Abstract

This essay tries to bring nearer Roland Barthes’ latest book which has been just translated into Polish. The journal was written after his mother’s death and Barthes entitles it meaningfully Mourning Diary. “Main character” brings up the matter of mourning, melancholy, depression relating to both himself and his loss, as well as he takes up the discussion with Freud, Lacan or psychoanalysis. He also asks himself a question at the same time - whether mourner after the death of beloved person wants to abandon mourning at all and whether he has any right to do this. Therefore, an interesting perspective of vision appears here, a vision of what lies at the core of psychoanalysis, which main task was to work with the patient and - during an hour of analysis – drag him from psychosis though conversation. This essay also shows what happens with mourner’s language, what does this “break”, which is impossible to fill with neither words, Logos nor body. Body, which stays after the beloved one dies. And the journal itself is written in that language - broken, pointless, devoid of sense. These fragments that were used by Barthes to fill his world after his mother’s death are a remarkable proof of the experience of loss.