douglas - blanchot and sartre

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Blanchot and Sartre

Author(s): Kenneth DouglasReviewed work(s):Source: Yale French Studies, No. 3, Criticism and Creation (1949), pp. 85-95Published by: Yale University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929085 .

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KENNETH DOUGLAS

BlanchotAnd Sartre

The firsthing o attracturnotice n a critic'sworkwill often ethe lower evelsof generalization,he proceduresr theprinciplesfgrouping sed to situate wide rangeof authors. nlyafter hese en-dencies ave beensufficientlylluminatedan onehopeto reach heverynucleus fthecritic's onderings,o revealhis basicemotional,ocial, rmetaphysicalttitude.

Confrontedy the criticismfMauriceBlanchot, feelobligedto

adopt anotherrrangement.or his metaphysicaloncerns so apparentand so unremittinghatuntil omemeasure f usticehas been done it,there an be no thought f lingeringn the detailsofhis critical ech-niques-it may, ctually, e rendered lmost uperfluouso do so. Fromthe outsetwe find urselves eleaguered y anguish nd nothingnessntheir eciprocallyeterminedggrandizement,ycontradictionshackledirrevocablyn theparadox, nd we wonder,s Blanchotwhirls s afterhimalong thetortuousathwhicheads to ultimatensightorultimatebewilderment), hether poristics,he science f the discoveryf prob-lems,mustnot indeedbe viewed s the firstnd theonlymentaldisci-pline.

Blanchot s little concernedwithauthorswhosewritingsre eventhe highly espectableiteraryquivalent f thedailyround, he humbletask.He almost otally xcludesfromhis reflectionhosepersonswho,whatever dmirable ualitiestheymay possess, an naively herish heaimsproposed hemby theirmilieuor by their wnunclarifiedrges,whofollow n where he scent eadsthem,ntent s puppieswhonever

fora moment ause, hesitate,henchase their wn tails.Quite on thecontrary:is kind s theauthorprofoundlyngagedn theattemptoseizehis ownorigin, r,toput t less rreverently,ho scorns henaturaldown-streamrendmentionedbove,thedesire o master,make use of,and discard n evermountinggglomerationfphenomena,nd adoptsa radically nti-naturalttitude, he difficult,heimpossible truggle oreachthe source r therootof things. ike Descartes,uch a man pre-sumesto doubtof everything.ut Descartes ould not doubt that hedoubted, nd stopped t that.His successor,ess easily atisfied,oes on

to inquire n what ense, recisely,e can claimto be, onlyto discoverthatan unbridgeablehasmseparates eing fromhis own existence.He experiences ertigo, onsequently,undamentalnguishbefore hisabsence of foundation, his nothingness.-Theonnoisseur f recent

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Frenchand European literature an now confidently redictwhatauthors

Blanchot will choose to examine. They are Kierkegaard,Blake, Rimbaud,Rilke, Lautreamont, artre,Bataille, Camus, and Mallarm&.Proust, also,is relevant. Dealing with them,Blanchot does not incur the reproachof

forcingthem into an arbitrarily electedframework f thought.Rathermight t be claimed on his behalfthattheyenable him to workout,withall suitable qualification n each individual case, the specificallymodernconceptionof man's lot which, inadequately,we have strivento evoke.

Most directly ypicalof Blanchot, n this schoolof thoughtdevelopedthrough the nineteenth centuryuntil today, and with which Pascal is

oftenassociated, s the stresson the unconquerable ambiguityof things.The only way to be sure of not accepting false coin for true,of not

falling into a dogmatism f bad faithor a shallow indifferentism,othforms f inauthenticity,everance fromthe origin, s unflagginglyo callinto question. The questioning produces an apparent answer,but thisanswer is again exposed to doubt, in a quest which can have no end.But thechain of question, answer, uerying f the answerdoes not alwayshave verymany inks: we are in ambiguity's niversewhere, n oppositionto the non-existentworld of Aristotelian ogic, A is both A and not-A,

