Mourning Diary »

ROLAND BARTHES was born in 1915. A French literary theorist, philosopher, and critic, he influenced the development of schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, and post-structuralism. He died in 1980.

A major discovery: The lost diary of a great mind—and an intimate, deeply moving study of grief

The day after his mother’s death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society’s dismissal of grief. These 330 cards, published here for the first time, prove a skeleton key to the themes he tackled throughout his work. Behind the unflagging mind, “the most consistently intelligent, important, and useful literary critic to have emerged anywhere” (Susan Sontag), lay a deeply sensitive man who cherished his mother with a devotion unknown even to his closest friends.

The Barnes & Noble Review

In 1977, when he was 61, the French philosopher Roland Barthes lost his mother after a prolonged illness. Barthes, by then a celebrated cultural critic, was on the verge of beginning several seminal book projects, including his classic Camera Lucida. Yet alongside this work, he took notes describing his mourning, and compiled a journal of 330 cards spanning two years. These cards, translated by Richard Howard and presented now in book form, are themselves a classic in the making. Whether we approach Barthes as an old intellectual companion, or open his work for the first time, they're not to be missed.

Editor's Note

Foreword Nathalie Leger Leger, Nathalie

Mourning Diary 1

October 26, 1977-June 21, 1978

Continuation of the Diary 153

June 24, 1978-October 25, 1978

Further Diary Pages 211

October 25, 1978-September 15, 1979

Some Undated Fragments 245

Some Notes on Maman 249

Afterword Richard Howard Howard, Richard 257