Abstract
In the later work of Roland Barthes the singular body of the reader becomesincreasingly important. Barthes pleaded for a semiotics of literature thattook into account what he called 'le grain du désir, la revendication du corps'.In my analysis of Kosmos (1966), written by the Polish author Witold Gombrowicz,I want to examine how such a reading strategy, based on the desireof the reader, could take shape and how it could enrich the art of reading,which is for Barthes also an art of living. An important Barthesian notion inthis respect is the delicacy, the taste for nuances that is prominently displayedin literary texts. I also intend to show how this at first sight rather hedonistic,even egoistic way of reading actually has a number of important ethicalimplications, to the extent that the individual reader 'shares' his reading withother readers, and literature is able to create an intersubjective space wheredifferent subjects can meet each other.
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