the latter equation being taken up earlier than the preceding. Thus, togive a concrete example, victorymay turn out to be defeat,but in thisdefeat lies victory.And the authorswith whom Blanchot is more oftenconcerned have much the same consciousness f this ceaseless oscillationas has Blanchot himself.Of universal application, it is equally valid forlanguage, and one importantfunction of literature,as conceived bywritersof the Blanchot frameof mind, is to reveal by practice ratherthan precept that this oscillation saps literatureand language at theirbase. A simple llustrations thefragmentn Pascal's Pensdes which,banalas it may appear today,was to findno adequate appreciation fromthoseinvestigatinghe foundationsof mathematics or two centuries to come.Pascal pointed out that, while one might satisfythe demand of thescholasticsfor definitions f terms, nd perhaps even define the termsused in these definitions, his process neverthelesshad to stop some-where, leaving a handful of expressionsundefined and indefinable. Iquote Blanchot at some length,to show how he moves on froma con-siderationof the antinomies nvolved in language to reflect n the inter-

necine state of literature-althoughthis passage achieves an effect ofstability ommonenough in the history f paradox (compareHeraclitus'"God is day and night,winterand summer,war and peace, hunger andsatiety"), but less frequentwithBlanchot than is a sense of paired dis-illusionments nd twinfrustrations.

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. . . in uttering hings, n uttering urselves,we place our-selves under the protection nd the domination of the universal.

Nevertheless t is also the destinyof language to seem to tendtoward its opposite, to utilize its inescapable rules in order tocounteractthem, to renounce itself by an exact usage of itsproperties.f by speaking tacitly ecognize he realm into whichspeakingenables me to penetrate,by speech I can also call inquestion the realm I have entered by the fact of speaking.Myspeech is at the same time an affirmationnd a forgettingfthe principle of contradiction.And the significance f languagewhose role seems to be constantly o manifestthings,whereasit substitutes orthese things heir ntelligibility,ies preciselyn

this contradiction. uch is the dialectical functionof discourse,its power of calling into question which s essential o it .... Oneof the pretentions f literatures to suspendthelogical propertiesof language, or, at least, to add illogical propertiesto them.("Poetry," aid Paul Valery, is theattempt... to reconstituteythe processesof articulate language those thingsor that thingwhichoutcries, ears,caresses,kisses, ighs obscurely ndeavortoexpress.") If the term logic' is understood n keeping with itsetymology,hatamountsto sayingthat iterature ries to removefrom anguage the propertieswhich give it a language-like ig-nificance,which make it appear as language through ts affirma-tion of universalitynd intelligibility. ut it does not succeed inthat (if indeed it does succeed) by destroyinganguage or despis-ing its rules. On the contrary,t wishesto restore anguage towhat it believes is its true destiny,which is to communicatesilence by wordsand to express iberty- y means of rules, thatis to say to evoke itself s destroyed y the circumstanceswhichenable it to be what it is.

And Blanchot is particularly ortunaten his attempts o characterize henature of poetry,whichhe and otherstend to describe n a manneronce

reserved for the strivings f the mystic.At times, t must be confessed(see, forexample, "Mallarm6 et le langage,"L'Arche, No. 14, of March-April 1946, or the preface to Faux Pas, entitled "De l'angoisse au lan-gage"), his style, nd the truth s he sees it,becomemost tiring, ince thisoscillationof which we have spoken is not merely flickering eforeoureyes,but a rapid reversalof directionwe ourselves re forcedto undergo,as in one of those amusement-parkttractionspatronized only by themoreadvanced masochists.

All this should have imbued the readerwith the not entirelywrongnotion that Maurice Blanchot is especially ensitive o ideas, in literature.I did not say, to the ideological "content"of literature, or it is certainthatBlanchotwould not subscribeto the outworn patial metaphormak-ing of literaryforma can fromwhich may be spilled the beans of

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ideology. n matters f language,what is said can be knownonlyas it issaid, there s no scalpel thatmightcut out quiddity fromquality. Andthe criticcan attain to these ideas, and to the real center of a writer'swork (which he, in his turn, must try to convey throughsome newblend of his own personal language and thatof thewriterhe is examin-ing) only after painstaking textual study.Furthermore,B]lanchotdoesconsiderstyle.While quoting rarely, nd rarely f ever referringo par-ticularstylistic eatures, n occasion he gives a general and qualitativelyexpressed ppreciationof a writer'sbouquet. I choose by way of illustra-tion a poet not of his sort,Lamartine. What Blanchot has to say of him

is a masterlyombination fpraiseand contumelyour paradox), couchedin appropriately aradoxical terms.

