This month features: Mythologies, Roland Barthes, translated by Annette Lavers, Vintage Classics, 0099972204. £6.99

For a while longer, Roland Barthes will remain our contemporary.

‘The following essays were written one each month for about two years, from 1954 to 1956, on topics suggested by current events. I was at the time trying to reflect regularly on some myths of French daily life.’

Since when, cultural studies has brought critical thinking incessantly to bear upon la vie quotidienne. Yet no-one has come close to rivalling the economy and acuity of Barthes (1915-1980). Mythologies is to sociology as Aubrey’s Brief Lives is to biography: ubiquitously imitated, intractably unrepeatable.

Barthes’ subjects are micro. The article entitled ‘The Romans in Films’ is in fact concerned mainly with the hairstyles of Romans in films – Romans in films are signified as such by virtue of their coiffs:

‘In Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar, all the characters are wearing fringes. Some of them have curly, some straggly, some tufted, some oily, all have them well combed, and the bald are not admitted, although there are plenty to be found in Roman history.’

Other topics entered into, opened up, exhausted, all within around 1,000 words, include ‘Steak and Chips’, ‘The Face of Garbo’, ‘Soap-powders and detergents’ and, in the opening essay, ‘The World of Wrestling’.

This latter is one of the greatest pieces of short non-fiction ever written. It makes one feel, as few other essays do, that, out of an audience of hundreds, the only person truly to witness what was taking place was the writer:

‘Wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks.’

How vivid is this?

‘Foul play exists only in its excessive signs: administering a kick to one’s beaten opponent, taking refuge behind the ropes while ostensibly invoking a purely formal right, refusing to shake hands with one’s opponent before or after the fight, taking advantage of the end of the round to rush treacherously at the adversary from behind, fouling him which the referee is not looking (a move which obviously only has any value or function because in fact half the audience can see it and get indignant about it).’

Watch five minutes of World Wrestling Entertainment and you’ll realise that these are classic moves, in the strictest sense.

‘In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good and Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.’

For most people, essays themselves are a form of injustice, of misapplied punishment. Compelled to write them at school, we are unlikely to learn to love them afterwards.

Obviously, teachers are trying to get children to express themselves in a clear and structured way. Yet the more essays I read, the less I find which work like this.

‘To essay’ means to attempt, to try. It isn’t the same as a summation, a report or a verdict. It is a go.

Barthes has a go at getting wrestling, and I think he succeeds. And his writing is dynamic, always moving forwards. But I think he would probably be given a B minus by most teachers. His insights imbalance the form; he is more interested in them than in thesis, antithesis, synthesis or introduction, exposition, conclusion – whatever is most correct.

The conclusion of ‘The Face of Garbo’ works by statement rather than justification. The essay goes to the immediate subject rather than secondary sources (other essays about the subject) or even examples from the subjects (scenes or frames from her films). But an even more basic essay manoeuvre is being employed, compare and contrast:

‘Viewed as transition the face of Garbo reconciles two iconographic ages, it assures the passage from awe to charm.’

(I have to pause here, just for an editorial gasp. Hits do not come more direct.)

‘As is well known, we are today at the other end of the pole of this evolution: the face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualized, not only because of its particular thematics (woman as child, woman as kitten) but also because of her person, of an almost unique specification of face, which has nothing of the essence left in it,…’

There is a liveness to Barthes’ argument, each sentence being a gamble, a risk of huge intellectual embarrassment. And the final line is about the best-known, because most thrilling, in the whole book:

‘The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event.’