(Draft typescript of letter to Jean-Paul Sartre, with autograph corrections and with a second version of the first page, and typescript with autograph corrections of "Le monde en question (Cours du monde)" (project for La Revue internationale)
Set of five typescript leaves, rectos only (with the exception of one leaf recto-verso), with corrections in red and black ballpoint pen in Maurice Blanchot's hand.
This important collection bears witness to the exchanges between Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Paul Sartre around the famous "Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la guerre d'Algérie" and the publication project that resulted from it, La Revue internationale. Known as the "Manifeste des 121," this declaration, signed by numerous intellectuals and artists and published on September 6, 1960, had been drafted by Dionys Mascolo and Jean Schuster, assisted by Maurice Blanchot, in anticipation of the trial of the Jeanson network (a group of French militants supporting the FLN) and with the aim of informing public opinion about the protest movement against the Algerian War and its anti-democratic excesses. Among the signatories was, of course, Sartre.
The manifesto had made many personalities aware of the influence they could exercise in public debate, even in the course of History. It was in this context that in autumn 1960, Maurice Blanchot, Dionys Mascolo and Elio Vittorini decided to create a review that would be not literary but critical, whose purpose would be to continue this action. They sought the help of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose extraordinary aura would benefit the publication favorably.
In his letter to Sartre, Blanchot attempts to convince the philosopher to join the project: "Vous m'avez rappelé ce que j'ai dû dire quelquefois et que j'ai toujours intimement pensé : que la Déclaration ne trouverait son vrai sens que si elle était le commencement de quelque chose." ["You reminded me of what I must have said sometimes and what I have always intimately thought: that the Declaration would only find its true meaning if it were the beginning of something."] "[...] Je voudrais dire mon sentiment propre : je crois que si nous voulons représenter, comme il faut, sans équivoque, le changement dont nous avons les uns et les autres le pressentiment, si nous voulons le rendre plus réel et l'approfondir, dans sa présence mouvante, c'est seulement à partir d'un organe nouveau que nous pourrons le faire. A partir de là, si l'on voit Sartre, et d'autres avec lui parmi les 121, décider de s'exprimer en cette forme choisie délibérément comme nouvelle, chacun " ["I would like to express my own feeling: I believe that if we want to represent, as we should, unequivocally, the change that we all have a premonition of, if we want to make it more real and deepen it, in its moving presence, it is only from a new organ that we will be able to do so. From there, if we see Sartre, and others with him among the 121, decide to express themselves in this form deliberately chosen as new, everyone"] "[...] comprendra que vraiment nous entrons dans une nouvelle phase et que quelque chose de décisif a lieu qui cherche à s'affirmer." ["will understand that we are truly entering a new phase and that something decisive is taking place that seeks to assert itself."] But Sartre would refuse to commit to the review.
However, during the first six months of 1961, Blanchot devoted himself body and soul to the project, hoping it would come to fruition. The typescript included here, "Le monde en question (Cours du monde)," reveals the table of contents he envisioned for the first issue: texts on destalinization, the situation of the German press, intellectual compartmentalization in France and Italy, hunger strikes, and the Berlin Wall and utopia. The review would never see the light of day, to the great despair of Blanchot who was deeply enthusiastic about the idea of collective and international writing.
The final version of Blanchot's letter to Sartre would be published in the dossier devoted by the review Lignes to the project of La Revue internationale (no. 11, September 1990).
Important testimony on the follow-up that Blanchot wished to give with Sartre's help to the "Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la guerre d'Algérie."
