Barthes and Musil, how to live together: Gonçalo M. Tavares’ literary tables

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Roland Barthes e Robert Musil (2004), by the Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares. It is a peculiar literary text, disposed in form of columns and rows, denominated “literary tables” by the author. I try to expose how Tavares makes Roland Barthes live in his text, beyond the quotations and references to the French author. Therefore, my reading of Tavares’ text is based on an inverted image of the “drugged reading” made by Barthes of Balzac’s short story Sarrasine in a seminar he held between 1967 and 1969, which resulted on the book S/Z (1970). I also seek to relate the “literary tables” to the idea of “calculation of pleasure” contained in Barthes’ study of the oeuvre of Charles Fourier in Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1971). This paper proposes to liken Tavares’ “literary tables” – a device of exactitude which moulds a poetic and fragmentary text – to the diachronic movement made by Barthes’ oeuvre itself, from the enthusiasm with the formalism in the 50’s and 60’s towards the pleasure of Text in the 70’s.