MAURICE BLANCHOT: Thomas the Obscure, Death Sentence, Madness of the Day, & The Instant of My Death
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 เม.ย. 2022
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THOMAS THE OBSCURE - amzn.to/3IXfQ93
Paperback, 124 pages
Published by Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc. (first published 1950)
Original Title: Thomas l'obscur
ISBN: 978-0882680767
DEATH SENTENCE - amzn.to/3Kpaofa
Paperback, 81 pages
Published 1998 by Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc. (first published 1948)
Original Title: L'Arrêt de mort
ISBN: 978-1886449411
THE MADNESS OF THE DAY - amzn.to/35DnyH1
Paperback, 32 pages
Published 1995 by Station Hill Press (first published 1973)
Original Title: La Folie du jour
ISBN: 978-0930794361
THE INSTANT OF MY DEATH - amzn.to/3CAHC8Y
Paperback, 128 pages
Published 2000 by Stanford University Press (first published 1994)
Original Title: L'instant de ma mort
ISBN: 978-0804733267
THE GAZE OF ORPHEUS AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS - amzn.to/3qcUNbh
Paperback, 198 pages
Published 1981 by Station Hill Press (first published 1981)
ISBN: 978-0930794385
#leafbyleaf #bookreview #mauriceblanchot #stationhillpress
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your videos are always appreciated, you're doing a great thing with this channel
Thanks so much!
The best way to start a day 😊 - with a book review from Leaf by Leaf or Better Than Food
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Lol ♥️I love that you threw better than food in there too.
Me, too. Cliff is great!
Oh yeah! Blanchot the vertigo!
Ever since reading Blanchot for this video, his words have taken up a permanent compartment in my mind. I've read a lot of secondary work since this. What a writer.
He is my favourite experimental novelist ❤️👍
His work has really sent down several rabbit holes--and I'm eternally grateful!
hearing someone articulate on Blanchot is kind of surreal 🤯
Means a lot coming from you, my friend!
blanchot has maybe been my greatest obsession over the pandemic. felt like I had gone through all the content on him here so it was exciting to land on this vid!
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When I read Thomas the Obscure I didn't understand very much but found it interesting enough to also read Death Sentence. I have since read nothing more by Blanchot, but this video makes me want to revisit those works and read more.
It's a strange experience of bewilderment and enchantment.
YES! I've been waiting for this. Gonna save it for a rainy day. A lot of Blanchot's work in English was published by Bison Books in my hometown. They have a very good French literature series in general, check them out. Not too many people talk about this writer, and I certainly understand why. The work does lay itself open to labels like 'nihilism' or 'mysticism' (in the pejorative sense) because of the mysterious prose and opaque pronouncements, but I read Blanchot for those reasons. Also, his analyses of the works of others can be breathtaking. For me, there is definitely a performative quality to his writing in addition to the insight. It is very poetic and takes a lot of time to savor. Same with a lot of his contemporaries. May I recommend Emmanuel Levinas for a start?
Thanks so much! I love Bison Books (several of my copies of Nietzsche are from them)! Great input here about Blanchot, too. And thanks above all for the new recommendation!
Thanks dude. Great way to start a Friday
My pleasure! Happy Friday!
My guiding light for Thomas the Obscure (the only book I read from Blanchot) was a note I've read that the book evokes the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus. His epithet was "the obscure". He believed world was fire, meaning constantly changing like fire, he believed in unity of opposites, everything is impermanent, everything flows. This explained many moments in Thomas for me, where everything is constantly negated and paradoxical, but this negation and paradox makes the "story" flow. Thomas (and later Anne) moves by not moving, sees by not seeing , great distances are getting closer, innocence is dirty, sleep keeps Thomas awake... etc. Destruction (Orpheus look) creates (the text).
Ahhh, wonderful insight! Thank you so much!
"The Space of Literature" and "The Writing of the Disaster" are his masterpieces.
They are the next up for me!
"The Writing of the Disaster" left a huge impression on me!
