Barthes on the light of the Southwest

He’s pronounced “Bart” of course. I’m talking about Roland Barthes, the very influential French writer, philosopher,  semiologist and critic.

Here’s an extract from a piece he did for L’Humanité in 1977, about his travels to the ” Sud-Ouest”. It was written on 17 July that year, and talks about the quality of the light.

Roland Barthes

The Light of the Sud-Ouest

“…Whenever I drive down from Paris (I have made this trip a thousand times) I pass Angoulême, where there is a signal that tells me I have crossed the threshold and am entering the country of my childhood; a pine grove on one side of the road, a palm tree in a courtyard, a certain height of the clouds that gives the terrain the mobility of a face.

“Then begins the great light of the Sud-Ouest, noble and subtle at the same time; never gray, never low (even when the sun is not shining), it is light-as-space, defined less by the colors it imparts to things (as in the other Midi) than by the eminently habitable quality it communicates to the earth. I find no other way of saying it: it is a luminous light.

“You must see this light (I would almost say: hear it, so musical is its quality) in autumn, which is the sovereign season of this country; liquid, radiant, heartrending since it is the last fine light of the year, illuminating each thing in its difference (the Sud-Ouest is the country of microclimates), it saves this country from all vulgarity, from all “gregarity” too, making it inapt for facile tourism and revealing its profound aristocracy (not a question of class but of character).

“Offering such tribute, I catch myself wondering: are there never disagreeable moments in this Sud-Ouest weather?

“Of course, but for me these are not the (quite frequent) moments of rain or storm; not even the times when the sky is overcast; the accidents of light, here, seem to engender no spleen; they do not affect the “soul,” only the body, sometimes sticky with humidity, intoxicated with chlorophyll, or languid, exhausted by the wind from Spain that brings the Pyrenees so close, so purple: an ambiguous sentiment, in which fatigue ultimately has something delicious about it, as happens each time it is my body (and not my gaze) that is stirred.”

Read his full essay (English translation)