Maurice Blanchot

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Maurice Blanchot (born September 22, 1907 in the hamlet of Quain, municipality of Devrouze in the Saône-et-Loire department , Burgundy; † February 20, 2003 in Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis , Yvelines department , near Paris ) was a French journalist, philosopher, Literary theorist and writer .

Life / writing

Blanchot grew up with three siblings in affluent, Catholic circumstances. From 1925 he studied philosophy and German in Strasbourg . There he made friends with Emmanuel Levinas .

Blanchot advocated a preventive strike against Germany during the rise of National Socialism , which is why he was initially insulted as "right wing". Blanchot was a member of the Resistance . He signed the "Manifesto of 121", which called on French soldiers to refuse to obey in the Algerian war .

Its influence on the later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida is difficult to overestimate. His work cannot be described as a coherent, comprehensive theory, as it is based on paradoxes and impossibilities. A central theme in his writing is the constant preoccupation with the "problem of literature", which he describes as a simultaneous admission and questioning of the deeply precarious experience of writing .

His best-known literary work is Thomas the Dark (1941), a disturbingly abstract novel about the experience of reading. The name of the title hero is based on the Apostle Thomas from the Bible, the "unbeliever". Jesus is said to have replied: "Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe." Leslie Kaplan sees her writing primarily influenced by Blanchot. Joseph Hanimann writes about him:

MB has taken narrative event abstraction to extremes. His method, which is almost classic in France, of not telling events themselves but only traces of events in looks, mind games, behavioral disorders, internal or remembered dialogues, is still not really well known in Germany. ... (A) storytelling art of such perfection that every attempt at translation must lead to the edge of the impossible.

Text samples

The disaster ruins “everything” and yet lets “everyone” exist. It does not affect one or the other, "I" am not threatened by them. To the extent that disaster threatens me (because I have been spared, left aside), what is outside of me threatens within me, someone other than me, who I become, passively, someone else. You won't be hit by the disaster. Out of reach is the one it threatens, you cannot even tell whether it is from near or far - the infinite threat has in a way broken all boundaries. We stand on the edge of the disaster without our being able to locate it in the future; rather, it has always already passed, and yet we stand on the edge or under the threat - all formulations that include the future if the disaster were not what what has refused to arrive never comes.

To think the disaster (if that is possible, and it is not possible to the extent that we suspect that the disaster is "the thinking") is to have no future to think it at all.

The novel has nothing to fear from the thesis as such - on the condition that the thesis accepts that without the novel being nothing. Because the novel has its own moral: ambiguity and ambiguity. (1945)

About literature:

Descent into the depths, approaching solitude, asserting a reference which escapes the possibility, the ability and the power, experience of the dark, in which the dark gives itself in its darkness. Everything in this area is indeterminate because the artist, like Orpheus, has to descend to that which is the ultimate, to the point where art, desire, space and death appear soft. (Letter to his translator Gerd Henniger, early 1960s)

Works (selection)

