Blanchot and Mallarm

Author(s): Leslie Hill

Source: MLN, Vol. 105, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1990), pp. 889-913
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Blanchotand Mallarme
LeslieHill
La poesietoujoursinaugureautrechose
Le Livrea venir

Maurice Blanchot is undoubtedlyone of France's mostfascinating

and influentialliteraryfigures,and it is forthese qualities thathis
workas a criticis perhaps best known.In thispaper I wantto look
more closely at one small, but nonetheless significantaspect of
Blanchot's writing,his reading of the work of the poet Stephane
Mallarm6.Indeed, to read Blanchot'sliteraryessaysor non-fiction,
if I may be allowed the naive termsat this stage, is repeatedlyto
encounternot so much a repertoireof criticalconceptsas a configuration of proper names. The names are familiarones: Kafka,
Holderlin, Nietzsche,Rene Char, and, perhaps best known of all,
Mallarm6 himself.'
What these names have in common is that they recur in Blanchot's work with a certain force of repetition and excess. Each
signs, for Blanchot, a text or a writingthat enacts a moment of
crisisin the explorationof the space of literature.But literatureis
not so much challenged as constitutedin such moments of aestheticquestioningand doubt,and the source of the crisislies less in
the individual worksof the authors Blanchot cites than in the exorbitantlogic of literatureitself,which such textsserve to exemplifyor instantiate.Yet while the textsBlanchot names are in this
respect paradigmatic, they display essential traits of literature
without being themselves constituted as examples of anything
otherthan themselves.As names in Blanchot'swriting,theydo not
representmodels to be emulated or norms to be followed.They
are constitutedrather as a series of singular protagonistsin the
MLN, 105, (1990): 889-913 C) 1990 by The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress

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890

LESLIE HILL

unfolding of the strange, paradoxical drama called literature,

figureswhose statusis as much fictionalas it is historical,and for
whom-in Mallarmes phrase-the 'seul acte d'6crire' (EL, 30)
turnsinto an experience of the uncertainand fragileborders between name and namelessness,affirmationand dispossession,exemplificationand excess.
One begins to see here how for Blanchot what is at stake in
writingon literaryworks is not the need to elaborate new and
more accurate methods of textual explication or interpretation.
More ambitiouslyand radically,Blanchot's project is to bring to
light-while remainingalert to the ethical dilemmas these metaphors of clarityand insightimply-the peculiar logic of oscillation,the syntaxof fundamentalparadox and unresolvedor unresolvable duplicitywhich, Blanchot suggests,is what makes literature possible,while simultaneouslyand necessarilydeprivingit of
secure foundationand of any stable or determinaterelationwith
being or truth.
Of all the proper names Blanchot citesin his essays,thatof Mallarme is arguably the one that recurs withthe greatestregularity
and frequency.This it does fromthe veryearliestpublished texts
on literature,dating fromthe 1940s, up to and includingsome of
the more recentbooks of the 1980s. Thus Faux Pas (published in
1943) containsthree pieces on Mallarm6 that firstappeared in Le
Journaldesdebatsduring the Occupation. La Part dufeu, Blanchot's
next collectionof essays, published in 1949, has one major piece
on the theme of Mallarm6 and language, while L'Espace litt1raire
(1955) and Le Livre a venir(1959) contributebetween them three
more importantessays.
After 1959, the reference to Mallarm6 is less specific but remains nonetheless insistent.L'Entretien infini(1969) closes with a
series of propositionson the theme of 'l'absence de livre'; these
begin by invokingMallarme and pursue several motifsalready explored apropos of Mallarm6 in Le Livre a venir. Similarly,L'Amitid
(1971) pays homage, in passing,to Mallarmes 'bilingualism',while,
more recently,L'Ecriture du desastre (1980) derives its title (and
other fragmentsof text)fromMallarm6,notablyfromthe famous
poem on the death of Edgar Allan Poe (in whichPoe's tomb-poetryitself-is described as: 'Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un desastre
obscur' [E.c., 70]). In 1983, the name of Mallarm6is again invoked
by Blanchot at the beginningof his postface to the volume Apres

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891

Coup,a new edition of two earlystoriesfromthe 1930s whichfirst

appeared in printtogetheras Le Ressassement
in 1952.
8ternel
In the lightof this lengthyengagement of Blanchot with Mallarme's text,I want to consider three main issues. First,I shall be
looking at the place of Mallarm6 in Blanchot's criticalwritings;
second, I want to explore Blanchot's particularinterpretationof
Mallarm6; and, finally,I shall be sayingsomethingabout the importance of Mallarm6 as a writerfrom the perspectiveof Blanchot's own literarypractice.
The referenceto Mallarm6, as I have implied, is rarelyabsent
from Blanchot's criticalwriting.But more remarkable than the
longevityof Blanchot's interestin the poet is the extentto which
the name of Mallarm6 persistentlyfulfilsthe same structuralrole
in respect of the internalcompositionof Blanchot's collectionsof
essays. In the earlierbooks mentioned,the essayson Mallarm6fall
consistentlyat, or towards, the beginning of the volume (or, as
withFaux Pas, whichBlanchot divides into sections,at the head of
the individualsections).Thus, in La Partdufeu,the Mallarmeessay
followstwo opening chapters on Kafka and in L'Espace litMraire
a
piece on Mallarm6 immediatelyfollowsthe initialsectionon 'la solitude essentielle'. Mallarm6's place is thus that of the second
figure to appear in the text. Conversely,in Le Livre a venir,the
essay on Mallarm6 comes second to last, and 'Un Coup de des'
operates as the penultimate point of reference. As a result,
whether as second from the beginning or as second-to-last,the
name of Mallarm6 in Blanchot's text has the functionof a limen,
that is, a threshold, a limit,a margin, opening and closing the
space of writing,existingas part of that space but at a distance
fromit.
This liminalplace of Mallarm6is difficultto explain by recourse
to literaryhistoryor to the dates of composition of Blanchot's
essays. In his writingBlanchot shows scant interestin chronological progression,and historyitselfis hardlyever invokedas an adequate structuralframeworkforBlanchot'sanalysis.But itno doubt
could be said thatMallarm6'sappearance on the limenis littlemore
than a chance occurrence, a random effectlacking real significance. Since manyof Blanchot'stextsbegan as reviewsor pieces in
journals (notablyLa NouvelleRevuefrancaiseand Critique),the objection mightbe thatthe shape of Blanchot'sindividualcollections
of essaysis more indicativeof the occasional and haphazard nature

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892

LESLIE HILL

of Blanchot'sactivitiesas a literaryjournalistthan of any enduring

commitmentto the same repeated architecturaldesign. But to do
thiswould be to disregard the persistentand seeminglynecessary
way in which certain names, like that of Mallarme, do recur in
Blanchot's criticaltexts,and recur-as does Mallarm6's-in preciselythe same position.
This alternativebetween chance and necessity,it can be said, is
in some ways a false one. Blanchot discusses at some lengthin Le
Livrea venirthe paradoxical implicationsof the phrase (fromMallarme's poem, 'Un Coup de des') that 'un coup de des jamais
n'abolira le hasard'. If chance cannot be eliminatedby the throwof
the dice, it followsthatchance, denyingitself,becomes,as a result,
a formof necessity.But if necessityremains necessary,the poem
has no chance of being written.In thisoscillatinglogic of writing,
chance and necessitydefeat one another in reciprocalfashionand
Mallarm6's poem, Blanchot argues, approaches a space in which
'ce qui est necessaire et ce qui est fortuitserontmis l'un et l'autre
en 6chec par la forcedu desastre' (LV, 284).2 The principleof disaster,as L'Ecrituredu desastremakes evident,though Blanchothere
adduces it with regard to Mallarme's poem, holds for all writing
and all composition.What is trueof 'Un Coup de des', therefore,is
also the case in respectof the essays of Blanchot. Disaster defeats
both the mastery of the author and the closure of the book.
Writingobeys its own unpredictable but rigorous logic and the
place of Mallarme on the limenverifiesand confirmsthe rule.Just
as it is not possible to divide the textsof an author like Blanchot
into occasional pieces dictatedby chance and essentialones determined by philosophical necessity,so Blanchot's essay collections
have a coherence that is both contingentand irredeemable,aleatoryand inescapable. As Blanchot's much-discussedre'cit,La Folie
du jour, makes clear in its own strange and duplicitous way, the
clarityof exposition and argument suffersfrom its own diurnal
madness and its own haphazard necessity.
The pertinence of the figure of the limenwith regard to the
place Mallarme holds in Blanchot'stextconvincesalso by the regularitywith which it occurs in metaphorical terms. Mallarme for
Blanchot rarelyrepresentsa pure beginningor end, but his name
seems closely related to the possibilityof speaking about beginnings or endings and of dramatisingthese moments in his own
discourse. In La Part dufeu and L'Espace littraireMallarme is used
to raise the question of how it mightbe possible to begin to analyse

