The Space Of Literature

The Space of Literature Maurice Blanchot Translated, with an Introduction, by Ann Smock University of Nebraska Press Lincoln, London -iiiIntroduction and English-language translation © 1982 by the University of Nebraska Press Originally published in France as L'Espace littéraire, © Éditions Gallimard, 1955 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First paperback printing: 1989 Most recent printing indicated by the first digit below: 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Blanchot, Maurice. The space of literature. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Literature--Philosophy. 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title. PN45.B42413 801 82-2062 ISBN 0-8032-1166-X AACR2 ISBN 0-8032-6092-X (pbk.) ∞+ -ivA book, even a fragmentary one, has a center which attracts it. This center if not fixed, but is displaced by the pressure of the book and circumstances of its composition. Yet it is also a fixed center which, if it is genuine, displaces itself, while remaining the same and becoming always more central, more hidden, more uncertain and more imperious. He who writes the book writes it out of desire for this center and out of ignorance. The feeling of having touched it can very well be only the illusion of having reached it. When the book in question is one whose purpose is to elucidate, there is a kind of methodological good faith in stating toward what point it seems to be directed: here, toward the pages entitled "Orpheus' Gaze." -v[This page intentionally left blank.] -vi- Contents Translator's Introduction 1 The Essential Solitude 19 Approaching Literature's Space 35 Mallarmé's Experience 38 The Work's Space and Its Demand 49 The Work and the Errant Word 51 Kafka and the Work's Demand 57 The Work and Death's Space 85 Death as Possibility 87 The Igitur Experience 108 Rilke and Death's Demand : 120 1. The Search for a Proper Death 121 2. Death's Space 133 3. Death's Transmutation 146 Inspiration 161 The Outside, the Night 163 -viiOrpheus's Gaze 171 Inspiration, Lack of Inspiration 177 Communication and the Work 189 Reading 191 Communication 198 Literature and the Original Experience 209 The Future and the Question of Art 211 Characteristics of the Work of Art 221 The Original Experience 234 Appendixes 249 The Essential Solitude and Solitude in the World 251 The Two Versions of the Imaginary 254 Sleep, Night 264 Hölderlin's Itinerary 269 Index 277 -viii- Translator's Introduction Why is it that, notwithstanding all the other means of investigating and ordering the world which mankind has developed, and in spite of all the reservations great poets have expressed about their own endeavor, we are still interested in literature? What is literature, and what is implied about our learning in general and about its history, if it must be said at this late date that something we call literature has never stopped fascinating us? Maurice Blanchot asks this question with such infinite patience -- with so much care and precision -- that it has come to preoccupy a whole generation of French critics and social commentators. Hence Blanchot's imposing reputation. The list of postwar writers in France who have responded to his emphasis on the question of literature and its implications for all our questions is long and impressive. Their names are associated with the most provocative intellectual developments of recent times: not only have Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Poulet, and Jean Starobinski written about Blanchot, not only Emmanuel Levinas, Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris, and Pierre Klossowski, but also Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Philippe Lacoue-