VIVIAN LISKA

Universiteit Antwerpen

Trans. NAOMI SHULMAN

Institut Catholique de Paris

A Same Other, Another Same:

Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot
on Translation

Even though Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot are considered two of the
most important theorists and literary critics of the last century—the two who grant
literature the most radical and decisive role in critical thought—their affinity is not
obvious and has been rarely examined. What is the relationship between these two
figures? On the one hand, there is the German-Jewish thinker, who was persecuted
by the Nazis and committed suicide in 1940 and whose work, first marked by Jewish
theology, then by an idiosyncratic Marxism, is considered the main inspiration for
the “Critical Theory” of the Frankfurter Schule. On the other hand, there is the writer
and thinker from the heartlands of France, whose beginnings in the thirties—years
when Benjamin described the impending catastrophe of fascism in Europe—are
located in the French nationalist right wing. He was a confirmed atheist and man of
letters, inspired by the thinking of Martin Heidegger, but also a participant in the
movement of 1968 and a major precursor of deconstruction. In his speech on the oc-
casion of receiving the Adorno Prize, Jacques Derrida affirms—albeit obliquely—
that deconstruction is the heir of the Frankfurter Schule,1 yet this bond remains to be
explored in depth and in its various nuances. The relationship between Benjamin
and Blanchot may prove a fascinating point of departure for such research.
Benjamin does not appear to be among the names that possess great importance
for Blanchot. Nevertheless, there are signs that Blanchot read parts of the work of the
man whom he called an excellent essayist. He names Benjamin three times in all ex-
plicitly, mentioning him twice almost in passing and citing him once in a short text
from 1968 entitled “A Rupture in Time: Revolution,” which was published in his
Political Writings. Benjamin is evoked again in the context of the aura of the work of
art in the chapter entitled “Ars Nova” from The Infinite Conversation (1969). The most
detailed and important reference to Benjamin—and, as I will try to show, the one

The German Quarterly 87.2 (Spring 2014) 229

©2014, American Association of Teachers of German
230 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

that touches on the central concerns of these two writers’ thinking—appears in a

piece written during the same period, entitled “Traduire,” or “Translating,” and
included in Friendship in 1971. From the outset, Blanchot declares Benjamin’s
important essay from 1921, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” as his subject, as the
inspiration and origin of his reflections in this piece.The documents that are crucial
to my analysis and that Eric Hoppenot has generously shared with me consist in
three unpublished pages of notes taken while Blanchot read Benjamin’s essay. They
consist exclusively of selected passages from the text,which Blanchot translated into
French,apparently while thinking about his own essay on translation,into which he
partially incorporated these notes. It is important to emphasize that, even though a
note at the beginning of Blanchot’s published text refers to Maurice de Gandillac’s
translation of Benjamin (57), the translation of the passages that he selected from
Benjamin’s essay in his unpublished notes does not resemble Gandillac’s at all.Thus,
there is no doubt that Blanchot translated these passages himself while reading the
text in German, with an eye to writing his own essay on translation. This fact is im-
portant, because it allows us not only to understand Blanchot’s notes as a transition
between the essay by Benjamin and his own article, “Translating,”but also to exam-
ine the extent to which Blanchot’s translation corresponds to the theories of transla-
tion the two authors articulate. Thus, in comparing the two texts, one may compre-
hend the unpublished notes as a passage from one text to the other in light of what
Blanchot retained from Benjamin’s essay and what he omitted. And one may con-
sider what happens in—what passes (and does not pass) into—Blanchot’s transla-
tion of Benjamin’s text in light of their respective theories.
In an article entitled “La réception de l’essai sur la traduction dans le domaine
français”[“The Reception of the Essay on Translation in the French Arena”],Alexis
Nouss severely criticizes several authors who have discussed Benjamin’s es-
say—George Steiner,Henri Meschonnic,and others—but praises Blanchot and in-
sists on his affinity with the German-Jewish thinker. On “Translating,” Nouss
writes:

Rien ne pouvait mieux signifier la justesse et l’élégance avec lesquelles [Blanchot] a su

rendre les thèses exprimées [dans l’essai de Benjamin]. Ses lignes déclinent au plus près
les deux aspects [de cet essai] dont nous avons à plusieurs reprises souligné le manque
dans les ouvrages précédemment traités: la révélation des différences dans le devenir
historico-messianique des langues. (81–82)

Nothing could signify better the accuracy and elegance with which [Blanchot] was able
to render the theses expressed [in Benjamin’s essay]. His lines articulate as closely as
possible the two aspects [of this essay] whose absence in the works previously examined
we have underscored on several occasions: the revelation of differences in the histori-
co-messianic becoming of languages. (My translation)
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 231