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the language and experience of poetryaccordingto a strategythat

is not dialecticallyreductive,while in Le Livre a venir his name is
evoked to markthe possibilityof an end to the totalityand closure
of the book. The patternrepeats itself,though more discreetly,in
several of Blanchot's later texts.In L'Entretien infini,for instance,
the reference to Mallarme opens the final essay in the book
(dealing with'l'absence de livre'),while in L'Ecriture du desastreit is
noticeable that Mallarm6 is mentioned by name on pp. 14-16 of
the French edition and cited again (withoutbeing named) on p.
190, that is, at the beginningand towardsthe end of the volume,
as though to framethe book as a whole but froma place whichis
already contained withinthe book. The name of Mallarm6 seems
to trace a limitenclosingthe textwhilebeing also enclosed by it,in
the same way thatthe titleof the text,itself,as I have observed,a
partial quotation from Mallarm6, both contains Blanchot's book
and is contained withinit.
A paradoxical indeterminacyaffectsthe place occupied by Mallarme in L'Ecriture du desastre.The phenomenon seems to be a general one. For somethinganalogous is also at workwithinthe textof
L'Amitiz. In thiscollectionof essaysdedicated to Blanchot'sfriendship with Georges Bataille the reference to Mallarm6 takes the
formof an untitledpage, belonging neitherto the chapter which
precedes it nor the one that follows,describinghow Mallarm6's
'divisionviolente'of language into two separate modes-ordinary
language and poetic language-institutes a kind of literarybilingualism. Writingitself,Blanchot suggests, gravely compromises
the writer'sbelonging to any native tongue. To writeis to be exposed to an essentialothernessin language, and as thoughto demonstrateboth the efficacyand the uncertaintyof the division of
tongues which Mallarm6 enacts in thisway,Blanchot's remarkintervenesin the middle of the textof L'Amiti&,in such a way thatit
belongs to neitherof the two essaysthatsurround it,but marksan
invisiblelimitappearing to separate the book fromitself.
I shall say more about the role of Mallarm6 in these two texts
later. For the moment,it is enough to note thatby comingsecond,
or second-to-last,Mallarm6 functionsas a figureof mediation or
passage within Blanchot's critical discourse. Consequently, Mallarme's name, in Blanchot,is like an internalframe,partlyturned
towardsthe outside of the book thatprecedes or followsitsoccurrence, partlyfacing towards the mobile centre of the work itself.
As such his place is double, as befitsa threshold,and it is possible

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894

LESLIE HILL

on occasion to find Blanchot viewingMallarm6 with some aloofness, while at other momentshe affirmsMallarm6's absolute importance with extraordinaryconviction.Thus, in La Part du feu,
Blanchot speaks withscepticaldiffidenceof the poet's faith'dans
l'art place au-dessus de tout'or of his commitmentto a 'religionde
la solitude du po&te' (PF, 35), while, ten years later,in Le Livrea
venir,Blanchotdeclares withremarkablebluntnessthatMallarm6's
last poem is the embodimentof the hope the titleof his own book
allows him to envisage: 'Un Coupde des',he says,'est le livrea venir'
(LV, 291).
In Blanchot'svarious discussionsof Mallarm6two major themes
constantlyrecur. The firstis a concern with poetic language as
such and its relationship to so-called ordinary or common language. This provides the principal focus of Blanchot's writingon
Mallarm6in the yearsup to about 1955, whenL'Espace litt1raire
was
published.AfterL'Espace 1itteraire,
Blanchot'smain interest,byway
of a prolonged commentaryon Mallarm6's'Un Coup de des' and
other late texts,is with the question of the book, withthe art of
worklessnessand fragmentation,
and withthe nature of writingas
an affirmativedisaster. The shift in emphasis was no doubt
promptedin part by the publicationin 1957 byJacques Schererunder the titleLe 'Livre'de Mallarme-of the few scatterednotes
and draftsthat survived destructionat Mallarm6's death.3 However opaque and conjecturaltheyremain,these confirmedat least
the possibility of the radical project at which Mallarm6 was
working throughout his final years, the all-inclusive originary
Book.
During the 1940s and early 1950s Blanchot'smain interestlay in
Mallarm6'seffortsto found the rationaleof his own writingpractice by elaborating a general theory of poetic language. In the
essay, 'Crise de vers', in a passage firstpublished in 1886, Mallarme describes,in famous terms,how, for himselfand his contemporaries,language is no longer simple, but double: 'Un desir
indeniable 'a mon temps',Mallarme writes,'est de separer comme
en vue d'attributionsdifferentesle double etat de la parole, brut
ou immediat ici, la essentiel' ((E.c., 368).4 Language, therefore,
splitsinto two. On the one side is what Mallarme termsthe raw or
immediate state of language. Outside of literature,or poetry,he
contends, words serve as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas or
information(what Mallarme calls 'reportage').
The metaphor here
is of communicationas a speechless exchangingof coins, withthe

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wordsoperatingas an abstractgeneral equivalentof thought,their

presence entirelysubordinateto the ideas theyare held to convey.
When language becomes essential,however,we enter into the
verydifferentrealm of the aesthetic.Here, words lose theirfunctional characterand the language of poetrychallenges the facile
automatismand instrumentality
of ordinary discourse. Essential
language does not deliver real objects but an absence, a pure notion. In place of the absent object, as Mallarm6 puts it, writing
creates an entirelynew entitywhich is virtualratherthan actual,
fictionalratherthan real and whichvibratesmusicallyin the empty
space of its own dissolution. Mallarm6's own descriptionof the
process is by now canonic:
Je dis: une fleur!et, horsde l'oubliou ma voixrelegueaucuncontour,en tantque quelque chose d'autreque les calicessus,musicalementse 1eve,idWememeet suave,l'absentede tousbouquets.
Au contraired'une fonctionde numerairefacileet representatif,
commele traited'abordla foule,le dire,avanttout,reveet chant,retrouvechez le Poete,par necessiteconstitutive
d'un artconsacreaux
sa virtualite.
fictions,
((E.c.,368)5
These words formthe basis forwhat is now a powerfulmodern
vulgate. Though it has its originsin German Romanticism,it has
continuedto dominate modern literarytheorysince the Symbolists
and has taken on numerous differentguises. In Russian Formalism and the work of Roman Jakobson,which later provided the
foundationsfor the Paris structuralismof the 1950s and 1960s, it
is a claim that poetic language and ordinarylanguage are subject
to divergent, even antagonistic conventions. Whereas the communicativeor referentialfunctionpredominatesin ordinarydiscourse, poetic discourse,it is argued, has its end in itself.As such,
it has the capacity (in Shklovsky'sphrase) to 'break the glass armour' of habitual,automaticperceptionand thus renew the experience of the world by the reader.
There are otherwaysof articulatingthisdichotomybetweenthe
prosaic and the poetic, the representationaland the autotelic,the
mimeticand the self-conscious.In American New Criticism,for
instance,it is the idea that poetic language is inherentlymore ambiguous and more suggestivethan communicativeprose, and that
in poeticwritingindirectconnotationcounts formore thanexplicit
naming. In France, meanwhile,Paul Valery,who had been one of
the firstto be shown the correctedproofsof 'Un Coup de des' in