Facility is his chief discipline.The eight thousand lines ofJocelyn, he twelve thousand ines ofLa Chute d'un ange endowthe creativeprocess,thanks to the indefinitely enewed oppor-tunities uch a durationoffers, ith the same happy chances asan ascetic vigilance, a deliberate application of the mind. Hismethod,his sole method,consists n enabling himself, hroughthe sheerabundance of an extraordinarilyaturalmobility, en-

uine utilizationof the calculus of probabilities, o seize the com-binations of harmony,depth, and strangenesswhich generallyare born only out of the conscious search for the emotive re-sourcesof language and the activizingof the forcesof mobilityand of enchantment. y this employment f his facilitywhich isthus transformed nto a deliberate system nd a method, hearouses also the sense of a poetic presence of which no line,taken alone, can be the faithfulmirrorbut which is amassed inthe flowingand ebbing of imperfect ines, in a liquid forestwhosewhole expansemaybe seen, providedone does not look ata singletree.

In one respectthe note on Lamartine, n passages not reproducedhere,is an exception to Blanchot's usual procedure,since he deigns to com-ment on the poet's historicalposition and on the variationsof taste forhis poetrysince that day. Perhaps, for a writer ittle to his liking,heis willing to fall back on establishedmethodsof literaryhistory,whilewriters eally worthy f studyare conceivedas risingso far above theirhistorical situation that it would be pointless to discuss it. PerhapsBlanchot prefers o do what Taine and Sainte-Beuve could not: hint at

the centralenigmaof the writer f genius.There is a remarkable absence of the comic sense in Blanchot's

approach to literature.Not thatany literary riticdealing with any authorshould seek to convulse the reader,but ambiguity, scillation,paradox,

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how can they be divorced from wit, a wit which at times s the verbal

equivalent of the chair displaced just as some dignitary s about to sit

upon it? Peruse the list of his favored writers:to treat the quirks,sar-casms, parodies, banana skins of Kierkegaard,and Lautrdamont,andProust, and Bataille, and Raymond Queneau (Blanchot inevitablyre-gards the fantastic r mythological ovel as the true novel of the future)with no more than an occasional reference to "humour,""ironique,""comique," "absurde,"and this last cannot be allowed to count,for theabsurd,as the reader of Camus well knows, s nothing o laugh at-is closeto being a tour de force.An interestingontrast s Kafka, the novelistoftotal frustration, f, as Sartre puts it, an impossible transcendence,whocould not restrainhis laughterwhile reading to his friends chapter ofThe Trial.

I venture another shade of a reproach-if it may be voiced withoutobliterating he impressionthat Blanchot is a man of rare intelligenceand insight,whose contribution to our understandingof the literarythingoutranksby far the respectableplodding of routine investigators-the suggestionthat with Blanchot the indissoluble contradiction,theparadox, threatens o enter that stage on life'sway when the life force

begins to desert it, the stage of decline. Blanchot's very virtuositynexploitation,the calm mastery nd equable dispositionwith which heuncoversthe gaping wound that is our existential consciousness, rouseforeboding.s theprofessorlose at hand? (I am remindedof JeanWahl'squerywhetherJaspershas not academicizedKierkegaard,whose mockeryof the professors oes not save him frombecoming professors'meat.)Even more immediatelyrelevant is Sartre's view that Aminadab, thesecondnovel byMaurice Blanchot, s in effect he reductionto a formula,to a group of rhetoricaldevices,of Karka's highly original procedures.But it must be stressed: Blanchot had not read Kafka at the time of

writingAminadab. So this is a remarkable ttestation f the fact that awhole complex of ideas revolvinground the problemsof man's lot, andforwhichpost hoe it is easy to findancestorsthroughouthistory,Job,St. Augustine,Pascal, etc., has now reached the point when it can beraised to full consciousness.

