BLANCHOT (Maurice).

Lot 108
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Estimation :
1500 - 1800 EUR
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Result : 2 080EUR
BLANCHOT (Maurice).
12 L.A.S. to Raymond Queneau. September 3, 1941-1971. 14 p. in-16 or in-8 in tiny handwriting, mostly from Paris + 3 signed letters (4 p. in-4), August 18 - October 29, 1941. Beautiful friendly and literary correspondence. The first letters concern the association "Jeune France", of which Blanchot was then director of the literary edition, from which he resigned at the end of October 1941 after having recognized that J.F. artistic and literary association was in no way independent of the political powers in place. As I had asked you to collaborate in the notebooks and collections, seeing in these publications an interest that I believed to be valid, I feel obliged to tell you why I had to change my feelings. If you will read the few lines enclosed, you will see the reasons that made it my duty to leave and the gravity with which they were imposed on me! [See L.S. of October 29, 1941]. I am very moved by the mistake you have spared me. Aminabad and Aminadab. The text of St. John of the Cross says exactly: "no one was a witness to it, nor did Aminadab show it", and St. John of the Cross adds in his commentary that in Scripture Aminadab symbolizes the devil; but I remember that a commentator of St. John of the Cross remarked that Aminadab is the one who cannot appear, the prince of darkness (...) (Vézelay, June 26, 1943). BATAILLE is courting the farm girls and seems to be doing brilliantly. He may not have an excellent appearance, but he says he is doing well. He is also working hard - I imagine he will soon have finished a new book. And what calm in this dead country! Romain Rolland himself has left it. If you don't mind, would you give me some news about you and the house? When will you be baptized at the beginning? Are we still talking about the Nietzsche centenary? About copyrights for Faux Pas: I'm going to bore you with a story, obviously completely unrelated to your duties, but since, in the aminadabian house on Seb. B., I don't know who is interested in it, I address to you that it certainly does not concern... Thank you for thinking of me, but I think that I do not wish to speak again about these writers, at least at this moment (...) I answer very late, but I was obscure. I am thinking, as of a project from which I would like to free myself, of a book on literature - which could be entitled Literary Space. There is still the text that I had given you, a few years ago, for "Histoire des Littératures": can I finally dispose of it? I did not want to tell you, too directly, earlier how much I felt in friendship with your books (certainly not forgetting the "Sonnets"), and also happy to know that they are loved by many others... André Neher sent a manuscript to Blanchot thinking that he had some function at Gallimard. I wrote to him to disabuse him of my role, but to tell him that I would not fail to give his manuscript to the reading committee that would seem to me to be the most likely to recognize its merits (...) He therefore sent it to Queneau, wondering in which collection a book devoted to the philosophy of the Mahorel of Prague could be placed (....] Reflecting on this, I formulated this wish (quite disinterestedly): why shouldn't the Gallimard publishing house take advantage of this opportunity to open a collection reserved for Judaic thought and literature, both of which are still largely unknown and, as it were, buried? The success of the Albin Michel collection (despite its timidities and limitations) shows that this might not be a bad idea, even from the editorial point of view. May I say that I think a lot of you? I know from Louis-René DES FORÊTS and from Robert ANTELME how difficult things are for you at the moment. The fact that I too have recently passed through the American hospital, like Janine Queneau, this community of experience already makes us solidary (...) I know that silence has fallen between us, but it has never really separated me from you, and I am sure that it has not kept you from me...
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