Romans nouveaux. Manuscrit autographe et tapuscrit complets

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 Grout (Prix Goncourt winner in 1943), Maurice Toesca and Roger de Lafforest: « On voit qu'à ces quatre ouvrages, la monotonie des moyens, l'élusion du temps, la sobriété du ton et surtout le caractère théorique du thème principal donnent l'apparence d'un conte, d'une longue nouvelle qui se montre ou qui se cache sous la figure d'un roman. M. Georges Magnane n'a pu faire que son livre ne paraisse peu de chose au regard des descriptions sportives dont il l'a enrichi : l'histoire qu'il raconte ne s'impose pas ; elle reste vide ; elle s'efface. De même, chez M. Toesca et M. de Lafforest, il y a comme une absence d'âme qui rend inutile le jeu intellectuel dont ils ont soigneusement tendu les fils. L'esprit ne retient que l'intention qui, comme telle, lui paraît assez insignifiante ; à quoi bon un livre, si l'art ne se rend pas inséparable de la pensée par le style dont il la marque ? Il y a plus de secret dans le récit de M. Marius Grout, et c'est ce poids lourd, ce silence grave, ce plus indiscernable qui, malgré toutes les explications que l'auteur a cru bon nous donner, s'ajoutent à son œuvre comme la vérité qui ne peut être dite et l'empêchent de n'être plus rien, lorsque le lecteur en a découvert la conclusion. » ["We see that these four works, through the monotony of their means, the evasion of time, the sobriety of tone and especially the theoretical character of their main theme, take on the appearance of a tale, of a long short story that shows itself or hides under the guise of a novel. M. Georges Magnane could not prevent his book from appearing insignificant compared to the sporting descriptions with which he enriched it: the story he tells does not impose itself; it remains empty; it fades away. Similarly, in M. Toesca and M. de Lafforest, there is something like an absence of soul that renders useless the intellectual game whose threads they have carefully woven. The mind retains only the intention which, as such, seems quite insignificant to it; what good is a book if art does not make itself inseparable from thought through the style with which it marks it? There is more mystery in M. Marius Grout's narrative, and it is this heavy weight, this grave silence, this more indiscernible element that, despite all the explanations the author thought fit to give us, add to his work like truth that cannot be told and prevent it from becoming nothing when the reader has discovered its conclusion."]

Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice Blanchot published 173 articles on recently published books in the "Chronicle of Intellectual Life" in Journal des Débats.
In half a newspaper page (about seven octavo pages), the young author of "Thomas l'obscur" takes his first steps in the field of literary criticism and thus inaugurates a theoretical work that he would later develop in his numerous essays, from "La Part du feu" to "L'Entretien infini" and "L'Écriture du désastre".
From the first articles, Blanchot demonstrates an acuity of analysis far exceeding the literary current events that motivate their writing. Oscillating between classics and moderns, first-rate writers and minor novelists, he establishes, in his chronicles, the foundations of critical thought that would mark the second half of the 20th century.
Transformed by writing and by war, Blanchot breaks, through thought exercised "in the name of the other," with the violent Maurrassian certainties of his youth.
Not without paradox, he then transforms literary criticism into a philosophical act of intellectual resistance to barbarism at the very heart of an "openly Maréchaliste" newspaper: "Burning a book, writing one, are the two acts between which culture inscribes its contrary oscillations" (Le Livre, In Journal des Débats, January 20, 1943).
In 2007, the Cahiers de la NRF brought together under the direction of Christophe Bident all the literary chronicles not yet published in volumes with this pertinent analysis of Blanchot's critical work: "novels, poems, essays give rise to a singular reflection, increasingly sure of its own rhetoric, more given over to the echo of the impossible or to the sirens of disappearance. (...) Not without contradictions or sidesteps, and in the feverish certainty of a work that begins (...) these articles reveal the genealogy of a critic who transformed the occasion of the chronicle into the necessity of thought." (C. Bident).
Autograph manuscripts by Maurice Blanchot are extremely rare.