A dangerouspoint, f like Paul Valeryand Ludwig Klages we equatetotal lucidity nd the annihilationof life. "The specificallymodem con-

ceptionof man's lot,"we called it. Has the timealreadycome to embraceits successor?Yet we may feel that the step beyond paradox, if such astep proves possible,will embody the paradox within itself, that thereis no future n a retreat o some earlierage (the essaysof Roger Caillois

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call for mention here, brilliant pastiches of French eighteenth-centuryprose style,used to expresseighteenth-centurydeas). Until some man ofgenius snatches he futurefromthe gods, themost vital course is to keepliving contradictions live, and reallywarring gainst each other in our

consciousness.As Ren6 Char says of Heraclitus (in his eyes the supremepinnacle of achievementfor the poet, just as the philosopher Heideggerfinds n him, and other pre-Socratics, edemption from the aberrationsof subsequentphilosophy):

Heraclitus, among them all, is he who, refusing o atomizethe prodigious question, has guided it to the gestures,to the

intelligence, nd to the habits of man withoutdiminishing tsfire, interrupting ts complexity, compromisingits mystery,oppressing tsyouthfulness. e knewthat truth s noble and thatthe imagerevealing t is tragedy.

For presentand futureare compounded in the tragic crucible,not be-tween elements isolated, neatly labelled and inert on the laboratoryshelves-and just as withoutthe conflict nd interpenetrationf opposites,there s no biological futurefor the race.

One last remark,before takinga respectful eave of Blanchot. He

writeson MeisterEckhart, choice which even fromthe purelyestheticpoint of view is justified, ince the fourteenth-centuryermanspeculativemystic s one of the most breath-taking riters f prose to be found in

any age -orculture. n him Blanchot comes on meditationswhich are instriking ccordwith themestreatedby recentpoets. Might not thishavebeen writtenafterreading the letters Mallarm6 addressed to Cazalis?:" . . . he maintains to the end the exercise of the reason in studyingrealitywhich becomes indistinguishablefromnothingness." Refrainingfromfurther uotation to show how Blanchot discovers he movement f

Meister Eckhart's thought to coincide with his own and that of thefavoredband, let us insist on a difference: ckhart'sexperience does notappear to be tinged by anguish. n view of the privilegedpositionwhichanguish occupies in the "system" f Blanchot, s it not incumbentuponhim to investigate t greater length whether this seeming freedom orescape from nguish removes nother veil thathad obscured reality, r isbut a negligiblepersonalvariant?

Sartreadopts quite a differentactic.Blanchot'svision seizes on thewriter fascinatedby the bottomlessabyss across which he shuttles,butSartre,who preferred o devotea separateand verybulky volume,L'Etreet le Neant, to the exposition of his philosophy,considershimselfdis-pensed, in his literary riticism, romdwellingwithoutsurcease on the

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common factorsof our human condition. He concernshimselffirst fall with the work, as an object and as an artefact.He turns it over

(before beginning to write about it) until he is able to pick out certainidiosyncracieswhich provide a clue to the author,who is regardednot asa man or a moth hovering round an already established focus,but as

travelling n a definitedirection,and involved in a specific enterprise.rhe end in view is a book, the means to the end are theelementsmakingup the book, which for Sartre, consequently, s the record of a goal-orientedstriving, ontaining the evidence of what the authorwanted todo and how he set about it.

Blanchot, we discovered, s rarelytemptedto quote from he authorswith whomhe deals. Sartre,on the contrary, s persistentlynd acutelyconscious of the verygrainingof each writer's tyle, nd quotes liberally.But the quotations are short,often of a few wordsonly, partly becauseSartre is listing characteristic eatures,more essentiallybecause he doesnot utter a complex judgment rich in aspects and nuances, and thenreproducea lengthypassage so thatthe reader, n the unlikely eventheshould wish to take the trouble, may analyse it for himself. With analmost microscopicvision, Sartreprefers to isolate certainof the basic

structuralunits which help to build the artefact nd so carryout thewriter'spurposes.The reader is, therefore, bliged either to accept theevidence Sartre presents,and his conclusions,since the two have anappearance of unshakable cohesion(and I have come acrossno attemptat a point-by-pointefutation), r he may simply hrugoffevidence andconclusions, ike theMarquis of Moli~re's Critiquede l'Ecole des Femmes-the only remainingalternativebeing laboriously to develop his ownviews on book and author,withat least an equal thoroughness.

