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Even though Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot are considered two of the
most important theorists and literary critics of the last century—the two who grant
literature the most radical and decisive role in critical thought—their affinity is not
obvious and has been rarely examined. What is the relationship between these two
figures? On the one hand, there is the German-Jewish thinker, who was persecuted
by the Nazis and committed suicide in 1940 and whose work, first marked by Jewish
theology, then by an idiosyncratic Marxism, is considered the main inspiration for
the “Critical Theory” of the Frankfurter Schule. On the other hand, there is the writer
and thinker from the heartlands of France, whose beginnings in the thirties—years
when Benjamin described the impending catastrophe of fascism in Europe—are
located in the French nationalist right wing. He was a confirmed atheist and man of
letters, inspired by the thinking of Martin Heidegger, but also a participant in the
movement of 1968 and a major precursor of deconstruction. In his speech on the oc-
casion of receiving the Adorno Prize, Jacques Derrida affirms—albeit obliquely—
that deconstruction is the heir of the Frankfurter Schule,1 yet this bond remains to be
explored in depth and in its various nuances. The relationship between Benjamin
and Blanchot may prove a fascinating point of departure for such research.
Benjamin does not appear to be among the names that possess great importance
for Blanchot. Nevertheless, there are signs that Blanchot read parts of the work of the
man whom he called an excellent essayist. He names Benjamin three times in all ex-
plicitly, mentioning him twice almost in passing and citing him once in a short text
from 1968 entitled “A Rupture in Time: Revolution,” which was published in his
Political Writings. Benjamin is evoked again in the context of the aura of the work of
art in the chapter entitled “Ars Nova” from The Infinite Conversation (1969). The most
detailed and important reference to Benjamin—and, as I will try to show, the one
Nothing could signify better the accuracy and elegance with which [Blanchot] was able
to render the theses expressed [in Benjamin’s essay]. His lines articulate as closely as
possible the two aspects [of this essay] whose absence in the works previously examined
we have underscored on several occasions: the revelation of differences in the histori-
co-messianic becoming of languages. (My translation)
LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 231
It is not accidental that Nouss illustrates the accuracy with which Blanchot allegedly
renders Benjamin’s theses by emphasizing “the revelation of differences” among
languages.The “historico-messianic”dimension of Benjamin’s theory of translation
remains a “becoming of languages”for Nouss.Here as well as in his subsequent cita-
tions from Blanchot,2 Nouss seems to describe a process abstracted from what, for
Benjamin,is not only a “becoming”but also the realization of the very thing he envi-
sions through this messianic temporality and that is, moreover, the central concern
of his essay: what he calls “reine Sprache,” a concept taken up again from his major
essay from 1916,“Über Sprache überhaupt und die Sprache des Menschen.”The in-
timate link between these two texts reveals that,for Benjamin,the task of the transla-
tor resides in the potential to make this pure language appear through retrospection
and anticipation, which is at once a paradisiaical “Ursprache”and the messianic lan-
guage of a future and accomplished redemption.3 The historical becoming of lan-
guages, in which translation participates, is measured according to the degree of
proximity to “eine[m] endgültigeren Sprachbereich” (“Aufgabe des Übersetzers”
4.1: 15).