It is not accidental that Nouss illustrates the accuracy with which Blanchot allegedly
renders Benjamin’s theses by emphasizing “the revelation of differences” among
languages.The “historico-messianic”dimension of Benjamin’s theory of translation
remains a “becoming of languages”for Nouss.Here as well as in his subsequent cita-
tions from Blanchot,2 Nouss seems to describe a process abstracted from what, for
Benjamin,is not only a “becoming”but also the realization of the very thing he envi-
sions through this messianic temporality and that is, moreover, the central concern
of his essay: what he calls “reine Sprache,” a concept taken up again from his major
essay from 1916,“Über Sprache überhaupt und die Sprache des Menschen.”The in-
timate link between these two texts reveals that,for Benjamin,the task of the transla-
tor resides in the potential to make this pure language appear through retrospection
and anticipation, which is at once a paradisiaical “Ursprache”and the messianic lan-
guage of a future and accomplished redemption.3 The historical becoming of lan-
guages, in which translation participates, is measured according to the degree of
proximity to “eine[m] endgültigeren Sprachbereich” (“Aufgabe des Übersetzers”
4.1: 15).
From the outset, Blanchot’s article, “Translating,”is presented explicitly as a re-
flection on Benjamin’s text: “From one of Walter Benjamin’s essays,in which this ex-
cellent essayist speaks to us of the task of the translator,”writes Blanchot in the first
paragraph of “Translating,” “I will draw several remarks on this particular form of
our literary activity” (57). While the introduction prepares the reader for an anno-
tated summary of the main ideas of Benjamin’s theory of translation,the essay proves
instead to be a dialogue with Benjamin.Blanchot,through slight shifts that can be il-
luminated by turning to his unpublished notes, formulates his own thoughts by in-
terweaving them with those of Benjamin and arrives at a position one could consider
nearly opposed to the one occupied by his imaginary interlocutor. It is striking that
the two authors meet, as Alexis Nouss accurately notes, where they envision the ef-
fect of a virtually insurmountable difference between languages. However, as I will
demonstrate, their crucial “dispute”concerns the most important term of their con-
vergence,the key expression present in both texts,but envisioned in a fundamentally
divergent manner: that of a pure language made perceptible by what they consider a
“true”translation. Indeed, the two authors’visions match in what they both contest:
for Blanchot,as for Benjamin,the task of the translator consists in work that opposes
transmission, reproduction, and the representation of meaning. Both of them call
into question the usual conception of translation as a matter of transporting the con-
tent of one language into another,in order to make a work accessible to a reader who
does not speak the original language.For both of them,it is not the communicability
of languages but the tensions of inter- and intralinguistic difference that constitute
the essence and the active realm of translation.Thus,one can speak of a “same other-
ness”: of a common attraction to all that escapes homogenization and the erasure of
232 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

difference—to the perception of the foreign as such—and of a shared resistance to

the idea that information should be transferred as accurately as possible, so as to en-
sure the communication of a unique and contained meaning. On the other hand,
what divides them is their respective visions of the possibility of transcending this
difference through a pure language. This is conceptualized so differently by the two
authors that one can speak of an “other sameness”—of fundamentally divergent
ideas about what might constitute that true, unified, indivisible, and absolute lan-
guage, devoid of the mediation and imprecision that characterizes existing lan-
guages.Both Benjamin and Blanchot consider existing languages imperfect and in-
complete—not only in relation to one another but also intrinsically; that is to say,
they are foreign in and of themselves—and believe that their lack can be revealed in
translation.Pure language would offer harmonious unification and perfect comple-
tion in the two authors’views, but in very different ways. This “other sameness”and
“same otherness” manifest themselves in their respective approaches to three do-
mains or principal arenas of inquiry: the status of the subject involved in translation;
the relation between translation and literary work; and, above all, the origin and the
JX8@H of translation. This last question, which addresses the concept of a “pure lan-
guage,”is one that also involves the intellectual,philosophical,and cultural tradition
in which this problem is inscribed.
Let us consider a key passage as an example, where Benjamin defines the task of
the translator, as well as its translation in Blanchot’s notes. In both texts, the task of
the translator is located in the interval, the gap, the difference between languages.
The two authors’visions of this task coincide where the confrontation with the for-
eign language entails breaking the “morsche[n] Schranken”(4.1: 19) of the transla-
tor’s own language. But the two authors attribute different roles to the translator.
Benjamin does not characterize this role primarily as a concrete act, but instead as a
particular disposition, as receptivity rather than activity. Benjamin’s only positive
comment on the translator’s activity occurs when he describes the process of liberat-
ing pure language, which happens through the translator: “Jene reine Sprache, die in
fremde gebannt ist, in der eigenen zu erlösen, die im Werk gefangene in der
Umdichtung zu befreien, ist die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” (4.1: 19). In his notes,
Blanchot translates this passage: “Ce langage pur était captif d’une langue étrangère;
le rôle du traducteur est de le libérer en le faisant passer ds sa propre langue [This pure
language was imprisoned in a foreign language; the role of the translator is to liberate
it by making it pass into his own language].”4 He omits another sentence in his notes,
which concerns the task of the translator in Benjamin explicitly: “Und was im
Werden der Sprachen sich darzustellen, ja herzustellen sucht, das ist jener Kern der
reinen Sprache selbst” (4.1: 19). For Benjamin, existing languages thus already
contain the nucleus of this pure language—which he also calls a “Keim”earlier in his
essay (4.1: 12)—and the translator does nothing more than foster its emergence.For
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 233

Blanchot, on the other hand, the translator has not only a task but also a role: that of
the “passeur,” or medium. But Blanchot’s translated note reveals another crucial
difference: pure language, in Benjamin, is “gebannt”—banned, exiled—in the for-
eign language,but it is imprisoned—“gefangen”—in the work.Refraining from pre-
senting the poetic work of art as a prison, Blanchot contracts these two aspects of
pure language into a single one and speaks of the “captivité dans la langue étrangère
[imprisonment in the foreign language].” Likewise, the messianic redemption that
the word “erlösen”connotes in Benjamin’s text is lost in Blanchot,who retains noth-
ing but the notion of liberation.In addition,this liberation has not only already taken
place for Blanchot—he uses the past form “était [was]” to translate Benjamin’s
present “ist”—it also takes place when pure language passes into the translator’s own.
Thus, Blanchot translates “in der Umdichtung”—which refers to the process of
translation—with “[le passage de] la langue pure dans la langue propre [the passage
of pure language into the translator’s own language].” But for Benjamin, pure lan-
guage can only momentarily appear through this passage. It cannot be fixed and
transposed into an existing language, but can only be anticipated messianically, in a
fleeting moment in the course of translating. As the ultimate aim in the passage be-
tween existing languages,pure language does not come to pass: it is the fulfillment to
come,the JX8@H itself.In this paradigmatic passage,the differences I will consider in
the following pages already present themselves: Blanchot highlights the action of
the translator, whereas Benjamin emphasizes the process of translation. Blanchot
fails to mention everything that, in Benjamin’s text, might be interpreted to call the
literary work into question, and, above all, Blanchot distances himself from the re-
demptive and messianic finality of pure language toward which the entire Benja-
minian theory of language tends.

