maurice blanchot - the rising word [speech that rises: are we still worthy of poetry], trans. by...

7/25/2019 Maurice Blanchot - The Rising Word [Speech That Rises: Are We Still Worthy of Poetry], Trans. by Wanyoung Kim

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10/2016, Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy]

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Maurice Blanchot

Speech that Rises:

Are We Still Worthy of Poetry?

Translated by Wanyoung Kim

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Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016

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Originally published as La Parole Ascendante, 1984

Copyright 2016, Wanyoung Kim, under Creative

Commons License 1984, Hermann (France)

Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution: No Derivatives 4.0 International

Speech that Rises, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016

Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy]

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1When Mallarm says, "Only the poet can speak", and Valry says,

"The true writer is a man who does not find his words, so he seeks them," I myself

am ready for a statement that leaves me far from what is at stake for me, in what

we call poetry (it is called, it does not respond). But when I read the end of a text

by Vadim Kozovo: "Between two points of pain, poetry is the shortest route; short

so that at his lonely grave, the time was beheaded, I feel challenged by the torment

of a riddle whose primary effect, clearly, is to confuse me - to make me feel that

there is not a 'definition' of poetry, that the latter exhausts any definition. I agree

(not only in my mind, but in my life - writing - mind) to ultimate crisis, due to the

indefinite quality it

incessantly provokes.

Who could say to himself, "I am a poet," as if "I" could attribute poetry to itself?Such a

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rich opportunity that would be, among others: its glory and dependence, and without

immediately being disqualified and disastrous, rather than enhanced or

disqualified by the inappropriate attribution. The ancient cursed poet is none

other than someone with the impossibility of being recognized elsewhere than by a bad

name; bad in terms of a common a n d s o c i a l l y a c c e p t a b l e

language, which despite disturbing no one and nothing, becomes forgotten.

1It should be mentioned, as it reads in the letter: "The poetic fact itself consists in

grouping quickly ["quickly," a word to meditate upon], a certain number of lines of equaltraits, to adjust them; such thoughts that are otherwise distant and scattered, whichexplode and rhyme together, so to speak. Then one must, above all, dispose of thecommon measure that it has to do with, as in the Verse. The poem remains short,multiplies in a book; its fixity becomes a norm, as the Verse. This, at least, is my vision.Now, for the proportionate emotional notation, I tasted it absolutely, but as much as aprose; delicate, nude, pierced. The poetic operation of the common measure fails, or it isnot a game." (Letter to Charles Bonnier, in March 1893, Correspondence, Volume VI,Gallimard).



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On one hand, the poet is honored; poetry deserves reverence. "Only the

Poet [essentially in uppercase] can speak." On the other hand, he is wandering without a

place, the pursuer whom one persecutes, a defaulting based only on his

own refusal (still unsafe to be assured); the hermit vainly seeking solitude, with

uninhabitable remains. No, he is not victorious; if in distress he has courage, and if in

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fear he receives the life of incompleteness. He finds no wealth in his poverty, he who is

called obscure, because he brings the generosity of a new day to the "night for naught."

As a poet, he senses the relation between the terror and the word, and still the

ancient Pythia that embodies the proper horror of saying everything; the monstrousness

that is choked with the impossible voice, unable to utter anything, and, thereby

suggesting what precedes every word; that terrible antecedence that calls and devastates

the expression, until it welcomes the temper by setting it to the beat. But the rhythm,

always in connection with the furious origin, extends it by the same scanning so that no

ultimate meaning thwarts it or rests there. There we have poetic intra-translation, not in

the difficult passage from one language to

another, but rather in the original language itself; what is concealed while

working there or delegable to the previous track that always fades away. (Let us

recall that Jules Renard depicts mind without mind: "Mallarm is

untranslatable, even in French." I add: "Especially in French.")