From the outset, Blanchot’s article, “Translating,”is presented explicitly as a re-
flection on Benjamin’s text: “From one of Walter Benjamin’s essays,in which this ex-
cellent essayist speaks to us of the task of the translator,”writes Blanchot in the first
paragraph of “Translating,” “I will draw several remarks on this particular form of
our literary activity” (57). While the introduction prepares the reader for an anno-
tated summary of the main ideas of Benjamin’s theory of translation,the essay proves
instead to be a dialogue with Benjamin.Blanchot,through slight shifts that can be il-
luminated by turning to his unpublished notes, formulates his own thoughts by in-
terweaving them with those of Benjamin and arrives at a position one could consider
nearly opposed to the one occupied by his imaginary interlocutor. It is striking that
the two authors meet, as Alexis Nouss accurately notes, where they envision the ef-
fect of a virtually insurmountable difference between languages. However, as I will
demonstrate, their crucial “dispute”concerns the most important term of their con-
vergence,the key expression present in both texts,but envisioned in a fundamentally
divergent manner: that of a pure language made perceptible by what they consider a
“true”translation. Indeed, the two authors’visions match in what they both contest:
for Blanchot,as for Benjamin,the task of the translator consists in work that opposes
transmission, reproduction, and the representation of meaning. Both of them call
into question the usual conception of translation as a matter of transporting the con-
tent of one language into another,in order to make a work accessible to a reader who
does not speak the original language.For both of them,it is not the communicability
of languages but the tensions of inter- and intralinguistic difference that constitute
the essence and the active realm of translation.Thus,one can speak of a “same other-
ness”: of a common attraction to all that escapes homogenization and the erasure of
232 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014
Blanchot, on the other hand, the translator has not only a task but also a role: that of
the “passeur,” or medium. But Blanchot’s translated note reveals another crucial
difference: pure language, in Benjamin, is “gebannt”—banned, exiled—in the for-
eign language,but it is imprisoned—“gefangen”—in the work.Refraining from pre-
senting the poetic work of art as a prison, Blanchot contracts these two aspects of
pure language into a single one and speaks of the “captivité dans la langue étrangère
[imprisonment in the foreign language].” Likewise, the messianic redemption that
the word “erlösen”connotes in Benjamin’s text is lost in Blanchot,who retains noth-
ing but the notion of liberation.In addition,this liberation has not only already taken
place for Blanchot—he uses the past form “était [was]” to translate Benjamin’s
present “ist”—it also takes place when pure language passes into the translator’s own.
Thus, Blanchot translates “in der Umdichtung”—which refers to the process of
translation—with “[le passage de] la langue pure dans la langue propre [the passage
of pure language into the translator’s own language].” But for Benjamin, pure lan-
guage can only momentarily appear through this passage. It cannot be fixed and
transposed into an existing language, but can only be anticipated messianically, in a
fleeting moment in the course of translating. As the ultimate aim in the passage be-
tween existing languages,pure language does not come to pass: it is the fulfillment to
come,the JX8@H itself.In this paradigmatic passage,the differences I will consider in
the following pages already present themselves: Blanchot highlights the action of
the translator, whereas Benjamin emphasizes the process of translation. Blanchot
fails to mention everything that, in Benjamin’s text, might be interpreted to call the
literary work into question, and, above all, Blanchot distances himself from the re-
demptive and messianic finality of pure language toward which the entire Benja-
minian theory of language tends.
Translator or Translation?
Given the aims of Benjamin and Blanchot, it seems somewhat paradoxical that
the first refers to the “translator” in his title, and the second to the word “translate.”
The two terms appear in Benjamin’s as well as Blanchot’s texts, but it is Benjamin
who presents translation as a nearly autonomous interlinguistic process, while
Blanchot insists on the role of the translator and his intervention in the life of lan-
guages. “Translatability,” writes Peter Fenves on Benjamin’s theory, “designates the
potential of a work and not the skill of the translator” (161). It is in this spirit that
Benjamin, in a passage Blanchot omits in his notes, underscores the objective char-
acter—which is independent of the consciousness of a subject—of the relation be-
tween a work and its translation. Blanchot begins his article, “Translating,”with the
rhetorical question, “do we know all that we owe to translators and, even more, to
234 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014
the translator,who wants to reach the heavens like the builders of the Tower of Babel,
an “ennemi de Dieu [an enemy of God]” (58).
Several times, Benjamin insists that the potential of translation to point to pure
language inheres in existing languages and that it is “verborgen,”hidden in the works
(4.1: 12, 14). Thus, the messianic task of translation takes place in the passage from
one language to the other—a passage for which the translator is the medium—and
not as original creation sprung from his consciousness or will.In Blanchot’s notes,by
contrast, we read:
La traduction ne tend à exprimer que le rapport le plus intime entre deux langues: elle
ne peut révéler cette mystérieuse relation, ni la restituer, se contentant de la représenter
en l’actualisant sur un mode inchoatif ou intentionnel.
