Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003)

Monokl’un kırmızı serisinde Maurice Blanchot Kafka okurları için olağanüstü bir yapıta imza atıyor ve Kafka’yı hiç görülmedik bir halde okurunun karşısına çıkarıyor.
Yazmak gececil şeydir; kendini karanlık güçlere bırakmak demektir, aşağıdaki bölgelere inmek, kendini saf olmayan kucaklaşmalara teslim etmektir. Bütün bu ifadeler Kafka için dolaysız bir hakikati barındırır. Karanlık büyülenmeyi, arzunun iç karartıcı parıltısını, her şeyin show more radikal ölümle son bulduğu geceleyin zincirlerinden boşanan şeyin tutkusunu çağrıştırır. Peki, aşağının güçleriyle neyi anlar Kafka? Bunu bilmiyoruz. Ama git gide, canlı şeylere susamış ve her türlü hakikati güçten düşürmeye muktedir olarak, sözcükleri ve hayaletimsi bir gerçekliğin yaklaşmasıyla sözcüklerin kullanımını birbirine bağlayacaktır. İşte bu yüzden son yıl arkadaşlarına yazmayı dahi neredeyse bırakacak ve özellikle de kendinden söz etmeyecektir: “Doğru, hiçbir şey yazmıyorum ama gizleyecek bir şeyim olduğundan değil. Her şeyden önce, bunu kendime son yıllarda stratejik nedenlerle bir yasa bellediğim için, sözcüklerime de mektuplarıma da güvenmiyorum; kalbimi pekâlâ insanlarla paylaşmayı istiyorum ama sözcüklerle oynayan ve onu dilleri sarkık, mektupları okuyan hayaletlerle paylaşmak istemiyorum.” Dolayısıyla sonucun kesin bir şekilde şu olması gerekirdi: artık yazmamak. Oysa sonuç bambaşkadır: “Benim için yazmak en zorunlu ve en önemli şeydir.” Ve Kafka, bizlere bu zorunluluğun nedenlerini göstermekten, hatta onları farklı mektuplarında yinelemekten geri kalmadı: eğer yazmayacak olursa delirecekti. Yazmak deliliktir, onun deliliğidir ama bu delilik onun aklıdır…
Kendinden kaçmayı isteyerek kendi saplantısına daha da batan kör uyanıklığıyla edebiyat; eğer varoluş varoluştan çıkma olanaksızlığıysa, varlık her zaman varlığa geri itilen şeyse, dipsiz derinlikte olan şey çokta dipteyse, hâlâ uçurumun temeli olan uçurumsa, kendisine karşı çarenin olmadığı çareyse, varoluş saplantısının tek tercümesidir.
MAURICE BLANCHOT show less

"[And] she stared at me, but in a strange way, as if I had been in back of myself, and infinitely far back."

Precious: sending plaster casts of a hand to a palm reader. Decadent the first time, but when it happens twice in the same novel (against all odds!) one thinks this surely must be a trope of Huysmans's (Huysmans sentenced to death the same year Blanchot sentenced to be born), or is the mechanical conveyance of plaster a conceit to avoid the dread-ful fortune-teller scene (Impossible show more to pull off in literature, not even by Kleist.)

Compared to the stupefied physicians of the early 20th century, overwhelmed by the pathophysiology of disease and an obligation to tonal fidelity at bedside, modern physicians are perhaps better on the margins. (Surely more accurate at prognostication than the palm read, though likely hardly less halting.)

"[Infidelity's] merit is to keep [a] story in reserve,"
On infidelity to a tone. A sad moment becomes happy, or there is a moment of comedy or delirious-transcendence ("A perfect rose"), but only to return to a greater silent despair; though Blanchot may not be aware that the sadness turned to humor turned to sadness can become (burnt) humor again at the final moment. (Compare this to the vision of 'silence beyond silence beyond silence.')

"[But] the road wants to see if the man who is coming is really the one who should be coming: it turns around to see who he is. [. . .] Unhappy is the path that turns around to look at the man walking on it;" show less

I gave a not particularly enthusiastic review to Blanchot's "The Madness of the Day" wch was, at that point, the only thing I'd read by him. Then my respected colleague Franz Kamin sd I shd give him another chance so when I found this bk I picked it up. Others put in a good word for him too. I've read many 19th & 20th century French writers so I definitely have a taste for such things but Blanchot's a writer I never discovered when I was most in the thick of such interests.

Whilst reading show more it, though, I found myself wondering: Do I even ENJOY reading anymore? Perhaps if I'd read it 30 yrs ago I wd've found it fascinating. As it was, I mostly just found it tedious - much like the only bk I've read by Michel Butor. The back-cover promo for "Aminadab" compares it to Kafka's "enclosed and allegorical spaces" &, yes, it's very claustrophobic - like Kafka, like Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast Trilogy" - wch I loved as a young teenager.

But this is the type of claustrophobia that reminds me of friends making what I consider to be 'bad' decisions - I just felt like saying: "Don't do that!" - like talking to a character in a horror movie about to make a fatally stupid blunder. In other words, as the protaganist goes thru his progressive entanglement, I found myself caring only insofar as I was annoyed.

Also on the back cover blurb it says: "Blanchot's novel functions as an allegory referring, above all, to the wandering and striving movement of writing itself" & keeping that assertion in mind made the bk slightly more interesting to me. Strangely, but as a nice change from the norm, the 'romantic' aspect of it is downplayed to the point of barely a mention in the translator's intro. However, it seems to me that the bk is as much about human relationships as anything more formal - w/ the human relationships not being very appealing to me.

All in all, "Aminadab" is fairly original & unusual - 2 qualities I always search out - but I found myself not caring very much. Blanchot has helped me realize that I want something very different out of writing than what wd've been interesting 30 yrs ago (just based on its difference). Now? It's not so clear what I want - stimulation, of course, but maybe I'm too jaded to receive that easily. show less

I have been rendered somewhat speechless by this book. It is so surreal that I really don't know what happened or what to say about it. It appears to be written in two sections. In the first, the narrator details his interactions with J., a dying young woman. The second part takes place during the bombing of Paris during WWII. The first part is much more lucid with something that resembles a story. The second part is not -- reading summaries/reviews it apparently revolves around three women, show more but I only remember one.

Part of my frustration is that early on Blanchot teases the reader with hints of what is to come: "{This story} could actually be told in ten words. That is what makes it so awful. There are ten words to say." A few pages later, he describes a mysterious attack a woman has after she attempts to open a closest door where the narrator kept "proof of these events". As the narrator continued to drop hints about the awful events, I found myself reading faster and faster to discover what happened. However, the narrator is never able to say those ten words or describe "the events". I believe this is the authors intention - to meditate on the impossibility of language and words to convey one's experiences. However, I needed a few more markers, a few more bread crumbs to help me follow his tortuous intent.

It is a book that would have been greatly helped by an introduction or a translators note -- something that frames the book and sets realistic expectations. I think if I reread it, I will enjoy it tremendously. show less