Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot (Quain, Saône-et-Loire, September 22nd 1907 - the Mesnil-Saint-Denis, Yvelines, February 20th 2003) is a Romancier, Critique and Philosophe French. Its life was entirely devoted to the literature and the silence which is clean for him.

Biography

Maurice Blanchot is born on September 22nd, 1907 with Quain (Saône-et-Loire), in an easy medium. He follows his studies to Strasbourg (German and Philosophie) until in 1925. He attends the French Action and saunters provided with a cane to the money pommel. It is with Strasbourg that it meets Emmanuel Levinas: “very distant from me politically at this time, he was monarchist. ” Blanchot will say: “Emmanuel Levinas, the only friend - ah, friendly distance - whom I address as tu and who address as tu me; that arrived, not because we were young, but by a deliberated decision, a pact to which I never hope not to miss. ” ( For the Friendship ). In 1928, it completes the reading of Être and Time of Martin Heidegger: “Thanks to Emmanuel Levinas, without which, as of 1927 or 1928, I could not have started to hear Sein und Zeit , it is a true intellectual shock which this book caused in me. An event of first size had just occurred: impossible to attenuate it, even today, even in my memory. ” (quoted by Christophe Bident, p. 44). It passes its Certificat of Higher learning to Paris in 1929, then diploma with the Sorbonne in 1930 by completing a work on the design of dogmatism at the skeptics. It then follows studies of medicine to the Hospital Holy-Anne, with a specialization in Neurologie and Psychiatrie.

Starting from 1931, Blanchot collaborates with certain newspapers and reviews of extreme-right-hand side: it publishes its first text in June 1931 in the French Revue : “François Mauriac and those which were lost”. Critical arts person, during the war, and chronicler of foreign politics to the Newspaper of DEBATEs , it becomes editor association there - “and it is there that it will pass, during nearly ten years, most clearly of its time” (Bident, p. 68). In 1932, it begins the drafting of Thomas Obscure the . In 1933, it enters to the Remparts (of Paul Levy) while continuing its work to the Journal of DEBATEs . “With Blanchot, Maxence and Maulnier with key positions, the " young person droite" occupy an important place however” (Bident, p. 73). After the end of Ramparts , Blanchot finds Levy with With listenings where he is also editor association. In 1935 - 1936, it writes the last word and the idylle , which will be initially republished in ressassement the eternal in 1951, then in Afterwards in 1983. In 1936 it enters to the review Combat , where it vituperates against Leon Blum, then to the Insurrectionist in 1937.

In May 1940, Thomas Obscure the is finished: Jean Paulhan receives it at Gallimard. During the Occupation, as from May 1940, Blanchot gives up political journalism but as from “April 1941, and until the last days, Blanchot will ensure the Journal of DEBATEs , always more Vichyist, ultra marechalist, of a regular literary chronicle” (Bident, p. 155). In November, Blanchot saves Paul Levy of the Déportation, then will put in safety the woman and the girl of Levinas. It will take part in a network of assistance in clandestine in its native area. At the end of 1940, it meets Georges Bataille, as her partner Denise Rollin (who will perhaps have an adventure with Blanchot). Battle reads in Blanchot the interior Experiment , which will be extremely indebted with Thomas obscure the . This one was published in 1941: Paulhan advises it with NNRF ( Nouvelle French re-examined news ); in 1942 follows its second novel, Aminadab . It meets Dionys Mascolo in 1943, whereas it publishes its first compilation of critical texts, Faux Step , first collection of criticisms. He becomes member of the Jury of the Price of the Pleiad.

In 1944, Blanchot remains in Quain where he will live one of the most dramatic events of his life, reported fifty years later in the moment of my death: it failed to be shot by German soldiers. Since this day, death, like already passed and having to return again, did not leave it any more.

After the War, Blanchot becomes an eminent member of the French literary scene. He is member of the jury of the Price of Criticisms in 1945, then collaborates as of 1946 in various important reviews: the Arch , the first numbers of the Modern times , the new Critical review or it meets Jean Piel. With the end of the year 1946, it decides to leave Paris and settles with Èze in the the Alpes-Maritimes.

It continues a work increasingly more demanding and of which it extirpates very given biographical. It publishes its last novel, the Almighty in 1948, and as of 1947, with the last word until the end of its life, it will write from now on but accounts nothing any more. A study, Lautréamont and Sade , are published in 1949, as well as a second compilation of critical texts, the share of the fire , in which perhaps the program of sound " is; livre" to come, literature and right to dead the . It publishes in the review Empédocle an account? (which will be published in book only in 1973 pennies the title the madness of the day). Following the choice like the account, it works over again Thomas obscure the , shortens it of two hundred pages, finishes it in 1948 (it will be republished in 1950). In 1953, it begins its collaboration with NNRF , regularly, until less the 1969. It gathers the first of these tests (the Recherches ) in literary space , then the book to come . Another account follows, the last man , in 1957. It returns then to Paris, where it meets Robert Antelme, of which he will become the friend.

