancholy—or, at least, it is an incomplete melancholy (and not at all a clinical one), for I accuse myself of nothing, nor am I prostrated. My sadness belongs to that fringe of melancholy where the loss of the beloved being remains abstract. A double lack: I cannot even invest my misery, as I could when I suffered from being in love. In those days I desired, dreamed, struggled; the benefit lay before me, merely delayed, traversed by contretemps. Now, no more resonance. Everything is calm, and that is worse. Though justified by an economy—the image dies so that I may live—amorous mourning always has something left over: one expression keeps recurring: “What a shame!”

Franzi closes the book, puts Roland Barthes back on the shelf, and cleans the kitchen. She feels strangely sobered—maybe a bit like Barthes described. It’s remarkable that it worked, that Barthes was able to help cure the very love which he himself illuminated.

*

Months later Franzi notices that as a result of her heartache, something has fundamentally shifted. She had always believed that she was a lucky person and that at the right time she would meet the right people, and that life would go well as long as she didn’t actively get in the way. Almost like she thought there were some kind of higher power watching over her, or that everything happened for a reason. She doesn’t believe that anymore, and this existential uncertainty stays with her for years after she snuffs out the final architect-related what a shame!

[1] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang: New York, 1977), 39-40.

[2] Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments, 107-108.

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“What a Shame!” (“Wie schade”) is part of the collection of stories Das Gefühl zu denken, published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin.

Veronika Reichl lives in Berlin as an author, illustrator and lecturer. She studied communication design and media art in Stuttgart and Portsmouth and completed her doctorate on the visualizability of philosophical texts. Her latest publication was Das Gefühl zu denken (The Feeling of Thinking), was published in 2023. Instagram: veronika_reichl

Francesca Hyatt is a writer, translator and professor of English at CUNY-Queens College. In 2022 she was awarded the Birdhouse Prize for her chapbook Forestwish (Ghostbird Press). She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and is an assistant editor at KtB Magazine. She lives in New York. Instagram: @francescavhyatt Website: https://www.francescahyatt.com/