The first renchwriterSartre takes up is Francois Mauriac, whoseprocedures are illumined only to be spurned. He knows far too muchabout the future, s well as the past of his characters, nd allows themtoo little real freedom. aulknerand Dos Passos are treatedmore sympa-thetically Sartre is later to borrow,for The Reprieve, the synchronictechnique used by Dos Passos), but they, too, falsifyreality: time istruncated, he future s suppressed, eaving only a chaotic present and acongealed past. Giraudoux evokes a static,Aristoteliandream-world fessenceswhichhave bloomed into unsulliedpurity.Camus is shown to be

under the influence of French moralistsrather than of Kierkegaard,Husserl, and Heidegger-in his Etranger,he tried to convey reality asseen throughthe eyes of a man totallyunable to grasp the causal con-nections inking phenomena,and this is an impossibledeficiencyn real

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life. Other studies show Sartre increasingly oncerned with the writer'splace in

society.n a

sympathetic reatment fhis

friend,Brice Parain,Sartretakes into account Parain's position as an intellectual of peasantorigin, s a participant n World War I, and who shared in the revulsionagainst established and threadbareauthorityduring the post-waryears.But themostbrilliantpiece of detectivework, t seems to me, is Sartre'sinterpretation f the highlycurious Francis Ponge, who writes aboutpebbles and pieces of bread. By his usual close attentionto the tiniestdetails, Sartre s able to unveil the ideal imbueingPonge, and which isimpossible of fulfillment. bviously, he is anxious to convince Ponge

that he shouldadjusthisview of humanexistence,writeon humanbeings,and so free himselfforgreatliterary chievement. artre thusappears tohave moved fromapprenticeship nd the rejectionof apprenticeship othe affirmationf his own individuality nd the desire to influence therwriters.

Having written hese individual studies (and a fewothers not men-tioned), Sartre,who has the feelingthat many thingsrequire urgentlyto be done, and that quite a number of them had betterbe done byhimself,hastened to erect a grandiose sketchof the relationsof writerand society n France fromtheMiddle Ages on. His previouspronounce-ments on the unavoidable "commitment" f the writer had awakenedall sorts of unfortunatemisunderstandings,nd in What is Literature?he undertookto clear mattersup. It cannot be regardedas certain thathe is better satisfiedwith the responsemeted out to this considerablework.To name only some of the mostreputable and responsibleamongthose who took him to task, Rachel Bespaloffwas moved to generousindignation,and bewildermentbefore such a blending of magnificent

insightsand sheer sophistry;Thierry Maulnier opposed to Sartre aresounding "nonl"-while Claude-Edmonde Magny, arriving later onthe scene,scoredpoint afterpoint with the calm mastery f the billiardprofessional.But after a pretty un of caroms,the lady,shifting er gripon the cue, in a beserkattackbroughtdown itsweightedbutton Sartre'sskull. In mitigationof the onslaught, t may be insinuated that Sartrepossesses the happy knack of arousing fury.One might almost suspectthathe consciously avors heprovocativerather hanthe anodyneexpres-sion, not out of a mere lust forpublicity,but in order to make people

think for themselves, s theywould not, did he deliver himselfof avoluminous and cautiouslyqualified statement.This trickis known togood teachers, mong whomSartre should perhaps still be reckoned.Byway of contrast,how many readers,with their praise or blame, haveforcedothersto read or at second-handto absorb the viewspropounded

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in a not totallydissimilarbook, Erich Kahler's six-hundred-page an the

Measure? But Sartre writes, oncerningWhat is Literature?:"Je vais au

plus press6."This book is a great deal more,however,than a historicalsketch.

Combiningthe aspect of change in timewitha search for the atemporalessence that entitlesus to give imaginativewritingof everyepoch thecommon name of literature, Sartre, in an interestingunion of theExistentialist iewpointwith something eminiscent f thatHegel againstwhom all Existentialists re alleged (fallaciously)to oppose an unbrokenfront, inds iterature o be the reflexivemoment n the functioning f

man's liberty, he momentwhen the writer,by the exerciseof his ownliberty,makes an appeal to the fundamental ibertyof the reader. Thisis the Phenomenologicalelucidation: and since philosophy is not thegratuitous pinning of words, t has far-reachingocial and political con-sequences. Sartrecomes to see (maybean argument ould be worked uphere between him and T. S. Eliot) that literaturecan function freely,and wielders of the word have a clear conscience,only in the classlesssociety, no doubt impossible deal, in a societyperpetuallygiven overto revolution,and which has totallyabolished the exploitation of man

