Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 7:09:32 GMT+1000
Subject: MB: Images of Blanchot


A photograph of the young Blanchot with Levinas, Rontchewsky, Guery 
and Poirer appears in the "Cahiers de l'Herne" volume on Levinas; it 
is reproduced in Marie-Anne Lescourret's "Emmanuel Levinas" 
(Flammarion) and in "Magazine litteraire" 327 (decembre, 1994), 86. 
I dare say that Levinas allowed this photograph to be reproduced, 
and I suppose that he consulted with his old friend about it. The 
second photograph, of the old Blanchot, appears in "Lire" No. 117 
(juin, 1985), 46. It has the heading, "Un inedit rarissme: Maurice 
Blanchot, dont personne - ou presque - ne connait le visage, saisi 
par l'objectif de Gilles Cahoreau". This photograph was taken and 
reproduced without Blanchot's permission, and (as I said earlier in 
the week) this greatly annoyed Roger Laporte who counts himself as a 
close friend of Blanchot but who has never met him, face to face.
Blanchotians like to present MB as an anchorite of literature, and 
all the stories about Jabes and Laporte never being able to meet the 
man help to create this image.And the image has been in place for a 
long time. In his memoirs Georges Perros depicts himself virtually 
fainting with emotion after shaking Blanchot's hand: to think, he 
wonders, Blanchot actually exists and looks like other people! How 
very extraordinary!

I think Pierre Joris misstates things when he says that what MB 'was 
public about was literature, books'. He has gone public about 
politics: after all, he sat on at least one committee in 1968. And 
also - since then, if I remember correctly - he has met at least one 
visiting American in Paris: Richard Howard. One thing that puzzles 
me about Blanchot's elected solitude is the principle (if there is 
one) by which, since the 1940s, he chooses to see people face to 
face: Jabes no, Howard yes. But it is just a puzzle, not a matter of 
any great concern, and I'm sure we have many more interesting 
matters to discuss in this group than what Blanchot looks like. 

Kevin Hart,
Monash University