Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot ( born September 22, 1907 Weiler Quain, community Devrouze in the department of Saône -et -Loire, Burgundy, † February 20, 2003 in Paris, Yvelines) was a French journalist, literary theorist and writer.

Life / Writing

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

Blanchot advocated during the rise of National Socialism a preemptive strike against Germany, which is why he was initially accused of being right. Blanchot was a member of the Resistance. He signed the " Manifesto of the 121 ," the French soldiers to insubordination in the Algerian war called.

His influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida is difficult to overestimate. His work can not be described as coherent, comprehensive theory, since it is based on paradoxes and impossibilities. One common thread within his writing is the constant preoccupation with the " problem of the literature," which he describes as a simultaneous Allow and questioning of deeply precarious experience of writing.

His best-known literary work is Thomas the Dark (1941 ), a disturbing abstract novel about the experience of reading. The name of the title character leans to the Apostle Thomas from the Bible, the "infidels " at. He should have Jesus replies: "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe. " Leslie Kaplan sees her writing mainly influenced by Blanchot. Joseph Hanimann writes about him:

Text samples

The disaster ruined "everything" and can still "all" exist. It does not apply to one or the other, " I " will not be threatened by it. To the extent that like me (because spared, left aside ) threatens the disaster, it threatens in me that which is outside of me, one other than me, who, passive, someone else will. You will not be hit by the disaster. Keep out of reach is the one threatened it, you can not even say whether near or far - broken every boundary has the infinite threat in some way. We are on the brink of disaster, without being able to locate it in the future, rather it is always already past, and yet we are at the edge or under the threat - all formulations incorporating them in the future, the disaster would not be what never comes, which has denied any arrival.

The disaster think ( if that is possible, and it is to the extent possible, as we suspect that the disaster " thinking "), it means to have no future to think about it at all.

The novel as such has nothing to fear from the thesis - under the condition that the thesis be accepted without the novel to be nothing. Because the novel has its own morality: double meaning and ambiguity. (1945 )

About literature:

Descent into the depths, proximity to solitude, assertion of a reference, which escapes the possibility of the assets and the power, experience the darkness, in the Dark is in its darkness. Everything in this area is uncertain, because the artist must, like Orpheus, to descend to what there is to the extreme of the point, as art, desire, space and death appear gentle. ( Letter to his translator Gerd Henniger, early 1960s )

Works (selection)

  • The conquest of space. [ 1964, special issue of "Revue Internationale" ] (above Gagarin ) trans. by Emmanuel Alloa, in: Zs Atopia, born 10
  • Repetition and duplication. Note on literature and interpretation. in: Neue Rundschau, 1988, No. 2, pp. 121-130 Fischer TB. ISBN 3-596-29030-9
  • Paix, paix au lointain et au proche in: Colloque of intellectuels juifs (Hg): Difficile justice. Dans la trace d' Actes du 36ème Colloque Emmanuel Levinas of intellectuels de langue française juifs. Text reunis par Jean Halperin et Nelly Hansson. Albin Michel, Paris 1998, pp. 7 - 12
  • A la rencontre de Sade. In: Les temps modern, Issue 25, Vol 3 (1947 ), pp. 577-612; with different title La raison de Sade. In: ders. Lautréamont et Sade. Édition de Minuit, Paris 1949 - German. Sade. Translated by Johannes Hübner. Henssel, Berlin in 1963 & 1986, ISBN 3-87329-117-7
  • Sade et de La Bretonne Restif Éd. Complexe, Bruxelles 1986 ( series: Le Regard littéraire, 5).
  • Political writings 1958 - 1993rd Übers Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich, 2007. ISBN 978-3-03734-005-9
  • The dismembered infinity. Leslie Kaplan's " The Excess - The Factory" translator's Peter AEB, copybook Issue 27, 1986, p 24
  • From Kafka to Kafka. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1993 Translated by Elsbeth Dangel - Pelloquin (French: De Kafka Kafka à Paris: Gallimard 1981 collection idées = 453). .
  • From the Translator Archive: MB to Johannes Hübner, Paris, April and May 1969 in: Zs Trajekte, No. 10, April 2005 Center for Literary and Cultural Research. . ISSN 1616-3036
  • Attention. Vigilance. Merve Verlag, Berlin, 2009. ISBN 978-3-88396-252-8
  • The uneingestehbare community. Translator's Gerd Bergfleth. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin, 2007. ISBN 978-3-88221-892-3
  • The Neutral. Philosophical writings and fragments. Translator's Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich, 2010. ISBN 9783037340196
  • The friendship with an afterword by Gerhard Popp mountain; translated by Uli Menke, Ulrich Kunzmann et al Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88221-543-4.
  • The Most High. Novel. Translator's Nathalie Mälzer Semlinger. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin, 2011. ISBN 978-3-88221-627-1
  • Offense. Übers by Marcus Coelen. Diaphanes, Zurich, 2011. ISBN 978-3-03734-177-3
  • The two versions of the imaginary. Übers by Emmanuel Alloa. in: Alloa E. (ed.) image theories from France. An Anthology, Fink, Munich 2011, pp. 89-101. ISBN 978-3770550142
  • Retrospectively. The idyll. The last word. Übers v. Marco Gutjahr & Jonas Hock. Diaphanes. Zurich, 2012. ISBN 978-3-03734-186-5
  • The literary space. Übers v. Marco Gutjahr & Jonas Hock. Diaphanes, Zurich 2012 ISBN 9783037341827
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