Spacing Literature between Mallarmé, Blanchot and Derrida

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Notes

¹Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume II, 4.

² In dialogue with Richard Kearney; see Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, 108.

³Derrida, Glas, 75.

⁴Derrida, Glas, 75.

⁵Derrida, in ‘“This Strange Institution Called Literature,”’ 60.

⁶Miller, “Derrida and Literature,” 69.

⁷Derrida, “My Chances,” 358.

⁸Derrida, “My Chances,” 347.

⁹ See Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, 5.

¹⁰Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume I, 45 (‘Psyche: Invention of the Other’).

¹¹Miller, “Derrida and Literature,” 69.

¹² See for example Aporias, 15 (referring to the pivotal essay “Psyche: Invention of the Other,” 15); “Force of Law,” 243, 244; Negotiations, 192, 194 (“Politics and Friendship”), 352 (“Ethics and Politics Today”); Paper Machine, 81, 194, n. 10 (“As If It Were Possible, “Within Such Limits””); “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event,” 451.

¹³ This now famous formula for radical, absolute alterity was first introduced in The Gift of Death, 68 and chap. 4 (82 ff.).

¹⁴Miller, “Derrida's Topographies,” 314.

¹⁵Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, 112.

¹⁶Derrida, in ““This Strange Institution Called Literature,”” 41.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸Derrida, in ““This Strange Institution Called Literature,”” 42. Celan's whole quotation, ‘Ich spreche ja von dem Gedicht, das es nicht gibt!’ (I am speaking of the poem which doesn't exist!), was first discussed in “Shibboleth,” 11. One should note that Derrida's juxtaposition of Celan and Mallarmé here is intriguing since Celan rejected Mallarmé's conception of the ‘absolute poem’, claiming that such a poem cannot take place as it is ‘self-forgetting’ poetic art that leads to distance from the poetic ego.

¹⁹Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, 109.

²⁰ See for instance Signéponge / Signsponge, 138, and ‘Countersignature,’ 7–42.

²¹Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction, 29.

²² Ibid., 2.

²³ Ibid., 121.

²⁴Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, 121.

²⁵Derrida, in ““This Strange Institution Called Literature,”” 36. See also Paper Machine, 163 (‘Others Are Secret Because They Are Other’).

²⁶Derrida, in ““This Strange Institution Called Literature,”” 36.

²⁷Derrida, The Gift of Death, 71.

²⁸Bowie, Mallarmé and the Art of Being Difficult, 119.

²⁹ See La Charité, The Dynamics of Space, especially 56–57.

³⁰Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, 459 (translation mine).

³¹ See Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé online, at http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm, s. v. ‘hasard’. I wish to thank Laurent Milesi for this etymological nugget.

³²Derrida, “Khora,” 104.

³³Derrida, “Che cos'è la poesia?,” 289.

³⁴ Ibid., 293.

³⁵ Quoted in Rasula & McCaffery, “Words in Freedom,” 5, 4.

³⁶Derrida, “Che cos'è la poesia?,” 297 (bold type mine).

³⁷Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man, 73.

³⁸Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, 32 (French insertions mine).

³⁹Smock, Translator's Introduction in Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 13.

⁴⁰Blanchot, TheInfinite Conversation, 295.

⁴¹Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 114, about Mallarmé's “Igitur”.

⁴² Ibid., 141.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, especially 54, 57 (“Plural Speech”), 415 (“The Absence of the Book”). I am grateful to Mario Aquilina for bringing to my attention these passages, which helped me refine this last point.

⁴⁵Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 156.

⁴⁶ In that respect, see Hägglund, Radical Atheism, especially chap. 3 (76–106).

⁴⁷Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 141.

⁴⁸Derrida, Glas, 242a. The phrase is used in connection with an originary gift as sacrificial all-burning (‘holocaust’).

⁴⁹Bowie, Mallarmé and the Art of Being Difficult, 119.

⁵⁰ Blanchot's désastre is to be understood etymologically as a ‘bad star’ (aster), from Italian dis-astro, and is associated with the falling of/from an unlucky star, the advent of misfortune, as well as passivity and death. See Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster.

⁵¹Derrida, Glas, 241a.

⁵²Derrida, Cinders, 62.

