[Reader-list] (no subject)

[abir bazaz]

Liberation has reported that Maurice Blanchot died on 20th of February.

Maurice Blanchot was probably the least-read yet most influential French writer of the postwar era. Reclusive to a degree, shunning all public appearances, refusing even to be photographed (though once snapped unawares), he nevertheless played a decisive part in the transformation of the literary and philosophical landscape of France in the second half of the 20th century. He had no disciples, his readers were invited to act as if he did not exist, yet no writer can have devoted himself more selflessly to the simple intimacy of friendship, from which much of his influence stemmed.  He was born in 1907 in Quain, a village in the département of Saône-et-Loire. Obtaining his baccalauréat at a precocious age, he went to Strasbourg to study German and philosophy, before completing a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures at the Sorbonne. He then studied medicine for a while. In Strasbourg he met the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and their friendship was to last until Levinas’s death in 1995. Maurice Blanchot political and philosophical writing informed the work of Derrida, Foucault and Barthes (Times Online)

Maurice Blanchot: "Let us imagine the last remaining writer, upon whose death, without anyone realizing it, the minor mystery of writing would also be lost. To add  something fantastical to the situation, let us suppose that this  Rimbaud-like character, who is even more mythical than the real one, hears  the speaking that dies with him fall silent too. And let us finally suppose  that this irrevocable end is somehow noticed within the world and orbit of  human civilizations. What would be the outcome? Apparently, there would be  a massive silence."