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896

LESLIE HILL

1897 and subsequentlyremained the major claimantto Mallarmes

literaryand spiritualheritage,explained the distinctionbetween
prose and poetryby comparingthem,respectively,to walkingand
dancing.6To walk, for Valery,was to be employed in an entirely
functionalactivity,whereas to dance was to be engaged in movement for its own sake and to take delight in rhythm,music,and
gestureas formsthathad theirend or justificationin themselves.
For Valery, the differencebetween Mallarmes immediatelanguage and essentiallanguage is the differencebetweena transitive
and an intransitiveactivity.The formula is a powerfulone, and
has borne some repeating.Indeed, it was in the same termsexactly
that Roland Barthes, pausing to theorisehis own writingpractice
in 1960, was to describe the relationshipbetween the activitiesof
an '6crivain'and those of an '6crivant'.Whereas the latter,Barthes
suggests, is a journeyman purveyorof meanings, committedto
using language as a tool for communicationand interventionin
the world,the formerhas only one object: language itself.'L'Ucrivain', Barthes writes,'est celui qui travaille sa parole ... et s'absorbe fonctionnellement dans ce travail.'7 Writing literature,
Barthes adds, has itselfas its own end: it is an activitywhich is
essentiallytautological.
This historicalsketchis admittedlyall too brief.But it does reveal something of the impact of Mallarmes formulation on
modern literarytheory.In effect,though it may be hedged with
ironyand self-consciousdetachment,Mallarmes separationof language into two divergentand antagonisticstatesis a foundingact,
albeit an oddly belated one. What it constitutes,or reconstitutesis
the possibilityof poetic language as such. The language of literature is posed by Mallarm6as a distinct,autonomous object thatcan
seeminglybe dissociatedfromthe language of ordinarydiscourse.
It can thereforebecome an object of theoreticalreflexion in its
own right.So when Blanchot,in his early essays on Mallarm6,returns persistentlyto the relationshipbetween immediateand essential language in Mallarmes writing,it is clear that what is at
stake is not only a problem in the interpretationof Mallarm6,but
more a question as to the statusnot only of poetic language itself,
assuming such an entityto exist,but also of literarycriticismas a
project whose legitimacyas a discourse depends on the specificity
and autonomyof poetic language.
It is againstthisbackgroundthatBlanchot'sinterestin Mallarm6
can be understood. But it is important to remember, too, that
Blanchotdoes not read Mallarm6in isolation.Indeed, in a number

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of essays (which often began as book reviews),one can observe

Blanchot in argument with other influential commentatorson
Mallarm6.These include Charles Mauron, the author of a psychoanalyticaccount of Mallarm6's writings,Henri Mondor, who was
responsible for editing much of Mallarm6's work and correspondence and published a Vie de Mallarmein 1941, as well as Valery,
whose numerous tributesto the poetic masteryof Mallarm6 were
collected in the second and thirdvolumes of VariWtM
in 1929 and
1936. One also detectsin Blanchot's textsof the 1950s signsof an
implicitpolemic withSartre on the nature of the relationshipbetween the language of poetry,negativity,historyand consciousness. Already in 1949, the concluding essay in La Part du feu, 'La
litteratureet le droit a la mort',was a pointed rebuttalof Sartre's
positionin Qu'est-ceque la lithfrature?,
and it is worthnotingat this
stage thatin 1952 Sartrewas also at workon a manuscripton Mallarme, substantialpartsof whichwere not published till 1979.
Faux Pas, Blanchot's firstcollection of essays, contains three
shortpieces on Mallarm6.The firstis a reviewof Mondor's Life of
Mallarm6,the second a criticalaccount of Mauron's Mallarmel'obscur.They are an opportunityfor Blanchot to reject any reading
that fails to take Mallarm6's language as absolutely central. Of
Mondor, damning the biographicalapproach withsomethingless
than faintpraise, Blanchot writes:'H61As!Le livre est complet et
l'essentiellui manque' (FP, 121). Mauron, forhis part,betraysthe
reductive nature of his project in Blanchot's view by electing to
write about Mallarmes poems by explicitlyparaphrasing them.
Mallarm6's poems, however, are entire in themselves and the
reason forthis,Blanchot writes,is thatpoeticlanguage is not a tool
for the expression of practical ideas. The thesis no doubt owes
somethingto Heidegger, as the allusion in the followingpassage to
Holderlin's naming of the gods seems to suggest.This, any way,is
Blanchot'sversionin 1942:
Dans l'usage de la vie pratique,le langageest un instrument
et un
moyende comprehension,
il est la voiequ'empruntela penseeet qui
s'evanouitau furet a mesureque s'accomplit
le parcours.Mais,dans
l'actepoetique,le langagecesse d'etreun instrument
et il se montre
dans son essencequi est de fonderun monde,de rendrepossiblele
dialogue authentiqueque nous sommesnous-memeset, commedit
Holderlin,de nommerles dieux.(FP, 128_9)8
Here, it seems as though poetic language is a turningaside from
the norms of practicallife,but later in the book, in an essay that

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LESLIE HILL

firstappeared in 1943, thismove is reversed. In 'Mallarm6 et l'art

du roman' (the titleof whichneeds to be read withthe knowledge
that in the early 1940s Blanchot was beginningto publish his own
firsttexts as a novelist),though he makes substantiallythe same
point, Blanchot argues that it is the belief that language can be
that is an illusion and an error: 'cela
reduced to instrumentality
signifie',he notes, 'que la poesie et le discours,loin de constituer
des moyenssubordonnes,des fonctionstresnobles,mais soumises,
sont a leur tour un absolu dont le langage banal ne peut meme
apercevoirl'originalit&'(FP, 191-2).9
The poetic act, then,is itselfthe originalevent; it foundsa world
ratherthan givingvoice to an alreadyextantuniverse.Thus poetic
language, for Blanchot, provides the only radical and authentic
relationshipto human reality.Language is not a subordinatetool
for expression in the hands of human agents; it is originallyconstitutiveof human existenceand experience themselves.
In 'Le mythede Mallarme, the essay collected in La Part dufeu,
Blanchot goes on to extend and develop this last point. The discussion takes the formof a critiqueof the reading of Mallarme by
Paul Valery.As I have said, Valerydraws much of his own prestige
and authorityas a commentatorof Mallarme fromthe close relationship he enjoyed with the poet during his last years; and, in
numerous prose textsdevoted to a considerationboth of Mallarme
and the art of poetry in general, Valery undertakes the task of
expanding Mallarmes remarkson poetic language intoa more coherentand more articulatewhole. In the course of the discussion
the picture of Mallarme that emerges is that of the poet as the
supreme master of the instrumentof language. In 1931, for instance,Valery writesthat
Mallarmea comprisle langagecommes'il 1'eutinvente.Cet ecrivainsi
au
et de coordination
de comprehension
obscura comprisl'instrument
au desiret au desseinnaffset toujoursparticuliers
pointde substituer
de concevoiret de dominerle
extraordinaire
des auteurs,l'ambition
verbale.(I, 658)10
entierde l'expression
systeme
The lesson of Mallarme lies in this notion of the poet's mastery
over the means of expression; for Valery, Mallarme's work is the
embodimentof 'la possessionconscientede la fonctiondu langage
et le sentimentd'une libertesuperieure de l'expressionau regard
de laquelle toute pensee n'est qu'un incident,un evenementparticulier' (I, 660)."1

