Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 10:50:35 -0400
Subject: Re: MB: Blanchot Web Site


>I'm gradually updating the Blanchot Resource Page, and would encourage anyone
>who knows of recent publications, conferences, etc. relevant to Blanchot
>to send
>me information.  Also, I've make a frames version of the site which should
>make
>it easier to move around in quickly.  Any comments and/or suggestions are, as
>always, greatly appreciate.
>
>Regards,
>Reg Lilly

One extremely interesting thing just recently published are the Choix de
lettres de Georges Bataille, ed. M Surya.  (You may already have this?)
There's an appendix of ten pages of letters FROM Blanchot to Bataille (no
letters from Bataille to Blanchot, presumably because Blanchot hasn't made
them public).  The letters from Blanchot date from c. 1958-62 and in them
he makes some reference to his own troubles, which he deprecates in
comparison to Bataille's.  I assume that one possible thing MB is talking
about is his participation in the protests against the Algerian war, which
led to his redaction of the Manifesto of the 121 and to his interrogation
by an examining magistrate.  But I don't know.  What's fascinating about
the letters (all addressed to "Mon cher ami" and all using "vous" and not
"tu"--which he says elsewhere he reserved exclusively for Levinas) is how
very close in tone, style, vocabulary, and gravity they are to his pulished
work.  One feels, again, how serious these things are for him, and how
consistent his thinking is.  (In the letters he refers to Robert Antelme's
L'espece humain, subject of his great essay in L'entretien Infini, "Etre
Juif.")

(As to that thinking, I am reminded of a line I think from L'ectriture du
desastre: "Quand on commence a penser, pas de repos.")

Bataille, in letters to some other people describes how important these
letters of Blanchot's are to him.

Re: the Heidegger and Blanchot thread, there's a fascinating footnote in
this volume to a letter of Bataille's about an obscure incident in which
Heidegger seems to have called Bataille the best thinker in France, but
seems to have meant Blanchot (Bataille refers to "l'incident Heidgger:
Heidegger confondant Blanchot et Batialle" and Surya says in the footnote
that "The details of this incident are not known.  It seems that Heidegger
once said (to R. Char, to J. Beaufret, to K. Axelos?) that Bataille was
"the best French mind."  Saying this, Heidegger would have confused
Bataille with Blanchot, to whom this compliment referred" (p. 582).  (This
in a letter to Jerome Lindon, the publisher, fairly recently in the news
for publishing a translation of Beckett's Eleutheria (translation by
Michael Brodsky, author of X in Paris and some other fascinating works),
forcing Minuit to publish the original French.

Also, for bibliographical purposes, there's a wonderful forthcoming essay
by Neil Hertz about Merleau-Ponty and Wordsworth in some festschrift coming
out in 1998 from Ohio State University Press, but I don't remember name,
editors, or title.  But worth a look, since he grounds his analyses on
Blanchot's passages on "La voix narrative (le "il", le "neutre") in EI.
I'll try to dig up more bibliographical info.


William Flesch