As the days go by I continue to eliminate the I, 2023
In Maurice Blanchot’s text The Essential Solitude, in the The Space of Literature (1982), he refers to the solitary act required to connect with the work of reading or writing literary works of art as being capable of entering into the ‘affirmation of the works solitude’. Stating how, in solitude, we find ourselves ‘losing the power to say ‘I’’ in order to ‘capture the essence of creativity’, through which, we adopt an ‘incessant speech’ where ‘’I’ can’t communicate’, Blanchot reflects on the ‘tone’ created through writing as not being the ‘writers voice but the intimacy of silence he imposes on the word’. [1]
Characterising the ‘discretion’ of silence as ‘an authoritative, a restrained and contained self’ and an ‘effaced ‘I’’, he highlights how the writer must sacrifice the self in order to ‘give voice to the universal’, a ‘truth…beyond the person’ explored through the ‘third person’. And reflecting upon the creator of literary works as ‘run[ning] the risk of seeking a sense of belonging in the work, through a ‘bond’, Blanchot explicates how, the creator must ‘de-subjectivize’ in order to ‘transform…thinking into making’ and allow for ‘affirmation’ to enter into a place of solitude. [2]
Emphasising how the creator must ’bear witness’, ‘surrender’ and ‘renounce personal beliefs and desires’ to adapt to the solitary permission, in ‘submission’, so that the imagination of other worlds can take form, Blanchot describes the work of solitude as;
…a time without negation, without decision, when here is nowhere as well, and each thing withdraws into its image while the ‘I’ that we are recognizes itself by sinking into the neutrality of a featureless third person. [3]
[1] Maurice Blanchot. ‘The Space of Literature’. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1982. p24-30
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.