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Here, Blanchot protests.He does so on two counts. First,Valery

systematisesMallarm6'stheoryof poetic language, and in so doing
plays Plato to Mallarm6's Socrates (PF, 35). The phrase suggests
that Valery not only codifiesbut also distortsthe authenticity
and
radical originalityof what Mallarm6 said. (There is, in Blanchot's
account here, a neat chiasmus around the topic of writingand
speech. If Socrates distinguisheshimselfas a philosopherby never
committingoral dialogue to writing,the same is far fromthe case
withMallarm6,despite his reputationas a conversationalist.Yet it
is Valery who is seen later by Blanchot to preferthe immediacy
and presence of the voice to the disturbing'mobility'of Mallarm6's
script[PF, 42-3]). For Blanchot,the crucialpointis thatMallarm6's
remarkson poetrydo not add up to a generalisabletheoryof poetic language; they share with Mallarm6's other texts a fundamental dispersion and fragmentation.To ignore this is to construct a false totalityof doctrine. Blanchot points this out as
follows:
Le manquede coherencedes textes,un soucitoutautreque logique,
1'6clatde certainesformulesqui n'expliquentpas maisqui montrent,
rendentles meditations
de Mallarm6peu reductibles
a 1'unit6et a la

simplicit6d'une doctrine.(FP,

37)12

Valeryalso takes the viewthatMallarm6'spoems can be ascribed

to an aestheticof conscious mastery.For Valery,the poetic act is a
heightened momentof self-presenceand possession (in which,in
the famous words of the heroine of his poem, 'La Jeune Parque',
'toute a moi, maitressede mes chairs,/... je me voyaisme voir' [I,
97]). Valery contrastspoetic language and practicewith prose by
arguing that poetryfalls subject to differentprosodic or musical
conventions. 'Prose et poesie,' he writes,'se servent des memes
mots,de la meme syntaxe,des memes formeset des memes sons
ou timbres,mais autrementcoordonnes et autrementexcites' (I,
1331).13 In this way, Valery thematisesprose and poetryas two
differentiatedbut symmetricalactivities.In the one, words have
onlya shortenedlifespanand rapidlygive wayto the expositionof
ideas and the exchange of mentalimages; in the other,words live
on as musical elements irreducibleto simple ideas, during which
time poetry takes part in the purely self-legitimating
pursuit of
itself.But in Valery'sanalysisof both prose and poetry,thereis the
common unquestioned assumption that it is possible for the
speaker to exercise conscious masteryover language as an instru-

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LESLIE HILL

ment,musical or otherwise.This beliefis fundamentalto Valery's

position. For it is what allows prosaic language to serve the purpose of expressing ideas and it is also what makes it possible for
the poet to comprehend the materials from which poems are
made. And in both cases whatis obfuscatedis, in Blanchot'sterms,
the originalor foundingrole of language as well as the experience
of dispossessionamply documented by Mallarm6 as the condition
and object of the poetic enterprise.
In writing'Le mythede Mallarm&, Blanchot's purpose was evidently to destabilise this dialectical symmetryor parallelism between prose and poetrythat Valery accreditsin many of his remarks on Mallarm6. This is the mythreferredto in Blanchot's
title.By underminingthat binaryrelationship,the aim is also to
challenge the violent-dialectical-hierarchy that privilegeslinguisticmasteryover poetic experience, and, ultimately,endorses
prosaic normsand treatspoetryas a deviationwhich,as in Valery's
account,is logicallydependent on principlesof masteryof whichit
is the applicationor product.
Blanchot achieves thisunbalancingact by pointingsimplyto the
double role of silencein Mallarm6'spoetictheory.Oddly, Blanchot
explains, silence is the terminusor end-point of both the immediate and the essentialregimesof language in Mallarm6.The language of reportagedeliversonlyemptyabstractionswhich,as Mallarme notes, mightjust as well have remained mute. But poetic
language, too, destroysits real objects and ends in silence. It liberates no spiritual or real presences, but an absent fiction,the
bloom which is 'l'absente de tous bouquets'. As Blanchot points
out, thereis a crucialdiscontinuity
here, and the criticexpectingto
be faced with two securelycontrastedregimes of language is left
havingto decide-aporetically-between two equally self-effacing
modes of silence.
Mallarm6, then, does not provide a stable, empirical criterion
for distinguishingbetween essentiallanguage and immediatelanguage. The distinctioncannot readilybe reduced, as Valery and
othersseem to imply,to the distinctionbetween poetryand prose.
Afterall, in 'Crise de vers',Mallarmes remarkson language were
prompted by the currentvogue for the 'vers libre' and the abandonment by some poets of standard formsof versification,all of
whichcaused major problemsin distinguishingbetweenwhatnow
was and was not verse. And thoughon one level Mallarme appears
to be evoking the divisionbetween essentialand raw language in

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an attemptto reassertsome theoreticalcontrolover these changes

in prosodic convention,it is plain thatcodifyingthe crisisdid little
more than defer it. As Blanchot's account implies,the reader of
Mallarm6's text looks in vain to find any essential differencebetween the essentialand the immediate.
But for Blanchot if there is no dialecticalsymmetryin the relation between poetry and prose, this does not imply the two are
identicalnor thatMallarm6'sargumentnecessarilyneeds to fallby
virtueof its circularity.If poetic language culminatesin the embodimentof silence,it does so in a more radical way than the language of mute social ritual.This is because poetic language is destructiveof the world of two counts, firstbecause it reduces the
world to an abstraction,like all language, then second because it
destroys abstraction, the presence of the idea, by the sensual
echoing of the word. What is crucial,Blanchot argues, is that'l'interetdu langage est ... de detruire,par sa puissance abstraite,la
realit6materielledes choses, et de detruire,par la puissance d'Yvocation sensible des mots,cette valeur abstraite'(PF, 38).14 To this
extent,for Blanchot, poetic language does not extend mastery(as
it does for Valery), but enacts and records loss and destruction.
What is lost or destroyedis the intuitionof being, and poetrybecomes an experience of this loss of being, that is, an experience
which is consequently without essence or subjective truth,and
which Blanchot describes in La Part du feu (and later in L'Espace
littt'raire)as 'une sorte de conscience sans sujet, qui, separee de
l'etre,est detachement,contestation,pouvoir infinide creerle vide
et de se situerdans un manque' (PF, 48).15 (And readers may recognise here in the terminologicalcomplexityof Blanchot's text
the syntaxof 'sans' described by Derrida in his Parages.)'6 Poetry,
for Blanchot,like Mallarm6,becomes synonymouswiththe explorationof thisempty,vacant space. It maybe thatlanguage founds
a world,but what it founds is a world withoutfoundation.
For Valery, the radical negativityof Mallarmean experience is
purged of all heterogeneityand transformedinto a demand for
poetic purity.For Blanchot, however,experience remains an importantthough paradoxical point of reference,and his next essay
on Mallarm6 has as its title: 'L'Experience de Mallarm&'. (The
essay firstappeared as an articlein Critique,
inJuly1952, under the
heading, 'Mallarm6 et l'experience litteraire',before being republished, with revisions, in L'Espace litWraire.)
The chapter begins
largelywhere the precedingessay had leftoff.Blanchot again em-

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LESLIE HILL

phasises the unstable characterof the relationshipbetween Mallarmes two modes of language. They do not provide a secure
foundationfor literarytheoryor doctrineforsome of the reasons
already given. What distinguishesthe one from the other is not
poetic conventionor essence, but the criterionof use (on thispoint
Blanchot's positionseems unchanged since the essays of the early
1940s). But Blanchot also declares Mallarmes formula a misnomer. In reality,he argues, the immediateor unrefinedstate of
language is neitherof the thingsit purportsto be. Ordinarylanguage is heavilymediated by historyand convention;the world to
which it gives access is the very opposite of being immediately
present: 'La parole brute', he writes,'n'est ni brute ni immediate.
Mais elle donne l'illusionde l'etre' (EL, 32).
Ordinarylanguage, therefore,deceives. This, writesBlanchot,is
the source of its extraordinarypower:
La parolea en elle le momentqui la dissimule;elle a en elle, par ce
la puissancepar quoi la mediation(ce qui
pouvoirde se dissimuler,
l'inla fraicheur,
sembleavoirla spontaneite,
donc detruitl'immediat)
nocence de l'origine.(EL, 33)17

