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This article seeks to revisit the debate on the “modernity” of Balzac’s text, as contested by French Theory, by analyzing some little-known or unpublished material, in particular interviews with Roland Barthes that appeared in the press or were broadcast on the radio when S/Z was published. My aim is to expose the semiologist’s surprising regrets that led him not only to a reassessment of Balzac’s text (which would then have due place in modernity) but also to a theoretical reincorporation of the figure of the author, contradicting the assertion of his supposed death. Questioning the reasons behind Barthes’s choice of tackling a text by Balzac, Sarrasine, and analyzing the different assessments of it, my aim here is to show the insoluble nature of Balzac’s text in the dual sense of the term: i.e., what cannot be dissolved (in this case, in a theory), but also what poses an unsolvable enigma and has prompted critical debate for nearly two centuries.