Translation does not tend to express anything but the most intimate relation between
two languages: it cannot reveal nor restore that mysterious relationship but rather con-
tents itself with representing it,by actualizing it in an inchoative or intentional mode.
Was “sagt”denn eine Dichtung? Was teilt sie mit? Sehr wenig dem, der sie versteht. Ihr
Wesentliches ist nicht Mitteilung nicht Aussage. Dennoch könnte diejenige Überset-
zung,welche vermitteln will,nichts vermitteln als die Mitteilung—also Unwesentliches.
Das ist denn auch ein Erkennungszeichen der schlechten Übersetzungen. (4.1: 9, my
emphasis)
In these few lines, Benjamin repeats variations on the word “Mittler”: “mitteilen,”
“vermitteln,”“Mitteilung.”Already omitting “was teilt sie mit”in his notes,Blanchot
translates:
Que dit une œuvre littéraire ? Très peu à qui la comprend. Son rôle essentiel n’est ni de
communiquer ni d’énoncer. Une traduction qui se veut communication ne communi-
que que la transmission, cad l’inessentiel. C’est le trait de la mauvaise traduction.
What does a literary work say? Very little to the one who understands it. Its essential
role is neither to communicate nor to express anything. A translation that wishes to be
communication communicates nothing but transmission, that is to say the inessential.
This is the mark of a bad translation. (My emphasis).
While preserving the essential meaning of Benjamin’s sentences, Blanchot not only
neglects his insistence on the negative connotation of “Vermittlung,” but also uses
the word “transmission” as if it were a synonym of “Mitteilung.” In the course of
Blanchot’s sentence, this word becomes glossed as “the inessential,” whereas the
German word for “transmission” has, for Benjamin, positive connotations. Trans-
mission,in the sense of Tradierung,occurs through the medium of translation and,in
contrast to Vermittlung, it resists any voluntary or—especially from the messianic
point of view—premature synthesis.
The importance of this difference between Blanchot’s insistence on the transla-
tor and Benjamin’s insistence on translation, as well as Blanchot’s surprising efface-
ment of Benjamin’s refusal of any voluntary and premature synthesis, becomes
plainly visible in the article “Translating.”There,almost in opposition to Benjamin’s
text, he renders the translator a veritable hero, precisely due to his “pouvoir
unificateur [unifying power]” and his “pur pouvoir d’unifier [pure power of unify-
ing]”(73).In the first and last paragraphs of his article,Blanchot employs the follow-
ing terms of praise: he speaks of gratitude to translators as “men who valiantly enter
into the enigma that is the task of translating,” of “hidden masters of our culture”
(57).He compares them to “Hercules drawing together the banks of the sea”(59) and
ends with a description of a particular poet-translator, Hölderlin, who advanced
“recklessly”toward the abyss of madness.But could Benjamin’s vision of the transla-
tor as a medium of the divine word be closer to Blanchot’s vision of the translator as a
hero on the edge of madness than it seems at first? Despite the fact that the work of
translation is,for the former,a linguistic event independent of a subject or a deliber-
ate action, while latter understands translation as the heroic act of an individual, the
LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 237
two visions meet. They do so where the issue is not that of a rational and conscious
Kantian subject, but of a course that opens the horizon towards what Blanchot calls
explicitly “a state that is other”(59)—a state that would be messianic for Benjamin,
but mad according to Blanchot.
