Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Roland BarthesRead
New York... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the essence of New York as a city characterized by its structure and emptiness despite its vibrancy.
Roland Barthes describes New York as an intricate and structured city, filled with geometric designs and grids, yet he highlights a paradox of urban life. The city is portrayed as both a marvel of human achievement and a space where the hustle and bustle of life can create a sense of absence or alienation, suggesting that in the midst of our creations, the true human spirit may be lost.
Themes
New YorkUrbanPhilosophyExistenceAlienationMetropolis
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on urban living, one might use this quote to illustrate the complexity of city life.
More from Roland Barthes
All quotes βIf I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
Roland BarthesRead
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
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The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
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I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
Roland BarthesRead
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
Roland BarthesRead
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