ABSTRACT
In Writing Degree Zero, Roland Barthes characterises the impossibility
of writing classical literature as the tragedy of the modern writer. By the second half of the last century, literature was no longer seen to be as natural as language, as natural as speech, and one consequence of the perceived arbitrariness of literature was the necessity of the writer’s addressing the questions of what literature is and what is his relation to it. Loving literature, the modern writer is not content to give it up for dead, as Orpheus was not content to give up Eurydice to
the gods o f the dead. He went to the underworld and played so
movingly on his lyre while he asked the king of the dead to let him take Eurydice back to the world that his words and his music:
M ade the pale phantoms weep: Ixion’s wheel W as still, T ityos’ vultures left the liver, T antalus tried no more to reach for the water, And Belus’ daughters rested from their urns, And Sisyphus climbed on his rock to listen. T hat was the first time ever in all the world
The Furies wept. Neither the king nor consort H ad harshness to refuse him, and they called her, Eurydice . . .