Surely it matters that both Benjamin and Blanchot begin with the literary work
in thinking through translation,but the role and the significance they accord it differ
fundamentally. In “Translating,” Blanchot writes that translation is the
forme originale et si l’on continue de dire à tort ou à raison : il y a ici les poètes, là les ro-
manciers, voire les critiques, tous responsables du sens de la littérature, il faut compter
au même titre les traducteurs, écrivains de la sorte la plus rare, et vraiment incomparab-
les. (69)
original form; and if one continues to say, rightly or wrongly: here are the poets, and
there the novelists, indeed the critics, all of whom are responsible for the meaning of li-
terature, then one must in the same way count the translators, writers of the rarest sort
and truly incomparable. (57)
tower of Babel,and the fall that leads to the arbitrary nature of the sign.5 He returns
to pure language in the last notes that he had written in 1940 in preparation for his
theses on the philosophy of history. In these materials, he speaks about a universal
language that can come into being only with the coming of the Messiah.If a paradi-
siacal state is at stake in his first references to a pure language, these last writings are
essentially messianic and directed towards a future. In his article, “Translating,”
Blanchot takes up these Biblical and messianic allusions of pure language again
briefly,but the tone is different,and the transformation of this concept in Blanchot’s
writing proves radical.Even though,in “Translating,”Blanchot mentions in passing
the Biblical story of the tower of Babel—where, let us remember, the translator is
identified as the “enemy of God”(58)—he distances himself from everything that,in
Benjamin’s essay, refers to the Jewish tradition, including pure language, which,
moreover, Blanchot calls most often “langue à l’état pur” [“language in the pure
state”]. What, for Benjamin, derives from divinely inspired Adamic language and is
conceived in his essay as a messianic destination, is not only altered radically in
Blanchot’s essay, but also comes to belong to an entirely different, in some contexts
even antagonistic tradition.
“Jadis,”Blanchot writes somewhat denigratingly, “on croyait pouvoir remonter à
quelque langage originaire, parole suprême qu’il eut suffit de parler pour dire vrai.
Benjamin retient quelque chose de ce rêve [In the past, one believed it possible thus
to return to some originary language,the supreme language that one needed only to
speak in order to speak truly. Benjamin retains something of this dream]” (70).
Blanchot expresses his skepticism—even a certain disdain towards this belief—by
paraphrasing Benjamin’s theory subsequently in the subjunctive. His summary re-
sults in the diagnosis that it is “visiblement [clearly]” a matter of “un jeu utopique
d’idées [a utopian play of ideas]” (70).
Indeed, it is not this aspect of Benjaminian language that attracts Blanchot. He
insists that Benjamin suggests something else:
Tout traducteur vit de la différence des langues, toute traduction est fondée sur cette
différence,tout en poursuivant,apparemment,le dessein pervers de la supprimer.(70)
Every translator lives by the difference of languages; every translation is founded upon
this difference even while pursuing, or so it appears, the perverse design of suppressing
it. (58)
It is true that, for Benjamin, the difference between languages that the translator
confronts makes the effect of translation—the revelation of a messianic poten-
tial—possible,but Blanchot inverts the order of things.According to Benjamin,this
difference is the condition of the translator’s messianic task to expose the incomplete-
ness of existing languages and, through an inverse dialectic, to reveal and anticipate
through this lack their future unification in a pure language. Blanchot distances
240 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014
himself from this idea in ways that one can trace already in his translations of pas-
sages from Benjamin’s essay in his notes. When Benjamin speaks of the intimate
relation among all languages that translation expresses,Blanchot translates,“le rap-
port le plus intime entre deux langues [the most intimate relation between two lan-
guages]” (my emphasis), thus minimizing the totality and the completeness which,
for Benjamin,represents the JX8@H of translation.While Benjamin invokes the “das
große Motiv einer Integration der vielen Sprachen zur einen wahren” (4.1: 16),
Blanchot translates this vision of an absolute unification of dispersed languages with
an integration that is only partial and—introducing a subjunctive form that is absent
in Benjamin’s essay—conditional. Blanchot renders this passage: “le grand motif de
l’intégration des langues multiples en la seule vraie [the grandiose intention to inte-
grate a plurality of languages in a single language which would be the true one]” (my
emphasis). His choice to distance himself from Benjamin’s explicit messianism
expresses itself most clearly in his translation of Benjamin’s formulation, “das
messianische Ende ihrer Geschichte [der Sprachen]”(4.1: 14) as “une sorte de terme
messianique [a sort of messianic term].”Recopying a few sentences from Mallarmé,
which Benjamin quotes in French, Blanchot replaces an adjectival phrase that fur-
ther determines the feminine substantive “la [langue] suprême”with the masculine
abstract substantive,“le suprême.”This is,no doubt,an error of haste,but one which,
even if unintentional,transposes Benamin’s citation of Mallarmé’s words into an un-
specified, absolute “supreme” that no longer refers to the linguistic phenomenon at
the heart of Benjamin’s messianic thinking but supports Blanchot’s own thinking on
pure language.