Increasingly absent, it côtoie however Antelme, Marguerite Duras, Mascolo, Gineta and Elio Vittorini, and its thought is radicalized. It takes an active part in the Manifeste of the 121 defending the right to insubordination in Algérie. As from 1960-1961, the idea germinates of creation of a international Revue . The project, carried by Blanchot until at least 1964, will recut the history of the majority of the important writers of the Fifties and Sixties in Europe, like in the United States and in South America. Louis-Rene of the Forests will be one of the pillars, with Vittorini, Magnus Enzensberger, and to a lesser extent, Italo Calvino, Roland Barthes, Michel Butor, Günter Grass, etc

In 1962 appears Waiting the lapse of memory , not of organ of its work, and first attempts at writing of the fragment.

Blanchot meets Jacques Derrida in 1967, then Michel Foucault in 1968, which, with Gilles Deleuze, Barthes, Roger Laporte or even Philippe Sollers (which will be dissociated some). It takes part in the processions from May-June with Mascolo and Duras in particular, and it takes part in the Committees Writer-Students. Blanchot is withdrawn then more and more in silence, holding its reception only with rare friends. After the publication of the sum which is infinite maintenance in 1969 (year of died of Jean Paulhan), he will not devote himself any more but to the fragment. the step beyond (1973), then the writing of the disaster (1983). Its last book of narration the Moment of my death, appears in 1994. This book marks the transition between the personnel and the collective, the biographical one and the account.

the unavowable community (1983), on Battle, Lasted and the Communisme, mark the beginning of several at the same time political texts and homages, like For the friendship or the intellectuals in question in 1996, or others initially published at Fata Morgana (from of which Blanchot snap the door in 1996 following the business Alain de Benoist, published by the editor) then gathered in a voice come besides in 2001 (tests on Forests, Michel Foucault, Paul Celan). It will still give an opinion in favor of the Jewish People, for the legal recognition of the homosexual couple, against the Debré laws.

Not côtoyant more that Jacques Derrida and two or three close friends, Blanchot dies in 2003, at the 96 years age.

The work of Maurice Blanchot

The range, the influence, the importance of the texts of Maurice Blanchot on the literature and philosophy Frenchwomen of post-war period are an undeniable fact. Its work balances at first sight between hermetism (returning with the one of the authors most read of Blanchot, Stephan Mallarmé) and terrorism (ascribable with another of the figures of training of young people Blanchot, that of Jean Paulhan). Perhaps the work of Blanchot would be thus the heiress of a French literary tradition which, perhaps born of the audience of writers such as Maurice Scève, is reflected at Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Paulhan and would continue, to a certain extent however, at Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Edmond Jabès or Jacques Derrida.

Its work, the silence of which it determined its life of man, but also its political commitments and its poetic demanding, set up Blanchot in a mythical species of figure, guides or nocher, or, in the contrary case, public enemy or guru. The passion which its name crystallizes has of equal only the absence of re-elected near the general public.

Its political advance (of the extreme-right-hand side to the extreme-left); its standpoint, in particular against Charles de Gaulle; its opposition, less virulent, with Jean-Paul Sartre; the writers who claim themselves of him or whom himself supported against all; its irresistible relationship with the New French Re-examined News; its engagement near the Jewish people and the impossible questioning of the Shoah (Auschwitz); finally its indéfectibles friendships, at the head that with Emmanuel Levinas and that with Georges Bataille make of him, although absent from the media scene and prone to an obscure disease which seems eternal, an obliged witness of the cultural life of the post-war period.

Word of Blanchot

For the reader who discovers the first Blanchot time, either by the account or the novel, or by the test, the experiment is new. Reading Blanchot, the reader grants to enter a language which, although never really difficult, surprises, and requires an effort from his difficult syntax and his rigorous method: method whose rigor primarily consists in pushing until the end at the same time the thought and the language and the report/ratio that both maintain.

Influenced by the linguistic slope of the reflection of Jean Paulhan, in particular the texts on the triptych thought-language-sign (of an invoice different from the precepts of the linguistic structuralism of Saussure to Jakobson): Cow Jacob the Key pirate (1921), of Poetry (1944), and of course Flowers of Tarbes (1941). The first critical text published by Blanchot: Comment the literature is possible? , in 1942 at Jose Corti, precisely between the Flowers and Key of Paulhan, marks at the same time the print of this one and the major concern of “poetic” the blanchotienne.

Indeed, all the first writings of Blanchot, which meditate on an enormous reserve of French and foreign publications (in particular German and American), less seem tests with the traditional direction than like a clean literary experiment, a foreword, an initiation in Montaigne, whose continuation of work will be never more than the deepening.

Finally let us notice that this time corresponds to the beginning of the writing of the large novel of Blanchot, Thomas obscure the . What one can say of this time of formation (long however), the text blanchotien is built, and to seize salt of it, we can pose like preliminary quotation this extract of Thomas obscure the .

