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Простір літератури
Книга Моріса Бланшо - не лише спроба пролити світло на літературну й мистецьку творчість, а й детальне дослідження того, чим же загрожує сучасній людині факт "існування таких явищ, як мистецтво чи література" - зануренням у глибінь, наближенням до мороку, досвідом самотности і смерти. Автор досліджує творчість Малларме, Кафки, Рільке, Гельдерліна й багатьох інших письменників; можливо, у всій історії критичної думки не знайти таких розючих, таких глибоких роздумів про природу творчости.
272 pages
First published January 1, 1955
133 people are currently reading
4097 people want to read
About the author
Maurice Blanchot
146 books601 followersMaurice 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
July 25, 2025
Even though this is a heartless and soulless book (mais sauve qui peut), it is a great summary of the postmodernist and woke philosophy of writing, for what it's worth, that thrives on our kids.
I have a love/hate relationship with Blanchot: he takes us to the brink of despair, yet never falls into it; he hopes against hopelessness for peace in his life; and he never gives up the struggle. But such is not ethical or reverent, but only woke, alas. He simply never shuts up.
I really like, however, the sense of incompleteness in this book on writing and writers. My friend Black Oxford is right in saying this book leaves us feeling incomplete, as our lives must necessarily always be. And yet, and yet. For isn't incompleteness the point at which God reaches down into the Dark Void - in the second Creation story of Genesis?
That was my overall impression after putting aside this author's amazing Writing Of The Disaster for a while, in favour of this book.
I say "putting aside" - for to me we are never "finished" with a Blanchot text. He demands constant rereading for his books to be seen as unfinished monuments to his perforce incomplete and often anguished memory. Incompleteness spells translucent Forgetfulness, and in Lost Memory we glimpse the sovereignty of God over our forgetful nonbeing. But to be woke is to will the loss of true hope.
So Disaster, I think, must be read alongside The Space of Literature.
But when he wrote this book, possibly because his writing has no heart, he was very fitfully asleep. And awakening is seeing the Terrible Face of God. Once you're awake, you see the combined Glory and Disaster of God. For He remains a Disaster for incomplete souls like Blanchot who have not yet awoken - and not a dispassionate one, either.
Look at it this way - no matter how we slice or dice up life it remains a duality, the two sides of which - the objective and the subjective sides - are very strange bedfellows, mutually exclusive and each continually vying to be top dog. We must bring their constant conflict to a boil.
So Space of Literature is top-dog transcendent and Disaster is low-dog immanent. Space takes the aphoristic aporias denoting the Primal Scream from Disaster and unobtrusively drapes the banal calico cloth of Time and Space overtop, blunting the screams and burying the pain in sheer tedium.
It's as if the author is finally exhaling in the former work. Space of Literature is a release. There is a some passive peace in seeing the equation represented by your life as a pure tautology. There are traces of meaning in nonbeing. But no firm foothold.
The conflictual world seeks value; the passive world seeks peace. But there is ultimately no rest in either attitude, if you're woke. Life is a dualistic thing. And there can be no letup until we are indifferent to our anxieties and inner conflicts. And outer events.
That, as Blanchot repeats, is patience. But Patience must not disown its heart.
Patience looks kindly on both defeat and victory. In the contentious weight of conflict - borne with patience - life is perennially reborn anew.
But for Blanchot, the important thing throughout is the patience of equanimity - the Stoic virtue of bearing up patiently through whatever circumstances life may deal you.
Anguish can be bleak, but the greater the inner conflict, the more easeful the release will be with patient equanimity carrying you through.
A rebirth in Grace, in spite of his naysaying, is ultimately a sharing in a universal release of isness. And it's wonderful. And eternally secure.
For me, personally, that is the meaning of the peace of our final years: for that is my final preference of the bland peace of a very ordinary sameness over the fractious combat of the workplace, if you will.
I'm now perfectly happy to blend in with the scenery rather than try to be a force to be reckoned with. The simple joys of life flow more freely now.
I am more ready - and thankfully, more likely - to be discounted as a harmless nonentity than to be discredited as anyone's pain in the posterior. Even to the woke.
With age comes easier acceptance of the ongoing battle, too.
Last night I had a happy dream about death. Oxymoronic, you say? Not at all - in fact, my state of nonexistence in the dream was infinitely encouraging. You see, my release into death's full stop was like an utter completion.
I think of Eliot’s poem The Dry Salvages, and I wonder whether these pessimistic woke writers will ever know such rest as I dreamt of:
We have to see them as forever bailing,
Perpetually setting and hauling, while the North East lowers…
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.
We must suspend our judgement forever -
For whether these others remain here, in the Hope of Resurrection,
Or there, in the Hopelessness of an Empty Vacuum of Hell,
It’s none of our business.
For as Ezekiel says we can only prophecy to the wind -
For only the wind will listen.
I have a love/hate relationship with Blanchot: he takes us to the brink of despair, yet never falls into it; he hopes against hopelessness for peace in his life; and he never gives up the struggle. But such is not ethical or reverent, but only woke, alas. He simply never shuts up.
I really like, however, the sense of incompleteness in this book on writing and writers. My friend Black Oxford is right in saying this book leaves us feeling incomplete, as our lives must necessarily always be. And yet, and yet. For isn't incompleteness the point at which God reaches down into the Dark Void - in the second Creation story of Genesis?
That was my overall impression after putting aside this author's amazing Writing Of The Disaster for a while, in favour of this book.
I say "putting aside" - for to me we are never "finished" with a Blanchot text. He demands constant rereading for his books to be seen as unfinished monuments to his perforce incomplete and often anguished memory. Incompleteness spells translucent Forgetfulness, and in Lost Memory we glimpse the sovereignty of God over our forgetful nonbeing. But to be woke is to will the loss of true hope.
So Disaster, I think, must be read alongside The Space of Literature.
But when he wrote this book, possibly because his writing has no heart, he was very fitfully asleep. And awakening is seeing the Terrible Face of God. Once you're awake, you see the combined Glory and Disaster of God. For He remains a Disaster for incomplete souls like Blanchot who have not yet awoken - and not a dispassionate one, either.
Look at it this way - no matter how we slice or dice up life it remains a duality, the two sides of which - the objective and the subjective sides - are very strange bedfellows, mutually exclusive and each continually vying to be top dog. We must bring their constant conflict to a boil.
So Space of Literature is top-dog transcendent and Disaster is low-dog immanent. Space takes the aphoristic aporias denoting the Primal Scream from Disaster and unobtrusively drapes the banal calico cloth of Time and Space overtop, blunting the screams and burying the pain in sheer tedium.
It's as if the author is finally exhaling in the former work. Space of Literature is a release. There is a some passive peace in seeing the equation represented by your life as a pure tautology. There are traces of meaning in nonbeing. But no firm foothold.
The conflictual world seeks value; the passive world seeks peace. But there is ultimately no rest in either attitude, if you're woke. Life is a dualistic thing. And there can be no letup until we are indifferent to our anxieties and inner conflicts. And outer events.