Translator or Translation?

Given the aims of Benjamin and Blanchot, it seems somewhat paradoxical that
the first refers to the “translator” in his title, and the second to the word “translate.”
The two terms appear in Benjamin’s as well as Blanchot’s texts, but it is Benjamin
who presents translation as a nearly autonomous interlinguistic process, while
Blanchot insists on the role of the translator and his intervention in the life of lan-
guages. “Translatability,” writes Peter Fenves on Benjamin’s theory, “designates the
potential of a work and not the skill of the translator” (161). It is in this spirit that
Benjamin, in a passage Blanchot omits in his notes, underscores the objective char-
acter—which is independent of the consciousness of a subject—of the relation be-
tween a work and its translation. Blanchot begins his article, “Translating,”with the
rhetorical question, “do we know all that we owe to translators and, even more, to
234 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

translation?”(57). Therefore, it is even more striking that, in his notes, he translates

the word “Übersetzung,” which designates an intrinsic phenomenon of language in
Benjamin, with “translator”in the majority of instances, insisting on the translator’s
active and creative role. A first example: to describe the effect of translation,
Benjamin evokes the image of an echo resonating in a forest. He writes: “Die
Übersetzung aber sieht sich nicht wie die Dichtung gleichsam im innern Bergwald
der Sprache selbst, sondern außerhalb desselben, ihm gegenüber und ohne ihn zu
betreten ruft sie das Original hinein,an demjenigen einzigen Orte hinein,wo jeweils
das Echo in der eigenen den Widerhall eines Werkes der fremden Sprache zu geben
vermag” (16, my emphasis). Blanchot translates: “La tâche du traducteur consiste à
découvrir, portant sur la langue même du traducteur, une visée intentionnelle capa-
ble d’éveiller en elle l’écho de l’original […] le traducteur reste au-dehors, face à la
forêt”[“The task of the translator consists in uncovering,in the translator’s own lan-
guage,an intentional aim capable of awakening in it the echo of the original […] the
translator remains outside, in front of the forest”] (my emphasis). In Benjamin, it is
translation that makes the echo resonate; in Blanchot, it is the subject aiming at the
foreign language, namely, the translator. Likewise, when Benjamin evokes the Ro-
mantics, their profound comprehension of the lives of literary works, and their in-
vestment in translation, he insists on their “grosses Übersetzungswerk,”which goes
hand in hand with their “Gefühl von dem Wesen und der Würde dieser Form”(4.1 :
15). Blanchot translates: “Les romantiques st les premiers à avoir compris ce que
signifie la vie des œuvres dt l’art de la traduction est l’éminent témoin. De là leur
destinée de traducteurs [The Romantics are the first to have understood what the
lives of works signify,to which the art of translation bears eminent witness: therefore
their destiny as translators]” (my emphasis). Reflecting on the “Übersetzbarkeit” of
the work, Benjamin also emphasizes the distinction between the practical question
of finding an adequate translator,which he considers minor,and the fundamental as-
pect of the potential “translatability”of a work,which is inherent in it to the point of
being independent of human intervention. Moreover, it is in this spirit that Ben-
jamin begins his essay with a famous paragraph, denying that the work of art—and,
still more, its translation—is addressed to an audience, a spectator, or a reader. He
discusses concepts of relation that maintain their “besten Sinn [...], wenn sie nicht
von vorne herein ausschließlich auf den Menschen bezogen werden” (10). In this
passage,which Blanchot omits,Benjamin introduces another sphere where the mes-
sianic task of translation will take place, a domain beyond mankind that defines the
theological dimension of his discourse.In Benjamin’s essay, this preliminary remark
leads to his explicit reference to the realm in which a claim unfulfilled by men is ful-
filled: a “Gedenken Gottes”(10).The only time that Blanchot mentions divinity—a
term that does not appear in his notes—is in his article,“Translating,”where he calls
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 235

the translator,who wants to reach the heavens like the builders of the Tower of Babel,
an “ennemi de Dieu [an enemy of God]” (58).
Several times, Benjamin insists that the potential of translation to point to pure
language inheres in existing languages and that it is “verborgen,”hidden in the works
(4.1: 12, 14). Thus, the messianic task of translation takes place in the passage from
one language to the other—a passage for which the translator is the medium—and
not as original creation sprung from his consciousness or will.In Blanchot’s notes,by
contrast, we read:

La traduction ne tend à exprimer que le rapport le plus intime entre deux langues: elle
ne peut révéler cette mystérieuse relation, ni la restituer, se contentant de la représenter
en l’actualisant sur un mode inchoatif ou intentionnel.

Translation does not tend to express anything but the most intimate relation between
two languages: it cannot reveal nor restore that mysterious relationship but rather con-
tents itself with representing it,by actualizing it in an inchoative or intentional mode.