Poetic language, on the other hand, has the capacityto annihilate

the illusion of presence and immediacysustained by this instrumental exchange of meanings. 'En elle', Blanchot argues, 'le
monde recule et les buts ont cesse; en elle, le monde se tait,les
etres en leurs preoccupations,leurs desseins,leur activite,ne sont
plus finalementce qui parle' (EL, 34).18
But though this capacity of poetic language to neutralise use
gives rise to the possibilityof the workof art,it,too, deceives,but
in anotherway.The particularworkof art simulatesbeing,but has
its principle not in the intimacyor proximityof poetic language
withthe origin or the truthof being, but in the absence of being
thatgives the workof art its paradoxical possibility.The originof
the work of art lies, for Blanchot, in worklessness,in what he describeshere as 'la profondeurdu desceuvrement'(EL, 39), the absence of workthatruins any workand gives it the appearance not
of unitybut of dispersion. Worklessnessis not a foundation; it
takes more the formof a flickeringothernessthatis articulatedby
Blanchot as if it were both an absence of being and the indeterminate generalityof being. The logic of this position-or lack of
position-is not contained in any dialecticof being. It is presented
more as a series of paradoxes or rhetorical shiftsthan a set of

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903

propositions; as such it figures in the text-that of Mallarm6's

poem as well as Blanchot's commentary-as a rhythm,a movement of fundamental oscillation affectingboth the terms and
syntax of the writing.Time and again, oscillation is the figure
Blanchot also uses to name the underlyingstructureof Mallarmes
poetic enterpriseand poetic experience. Glossing the short fragment,Igitur,in itsabilityboth to fallshortof literatureand exceed
it, Blanchot writesthat:
On voudraitdireque le poeme,commele pendulequi rythme,
par le
temps,l'abolition
du tempsdans Igitur,oscillemerveilleusement
de sa

presence comme langage aI l'absence des choses du monde, mais cette

presenceelle-meme
esta sontourperpetuite
oscillante,
oscillation
entre

l'irrealitesuccessive de termes qui ne terminentrien et la realisation

totale de ce mouvement,le langage devenu le tout du langage, la ou
s'accomplit,comme tout, le pouvoir de renvoyeret de revenira rien,
qui s'affirmeen chaque mot et s'aneantiten tous, 'rythmetotal','avec
quoi le silence'. (EL, 38)'9

Experience, then, in Blanchot's account, is not a pure moment

of inwardness, nor does it conform to a totalising existential
project. It is here that there is evidence of an exchange with

Sartre.20 It is difficult to tell whether Blanchot was aware of

Sartre'sshortpreface to Mallarmes poems, published in 1954, but

in it Sartrequotes approvinglyfromBlanchot's 1952 articleto the
effectthatpoetry
sera, comme le dit fortbien Blanchot,'ce langage dont toutela forceest
de n'etre pas, toute la gloire d'evoquer, en sa propre absence, l'absence
de tout'. ... En se risquant tout entier,Mallarme s'est decouvert,sous
l'eclairage de la mort,dans son essence d'homme et de poete. I1 n'a pas
abandonne sa contestation de tout,simplement il la rend efficace.
Bient6til pourra ecrireque 'le poeme est la seule bombe'. (MLF, 157)21

I shall returnto some of the detail of these remarkslater,but there

is here, it would appear, something of a misunderstandingof
Blanchot by Sartre that has to do withthe functionand statusof

negativity in Mallarmes text.

Together with his essays on Baudelaire and Genet, Sartre's work
on Mallarme represents a stage in an attempt to lay the foundations for a historical anthropology and to develop an account of
literature founded on an existentialist ethics. Already in Qu'est-ce
que la littrature?, Sartre had relied on a crude version of the Mallarmean dichotomy between poetry and prose to establish prose as

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LESLIE HILL

primarilya vehicle for communicationand commitment.Poetry,

for its part, figures in that book as the impoverished other of
prose, its success predicated on the failureof prosaic communication. In a long footnote,Sartre has it that:
le langagepoetiquesurgitsur les ruinesde la prose.... Ce n'estpas
qu'ilyaitautrechosea communiquer:
maisla communication
de la prose
ayant%chou,c'estle sensmemedu motqui devient'incommunicable
pur. Ainsi1'kchec
de la communication
devientsuggestion
de l'incommunicable;et le projetd'utiliserces mots,contrari6,
faitplace a une
pureintuition
desinteressee
de la parole.22
'La poesie', Sartre continues, 'c'est qui perd gagne'. As a result,
followingthe dialecticallogic of thisgame of 'loser wins',Mallarme
ends up acting out in Sartre's text a philosophical and historical
drama in which negativityis convertedinto a variationon its own
opposite: 'le Negatif', writes Sartre, 'est le symbole du Positif'
(MLF, 30). Mallarme's role is to double as a Hegelian 'Conscience
malheureuse: en lui vont s'affronter,pour le compte de tous, le
Singulier et l'Universel,la Cause et la Fin, l'Idee et la Matiere, le
Determinismeet l'Autonomie, le Temps et l'Eternel, l'Etre et le
Devoir-Etre'(MLF, 136). Mallarmean experience is understood in
this historicalframeas a sociological drama and Sartre concludes
thatthe themeof shipwreckin 'Un Coup de des', forinstance,tells
a tale recountingthe historicalnightmareof the bourgeoisie, 'la
terreurde la classe possedante qui prend conscience de son inevitable declin' (MLF, 89).23 Negativityis incorporatedinto a project
that unifiesdispersionand allows poetryto take place as an event
only to the extent that its place and position is controlledin advance by a prior philosophical and historicisingdialectic. If Mallarme's poetryis predicatedon the problematicsense, in the words
of 'Un Coup de des', that 'rien n'aura eu lieu que le lieu', then
Sartre's analysis sees its task as determiningthe meaning of the
place occupied by Mallarme's poem in a teleological and moralisinghistoryof literaturein the nineteenthcentury.Put back in its
place, so runs Sartre'sverdict,Mallarme'spoeticworkrevealsitself
as an essentialembodimentof terrorism,suicide and death.
Despite Sartre'scitation,Blanchot in factoffersa verydifferent
account of negativityin Mallarme'stext.For Blanchot,a dialectical
approach fails in face of the oscillatinglogic of worklessness;the
power of the negativecannot be recuperatedintoactualityor presence and there is thereforeno foundation to its movement,no

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905

essence to be revealed at its core, and no historicalteleologyto be

derived fromit.The futureperfectis a tense thateclipsespresence
and position.As Blanchot writesof the role of Midnightin Igitur,
in termsthat not only echo Mallarm6 but also anticipatemuch of
what Derrida has to say about Mallarm6 in La Dissemination,
La Nuit est le livre,le silence et l'inactiond'un livre,lorsque, toutayant
6t6 profer6,tout rentredans le silence qui seul parle, parle du fond du
passe et est en meme temps tout l'avenir de la parole. Car le Minuit
present,cetteheure oii manque absolumentle present,est aussi l'heure
ou le passe touche et atteintimmediatement,sans l'intermediaire
de rien
d'actuel,l'extremitede l'avenir,et tel est ... l'instantmeme de la mort
qui n'estjamais present,qui est la fetede l'avenirabsolu et oiul'on peut
dire que, dans un temps sans present,ce qui a ete sera. (EL, 114-15)24
After L'Espace litteraire, in a slippage that may be understood as
corresponding to the need to abandon the privilege attached to the
concept of experience, too easily recuperable within a time-based
dialectic of consciousness, Blanchot shifts the emphasis of his
reading. Le Livre a venir turns its attention to the problematic of
textual space in Mallarme's writing. Mallarmes 'Un Coup de des',
the book argues,
est ne d'une entente nouvelle de l'espace litteraire,tel que puissents'y
engendrer, par des rapports nouveaux de mouvement,des relations
nouvelles de comprehension.... On ne cree rien et on ne parle d'une
maniere creatriceque par l'approche prealable du lieu d'extreme vacance oiu,avant d'etre paroles determineeset exprimees,le langage est
le mouvement silencieux des rapports, c'est-a-dire'la scansion rythmique de l'etre'. Les paroles ne sont jamais lIa que pour designer
l'etendue de leurs rapports: l'espace oiu ils se projettentet qui, a peine
designe, se replie et se reploie, n'etantnulle part ou il est. (LV, 286)25
Space in Mallarme is not homogeneity; it is, according to Blanchot,
an oscillating force of dispersion and unification which suspends
present time and the presence of time. Space in itself is not an
origin, for what it is in Mallarme's text is an unceasing movement
of figural articulation and effacement. Space is like a mode of language, but a language in which words cease to be identical with
themselves, and are more like a series of flickering or oscillating
traces. Language in Mallarme, Blanchot writes in a note, 'n'est pas
fait de mots meme purs: il est ce en quoi les mots ont toujours deja
disparu et ce mouvement oscillant d'apparition et de disparition'
(LV, 286).26 Space, therefore, provides no shelter for being; and

