Statement 29
“Thus, in the elevator at Balbec, where Proust's narrator wants to initiate a conversation with the young operator, the latter does not reply, "either because of astonishment at my words, attention to his work, a regard for etiquette, hardness of hearing, respect for the surroundings, fear of danger, slow-wittedness, or orders from the manager." The game here is grammatical in essence ( and therefore much more exemplary): it consists in presenting, acrobatically, for as long as possible, the plural diversity of possibilities within a singular syntagm, to transform the verbal proposition behind each cause (“because he was hard of hearing”) into a double substantive “hardness of hearing”); in short to produce a constant model carried out to infinity, which is to constrain language as one wishes: whence the very pleasure of power.” Ronald Barthes S/Z (translated by Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), pp. 58-59
