Maurice Blanchot as Novelist Author(s): Georges Poulet Reviewed work(s): Source: Yale French Studies, No.

8, What's Novel in The Novel (1951), pp. 77-81 Published by: Yale University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929134 . Accessed: 06/01/2012 10:05
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GEORGES

POULET

Maurice Blanchotas Novelist

and a novelist, MauriceBlanchot thatis to saya novelist is botha critic of his art. As on the veryprinciples who has had occasionto reflect of all contemporary a result he is the most strictand demanding In his opinionthe goal of the novel is not Frenchwriters of fiction. of an imaginary of characters or the portrayal the fictional existence realitywhich the world,even less is it that kind of supplementary to weave into the compactpatternof an unnaturalists attempted are in Blanchot's opinion, world. Suchnovels, contested and preestablished poetry. as insignificant as poemswithout Blanchot impure and imperfect, in therealmof fiction, by a form of novel,which, is evidently obsessed of pure poetry. What he triesto attainis a would be the equivalent to a doubtful element oughtto be returned novelof whichevery status,' as it was a novel whichwould be obligedto inventand authenticate, its own existence and its own universe. being written, imaginaViewedin a certain way,sucha novelcan be onlya purely tive work.It can ask for no supportfroma worldwhich is already it mustmake us enterand roam in nameknown.With no preambles we do not know, and less spaces,among beings whose relationships a world of communication: withwhomwe feel the greatest difficulties a strange world, the laws nor the language, of whichwe knowneither a foreign world.But on the otherhand,thisworldmustnot be absoto us. We mustbe able to conceivesome poslutelyincomprehensible our own. The novel it significantly of interpreting it, of making sibility in our efforts (even thoughtheyare useless should consistprecisely a means beginning over again) to establish and necessitate constantly It will therefore of communication betweenthatworldand ourselves. and strangely be a worldwhichis strange understandable, opaque and In truth it will be simply our dream and familiar. transparent, fantastic of paramas we see it in the phenomenon or else the universe world, which into another world,a "contremonde," nesia,thatis, transformed of the real Such like the world."2 "the would be negation, overturning of Like the novels invention."3 at "end in a novel must last mythical like Mallarme's Kafka and Melville, Maldorof, Igiturand Lautreamont's and its heroa taskwhichis its reader, novelgivesits author, Blanchot's
1La Part du feu,p. 219.
2

3 Faux pas, p. 230.

Ibid.,p. 85.

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truly global.It is a questionof guessing the essential enigma,of conferring complete meaning on man'suniverse. But as thismeaning is never true, since it is always partial,always outdistanced and constantly belied,the personwho mustlook for it is unceasingly faced with the task of successive reconstructions, if not of reality, at least of the intelligibility of everything he sees. Thus are explained, for novels of this type,the multiple endeavors, the endlesswandering "along empty all manner corridors,"4 of "spacesvainlytraversed"5 like hospital rooms or antechambers of governmental officials, and lastly the essentially time element, with the same encounters repetitive occurring again and again and always unfailingly ambiguous.Such is the universe, constantly called again in question,the cellulary and mythical universe whichthe characters in Blanchot's most imaginative novels,Aminadab and Le Tres Hagt, hastily pass through. They are "wanderers looking for nothing."6 Thus Blanchot's failure. It testifies novel is one of perpetual to the impossibility of a significant universe built by the humanmind.It is "the tragedy with calm anguishits of the creativespirit,witnessing own ruin."7 And here the mythis no longerthat of spiritual reality whichis understood and possessed, of lackof reality, butthevery symbol which causes everything that is seen, thought, and said, by the very factthat it is seen,thought, and said, to emergeas unrealand thereforemythical. The novelis no longera myth, but the myth of a myth; it is, like a poem by Mallarm',the hollow figure of what is absent. in Blanchot's universeis reduced Forms,events, characters, everything destruction recounted until to the monotonous of a minutely falsehood, finally thereremains onlya kind of brittle memory such as one keeps in a deep recessof the mind concerning a definitely closed subject. as in Sade's works, Somewhat but devoid of the vast joy with which Sade completeshis hecatombs, Blanchot'snovels presentcontinuous for his victimshave annihilation of all life. Yet this too is inexact, no body has any warmth to lose, reallyneverlived, no blood flows, have and since the beginning of time these beings without existence than theirlife. Death is for death no less illusory been predestined not merely novels;it is the the finaleventwhichends all of Blanchot's
4Thomas l'obscur(nouvelleversion),1950, p. 83.
5 Faux pas, p. 285.

