Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:04:36 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: MB: Heidegger


I think I don't quite understand what A. Cools means by describing Blanchot's
1941 ideal as "defined in a hegelian way by the ethical-esthetical conception
of harmony and sovereignty."  But I do think that Blanchot's pre-war critical
writing is mainly of historical and personal (biographical) interest, and as
a context which might complicate our sense of certain moves or evolutions he
makes later.  By the time of Le Tres-Haut, however (and it shoulc be stressed
that Blanchot's fiction is always several years in advance of his critical
writing), he is explicitly, deeply, powerfully, and decisively rejecting Henri
Sorge's initial Heideggeran commitments to the ubiquity and ineluctability of
being.  The il y a, if I'm remembering correctly (I have not here my books about
me) comes initially in Blanchot in Le Rassessement Eternel, I think in the first
of those stories, and it's hard for me to see that moment as Hegelian or as
an ethical-esthetic conception of harmony and sovereignty.  Again, although 
that's pre-war, it's several years in advance of his critical writing.

As to Blanchot's taking responsibility for some of the terrible things he 
allowed to appear over his signature in the thirties, and some of his assoc-
iations then, it is true that he almost never refers to his own life, and that
such silence has its conveniences.  But when Jeffery Mehlman informed him that
he was writing a piece on Blanchot's article on Maurraus written I think in
1943, and given Mehlman's earlier work on Blanchot it was anticipated that 
this piece would be critical, Blanchot--to disarm criticism in advance perhaps,
but still openly--wrote an open letter (through Roger Laporte) to the con-
ference where Mehlman was to give his piece saying that though he didn't
remember it, to write about Maurras at the time was inexcusable.  In the event
Mehlman ended up chalking the piece up to Blanchot's anti-fascist credit.

Blanchot has also, in personal letters, claimed that the anti-semitism to be
found in some of the thirties journalism was not his but inserted editorially,
and against his will; a claim that his friendship with Levinas would bolster.
Blanchot also helped Levinas' wife and children during the war.  As to what
event in the war might account for a sea-change, if there was one, and that
would make for Blanchot's turn against a Hegelian-Heideggerean jargon of
absolutism and authenticity, see "L'instance de ma mort," perhaps his most
overtly autobiographical work, and which is specific about the historical 
connection to Hegel.

William Flesch