The Infinite Conversation (Theory and History of Literature) (Paperback)

~ Maurice Blanchot (Author), Susan Hanson (Translator)
Key Phrases: eternal return, plural speech, naked visage, Simone Weil, Georges Bataille, Don Juan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in France in 1969, this substantial addition to the "Theory and History of Literature" series could more readily be described as philosophy. Blanchot, a noted French literary critic who is as conversant with German literary philosophy as with French, has addressed the primary issues dealt with by literary scholars today: the nature of language, the narrative voice, the imaginary, nihilism, and the influence of religious thought. He uses examples ranging from Heraclitus to Pascal, Simone Weil, and Robert Antelme and launches into a major chapter on Nietzsche. Other writers that merit serious discussion are Camus, Kafka, Georges Bataille, Sade, Artaud, Rene Char, Flaubert, Roussel, Novalis, and Breton. While well written, this dense tome will find its audience only among literary scholars, theorists, and critics. Recommended for academic libraries.
- Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 471 pages
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press (December 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816619700
• ISBN-13: 978-0816619702
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,998 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most coherent of Blanchot's critical works, July 26, 2002

By	"rpatz" (Blacksburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews

By the above I don't mean to imply that Blanchot's works are not coherent or that they don't merit reading. I think Blanchot is one of the most important writers of this century. His work is far more significant than Foucault or Derrida, not to denigrate them or deny the vitality of thier work. Readers of Derrida's more recent works (Politics of Friendship, the Gift of Death, Cinders, even Postcards) will find Blanchot quite worthwhile.

In The Infinite Conversation are an extensive collection of essays and dialogues composed by Blanchot over several years and most of them originally published seperately. In this book Blanchot explores in a rigorous and almost orderly fashion "what it would mean for something like literature" to exist. Starting with the idea of literature he explores, through consideration of literature--Hoderlin, Homer, Kafka, Levinas and others--the vacant center of such concepts as identity, agency and subjectivity. Almost ex nihilo, Blanchot constructs an ethics that asks extraordinary responsibility from us without drawing on God, natural law, humanism, or any kind of center.

After reading Blanchot, the weight of words weighs heavily. Anyone with even a slight interest in continental philosophy ought to read this book.

15 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An infinite re-source, December 9, 1999

By	"noisome" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Among Blanchot's publications in American (English), this is one the reader can turn to repeatedly. The index is wonderful, and the Introduction by the translator is very helpful when trying to situate ourselves within the con-text of Blanchot's work.

I never start at the beginning of the book and read it in order. Instead I'll open it randomly and scan the words until I am drawn in, somehow.

Or I'll turn to the marvel of an Index at the back of this book and scan this until I find a topic, or textual arrangement that grabs at me.

Or if you find yourself wanting to pursue a curiosity with a certain writer, poet, or intellectual/thinker it is fascinating to turn to the Index and see what Blanchot's take on it might be.

Make this book your own! Follow its coursings and angulations perhaps as a way of holding your own mind-ful inquiries (conversations) against the page as a mirror and watch where the light dances, refacts, or is obscured. And the cracks, silvered coating ('reflecting glaze'?), and mirrorized display will work and 'un-work' the space which surrounds or unbinds you. And of this "space" what of it is parlayed by the 'space of literature'( to borrow what Blanchot refers to in another book of his ). Isn't this an uncanny notion (or how is it we forget?): that we make our way in the world by thinking, and speaking? And so what or how are we to 'read' into that? What is the topology of this, as such? Do we enter the maps as 'surs'? (Thinking of Michael Palmer's poetry here, perhaps).

What is it that draws us on? What 'calculus' observes or holds us within a 'recognizable context'? Or what one are we observing and holding to, without criticism or re-course?(Palmer again:"An indefinite calculus watches/ writes and re-writes")

What is determined within this "sphere" of recognized forms, gestures, figures, and their articulation,where-in we recognize our movements:

the re-formed un-maskings, shown coverings, and 'un-workings', which pass on to the un-recognizable, the un-accountable, the unavowable? Only to make their way back again, but is this re-transmitted, re-circuited? Or are, we though "acting", somehow short-circuited in our thinking and speaking? Do we have a prayer? Thanks be to Maurice Blanchot...but somehow... and yet...?

Now, finally, to end this review, one way to adjust to the "infinite" in the title of his book, looking at some lines by Isaac-the-Blind,who writes:

For every sphere fills itself from a sphere above it. //

& they are given in order to meditate from the sphere that appears //

in your heart, to meditate //

up to the infinite. //

For there is no path to prayer other than that whereby //

man is sucked up by finite words & rises in thinking to the infinite//

2 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars comment?, November 25, 2000

By A Customer

I don't know how to answer the question, "was [e-mail]'s response helpful?"

Perhaps it is not so helpful to readers as it is to [e-mail]'s psychiatrist.