Journal des débats

Autograph manuscript by the author, 2½ pages in-8, published in the issue of 30 March 1944 of the Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript in very dense handwriting, containing numerous deletions, corrections and additions. This is a review published on the occasion of the reissue of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto with a preface by Paul Eluard. Accompanied by the complete typescript.
The reissue by Éditions José Corti of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto with a preface by Paul Eluard offered Maurice Blanchot the opportunity to set out his definition of the Gothic novel, which, thanks notably to the Surrealists, was then enjoying a...

Autograph manuscript by the author, two and a half pages, octavo, published in the issue of May 4, 1944 of the Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, densely written, with numerous deletions, corrections, and additions.
Together with the complete typescript.
A column published on the occasion of the release of Robert Poulet’s Prélude à l'apocalypse.

In this column devoted to the contemporary state of the fantastic novel, Maurice Blanchot focuses in particular on Robert Poulet’s Prélude à l'apocalypse which had just been published: « Le lecteur passe volontiers du réel au fantastique, mais qu'y gagne-t-il ? Les...

Autograph manuscript by the author, two and a half pages in octavo, published in the issue of April 13, 1944 of the Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, in a very dense hand, with numerous deletions, corrections, and additions.
Accompanied by the complete signed typescript.
A review published on the occasion of the posthumous release of Jarry’s novel, La Dragonne.

In this review devoted to Alfred Jarry and Père Ubu, Maurice Blanchot examines the confusion between the two and its consequences: « [...] on peut penser que Jarry, en s'entêtant à être le Père Ubu, a pendant sa vie gaspillé une partie de ses...

Autograph manuscript by the author, 2½ pages octavo, published in the April 13, 1944 issue of the Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
Together with the complete signed typescript.
Chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Jarry's posthumous novel, La Dragonne.

In this chronicle devoted to Alfred Jarry and Père Ubu, Maurice Blanchot was interested in the confusion between one and the other and its consequences: « [...] on peut penser que Jarry, en s'entêtant à être le Père Ubu, a pendant sa vie gaspillé une partie...

Autograph manuscript by the author, 4 and a half octavo pages, published in the June 2, 1943 issue of the Journal des Débats.
Complete manuscript in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Servius et la fortune by Georges Dumézil. The complete typescript is included.

By devoting his study to Dumézil's work on Servius, Blanchot established a crucial milestone in the evolution of his own thought, the passage from political conviction to literary engagement.
This reflection on sovereignty indeed led the former Maurrassian to reorient...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 4 and a half pages in-8 published in the issue of November 3, 1943 of Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
The complete typescript is included.
Chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of L'Apocalypse de St Jean, vision chrétienne de l'histoire by Father H.M. Féret.

From the outset, Maurice Blanchot, doing his job as a critic, praises the seriousness of the study conducted by Father Féret. But what interests him more than this careful orthodoxy are the powerful echoes of L'Apocalypse in the...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2 and a half octavo pages published in the April 20, 1944 issue of Journal des Débats. Complete manuscript with very dense writing, containing numerous strikethroughs, corrections and additions. Literary chronicle on the work of Claude Roy. The complete typescript is included.
This critique of La Mer à boire by Claude Roy is at once a detailed analysis of each short story and a poetic hymn to the poet's writing: "Le style de Claude Roy répond à merveille à ce jeu de nuances : il est lui aussi plein d'échos qui s'évanouissent, de mots qui se répercutent: il est libre, discipliné, tout en inventions et fidèle à la réalité qu'il...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2 and a half pages in-4 published in the March 2, 1944 issue of Journal des Débats. Complete manuscript with very dense writing, containing numerous strikethroughs, corrections and additions. Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication, in the new collection of Gallimard editions devoted to "La Jeune Philosophie," of the work "Le souci de sincérité" by Yvon Belaval. The complete typescript is included.

Under Blanchot's pen, philosophical criticism acquires its own autonomy which makes it impossible to distinguish between Belaval's original thought and the luminous interpretation that Maurice Blanchot offers of it, in a few...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 4½ pages octavo published in the December 23, 1942 issue of Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, very densely written, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
The complete typescript is included.
Chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of four new novels: Les Hommes forts by Georges Magnane, Le Vent se lève by Marius Grout, Clément by Maurice Toesca and Si le ciel tombe by Roger de Lafforest.