⁵³Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 47.

⁵⁴ See the section on Auschwitz in Lyotard, The Differend, 86–106.

⁵⁵Derrida, Glas, 241a. I am grateful to Laurent Milesi for guiding me through the complexities of Derrida's development on Hegel.

⁵⁶Derrida, “Che cos'è la poesia?,” 299.

⁵⁷Derrida, Glas, 242a.

⁵⁸Derrida, Glas, 259a. However, for a speculative de-ciphering of Mallarmé's joint calculation of ‘l'unique Nombre’ (Œuvres complètes, 462), as 707, and contingency, see Meillassoux, Le Nombre et la sirène.

⁵⁹Derrida, Positions, 45–46.

⁶⁰Derrida, Dissemination, 236.

⁶¹Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, 380; translated in Derrida, Dissemination, 236.

⁶²Derrida, Dissemination, 236.

⁶³Derrida, Positions, 46.

⁶⁴La Charité, The Dynamics of Space, 97.

⁶⁵Mihram, “The Abortive Didot-Vollard Edition of “Un Coup de Dés,”” 43.

⁶⁶Mallarmé, Divagations, 200 (“Crisis of Verse”).

⁶⁷ Ibid., 210.

⁶⁸Mallarmé, Divagations, 210 (“Crisis of Verse”); translation modified in light of the English version in Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 30 (“The Myth of Mallarmé”), which endeavours to capture the syntactical rhythm of this celebrated evocation.

⁶⁹Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 327 (“Literature and the Right to Death”). Gerald Bruns went as far as to assert that Blanchot's poetics represented ‘in certain respects an extended, open-ended commentary on this passage’ (Maurice Blanchot, 7).

⁷⁰Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 30 (“The Myth of Mallarmé”).

⁷¹Bruns, Maurice Blanchot, 9. Spelt ‘im-possibility’ in The Infinite Conversation, 54 (“Plural Speech”).

⁷²Bruns, Maurice Blanchot, 54.

⁷³Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 33 (“The Myth of Mallarmé”).

⁷⁴Blanchot, TheInfinite Conversation, 260.

⁷⁵Bruns, Maurice Blanchot, 7.

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 42.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 21.

⁸¹Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 327.

⁸² Ibid., 8 (‘Différance’); also 10.

⁸³Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond, 71.

⁸⁴ For the ‘essential relation’ between ‘the blank of writing’ and rhythm, see Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume I, 88 (“What Remains by Force of Music”).

⁸⁵Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 13 (‘Différance’).

⁸⁶Derrida, Positions, 94.

⁸⁷Derrida, Dissemination, 181–82, 214–15.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 271.

⁸⁹Bowie, Mallarmé and the Art of Being Difficult, 142.

⁹⁰ Rhyme was replaced by several homophonic correspondences: (le) voile, (la) voile; (le) vague, (la) vague; poing, point; nom, non; temps, tant, tentant, etc.

⁹¹La Charité, The Dynamics of Space, 65.

⁹²Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 108.

⁹³Blanchot, The Space of Literature, 108–109.

⁹⁴Lykourioti, “Antiform,” 181; Lykourioti's italics. The author refers to Rorty's notion of contingency in relation to language and selfhood in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 182.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 186.

⁹⁷Blanchot, Death Sentence, 31.

⁹⁸ The title of the poem by Shelley which Derrida and others had been assigned to write about. See Derrida, “Living On: Border Lines,” 163.

⁹⁹Clark, Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot, 74.

¹⁰⁰Derrida, Dissemination, 226–27; French insertion mine.

¹⁰¹Iyer, “The Unbearable Trauma and Witnessing in Blanchot and Levinas,” 46–47. The phrase is in Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 116.

¹⁰²Fagenblat, “Back to the Other Levinas,” 301. See also Critchley, “Il y a - Holding Levinas's Hand to Blanchot's Fire,” 108–22.

¹⁰³Derrida, Cinders, 37 (also 15, 39).

