Reading group 'Death of the Author' Roland Barthes ( Graham)

I found this reading really interesting, I have never studied philosophy but have always been interested in the subject, probably because I'm very opinionated. That is not to say I expect everyone to agree with my opinions. I wanted to just mention a few points about the text itself that interested me.

1. As with art it is the work that speaks not the artist.
2. All objects are just that,object, until found and life breathed back into the ( the ready made)
3. Respect of all mediums and artists present and that have come before. (except Damien Hurst)
4. We are all influenced by that which has come before whether this be consciously or unconsciously.
5. You can never truly understand what a work was originally about even if the artist explains it, as things get lost in all translation there is also the possibility of fabrication. This I feel is were Barthes ideas of the birth of the reader comes in. 

There was however one aspect that we talked about which i did however disagree with, which concerned Mallarme. this was in reference to a footnote that graham included about Mallarme's book (Le Livre) which he "envisioned as a cosmic text..a flexible structure that would contain .." all existing relations between everything".."this 'Grande Oeuvre',..freed from the subjectivity of its author and containing the sum of all books,represented for Mallarme the essence of all literature...the realization of this pure work....."  when this was discussed I made the point that Mallarme there for must have seen himself as Author/God. Graham disagreed with this and gave the opinion that he was more like a curator or librarian. This is where I go on a rant, as if he intended to create a tomb of sorts it would include all that he saw as literature or great literature, he would be the one deciding what was included and what would not be, even to the precise amount of people that he clearly felt there where in the world that had the right to read it. This to me congers up the image of a dictator or one of the many American so called religious! cult leader who bastardize the bible for there own benefit picking and choosing parts of it and rewriting it to fit in to there own narcissistic notions. Which is basically what Mallarme had the intention to do,to create, "the Essence of of all literature".