Thomas remained with reading in his room. He had sat, the hands united with the top of his face, the inches supported against the root of his hair, if absorptive that he did not make a movement when the door was opened. those which entered, indicator its book always opened in the same pages, thought that he pretended to read. He read. He read with an unsurpassable attention and a meticulousness. He was, near each sign, in the situation where the male is when the religious mante will devour it. One and the other was looked at. The words, resulting from a book which took a power mortal, exerted on the glance which touched them a soft and peaceful attraction. each one of them, like an eye with closed half, let enter the too sharp glance that in other circumstances he had not suffered He saw himself with pleasure in this eye which saw it. Its pleasure even became very large. It became so large, if pitiless that it undergoes it with a kind of fear and that, being drawn up, unbearable moment, without receiving from its interlocutor an accessory sign, he saw all the strangeness that there was to be observed by a word as by an living being, and not only one word, but all the words which were in this word, by all those which accompanied it and which in their turn contained themselves of other words, like a succession of angels opening ad infinitum to the absolute eye. Of an as well defended text, far from deviating, it put all its force to be wanted to seize itself, obstinately refusing to withdraw its glance, believing to be still a deep reader, when already the words seized him and started to read it| (pp. 27-28)

This long quotation, in spite of its decontextualization and impossibility at Blanchot of raising sentences with exempla , enables us to pose, initially, one of the principal sets of themes at Blanchot: reading.

The report/ratio: reading <-> writing

Because Maurice Blanchot is before a whole reader, who attacks of a tight reading the literary movement. If Thomas obscure the were the first novel of the author, this one written since the Thirties of the articles which are authorized more and more incursions in literary ground, to become really readings .

All the traditional repertory passes there, like number of the contemporary publications of the time. The first two critical collections of Blanchot, False step and the share of fire abound in texts which seek to encircle something literature.

This something, it arrives at the end of the share of fire (cf the text founder “literature and right to death”, which transcends the work of Hegel by that of Mallarmé) as in the small test Comment the literature is possible? . Like says it Blanchot, the work of the writer starts when the literature becomes a question. It is the direction of the test published at Corti. Consequently this tireless questioning will describe a “literary space”, where it will not be any more question but of this question.

Blanchot visits and works for that important works of the funds world, with a clear preference for works working this unsoundable literary source: by there Blanchot opens ways which will be those explored thereafter by writers like Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers. Its dialog with the literary text is profitable: Hegel then Heidegger, Sade, Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, Robert Antelme, Pierre Klossowski, Rene Tank, Louis-Rene of the Forests, Paul Celan, Philippe Jaccottet, and especially Hölderlin, Rilke, Kafka and Mallarmé, then Emmanuel Levinas (their relations made (object of a recent conference), as well as a very great number of other writers, the sap of the written texts forms, in particular during the Post-war period, in reviews like the Arch , the Arc , the New Trade , Critique , Modern times and especially, thanks to Jean Paulhan, starting from the first number of the Nouvelle French Re-examined News in 1953 until the death of this one about in 1969.

Each month, ten pages of Blanchot worked generations of writers, and even of other artists: painters and plastics technicians, architects, photographers, etc These texts, still joined together in the masterpieces which literary space and are the book to come .

But these texts would be nothing if the work of reading of Maurice Blanchot were not accompanied by a clean writing, the two methods, the two occupations, being the reverse and the avers, indissociable, of the same entity, called literature .

The novels of the Blanchot young person which rather conventional, were then influenced by those of Jean Giraudoux, Kafka, a certain romanticism, certain fantastic ( Aminadab , the Almighty ), become their with dimensions increasingly thin screens: the language is tightened, the intrigue rarefies and the word takes all its place: Thomas obscure the reappears in 1950, clipping, radical. the death warrant , opens a research by which the triptych At the desired time , That which did not accompany me , the last man form an increasingly demanding continuation and whose it is essential less to know the finality to feel the gasoline it, and in particular specific poetry to this limit of the literature.

This unison is done more sensitive as of the Sixties, in particular by the singular text waiting the lapse of memory , delivers strange, fragmentary, the first of a successive series. Perhaps a text published in review, “infinite maintenance” marks the limit of this literary research where the account is reduced more and more to the interval oneiric, fantastic, ethical and erotic suitable for maintenance.

This text will be taken again at the head the most important book éponyme perhaps of Blanchot, whose force undoubtedly yet today was not completely tested. fragments will be taken again books in books, in different contexts, without attenuating their literary range. It seems that the research of Blanchot (of the name of the chronicle that he held in NRF during more than fifteen years), as well as the test of this research in the narrative field, actually serve only one immense respect towards the literary thing that Blanchot, paraphrasing Mallarmé, described like “this foolish play to write”.

• the secrecy, this reserve which, if she spoke, made it differ from speaking, giving him word in this difference.

“Do I have You never promi to speak?” - “Not, but it is yourself which were, not saying anything and refusing anything to say and remainder related to what is not said, promise of word.” They did not speak, they were the guarantors of any word still to be said between them| ( waiting the lapse of memory , p.86)