by man. Until that distant day, the dutyof the writer s, negatively, otto sell his pen to the forcesof unjustifiableprivilege, and, positively,to favor all thatreducesthe quantum and the power of evil. The writeris not thereby ompelled to choose contemporaryhemes or to ape thepopulistauthorsof fifty earsago. He mighthope, though, o achieve theequilibrium of his predecessor n France during the eighteenth entury,who was a cheval on two distinctclasses,the declining aristocracy ndthe bourgeoisie,which at that time representedprogress.Consider, forexample,Beaumarchais and his Mariage de Figaro. Today, the best illus-tration artre an findof a writer ppealing to two social strata s RichardWright, the AmericanNegro author, who, read in the main by whiteAmericans, helps to make impossible their unthinking acceptance ofprivilege,while he is read also by theeducatedminority f his own ethnicgroup, to whom he holds up a mirror of present disabilities and thepromise, f they act resolutely, f betterthings to come. Sartre's book, Imaintain, s worthy f respectand deserving f study.

Blanchot has writtenof Sartre'snovels, and excellently, artre has

reflected n Blanchot'sAminadab, both discussCamus' Etrangerand thelinguisticresearches f Brice Parain. But perhaps the most remarkableand in itself nearly complete exemplificationof their divergency soffered y what each of themhas to say on L'Expdrience intdrieure, y

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GeorgesBataille. Blanchot writeson the, ogicallyand humanly peaking,outrageous anomaly of man's existence, nd has no trouble in keeping

a straight ace while dealing with a book whose calculatedlypreposterousstatements,t mightbe thought, hould propel upwardsthemost sophisti-cated eyebrows. Sartre,on the other hand, is keenly sensitive to theabsurd, in the sense of "haha," and in accordance with the laudablecustomfor which he must thank his Phenomenologicaltraining,beginsby examining things,which in the case of a writtendocument are theactual features f styleto be read off he page. He thenuses the skill hehas acquired in philosophical analysis to expose the incoherence andcontradictorinessf Bataille's extravaganza. t is not absolutelycertain

thathe is acting fairly-not, t least, fwe class the book withthe Chantsde Maldoror or the grotesque imaginings of a Jarry, ather than withnon-ironical philosophical works. And Sartre's employmentof "contra-

diction" as an argumentto prove the incorrectness f a propositionor

the non-existence f an alleged existent God) badly needs clarification,since he himself sserts: "Man is the being who has to be his being inthemode of notbeing his being."When is contradiction egitimate,whennot?

While Sartre may appear to us more multiple and various, as aliterary ritic, han is Blanchot,at least in one respecthe might do wellto learn a lesson fromBlanchot,and from Bataille. They are concernedwith the presentof an experience,and tryto evoke it for us in all itsintensitynd authenticity.n spiteofhis beginnings s a Phenomenologist,and his continuings s an Existentialist,s there not some slight dangerthatSartre,with his pOst-1939ommitmento commitment, o the realiza-tion that life can be lived only as a project,and must consequentlybeturnedtoward shaping the future-is there not the danger of his failing

sufficientlyo stressthe fact that the projectmust be conceived in thepresent, nd thatonly in the presentcan I call into question the validityof this project, its integration n my fundamental ife-project, nd thevalidity of my life-projecttself? n harmonywith this soft-pedalling frealization n the present s his "existentialpsychoanalysis"f Baudelaire,where he uses Baudelaire's poetry xclusively s a psychological ocument,and his groupingof poetry, n What is Literature?,with the non-verbalarts. But is not poetry the attempt to express the essential in all itspurity?Sartre's position at a tangled intersection f our age requires

him, as I see it, to hold in equilibriumthe urge towardthe future and"genuine existence" in the present one might add a third member,fidelityo thepast as one interpretst). He mustnot fall into the panlogi-cismof Hegel, repudiated by the first xistentialist,Kierkegaard, nd in

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accordancewith whichnothing had ts real significancewithin tself,butwas merely note thathelped to build the totalmelody;nor should he,

like Kierkegaard, nsistonesidedlyon the absolutenessof the instantandon the individual'suniqueness,withthe resultthatquestions concerningthe orderingof societyfade into oblivion. Sartre'swritingon literatureshows that he is able both to saver the individual in his irreduciblenovelty, nd to insert him in the movementof history.He should notrelax his grip on either.

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douglas - blanchot and sartre

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