When the Time Comes

by Maurice Blanchot

WHEN THE TIME COMES ostensibly chronicles the troubled relations between the narrator-a very ill man-and the two women whose lives he invades. As in all of Blanchot's intensely subjective fiction, the true subject of the work is the narrator's consciousness and the process by which his tale emerges through its telling. Powerfully affected by the slightest of events, the narrator responds with a violence that, most disturbingly, appears inevitable.

Genres: Fiction, France, Literature

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She looked at me for a long time, but I did not see her. Days that were supreme in her eyes. That she was in this way unknown was not a misfortune for her; and her gaze was not modest, but avid: as I said, the most avid of all, since it had nothing. Yet she yielded to shudder; she stared at me from the depths of an extreme past, a wild place, towards an extreme future, a desert place, and because she was not at all contemplative, that look, oddly brazen, was a constant, violent attempt to seize me, a drunken, joyful challenge unconcerned about either possibility or the moment. Because of that, she was ahead of me, and yet her youth had something unreal about it, a prophetic transparency that injured time and made it anxious about itself. Subjudge me? She didn't want that. Let herself be guided? She couldn't. Touch me? Yes; it was this contact that she called the world, world of a single instant, an instant before time rebels."

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who wants to live has to rely on the illusion of a story.

For me, few writers can summon in words the interstitial ether of living in the way that Maurice Blanchot does. His récits are short, dense philosophical fictions devoid of plot and peopled with characters we see only parts of from a distance, typically through the eyes of a first-person narrator struggling to stay afloat in the quagmire of daily living. As Blanchot describes it:

The récit is not the narration of an event, but the event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen-an event which is yet to come and through whose power of attraction the récit can come into being, too.

Here, in this particular récit, the male narrator arrives at the small apartment of two women roommates. His relationship to them is ambiguous: one perhaps a former lover, Claudia, the other perhaps a stranger, whom he decides to call 'Judith', to Claudia's objection. The man is ill and after first moving around the apartment and sleeping for a time, he eventually retires to a corner, where Claudia cares for him in a manner of speaking. In his corner he puzzles over time and its passage.

I think I can no longer lose my time, and for a peculiar reason, really, which is that it has already lost itself, having fallen below the things one can lose, having become unknowable, alien to the category of lost time. A mysterious impression, since I occupy myself with fewer and fewer things and yet I am always entirely occupied. What is more, I am subjected to a constant, extreme pressure to reduce my tasks even further, though they are already so far reduced. Surprising, instantaneous obviousness.

Strange nocturnal events transpire. The narrator passes through a complex series of emotions, both alone and in concert with Claudia, and we feel it all with him. Above all, he is anxious; in fact, this récit could be called The Anxiety of the Day, to pair nicely with Blanchot's other outstanding récit The Madness of the Day. The last 10 pages or so of this are so beautiful I want to copy it all down, but instead I'll just close with this:

The morning burns. I go down the stairs; again there is emptiness, the gaity [sic] of emptiness, the joyful shiver of space and no one, really, is there to notice it; it is true that I myself undoubtedly know something about this light and furtive thrust, about this roving air that hardly disturbs the expanse and that leads me here, and here, but it doesn't seem to concern me particularly; this is how the day is, an endless shimmer, footsteps wandering through the rooms, the muffled thumps of work.

[Pieter-Jan De Paepe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boek voor zweefteven met, weliswaar, vlagen genialiteit

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the dilation of a moment of encountering a specific otherness, cuts to the subtle violence of will over desire, sailing along in turbulent isolation, fragmentary togetherness. sometimes you read something at the perfect moment; when the time comes—?

[Jacob]

This sucked

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Blanchot is an excellent writer. Everything in this book (and Death Sentence....maybe more) feels saturated with dread and like there's some horrible secret seeping through the text that refuses to reveal itself and never does. The dialogue is mundane but is written in a way that seems alien, strange, bizarre. The main character is uncanny and almost does seem like an alien in a human's body trying to shuffle along his life. There's no real discernible plot, almost pure psychological/philosophical ruminations. Stuff does happen but no traditional plot and certainly no traditional plot resolution. I think there was a part where Claudia (or maybe "Judith") had to cough and the way he described it made it sound like some bizarre, alien, horrifying thing no one ever does. Blanchot has an extremely unique style and aesthetic that I did a lot and I'll be reading a lot more of him. Starting to like him more than Bataille - I think he is a much better novelist than Bataille, as much as I like him.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Occasionally obscure but never confounding, like some of the best of Blanchot’s fiction it hones in on his theoretical concerns. I should really re-read The Space of Literature

[Tentatively, Convenience]

Ok, I'm an unabashed enthusiast for French literature - at the same time that I'm an anti-nationalist. I'm reminded of a French-Canadian friend asserting to me that French culture is much more supportive of language play than American culture is & I find that easy enuf to believe. My friend sd that there're French comedians whose comedy is oriented around complex puns - contrast this to endless dick jokes & you get the idea.