That, as Blanchot repeats, is patience. But Patience must not disown its heart.
Patience looks kindly on both defeat and victory. In the contentious weight of conflict - borne with patience - life is perennially reborn anew.
But for Blanchot, the important thing throughout is the patience of equanimity - the Stoic virtue of bearing up patiently through whatever circumstances life may deal you.
Anguish can be bleak, but the greater the inner conflict, the more easeful the release will be with patient equanimity carrying you through.
A rebirth in Grace, in spite of his naysaying, is ultimately a sharing in a universal release of isness. And it's wonderful. And eternally secure.
For me, personally, that is the meaning of the peace of our final years: for that is my final preference of the bland peace of a very ordinary sameness over the fractious combat of the workplace, if you will.
I'm now perfectly happy to blend in with the scenery rather than try to be a force to be reckoned with. The simple joys of life flow more freely now.
I am more ready - and thankfully, more likely - to be discounted as a harmless nonentity than to be discredited as anyone's pain in the posterior. Even to the woke.
With age comes easier acceptance of the ongoing battle, too.
Last night I had a happy dream about death. Oxymoronic, you say? Not at all - in fact, my state of nonexistence in the dream was infinitely encouraging. You see, my release into death's full stop was like an utter completion.
I think of Eliot’s poem The Dry Salvages, and I wonder whether these pessimistic woke writers will ever know such rest as I dreamt of:
We have to see them as forever bailing,
Perpetually setting and hauling, while the North East lowers…
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.
We must suspend our judgement forever -
For whether these others remain here, in the Hope of Resurrection,
Or there, in the Hopelessness of an Empty Vacuum of Hell,
It’s none of our business.
For as Ezekiel says we can only prophecy to the wind -
For only the wind will listen.
June 15, 2021
Meditations on Incompleteness
The only thing certain about any work of literature, indeed about writing of any kind, is that it is; it exists. But its being is of a certain kind. While essentially passive, writing is seditious. It promotes uncertainty about what is already known through both experience and other writing. It interrupts whatever intentions it encounters in the reader. It creates a space, a zone, of insecurity which paradoxically induces the need for more reading and hence more writing. Thus writing seduces both writers and readers into an obsessive state of permanent ‘unfinishedness,’ of longing for more.
“To write is to break the bond that unites the word with myself,” says Blanchot. In a sense this sterilises language. The word becomes independent once launched. On its own it has no effect. It is barely any thing at all. Language is not human but something alien per Blanchot: “To write is, moreover, to withdraw language from the world, to detach it from what makes it a power.”
And to read, one might add, is to break the bond that unites the world with the reader, replacing what is with what is written. What is read is doubly detached - from the writer and from the world. It is its own independent space, lurking, an alien reminder to the writer and a sort of fly-trap for any reader who happens to notice its existence.
Within this literary space anything is possible. Interpretations are potentially infinite. Like the physical universe, literary space, therefore, is expanding at an increasing rate. Writing breeds as it is fertilised through reading. It is not the gene that is selfish but the word that desires replication, translation, and re-definition.
Literary space is democratic in the same way that a dictionary is democratic. Individuals propose without constraint but only literary space disposes. This is the primary source of uncertainty. No one knows the physics of literary space. Its laws are its own, and hidden. Whenever these laws are in danger of being discovered, they change.
Religion is a small corner of literary space which is typically claimed by an authority which desires to limit local expansion and objects to incompleteness on principle. This sort of hubris has no effect on literary space but causes significant misery for readers and writers. The pen is not always mightier than the sword. But both are always subject to the dominance of literary space, and succumb to it eventually.
All activity inside literary space is useless. But it is where usefulness is defined. More to the point, it is where usefulness is re-defined, along with all other valuations. The revaluation of values occurs there more or less continuously in a way Nietzsche would approve, submitting himself to that very process. Since all authority relies on the stability of valuations to remain in power, there is a permanent tension between government - civil, social, religious, scientific, and institutional - and the activities of literary space.
Despite its density of population, literary space is a lonely place. Writing and reading are solitary activities. There is no consolation for this solitude except for the deeper penetration into literary space. Having entered into it, salvation is hopeless. Or rather, salvation is the very hopelessness of ever achieving a final understanding literary space. Incompleteness is our destiny, interrupted only by death.
The only thing certain about any work of literature, indeed about writing of any kind, is that it is; it exists. But its being is of a certain kind. While essentially passive, writing is seditious. It promotes uncertainty about what is already known through both experience and other writing. It interrupts whatever intentions it encounters in the reader. It creates a space, a zone, of insecurity which paradoxically induces the need for more reading and hence more writing. Thus writing seduces both writers and readers into an obsessive state of permanent ‘unfinishedness,’ of longing for more.
“To write is to break the bond that unites the word with myself,” says Blanchot. In a sense this sterilises language. The word becomes independent once launched. On its own it has no effect. It is barely any thing at all. Language is not human but something alien per Blanchot: “To write is, moreover, to withdraw language from the world, to detach it from what makes it a power.”
And to read, one might add, is to break the bond that unites the world with the reader, replacing what is with what is written. What is read is doubly detached - from the writer and from the world. It is its own independent space, lurking, an alien reminder to the writer and a sort of fly-trap for any reader who happens to notice its existence.
Within this literary space anything is possible. Interpretations are potentially infinite. Like the physical universe, literary space, therefore, is expanding at an increasing rate. Writing breeds as it is fertilised through reading. It is not the gene that is selfish but the word that desires replication, translation, and re-definition.
Literary space is democratic in the same way that a dictionary is democratic. Individuals propose without constraint but only literary space disposes. This is the primary source of uncertainty. No one knows the physics of literary space. Its laws are its own, and hidden. Whenever these laws are in danger of being discovered, they change.
Religion is a small corner of literary space which is typically claimed by an authority which desires to limit local expansion and objects to incompleteness on principle. This sort of hubris has no effect on literary space but causes significant misery for readers and writers. The pen is not always mightier than the sword. But both are always subject to the dominance of literary space, and succumb to it eventually.
All activity inside literary space is useless. But it is where usefulness is defined. More to the point, it is where usefulness is re-defined, along with all other valuations. The revaluation of values occurs there more or less continuously in a way Nietzsche would approve, submitting himself to that very process. Since all authority relies on the stability of valuations to remain in power, there is a permanent tension between government - civil, social, religious, scientific, and institutional - and the activities of literary space.
Despite its density of population, literary space is a lonely place. Writing and reading are solitary activities. There is no consolation for this solitude except for the deeper penetration into literary space. Having entered into it, salvation is hopeless. Or rather, salvation is the very hopelessness of ever achieving a final understanding literary space. Incompleteness is our destiny, interrupted only by death.
February 11, 2020
Tu traccia infinita!
