Roland Barthes on the purpose of making notes: writingslowly.com
@writingslowly The "carré savant" translation is curious. This is a poetic twist; "learned square" doesn't invoke a similar feeling. With "savant" being an adjective indicating that something has been learned, or is learned, but also applying metaphorically to humans, then humanizing the slip of paper, the note, could help: a "scholarly square" maybe :)
@writingslowly Oh, on page 12, there's footnote 30 referencing Rowan Wilken, but footnote 31 is not giving away the source; it's attached to the name Mowitt, but not whether it's about (a) John Mowitt, Text: The Genealogy of an Antidisciplinary Object (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 117, or (b) Mowitt, “What is a Text Today?” PMLA 117:5 (2002), 1217–1221
@ctietze yes, it's a tricky phrase to translate. I agree with the humanising element and take "learned square" to be similar to "learned professor".