@@berlinesquelove1360 It took me several months to read it and gain whatever understanding I could of it. This is going to be a clunky metaphor, but my experience reading it felt like having to look at one of those magic eye illustrations and sustain that gaze without losing focus for a second. Otherwise, the image disappears.
@@andrewmatthews5477 Completely relate to this. A lot of his writing feels like I'm following a specific line of thought and images as if I'm on a tightrope, then if I come back to the same passages later on it's like I never read them before.
@@berlinesquelove1360 The latter feature of his work that you mentioned is deliberate. For me, Blanchot's prose has to be elusive for his ideas to have any integrity. His prose is a performance of his concepts. Same with Derrida's work. It's no surprise to me that both of those writers and their contemporaries moved past concerns of language to ethics.
Every single book I've read from the Crossing Aesthetics series has been fantastic.
Speaking of aesthetics--I just got a copy of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory yesterday. Looking for ward to diving in!
I’m sure you know about it already, but Dostoyevsky famously was subjected to a mock execution and granted a last-minute reprieve as well. That moment, and the transfiguration it created in his later work, could be read in conversation with Blanchot’s “L’instant.”
Oh, yes! The opening scene used in the Russian miniseries, too. Derrida brings in the likeness of this incident in his critique of L’Instant. Cheers!
@@LeafbyLeaf I actually don’t know about this miniseries, thanks for the tip! And also, thank you for your succinct breakdown of Blanchot’s idea of impersonality. I’m in a graduate program now and hoping to begin writing my dissertation soon on impersonality in American literature - with specific reference to Henry James - and you putting Blanchot on my radar in such a clear way has just been enormously helpful. Thanks for all you do!
Ahhhh, how wonderful! To be a student of The Master!
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A really great curio from that series is 'Soap' by Francis Ponge. There's a great sampling of his work in English, i think it has a generic title like 'Collected Poems.' I think you would enjoy it.
Thanks so much for the rec!
I loved THOMAS THE OBSCURE!!! (I think I wrote something about it in our short communication on Goodreads one or two years ago). I really have to reread it. With the other works I wasn't that lucky. DEATH SENTENCE I felt was a little bit boring (I can only speak about the German translation, I thought that something was missing ...).
".... and just dive in."
me, laying back in my chair : "oh boy"
:-)
I just have his Infinite Conversation, a brilliant work of theory.
Lovely video :) You definitely should read Being and Time by Martin Heidegger!
I've plucked around in that book many, many times over as many years. I so do want to simply sit with it and dig through. Blanchot (and you) may well have been the provocation I needed!
Sorry if this is unrelated, but could you please consider doing a 3-hour+ version of The Recognitions by Gaddis like you did for GR?
I don't know if i can read this because I am terrified, I feel like I will actually hurt myself the same way a weight-lifter deadlifting to near ripping of tendons.
GR is more to me about the problem of perception, but Gaddis is on the problem of sincerity.
Hahaha! Will an hour-long video suffice for now? th-cam.com/video/NhA7P8pPosI/w-d-xo.html
@@LeafbyLeaf Yeah, I've watched it twice, and its really strong. You mentioned it was your favorite book and its clear to me why.
Ah, OK. Thanks! I’m sure I’ll be reading it again in the coming years-and I’ll certainly do another big video.
@@LeafbyLeaf Awesome. I'd really love to hear what makes it special for you
You bring up a good point. Now that I have a video with the main purpose of trying to make the novel accessible for first time readers, I could do a video where I just freely talk about my very personal experience with the book. To be honest, I have not taken time to really explore why it made such an impact on me, and I think it would be worth doing so. Thank you for this nudge !
Do you plan on reading Cormac McCarthy's new books that are coming out this October and November? If so, are you going to make a video about them?
Oh, yes--I preordered them as soon as I heard. I was thinking that the next McCarthy video here would be either Blood Meridian or Suttree. But you never know...
@@LeafbyLeaf comprehensive bibliography breakdown of McCarthy tomorrow???
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The Uber-cat, may God help us 😄😸
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How the hell do you read SO MUCH
Small changes over time to establish a lifestyle where I have 3-4 hours a day dedicated to close reading.