“La terza persona significa che me stesso è divenuto nessuno, che gli altri sono divenuti altro, che là dove mi trovo non posso rivolgermi a me stesso e che chi si rivolge a me non può dire io e a sua volta è altro da sé”.
Ho letto questo libro con impegno e mi ha restituito un pensiero complesso e raffinato che non so se sia accessibile a una sintesi. Le posizioni politiche dell'autore sono difficili e insicure tanto quanto si rivela polivalente e antinomica la sua riflessione filosofica e letteraria. Cercando di entrare nel discorso del testo, il lettore si trova vicino a sé come parole familiari i versi di Rilke e Hölderlin, le speculazioni negative di Mallarmé e Nietzsche, la fenomenologia esistenziale di Kafka. Italo Calvino ricorda nel saggio L'ordinatore di desideri, contenuto in Una pietra sopra, l'opinione di Blanchot sulla felicità misurata, secondo la quale La misura è un'esigenza così smisurata che obbliga non solo tutto l'universo a modificarsi, ma non si contenta dell'universo e lo fa elemento d'un altro e così via, quasi senza fine, fino alla notte calma in cui tutto si ferma senza che nulla si disfaccia”. Così, è evidente come sia notturno il discorso di Blanchot, originato dalla notte primaria che è fonte di una notte altra. Stefano Agosti, in prefazione, nota con acutezza che questo testo è in stretto legame con le idee di Saussure e Lacan, specie per il concetto di vuoto, assenza, mancanza, dai quali lasciar discendere le elaborazioni sulla natura del segno linguistico e della parola, sulla relazione tra le cose e il linguaggio, nel dialogo tra potenzialità e oggettualità. Blanchot crede che l'opera d'arte, letteraria o in altra forma, tenda sempre a un vuoto dell'origine, sia in altri termini irraggiungibile persino alla scrittura, tormentata e sottomessa, perché si presenta come estraneità, incessante e intangibile. Questa caratteristica è condivisa in Blanchot dalla neutralità del testo artistico e dalla ineffabilità conoscitiva della morte come evento e come impossibilità. La morte è un aldilà che dobbiamo imparare a riconoscere e accogliere. L'arte e la sua tensione verso la morte tentano, dilatando l'io l'una verso l'altra, un'esposizione, un'incorporazione, una pienezza del vuoto, che naturalmente è destinata al fallimento, nella ricerca di una verità segreta sempre ineffabile e inconoscibile. Il poeta scava il verso e quindi deve disperare; lo scrittore appartiene a ciò che esiste prima dell'opera, a un'anteriorità che egli non può mai convertire in dimora. La solitudine essenziale dello scrittore si rivolge all'intimità con il tu del lettore, ricerca un movimento verso un oggetto (che è transizione), divenuto la sua ombra, rendendolo pura passività, laddove egli cerca di preservare, con una prensione persecutrice, quel che per lui non ha mai inizio, ed egli maledettamente ricomincia, volendo privare il linguaggio del mondo, del gigantesco mormorìo del mondo. Ovvero: Se voglio diventare l'eco, devo imporgli il silenzio. Errare è dunque il compito infinito dei soggetti della creazione letteraria, l'autore, il testo, il lettore, nella duplice accezione di movimento continuo ed errore, interruzione della pulsione alla verità; così nel mentre della ricerca, si crea quello che Blanchot definisce “lo spazio interiore del mondo”. La malinconia di Kafka si compone di luce spaventosa e attraente, perché lo inabissa; egli mette in narrazione l'impossibilità di non vedere, per lui scrivere è un'apertura su ciò che è, quando non c'è ancora un mondo. In ciò la letteratura manifesta una caratteristica unica, mettere in contatto con quel luogo impersonale e anonimo dove si invera la morte, quel nulla inafferrabile che non giunge mai, ma insieme la negazione possibile, la facoltà di morire. È così che Blanchot arriva a definire anche il suicidio; prendere una morte per l'altra, sostituire l'ombra di qualcosa di neutro, il rifiuto al mondo, con l'oscurità di una cessazione congiuntiva, spirituale e indicibile. ”Non mi allontano dagli uomini per vivere in pace, bensì per poter morire in pace”. Le cose hanno una profondità naturale che sfugge al possesso della lingua; le parole non sono materia di verità. Da una parte c'è il mondo concreto, senza di noi; dall'altra un mondo ideale, falso, portatore di illusione. In questo senso l'ambiguità si presenta nei suoi differenti livelli, tutto è parola ma la parola stessa è sparizione, dissoluzione, dissimulazione. Scrivere significa, sempre nel discorso letterario, trovare quel punto immaginario in cui nulla si rivela, non ci sia nulla che lavori dentro le parole. Rilke scrisse che “i versi non sono sentimenti, sono esperienze”. Siamo certi allora che la scrittura non appartenga al male, ci interroga Blanchot? Nessuno è sicuro di esistere né di morire e nessuno mette in dubbio la vita né la morte, ci nascondiamo dalla vita e dalla morte, nascondendoci in esse. È l'affermazione, l'appropriazione di Orfeo, l'oscura lotta per fuggire la necessità, l'indefinito, la negligenza. Scrive Blanchot che colui che viene raggiunto dall'invisibilità non è più l'io, è un altro, che la morte ha trascurato e rifiutato. In questa contraddizione identitaria sta la nostra sofferenza, e l'impazienza che riserviamo al dolore; è la nostra paura che crea quel che ci fa paura, lo spazio della fine è quel lato della vita che non è rivolto verso di noi. Non esiste un al di qua e un al di là, ma solo una grande unità, dove dimora la nostra esistenza, rendendo la nostra coscienza un ostacolo, perché in essa il nostro destino è essere sempre di fronte, presenze e separatezze simultanee. Ecco allora che lo spazio ci oltrepassa e traduce le cose, noi ci consumiamo felicemente nell'essere, continuando a muoverci, trasformarci, puro movimento, apprendiamo i dati dell'esistenza terrena e partecipiamo a significati superiori, in questa dualità subordinati e insubordinati, all'eternità e alla mortalità. Tutto risuona, tutto è nel ritmo. Il canto è assenza e presenza, è trasfigurazione, dice cose finite che escludano l'infinito, che siano opera del cuore, dove le cose si convertono, si fanno interiori. Attraverso il canto, il soggetto non pensa al mondo, è il mondo che pensa lui; scriveva Hofmannsthal che è compito del poeta ”non impedire a nulla l'accesso alla sua anima”. Attuale in questo il pensiero di Blanchot: il libro è intimità, ma oggi l'intimità è diventata una potenza esteriore; la psicoanalisi ci insegna che l'immagine sembra consegnarci profondamente a noi stessi; apparenza, appunto. Solide difese costruiamo contro il mondo superiore e così siamo vulnerabili ai rischi del mondo inferiore. La notte rinchiude nel canto quel che passa oltre il canto. Blanchot è convinto quindi che l'opera sia una via che conduce all'ispirazione, e, a differenza di Wittgenstein, crede che quel che non può essere detto, debba comunque farsi sentire. Tutto quel che è nascosto deve apparire. Bene, ho letto questo libro, e ancora rifletto sulle parole percorse: che ne è di un libro che non viene letto? È la leggerezza del lettore (ancora Calvino) a fare sì che l'opera diventi opera: il libro è uno spazio in cui niente ha ancora senso, è un'aperta violenza verso l'origine. Il lettore evocato scrive nell'autore; poetico vuol dire soggettivo, il testo ci rende deboli, ci annienta, designa una regione dove l'impossibilità non è più privazione ma affermazione, una regione dove possiamo vedere le cose nella loro trasparenza. E nel tempo dell'angoscia.