In his translation,Blanchot substitutes for “verborgen”the term “mysterious,”and,at

other times when this word or analogous terms appear in Benjamin’s German, he
writes “énigmatique.”His choice causes this aspect of pure language—which, as the
word “verborgen” suggests, resides in potentia in the relation between existing lan-
guages and can be revealed through translation—to disappear. Even more impor-
tantly, Blanchot translates “herstellen” in Benjamin’s remark on the impossibility
“dieses verborgene Verhältnis […] her[zu]stellen” (4.1: 12) with “restituer [to re-
store].”Whereas Benjamin’s verb suggests that this relation cannot be created by the
translator, Blanchot’s implies the impossibility of returning to a prior state. But in
Benjamin’s theory,it is precisely the return to a paradisiacal language that orients his
messianic anticipation.
In “Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen,” Benja-
min describes Adamic language as a “Namenssprache” (2.1: 146): God gave Adam
the ability to name things,but he is not a creator; he is above all “sprachempfangend”
(2.1: 150), the receipient of the divine word. For Benjamin, the translator is also the
medium of the divine word rather than a “Mittler” or “Vermittler.” Especially this
earlier essay, which is related intimately to the essay on translation, bears witness to
the fact that these are explicitly negative terms in Benjamin’s work, as does his im-
portant article on Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften, where a character in the novel, a
go-between called “Mittler,” forces compromises and eliminates the singularity of
opposite viewpoints.Benjamin,pointing to the “Pferdefuß des Sittenstrengen”(1.1:
130),describes him as the devil incarnate.This derogatory aspect of mediation van-
ishes in Blanchot’s translation of the first passage in his notes, but for which
Benjamin’s formulation is crucial:
236 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

Was “sagt”denn eine Dichtung? Was teilt sie mit? Sehr wenig dem, der sie versteht. Ihr
Wesentliches ist nicht Mitteilung nicht Aussage. Dennoch könnte diejenige Überset-
zung,welche vermitteln will,nichts vermitteln als die Mitteilung—also Unwesentliches.
Das ist denn auch ein Erkennungszeichen der schlechten Übersetzungen. (4.1: 9, my
emphasis)

In these few lines, Benjamin repeats variations on the word “Mittler”: “mitteilen,”
“vermitteln,”“Mitteilung.”Already omitting “was teilt sie mit”in his notes,Blanchot
translates:

Que dit une œuvre littéraire ? Très peu à qui la comprend. Son rôle essentiel n’est ni de
communiquer ni d’énoncer. Une traduction qui se veut communication ne communi-
que que la transmission, cad l’inessentiel. C’est le trait de la mauvaise traduction.

What does a literary work say? Very little to the one who understands it. Its essential
role is neither to communicate nor to express anything. A translation that wishes to be
communication communicates nothing but transmission, that is to say the inessential.
This is the mark of a bad translation. (My emphasis).

While preserving the essential meaning of Benjamin’s sentences, Blanchot not only
neglects his insistence on the negative connotation of “Vermittlung,” but also uses
the word “transmission” as if it were a synonym of “Mitteilung.” In the course of
Blanchot’s sentence, this word becomes glossed as “the inessential,” whereas the
German word for “transmission” has, for Benjamin, positive connotations. Trans-
mission,in the sense of Tradierung,occurs through the medium of translation and,in
contrast to Vermittlung, it resists any voluntary or—especially from the messianic
point of view—premature synthesis.
The importance of this difference between Blanchot’s insistence on the transla-
tor and Benjamin’s insistence on translation, as well as Blanchot’s surprising efface-
ment of Benjamin’s refusal of any voluntary and premature synthesis, becomes
plainly visible in the article “Translating.”There,almost in opposition to Benjamin’s
text, he renders the translator a veritable hero, precisely due to his “pouvoir
unificateur [unifying power]” and his “pur pouvoir d’unifier [pure power of unify-
ing]”(73).In the first and last paragraphs of his article,Blanchot employs the follow-
ing terms of praise: he speaks of gratitude to translators as “men who valiantly enter
into the enigma that is the task of translating,” of “hidden masters of our culture”
(57).He compares them to “Hercules drawing together the banks of the sea”(59) and
ends with a description of a particular poet-translator, Hölderlin, who advanced
“recklessly”toward the abyss of madness.But could Benjamin’s vision of the transla-
tor as a medium of the divine word be closer to Blanchot’s vision of the translator as a
hero on the edge of madness than it seems at first? Despite the fact that the work of
translation is,for the former,a linguistic event independent of a subject or a deliber-
ate action, while latter understands translation as the heroic act of an individual, the
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 237

two visions meet. They do so where the issue is not that of a rational and conscious
Kantian subject, but of a course that opens the horizon towards what Blanchot calls
explicitly “a state that is other”(59)—a state that would be messianic for Benjamin,
but mad according to Blanchot.

Translator and Poet

Surely it matters that both Benjamin and Blanchot begin with the literary work
in thinking through translation,but the role and the significance they accord it differ
fundamentally. In “Translating,” Blanchot writes that translation is the
forme originale et si l’on continue de dire à tort ou à raison : il y a ici les poètes, là les ro-
manciers, voire les critiques, tous responsables du sens de la littérature, il faut compter
au même titre les traducteurs, écrivains de la sorte la plus rare, et vraiment incomparab-
les. (69)

original form; and if one continues to say, rightly or wrongly: here are the poets, and
there the novelists, indeed the critics, all of whom are responsible for the meaning of li-
terature, then one must in the same way count the translators, writers of the rarest sort
and truly incomparable. (57)