Blanchot obfuscates the passages where Benjamin refers explicitly to a messi-
anism inspired by Jewish mysticism. He thus omits an important phrase in which
Benjamin describes how translation participates in the messianic harmonization of
languages in one pure language in terms of the “Scherben eines Gefäßes” (4.1: 18).
This is undoubtedly a Kabbalistic allusion to the breaking of vessels that corre-
sponds to the end of the paradisiacal state of man and language and suggests the
hope of tikkun olam,the messianic healing of the world.This image links Benjamin’s
text to the tradition of Jewish mysticism. Benjamin associates existing languages
with these shards, which, “um sich zusammenfügen zu lassen, in den kleinsten
Einzelheiten einander zu folgen,doch nicht so zu gleichen haben.”He continues:
[S]o muß,anstatt dem Sinn des Originals sich ähnlich zu machen,die Übersetzung lie-
bend vielmehr und bis ins Einzelne hinein dessen Art des Meinens in der eigenen
Sprache sich anbilden, um so beide wie Scherben als Bruchstück eines Gefäßes, als
Bruchstück einer größeren Sprache erkennbar zu machen. (18)
Hierfür wie in jeder andern wesentlichen Hinsicht stellen sich Hölderlins Übertra-
gungen,besonders die der beiden Sophokleischen Tragödien,bestätigend dar.In ihnen
ist die Harmonie der Sprachen so tief, daß der Sinn nur noch wie eine Äolsharfe vom
Winde von der Sprache berührt wird. Hölderlins Übersetzungen sind Urbilder ihrer
Form; sie verhalten sich auch zu den vollkommensten Übertragungen ihrer Texte als
das Urbild zum Vorbild, wie es der Vergleich der Hölderlinschen und Borchardtschen
Übersetzung der dritten pythischen Ode von Pindar zeigt. Eben darum wohnt in ih-
nen vor andern die ungeheure und ursprüngliche Gefahr aller Übersetzung: daß die
Tore einer so erweiterten und durchwalteten Sprache zufallen und den Übersetzer ins
Schweigen schließen. Die Sophokles-Übersetzungen waren Hölderlins letztes Werk.
In ihnen stürzt der Sinn von Abgrund zu Abgrund, bis er droht in bodenlosen Sprach-
tiefen sich zu verlieren.6 (21)
Dès les traductions de Sophocle par Hölderlin, l’ahmonie [sic] est si profonde entre les
deux langues que le souffle du langage n’effleure le sens que comme le vent fait vibrer la
langue hx [sic] éolienne.Ces traductions st de vrais archétypes: sur elles rôde l’immense
danger que court dès l’origine tte traduction: la porte d’une langue si élargie risque de
retomber sur le traducteur et de le murer ds le silence. Ses versions de Sophocle furent
l’œuvre ultime de H. En elles, on voit le sens s’effondrer d’abîme en abîme jusqu’à ris-
quer de se perdre ds les gouffres sans fond du langage.
