Literary space

Author: (French) Blanchot
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Excerpt: The same situation as mentioned above can also be described as follows: A writer never reads his own works. In the eyes of a writer, his own works are unreadable, a secret, something he does not take seriously. It is called a secret because the writer is distant from it. This unreadability is not purely a negative act; it can be said that it is a practical method by which the writer can approach what we call a work. Wherever there are still books, "Do not read my book" will reveal another kind of power. It is a direct yet elusive experience. It is not a force of prohibition, but rather the persistent, harsh, and agonizing expression embodied through the techniques and meanings of words—that is, what appears as a whole in the final text. It refuses to accept itself, becoming a void of harsh, biting refusal, or, with indifference, excluding the person who wants to revise it again through reading after it has been written. Unreadability is such a discovery: now, in the space opened up by creation, there is no longer a place for the creator—while for the writer, there is nothing but to keep writing. No one who has completed a work can live or stay beside it. The work itself is the decision itself; it sends the writer away, deletes him, turns him into a survivor, into someone utterly bored and idle, into someone who does not depend on lifeless methods. The writer cannot linger beside the work: the writer can only write. When the work is completed, the writer can only discern a way to approach the work in the rude "Do not read my book," while "Read my book" pushes the writer away, separates him, or forces him back to the "distance" he initially entered to communicate with what he wanted to write. Thus, he returns to his original state, again becoming the near neighbor and restless confidant of this external thing, yet he has not lingered there. This discipline may lead us to what we are seeking. The solitude of the writer, that is, the situation that becomes his risk, may arise from this: in the work, the writer belongs to what always precedes the work. The work arises through the writer and becomes a firm beginning, while the writer himself belongs to the time of hesitation to start again. An inescapable thought connects the writer to a favorite theme, compelling him to say again what he has already said. Sometimes he is brilliant, but at other times he is monotonous and weakly repeats the same thing, becoming more and more tiresome and dull. This thought reveals this necessity: it seems to return to the starting point, to take the old path, persistently to begin again what, for him, can never begin. It seems that he belongs to the shadow of things rather than their substance, to the image rather than the thing, to that which makes words themselves capable of becoming images, representations—not symbols, values, or real powers.