"Other Mythologies..."
Before I start today's important tasks, I am rediscovering one of my favorite books, "A Lover's Discourse" by Roland Barthes:
'The world subjects every enterprise to an alternative; that of success or failure, of victory or defeat. I protest by another logic: I am simultaneously and contradictorily happy and wretched; "to succeed" or "to fail" have for me only contingent, provisional meanings (which doesn't keep my sufferings and my desires from being violent); what inspires me, secretly and stubbornly, is not a tactic; I accept and affirm, beyond truth and falsehood, beyond success and failure; I have withdrawn from all finality, I live according to chance... Flouted in my enterprise (as it happens), I emerge from it neither victor nor vanquished: I am tragic. (Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?)' - pg 22-23
'The world subjects every enterprise to an alternative; that of success or failure, of victory or defeat. I protest by another logic: I am simultaneously and contradictorily happy and wretched; "to succeed" or "to fail" have for me only contingent, provisional meanings (which doesn't keep my sufferings and my desires from being violent); what inspires me, secretly and stubbornly, is not a tactic; I accept and affirm, beyond truth and falsehood, beyond success and failure; I have withdrawn from all finality, I live according to chance... Flouted in my enterprise (as it happens), I emerge from it neither victor nor vanquished: I am tragic. (Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?)' - pg 22-23Tax Deductible Donations
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