Accidentally, Werther’s finger touches Charlotte’s, their feet, under the table, happen to brush against each other. Werther might be engrossed by the meaning of these accidents; he might concentrate physically on these slight zones of contact and delight in this fragment of inert finger or foot, fetishistically, without concern for the response… But in fact Werther is not perverse, he is in love; he creates meaning, always and everywhere, out of nothing, and it is meaning which thrills him: he is in the crucible of meaning. Every contact, for the lover, raises the question of an answer: the skin is asked to reply.
(A squeeze of the hand–enormous documentation–a tiny gesture within the palm, a knee which doesn’t move away, an arm extended, as if quite naturally, along the back of a sofa and against which the other’s head gradually comes to rest–this is the paradisiac realm of subtle and clandestine signs: a kind of festival not of the senses but of meaning.
Barthes, “contacts“, A lover’s discourse.
Such a brilliant text. I think I want to quote this for the conference paper I’m writing about love signs and paranoia. Has there been a rigorous attempt to think romantic (lowercase r) semiotics? Is it not serious enough? — And yet, could anything be more serious?
