John Hughes’ commentary: The closer he looks at the child, the less he sees…The more he looks at it, there’s nothing there and I think he fears that the more you look at him, the less you see—there isn’t anything there. That’s him.
Struck by the abstract nature of absence; yet it’s so painful, lacerating. Which allows me to understand abstraction somewhat better: it is absence and pain, the pain of absence—perhaps therefore love?
After his mother died, Barthes grappled with the complexities of grief, loss, and mourning by writing fragments on more than 300 index cards. The cards were eventually published as Mourning Diary.
