Mourning Diary

By Roland Barthes and Richard Howard

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Oct 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781429977074

Book preview

Reviews for Mourning Diary

[jasoncomely-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't connect with this emotionally, although there were some profound entries.

[Sarah Blake · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a standalone book, kind of meh. works best as a companion to other works by Barthes, I think. some lovely gems and insights, though.

[pivic-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book on a whim, as I've never read Roland Barthes. I knew of him, of his prolific careers and different types of writing, but not of his heft.

This book is written after Barthes’s beloved mother died. Its contents are detailed on the cover of the book: it contains details of his feelings from just after his mother died.

Don’t say mourning. It’s too psychoanalytic. I’m not mourning. I’m suffering.

The book says it all. This is a collection of pain, of temporal and temporary relief, of despair, anguish, and anger. In spite of how we currently, as human beings, tend to hide our pains, Barthes displayed them and the world is a far better place for it.

The Notting Hill Editions version of this book is very well made: it allows the writing to breathe and make the room that it needs.

This book is needed by all.

[proustitute_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"I am either lacerated or ill at ease
and occasionally subject to gusts of life"

Devastating.