The three avenging angels return from the kingdom of the dead raging: “This is a place for the dying! It’s a scandal! Who are they trying to fool? Why didn’t anyone warn us? If only we’d been there!” It’s a shame there is no photographer in the room to immortalize this great moment in the history of French intellectuals: Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Bernard-Henri Lévy upbraiding the hospital staff for the disgraceful way they are treating a patient as prestigious as their great friend Roland Barthes.
Maybe you’ll be surprised by the presence of BHL but, even back then, he is always where the action is. Barthes supported him as a “new philosopher” in slightly vague but nevertheless relatively official terms, and Deleuze took him to task for it. According to his friends Barthes was always weak, he never knew how to say no. When Barbarism with a Human Face comes out in 1977, BHL sends him a copy and he gives a polite response praising the book’s style, while not lingering on its substance. No matter: BHL has the letter published in Les Nouvelles littéraires, teams up with Sollers, and here he is three years later, raising his voice in the Salpêtrière in a show of noisy concern for his friend the great critic.
Now, while he and his two acolytes continue making a scene by barking at the poor medical staff (“He must be transferred immediately! To the American Hospital! Call Neuilly!”), two figures in ill-fitting suits sneak down the corridor unnoticed. Jacques Bayard watches, baffled and slightly stunned, as the tall, dark-haired man whirls about and the two others squawk. Beside him, Simon Herzog, fulfilling the task he was requisitioned for, explains to Bayard who these people are, while the three avengers bang on, moving through the lobby in a grid pattern that appears erratic but which I wouldn’t be surprised to discover actually obeys some obscure tactical choreography.
They are still barking (“Do you know who he is? Are you going to pretend that Roland Barthes can be treated like any other patient?” It’s always the same with people like that, expecting privileges because of who they are…) when the two badly dressed figures reappear in the lobby before discreetly slipping away. And they are still there when a terrified nurse runs in, a blonde with slender legs who whispers something in the doctor’s ear. Cue a mass movement: people push past one another, charge down the corridor, rush into Barthes’s room. The great critic is lying on the floor, the tube and all his wires torn out, his flabby buttocks visible under the paper-thin hospital tunic. He groans as he is turned over and his eyes roll frantically, but when he sees Superintendent Jacques Bayard, who is standing among the doctors, he sits up, in a superhuman effort, grabs the policeman’s jacket, forcing him to squat down, and pronounces weakly but distinctly, in his famous bass voice, only broken now and as if he is hiccupping:
“Sophia! Elle sait…”
But what does Sophia know?
In the doorway he sees Kristeva, next to the blond nurse. His eyes are fixed on her for several long seconds, and everyone in the room—doctors, nurses, friends, policeman—is frozen, paralyzed, by the intensity of his distraught gaze. Then he loses consciousness.
Outside, a black DS races off with a screech of tires. Simon Herzog, who has remained in the lobby, pays no attention.
Bayard asks Kristeva: “Sophia, that’s you?” Kristeva says no. But as he just stands there waiting, she eventually adds—pronouncing it the French way, with the j and the u palatalized—“My name is Julia.” Bayard can vaguely detect her foreign accent; he thinks she must be Italian, or German, or maybe Greek, or Brazilian, or Russian. He finds her face harsh; he doesn’t like the piercing look she gives him; he is well aware that those little black eyes want him to understand that she is an intelligent woman, more intelligent than he is, and that she despises him for being a stupid cop. Mechanically, he asks: “Profession?” And when she replies disdainfully, “Psychoanalyst,” he instinctively wants to slap her, but he suppresses the urge. He still has the two others to question.
The blond nurse puts Barthes back in his bed. He is still unconscious. Bayard puts two policemen on guard outside the room and forbids all visits until further notice. Then he turns to the two clowns.
Last name, first name, age, profession.
Joyaux, Philippe, aka Sollers, forty-three, writer, married to Julia Joyaux née Kristeva.
Lévy, Bernard-Henri, thirty-one, philosopher, former école Normale Supérieure student.
The two men were not in Paris when it happened. Barthes and Sollers were very close … Barthes contributed to Sollers’s magazine Tel Quel, and they went to China together with Julia a few years ago … To do what? A study trip … Bloody Communists, thinks Bayard. Barthes wrote several articles praising Sollers’s work … Barthes is like a father for Sollers, even if Barthes behaves like a little boy at times … And Kristeva? Barthes said one day that if he liked women, he would be in love with Julia … He adored her … And you weren’t jealous, Monsieur Joyaux? Ha ha ha … Julia and I, we don’t have that kind of relationship … And anyway, poor Roland, he already had enough problems with men … Why? He didn’t know how to handle things … He always got taken for a ride!… I see. And you, Monsieur Lévy? I admire him greatly, he’s a great man. Did you travel with him too? I was going to suggest several projects to him. What sort of projects? A project for a film about the life of Charles Baudelaire; I was planning to offer him the title role. A project for a joint interview with Solzhenitsyn. A project to petition NATO to liberate Cuba. Could you provide any evidence to substantiate these claims? Yes, of course, I spoke to Andre Glucksmann about them—he’s a witness. Did Barthes have any enemies? Yes, lots, replies Sollers. Everyone knows he’s our friend and we have lots of enemies! Who? The Stalinists! The fascists! Alain Badiou! Gilles Deleuze! Pierre Bourdieu! Cornelius Castoriadis! Pierre Vidal-Naquet! Uh, Hélène Cixous! (BHL: Oh, really? Did she and Julia fall out? Sollers: Yes … well, no … she’s jealous of Julia, because of Marguerite…)
Marguerite who? Duras. Bayard notes down all the names. Does Monsieur Joyaux know a certain Michel Foucault? Sollers starts whirling around like a dervish, faster and faster, his cigarette holder still held between his lips, the incandescent end tracing graceful orange curves in the hospital corridor: “The truth, Superintendent? The whole truth … nothing but the truth … Foucault was jealous of Barthes’s fame … and especially jealous because I, Sollers, loved Barthes … because Foucault is the worst kind of tyrant, Superintendent: a lackey … Can you believe, Mr. Representative of Public Order—cough cough—that Foucault gave me an ultimatum? ‘You must choose between Barthes and me!’ … One might as easily choose between Montaigne and La Boétie … Between Racine and Shakespeare … Between Hugo and Balzac … Between Goethe and Schiller … Between Marx and Engels … Between Merckx and Poulidor … Between Mao and Lenin … Between Breton and Aragon … Between Laurel and Hardy … Between Sartre and Camus (well, no, not them) … Between de Gaulle and Tixier-Vignancour … Between the Plan and the Market … Between Rocard and Mitterrand … Between Giscard and Chirac…” Sollers slows down. He coughs into his cigarette holder. “Between Pascal and Descartes … cough cough … Between Trésor and Platini … Between Renault and Peugeot … Between Mazarin and Richelieu … Hhhhh…” But just when it looks as if he is about to collapse, he finds a second wind. “Between the Left Bank and the Right Bank … Between Paris and Beijing … Between Venice and Rome … Between Mussolini and Hitler … Between andouille and mashed potato…”