Benjamin, on the other hand, attaches an importance to translation not only of an

entirely different order,but also of a different magnitude.He insists on the difference
between writer and translator in a metaphysical sense. In a passage that Blanchot
does not take up in his notes,Benjamin suggests that the task of the translator can be
distinguished rigorously from that of the poet and that translation exerts more
power on language than the poet. While the intention of translation aims at lan-
guage as such, in its totality, the poetic work is not concerned with anything but the
relations among specific contents. Translation thus has an impact of an order that
transcends the “Dichtwerk”(16),one that is simultaneously historical and messianic.
For Benjamin, history manifests itself in the survival of works through translation,
yet what is at stake cannot be reduced to the renewal of the works.Rather,translation
aims at pure language, which will not arrive until the messianic end of time, when
pure language will correspond to the creature’s redemption in its totality.As the me-
dium of the process that anticipates this state, translation, having accomplished this
task,is destined to dissolve there.Contrary to the poetic work,translation is oriented,
for Benjamin,towards this “letzte[n],endgültige[n] und entscheidende[n] Stadium
aller Sprachfügung. In ihr wächst das Original in einen gleichsam höheren und
reineren Luftkreis der Sprache hinauf ” (4.1: 14). Omitting the idea of a final and
definitive phase, Blanchot translates: “Toutefois, ds la traduction l’original connaît
une nouvelle croissance, il s’élève jusqu’à une atmosphère plus haute et plus pure
[However, in translation, the original experiences new growth, it rises towards a
238 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

higher and purer atmosphere].”For Blanchot,too,translation “se vide de sa valeur [is

emptied of its worth],”but what counts for him is the survival of the work.Likewise,
Benjamin distinguishes the intention of the poet, whom he characterizes as “naiv,
erst, anschaulich,” from that of the translator, who is “abgeleitet, letzt, ideenhaft”
(4.1: 16). In his translation, Blanchot reverses the order, giving the final word to
poetry. He translates “anschaulich”—a term that Benjamin subordinates to the
ideational, to the very idea of translation—with “nourrie d’intuitions [nourished by
intuitions]”and so displaces Benjamin’s consistent emphasis on the visual.Blanchot,
unlike Benjamin, thus suggests a contrast between cognitive or rational functions
and the intuition of the creator, giving priority to the poet.
Therefore, it is not astonishing that Blanchot reduces Benjamin’s metaphor for
translation, which “ihren Gehalt wie ein Königsmantel [umgibt]” (4.1: 15), by ren-
dering the phrase simply “envelops.”For Blanchot, it is the work that remains king.
This difference gains its full significance when he translates those passages where
Benjamin approaches the messianic aim of translation explicitly.Benjamin writes of
“die große Sehnsucht nach Sprachergänzung, die aus dem Werke spricht” (18). In
his translation of this great desire, this hope to witness the way languages comple-
ment each other—Benjamin’s ultimate messianic aim—Blanchot places an objec-
tive accent upon the transformative force of the original: “sa gde nostalgie de voir
perfetionner [sic] sa propre langue [its great nostalgia to witness its own language
perfected].” Between Benjamin’s messianic hope for the unification of incomplete
languages through the medium of translation and Blanchot’s articulation of nostal-
gia,the divergence of priorities is striking.And it is related directly to the theological
dimension of Benjamin’s text, from which Blanchot keeps his distance.

Two “Pure Languages?”

This difference,which one could consider in terms of transcendence and imma-

nence or of theology and poetics, has greater consequences, which manifest them-
selves in the ultimate aim of Blanchot’s article “Translating,”but which can already
be located in his unpublished notes. These consequences become evident in
Blanchot’s mistranslation or outright omission of certain key passages from Benja-
min’s essay in his notes,especially those which refer to the messianic tradition and to
Jewish mysticism. Benjamin’s “pure language”comes principally from the Jewish—
Biblical and Kabbalistic—tradition.One finds references to this notion throughout
Benjamin’s entire œuvre, beginning with his interpretation of Genesis in “Über die
Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen.” There, he describes Ad-
amic language, which is distinguished by an absolute correspondence between the
word and what it designates, the dispersion of languages after the destruction of the
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 239

tower of Babel,and the fall that leads to the arbitrary nature of the sign.5 He returns
to pure language in the last notes that he had written in 1940 in preparation for his
theses on the philosophy of history. In these materials, he speaks about a universal
language that can come into being only with the coming of the Messiah.If a paradi-
siacal state is at stake in his first references to a pure language, these last writings are
essentially messianic and directed towards a future. In his article, “Translating,”
Blanchot takes up these Biblical and messianic allusions of pure language again
briefly,but the tone is different,and the transformation of this concept in Blanchot’s
writing proves radical.Even though,in “Translating,”Blanchot mentions in passing
the Biblical story of the tower of Babel—where, let us remember, the translator is
identified as the “enemy of God”(58)—he distances himself from everything that,in
Benjamin’s essay, refers to the Jewish tradition, including pure language, which,
moreover, Blanchot calls most often “langue à l’état pur” [“language in the pure
state”]. What, for Benjamin, derives from divinely inspired Adamic language and is
conceived in his essay as a messianic destination, is not only altered radically in
Blanchot’s essay, but also comes to belong to an entirely different, in some contexts
even antagonistic tradition.
“Jadis,”Blanchot writes somewhat denigratingly, “on croyait pouvoir remonter à
quelque langage originaire, parole suprême qu’il eut suffit de parler pour dire vrai.
Benjamin retient quelque chose de ce rêve [In the past, one believed it possible thus
to return to some originary language,the supreme language that one needed only to
speak in order to speak truly. Benjamin retains something of this dream]” (70).
Blanchot expresses his skepticism—even a certain disdain towards this belief—by
paraphrasing Benjamin’s theory subsequently in the subjunctive. His summary re-
sults in the diagnosis that it is “visiblement [clearly]” a matter of “un jeu utopique
d’idées [a utopian play of ideas]” (70).
Indeed, it is not this aspect of Benjaminian language that attracts Blanchot. He
insists that Benjamin suggests something else:

Tout traducteur vit de la différence des langues, toute traduction est fondée sur cette
différence,tout en poursuivant,apparemment,le dessein pervers de la supprimer.(70)

Every translator lives by the difference of languages; every translation is founded upon
this difference even while pursuing, or so it appears, the perverse design of suppressing
it. (58)

