The article proposes, with Barthes, a re-reading of Simple Passion and Se perdre. In order to tell of passion, Annie Ernaux is confronted with a dilemma located at the very heart of the language of love, which is both too much and too little. Tempted by the sociological pleasure to disillusion, by an overlooking posture, she sees her object get away from her because distanciation signals a loss ; and what is lost is the magic, romantic share of this passion. To attain the truth of this passion two apparently antagonistic modalities have to jostle together in writing, Sade and Nous Deux, the sexual and the sentimental, Vronski and the Russian pair of pants, have to overlap. Out of this unexpected clash, the female writer kindles a real invisible to the naked eye, a romantic of the punctum, hidden in the detail, in a manner of cutting out the real.