But what does Mallarm himself, have to say u p o n this? T h e r e i s

n othing that stops h i m . It does not escape from the national language, except to the

point of strangeness contained within in it ,old as it is new: old because it is



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"innate" (the idiomatic generator) and more than new, as it uncovers untold intonations

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or issues new agreements. "Having provided the voice to unheard intonations to just to

themselves... and actually rendering to the national

instrument such that new agreements are innately recognized; he constitutes the poet in

the extension of his task and prestige." A possibly disappointing phrase, if it was related

to the now-established poet, belonging to the institution that he

elevates to crumble. But what is it that without membership, does not have

language "except in the abolition of the text, subtracting the image from itself"?

Perhaps he is carried by a trans-national rhythm or trans-linguistic rhythm

which defeated the linear phrase - the syntactic space - just to reach the

fragmented energy "where everything is in suspense", at the same time (the same

time?) that it interrupts time and substitutes in it "the shipwreck of eternal

circumstances" or the short-circuit of that which escapes measurement -the

metric-: the clash of "decapitated" expectation. The poetic language is never

that of a heritage or anticipation of an abstract or completed universality, but

rather the rupture of a refractory Speech, without which, as previously said,

there would not even be silence.

I canceled all that. I only add: that when Mallarme designates his target,

the response falls decisively: "I call it Transposition" - indeed, the first

transferring which is in another language, but also, in this language that is never given as

would be a mother tongue, the rhythmic trajectory which only counts

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the passage, the voltage, the modulation and not the points by which one passes; the

terms that do not end. And poetry would be the requirement of a translation that makes it

impossible, or the perpetual transfer that it calls at the same time that it lacks or denies it.

Perhaps the response given by Joyce would be applicable: "Untranslatable? Nothing."

This means that it is nothing that doesnt write itself, or does not already have the work

of the laborious translator, as also the cheeky Commentator, who indefatigably helps -

hence there is the injunction of Vadim Kozovo: "Get rid of the other way". (Must I

remind you of Ren Char's early statement: "We are passively passing away into our

time, so as to cause trouble, impose our heat, and state our exuberance"?)

Mallarm -yes, him once again-: it took him time to abandon the distinction

between prose and verse; that is to say, to recognize that this division should be placed

elsewhere - where? it will remain problematic. In 1893, writer Charles Bonnier boldly

defines the poetic fact: "The poetic fact itself consists in quickly combining a certain

number of equal lines, so as to adjust them, such phrases that are otherwise distant and

scattered; but it explodes into rhyming together, or the Verse. It is therefore, above all,

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having the common measure, that it happens to apply, or the Verse. The poem remains

short, and multiplies into a book..." Of course, Mallarm adapts what he thinks into

poems that he reads (those of Bonnier); where, despite the politeness, the exclusion of

emotional notation where he boldly says it is not any longer poetry, but prose (...): "The

poetic operation of the common measure is [thus] the default, where there is not a



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game" 1. And yet (it is well-known), after "the memorable crisis") "Even if it was never

seen. We hit the verge"), he will say: "In the genre called prose there are sometimes

admirable verses, of all rhythms... "What, in the end, removes the prose and especially

dispels these hybrid ways that were called "poems in poems" or "free verse", while it is

established in 1895, with "The Mystery in the letters,"

"the critical Poem" or "the critical poems", etc.. But - they state more formalistically than

it is, only to break with all romanticism and perhaps even

with Baudelaire - he reaffirms it: "It's all about making music with his pain, which does

not directly matter. "(However, he should take into account the word

"directly": the pathetic quality or the pathos pretends immediately as if it refuses

the expression.)

