88
ROLAND BARTHES
yet always a question to nature, an answer which questions and a
question which answers.
How then does structural man deal with the accusation of un–
reality which is sometimes flung at him? Are not forms in the world,
are not forms responsible? Was it really his Marxism that was revolu–
tionary in Brecht? Was it not rather the decision to link to Marxism,
in the theater, the placing of a spotlight or the deliberate fraying of
a costume? Structuralism does not withdraw history from the world:
it seeks to link to history not only certain contents (this has been done
a thousand times) but also certain forms, not only the material but
also the intelligible, not only the ideological but also the esthetic. And
precisely because
all
thought about the historically intelligible is also a
participation in that intelligibility, structural man is scarcely concerned
to
last;
he knows that structuralism, too, is a certain
form
of the world,
which will change with the world; and just as he experiences his
validity (but not his truth) in his power to speak the old languages
of the world in a new way, so he knows that it will suffice that a
new language rise out of history, a new language which speaks him
in
his turn, for his task to be done.
