Analysis of the reviews of Tweet di un discorso amoroso by R. Cotroneo

Tweet di un discorso amoroso is an essay written by the Italian contemporary writer R. Cotroneo. The essay is clearly inspired by A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by R. Barthes.

As review 1 states, Barthes’ essay and Cotroneo’s one have different aspects in common, apart from the title. There is a clear focus on the fact that a “lover’s discourse”, in the 20^th- 21^st century, is fragmented and non-linear. This is a complete break from the ancient conception of love, which survived until the 19^th century, tracing its roots into the Medieval tradition, where love was seen in a courteous way (e.g. the Canzoniere by Petrarch).

However, there is an obvious distinction between Barthes’s and Coroneo’s conception of discourse: while Barthes wrote “fragments”, Coroneo wrote “tweets”. As the first review stresses, in the postmodern-contemporary world, even the fragments by Barthes, written in the 70ies, appear as something old and distant, since nowadays we collect and spread our ideas, our emotions and opinions through the tweet or the Facebook status, which are much more inconsistent and frail mediums. This fact is also highlighted by Coroneo in one of the extracts from his book, where he argues that “[il mondo] toglie lunghezza ai pensieri” (the world curtails our thoughts); it is like opening an old suitcase, where you find objects which were once useful, but that have  become “obsolete”: “sono strumenti che non dovrebbero servire, e continuano a non servire, ma un tempo ti sono serviti”.

Building a love discourse on tweets may appear as a rather bold attempt, since the idea itself of tweet clashes with the idea of a relationship with a person, which is always a complicated, long process, that often involves unforeseen (and unforeseeable) consequences. Indeed, R. Barthes, in the “how this book is constructed” section, pointed out that the book is “the site of someone speaking within himself, amorously, confronting the other (the loved object), who does not speak”. Thus, rather than focusing on love as a relationship, Barthes preferred focusing his attention towards love itself, and how love affects the individual in his private, inner sphere. However, R. Barthes explains that “The lover is not to be reduced to a simple symptomal subject, but rather [we have to conclude] that we hear in his voice what is unreal, intractable”, clarifying that the lover should not be treated as an ill patient, who has to undergo a medical examination, but as a way to detect and try to seize the “unreal”, the “unseizable” that is in his voice: love itself. The fragments (or the tweets) become the only method to accomplish this task: both writers affirm that, in a surprisingly similar way; while R. Barthes wrote that “discourse exists only in outbursts of language, which occur at the whim of trivial, of aleatory circumstances”, R. Coroneo said that “Ora si tratta di sapere se sarò capace di lasciare raccogliere [le parole]. Di lasciarle riconoscere, di sedermi e aspettare che a una a una, come le tessere di un mosaico sentimentale e prezioso, siano raccolte e guardate come fosse la prima volta, anche quelle che si conoscono bene”.

Both R. Barthes’s and R. Coroneo’s essays share some features with T. S. Eliot’s dramatic monologue, and, indeed, «come un tedioso argomento» (as a tedious argument), from Coroneso’s book, is also a quotation from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Barthes, on the other hand, wrote that “The lover's discourse is today of an extreme solitude. This discourse is spoken, perhaps, by thousands of subjects (who knows?), but warranted by no one”, so the connection between the two essays and the dramatic monologue becomes evident: the “love discourse” is made by just one person, who is, at the same time, everyone and no one. When you read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, you understand that Prufrock is an invented character, which has been constructed on purpose by the poet, to convey a message. Nevertheless, you discover that Prufrock may be the man you see every morning at the bus stop, or at the working place: it is the “common man”, with all his miseries and faults. The same happens with R. Barthes’s and R. Coroneo’s essays, where everyboby, in his solitude, can become the involuntary writer of the book itself.

Maybe, as it is written in the third review, it is true that “leggere il libro è come sedersi a sbirciare dalla finestra un uomo che parla da solo, in cui però ci riconosciamo”.