ABSTRACT
Roland Barthes could be alluding to Vita Nova here, the utopian, autobiographical novel he contemplated writing towards the end of his life and to the preparation of which La Preparation du roman offers the theoretical framework. In Barthes's view, Proust creates 'l'ecriture de vie, la vie ecrite, la "bio-graphematique" ' which is always also 'une thanatographie'. In Barthes Proust figures as a role model for the creation of the imaginary 'ecrivain comme fantasme', in La Chambre claire he appears as paradigm for the writing of the 'originalite de la souffrance', while in La Preparation du roman, in turn, he increasingly functions as a pathfinder of new forms of life writing. Barthes sets against Proust's endlessly unfolding involuntary memory images the concept of the 'immobilité vive' that, in structural reminiscence to Benjamin's dialectical image, aspires to the mnemonic ideal of the pure factum.
