Café Dissensus

By Dhruvi Modi

In A Lover’s Discourse (1977), Roland Barthes writes about the fragments of discourse that a lover wrestles with. He refers to these fragments as figures, and defines them as “outbursts of language, which occur at the whim of trivial, of aleatory circumstances” (Barthes: 3). The text is an alphabetically ordered collection of such “non-narrative” figures replete with references to Barthes’ readings, conversations with friends, and his own life, each of which the reader may engage with according to his own history, and in varying ways and degrees. The figure I am concerned with in this essay is the one titled “Talking: déclaration / declaration.”

Barthes writes in it about the lover’s proclivity to talk endlessly “to the loved being, about his love for that being, for himself, for them,” and argues that this declaration bears not upon an affirmation of love, but on the “endlessly glossed” form of the romantic relation (Barthes: 73). Speaking of love is an avowal of the singularity of that relation. This follows a phenomenological view of love, which suggests that love involves valuing both the singular uniqueness of the loved one, and that of the relationship, wherein a “shared world” is constructed between the lovers, which, too, “comes to be valued in and for itself” (Anderson: 92). In the amorous discourse with the beloved, Barthes writes, “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire” (Barthes: 73). This essay concerns not skin but the absence of skin. In the event of separation, what role does language play? We use epidermal metaphors constantly in everyday life. ‘Stay in touch,’ we say, or ‘feel free to reach out,’ or ‘keep in contact.’ What do these metaphors indicate if not the primacy of touch? Can language suffice if it is only skin, trembling with desire, awaiting touch?

Here I examine Amrita Pritam and Imroz’s letters, which exemplify the metaphor of language as skin. Their letters were translated from the Punjabi by Ms Arvinder and published in English under the title In the Times of Love and Longing (2021). Amrita, a writer, and poet, lived in Delhi and travelled across the globe, while Imroz pursued his career in art in Mumbai, early in their relationship. In the 1960s and 70s, the only recourse available for communication were the handwritten letter and telephone calls. As the book’s blurb suggests, these letters offer an intimate glimpse into their creative minds, as well as the social conditions that governed the time.

In a letter written in 1967, several years into a relationship frequented by separation, Amrita writes to Imroz, “Till now I always felt loneliness as something effervescent, something flowing – like tears or maybe like sweat – that can be wiped off easily. But now it feels like a reality, an ugly one – like a carbuncle on the body that can actually be felt and we have to carry its weight around” (Pritam & Imroz: 100). This metaphor of loneliness as physically felt, as disease, reveals its debilitating discomfort. The letters, deeply moving, reveal a range of emotions that the “frost” of separation brings forth.

Amidst the longing, there are the occasional complaints. Accusations of the other having become frugal with his words, or becoming silent “now, when I think I mean so much to you,” when earlier she could talk about anything and everything to him (Pritam & Imroz: 58). Language does not suffice, as her silence indicates. And yet, language is also the vehicle of longing that sustains the amorous relation. In one letter, Imroz asks, “Do you love the pain of separation? Your poetry cannot survive without it? These poems immersed in melancholy have brought you so much of fame” (Pritam & Imroz: 40). To this provocation, she replies, “I am not in love with melancholy. […] It was to tread this arduous path that I write songs of melancholy. They have sustained me during the ordeal of your separation” (Pritam & Imroz: 42).

Their letters often begin with an appreciation of the other’s letter. In a letter from 1959, Amrita writes that she waited for such letters all her life, and that many of the poems she had written were “replies to such unreceived letters” (Pritam & Imroz: 18). Imroz writes, upon hearing from her, “This letter is my pride” (Pritam & Imroz: 24). Amrita likens his letters to a ray of light, writes that reading his letters breathes life into her, and that “Each day I wait, just for a word from you. People here have told me so much about my writing, in very touching words… But all the praise that was showered on me only aggravated my longing for you” (Pritam & Imroz: 27). She writes of looking at the door again and again, hoping for a letter from him. Imroz writes, “I am not waiting for your letters. I am waiting for you” (Pritam & Imroz: 38). The letter is Amrita, is Imroz. The letter is the only thing that brings the beloved close.

Language thus bears desire for touch, which is a crucial form of communication that connects us to others. From the moment we are born there is in each of us the desire to be caressed and held. The erotic encounter in particular reveals the simultaneity of one’s subjectivity and one’s status as an object for the other in an embodied reciprocity (Anderson: 94). Touch affirms and positions us in relation to the other and the world. In her essay “Three touches to the skin and one look: Sartre and Beauvoir on desire and embodiment,” published in the collection Thinking Through the Skin (2001), Penelope Deutscher writes that for both Sartre and Beauvoir, the tactile encounter is more than just a physical contact of the epidermis with objects or others. For Sartre, touch occurs as “part of a constant project to appropriate the world, its things and the consciousness of others,” whereas for Beauvoir, touch occurs as “part of a being in the world which thrills to disturbance, being unsettled or tantalised by objects and others. The touch represents a making oneself body, with the aim of being surprised by, rather than possessing, objects and others” (Deutscher: 146). For Beauvoir, the tactile encounter allows the subjects to enjoy a complex reciprocity, “in the simultaneous assertion and undermining of bodily and subjective boundaries” (Deutscher: 145). It allows them to recognise both “similitude (in so far as I can experience desire at once and at one with my partner) and difference (for I can never assume that the other experiences desire as I do). The touch is at once a moment of greatest proximity and greatest distance” between lovers (Deutscher: 145). In the absence of touch, what can language offer, then, with all its limitations?

Amrita writes in a letter from 1967 about the power Imroz’s letters had on her, how “They gently suggest that I should continue my work here and their warmth beckons me back home” (Pritam & Imroz: 124). The letters reveal how painful the separation was, and yet, there is often an acknowledgement of its necessity for their careers and artistic practices. In a letter that began with complaints, Amrita signs off with an irrefutable understanding: “Not a trace of my pain be an obstacle in the way of your progress…” (Pritam & Imroz: 35).

She travelled all over the world to attend poetry gatherings, and often wrote from her travels. In a letter from Europe, she writes, “It seems I have come here just to write letters to you. Feel like talking to you all the time. Conversation with everyone else comes to a stop but with you it goes on, it moves – just like one breath follows another…” (Pritam & Imroz: 102). She visited Germany and wrote of the aftermath of the Holocaust, how a friend cited Adorno’s remarks on how the “people of this language have terrorised and tortured millions of innocents” (Pritam & Imroz: 136). She wonders how anyone can write a story or a poem in that language, but after having written to him, she does not feel restless anymore, and realises that language is capable of great creativity as well. In the act of writing to the other, she writes, “a strange serenity has descended” (Pritam & Imroz: 136). To speak of love, therefore, is to wait, to “expend without an end in sight” (Barthes: 73). Language thus affirms the unique value of the beloved, of the lover herself, and affirms the amorous relation itself.

Works Cited

Anderson, Ellie. “Phenomenology and the Ethics of Love.” Symposium, vol. 25, no. 1, 2021, pp. 83–109, https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium20212515. Accessed 6 Dec. 2021.

Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard, London, Vintage, 2018.

Deutscher, Penelope. “Three touches to the skin and one look: Sartre and Beauvoir on desire and embodiment.” Thinking through the Skin. Edited by Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, New York, Routledge, 2001.

Bio:
Dhruvi Modi is pursuing her PhD in English at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Her academic interests include literary theory and criticism, performance studies, and phenomenology.

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