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Always Mallarm. Consideration should be given to the meaning of

"Tuesdays," as the headquarters of poetry, as said by one of the participants. That does

not delight us. But despite the charm and enchantment, was it not Mallarm who, leaning

against the chimney, let unfold a word, from which one, in wonder, failed to recover;

Mallarm, who once joined the outside (perhaps Lacan and his seminar)? Or was it none

other Mallarm, who said something like: I am not related to the gentleman who carries

that name? Or saying how the word "poet" was disagreeable to him and affirming (before

Georges Bataille) that he hated the word poetry; adding after Fontainas - which is not a

guarantee --one must dream of eternal art and nonetheless a continuous growth, and

where man goes, there is not a gentleman whose whole life consists in being a poet; it

was the poet's day at



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a time when the poem gave it a momentary existence (a breaking at the same time that it

contributes, whereas the stranger excludes or disperses it).

"Creating: exclusively" (Ren Char). "Author, creator, poet, this man never

existed" (Rimbaud). That the fury (the terror), the pure, impure violence, the explosive,

which one assigns, by frame, from the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) is able to

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maintain in the still-traditional poem, Rimbaud, of course, attests: "And all revenge? -

Nothing! ... But if, all the same, / We want it! (...) / It is our due. The blood! Blood! The

golden flame! / All the war, revenge, terror..." The

poetic rage is at the extreme. Artaud did not add, except that he shattered the

syllabic language with spasms, arrhythmia, the pulsation without measurement,

and without the sudden spawning of the unattained form, expulsion and retaining the

void. But Rimbaud will remain eternally apart through solitary

indifference, the final oblivion where he is hiding, "staying alive from poetry" in the

poetry itself, not because one day he goes, but because he is always already outside:

"What is my nothingness other than the stupor that awaits you?" Poetry: a violence of

burglary where language refrains from opening itself up, due to shock or malfunction, or

the enigma of its improper gap. "It cannot be the end of the world moving forward."

Valry, who has not always attached great importance to Rimbaud, says

something about him: "The work of the poet is perhaps all the work where the greatest

impatience has essential necessity of the utmost patience." The particular sketches or

drafts of "Season in Hell" show that Rimbaud had time to reach the



short, tighter rhythm, the "beheaded time ," which was never added, but is still striking--

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as if the crude or brutal language and the sudden bitterness does not

first come into this too helpful and naturally friendly French language. Draft:

"Shut up, it is pride!" Final text: "Pride." Draft: "Ah! my God, I'm afraid, pity!" Final

text: "Lord, I'm afraid." etc.

That there is some difficulty and roughness (for us) in some of Vadim

Kozovos poems- and to better say, devastation - evokes the exigency of

impatience, the rhythmic breaking, the need to quickly depart which challenges the

judgment, and sometimes an accumulation of images that can be said to zoom into one

word. But just as the joking of Rimbaud, the percussive violence, the

non-incantatory shock, keeps an inner rhythm and a premeditated vibration, which

beyond lyricism and provocation, marks the momentum... (the

unknown?), and at the same time, in Vadim Kozovo, one must foresee rigor and

freedom, a terrible vehemence and an even more terrible sweetness, a furious movement;

uncontrollable, however controlled, perhaps intolerant revolt against any intolerance; that

is to say against oppression that prohibits sharing with this

eternal migrant, the poet, whose sole job is to leave. "I watched, searching for the

reason that he wanted so much to escape ... One day, maybe he will happily

disappear..." Happily? Miserably? There is no difference. "Miserable miracle,"

Michaux has always warned us.

The poetic enigmawhether i t i s the most certain statement of

Mallarm is thus: "The work involves the elocutionary disappearance of the

poet ..." But

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Speech that Rises,,trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

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Valry (1941) refers to the strangeness of Mallarm saying exactly the opposite:

"How and where was the strange and unshakable certainty born, on which Mallarm has

founded his whole life - his sacrifice, his incredible temerity ... -to

be- .... the man himself of a work that he has not accomplished and he knew not the

power to be?"

In other words (because there is always an "alternative"): for Mallarm, the work

is the ultimate denial of the author, and the progressive deletion (which has the sense of

a grand urgency); but Valry sees in Mallarm nothing but an author without his work,

some man of an unfinished work, where he dedicates a lifetime for nothing besides

work: (i.e.: Mallarm was wonderful and crazy, wonderful for having shared his

madness to someone who was the least willing to read it, said Valry). But dont we, in

this duplicity, have the same force of poetic enigma that has a share of the impossible?