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LESLIE HILL

on this point Blanchot dissociates himselfspecificallyfrom Heidegger's reading of H6lderlin.27 In Mallarm6, writes Blanchot,
drawingon the figuresand themesof 'Un Coup de des',
de la parole
ce que fondentles poetes,l'espace-abime et fondement
n'estpas l'abrioui
-,est ce qui ne demeurepas,et le sejourauthentique
maisesten rapportavec l'cueil, par la perdition
l'hommese preserve,
crise'qui seulepermetd'atteindre
et le gouffre,
et aveccette'memorable
commence.(LV,289)28
au videmouvant,lieuou la tAchecrBatrice
By now, Blanchot begins to move beyond many of the issues
posed by Mallarm6's putative contrastbetween the essential and
the immediate. What may have begun on Mallarm6's part as an
attemptto found the rationaleof his own artisticenterpriseby isolating poetic language and practice from that of 'l'universelreportage'((E.c., 368), culminates,in Blanchot,in the realisationthat
no such gesture of stable separation is possible, that poetic language is conceivable only in termsof a logic of oscillationthatdeprivesthe act of writingof any foundationand signals the ruin of
the book-and of poetry-as an activitywithitsown autonomous
logic or conventions.
In some respects,Blanchot's reading of Mallarm6 does not proceed much furtherbeyond this point. From now on, Mallarm6's
name becomes synonymousin Blanchot withthe question of the
absence of the book and the theme of the fundamentaldispersion
of writing.It would be wrong to assume, however,this implies a
decline in Mallarm6'simportanceafter 1959. Rather,the statusof
Blanchot'sown textchanges,and withit the natureof the relationship between the two writings.As the dichotomybetween poetry
and prose is abandoned, Blanchot'sown workundergoes a radical
L'Oubli in
marked by the appearance of L'Attente
transformation,
1962. This work,withits odd bifurcatingtitle,is the firstby Blanchot not to presentitselfas a fiction(as a 'roman' or 'recit')or as a
book of criticalcommentary.It contains numerous fictionalfragments,but also sustainsa complex meditationon several themes
that carryover from Blanchot's other work, includingLe Livre a
L'Oubli thusbecomes both continuousand disveniritself.L'Attente
continuous withitself,and its unity-or, equally, its dispersionlies in this non-dialecticaloscillationin its structure.The text no
longer belongs either to the fictionalor the non-fictional;what it
describes is how the coming of the text is an event irreducibleto
both. 'Plus tard',the textsaysof an unnamed protagonist,'il pensa

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907

que levenement consistaitdans cette maniere de n'etre ni vrai ni

faux' (AO, 13). What the textgathersit also disperses; what it disperses it also gathers: 'Loubli, lattente. L'attente qui rassemble,
disperse; l'oubli qui disperse, rassemble. L'attente, loubli' (AO,
64).29

When Blanchot returns for the last time, in L'AmitiZ,to the

themeof the divisionof language in Mallarm6,it is froma position
that is irreducibleeitherto poetryor prose and can no longer be
enclosed withinthat opposition,or fall subject to the contrastbetween transitiveand intransitive.Language itselfis synonymous
withitsown dispersionand figuralmovement,and Blanchot'sconcern now, in the words of L'Attente
L'Oubli, is to give voice to that
internaldifferenceof language withitself:'Et donc en un seul langage toujours faire entendre la double parole' (AO, 15).3 More
importantthan legislatingon the nature of poetryor prose is the
abrupt separation of language from itselfinto two incommensurate and unequal doubles. Mallarm6 is no longer,then,the source
of a theoryof poetic language; he is a witnessto the uneasy duplicityof language and it is this that qualifies him as a bilingual
writerwhose abode is nowhere,except in the relationwithoutrelation that binds and separates one singular-yet curiously diffracted-act of speech withand fromanother:
Par une divisionviolente,
Mallarm6a separ6le langageen deuxformes
presquesansrapport,l'unela languebrute,lautrele langageessentiel.
Voila peut-etrele vraibilinguisme.
L'ecrivainest en cheminversune
parolequi n'estjamais deja donnee: parlant,attendantde parler.Ce
cheminement,
il l'accomplit
en se rapprochant
toujoursdavantagede la
languequi lui esthistoriquement
destinee,proximite
qui meten cause
et parfoisgravement
sonappartenance
a toutelanguenatale.(A, 171)31
Mallarme in Blanchot's work is a figureof writingas a mode of
fragmentationand disaster.As I have noted, the titleof L'Ecriture
du desastre contains a silent homage to Mallarme and in the
opening pages of the book Blanchot attributesto Mallarme the
phrase: 'Il n'est d'explosion qu'un livre' (ED, 16). The remark,
which recurs later without Mallarmes name, is almost certainly
apocryphal,though it has an extensivedoxology. Its own fate,like
that of all books, lies perhaps in thisdispersion.That it lacks any
precise historicaloriginis like an allegoryof what it communicates
withinBlanchot's text.But, whateverits source, the phrase comes
fromafar. In 1894, in an interviewwithLe Soir,given in defence

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LESLIE HILL

of his anarchistfriend,the writerFelix Feneon, who had just been

arrested for his alleged involvementin a bomb outrage (and in
1944 was to be nominated by the journalist Maurice Blanchot as
his candidate for the titleof the most astute literarycriticof the
age), Mallarme pointed out to the newspaper that'il n'y avait pas,
pour Feneon, de meilleursdetonateursque ses articles'.'Et je ne
pense pas', he added, 'qu'on puisse se servird'arme plus efficace
que la litterature'.Some yearslater,in L'Arten silence,published in
1901, Camille Mauclair comes nearer to Blanchot's formulation
and attributesto Mallarm%the phrase: je ne sais qu'une bombe,
c'est le livre'. Henri Mondor, in his biographyof 1941, though he
does so withoutindicatinghis source, has the poet declare, in similar terms, that lje ne connais d'autre bombe qu'un livre'. This
phrase, in its turn, is taken up, as we have seen, by Sartre and
reproduced frommemoryas evidence of Mallarme'sown political
sympathies,though Sartre's Mallarme drops the literaryflourish
and puts it more pugnaciously: je ne connais pas d'autre bombe',
he says,'qu'un livre'.32
In its oddly negative but affirmativesyntax,Blanchot's version
of the phrase repeats fragmentsof both sound and sense as they
echo fromother reports.But if the phrase assembles these earlier
sayings,it disperses them,too, and it is noticeable that Blanchot's
wording shows more concern for the repercussionsof the event
than itsalleged source. He thus substitutesa process foran object,
an explosion for a bomb, an act of fragmentation for one of
single-mindeddestruction,and the writingof disaster for a gesture of militantcommitment.In this way Mallarme's phrase-if
ever it was the poet's phrase-is translated by Blanchot into a
fragmentof his own idiom. In the last, he thus becomes one of
Mallarme'sco-authorsand the phrase enacts notjust the explosion
of a book but of a signature,too.33
At the end, withinthe volume of a book-the book of Blanchot's phantom quotation as well as the Book of Mallarme's last
years-there occurs something like a merging of the names of
Mallarme and Blanchot. Prose and poetry,the occasional and the
essential,the transitiveand the intransitivemerge, too, in Blanchot's writing,in the same way as do criticaltext and literaryfiction. The rule is of disasterand fragmentation.Regulated forms
lose theirdistinctnessbut only in order that each may display the
fundamentaloscillation that makes each differentfrom itselfas
well as from its fellow. No legislationis possible on the topic of

