Writing Degree Zero - Barthes

1953

“Like modern art in its entirety, literary writing carries at the same time the alienation of History and the dream of History; as a Necessity, it testifies to the division of languages which is inseparable from the division of classes; as Freedom, it is the consciousness of this division and the very effort which seeks to surmount it. Feeling permanently guilty of its own solitude, it is none the less an imagination eagerly desiring a felicity of words, it hastens towards a dreamed-of language whose freshness, by a kind of ideal anticipation, might portray the perfection of some new Adamic world where language would no longer be alienated . The proliferation of modes of writing brings a new Literature into being in so far as the latter invents its language only in order to be a project : Literature becomes the Utopia of language.” (P.87-88)

Barthes, Roland. Page 87-8, Writing Degree Zero. Translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Beacon Press, 1970.