A Writer's Ruminations

"I have often asked myself why I enjoy writing (manually, that is) to such a great extent that usually the pleasure of having a nice sheet of paper and a good pen in front of me (as if it were the work bench of the bricoleur) makes up for the often thankless tasks of intellectual labor. Even as I reflect on what I should write (as is happening at this very moment), I feel my hand move, turn, connect, dive, rise, and often enough, as I make my corrections, erase or even obliterate a line. This field expands until it reaches the margins, thus creating, out of seemingly functional and minuscule traces (letters), a space which is quite simply that of art. I am an artist, not because I represent an object, but more fundamentally, because, as I write, my body shudders with the pleasure of marking itself, inscribing itself, rhythmically, on the virgin surface (virginity being the infinitely possible)… . Writing is not only a technical activity, it is also a bodily practice of jouissance."

— Roland Barthes, from the preface to La civilisation de l’écriture by Roger Druet and Herman Grégoire