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prose and poetry,only a movementof constanttransgression.But

it is, Blanchot points out, a movementof transgressionthatis not
contained by canonic norms and recognises no law: 'Ecrire', he
writesin L'Entretien infini,'sous ce point de vue, est la violence la
plus grande, car elle transgressela Loi, toute loi et sa propre loi'
(EI, viii).34
What Blanchot shares mostof all withMallarm%is a shiftingand
unsettledbilingualism.Both writein the literarycriticalor theoretical mode and both writefictionsor poems. But the borders that
run between the one and the other prove impossible to police.
They are limitsthat are effaced, affirmatively,
anonymously,by
the force of disaster and worklessness.What Blanchot therefore
derives most of all from his lengthyengagement with Mallarm6,
one might say, is somethinglike the possibilityof conceivingof
literatureas a space in which language never overcomes or resolves its duplicitous,double characterand remainsever different
from its own words, ever fragmentary,an explosion continually
awaitingitsown event.
NOTES
1 In thispaper, referencesto Blanchot'sworkwillbe given directlyin the textby
use of the followingabbreviations:
FP:
PF:
EL:
LV:
AO:
EI:
A:
ED:

2
3
4
5

Faux Pas, Paris: Gallimard, 1943

La Part dufeu, Paris: Gallimard, 1949
LEspace litWraire,
Paris: Gallimard, 1955
Le Livrea venir,Paris: Gallimard, 1959
L'Attente
L'Oubli, Paris: Gallimard, 1963
L'Entretien
infini,Paris: Gallimard, 1969
L'Amitid,
Paris: Gallimard, 1971
LEcrituredu desastre,
Paris: Gallimard, 1980

All referencesto Mallarm6's work will be to the one-volume (Euvrescompletes,

edited by Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry(Paris: Gallimard, 1945). These
will also be given in the text,withthe abbreviation(E.c.. All major quotations
fromthe French have been translatedin the notes. These translationsare my
own.
'that which is necessaryand that which is fortuitouswill be mutuallykept in
check by the forceof disaster.'
See Jacques Sch6rer,Le 'Livre'de Mallarme(Paris: Gallimard, 1957).
'An undeniable desire of the presenttime is for it to separate as though witha
view to differentfunctionsthe double state of speech, raw or immediatehere,
there essential.'
'I say: a flower! and, beyond the oblivionto whichmy voice relegatesany outline, as somethingother than the familiarchalices, musicallythere arises, the
idea itselfand suave, the one absent fromall bouquets.

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LESLIE HILL

Converselyto a functionof easy and representationalcoinage, as treatedprimarilyby the crowd,speech, above all dreaming and song, regains in the Poet,
by a necessityconstitutiveof an art devoted to fictions,its virtuality.'
6 Paul Valery,(Euvres,edited byJean Hytier,2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), I,
1329-30. All furtherreferencesto Valery's essays on Mallarm6 will be to this
edition and willbe given directlyin the text.
is someone
(Paris: Seuil, 1964), 148. 'The kcrivain
7 Roland Barthes,Essais critiques
who worksat the act of speaking ... and is functionallyabsorbed intothatwork'.
Some of the recenthistoryof the dichotomyof essentialversus immediatelanguage is retraced by Tzvetan Todorov in Critiquede la critique(Paris: Seuil,
1984). It must be said, however,that Todorov's discussionof Blanchot in that
context (66-74) remains largely superficial.Todorov's view that Blanchot naivelyendorses a 'romantic'account of the autotelicnature of poetic language is
one which,as we shall see, is difficultto sustain.
8 'In practicaleverydaylife,language is a tool and means forunderstanding,it is
the path followedby thoughtand one thatgraduallydisappears as the necessary
distance is covered. But in the poetic act, language ceases to be a tool and displays itselfin its essence, which is to found a world, to make possible the authenticdialogue thatis ourselvesand, in Holderlin's phrase, to name the gods.'
9 'This means that poetry and discourse, far from being subordinate means,
functionsthat are most noble but have been subjugated, are in their turn an
absolute whose originalityis entirelybeyond the grasp of ordinarylanguage.'
10 'Mallarm6 understood language as well as if he had inventedit. This most obscure of writershad such a fine understandingof the instrumentof understanding and co-ordinationthat rather than the naive and always particular
intentionsand wishesof otherauthorshe conceived the extraordinaryambition
of articulatingand controllingthe entiresystemof verbal expression.'
11 'the conscious possessionof the functionof language and the feelingof a higher
freedom of expression in respect of which all thoughtis incidental,a passing
occurrence.
12 'The lack of coherence of the texts,a concern for somethingother than logic,
the brillianceof certainformulationswhichshow the waybut do not explain, all
this makes it difficultto reduce Mallarm6's meditationsto the unityand simplicityof a doctrine.'
13 'Prose and poetryuse the same words,the same syntax,the same formsand the
same sounds or resonances,but coordinated and stimulatedin differentways.'
14 'What is interestingabout language is how it destroysthe material realityof
thingsthroughitsabstractpower,and then destroysthisabstractvalue through
the sensuous evocativepower of words.'
15 'a kind of consciousness withoutsubject which,in so far as it is separate from
being,is detachment,challenge,the infinitepower to create the void and to take
up a positionwithina lack.'
16 Jacques Derrida,Parages(Paris: Galilee, 1986), 35. It is remarkable,thoughhe is
never cited in the text,how much Blanchot'sreading of Mallarm6seems to have
influencedDerrida's own account of the poet in the essay 'La Double Seance' in
La Dissemination
(Paris: Seuil, 1972), 199-317.
17 'Words contain withinthemselvesthe momentof theirown disguise; theyhave
in them,by virtueof thispower of disguise,the power by whichmediation(that
which thereforedestroysimmediacy)seems to have the spontaneity,the freshness, the innocence of the origin.'
18 'In poetic language, the world retreatsand goals come to an end; in poetry,the

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world is silent,human beings withtheirpreoccupations,ambitions,and activities are finallyno longer thatwhichspeaks.'

