Adolphe ou le malheur des sentiments - Manuscrit autographe.

Autograph manuscript by the author of sixteen and a half pages in-8vo published in issue 20 (October 1946) of L'Arche and reprinted, slightly revised, in La Part du Feu (1949).
Complete recto-verso manuscript, in very dense handwriting, with numerous deletions, corrections and additions.

Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, who was one of the prestigious contributors to the Journal des débats during its golden age, interests Maurice Blanchot at the very moment when he begins a passionate relationship with Denise Rollin, former mistress of Georges Bataille. Moreover, "Adolphe ou le malheur des sentiments vrais" is one of Blanchot's rare texts thus devoted to amorous desire: "On trouve presque à chaque page dans Adolphe la description des sentiments dont la cause a beau se renverser, tout les renvoie à eux-mêmes, tout en confirme la fatalité. C'est que le point est atteint où la diversité des évènements et tout l'infini du monde répètent inlassablement le mouvement en cercle dans lequel s'est enfermé le cœur avide de vérité." ["One finds on almost every page in Adolphe the description of feelings whose cause may well be reversed, everything sends them back to themselves, everything confirms their fatality. This is because the point is reached where the diversity of events and all the infinity of the world tirelessly repeat the circular movement in which the heart avid for truth has enclosed itself."]
To support his analysis, Blanchot chooses to compare Constant's approach to that of other writers, particularly to that of Proust in the Recherche: "[...] Proust ne désire pas cette absence comme le mouvement de toute communication, ainsi que le fait Constant : il ne la désire même pas, mais c'est elle qui lui rend un être désirable en le faisant souffrir de ne pouvoir l'atteindre. [...] Proust aime parce qu'il souffre, et il souffre de sentir tout ce qu'il y a d'absence dans une présence toujours fuyante ; mais c'est aussi, à cause de cette absence, que cette présence fonde des rapports véritables. Constant commence à aimer lorsqu'un être particulier éclaire, aimante tout le vide qui le sépare des autres et que la possession est loin de restituer sous la forme de l'inconnu. Dès que, par un engagement trop exigeant, la possibilité de ses relations avec tous qu'il a voulu vivre avec une personne unique est épuisée, il étouffe, il succombe. Il a besoin d'être libre, mais il est toujours lié." ["Proust does not desire this absence as the movement of all communication, as Constant does: he does not even desire it, but it is this absence that makes a being desirable to him by making him suffer from not being able to reach it. [...] Proust loves because he suffers, and he suffers from feeling all the absence there is in a presence that is always fleeting; but it is also, because of this absence, that this presence establishes true relationships. Constant begins to love when a particular being illuminates, magnetizes all the void that separates him from others and which possession is far from restoring in the form of the unknown. As soon as, through too demanding an engagement, the possibility of his relationships with all that he wanted to live with a single person is exhausted, he suffocates, he succumbs. He needs to be free, but he is always bound."] Blanchot's biographer will see in this conception of Adolphe the reflection of his own feelings toward Denise Rollin (BIDENT Christophe, Maurice Blanchot : partenaire invisible, p. 275).

Handsome study on passion and desire through the work of Benjamin Constant.