Maurice BLANCHOT
Tapuscrit inédit de deux versions courtes de Thomas l'Obscur précédant l'édition de 1950, dite version Chapelain.
(1941), 21x29,5cm, 212 feuillets.
An exceptional collection of two unpublished short versions of
Thomas the Obscure written between 1941 and 1945.
This unique document made up of 12 Roneo pages (typewritten copies using a stencil). It consists of 3 pages of handwritten manuscripts and 200 pages of typescript coming from the printing of the proof of
Thomas the Obscure in 1941 (with still some errors in the correction of the manuscripts present at the time of this first publication), it was transmitted to Blanchot who reworked and it is filled with his handwritten correction.
It is divided in two independent sections:
The first is a group of 12 complete Roneo pages, opening on the first line of the novel and finishing with the name of the author, which seemed to be how it was intended to be published. More than an extract, these 12 pages assemble several episodes of the novel in a short coherent story and finishes in a blaze of glory “he went with even and heavy footsteps, he went with the same footsteps, of men who are surrounded in a shroud and whose eyes and hands are focused on their ascension towards the most appealing point of life.”
Therefore the text is thought to be a first short version of Thomas the Obscure, reduced to a “novella" it is the same size as his first two novella, The Idyll (L'Idylle) and The Last Word (Le Dernier Mot) which were composed some years before.The second part is compilation of 200 pages of the typescript of 1941 with the original title page enhanced with a handwritten note by Maurice Blanchot: “5 Rue Jules Chapelain / Paris VI
e” (It is known of two letters dated April and May 1940 sent by Blanchot using this address). Under the title, in another handwriting is written in pencil: 15 chapters /590,00 words. “One finds equally and regularly in places; grey, blue and red crosses in pencil, the indication of page layout and other typical elements of proof used by a printer. This typescript is very incomplete, it is made up of large passage from
Thomas the Obscure, certain pages have almost no corrections on them, while others are filled with reworking of the text, containing sentences or paragraphs completely crossed out and numerous addition to the manuscript which includes the end of the story, which was reworked many times on the tapuscript. It was entirely rewritten twice on two pages that were stapled to the tapuscript. So, there are three substantially different versions of the end of the story. The edits and the rewriting of the text overlap only partially with the choices made by Maurice Blanchot for the 1950 version.
Because of this editing, the result is therefore a new version in the form of a 12 page “novella” which just until the present was unpublished and unknown part of his bibliography. It is a first attempt at his longer version, which remained unfinished, but which will be in part take up again some years later and will be concluded in the 1950 publication of the new
Thomas the Obscure reduced by three – quarters.
“We know almost nothing about the reasons that drove Maurice Blanchot to write the text. In a 1950 letter, he spoke to his friend George Bataille of the project he was working on, that would allow him, he said to see the novel “from the other end of the telescope” to unveil its heart. Apart from that, no other reference to the project is made, which nevertheless coincide with a major turning point in the narrative work of the author” (Michael Holland). Beginning in 1948, in fact Blanchot abandons the novel “interminable in his eyes” and engages in writing more and more refined short stories; an aporetic writing project in a quest to stretch his limits. However, despite this radical transformation initiated by
The Highest (
Le Trés Haut), Blanchot does not renounce his earlier writings. The publication of the new
Thomas the Obscure will be followed by that of his earlier novellas:
The Idyll and
The Last Word, written simultaneously in the 30's with the first unpublished version of the novel:
Thomas the Solitary.
The typescript and the manuscript that we are presenting demonstrate many marks of this precocity search for a writing pruned of the contingent elements of the narrative which Blanchot considered important since his early writings and which he will continually returns to. The archives of his sister Marguerite Blanchot, in fact revealed the existence of several stages of his writing and reedited of the same novels:
- A first version, unpublished and more compact than the novel published in 1941, intitled
Thomas the Solitary which is conserved at the Library at Harvard University.
- A second manuscript/typescript of this unpublished novel greatly modified and amputated, which constitute the first tentative of reworking the text towards that which will become
Thomas the Obscure. This intermediary vision “ in development” which diverge as much form the primitive novel of 1930 and that published in 1941 highlights the internal structure of the story that Blanchot wanted and constitute without doubt a key for the interpretation of the Blanchot writings.(cf. the description of
Manuscript and tapuscript completely unpublished constitutes an elaboration of Thomas the Obscure from the tapuscript of Thomas the Solitary, sold by the Bookstore Le Feu Follet)
- Finally, from this tapuscript, appears two new versions that constitute the third and the fourth stages in the writing of his
Thomas after the publication of the novel in 1941 and before that which will led to the version of 1950.
The form incomplete of our document could be explained by the accidently loss of the original tapuscript. However, among all the documents of her brother conserved by Marguerite Blanchot, the only partially incomplete work, is a tiny part of a correspondence, intentionally edited by the recipients for the reason of privacy. As for the rest, Marguerite Blanchot and her descendants have, it seems, perfectly conserved the documents of the writer in their original state.
Thus, it highly probable that the amputation of the tapuscript happened at the same time as the reworking of the text, and that it was a deliberate act on the part of Maurice Blanchot. A more profound study of the unchanged parts of the work in relation to the original text and the 1951 version would permit without doubt the resolution of this question and bring to light important information on the creative process Maurice Blanchot underwent when writing and editing his work.
With the manuscript of
Thomas the Solitary and the intermediary version of
Thomas the Obscure this exceptional document is the ultimate trace of the considerable work accomplished by Maurice Blanchot in this his first foundational novel that, over the years, he makes a part of himself, following the example of the main character, revealing his essence in erasing it. Here Blanchot pushes sometimes the exercise of reduction to the limit of absence, attempting to attain that which will be henceforth his principal ambition as a writer: “idleness” “in activity” “inaction”.
An unpublished document representative of the work of “creative dissolution” undertaken by Blanchot, illustrating perfectly the notice that until his death was used for his biography. “Maurice Blanchot, Writer and Critic. His life was completely devoted to literature and to a silence that was his own.”
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