“”O, dimmi poeta, quel che fai. - Io celebro.
Ma il mortale è mostruoso,
come puoi sopportarlo, come puoi accoglierlo? - Io celebro.
Ma quel che non ha nome, l'anonimo,
come fai a invocarlo comunque? - Io celebro.
Donde trai il tuo diritto d'essere vero
in ogni costume, sotto ogni maschera? - Io celebro
E come possono il silenzio e il furore conoscerti,
così come la stella e la tempesta? - Perché io celebro”.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Per Leonie Zacharias, Poesie Sparse, 20 dicembre 1921
“La terza persona significa che me stesso è divenuto nessuno, che gli altri sono divenuti altro, che là dove mi trovo non posso rivolgermi a me stesso e che chi si rivolge a me non può dire io e a sua volta è altro da sé”.
Ho letto questo libro con impegno e mi ha restituito un pensiero complesso e raffinato che non so se sia accessibile a una sintesi. Le posizioni politiche dell'autore sono difficili e insicure tanto quanto si rivela polivalente e antinomica la sua riflessione filosofica e letteraria. Cercando di entrare nel discorso del testo, il lettore si trova vicino a sé come parole familiari i versi di Rilke e Hölderlin, le speculazioni negative di Mallarmé e Nietzsche, la fenomenologia esistenziale di Kafka. Italo Calvino ricorda nel saggio L'ordinatore di desideri, contenuto in Una pietra sopra, l'opinione di Blanchot sulla felicità misurata, secondo la quale La misura è un'esigenza così smisurata che obbliga non solo tutto l'universo a modificarsi, ma non si contenta dell'universo e lo fa elemento d'un altro e così via, quasi senza fine, fino alla notte calma in cui tutto si ferma senza che nulla si disfaccia”. Così, è evidente come sia notturno il discorso di Blanchot, originato dalla notte primaria che è fonte di una notte altra. Stefano Agosti, in prefazione, nota con acutezza che questo testo è in stretto legame con le idee di Saussure e Lacan, specie per il concetto di vuoto, assenza, mancanza, dai quali lasciar discendere le elaborazioni sulla natura del segno linguistico e della parola, sulla relazione tra le cose e il linguaggio, nel dialogo tra potenzialità e oggettualità. Blanchot crede che l'opera d'arte, letteraria o in altra forma, tenda sempre a un vuoto dell'origine, sia in altri termini irraggiungibile persino alla scrittura, tormentata e sottomessa, perché si presenta come estraneità, incessante e intangibile. Questa caratteristica è condivisa in Blanchot dalla neutralità del testo artistico e dalla ineffabilità conoscitiva della morte come evento e come impossibilità. La morte è un aldilà che dobbiamo imparare a riconoscere e accogliere. L'arte e la sua tensione verso la morte tentano, dilatando l'io l'una verso l'altra, un'esposizione, un'incorporazione, una pienezza del vuoto, che naturalmente è destinata al fallimento, nella ricerca di una verità segreta sempre ineffabile e inconoscibile. Il poeta scava il verso e quindi deve disperare; lo scrittore appartiene a ciò che esiste prima dell'opera, a un'anteriorità che egli non può mai convertire in dimora. La solitudine essenziale dello scrittore si rivolge all'intimità con il tu del lettore, ricerca un movimento verso un oggetto (che è transizione), divenuto la sua ombra, rendendolo pura passività, laddove egli cerca di preservare, con una prensione persecutrice, quel che per lui non ha mai inizio, ed egli maledettamente ricomincia, volendo privare il linguaggio del mondo, del gigantesco mormorìo del mondo. Ovvero: Se voglio diventare l'eco, devo imporgli il silenzio. Errare è dunque il compito infinito dei soggetti della creazione letteraria, l'autore, il testo, il lettore, nella duplice accezione di movimento continuo ed errore, interruzione della pulsione alla verità; così nel mentre della ricerca, si crea quello che Blanchot definisce “lo spazio interiore del mondo”. La malinconia di Kafka si compone di luce spaventosa e attraente, perché lo inabissa; egli mette in narrazione l'impossibilità di non vedere, per lui scrivere è un'apertura su ciò che è, quando non c'è ancora un mondo. In ciò la letteratura manifesta una caratteristica unica, mettere in contatto con quel luogo impersonale e anonimo dove si invera la morte, quel nulla inafferrabile che non giunge mai, ma insieme la negazione possibile, la facoltà di morire. È così che Blanchot arriva a definire anche il suicidio; prendere una morte per l'altra, sostituire l'ombra di qualcosa di neutro, il rifiuto al mondo, con l'oscurità di una cessazione congiuntiva, spirituale e indicibile. ”Non mi allontano dagli uomini per vivere in pace, bensì per poter morire in pace”. Le cose hanno una profondità naturale che sfugge al possesso della lingua; le parole non sono materia di verità. Da una parte c'è il mondo concreto, senza di noi; dall'altra un mondo ideale, falso, portatore di illusione. In questo senso l'ambiguità si presenta nei suoi differenti livelli, tutto è parola ma la parola stessa è sparizione, dissoluzione, dissimulazione. Scrivere significa, sempre nel discorso letterario, trovare quel punto immaginario in cui nulla si rivela, non ci sia nulla che lavori dentro le parole. Rilke scrisse che “i versi non sono sentimenti, sono esperienze”. Siamo certi allora che la scrittura non appartenga al male, ci interroga Blanchot? Nessuno è sicuro di esistere né di morire e nessuno mette in dubbio la vita né la morte, ci nascondiamo dalla vita e dalla morte, nascondendoci in esse. È l'affermazione, l'appropriazione di Orfeo, l'oscura lotta per fuggire la necessità, l'indefinito, la negligenza. Scrive Blanchot che colui che viene raggiunto dall'invisibilità non è più l'io, è un altro, che la morte ha trascurato e rifiutato. In questa contraddizione identitaria sta la nostra sofferenza, e l'impazienza che riserviamo al dolore; è la nostra paura che crea quel che ci fa paura, lo spazio della fine è quel lato della vita che non è rivolto verso di noi. Non esiste un al di qua e un al di là, ma solo una grande unità, dove dimora la nostra esistenza, rendendo la nostra coscienza un ostacolo, perché in essa il nostro destino è essere sempre di fronte, presenze e separatezze simultanee. Ecco allora che lo spazio ci oltrepassa e traduce le cose, noi ci consumiamo felicemente nell'essere, continuando a muoverci, trasformarci, puro movimento, apprendiamo i dati dell'esistenza terrena e partecipiamo a significati superiori, in questa dualità subordinati e insubordinati, all'eternità e alla mortalità. Tutto risuona, tutto è nel ritmo. Il canto è assenza e presenza, è trasfigurazione, dice cose finite che escludano l'infinito, che siano opera del cuore, dove le cose si convertono, si fanno interiori. Attraverso il canto, il soggetto non pensa al mondo, è il mondo che pensa lui; scriveva Hofmannsthal che è compito del poeta ”non impedire a nulla l'accesso alla sua anima”. Attuale in questo il pensiero di Blanchot: il libro è intimità, ma oggi l'intimità è diventata una potenza esteriore; la psicoanalisi ci insegna che l'immagine sembra consegnarci profondamente a noi stessi; apparenza, appunto. Solide difese costruiamo contro il mondo superiore e così siamo vulnerabili ai rischi del mondo inferiore. La notte rinchiude nel canto quel che passa oltre il canto. Blanchot è convinto quindi che l'opera sia una via che conduce all'ispirazione, e, a differenza di Wittgenstein, crede che quel che non può essere detto, debba comunque farsi sentire. Tutto quel che è nascosto deve apparire. Bene, ho letto questo libro, e ancora rifletto sulle parole percorse: che ne è di un libro che non viene letto? È la leggerezza del lettore (ancora Calvino) a fare sì che l'opera diventi opera: il libro è uno spazio in cui niente ha ancora senso, è un'aperta violenza verso l'origine. Il lettore evocato scrive nell'autore; poetico vuol dire soggettivo, il testo ci rende deboli, ci annienta, designa una regione dove l'impossibilità non è più privazione ma affermazione, una regione dove possiamo vedere le cose nella loro trasparenza. E nel tempo dell'angoscia.
