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alisontyne's review
5.0
A lovely, quiet meditation on death, specifically the death of Barthes's mother. I found myself dog-earing many pages in this book.
sangeethat's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of those books that cannot be read at any emotional place. When you're happy and you read this, you think 'what an emotionally overwrought pansy of a Frenchman u are.' But to read it when ur sad, is to have Barthes verbalize your despair for you. He wrote this about the death of his mother but it could very well be about the loss of a lover, a child, anyone to whom there has been an absolute, desperate attachment. It is a stream of consciousness at times, repetitive at times, which is echoing truthfully what grief is.
fodderonherwings's review
4.0
So many beautiful thoughts, ‘Emotion (emotivity) passes, suffering remains’, ‘I ask for nothing but to live in my suffering’, ‘…my taste for writing gives me this apotropaic or integrative power: I integrate, by language…the very fact that language affords me the word “intolerable” immediately achieves a certain tolerance’.
jinjer's review
5.0
Why this book - Joyce Carol Oates mentioned it in an interview.
I loved this book. A few quotes:
The desires I had before her death (while she was sick) can no longer be fulfilled, for that would mean it is her death that allows me to fulfill them.
Disappointment of various places and trips. Not really comfortable anywhere. Very soon, this cry: I want to go back! (but where? since she is no longer anywhere, who was once where I could go back). I am seeking my place.
Occasionally (for instance, yesterday, in the courtyard of the Bibliotheque Nationale), how to express that fleeting thought that maman is never again to be here; a sort of black wing (of the definitive) passes over me and chokes my breathing; a pain so acute that it seems as if, in order to survive, I must immediately drift toward something else.
We don't forget,
but something vacant settles in us.
I loved this book. A few quotes:
The desires I had before her death (while she was sick) can no longer be fulfilled, for that would mean it is her death that allows me to fulfill them.
Disappointment of various places and trips. Not really comfortable anywhere. Very soon, this cry: I want to go back! (but where? since she is no longer anywhere, who was once where I could go back). I am seeking my place.
Occasionally (for instance, yesterday, in the courtyard of the Bibliotheque Nationale), how to express that fleeting thought that maman is never again to be here; a sort of black wing (of the definitive) passes over me and chokes my breathing; a pain so acute that it seems as if, in order to survive, I must immediately drift toward something else.
We don't forget,
but something vacant settles in us.
accalmos's review against another edition
3.0
Très sentimental et honnête, comme le titre le suggère. Parfois les réflexions se répètent mais comme il dit si bien : le deuil n’est pas linéaire.
ccharland's review against another edition
5.0
La sensibilité de Barthes qui se dévoile sans masque dans un rapport complexe au temps et au langage qui éclaire la lecture de sa CHAMBRE CLAIRE
koohzad's review against another edition
3.0
کتابی ساده، بیتکلف و عمیق از مواجهه رولان بارت با مرگ مادرش و تاملاتی در باب مرگ و به ویژه مرگ خودش.