Le Livre à venir

by Maurice Blanchot

Avec un savoir passionné et anxieux, il nous est parlé de Proust, d'Artaud, de Broch, de Musil, de Henry James, de Samuel Beckett, de Mallarmé, de plusieurs autres et même de celui qui sera, un jour, le dernier écrivain. Mais peut-être, plus que des auteurs et des livres, est-il question ici du mouvement d'où viennent tous les livres et qui détient, d'une manière encore cachée, l'avenir de la communication et la communication comme avenir.
Le secret de la littérature, la littérature comme exigence et comme sens et sa voie à venir se trouvent au centre de ces recherches.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Theory, Literature, Criticism, France

344 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Maurice Blanchot was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. Blanchot was a distinctly modern writer who broke down generic boundaries, particularly between literature and philosophy. He began his career as a journalist on the political far right, but the experience of fascism altered his thinking to the point that he supported the student protests of May 1968. Like so many members of his generation, Blanchot was influenced by Alexandre Kojeve's humanistic interpretation of Hegel and the rise of modern existentialism. His “Literature and the Right to Death” shows the influence that Heidegger had on a whole generation of French intellectuals.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Será que o extremo pensamento e o extremo sofrimento abrem o mesmo horizonte? Será que sofrer é, afinal, pensar?

Proust, Artaud, Rousseau, Joubert, Claudel, Broch, James, Musil, Woolf, Hesse, e muitos outros, são os autores de que Blanchot se socorre nestes ensaios sobre Literatura.

Gostei de ler os textos, embora, por tão eruditos, não os tivesse assimilado como deveria. Ficarão à mão para consultar quando/se ler alguns dos autores referidos.

[Hossein M.]

فقط با یکی از جستارهای این کتاب، که به بورخس مربوط بود، کار داشتم:
"Literary Infinity: The Aleph"

ترجمه‌ی فارسی خوبی ازش به فارسی هست، با نام «نامتناهی ادبی: الف»، کارِ سمیرا رشیدپور، از اصل فرانسوی، که شرحی چارپنج برابر خود متن بر آن نوشته‌. در سایت پروبلماتیکا یافتنی‌ست*.
در یادداشت مترجم انگلیسی (p xii) گفته شده بلانشو، در این کتاب، معنای دو گروه واژه را به بازی می‌گیرد‌. یکی‌شان error و مشتقات آن‌ست. گویا این کلمه معنای «پرسه‌زدن» هم می‌دهد و این‌جا لزوماً معنای بدی ندارد. اتفاقاً، بلانشو در جستار مذکور به طرز برجسته‌ای این کار را کرده، که مترجم انگلیسی مجبور شده با یک پانویسْ یادداشت ابتدای کتاب را به خواننده یادآور شود. در پانویس مترجم انگلیسی آمده:
Error is related to errer, "to wonder".

پانویس بالا در انتهای جمله‌ی نخست پاراگراف سوم آمده:
The truth of literature might be in the error of the infinite. (p 93)

در ترجمه‌ی فارسی می‌خوانیم:
حقیقت ادبیات شاید در خطای نامتناهی باشد.

گویا مترجم فارسی ما این ریزه‌کاری بلانشو را درنیافته و خراب‌کاری کرده. خصوصاً که در جمله‌ی آخر همین پاراگراف، «خطا» به‌ جای "error" یا "erreur" دیگر جواب‌‌گو نیست و خودْ خطاست:
For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite... (همان)

و در ترجمه‌ی فارسی:
اما همین فضا برای انسان بیابانی و زیسته در هزارتو واقعاً نامتناهی خواهد بود. [زیرا] این انسان محکوم به خطایی است که آن هم برآمده از رویّه‌ای است که ضرورتا طولانی‌تر از حیات‌اش است...

بلانشو در این چند جمله می‌گوید فضای معین و متناهی اطراف ما، برای آدم هزارتویی و نومادی (کوچ‌گر) فضایی‌ست نامتناهی، که کل عمر باید در آن «پرسه» بزند. این آدم محکوم به «خطا» نیست‌. و به‌نظر بلانشو پرسه‌زدنش چیز منفی‌ای، از جنس خطا، هم نیست.
مترجم فارسی در بخش آخر شرحی که برای جستار نوشته، دقیقاً به‌خاطر کژ فهمیدن همین یک کلمه، در شرحِ متن به‌خطا رفته.


ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
*: لینک مطلب (پی‌دی‌اف را از همین‌جا بگیرید بهتر است تا در سایت بخوانید):
https://problematica-archive.com/linf...

[Onur Öztemir · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The cross directs us ta a mystery, the mystery of the Passion of Christ, but for all that it does not lose its reality as a cross or its nature of wood: on the contrary, it becomes aIl the more a tree, and closer to a tree since it seems ta rise up into a sky that is not this sky and to a place beyond our access. " (page 88)

[Ncioals · Rating 5 out of 5]

j'ai pas compris la moitié

[Christina Pak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The use of the symbol has long been conventionally defined to distill our attainable knowledge of the world around us into a valuable, inanimate, or animate object that can be used as a means of identity, communication, and connection. However, Maurice Blanchot’s (1907) The Book to Come explains a different take of the symbol and its effect on humanity, stating that “The word ‘symbol’ reconciles believers and nonbelievers, scholars, and artists,” is false and continues to argue that symbols are and accompanied by experiences, rather than simply being a medium for meaning and representation (Blanchot, p.86). When applied to literature, the reader would be the sole one who recognizes a symbolic experience and sees beyond the “limited sphere” that fits our narrative. With this ideal, he encourages readers to open their mind and allow them to free themselves to ease and realize the symbols that impact cultures worldwide.

The conventional knowledge of symbols, the idea that they are a mode of representation and give a higher meaning to something that may seem ordinary, is rather employed in Blanchot’s description of an allegory. His believed distinction between the allegory and the symbol has opened new ways of understanding literature and gives an exceptional perspective of what we consider meaning and reality.

[Michaël · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crisse de grande leçon d’écriture !

[Dani Fino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está muy bueno pero no me sirvió de nada caray

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book extremely interesting (and reassuring) as well as disturbingly esoteric/theoretical:
1) interesting because of the insights offered into various of the authors and works discussed; 2.) reassuring because all of the authors, chronologically from Henry James through Samuel Beckett, were on my syllabi as an instructor; 3.) esoteric and theoretical in the cogitations which emanated from or were evoked by the works in question (I'll confess to having read this nightly in bed, in fits and starts, hardly the best of circumstances to deal with abstract argument).

The thread running through the book was the presence of Holderin and Mallarme, this latter concluding the volume in a chapter in which Mallarme becomes the source of "the book to come." As I have long been a muddled fan of his Un coup de des, the discussion of its potential effects fascinated me: "Only the poem--the future book--is capable of asserting the diversity of tempos and tenses that constitute it as meaning while still reserving it as source of all meaning" (p 241).

Regardless, The Book to Come offers much to be considered, and, at this moment when "meaning" has degenerated into "perception," much to offer.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blanchot never disappoints, always opening literature out beyond once more, ever again.
"Joubert and Space," "H.H.," and "The Book to Come" really stood out.
Blanchot's thought, disseminated through short pieces and expressed through the writing of others, on the writing of others, is an ever unfolding work of thought, and writing, to come.

[jmn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Textos difíceis uns, interessantíssimos outros. Percebe-se porque é um autor tão referenciado. Capacidade assinalável para criar ideias à volta dos livros e seus autores. Texto crítico mas criativo. Arte da crítica literária.

[amylea clemons]

It's on my prelim list, and has been recommended to me countless times by theory-people.