“”O, dimmi poeta, quel che fai. - Io celebro.
Ma il mortale è mostruoso,
come puoi sopportarlo, come puoi accoglierlo? - Io celebro.
Ma quel che non ha nome, l'anonimo,
come fai a invocarlo comunque? - Io celebro.
Donde trai il tuo diritto d'essere vero
in ogni costume, sotto ogni maschera? - Io celebro
E come possono il silenzio e il furore conoscerti,
così come la stella e la tempesta? - Perché io celebro”.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Per Leonie Zacharias, Poesie Sparse, 20 dicembre 1921
August 15, 2007
In order to balance out the seven Harry Potter books I have on my page, I realized that I should probably start giving myself credit for all the smart-person reading I've done. It's just...who wants to read a review of theory when they can read a review of Harry Potter...besides Erez?
So, Blanchot is the intersection of the soul into the academy. He is that space that allows for irresonsibility, for anxiety, for the honest shadow that says we only half-know what we are doing. His concept of "Fascination" has burned in my brain for seven years and inspired poems, an experiemental novel, short stories...and even a literary magazine.
He is easier to digest that Deleuze and Guattari and more poetic than Benjamin...although they do both share a wonderful mystisism.
Some day I'll go back to grad school and maybe then I'll study B-dog in a structure way. For now, I read him on my own term and am probably better for it.
So, Blanchot is the intersection of the soul into the academy. He is that space that allows for irresonsibility, for anxiety, for the honest shadow that says we only half-know what we are doing. His concept of "Fascination" has burned in my brain for seven years and inspired poems, an experiemental novel, short stories...and even a literary magazine.
He is easier to digest that Deleuze and Guattari and more poetic than Benjamin...although they do both share a wonderful mystisism.
Some day I'll go back to grad school and maybe then I'll study B-dog in a structure way. For now, I read him on my own term and am probably better for it.
July 3, 2024
Ouf! Lecture très fascinante mais aussi très dense; surtout les parties théoriques, non-axées sur des oeuvres concrètes. (J’avais l’impression qu’il y en a plus ici que dans, par exemple, “Le livre à venir.”)
Le chapitre sur Kafka était peut-être encore le plus accessible, mais ce sont les tout derniers (sur la lecture et la communication) qui m’ont le plus frappé.
Je vais devoir digérer tout ça longtemps avant de pouvoir en dire quelque chose de tant soit peu intelligent.
Le chapitre sur Kafka était peut-être encore le plus accessible, mais ce sont les tout derniers (sur la lecture et la communication) qui m’ont le plus frappé.
Je vais devoir digérer tout ça longtemps avant de pouvoir en dire quelque chose de tant soit peu intelligent.
June 30, 2014
Anyone who writes or is interested in writing should read this work immediately. It shocks me how little Blanchot is known and discussed (even in academia(and especially outside of france)).
A figure of great thought and importance, dwelling on the margins of society (both physical and intellectual)
A figure of great thought and importance, dwelling on the margins of society (both physical and intellectual)
December 30, 2024
este brilhante ensaio, necessariamente fragmentário, parece à primeira vista uma reflexão sobre a criação literária e artística e o poder da palavra. porém, através dos exemplos de algumas obras de mallarmé, kafka, hölderlin e rilke, encontramos algo mais profundo: a obscuridade interior inerente ao artista, a solidão criativa do escritor, a experiência antecipada do fim da vida (o capítulo dedicada a rilke e à morte é qualquer coisa...). uma meditação crítica sem paralelo, que há muito merecia uma tradução moderna em português são e escorreito.
July 3, 2021
'Ecrire, c'est disposer le langage sous la fascination et, par lui, en lui, demeurer en contact avec le milieu absolu, là où la chose redevient image, où l'image, d'allusion à une figure, devient allusion à ce qui est sans figure et, de forme dessinée sur l'absence, devient l'informe présence de cette absence, l'ouverture opaque et vide sur ce qui est quand il n'y a plus de monde, quand il n'y a pas encore de monde.'
Un livre magnifique sur l'art et le processus de sa création.
Un livre magnifique sur l'art et le processus de sa création.
August 5, 2007
Socrates, a man I deeply respect, hated sophists. But then again, he never read Blanchot.
November 1, 2011
Art and Action (Political)
“Whoever acknowledges effective action in the thick of history as his essential tak cannot prefer artistic action. Art acts poorly and little. It is clear that if Marx had followed the dreams of his youth and written the most beautiful novels in the world, he would have enchanted the world, but he would not have shaken it.” (213)
This as opposed to a pre-enlightenment art which could participate in eternal or sacred time. Desacralized, art can only be utilitarian (part of the world of means and purposes) and in comparison to all other courses of action, pretty shitty at being utilitarian.
Usefulness in Refusal
And so art finds its place where “art withdraws into the most invisible and the most interior—into the empty point of existence where it shelters its sovereignty in refusal and the superabundance of refusal” (215).
