Fragments of An Amorous Discourse: Canon in Ubis

Abstract

The cover of Roland Barthes’s recent Fragments d’un discours amoureux presets a puzzle for the reader: a fragment of a painting of Tobias and the Angel, it constitutes an opaque glaze, a scumble, through which the reader scans the text that follows. The configuration created by that frame seems to form the letter R. A prolonged gaze discloses prefigurations of Roland’s childhood in the Apocryphal story on which the painting is based, makes possible a reading of Goethe’s Werther as a parallel to that noncanonical legend, and reveals Barthes’s name inscribed within a short story of Balzac. Alternatively playing the roles of Tobias, angel and fish, Barthes and the reader engage in canonical imitation, a reunion of readers and lovers.