At the end of 1942, Maurice Blanchot reviews current literary events and provides uncompromising criticism of four novels by Georges Magnane, Marius...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2½ pages in-8 published in the February 10, 1944 issue of Journal des Débats.
Complete manuscript with very dense handwriting, containing numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Jean Dumay's "Journal de guerre".
The complete typescript is included.
Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice Blanchot published 173 articles on recently published books in the "Chronique de la vie intellectuelle" of Journal des Débats.
In half a newspaper page (approximately seven pages in-8), the young author of "Thomas l'obscur" takes his first steps in the field of literary...

Autograph manuscript by the author, 2½ pages octavo, published in the December 10, 1943 issue of the Journal des Débats. Complete manuscript in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions. Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Passage de l'homme by Marius Grout, winner of the 1943 Prix Goncourt. Accompanied by the complete typescript.
Blanchot's critique of this future Prix Goncourt winner is not gentle, although he perfectly grasps its stakes. This story whose tragic unfolding ends in a deception that creates a new faith contains, for Blanchot, an equivocal moral.
"We understand what Marius Grout seeks to show...

Autograph manuscript by the author, 2½ pages octavo, published in the January 13, 1944 issue of the Journal des Débats.
Complete recto-verso manuscript, in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
Accompanied by the complete typescript, with one autograph correction in black ink.

Chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Le pèlerinage aux sources by Joseph Lanza del Vasto.

This chronicle by Maurice Blanchot forms an astonishing echo to one of his very first published texts (1931), devoted to Gandhi's Memoirs, which already contained the essence of his thought from the 1930s...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2 and a half octavo pages published in the January 20, 1944 issue of Journal des Débats. Complete manuscript in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions. Literary chronicle on the literary current events of the moment. The complete typescript is included.

"The subject is not limited to the plot: it depends equally on incidents of language, details of composition and, even more, on those images that reveal the meaning of creation; the subject of a novel is above all the world it brings to birth."

This principle of the novelistic art could just as well apply to the chronicle it...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2 and a half quarto pages published in the December 23, 1943 issue of Journal des Débats.
Complete manuscript in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions. The complete typescript is included.
This article, one of the rare pieces to appear on the journal's front page, is an audacious critique of the traditionalist vision of Art, which, arguing for the necessary adequacy between Art and Truth, condemns Modernity. With implacable intellectual rigor, Blanchot demonstrates how this conception of "authentic Art" "joins exactly that of the surrealists" and cites one of the major...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 4½ pages in-8 published in the September 8, 1943 issue of Journal des Débats.
Complete manuscript with very dense handwriting, containing numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
The complete typescript is included.
Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Les Voyages de Montesquieu, prefaced by Marcel Arland.
This artificial collection of Montesquieu's travel notebooks gives Blanchot the opportunity to praise a form of "natural" writing, "pure of all concern for readership". These intimate notes indeed testify to an art of "concision [which] delivers [facts] to...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 2½ pages in-4 published in the May 26, 1943 issue of Journal des Débats. Complete manuscript with very dense handwriting, containing numerous deletions, corrections and additions. The complete typescript is included.
Each chapter of Roland Cailleux's novel, Saint-Genès ou la vie brève, presents a different narrative form. This gives Blanchot the opportunity to return to the interest of this literary audacity initiated a few years earlier by Joyce: "The novel showed itself there with all its possibilities, it metamorphosed into everything it could be."
Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice Blanchot published 173...

Autograph manuscript by the author of 4½ pages in quarto published in the November 27-28, 1943 issue of Journal des Débats.
Complete manuscript with very dense handwriting, containing numerous deletions, corrections and additions.
Literary chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of Paul Thiry d'Holbach et la philosophie scientifique au XVIIIe siècle by Pierre Naville.
The complete typescript is included.
Far more than a critique of Pierre Naville's work on Baron d'Holbach, this long article by Blanchot is a veritable philosophical pamphlet against the materialist thought of the Encyclopedists, whom he accuses of wanting to « know the world...

The first edition, published in a small number of copies, of which there were no deluxe copies, of this offprint from Pierre Nora's review, Le Débat.
Precious signed autograph inscription from Maurice Blanchot to his sister "... for you, this little reading and to help you regain courage".
Marguerite Blanchot, renowned organist at Chalon cathedral, remained all her life in the family home, with her mother and aunt. "She would gradually become, for the family, like the memory of origins." Very close to Maurice, she corresponded regularly with the writer who showed her great gratitude for her devotion to their invalid mother. While Blanchot's intense affection for...