In Glorifying the Self, Un-limiting the self, the Artist Affirms the Will, Power, and Useful Destiny of Man
“If he discloses the profundity of inner life, if he restores its richness, its free movement…the more this self becomes deep, insatiable, and empty, the more powerful is the advance of the human will, which already in the heart’s intimacy (but with a still unperceived intention) has posed the world as a set of objects that can be produced and are destined to usefulness” (217)
The Poem as Making then Casting Out Its Author
“Inspiration is not the gift of the poem to someone existing already, but the gift of existence to someone who does not yet exist” (227)
The poem “dispossesses” the poet who writes it. “The creator has no power over his work.”
The Space of the Poem. Poem as other.
What the work creates is “not another world, but the other of all worlds, that which is always other than the world” (228)
“Always it says, in one guise or another: beginning”
Art Without the Gods. Art in a desacralized world.
“What will become now of art, now that the gods and even their absence are gone, and now that man’s presence offers no support?” (233)
Art as repetition (and repetition aligned with failure)
“Beginning again, repetition, the fatal return—everything evoked by experiences where estrangement is allied with the strangely familiar, where the irremedial takes the form of an endless repetition, where the same is posed in the dizziness of redoubling, there is no cognition but only recognition.” (243)
Art and the beginning, alpha
“But where has art led us? To a time before the world, before the beginning.” (244). Utopia.
Language and the Absence of the Sacred – the loss of the evoking word
“It seems that art owes the strangest of torments and the very grave passion that animate it to the disappearance of the historical forms of the divine. Art was the language of the gods. The gods having disappeared, it became the language in which their disappearance was expressed, then the language in which this disappearance itself ceased to appear. This forgetfulness now speaks all alone.” (246)
“the double absence of the gods who are no longer and who are not yet. The poem’s space is entirely represented by this and, which indicates the double absence, the separation at its most tragic instant” (247)
“Whoever acknowledges effective action in the thick of history as his essential tak cannot prefer artistic action. Art acts poorly and little. It is clear that if Marx had followed the dreams of his youth and written the most beautiful novels in the world, he would have enchanted the world, but he would not have shaken it.” (213)
This as opposed to a pre-enlightenment art which could participate in eternal or sacred time. Desacralized, art can only be utilitarian (part of the world of means and purposes) and in comparison to all other courses of action, pretty shitty at being utilitarian.
Usefulness in Refusal
And so art finds its place where “art withdraws into the most invisible and the most interior—into the empty point of existence where it shelters its sovereignty in refusal and the superabundance of refusal” (215).
In Glorifying the Self, Un-limiting the self, the Artist Affirms the Will, Power, and Useful Destiny of Man
“If he discloses the profundity of inner life, if he restores its richness, its free movement…the more this self becomes deep, insatiable, and empty, the more powerful is the advance of the human will, which already in the heart’s intimacy (but with a still unperceived intention) has posed the world as a set of objects that can be produced and are destined to usefulness” (217)
The Poem as Making then Casting Out Its Author
“Inspiration is not the gift of the poem to someone existing already, but the gift of existence to someone who does not yet exist” (227)
The poem “dispossesses” the poet who writes it. “The creator has no power over his work.”
The Space of the Poem. Poem as other.
What the work creates is “not another world, but the other of all worlds, that which is always other than the world” (228)
“Always it says, in one guise or another: beginning”
Art Without the Gods. Art in a desacralized world.
“What will become now of art, now that the gods and even their absence are gone, and now that man’s presence offers no support?” (233)
Art as repetition (and repetition aligned with failure)
“Beginning again, repetition, the fatal return—everything evoked by experiences where estrangement is allied with the strangely familiar, where the irremedial takes the form of an endless repetition, where the same is posed in the dizziness of redoubling, there is no cognition but only recognition.” (243)
Art and the beginning, alpha
“But where has art led us? To a time before the world, before the beginning.” (244). Utopia.
Language and the Absence of the Sacred – the loss of the evoking word
“It seems that art owes the strangest of torments and the very grave passion that animate it to the disappearance of the historical forms of the divine. Art was the language of the gods. The gods having disappeared, it became the language in which their disappearance was expressed, then the language in which this disappearance itself ceased to appear. This forgetfulness now speaks all alone.” (246)
“the double absence of the gods who are no longer and who are not yet. The poem’s space is entirely represented by this and, which indicates the double absence, the separation at its most tragic instant” (247)
April 13, 2022
“The poet’s destiny is to expose himself to the force of the undetermined and to the pure violence of being from which nothing can be made, to endure this force courageously, but also to contain it by imposing upon it restraint and the perfection of a form.”
Blanchot's analysis heaves out a bittersweet sense of nothingness. Sometimes crossing the sharp outline of literary paradox he goes on to touch the infinite realm of man's existential relation with his act writing. Words,space,thoughts and language find their own innermost contraction and relief when Blanchot describes ambiguously the ambiguous role of art in our life,and even in our death. Most of time grazing the soul of Kafka and Rilke,he describes what we can call the impossibility of all our possibility or in some more refined words: writing as the art of dissolving. There are paradoxes whenever Blanchot wrote a line..the very act of his writing clearly shows how much he loved to play with paradox—the glimmering nothingness of our being. The opening chapter asserts the ‘solitude’ of the written work: To write is to break the bond that unites the word with myself. The work is even separate from the book, which we might see as a vessel borne on the surface of a submarine current: Writing is the interminable, the incessant. This means that the space of the title is not a privileged realm for a few “great writers”; it does not have borders or features with rules to be learned but is at a remove from such power. Mallarmé felt the very disquieting symptoms caused by the sole act of writing.
‘Blanchot cites Kafka’s comment that he has entered literature when he replaces ‘I’ with ‘He’, but adds that this metamorphosis is more profound: In doing this, the writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one, which has no center, and which reveals nothing. Mastery over words puts the writer in contact with a fundamental passivity that cannot be grasped: To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking. Instead, in a stirring paradox, mastery consists in the power to stop writing, to interrupt what is being written. This a curious formulation. When we admire the tone of a particular writer, he says, it is not the writer’s voice we admire but the intimacy of the silence he imposes on the word.
Blanchot's analysis heaves out a bittersweet sense of nothingness. Sometimes crossing the sharp outline of literary paradox he goes on to touch the infinite realm of man's existential relation with his act writing. Words,space,thoughts and language find their own innermost contraction and relief when Blanchot describes ambiguously the ambiguous role of art in our life,and even in our death. Most of time grazing the soul of Kafka and Rilke,he describes what we can call the impossibility of all our possibility or in some more refined words: writing as the art of dissolving. There are paradoxes whenever Blanchot wrote a line..the very act of his writing clearly shows how much he loved to play with paradox—the glimmering nothingness of our being. The opening chapter asserts the ‘solitude’ of the written work: To write is to break the bond that unites the word with myself. The work is even separate from the book, which we might see as a vessel borne on the surface of a submarine current: Writing is the interminable, the incessant. This means that the space of the title is not a privileged realm for a few “great writers”; it does not have borders or features with rules to be learned but is at a remove from such power. Mallarmé felt the very disquieting symptoms caused by the sole act of writing.
