Friendship

by Maurice Blanchot, Elizabeth Rottenberg (Translator)

For the past half century, Maurice Blanchot has been an extraordinarily influential figure on the French literary and cultural scene. He is arguably the key figure after Sartre in exploring the relation between literature and philosophy. This collection of 29 critical essays and reviews on art, politics, literature, and philosophy documents the wide range of Blanchot's interests, from the enigmatic paintings in the Lascaux caves to the atomic era. Essays are devoted to works of fiction (Louis-René des Forêts, Pierre Klossowski, Roger Laporte, Marguerite Duras), to autobiographies or testimonies (Michel Leiris, Robert Antelme, André Gorz, Franz Kafka), or to authors who are more than ever contemporary (Jean Paulhan, Albert Camus). Several essays focus on questions of Judaism, as expressed in the works of Edmond Jabès, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Buber. Among the other topics covered are André Malraux's "imaginary museum," the Pléiade Encyclopedia project of Raymond Queneau, paperback publishing, the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin's "Task of the Translator," Marx and communism, writings on the Holocaust, and the difference between art and writing. The book concludes with an eloquent invocation to friendship on the occasion of the death of Georges Bataille.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, France, Literary Criticism

326 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 1971

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

[Alyosha]

Another great collection of Blanchot's writings. This volume contains writings on themes that extend beyond literature in a way more obvious than some of his other writings, discussing topics such as Marxism and communism, and even nuclear arms and the possibly or impossibility of absolute destruction by their use.

"The Museum, Art, and Time" is an indispensable aid in understanding Blanchot's thought. "Friendship," the capstone piece that gives the collection its name, is a beautifully written piece that speaks of Blanchot's friendship with Bataille and his recent death; of the relation through seperation that is friendship; and the stewardship over the fading, the oblivion, that death imposes upon that forever gone conversation.

[Jon]

Blanchot remained startlingly provacative late into old age:

A word, a single word, ultimate or first, intervenes here with the full discreet radiance of a speech borne by the gods: destroy. And here we are able to grasp the second exigency of this new word, for if one must love in order to destroy, one must also, before destroying, have freed oneself from everything-from one-self, from living possibilities, and also from things dead and mortal-by way of death itself. To die, to love: only then can we approach capital destruction, that destruction which the unfamiliar truth intends for us (as neuter as it is desirable, as violent as it is remote from all powers of aggression).

Of course it was a different age then. As he saw it, at the time there was an advantage for the state to foster dissident thinkers:

The operation is doubly advantageous. By disseminating works that are aesthetically rebellious, one gives oneself the appearance of being without prejudice, as is proper for the important patrons of culture; one secures oneself the collaboration of the intellectuals of the opposition whose untimely political declarations one would refuse, but whose literary cooperation is always harmless. One is thus supported by them, and with the backing that they innocently provide, one increases the effectiveness of the work of persuasion, just as one increases the authority of official statements. The more a cultural service is tied to the political, the more it is in its interest to present itself as literarily and artistically debonair. But this is still only a crude game.

The game becomes more subtle and more perverse when the object is to neutralize the works themselves. The consciousness industry, controlled by the power of the State, runs a risk in helping to diffuse certain troubling works: what is at stake is the ability to maintain control of consciousness without appearing to weaken it; the risk is to expand it, and in expanding it, to make it too lively by multiplying its contradictions. In the same way, the object is not to enslave the writer-a writer who has been won over is no longer a useful ally, he is useful only when he is used while remaining the adversary-but to let him be free, to employ his freedom, secretly to make an accomplice of the infinite power of contestation that is literature. At the end of a day of television, a skillfully elaborated series of programs (and those who do the programming have only a very confused consciousness of what they are doing, because they are working on the inside of a system, and it is the system that is conscious), if, after listening carefully to the clever interview of a writer who thinks it good to speak about what he has written without noticing that he thereby makes it inoffensive; after hearing a political commentary discreetly or indiscreetly oriented; after watching, one after the other, a daring work and an insignificant work, the viewer goes to bed telling himself that the day was a good one but that, in the end, nothing happened, then the result is achieved. There should be interesting events and even important events, and yet nothing should take place that would disturb us: such is the philosophy of any established power and, in an under-handed way, of any cultural service.

A subject that has even bubbled up in these days. But of course this was before the end of the Cold War, the situation is far different now. At any rate, Blanchot was a paradoxical creation if his times, and many of the essays here reflect this.

But on the other hand, there is such a thing as one too many essays about Kafka.

[Panormino]

Consigliati i tre saggi finali di questa raccolta su Kafka e sul rapporto di “amicizia” tra lui e Max Brod troppo spesso iper semplificato nello schema: genio schivo che vuol fare scomparire la sua opera e benefattore dell’umanità che la salva. Qui ci appare più chiaro la compenetrazione tra i due, il loro essere una “coppia” in un certo senso, un esempio di quella “volontà deviata” che è il tema de “il Castello”. Max Brod ha regalato a Kafka la possibilità di vivere da “scrittore che non scrive”, forse la sua massima aspirazione e angoscia al tempo stesso. “Quello che ho fatto per gioco succederà realmente, non mi sono riscattato attraverso lo scrivere. Durante tutta la mia vita sono morto e ora morirò davvero. La mia vita era più dolce di quella degli altri, la mia morte sarà tanto più spaventosa. Lo scrittore in me morrà subito, poiché una tale figura non ha terreno, non ha consistenza, non è nemmeno di polvere; è solamente vagamente possibile nella più folle vita terrena, è solo una costruzione della brama di piaceri. Questo è lo scrittore. Io stesso però non posso continuare a vivere, poiché non ho vissuto, sono rimasto argilla, la scintilla non l’ho mai trasformata in fuoco. [Max Brod - Franz Kafka, Un altro scrivere, lettera dell’11 Settembre 1922]

[CharlesS]

Anything by Blanchot is not for the faint of heart as he constantly the challenges the reader's expectations and sometimes even patience, but his insights are always rewarding. I read this while working on my book on Deleuze and friendhip.

[Terence]

The Apocalypse is Disappointing