ABSTRACT
The little-known texts of the Oeuvres completes, moreover, provide insights into the "mutation" of Roland Barthes's thinking over the years, a term he prefers to "evolution" in his most far-reaching interview. In a 1944 reminiscence of a trip to Greece six years previously, for example, Barthes notes that "the art of shaving gently comes naturally to all boys, who know how to perform the task better than in Paris; they use all sorts of dubious creams, which they apply with such deftness that the filthy magician puts all worry and repulsion to sleep". Turning to poetry, Barthes continues his polemical rewriting of the text-books by remarking that in classical poetry "a completely formed thought gives birth to speech 'expressing' it", and by adding that in modern poetry "grammar is devoid of its finality, it becomes prosody, it is now only an inflection that subsists in order to present the Word".
