Roland Barthes – Mythologies - soundenvironments

The good-natured image of 'the writer on holiday' is therefore nomore than one of these cunning mystifications which theEstablishment practises the better to enslave its writers. Thesingularity of a 'vocation' is never better displayed than when it iscontradicted - but not denied, far from it - by a prosaic incarnation:this is an old trick of all hagiographies. So that this myth of'literary holidays' is seen to spread very far, much farther thansummer: the techniques of contemporary journalism are devotedmore and more to presenting the writer as a prosaic figure. But onewould be very wrong to take this as an attempt to demystify. Quitethe contrary. True, it may seem touching, and even flattering, thatI, a mere reader, should participate, thanks to such confidences, inthe daily life of a race selected by genius. I would no doubt feelthat a world was blissfully fraternal, in which newspapers told methat a certain great writer wears blue pyjamas, and a certain youngnovelist has a liking for 'pretty girls, reblochon cheese andlavender-honey'. This does not alter the fact that the balance of theoperation is that the writer becomes still more charismatic, leavesthis earth a little more for a celestial habitat where his pyjamas andhis cheeses in no way prevent him from resuming the use of hisnoble demiurgic speech.where the writer's work was so desacralized that it appeared asnatural as his vestimentary or gustatory functions.To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to revealthat he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make evenmore miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, theproducts of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringingnearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it isthe whole mythical singularity of his condition which the writeremphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to somesuperhumanity the existence of beings vast enough to wear bluepyjamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves asuniversal conscience, or else make a profession of liking reblochonwith that same voice with which they announce their forthcomingPhenomenology of the Ego. The spectacular alliance of so muchnobility and so much futility means that one still believes in thecontradiction: since it is totally miraculous, each of its terms ismiraculous too; it would obviously lose all interest in a world2930