‘Blanchot cites Kafka’s comment that he has entered literature when he replaces ‘I’ with ‘He’, but adds that this metamorphosis is more profound: In doing this, the writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one, which has no center, and which reveals nothing. Mastery over words puts the writer in contact with a fundamental passivity that cannot be grasped: To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking. Instead, in a stirring paradox, mastery consists in the power to stop writing, to interrupt what is being written. This a curious formulation. When we admire the tone of a particular writer, he says, it is not the writer’s voice we admire but the intimacy of the silence he imposes on the word.
October 8, 2018
I am always reading this book...the writing of the "constellations of doubt" - writing as close as possible to the desire for language itself.
December 8, 2017
challenging in more ways than one
January 5, 2025
"The poem is the answer’s absence. The poet is one who, through his sacrifice, keeps the question open in his work. At every time he lives the time of distress, and his time is always the empty time when what he must live is the double infidelity: that of men, that of the gods—and also the double absence of the gods who are no longer and who are not yet. The poem’s space is entirely represented by this and, which indicates the double absence, the separation at its most tragic instant. But as for whether it is the and that unites and binds together, the pure word in which the void of the past and the void of the future become true presence, the 'now' of dawn—this question is reserved in the work. It is that which reveals itself in the work by returning to concealment, to the distress of forgetting."
January 8, 2024
"We do not write according to what we are; we are according to what we write."
Maurice Blanchot finds within writing an abyssal impulse: it's a practice of erasing oneself from the affirmational possibilities of "the real", even of life, aspiring instead to something like "mastery over death." My favorite section of the book might be the one devoted to Kafka, who writes that he does "not hide from men because [he wants] to live peacefully, but because [he wants] to perish peacefully." Blanchot clarifies this sentiment to mean that "Kafka cuts himself off from the world in order to write, and he writes in order to die in peace."
The Space of Literature is deliberately opaque theory, no doubt further complicated by the act of translation. Blanchot writes circuitously, swimming around theses without ever really settling on them. He gestures often to referents defined only in the most oblique terms, which frequently made me feel more like I was drowning than swimming alongside him.
I appreciate his emphasis on writing's endemic negation as opposed to its much more oft-discussed productivity/creativity. I also value his substantive analyses of writers' letters and diaries to clarify and complicate their own beliefs about the acts of reading and writing (in addition to Kafka, he devotes a lot of space to Mallarmé, Rilke, and Hölderlin).
Maurice Blanchot finds within writing an abyssal impulse: it's a practice of erasing oneself from the affirmational possibilities of "the real", even of life, aspiring instead to something like "mastery over death." My favorite section of the book might be the one devoted to Kafka, who writes that he does "not hide from men because [he wants] to live peacefully, but because [he wants] to perish peacefully." Blanchot clarifies this sentiment to mean that "Kafka cuts himself off from the world in order to write, and he writes in order to die in peace."
The Space of Literature is deliberately opaque theory, no doubt further complicated by the act of translation. Blanchot writes circuitously, swimming around theses without ever really settling on them. He gestures often to referents defined only in the most oblique terms, which frequently made me feel more like I was drowning than swimming alongside him.
I appreciate his emphasis on writing's endemic negation as opposed to its much more oft-discussed productivity/creativity. I also value his substantive analyses of writers' letters and diaries to clarify and complicate their own beliefs about the acts of reading and writing (in addition to Kafka, he devotes a lot of space to Mallarmé, Rilke, and Hölderlin).
June 14, 2022
Leer a Blanchot no es fácil, más si delicioso. Muchos de sus apartes en este libro me resultaron caricias para mi ser. Su lenguaje merodea la ‘cosa’, se va acercando a la ‘cosa’, la acaricia, como el buen amante que va calentando el cuerpo del otre sin apuros, pero con un propósito, un tanto oculto, que avanza y se pliega para que une suplique por más. Blanchot es un delicioso amante del lenguaje. Su escritura es tal como su teorización sobre la obra literaria: inacción que profundiza en una acción no revelada, avance hacia la no-verdad es decir hacia el vacío esencial, hacia el origen imposible pero a su vez anhelado, la palabra en su potencia más errante porque nunca logra ser respuesta certera más sí es lugar seguro para la pregunta inagotable por nosotres, ahora que “los dioses nos han abandonado”. Todes quienes estamos sumidos en el goce de leer, para quienes están volcados a escribir, para quienes encontramos en el lenguaje ‘poético’ un lugar hermoso para estar en este mundo, seguro que este libro será una muy bella lectura. Leer a Blanchot es una experiencia altamente gozosa para los días de zozobra siempre que uno esté dispuesto a encararlos… eso si con gracia y dulzura.
Currently reading
May 15, 20192019 sudah hampir separuh berjalan. Belum ada satu pun buku yang selesai saya baca tahun ini. Di tahun lalu kira-kira saya hanya menamatkan sembilan atau sepuluh buku. Minat baca saya tidak berkurang, hanya rasanya membaca dan melihat-lihat timeline medsos lebih menghibur saat ini, alih-alih membaca buku. Agaknya tahun ini saya tidak akan menyelesaikan buku apa pun. Biarlah buku-buku yang sedang saya baca menjadi semacam unfinished business di hari-hari yang akan tiba.
Sekarang saya mengupdate goodreads ini di daftar panjang orang-orang yang membaca Blanchot. Saya tau Blanchot lewat tulisan Martin S. dan seketika itu langsung ingin tau lebih lanjut tentang filsuf satu ini. Beberapa bulan lalu saya iseng-iseng membaca tulisan Blanchot dan seketika itu langsung beliau masuk ke dalam daftar pendek kanditat filsuf yang akan saya gunakan sebagai pisau bedah di naskah skripsi saya, selain Giacomo Leopardi dan Emil Cioran.
Sekarang saya mengupdate goodreads ini di daftar panjang orang-orang yang membaca Blanchot. Saya tau Blanchot lewat tulisan Martin S. dan seketika itu langsung ingin tau lebih lanjut tentang filsuf satu ini. Beberapa bulan lalu saya iseng-iseng membaca tulisan Blanchot dan seketika itu langsung beliau masuk ke dalam daftar pendek kanditat filsuf yang akan saya gunakan sebagai pisau bedah di naskah skripsi saya, selain Giacomo Leopardi dan Emil Cioran.
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October 8, 2020" The image does not, at first glance, resemble the corpse, but the cadaver's strangeness is perhaps also that of the image. What we call mortal remains escapes common categories. Something is there before us which is not really the living person, nor is it any reality at all. It is neither the same as the person who was alive, nor is it another person, nor is it anything else. What is there, with the absolute calm of something that has found its place, does not, however, succeed in being convincingly here. Death suspends the relation to place, even though the deceased rests heavily in his spot as if upon the only basis that is left him. To be precise, this basis lacks, the place is missing, the corpse is not in its place."
