[In the following review, Jaron discusses the intersections between literature, politics, and morality in Pour l'amitié and Les Intellectuels en question.]

Like Paul Valéry before him, Maurice Blanchot explains of himself that he has very little “historical” memory, which is to say, he knows that he lived during a dark age and in some measure participated in it, but he is unable to reconstitute it in his current writings. The recent release of two short books by him therefore gives us pause for reflection on the relation of literature and philosophy to political action and the moral conscience.

Pour l’amitié was first published as the preface to Dionys Mascolo’s 1993 A la recherche d’un communisme de pensée. It is less an introduction to Mascolo’s book than it is a discussion of their friendship, which began approximately when Mascolo supported the publication of Blanchot’s first book of critical essays, Faux pas (1943), as it was being rejected for publication not by Gaston Gallimard but by wartime censors. Pour l’amitié, like Les intellectuels en question, bears reading for the light it sheds on the author’s early years, when the political ambiguities of his fiction and critical writings caused him to be perceived as “Blanchot, cet inconnu.”

Les intellectuels en question is Blanchot’s contribution to a 1984 issue of Le Débat. Blanchot sketches a history of the meaning and application of the term intellectuel, whose beginnings he dates to the Dreyfus affair. This is well known, and readers will do well to turn to other discussions of the intellectual, should they seek greater historical depth. The immediate interest of this pamphlet lies in Blanchot’s self-positioning vis-à-vis intellectual figures such as Simone Weil, Léon Brunschvicg, Drieu La Rochelle, René Char, Levinas, and still others, and in his three summary conclusions. First, “Depuis qu’ils portent ce nom, les intellectuels n’ont rien fait d’autre que de cesser momentanément d’être ce qu’ils étaient (écrivain, savant, artiste) pour répondre à des exigences morales, à la fois obscures et impérieuses, puisqu’elles étaient de justice et de liberté.” Second, “Les intellectuels, attachés en général à l’exigence de liberté, n’ont pas pris garde que le bien (la libération des peuples) allait s’altérer d’une manière grave s’il demandait ou seulement acceptait que le mal (la guerre) hâte ou assure sa venue.” A third difficulty they confront (and have confronted since Dreyfus) in virtue of being intellectuals is that they “détournent l’influence qu’ils ont acquise, l’autorité qu’ils doivent à leur activité propre pour les faire servir à des choix politiques, à des options morales.”

The surest indication of Blanchot’s assertion that literature and politics are ultimately joined in public debate and action is reflected in his recent refusal to publish these small books with Fata Morgana, with whom he has long published his shorter essays. When Fata Morgana’s director Bruno Roy released neoconservative ideologue Alain de Benoist’s Empire intérieur (1995) under his imprint, Blanchot asked Quinzaine littéraire editor Maurice Nadeau to print a letter, dated September 1996, in which he stated his wish that his name be deleted from all of the publishing house’s catalogues, at least until Bruno Roy has removed the accursed book from sale. Here, then, are a few lines of the letter: “Le seul fait que Benoist a collaboré à ces revues antisémites naturellement camouflées [Blanchot’s emphasis], puisque la loi les interdit, si elles sont trop déclarées, l’en rend complice. II est antisémite par le lieu où il a écrit et édité. Enfin, il a fondé le GRECE, dont Le Pen a été président” (La Quinzaine littéraire of 1–15 November 1996). To balance the accusation, Nadeau points out that while Alain de Benoist has written supportively of the National Front, Le Pen himself was never president of GRECE (la Groupement de Recherche et d’Étude pour la Civilisation Européenne), an extreme right-wing cultural organization. But the charge remains.

Not to be left in silence, Bruno Roy wrote to Nadeau, whose letter was placed beside Blanchot’s, explaining that he himself has never written an anti-Semitic text. “J’en serais triste,” he added, finger pointed at Blanchot, “et je n’aimerais pas me voir dans l’obligation de rappeler des textes qu’il est préférable d’oublier.” Blanchot’s response? Bruno Roy’s letter left him “totalement indifférent” (an extraordinary oxymoron, it must be admitted), because by now the cat’s been let out of the bag: after much sleuthing by the prosecution and clever rationalizing by the defense, the political import of Blanchot’s youthful writings on his mature work continues to be debated. The proceedings will no doubt take some time before a verdict is reached. But even then, whom will the intellectuals believe?