Une étude sur l'Apocalypse. Manuscrit autographe et tapuscrit complets

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 terrible hours the world was then going through: « Dans les périodes troublées, les esprits qui ne supportent pas l'incertitude de l'avenir ont besoin de prophètes. Mais ces prophètes, ils les demandent au passé, et plus l'oracle est ancien - et redoutable -, plus ils y voient des correspondances avec l'histoire qu'ils voudraient connaître. L'Apocalypse de St Jean doit, en partie à la sublimité du langage, à l'autorité de l'écrivain, à l'étendue de la révélation, une curiosité que des siècles d'étude n'ont pas réussi à épuiser. Mais elle doit aussi son prestige auprès d'esprits qui ne sont pas toujours pieux, à l'antiquité de la réponse et à son caractère terrifiant. Qui n'est pas prêt à croire que la fin des temps est proche et que le pire va être vécu ? Chacun a le désir secret d'associer sa propre fin qu'il entrevoie à celle du monde dont il est moins sûr. » ["In troubled periods, minds that cannot bear the uncertainty of the future need prophets. But these prophets, they seek them in the past, and the more ancient - and fearsome - the oracle, the more they see correspondences with the history they would like to know. The Apocalypse of St. John owes, partly to the sublimity of language, to the authority of the writer, to the extent of the revelation, a curiosity that centuries of study have not managed to exhaust. But it also owes its prestige among minds that are not always pious, to the antiquity of the answer and to its terrifying character. Who is not ready to believe that the end of times is near and that the worst will be lived? Each has the secret desire to associate his own end that he glimpses with that of the world of which he is less certain."] The biblical text thus awakens his interest for its literary and mythological qualities but also, in an almost political approach, for its sense of History. Furthermore, if religion does not of course pose itself in terms of belief for Blanchot, it nevertheless reveals his attention to the question of God (particularly sensitive through Judaism notably) and joins that, decisive in his eyes, of the writer's interior experience.
Finally, the analysis of L'Apocalypse that Blanchot delivers here constitutes a first in-depth reflection on the question of Evil: « [...] ce qui est propre au message inspiré, c'est le rôle qu'il fait jouer au démon dans la vie collective et le mouvement de l'histoire. Saint Jean ne dévoile pas l'action du mal dans les âmes ; il se borne à montrer quelle maîtrise les puissances démoniaques peuvent exercer sur les réalités collectives, par quelles voies elles agissent [...] et quelle défaite mettra un terme à leur empire. » ["[...] what is proper to the inspired message is the role it makes the demon play in collective life and the movement of history. Saint John does not unveil the action of evil in souls; he confines himself to showing what mastery demonic powers can exercise over collective realities, by what paths they act [...] and what defeat will put an end to their empire."] These links between the Apocalypse, History and Evil would be questioned again by Blanchot in "L'Apocalypse déçoit" (1964) and "Penser l'Apocalypse" (1988).

First foundational text by Blanchot on Evil and History.

Between April 1941 and August 1944, Maurice Blanchot published in the "Chronicle of intellectual life" of Journal des Débats 173 articles on recently published books. In half a page of newspaper (approximately seven in-8 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 analytical acuity 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 a critical thought that would mark the second half of the 20th century. Transformed by writing and by war, Blanchot breaks, through a 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: "To burn a book, to write 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, always more certain 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.