  • The essential loneliness. German Gerd Henniger. Henssel Verlag, Berlin 1959; Reprint ibid. 1984 ISBN 3-87329-048-0 (both out of print); again in the anthology MB, Das Neutrale. Philosophical writings and fragments. Translated by Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Berlin, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-03734-019-6 , pp. 93-103
  • Conquering space. [1964, special edition of the "Revue Internationale"] (about Gagarin ) trans. by Emmanuel Alloa, in: Zs. Atopia, Vol. 10 [1] [2] .
  • Repetition and doubling. Note on literature and interpretation. in: Neue Rundschau, 1988, issue 2, pp. 121–130 Fischer TB. ISBN 3-596-29030-9
  • Paix, paix au lointain et au proche in: Colloque des intellectuels juifs (ed.): Difficile justice. In the trace d ' Emmanuel Levinas Actes du 36ème Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue française. Textes reunis by Jean Halperin and Nelly Hansson. Albin Michel, Paris 1998, pp. 7-12.
  • A la rencontre de Sade . In: Les temps modern, issue 25, 3rd year (1947), pp. 577–612; with changed title La raison de Sade. In: Ders .: Lautréamont et Sade. Édition de Minuit, Paris 1949.- German: Sade. Translated by Johannes Huebner. Henssel, Berlin 1963 & 1986, ISBN 3-87329-117-7
  • Sade et Restif de La Bretonne Ed. Complexe, Bruxelles 1986 (series: Le Regard littéraire, 5).
  • Political Writings 1958–1993. Translated by Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich 2007. ISBN 978-3-03734-005-9
  • The dismembered infinity. Leslie Kaplan's "Excess - The Factory" trans. Peter Gehle, writing booklet 27, 1986, p. 24.
  • From Kafka to Kafka. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1993. Translated by Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin (French: De Kafka à Kafka Paris: Gallimard 1981 = collection idées 453).
  • From the translator archive: MB to Johannes Huebner , Paris, April and May 1969, in: Zs. Trajekte, No. 10, April 2005. Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin . ISSN  1616-3036
  • Attention. Alertness. Merve Verlag , Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-88396-252-8
  • The unacknowledged community. Translated by Gerd Bergfleth. Matthes & Seitz Berlin , Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3-88221-892-3
  • The neutral. Philosophical writings and fragments. Translated by Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich 2010. ISBN 978-3-03734-019-6
  • The friendship , with an afterword by Gerhard Poppenberg; translated by Uli Menke, Ulrich Kunzmann u. a. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88221-543-4
  • The Most High. Novel. Translated by Nathalie Mälzer-Semlinger . Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011. ISBN 978-3-88221-627-1
  • Offense. Translated by Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich 2011. ISBN 978-3-03734-177-3
  • The two versions of the imaginary. [1951] Translated by Emmanuel Alloa. in: E. Alloa (ed.) Image theories from France. Eine Anthologie, Fink, Munich 2011, pp. 89–101. ISBN 978-3-7705-5014-2
  • Afterwards. The idyll. The last word. Trans. V. Marco Gutjahr & Jonas Hock. Diaphanes, Zurich 2012. ISBN 978-3-03734-186-5
  • The literary space. Trans. V. Marco Gutjahr & Jonas Hock. Diaphanes, Zurich 2012 ISBN 978-3-03734-182-7
  • A voice from elsewhere. With an afterword by Emmanuel Alloa. Edited and translated by Marco Gutjahr. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-85132-759-5
  • The madness of the day. With an afterword by Michael Holland. Edited and translated by Marco Gutjahr. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2016. ISBN 978-3-85132-840-0
  • Aminadab. Trans. V. Marco Gutjahr. Diaphanes, Zurich 2019. ISBN 978-3-03734-655-6