Autograph manuscript of the author of 2 ½ pages 4to published in the issue dated March 2, 1944 of the Journal of Debates. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions. Literary Chronicle published on the occasion of the publication of The Wyvern Marcel Ayme full typescript is attached.
"The books of Marcel Ayme have this happiness to make coarse the most subtle criticism explanations," says Blanchot in the introduction. Yet this column tribute to the poetic and light literature of the storyteller, none the less an analysis of "magical realism" own writing by Marcel Ayme.
Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice...

Autograph manuscript of the author of 5 pages 8vo published in the issue dated 20 January 1943 of the Journal of Debates. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions. Full typescript is attached.
This article is regularly cited as a result of the incipit against the burning "fire libraries remains the misfortune that announces the end of the mind. Burning a book, write, are two acts between which culture entered its oscillations contrary. "It is indeed a position against a strong identifiers of Nazism, which clearly marks the failover Blanchot.
But beyond these historical considerations, this chronic "free" is also a...

Autograph manuscript of the author of 2 ½ pages 8vo published in the issue dated 30 December 1943 of the Journal of Debates. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions.
Typescript is complete seal.
Blanchot finds the gap between the ruined world "which is the truth of the world" that literature is forced to confront and personality of writers who do not seem to live this tragedy. "Feeling too obvious that the author [...] is happy to write, it is fortunate for him," contrast with characters who "through the desolation of events [...] hit some something deeper that they can no...

Autograph manuscript of the author of 2 and a half pages in-8 published in the issue dated 6 January 1944 the Journal of Debates.
Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions.
Complete typescript with a few deletions and additions autograph of the author is attached.
Inspired by the flowers of Tarbes Jean Paulhan, this short article is for Blanchot, the opportunity to reflect on the position and work of criticism. Well beyond literary analysis of a work, this column is probably a key to the theoretical work of Blanchot and wider confrontation with his creation.
The...

(JOYCE James) BLANCHOT Maurice. Le premier roman de Joyce. Complete autograph manuscript and complete typescript
N. n. [Journal des débats], n. p. [Paris] n. d. [1944], 1 leave in-8 (21 x 13,4 cm)
and ½ leave in-8 (10,4 x 13,4 cm) and 2 leaves in-4 (26,8 x 20,9 cm) numbered
Author’s autograph manuscript, two and a half pages, 8vo, published in the Journal des Débats on 18 May 1944.
Full manuscript, written both sides, densely spaced, with a number of erasures, corrections and additions.
With the complete typescript.
A review on the occasion of the republication of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a...

Autograph manuscript of the author of 5 pages 8vo published in the issue dated 27 January 1943 of the Journal of Debates. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions. Chronic literary published on the occasion of the publication by Gallimard of the book "The faithful shepherd" Alexander Vialatte and also referring to the works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Typescript is complete seal.
At the heart of the Occupation Blanchot focuses on two accounts of the French debacle of 1940 and the absurdity of the world it reveals. But the madness in which immerses the autobiographical character Vialatte is not for Blanchot, equivalent to that of war:

Autograph manuscript of the author of four and a half pages 8vo published in the issue dated August 4, 1943 of the Journal of Debates.
Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions.
Typescript is complete seal.
In this critical review of the problem of unbelief in the sixteenth century, the religion of Rabelais by Lucien Febvre, Blanchot takes us on an amazing journey of the humanist Renaissance. lacking the anachronistic interpretation of historians "who in modern rethinking what can be understood only by abandoning our habits of thought," the Renaissance appears as an enigmatic universe where atheistic...

Autograph manuscript of the author of four and a half pages in-8 published in the issue dated 1 September 1943 the Journal of Debates and resumed the same year in Faux-Pas. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions. Literary review published on the occasion of the releases of "High Evil" by Michel Leiris and "The ziaux Raymond Queneau. Complete typescript is attached.
In this fundamental test of poetic theory (integrated corpus Faux appeared immediately after) Blanchot makes a deconstruction of traditional hermeneutic categories poetry Leiris renders inoperative:
"The role of images in the poetic universe is not always assume...

Autograph manuscript of the author of four and a half pages 8vo published in the issue dated 21 July 1943 of the Journal of Debates. Complete manuscript writing very dense, with many erasures, corrections and additions. Chronic literary published on the occasion of the publication, among other collections of Marcel Ayme (Le Passe-wall) and Colette (The cap). Typescript is complete seal.
Through the analysis of new Colette, Marcel Ayme, Marcel Arland and Richard Marius, Blanchot focuses on the need for unity between the news of a book "to give the impression of a real world" .
Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice Blanchot published in the "Chronicle of...