Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was a French philosopher, writer and literary critic that left phrases to think about in various areas of human culture. What did he mean with his phrase: «Literature begins where language ends«.
He studied philosophy at University of Strasbourg and was editor-in-chief of Journal des débats. He produced more than thirty works, including novels and stories, as well as literary and philosophical criticism. Perhaps his best-known and most influential production is «The literary space» (1955).
His weight as an intellectual of the 20th century speaks for itself: he was a contemporary and friend of thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Georges Bataille y Jacques Derridaand inspired others like Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze y Michel Foucault. Many of Blanchot’s texts helped shape generations of writers.
A fact that describes his character, but that clashes with the weight he had in the thoughts of other intellectuals, is that never cultivated his public image. On the contrary, he refused interviews and, for decades, hardly a photo of him was known.
This phrase refers to the fact that literature, or the art of writing and reading, begins with a question. However, this is not a doubt, but the ability to question about what is to be done. For Blanchot, literature was not just an artistic expression or the search for «beauty,» but a profound life experience.
In his work «The literary space«, he develops that – for him – to write is to enter a radical solitude. There use the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydicea tragic legend about love that defies death. Orpheus descends into the underworld to rescue his wife, but finally, before leaving there, he turns around to look at her and loses her forever.
Who was Maurice Blanchot and why was he so influential?
This works as a metaphor for the writer, who when trying to capture what we want to say, disappears when we try. It gives literature a tone of paradox: it tries to use words to get to a place where words no longer work. For the author, like the Greek myth, a work cannot be made if the experience is sought in depth itself.
The context in which Blanchot writes in post-war France, which is why he is influenced by the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and existentialism. Literature begins where language fails or falls apart.
When someone names something, that is not what they name, but it takes its place. The real thing disappears when you name it so that the word takes its place. However, literature seeks to recover that loss.
Blanchot is not denying the value of words by saying that it begins when language ends: he is pointing to its limit. On that edge, where language is no longer enough to say what you are looking forliterature appears as a form of exploration. Under the author’s idea, literature is not defined by what it says, but by what it tries to say without fully achieving it.