It is true that, for Benjamin, the difference between languages that the translator
confronts makes the effect of translation—the revelation of a messianic poten-
tial—possible,but Blanchot inverts the order of things.According to Benjamin,this
difference is the condition of the translator’s messianic task to expose the incomplete-
ness of existing languages and, through an inverse dialectic, to reveal and anticipate
through this lack their future unification in a pure language. Blanchot distances
240 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

himself from this idea in ways that one can trace already in his translations of pas-
sages from Benjamin’s essay in his notes. When Benjamin speaks of the intimate
relation among all languages that translation expresses,Blanchot translates,“le rap-
port le plus intime entre deux langues [the most intimate relation between two lan-
guages]” (my emphasis), thus minimizing the totality and the completeness which,
for Benjamin,represents the JX8@H of translation.While Benjamin invokes the “das
große Motiv einer Integration der vielen Sprachen zur einen wahren” (4.1: 16),
Blanchot translates this vision of an absolute unification of dispersed languages with
an integration that is only partial and—introducing a subjunctive form that is absent
in Benjamin’s essay—conditional. Blanchot renders this passage: “le grand motif de
l’intégration des langues multiples en la seule vraie [the grandiose intention to inte-
grate a plurality of languages in a single language which would be the true one]” (my
emphasis). His choice to distance himself from Benjamin’s explicit messianism
expresses itself most clearly in his translation of Benjamin’s formulation, “das
messianische Ende ihrer Geschichte [der Sprachen]”(4.1: 14) as “une sorte de terme
messianique [a sort of messianic term].”Recopying a few sentences from Mallarmé,
which Benjamin quotes in French, Blanchot replaces an adjectival phrase that fur-
ther determines the feminine substantive “la [langue] suprême”with the masculine
abstract substantive,“le suprême.”This is,no doubt,an error of haste,but one which,
even if unintentional,transposes Benamin’s citation of Mallarmé’s words into an un-
specified, absolute “supreme” that no longer refers to the linguistic phenomenon at
the heart of Benjamin’s messianic thinking but supports Blanchot’s own thinking on
pure language.
Blanchot obfuscates the passages where Benjamin refers explicitly to a messi-
anism inspired by Jewish mysticism. He thus omits an important phrase in which
Benjamin describes how translation participates in the messianic harmonization of
languages in one pure language in terms of the “Scherben eines Gefäßes” (4.1: 18).
This is undoubtedly a Kabbalistic allusion to the breaking of vessels that corre-
sponds to the end of the paradisiacal state of man and language and suggests the
hope of tikkun olam,the messianic healing of the world.This image links Benjamin’s
text to the tradition of Jewish mysticism. Benjamin associates existing languages
with these shards, which, “um sich zusammenfügen zu lassen, in den kleinsten
Einzelheiten einander zu folgen,doch nicht so zu gleichen haben.”He continues:

[S]o muß,anstatt dem Sinn des Originals sich ähnlich zu machen,die Übersetzung lie-
bend vielmehr und bis ins Einzelne hinein dessen Art des Meinens in der eigenen
Sprache sich anbilden, um so beide wie Scherben als Bruchstück eines Gefäßes, als
Bruchstück einer größeren Sprache erkennbar zu machen. (18)

Blanchot abridges and translates:

 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 241

Au lieu de s’identifier au sens du texte, la traduction doit, par un mouvement d’amour

qui s’étend au détail, incorporer ds sa propre langue le mode de visée qui était celui de
l’original.
Instead of identifying with the meaning of the text, translation must, through a move-
ment of love that extends to detail, incorporate in its own language the mode of aiming
that belonged to the original.

The reference to the shards of the vessel has disappeared.

Even more important is what disappears completely both in Blanchot’s notes
and in his article. Blanchot’s last note includes a translation of the passage from
Benjamin’s essay in which he invokes Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus
and Antigone.Benjamin conceives of these translations,which Hölderlin carried out
literally, disregarding German syntax and forfeiting clear comprehensibility, as
“Urbilder ihrer Form”(21).This implies that the less translation is oriented toward a
communicable meaning, the more the translator has accomplished his task. This
destruction of intelligible meaning through the “Wörtlichkeit”of Hölderlin’s trans-
lation reveals the inherent difference between languages (21).The power of transla-
tion anticipates their eventual harmonization precisely through their insurmount-
able difference in the here and now. According to Benjamin, translation does not
touch upon comprehensible meaning here except in a minute point and in this way
approaches most closely the accomplished complementarity he had envisioned in
the idea of pure language:

Hierfür wie in jeder andern wesentlichen Hinsicht stellen sich Hölderlins Übertra-
gungen,besonders die der beiden Sophokleischen Tragödien,bestätigend dar.In ihnen
ist die Harmonie der Sprachen so tief, daß der Sinn nur noch wie eine Äolsharfe vom
Winde von der Sprache berührt wird. Hölderlins Übersetzungen sind Urbilder ihrer
Form; sie verhalten sich auch zu den vollkommensten Übertragungen ihrer Texte als
das Urbild zum Vorbild, wie es der Vergleich der Hölderlinschen und Borchardtschen
Übersetzung der dritten pythischen Ode von Pindar zeigt. Eben darum wohnt in ih-
nen vor andern die ungeheure und ursprüngliche Gefahr aller Übersetzung: daß die
Tore einer so erweiterten und durchwalteten Sprache zufallen und den Übersetzer ins
Schweigen schließen. Die Sophokles-Übersetzungen waren Hölderlins letztes Werk.
In ihnen stürzt der Sinn von Abgrund zu Abgrund, bis er droht in bodenlosen Sprach-
tiefen sich zu verlieren.6 (21)

In his notes, Blanchot translates:

