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 →If 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.)
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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.
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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.
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