W/ the preceding in mind, I mention that 5 of my favorite writers are French: François Rabelais, "Comte de Lautrémont" (honorary Frenchmen despite his being an Uruguayan expatriate - he wrote & died in France), Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel, & Georges Perec. Raymond Queneau is certainly high up there too. + many others that I'm probably not thinking of at the moment.

As such, I've definitely read more French writers (in English translation) than most Americans. & I tend to seek out the more experimental ones. & I've found some of them to be colossal bores. On the minus side there's been Michel Butor's "Passing Time" [you can read my shoddy review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...] & Nathalie Sarraute's "The Planetarium" (don't remember this one at all). I even plowed thru at least 5 novels by Alain Robbe-Grillet. I almost liked those - if only for their formal severity.

& then there's Maurice Blanchot. I read "The Madness of the Day" 1st. It did nothing for me [you can read me saying the same thing in 5 sentences here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...]. Then I read the considerably longer "Aminadab". I liked that a bit more but still not enuf to really embrace Blachot [See my somewhat more extensive review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44...].

But I'm stubborn. So I just read this 3rd bk b/c I'm curious - he's obviously a thoughtful writer but what can I get out of it? A man goes to a door. He's surprised by who opens it. There's another woman who lives there. Maybe he knew her before, maybe he didn't. He moves in.. or stays there for a little while.. or something.. Maybe he had a history w/ one or both of the women.. Such is the skeleton of the 'plot'. But no 'meat' fleshes out these bones - the rest of the bk is all 'marrow' instead, it's all internal - in the 1st person narrator's excuse for a mind. If this guy were a friend of mine he'd drive me crazy.

The bk seems to be based around canceled-out dualities. "Time has passed, and yet it was not past" The narrator seems to be trapped in some sort of limbo of microscopic analysis - so tedious as to be borderline monomaniacal. As he got thru the doorway & the internal monologue started in earnest I practically groaned w/ the knowledge that, yes, this was going to be a Blanchot novel like the other novels. Was Blanchot like this as a person? Did he spend all his time FIXATED on ideas that he was incapable of putting into any kind of life-affirming action? If so, I'd hate to be him on his death-bed.

All of wch isn't to say that this wasn't 'good' in some sense. As a reader, just navigating the narrative was an interesting challenge: Who are these people? What is their interrelationship? The 1st-person implies things that it doesn't deliver - as if the narrator already knows it so why shd he say anything about it? Then again, who these characters are & what they're doing w/ each other appears to just be a pretext for presenting the narrator's introversion:

"Now I have to say this: even though I saw how real it was, this gesture left me feeling uncomfortable, uneasy. Why? This is hard to understand, but it made me think of a truth whose shadow it would be, it made me think of some sort of unique, radiant thing, as though it had tried to condemn to mere likeness an inimitable instant. Bitter suspicion, disconcerting and burdensome thought."

What's he 'reacting' to? One of the women taking his 2 hands & putting them against her throat. Is he a paranoid?

[Myhte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time had passed, and yet it was not past, that was a truth that I should not have wanted to place in my presence.

to contemplate the truth in flesh and blood, even if one must remain invisible, even if one must plunge forever into the discretion of the most desperate cold and the most radical separation - who hasn't wanted that? But who has had that courage?

these hours were within my reach, hours that asked nothing of me and of which I ask nothing except that they go by without touching me and that they ignore me after having known me

I think I can no longer lose my time and for a peculiar reason, really, which is that it has already lost itself, having fallen below the things one can lose, having become unknowable, alien to the category of lost time.

the beginning always remains silent and unknown, but, and this is the strange thing, I don't worry about it and I go on seizing the instant again with an incredible avidity, the same instant through which I seem to catch sight of this glimmer: someone is there who is not speaking, who is not looking at me, yet who is capable of an entrancing life and cheerfulness, though that cheerfulness is also the echo of a supreme event reverberating through the infinite lightness of time, where it cannot settle.

[Rui · Rating 3 out of 5]

"No one here wants to be connected to a story."

This is a book that's concerned with the spaces-between-things: the medium of language that separates 'real' experience from narrative, and the gap between your own conscious thought and the somehow-unknowable impression that you make upon the world.

Blanchot's unnamed protagonist is anxious, meandering, evasive - the prose reads like a kind of grand epiphany is just around the corner, but which never fully arrives.

Even though it's quite short, I find it quite a technical read - it kind of challenges you to think alongside it.

[Antonio Iannarone]

TIme is out of joint once again as Blanchot's recital attempts a kind of emotional atomism. Can a relationship be a ghost? Probably. Mental apparitions and awkward silences abound.