¹⁰⁴Derrida, La Carte postale, 448, where the title “LE TROP D'ÉVIDENCE / OU LE MANQUE A SA PLACE” clearly plays on the possibility of omitting diacritics on French capital letters to introduce Derrida's refutation of Lacan's ‘atomistic topology of the signifier’ and the full place and plenitude of lack (453, 488, etc.). For Derrida's diacritical strategy avant la lettre in shifting from the locative, Lacanian plenitude of lack to its privative dissemination, see also Milesi, “De la déconstruction comme diacritique,” 463–79 (especially 472, 477, 479).

¹⁰⁵ Let us recall in this context, alongside “Che cos'è la poesia?” – ‘The poem falls to me, benediction, coming of (or from) the other. Rhythm but dissymmetry.’ (297) – Derrida's epigraph to his best-known discussion of hospitality: ‘An act of hospitality can only be poetic.’ See Derrida, Of Hospitality, 2.

¹⁰⁶ See Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, s. v. ‘ῥυθμ°´ς’.

¹⁰⁷ See Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, 663; translation mine. See Smith, “Mallarmé and the Ontologization of the Poem,” 163.

¹⁰⁸Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, 189 (“Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe”).

¹⁰⁹Milesi, “Thinking (through) the Desert,” 175.

¹¹⁰La Charité, The Dynamics of Space, 169.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 99, referring to ‘forme théâtrale de poésie’ in ‘Crayonné au théâtre’ (Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, 308). Mallarmé's strong interest in ballet and figures of the dance cannot be dissociated from his experiments with rhythm and syntax.

¹¹² See Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, 30.

¹¹³Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 36 (“The Myth of Mallarmé”).

¹¹⁴Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 32 (“The Myth of Mallarmé”).

¹¹⁵Meschonnic, “The Rhythm Party Manifesto,” 165. For the vicissitudes of Mallarmé's ongoing search for the Ideal of an Absolute Rhythm, see Evans, Rhythm, Illusion and the Poetic Idea 217–308.

¹¹⁶Meschonnic, “The Rhythm Party Manifesto,” 165.

¹¹⁷Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, 30.

¹¹⁸ See Smock, “Conversation,” 126. The subsequent remarks summarize Smock's excellent analyses.

¹¹⁹Clark, Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot, 92.

¹²⁰ See Clark, Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot, 92–93.

¹²¹Derrida, Dissemination, 4, 221. See also Brunette and Wills, “The Spatial Arts,” 19: ‘I pay attention to the power that words, and sometimes the syntactical possibilities as well, have to disrupt the normal usage of discourse, the lexicon and syntax.’

¹²² According to Sarah Kofman, Glas is based on ‘double designs, a double posture or postulation, exacting a double discourse, a double writing’, as well as ‘a double gaze, profound, stereoscopic’ resulting from the two texts which force the reader to ‘a cross-eyed reading’. See Kofman, ““Ça cloche,”” 120.

¹²³ An ‘apparently unpronounceable conversation’; Derrida, Cinders, 22. In ““This Strange Institution Called Literature”” Derrida will also speak of an ‘internal polylogue’ (34, 36).

¹²⁴ Derrida, in Brunette and Wills, “The Spatial Arts,” 22.

¹²⁵Derrida, Points…, 107.

¹²⁶Derrida, “La mythologie blanche,” 249. Cf. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 209 (‘White Mythology’).

¹²⁷ The translator's decision, in ‘such a flower engraves’; Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 209 (“White Mythology”).

¹²⁸Derrida, Dissemination, 274; La dissémination, 306–07.

¹²⁹Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man, 15.

¹³⁰Derrida, La Carte postale, 441 (“Le facteur de la vérité”). Cf. Derrida, The Post Card, 413.

¹³¹Derrida, “Che cos'è la poesia?,” 295; French insertions mine.

¹³²Derrida, Points…, 429.

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Arleen Ionescu

Arleen Ionescu is Professor in the Department of Philology and Foreign Languages at University of Ploie¸ti (UPG), Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Sciences and Executive Editor of Word and Text, a leading journal in the humanities in Romania. Her major research and teaching interests are in the fields of Modernist prose and, increasingly, Critical Theory. She has published widely on Joyce and other related aspects of modernism, as well as on Beckett, Blanchot and Derrida. She is the author of Concordanţe româno-britanice (2004), A History of English Literature: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2008, part of it revised for A Short History of English Literature: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 2012), and Romanian Joyce: From Hostility to Hospitality (2014). Email: [email protected]