Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 12:35:04 +0100 (BST)
Subject: MB: blanchot/heidegger


Re. David Melling's questions about Heidegger and Blanchot. This is hardly
an 'answer', but one route for thinking their proximity and divergence
might be provided, for instance, by this remark from Heidegger's commentary
on Holderlin's 'Andenken': 'the thinker thinks on the condition of
ex-patriation which for him is not a state of passage but the condition in
which he is 'at home'. The thoughtful interrogation of the poet on the
other hand poetizes the condition of repatriation.' Isn't it around this
notion of a possible horizon of repatriation that one could locate
Blanchot's divergence? An early Blanchot essay which 'accompanies' one of
Heidegger's Holderlin commentaries would be worth looking at in this
respect: 'Holderlin's 'Sacred Word'' in 'The Work of Fire' (ugh - don't
like that translation!). Leslie Hill has some really helpful pages on this
in his recent study, by the way.
Ian

Ian Maclachlan
Dept of French
University of Aberdeen
i.maclachlan-AT-abdn.ac.uk