Eric Marty on Barthes' Mourning Diary and a New Poetics of Grief

Eric Marty has published a new book, 'La littérature et le droit à la mort', drawn from a recent lecture. The work coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of Roland Barthes' death and follows Marty's publication of the final unpublished writings of Barthes, the 'Lexique de l'auteur'. The book focuses on Barthes' 'Journal de deuil', a collection of notes and reflections written after the death of his mother, published the previous year. Marty argues for a 'pathetic criticism' that reconciles aesthetic quality with emotional charge, redefining literature under the sign of Pity. He demonstrates how such criticism is possible and necessary, opening access to the text's truth and reflecting on literature's relationship with death, opposing a 'civilization of forgetting' with a poetics of mourning that demands a sign, not words. The book is published by Éditions du Seuil.