242 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014
l’exemple de Hölderlin montre quel risque court, à la fin, l’homme fasciné par la puis-
sance de traduire: les traductions d‘Antigone et d’Œdipe furent presque ses derniers ou-
vrages au tournant de la folie, œuvres extrêmement médités, maîtrisées et volontaires,
conduites avec une fermeté inflexible par le dessein, non pas de transporter le texte grec
en allemand ni de reconduire la langue allemande aux sources grecques, mais d’unifier
les deux puissances représentant l’une les vicissitudes de L’Occident, l’autre celles de
l’Orient, en la simplicité d’un langage total et pur. (72–73)
The example of Hölderlin illustrates the risk that is run, in the end, by the man fascina-
ted by the power of translating: the translations of Antigone and Oedipus were nearly his
last works at the outbreak of madness. These works are exceptionally studied, restrai-
ned,and intentional,conducted with inflexible firmness,with the intent not of transpo-
sing the Greek text into German, nor of reconveying the German language to its Greek
sources, but of unifying the two powers—the one representing the vicissitudes of the
West,the other those of the Orient—in the simplicity of a pure and total language.(61)
What for Benjamin is the lost language of paradise, an idea derived from Jewish
mysticism,becomes in Blanchot’s text the union of the Greek and the German.This
eminently Heideggerian J`B@H played a considerable role in the context of the cul-
tural and intellectual aspirations of the National Socialists.It is clear that Blanchot’s
thinking is not oriented towards the claim that the heritage of Greece was destined
to be realized by Germany,a claim which influenced so strongly the ultimately mur-
derous vision of an absolutely supreme,neo-pagan Germany,opposed principally to
the Jewish and, to a lesser degree, Christian tradition. Nevertheless, Blanchot’s
“translation”of Benjamin’s pure messianic language into a pure Greco-German lan-
guage,in an article in which Blanchot claims to make “some remarks”on Benjamin’s
essay, is surprising. Although inspired by Benjamin’s remarks on Hölderlin and his
translations of Sophocles, the divergence between the end of Blanchot’s article,
which concludes with praise for the German poet, and the final passage of Ben-
jamin’s essay is crucial. For it pertains to all three of the aspects of translation I have
been analyzing: the distinction between translation and translator, the status of the
LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 243
poetic work in relation to its translation,and the ultimate orientation of the authors’
philosophies of language.
In words of homage already announced by Blanchot’s insistence on the role of
the translator as an individual rather than on translation as a phenomenon,Blanchot
glorifies Hölderlin in the last paragraph of his article.He turns him into a mytholog-
ical hero who “s’avançait témérairement vers ce centre où il croyait trouver rassemblé
le pur pouvoir d’unifier et tel qu’il pût donner sens,en dehors de tout sens déterminé
et limité [was advancing fearlessly toward the center in which he believed he would
find collected the pure power of unifying, a center such that it would be able to give
meaning,beyond all determined and limited meaning]”(73). Here,one recognizes a
central value of modernist poetics: the transgression of conventional meaning in
view of a singular literary creation. Yet Blanchot’s insistence on the “power to unify”
and the revival of “meaning” is foreign to Benjamin’s conception of translation as a
medium through which all meaning leads to its own abolishment, ending in a pure
language that “ne vise plus rien et n’exprime plus rien [no longer means or expresses
anything]” (19).
The greatest divergence between Blanchot’s article and Benjamin’s essay occurs
in Blanchot’s omission of the latter’s final paragraph,both in his notes and in his arti-
cle.“Translating”ends with an emphasis on what Benjamin,in his penultimate para-
graph, describes as the danger of Hölderlin’s translation. For Blanchot, the courage
to confront this risk marks the conclusion of his text: Hölderlin is the one who,
avec le pouvoir unificateur qui est à l’œuvre dans toute relation et dans tout langage […]
[s]’expose en même temps à la scission préalable, l’homme prêt à traduire est dans une
intimité constante, dangereuse, admirable, et c’est de cette familiarité [avec le danger]
qu’il tient le droit d’être le plus orgueilleux et le plus secret des écrivains – avec cette con-
viction que traduire est, en fin de compte folie. (73)
with the unifying power that is at work in every practical relation, as in any language,
[…] [is] expose[d] [...] to the pure scission that is always prior[;] the man who is ready
to translate is in a constant,dangerous,and admirable intimacy—and it is this familiari-
ty [with danger] that gives him the right to be the most arrogant or the most secret of
writers—with the conviction that, in the end, translating is madness. (61)
This radicalization of the danger Benjamin describes of losing oneself in the bot-
tomless depths of language contrasts fundamentally with the final passage of
Benjamin’s essay, which Blanchot does not address.
