File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_2001/blanchot.0111, message 1


From: "Simon  Krysl" <sk5-AT-duke.edu>
Subject: MB: Blanchot on the gift
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 14:42:36 -0500


Dear Blanchot specialists - 
Would anyone, perhaps, be able (and willing) to tell me where, in 
Blanchot's writings, does the following quote come from? I have found 
it on the internet, and once, already, bothered your list with pretty 
much the same question. (Then, I was directed to several people who 
might know: but I wasn't able to discover an answer.) 
Now, I am vaguely aware that in the discourse of the gift and gift-
giving, besides the more (and most) obvious personnages - from Derrida 
to Mauss - Blanchot's name can and should come up. I know very little 
of his work, however: and if I am able to place the phrase - enticing 
as it is - in a context, I may - or so I think - have a possible 
starting point for reading Blanchot with this perspective.
"Maurice Blanchot wrote: 'There would be no gift at all, if not the 
gift one does not have.' This is an empty-handed victory: that the 
writer also - and above all - shares and gives away the love and 
knowledge that he does not himself possess in life." (Only the 
beginning is, of course, Blanchot.)
Is there, perhaps, someone able to help?
So many thanks
Simon Krysl
Graduate Program in Literature 
Duke University 
email: sk5-AT-duke.edu

   

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