Dès les traductions de Sophocle par Hölderlin, l’ahmonie [sic] est si profonde entre les
deux langues que le souffle du langage n’effleure le sens que comme le vent fait vibrer la
langue hx [sic] éolienne.Ces traductions st de vrais archétypes: sur elles rôde l’immense
danger que court dès l’origine tte traduction: la porte d’une langue si élargie risque de
retomber sur le traducteur et de le murer ds le silence. Ses versions de Sophocle furent
l’œuvre ultime de H. En elles, on voit le sens s’effondrer d’abîme en abîme jusqu’à ris-
quer de se perdre ds les gouffres sans fond du langage.
242 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

In Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles, the ahmony [sic] between the two

languages is so profound that the breath of language does not touch upon meaning
except as wind makes language vibrate hx [sic] aeolian. These translations are real
archetypes: the immense risk run by every translation from the beginning preys on
them: the door of a language thus enlarged may close again on the translator and
wall him up in silence. H.’s versions of Sophocles constituted his ultimate work. In
them,one witnesses meaning collapse from abyss to abyss,until it risks losing itself
in the bottomless depths of language. (My emphasis)

One detail of this translation proves to be fundamental. Blanchot’s translation of

“the harmony of all languages” as “the harmony” (or, rather, “ahmony”) between
“two languages”leads,in Blanchot’s article,to a conception of pure language that dif-
fers radically from the one Benjamin expresses. In Blanchot’s article,

l’exemple de Hölderlin montre quel risque court, à la fin, l’homme fasciné par la puis-
sance de traduire: les traductions d‘Antigone et d’Œdipe furent presque ses derniers ou-
vrages au tournant de la folie, œuvres extrêmement médités, maîtrisées et volontaires,
conduites avec une fermeté inflexible par le dessein, non pas de transporter le texte grec
en allemand ni de reconduire la langue allemande aux sources grecques, mais d’unifier
les deux puissances représentant l’une les vicissitudes de L’Occident, l’autre celles de
l’Orient, en la simplicité d’un langage total et pur. (72–73)

The example of Hölderlin illustrates the risk that is run, in the end, by the man fascina-
ted by the power of translating: the translations of Antigone and Oedipus were nearly his
last works at the outbreak of madness. These works are exceptionally studied, restrai-
ned,and intentional,conducted with inflexible firmness,with the intent not of transpo-
sing the Greek text into German, nor of reconveying the German language to its Greek
sources, but of unifying the two powers—the one representing the vicissitudes of the
West,the other those of the Orient—in the simplicity of a pure and total language.(61)

What for Benjamin is the lost language of paradise, an idea derived from Jewish
mysticism,becomes in Blanchot’s text the union of the Greek and the German.This
eminently Heideggerian J`B@H played a considerable role in the context of the cul-
tural and intellectual aspirations of the National Socialists.It is clear that Blanchot’s
thinking is not oriented towards the claim that the heritage of Greece was destined
to be realized by Germany,a claim which influenced so strongly the ultimately mur-
derous vision of an absolutely supreme,neo-pagan Germany,opposed principally to
the Jewish and, to a lesser degree, Christian tradition. Nevertheless, Blanchot’s
“translation”of Benjamin’s pure messianic language into a pure Greco-German lan-
guage,in an article in which Blanchot claims to make “some remarks”on Benjamin’s
essay, is surprising. Although inspired by Benjamin’s remarks on Hölderlin and his
translations of Sophocles, the divergence between the end of Blanchot’s article,
which concludes with praise for the German poet, and the final passage of Ben-
jamin’s essay is crucial. For it pertains to all three of the aspects of translation I have
been analyzing: the distinction between translation and translator, the status of the
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 243

poetic work in relation to its translation,and the ultimate orientation of the authors’
philosophies of language.
In words of homage already announced by Blanchot’s insistence on the role of
the translator as an individual rather than on translation as a phenomenon,Blanchot
glorifies Hölderlin in the last paragraph of his article.He turns him into a mytholog-
ical hero who “s’avançait témérairement vers ce centre où il croyait trouver rassemblé
le pur pouvoir d’unifier et tel qu’il pût donner sens,en dehors de tout sens déterminé
et limité [was advancing fearlessly toward the center in which he believed he would
find collected the pure power of unifying, a center such that it would be able to give
meaning,beyond all determined and limited meaning]”(73). Here,one recognizes a
central value of modernist poetics: the transgression of conventional meaning in
view of a singular literary creation. Yet Blanchot’s insistence on the “power to unify”
and the revival of “meaning” is foreign to Benjamin’s conception of translation as a
medium through which all meaning leads to its own abolishment, ending in a pure
language that “ne vise plus rien et n’exprime plus rien [no longer means or expresses
anything]” (19).
The greatest divergence between Blanchot’s article and Benjamin’s essay occurs
in Blanchot’s omission of the latter’s final paragraph,both in his notes and in his arti-
cle.“Translating”ends with an emphasis on what Benjamin,in his penultimate para-
graph, describes as the danger of Hölderlin’s translation. For Blanchot, the courage
to confront this risk marks the conclusion of his text: Hölderlin is the one who,

avec le pouvoir unificateur qui est à l’œuvre dans toute relation et dans tout langage […]
[s]’expose en même temps à la scission préalable, l’homme prêt à traduire est dans une
intimité constante, dangereuse, admirable, et c’est de cette familiarité [avec le danger]
qu’il tient le droit d’être le plus orgueilleux et le plus secret des écrivains – avec cette con-
viction que traduire est, en fin de compte folie. (73)

with the unifying power that is at work in every practical relation, as in any language,
[…] [is] expose[d] [...] to the pure scission that is always prior[;] the man who is ready
to translate is in a constant,dangerous,and admirable intimacy—and it is this familiari-
ty [with danger] that gives him the right to be the most arrogant or the most secret of
writers—with the conviction that, in the end, translating is madness. (61)

