A Care for the Claims of Theory

Those who know Metz from the three perspectives of writer, teacher, and friend are always struck by this paradox, which is only apparent: of a radical demand for precision and clarity, yet born from a free tone, like a dreamer, and I would almost say, as if intoxicated. (Didn’t Baudelaire turn H. into the source of an unheard of precision?) There reigns a furious exactitude. — Roland Barthes, “To Learn and to Teach”