19 'One would like to say thatthe poem, like the clock thatbeats out, throughtime,
the abolitionof time in Igitur,oscillatesmarvellouslyfromits presence as language to the absence of the thingsof the world,but thispresence itselfis in turn
an oscillatingperpetuity,an oscillationbetweenthe successiveunrealityof terms
which terminatenothingand the total realisationof that movement,language
become the whole of language, the place wherethe power to referand returnto
nothingis finallyrealised,as a whole,affirmedin each word and abolished in all
of them,"totalrhythm","withwhichthe silence".'
20 Sartre's preface to Mallarm6 as well as previouslyunpublished material also
writtenduring the early 1950s is now available in Mallarme:la luciditW
etsaface
edited by ArletteElkaim-Sartre(Paris: Gallimard, 1986). Referencesto
d'ombre,
thisvolume willbe preceded by the abbreviation:MLF.
21 'willbe, as Blanchot puts itverywell,"thislanguage the entireforceof whichlies
in not being, and the whole gloryof which lies in evoking,in its own absence,
the absence of everything".... Riskinghis all, Mallarm6,in the lightof death,
reveals himselfin his essence as a man and a poet. He did not give up the
challenge to everything,
he simplymade his challenge effective.Before long, he
was to writethat "the poem is the only bomb".' Misleadingly,an editorialnote
attributesthis quotation fromBlanchot to his earlier book of essays,Faux Pas.
Sartre is in factquoting fromBlanchot's essay, 'Mallarm6 et l'experience litt6raire',firstpublished in Critique,62 (July 1952), 579-91. The phrase Sartrecites
is on the second page of the article(thiscorrespondsto p. 31 of the textgivenin
L'Espace litt1raire).
It is perhaps worthrecallingat thisstage thatthe major part
of Sartre'sown-unpublished-manuscript on Mallarm6was destroyedby fire
as a resultof an OAS terroristbomb attackon Sartre's Paris flat in 1962.
22 'poetic language arises fromthe ruinsof prose.... There is notsomething
elseto
communicate; but with the failure of communication through prose, the
meaning of the word becomes pure incommunicability.Thus the failure of
communicationbecomes a suggestionof incommunicability;
and the projectof
using these words,if somethingstands in its path, gives way to a pure, disinterested intuitionof speech', Sartre,Situations
II (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 86.
23 'the Negative is the symbolof the Positive'.Mallarm6is thus the 'unhappy Consciousnessin whom,on behalfof all, the clash takes place betweenthe Singular
and the Universal,the Cause and the End, Idea and Matter,Determinismand
Autonomy,Time and Timelessness, Being and Having-to-Be'. 'Un Coup de
des' we are to believe, expresses 'the terrorof the property-owning
class realisingits own inevitabledecline'.
24 'Nightis the book, the silenceand the inactionof a book, when,afterall else has
been spoken, everythingenters into the silence thatalone speaks, speaks from
the depths of the past and is at the same time the whole futureof speech. For
presentMidnight,the hour at whichthe presentis absolutelymissing,is also the
hour at whichthe past touches and reaches immediately,without
themediation
of
anyactuality,
the extremepointof the future,and such is ... the verymomentof
death whichis never present,whichis the feastof the absolute future,at which
one may say that,in a time withoutpresent,what has been willbe.'
25 'is born of a new understandingof the space of literature,so that,by new relations of movement, new relations of comprehension may be produced....
Nothing is created and nothingcreativeis said except by the prior approach of
the place of extreme vacancy in which, before being determinate,expressed
words, language is the silentmovementof relationships,that is, "the rhythmic
scansion of being". Words are only ever there to designate the extentof their

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26
27

28

29
30
31

LESLIE HILL

relationships:the space into whichtheyare projectedand which,as soon as it is

designated,withdrawsand retreats,being nowhere where it is.'
'is not made up of words, albeit pure ones; it is that into which words have
always already disappeared and the oscillatingmovementof appearance and
disappearance.'
Levinas makes a similar point in his book Sur Maurice Blanchot(Montpellier:
Fata Morgana, 1975). Levinas writes:'La demarche qui domine la dernierephilosophie de Heidegger consistea interpreterles formesessentiellesde l'activit6
humaine-art, technique, science, 6conomie,-comme des modes de la verit6
(ou de son oubli). Que la marche a la rencontrede cette verit6,la reponse
donn&e a l'appel, s'engage pour Heidegger dans les cheminsde lerrance et que
l'erreursoitcontemporainede la verite,que la revelationde l'etreen soitaussi la
dissimulation,tout cela temoigne d'une proximitetres grande entre la notion
heideggeriennede l'etreet cetterealisationde l'irrealite,cette presence de l'absence, cette existence du neant que, d'apres Blanchot, l'aeuvred'art, le poeme
laisse dire. Mais pour Heidegger la verite-un devoilementprimordial-conditionne toute errance et c'est pourquoi tout l'humain peut se dire en fin de
compte en termes de verite,se decrire comme 'devoilement de l'etre'. Chez
qui n'estpas verite,une obscurite.
Blanchot, l'euvre decouvre,d'une decouverte
D'une decouverte qui n'est pas verite!-voila une singuliere maniere de decouvriret voir le 'contenu' que sa structureformelledetermine:obscuriteabsolument exterieure sur laquelle aucune prise n'est possible. Comme dans un
desert on ne peut y trouverdomicile. Du fond de l'existencesedentairese leve
un souvenirde nomade. Le nomadisme n'est pas une approche de l'etatsedentaire. I1 est un rapport irreductibleavec la terre: un sejour sans lieu' (21-2).
('The move that dominates the late philosophyof Heidegger consistsin interpreting the essential forms of human activity-art, technology, science,
economy-as modes of truth[or its forgetting].That the march towards the
truth,the response to the call, involvesforHeidegger takingpaths thatlead one
astray,and that error is contemporarywith truth,and that the revelationof
being is also itsconcealment,all pointsto the existenceof a veryclose relationship between the Heideggerian notion of being and the making real of the
unreal, the presence of absence, the existence of nothingnessthat is what, in
Blanchot'sview,the workof art or the poem articulates.But forHeidegger the
truth-a primordialunveiling-is the conditionof all wandering,whichis why
the whole of the human can be finallyspoken of in termsof truthand be dethat
in a discovery
scribedas an 'unveilingof being'. In Blanchot,theworkdiscovers,
is not truth,a darkness. A discoverythat is not truth!What a strange way of
discoveringand seeing the 'content' which its formal structuredetermines:a
darkness thatis absolutelyexterior,on whichno purchase is possible. Like in a
desert one finds no residence. From the depths of sedentaryexistence a nomadic memoryarises. Nomadism is not an approach of the sedentarystate.It is
an irreduciblerelationshipwiththe earth: a residence withoutplace'.)
'what poets found, space-the abyss and foundationof speech-is that which
does not remain,and the authenticresidence is not the shelterin whichman is
preserved,but has to do withthe rock on whichone founders,by wayof ruinacrisis"which alone gives access to
tion and the chasm, and withthe "memorable
the movingvoid, thatplace where the creativetask begins.'
'Later, he reflected that the event was in this way of being neither true nor
false'. 'Forgetting,waiting.The waitingthat gathers,disperses; the forgetting
that disperses,gathers.Waiting,forgetting.'
'And thus in one sole language alwaysmake heard the double speech.'
'By a violentdivision,Mallarme separated language into two almost unrelated

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913

forms,the one being immediatespeech and the otheressentiallanguage. This is

perhaps true bilingualism.The writeris on his way towardsa formof speech
which is never already given: speaking,waitingto speak. He accomplishesthis
journey by gettingever nearer to thatlanguage whichis historicallydestinedto
be his,and thatclosenessquestions,at timesgravely,his belongingto any native
tongue.'
32 Blanchot firstquotes the phrase fromMallarm6 in an earlier (more extensive)
version of the passage that now appears in L'Ecrituredu desastre,190-91. This
was originallypublishedas a prefatorynote to the collectivevolume,Miserede la
littfrature
(Paris: ChristianBourgois, 1978), 11-12. The othertextscited here in
sequence are as follows: Maurice Blanchot, 'Le Mystere de la critique,' Le
Journaldesdebats,6 January,1944; Stephane Mallarm6,Correspondance,
vol. VI,
edited by Henri Mondor and LloydJames Austin(Paris: Gallimard,1981), 287;
Camille Mauclair, LArt en silence(Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1901), 104; Henri
Mondor, Vie de Mallarmn(Paris: Gallimard, 1941), 670; Jean-Paul Sartre,Mallarme':la luciditW
etsaface d'ombre,157. I am indebted to Michael Holland and to
Deirdre Reynolds for their invaluable assistancein helping me to trackdown
some of these quotations.
33 There is a parallel here, despite obvious other differences,with Blanchot's
reading of Hegel, as I am reminded by Andrzej Warminski in his essay,
'Dreadful Reading: Blanchot on Hegel', YFS, 69 (1985), 267-75. Warminski
writes,for instance,of Blanchot's engagement with Hegel that 'the attemptis
not to explain Hegel but to rewritehim in another place' (269).
34 'Writing,in thisrespect,is the greatestviolence,forit transgressesthe Law, any
law and its own law.'

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