This radicalization of the danger Benjamin describes of losing oneself in the bot-
tomless depths of language contrasts fundamentally with the final passage of
Benjamin’s essay, which Blanchot does not address.
Having portrayed the dizzying fall from abyss to abyss faced by the translator
who follows Hölderlin’s example, Benjamin continues: “Aber es gibt ein Halten”
(21), which Gandillac translates, “Mais il y a un point d’arrêt [There is, however, a
stop]”(275).In fact,in this context,the German word “Halten”suggests much more:
there is something that holds and that holds back,preventing this fall into a bottom-
less gulf and saving one from madness. Whereas, for Blanchot, there is a “scission
244 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014

préalable [prior scission]” (73), there is, in Benjamin’s essay, a return to the very
depths of a monotheistic “one.” This return manifests itself “[w]o der Text
unmittelbar, ohne vermittelnden Sinn, in seiner Wörtlichkeit der wahren Sprache
[…] angehört”(21),a condition vouchsafed in Holy Scripture alone,which would be
“übersetzbar schlechthin (21) and thus without difference, tension, or mediation.
Here are Benjamin’s final words: “Die Interlinearversion des heiligen Textes ist das
Urbild oder Ideal aller Übersetzung” (21). This conception, which comes from the
Kabbalistic Jewish tradition of a primary unity before the breaking of the vessels—
and contrasts sharply with a “prior scission”—forms the messianic core of Benja-
min’s philosophy of language. It rests on the idea that God’s word, which reverber-
ates through Biblical Hebrew, passed immediately, “ohne vermittelnden Sinn”(73),
into a human language. Between Hölderlin and the Bible, the Greco-German and
the Jewish; between the primacy of a scission and of monotheistic truth, Blanchot
and Benjamin clear a path, each going in the opposite direction, that leads to an ab-
solute. It remains to be examined whether Blanchot, in translating Benjamin liter-
ally as well as figuratively,remains faithful to his own vision of the task of the transla-
tor, which would involve exposing one’s own language to the alterity of the other.
And in this case, it would entail the introduction of a language that would be, para-
doxically, the monotheistic language aiming towards what is one, what is same. It
may, however, be even more paradoxical that, according to Benjamin’s theory, even
Blanchot’s “language,”like an indispensable fragment, would have to join the vessel
that will constitute,in an uncertain but anticipated future,the comprehensiveness of
tikkun olam, the healing of the world.

Notes

1 Derrida remarks, “[W]hy not recognize, clearly and publicly, once and for all, the affini-

ties between your work and Adorno’s, in truth your debt to Adorno? Aren’t you an heir of the
Frankfurt School?” (176).
2 Nouss cites Blanchot’s remark, “[Tout] traducteur vit de la différence des langues, toute

traduction est fondée sur cette différence, tout en poursuivant, apparemment, le dessein
pervers de la supprimer. [...] À la vérité, la traduction n’est nullement destinée à faire
disparaître la différence dont elle est au contraire le jeu [...]” (82). I translate: “Every translator
lives by the difference of languages; every translation is founded upon this difference even
while pursuing, or so it appears, the perverse design of suppressing it. […] In fact translation is
not at all intended to make the difference disappear – it is, on the contrary, the play of this dif-
ference” (58).
3 Irving Wohlfarth writes, “Der Sprachaufsatz beschreibt dessen Aufgabe vor dem

Sündenfall [...]. Der Übersetzeraufsatz beschreibt die entsprechende Aufgabe danach” (93).
 LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 245

4 My translation. Blanchot’s abbreviations have been retained. I would like to thank Eric

Hoppenot for making these notes available to me. Gandillac translates this passage:
“Racheter dans sa propre langue ce pur langage exilé dans la langue étrangère, libérer en le
transposant ce pur langage captif dans l’oeuvre, telle est la tâche du traducteur” (273).
5 Benjamin repeatedly calls this idea of language “bourgeois.” Benjamin, “Über die

Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen.”

6 In Gandillac’s translation of Benjamin’s essay into French, he speaks of “les portes d’un

langage si élargi et si imprégnée [the gates of a language so enlarged and impregnated]” (275),
rendering “durchwaltet” with the French word for “impregnated.” Durchwaltet is virtually un-
translatable: one speaks of the presence of a divine sovereignty as the “Walten Gottes,” which
would imply that language, the term modified by “durchwaltet,” is impregnated by this divine
presence.

Works Cited

Benjamin,Walter.Gesammelte Schriften. Ed.Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser.7

vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972–89.
Benjamin, Walter. Œuvres choisies. Trans. Maurice de Gandillac. Paris: Julliard, 1959.
Blanchot, Maurice. Notes (Unpublished).
———. “A Rupture in Time: Revolution.”Political Writings: 1953-1993. Trans. Zakir Paul. New
York: Fordham UP, 2010.
———.The Infinite Conversation.Trans.Susan Hanson.Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P,1993.
———. “Translating.” Friendship. Trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.
57–61.
———. “Traduire.” L’Amitié. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. 69–73.
Derrida, Jacques. “Fichus: Frankfurt Address.”Paper Machine. Trans. by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford:
Stanford UP, 2005. 164–81.
Fenves, Peter. “Die Unterlassung der Übersetzung.” Übersetzen: Walter Benjamin. Ed. Christiaan
L. Hart-Nibbrig, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001. 159–73.
Nouss,Alexis.“La réception de l’essai sur la traduction dans le domaine français.”Walter Benjamin:
traductions critiques / Walter Benjamin’s Essay on Translation: Critical Translations. Ed. Alexis
Nouss. Spec. Issue of TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction 10.2 (1997): 71–85.
Wohlfarth, Irving. “Das Medium der Übersetzung.”Übersetzen: Walter Benjamin. Ed. Christiaan
L. Hart-Nibbrig, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001. 80–130.