de mort, 6L'Arret p. 120. pas,p. 300. 7FaWx

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of the plot, and the single subject,the content "initialcatastrophe,"8 whomwe hear about. the onlycharacter, or rather "counter-character,", it does not fillthem, since death or rather Death fillsall thesenovels, is not substance but absence,an absence that the goal of Blanchot's "have saysThomasthe unknown, novelsis to makevisible."I myself," a creator in protest theact of creating." That is Blanchot's become against of nothing. His novel is a vacuumpump,a macreation, the creation chine for emptying the world. thanto judgethesenovelsas purely Yet nothing couldbe moreunjust fantasies on the trite negative works. They are not at all pseudo-poetic has the contrary, Blanchot On themeof the greatillusionof existence. a direct, fundamental written which does not claim attaining nothing Seen in this light, and positiveexperience of "existence as such.'"10 of a poem, as Blanchot's fiction no longerappearsas the equivalent as "a meansof disthe creation but on the contrary of an imposture, on the most authentic experience of the a concentration covery,"'1 masters of the mythic mind.Thus it is not to the foreign novel,Kafka, that one should compareBlanchot, but rather Melville,or Faulkner, of theauthors of La Princesse de Cheves, to French of Adoiphe, masters, La Nausee. Blanchotis linkedto a long line of novelists, not so imfor whom as metaphysical, aginativeand even not so psychological thanksto whichthe of the mind,but a fiction the novel is a fiction of thought, mindcan embark on a hypothetical but real process tending which is truth. towardthat hidden,dazzling,sudden something No desires to be novelistis less realisticthan Blanchot;none, however, the novel is both a discourseand a more veracious.For Blanchot, a methodical and which discourse whichis essentially Cartesian method, destruction so thatout of the hyperbolical nullifies everything fictional, as in the Cogitoof Descartes, of apparent existence mayfinally emerge, of "thefactof existence."'2 the indubitable consciousness A novel of consciousness broughtto a high point of perfection, Blanchot's thus far,one of the major worksof contemmasterpiece In orderto graspits French such is Thoma l'obscur. porary literature: full meaning, thinkers, one need not have read the greatExistentialist even if the novelis filled withthe thought of present-day philosophers,
8fL Partdu fete, p. 76. 9Faux pas, p. 350. '0 L Partdu feu,p. 267. llIbid., p. 200. 12Faax pas, p. 38.

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is that especiallythat of Lvinas.13 But what one must understand forBlanchot, consciousness since it is alwaysirreparably from separated could never be otherthan the awareness everything including itself, of infinite if the very did not offer isolation, factof existence unmistaka constant able evidenceof presence, affirmation loomingbehind all a unique spot,a point without separatenegations, space or duration, wheretherewere no more contradictory terms,'4 where the objective and subjective meet,therefore a singularly felicitous site,the only one where truthand our consentto truthcan be situated. Everyone of Blanchot's novelsis directed toward realization of this experience. Once it is attained, nothingmore exists save the consciousness of an exlocated outside and within, istence, equally personaland impersonal, of another infinitely nearor infinitely far,neither the existence person, considered as another as self,nor person,nor that of self,considered It is simply thatof things, considered as things. whatis there, a totality incapable of beingdescribed, whichapparsin consciousness after everythinghas been "reduced to nothing by repudiation,"'5 as an indeterminate presence, thefirst truth evergrasped by themind, thelastit can ever itself attain, and one whichnevermanifests exceptin a kindof horror and anguish.It is the feelingof 'This exists": "Beginning nowhere, it assumed from form all directions."1 finishing nowhere, indiscriminately of "existence Such is the experience of unalloyedexistence, without being"'7 which Blanchotis constantly urgingus to feel, since it is thatwe have, the paramount perhapsthe one authentic feeling human whichis the hiddenmainspring feeling of all our spiritual adventures. This makes it easy to understand why Blanchotconsiders the novel a literary and philosophical form, more preciousthan any otherprean easy and ready constitutes ciselybecause the novel, being fiction, meansto reduceto fiction all the detailswhichprevent us fromseeing existence in its impersonal permanency. The novel is a way of accomplishing, with all possiblespeed,as completean ascesisas possible,a that exists in order to reveal way of dealing death to everything immortal existence above and beyondwhat has been destroyed. A very and almostatrocious strange immortality, since it is the immortality of no one, but simplythe logical impossibility of conceivingthe fact
18

14Thomas l'obscur, p. 104. 15Le Tres Haut, p. 236. 16 Ibid., p. 237. 17 La Part du fea, pp. 331-and 336.

Emmanuel Levinas, De I'existence d l'existant, Fontaine, 1947.

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POULET

of Heidegger to whathappens in theworks of beingdead.Thus,contrary for Blanchotis condemnednever to cease and Sartre,consciousness condemned of an anonymous drama, beingthesubjectand the observer to carry existence, of imperishable and,on the problem to outliveitself Thus Blanchot's which is also imperishable. on an endlessmeditation and capableof beingrebegun, rebegun novelis one whichis constantly of Boehme,a movement philosophy one in which,as in the mythic out"18 continues whichcan neverescape the "cycleof metamorphoses event,and Dying is an unending side as well as withinall existences. fromnothing."'9 "everything beginsemerging constantly all this,, and yet one in which experience, A terribly discouraging because death concludes thereis no finaldespair,no death sentence, novelsmake nothing, becausethereis no deathand no end. Blanchot's fire. devoidof central Warmth us dwellin a kindof Hell, but strangely Perhapsthe mostadmirable has no role; thatof cold is veryimportant. workis its coldness, not onlythe coldness frozen aspectof thiswilfully whichhas attainedthe most severesimplicity thought, of a Jansenist but also the chill arising and the mosthumbleand haughty indigence, of language which eschewsany fromthe voluntary impoverishment his style,"20Sartreonce personaltouch."All he lacks is discovering case, Nothingcould be more inexact.In Blanchot's said of Blanchot. His language,like everything superfluous. stylewould be something of a reptile'sglide. All the else, must be reducedto the simplicity according to Baudelaire, magic, and which, stylistic qualities whichcreate are "intensity, depth,and capacityfor vibration, sonority, limpidness, all thesequalitiesare intentionally in space and time,"2' reverberation in thoseabsences, of thislanguagelies precisely absent;and the beauty in its forcing opaque, withouttimbreand itselfto be dull, colorless, the exactly succeeding by thesemeans in expressing without warmth, An appearance. of its superficial negative aspectsof a world stripped not so much the polar nightsof the icy universewhich resembles which humandreams He'rodiade as the hollow white depthsthrough in hospital roomsgo wandering. His in Scotland. of Frenchliteratwre GEORGES POULET is a professor University by the Edinburgh Etudessur le tempshumain was published Press in 1948.
18L Part du feu, p. 88. 19Ibid., p. 308. 20 Sartre, SituationsI, p. 142. 21 Baudelaire, lFasees, p. 17.

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