Having portrayed the dizzying fall from abyss to abyss faced by the translator
who follows Hölderlin’s example, Benjamin continues: “Aber es gibt ein Halten”
(21), which Gandillac translates, “Mais il y a un point d’arrêt [There is, however, a
stop]”(275).In fact,in this context,the German word “Halten”suggests much more:
there is something that holds and that holds back,preventing this fall into a bottom-
less gulf and saving one from madness. Whereas, for Blanchot, there is a “scission
244 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2014
préalable [prior scission]” (73), there is, in Benjamin’s essay, a return to the very
depths of a monotheistic “one.” This return manifests itself “[w]o der Text
unmittelbar, ohne vermittelnden Sinn, in seiner Wörtlichkeit der wahren Sprache
[…] angehört”(21),a condition vouchsafed in Holy Scripture alone,which would be
“übersetzbar schlechthin (21) and thus without difference, tension, or mediation.
Here are Benjamin’s final words: “Die Interlinearversion des heiligen Textes ist das
Urbild oder Ideal aller Übersetzung” (21). This conception, which comes from the
Kabbalistic Jewish tradition of a primary unity before the breaking of the vessels—
and contrasts sharply with a “prior scission”—forms the messianic core of Benja-
min’s philosophy of language. It rests on the idea that God’s word, which reverber-
ates through Biblical Hebrew, passed immediately, “ohne vermittelnden Sinn”(73),
into a human language. Between Hölderlin and the Bible, the Greco-German and
the Jewish; between the primacy of a scission and of monotheistic truth, Blanchot
and Benjamin clear a path, each going in the opposite direction, that leads to an ab-
solute. It remains to be examined whether Blanchot, in translating Benjamin liter-
ally as well as figuratively,remains faithful to his own vision of the task of the transla-
tor, which would involve exposing one’s own language to the alterity of the other.
And in this case, it would entail the introduction of a language that would be, para-
doxically, the monotheistic language aiming towards what is one, what is same. It
may, however, be even more paradoxical that, according to Benjamin’s theory, even
Blanchot’s “language,”like an indispensable fragment, would have to join the vessel
that will constitute,in an uncertain but anticipated future,the comprehensiveness of
tikkun olam, the healing of the world.
Notes
1 Derrida remarks, “[W]hy not recognize, clearly and publicly, once and for all, the affini-
ties between your work and Adorno’s, in truth your debt to Adorno? Aren’t you an heir of the
Frankfurt School?” (176).
2 Nouss cites Blanchot’s remark, “[Tout] traducteur vit de la différence des langues, toute
traduction est fondée sur cette différence, tout en poursuivant, apparemment, le dessein
pervers de la supprimer. [...] À la vérité, la traduction n’est nullement destinée à faire
disparaître la différence dont elle est au contraire le jeu [...]” (82). I translate: “Every translator
lives by the difference of languages; every translation is founded upon this difference even
while pursuing, or so it appears, the perverse design of suppressing it. […] In fact translation is
not at all intended to make the difference disappear – it is, on the contrary, the play of this dif-
ference” (58).
3 Irving Wohlfarth writes, “Der Sprachaufsatz beschreibt dessen Aufgabe vor dem
Sündenfall [...]. Der Übersetzeraufsatz beschreibt die entsprechende Aufgabe danach” (93).
LISKA: Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot 245
4 My translation. Blanchot’s abbreviations have been retained. I would like to thank Eric
Hoppenot for making these notes available to me. Gandillac translates this passage:
“Racheter dans sa propre langue ce pur langage exilé dans la langue étrangère, libérer en le
transposant ce pur langage captif dans l’oeuvre, telle est la tâche du traducteur” (273).
5 Benjamin repeatedly calls this idea of language “bourgeois.” Benjamin, “Über die
langage si élargi et si imprégnée [the gates of a language so enlarged and impregnated]” (275),
rendering “durchwaltet” with the French word for “impregnated.” Durchwaltet is virtually un-
translatable: one speaks of the presence of a divine sovereignty as the “Walten Gottes,” which
would imply that language, the term modified by “durchwaltet,” is impregnated by this divine
presence.
Works Cited