Valery's judgment of Rimbaud (at the least, "Season in Hell"). The immense fire

that he lit leaves him "cold." There's nothing outrageous here. I do not assume that

poetry is pure subjectivity, but it is not a "value" that can be recognized: it escapes one

by awaiting an effect. Rimbaud was too impatient, too foreign to others and to himself

for wishing to exert effects on anyone. His books are rotting in a cellar. He forgets them,

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he forgets himself, he goes. He is perhaps a Hebrew; perhaps a prophet without people

and without God, called by no name, attracted by the bitter risk of the unknown where

others would not take shape - and the man who ignores most relations, destroyer of

solidarity though he



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is still deprived of solitude. Moreover, Valry speaks differently: "All known literature

is written in the language of common sense. Excluding Rimbaud, who

states: "However he is clearly not upset2. Mallarm was so, at least; one feels that he

was. Maybe one cannot love a single poet - polygamy being prohibited: in one poet, the

only one who would be everything; not totality, but the poetic infinity.

It is here that it translates, "this madness," that it comes back to us as the

impossible necessity. Translating especially the untranslatable: when the text does not

only carry an autonomous meaning which alone would be important, but when the sound,

the image, the voice (phonological) and especially the principality of rhythm are

predominant compared to the meaning or making of good sense, so that the meaning is

always in action, in formation, or else "the nascent state" cannot be dissociated by what

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by itself is not stored in semantics. And this, this is the poem. Certainly, no translator, no

translation will not pass, intact, from one language to another, and will not permit itself to

be read or heard as if it were transparent. And I would add: happily so. The poem in its

original language, is always already different from the language, whether it restores or

establishes it; and it is this difference, the otherness, where the translator grabbed it or

where it is grabbed by him, modifying in its turn its own

2 An adjective that of course does not suit him. Yet, he writes:An adjective that of course does not suit him. Yet, he writes:

"Mallarm struck me." - Hit, this is a very strong term; he took a blow.And one morning, he wrote: "I loved this extraordinary man ..."


Speech that Rises,,trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016

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language, making it dangerously moving, paring down its identity and

transparency to its "common sense," as Valry says.

Opacity? Opacity of sense? Opacity as meaning? It is neither one nor the other.

The opacity has multiple layers of language through which they walk and form what

eventually - in infinity - mean: strata that simultaneously flicker or darken by meaning,

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moments by themselves neglected in common parlance, transformed just to make another

form of agreement comprehensible, the unlimited agreement that breaks the ordinary

trade. Hence, perhaps, the poetic loneliness (has anyone been there to understand it? Is it

infinitely enough to hear it?); hence also the poetic brotherhood ("sovereign

conversation"), since, by the poem, we are called to the urgency of interminable relation

where the "I" has always faded away to the other, and where speech, writing, and sign

collapse without constantly pursuing the anticipation that dissolves them and

mysteriously remains there by a frightening dispersion.

To finish (but well havent I just begun?) I will quote this episodic remark by

Valry: "I confess that I do not think every day about the future of poetry." How does one

believe it and how does one believe it without any future? I then quote Ren Char:

"...How is one to deliver the poetry of one's oppressors? Poetry that is enigmatic clarity

and the haste of rushing, in discovering them, cancelling them. "May the poems of Vadim

Kozovo, in his language unknown to us, in our language, which is not solely ours, bring

us the promise against the oppressors -- [they are everywhere, the threat is not without

name]: the household of



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"decapitated time," once again, for another time, where, despite our disappointments, we

continue in hoping for the hopeless ones we have loved, our only survival which we

could not deny.

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maurice blanchot - the rising word [speech that rises: are we still worthy of poetry], trans. by...

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