literature

  • Emmanuel Alloa: Touch - Exposure. On the pathetic nature of pictures in Maurice Blanchot. In Kathrin Busch, Iris Därmann (ed.): "Pathos". Contours of a basic concept in cultural studies. Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-698-4 , pp. 75-91.
  • Christophe Bident: Maurice Blanchot. Partenaire invisible. Essai biographique. Champ Vallon, Seyssel 1998, ISBN 2-87673-253-X (In French).
  • Hadrien Buclin: Maurice Blanchot ou l'autonomie littéraire. Antipodes, Lausanne 2011, ISBN 978-2-88901-058-5 .
  • Jacques Derrida : "Shores." Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 1994, ISBN 978-3-85165-060-0 .
  • Jacques Derrida : A witness from time immemorial. Obituary for Maurice Blanchot (= International Merve Discourse 259). German by Susanne Lüdemann. Merve, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88396-193-0 (Second edition of this text), (Together with: Maurice Blanchot: The moment of my death. ).
  • Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin: Unholy words: To Maurice Blanchot. In: Recherches germaniques 21 (1991), pp. 43-64.
  • Hans-Jost Frey : Maurice Blanchot. Writing the end of the language. Urs Engeler, Weil am Rhein et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-938767-33-7 .
  • Andreas Gelhard: Thinking the impossible. Language, death and inspiration in the writings of Maurice Blanchot (= phenomenological investigations. Vol. 21). Fink, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7705-3975-3 . ( Digitized version )
  • Leslie Hill: Blanchot. Extreme Contemporary (= Warwick Studies in European Philosophy. ). Routledge, London et al. 1997, ISBN 0-415-09174-8 (In English; complete list of Blanchots' publications on p. 275ff., Chronologically. Can be viewed in online shops).
  • Peter Köppel: The agony of the subject. The end of the Enlightenment with Kafka and Blanchot. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-900767-65-3 (including about Blanchot, Le Très-Haut ).
  • Maurice Nadeau : Maurice Blanchot et la part du feu. In: Maurice Nadeau: Littérature présente. Corrêa, Paris 1952, pp. 241–246 (including comparison with Jean Paulhan Aytré qui perd l'habitude ).
  • Jean-Luc Nancy : The Challenged Community. Diaphanes, Zurich et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-03734-001-1 (on Blanchot, community).
  • Timo Obergöker: Totalitarian sick. Illness and absolute state in Maurice Blanchot's “Le Très-Haut”. In: Brigitte Sendet, Danielle Risterucci-Roudnicky, Timo Obergöker (eds.): Literary counter-images of democracy. Contributions to the Franco-Romanist Congress in Freiburg / Br. 2004. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3161-X , 123-133.
  • Walter Pabst (ed.): The modern French novel. Interpretations. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1968 (about Maurice Blanchot: Thomas the Dark ).
  • Gerhard Poppenberg: Into the Unbound. About literature according to Blanchot (= Mimesis 20). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-484-55020-1 (also: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1991).
  • Thomas Schestag: Mantis relics: Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Henri Fabre, Paul Celan. Urs Engeler, Basel et al. 1998, ISBN 3-905591-06-5 .
  • Roman Schmidt: The impossible community. Maurice Blanchot, the "group of rue Saint-Benoît" and the idea of ​​an international magazine around 1960 (= Kaleidograms 45). Kadmos, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86599-084-6 .
  • Marco Gutjahr / Maria Jarmer (eds.): From similarity to similarity. Maurice Blanchot and the passion of the pictorial (With texts by Maurice Blanchot and Françoise Collin, published by Éditions Gallimard). Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-85132-747-2 .
  • Jean-Luc Nancy: Maurice Blanchot. Political passion . Edited and translated by Jonas Hock, Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-85132-774-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Blanchot's The Literature and the Right to Death, German 1982 by Merve Berlin, again Gimlet 1995, there is a concentrated version of his literary theory. As a short excerpt, using the example of an event in Normandy in 1944, easily accessible in Akzente (magazine) volume 2, 1995, again in the selection volume Akzente. A reader from 50 years. Hanser, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-20409-1
  2. ↑ All books that were published for the first time up to 2007 and are in the list of Diaphanes-Verlag (18 works), see here web links: “Book Publications Blanchots”, are NOT listed here. Please note that Diaphanes only lists the FIRST German edition there; there are often later editions, possibly also by other translators, or in a different arrangement. Then the Dt. Consult the National Library
  3. ↑ above all about Franz Kafka , Das Schloss ; also about Cervantes' Don Quixote
  4. ↑ Span. Translation in: dsb., Escritos políticos Libros del Zorzal ISBN 987-599-006-X , p. 161ff.
  5. ↑ further lit. in other booklets, search engine Archived copy ( Memento of the original from February 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. to use @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zfl.gwz-berlin.de
  6. ↑ his main work L'espace littéraire here for the first time in full; previous selection edition at Hanser 1991 udT Das indestructible. An endless conversation about language, literature and existence, from other translators and with far. Extracts from L'entretien infini.
personal data
SURNAME Blanchot, Maurice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French journalist, literary theorist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamlet of Quain, municipality of Devrouze , Saône-et-Loire department , Burgundy
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 2003
Place of death Paris -Yvelines