October 20, 2020
Moments of truly heady thinking on the psychology and metaphysical significance of the writerly impulse, a probing of act and being that feels philosophically profound without ringing true for most writers, in any event. Blanchot's analysis of Kafka, however, is exceptional and insightful. And there, I suggest, we stop our reading. Blanchot then turns full tilt into the role of death and suicide in the creative impulse, and he never lets go. It is at this moment in the work where one wonders if we are reflecting on writing or upon the writer's personal obsession. Where does this reflection leave us? Nowhere (in)definite, no where (en)lightening, and no where satiated.
June 10, 2013
Very significant with regard to thoughts on Blasé or distinctions between words and things (See Foucault's _The Order of Things_.
March 18, 2024
"How is it possible to proceed with a firm step toward that which will not allow itself to be charted? It seems that both the artist and the suicide succeed in doing something only by deceiving themselves about what they do. The latter takes one death for another, the former takes a book for the work. They devote themselves to this misunderstanding as if blind, but their dim consciousness of it makes of their task a proud bet. For it is as if they were embarking upon a kind of action which could only reach its term at infinity."
Werkelijk een van de beste boeken die ik heb gelezen. Wat hier over de waarheid van kunst wordt gezegd, heeft een enorme kracht. Een onheilspellende kracht. Een ongemakkelijke kracht. Een waarschuwing, maar een welke de waarheid niet schuwt. En de waarheid van de kunst schuwt de waarheid, en is daarmee anders dan de ontvouwing van geschiedenis als de ontvouwing van waarheid, zin en doelmatigheid van de alledaagse wereld van de mensen.
Werkelijk een van de beste boeken die ik heb gelezen. Wat hier over de waarheid van kunst wordt gezegd, heeft een enorme kracht. Een onheilspellende kracht. Een ongemakkelijke kracht. Een waarschuwing, maar een welke de waarheid niet schuwt. En de waarheid van de kunst schuwt de waarheid, en is daarmee anders dan de ontvouwing van geschiedenis als de ontvouwing van waarheid, zin en doelmatigheid van de alledaagse wereld van de mensen.
January 5, 2025
Initial am perceput-o in mod perspectivist drept un manual de teorie literara care sa clarifice aspecte ale procesului de scriere. Am incheiat prin a realiza ca are o stilistica foarte greoaie, e incarcata de subcapitole carora nu le-am inteles sensul, iar intr-un final am reusit sa plec mai incetosat decat am intrat.
June 27, 2023
Lo que me costó terminarlo. Voy a descorchar un vino para celebrar.
October 4, 2024
Light makes room for the pure truth of noises. But at night to suffer the attraction of a star; spiral unfurling, sidereal poison in which the dream fulgurates.
“il y a une nuit dans la nuit”
“il y a une nuit dans la nuit”
February 25, 2017
A ces jours, je n’ai jamais lu un livre de critique littéraire qui se soit inspiré de façon si profonde à l’existentialisme de Heidegger.
La poésie, c'est-à-dire l’art de créer à travers la langue, est en contact avec le néant, donc la mort. Mais, cela n’est pas une chose négative, parce que c’est dans le néant que le poète peut être libre. En effet, n’etant plus lié aux contraintes du réel, l’homme peut fonder son propre monde. En plus, dans le monde né de la reflexion de l’écrivain les objets sont montrés hors de leur sens utilitaire, pour devenir leur propre essence. L’objet, dans l’art, est sa propre essence, parce qu’il s’éloigne du réel.
La littérature est l’expérience de l’éternel commencement, parce que l’être lu est la finalité du texte et chaque lecture devient une nouvelle origine du sens contenu dans la langue du travail artistique. C’est pourquoi la poésie est à la fois un élément lié à la morte et, mais aussi un élément situé au-delà du temps : elle meurt à la fin de chaque lecture, mais une outre lecture est toujours possible. L’Object littéraire est éternel, mais son sens se renouvelle à chaque lecture. Donc, la fin du texte, son contact avec la mort, ouvre toutes les possibilités : la mort dit qu’il y a toujours la possibilité d’une négation, donc de pouvoir choisir entre la présence et l’absence. Sans la mort, il n’y a pas de choix : tout est sans fin, contraint à être uniquement sa propre essence.
Enfin, il y a toujours la nécessité d’un final : sans la fin, le texte ne peut pas rejoindre son sens plus propre. Tandis que la lecture n’est pas finie, le récit peut devenir ce que l’on veut : mais c’est le final qui dissipe chaque ambiguïté, parce qu’il dit comment les choses sont passé.
June 21, 2019
Ainda que minha experiência lendo livros sobre teoria literária seja mediana, posso afirmar que O Espaço Literário é o mais distinto de quantos passaram pela minhas mãos. Imagine-se Clarice Lispector escrevendo uma obra de teoria literária? Pois bem, existe e se chama Maurice Blanchot.
Isto não é uma crítica, ainda que, em algumas ocasiões senti que o autor se recria em excesso para, às vezes, na minha opinião, só dar mais preciosismo ao texto. Contudo, falar de poesia e de literatura sem se valer de alguns recursos estilísticos próprios da lírica, é, em certa forma, justo.
Sendo assim, O Espaço Literário fala de morte, de inspiração, do processo de escrita, do leitor, da pouca importância que tem o autor na hora de interpretar a obra (segue a ideia inaugurada por Barthes e continuada por Foucault e Chartier), assim como temáticas típicas da crítica e teoria literária francesa, mas com um toque bastante interessante.
Então só me resta recomendá-lo àqueles estudantes de literatura que queiram se aprofundar nos estudos sobre poética, hermenêutica e semiótica.
Isto não é uma crítica, ainda que, em algumas ocasiões senti que o autor se recria em excesso para, às vezes, na minha opinião, só dar mais preciosismo ao texto. Contudo, falar de poesia e de literatura sem se valer de alguns recursos estilísticos próprios da lírica, é, em certa forma, justo.
Sendo assim, O Espaço Literário fala de morte, de inspiração, do processo de escrita, do leitor, da pouca importância que tem o autor na hora de interpretar a obra (segue a ideia inaugurada por Barthes e continuada por Foucault e Chartier), assim como temáticas típicas da crítica e teoria literária francesa, mas com um toque bastante interessante.
Então só me resta recomendá-lo àqueles estudantes de literatura que queiram se aprofundar nos estudos sobre poética, hermenêutica e semiótica.
July 8, 2015
This is not a book about literature as much as about life's challenges: loneliness, death, artmaking, etc. Blanchot's thoughts are dense, rambling and not so clear but a good exercise for the mind. Some of the writers examined here include Kafka, Mallarmé, Dostoevsky, Rilke and Hölderlin.
November 9, 2007
don't always agree w/ him.. but he is among the few that stirs me up
May 13, 2008
Blanchot meditates on literature. How can one recount or say what it is about?
August 7, 2011
Confuso no começo, esclarecedor no final.
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