‘The author sees other people taking an interest in his work, but the interest they take in it is different from the interest that made it a pure expression of himself,’ (Blanchot 2004 p.306)
Whilst reading ‘Literature and the right to death’ this quotation both amazed and startled me because of how I relate to it, as a reader, in ‘consuming’ the different works of authors, and therefore I wanted to analyze it.
The author’s interest lies in the pleasure that the work has ‘made him’ an author (Blanchot 2004), (it has shown that he has talent), because of what it confers. Here there has been a reversal because the work’s existence has made him an author; he is dependent on the work for the title. ‘He has made it and it makes him’ (Blanchot 2004 p.305), however as it passes into the public eye it loses this special essence that Blanchot states the writer needed. This special essence seems to be a kind of finally fulfilled longed for dream to ‘be’ in the world that comes via expression.
The public are not interested in the work as an expression of the author but rather they are interested in the work because it is alien to them; ‘an alien work in which he can discover something unknown’ (Blanchot 2004 p.306-307).
It seems the writer’s need to be comes in the shape of a work that becomes a book, a book which is then passed to the mob, who read it, see it in their imagination but, above all, change it and adapt it to their own ideas. The work eventually is nothing for the author because it ceases to express himself, but everything for the reader due to their interpretations. ‘The work itself is disappearing’ (Blanchot 2004 p.306).
References
BLANCHOT, M. (2004). The Work Of Fire. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
N0224503
Thanks James. A typically Blanchot meditation! Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteWhile I thought I didn't have anything initially to say about this, I thought maybe that, well do we really feel that a text is monstrous when we read it, or that a text is literally disturbing as Blanchot makes out, leading one onto the abyss and so forth. Sometimes I think that he overstates the case, but then, when I reflect more I think there might be something to it.
In some sense in any work of literature that we engage there is a slight disjointedness. If we buy one book, we assume that there is a special one to one direct relationship with it. This is not wholly the case, given that for the most part, these texts are mass produced. So therefore, there is a split between the self as a projection of its own ego and the self as effect of wider economic circulation. I suppose it was the inertia, mystery and impenatrability of the text that Blanchot which Blanchot saw as the ethical moment.