Blanchot Citations
• The Space of Literature

References for Theme: The Space of Literature

• Blanchot, Maurice
• The Space of Literature: A Translation of "l'Espace Littéraire" (2015)

  (p.20) The Solitude of the Work: In the solitude of the work -- the work of art, the literary work -- we discover a more essential solitude. It excludes the complacent isolation of individualism; it has nothing to do with the quest for singularity. The fact that one sustains a stalwart attitude throughout the disciplined course of the day does not dissipate it. He who writes the work is set aside; he who has written it is dismissed. He who is dismissed, moreover, doesn't know it. This ignorance preserves him. It distracts him by authorizing him to persevere. The writer never...

• The Space of Literature: A Translation of "l'Espace Littéraire" (2015)

  (p.21) The infinite nature of the work, seen thus, is just the mind's infiniteness. The mind wants to fulfill itself in a single work, instead of realizing itself in an infinity of works and in history's ongoing movement. But Valéry was by no means a hero. He found it good to talk about everything, to write on everything: thus the scattered totality of the world distracted him from the unique and rigorous totality of the work, from which he amiably let himself be diverted. The etc. hid behind the diversity of thoughts and subjects. However, the work -- the work of...

• The Space of Literature: A Translation of "l'Espace Littéraire" (2015)

  (p.53) A work is finished, not when it is completed, but when he who labors at it from within can just as well finish it from without. He is no longer retained inside by the work; rather, he is retained there by a part of himself from which he feels he is free and from which the work has contributed to freeing him. 

• The Space of Literature: A Translation of "l'Espace Littéraire" (2015)