Approaching Disappearance. Anne McConnell

(173, emphasis in original). Orpheus sacrifices everything in a reckless moment where his power to master the night disintegrates, and he experiences the profound disappearance of what his song seemed to have within its grasp. “But that forbidden movement is precisely what Orpheus must accomplish in order to carry the work beyond what assures it” (174). Orpheus’s look sends the work infinitely away, to disappear beyond a space where things can be made to disappear. Paradoxically, Blanchot explains that Orpheus must have already looked back in order to initiate his descent toward Eurydice. Orpheus enters the night through the seductive power of his song—a song that begins at the moment he turns back toward Eurydice to bring her in her absence to the light of day. His loss of Eurydice becomes the song, which always refers back to the loss of what inspires it. Orpheus’s work is the means by which he initiates his work, and this circularity reflects the absence of time of the work. The interminable error of the writer’s process, even if interrupted by an impatient look back, is maintained precisely in the impossibility encountered by the look back—the impossibility of beginning or ending. Blanchot explains, “One writes only if one reaches that instant which nevertheless one can only approach in the space opened by the movement of writing. To write, one has to write already” (176).

      In one of the last sections of The Space of Literature, Blanchot turns his attention to the act of reading and its relation to writing. If writing depends upon a movement toward disappearance, loss, and impossibility, reading would seem to counter this movement in some sense. Blanchot often describes reading as a light and careless process, which strongly contrasts the serious risk involved in the task of writing. And, yet, reading plays a crucial role in the “life” of the book. “What is a book no one reads? Something that is not yet written. It would seem, then, that to read is not to write the book again, but to allow the book to be: written—this time all by itself, without the intermediary of the writer, without anyone’s writing it. The reader does not add himself to the book, but tends primarily to relieve it of its author” (193). Here, it is important to note that Blanchot is discussing the book, not the work—one that a reader might or might not open, depending on his or her mood or some other extraneous factor. But this lack of care or investment brings a sort of freedom to the book, which, without the reader, remains weighted down in its relation to the writer. Even if the work pulls the writer into a space of powerlessness and takes him or her toward disappearance, the book bears the traces of this grave struggle until the reader calls it forward and relieves it of its author. And if the work demands that the writer disappear into anonymity, the reader responds to this demand by picking up the book, without regard for the writer, as if this writer had no relation to what is written. Blanchot explains that this reader could be any reader:

      The reader is himself always fundamentally anonymous. He is any reader, none in particular, unique but transparent. He does not add his name to the book (as our fathers did long ago); rather, he erases every name from it by his nameless presence, his modest, passive gaze, interchangeable and insignificant, under whose light pressure the book appears written, separate from everything and everyone. (193)

      In this passage, we see that the reader’s anonymity parallels the writer’s, and the use of the word “gaze” perhaps suggests the myth of Orpheus. While writer and reader have distinct relations to the book (and to the work), Blanchot deliberately blurs the distinction at points in order to emphasize the way that the two processes mirror one another, never really sustaining a stable identity or role of their own. The reader’s anonymity suggests that the act of relieving the book from its author does not constitute a moment of power or mastery, where the reader makes the book his or her own. At this point, reading is simply a matter of carelessly gazing at the book; and though this gaze casually seeks to make something appear, it certainly does not experience the profound loss associated with the writer’s gaze. The writer’s anonymity, on the other hand, refers to a sort of sacrifice demanded by the work. And when the writer “gazes” in a moment of impatience, he or she loses everything and affirms the disappearance and concealment of the work. But even when recounting the myth of Orpheus, Blanchot continually comes back to the notion of the carelessness and lightness of impatience—the way that the sacrifice of the work and the look back to Eurydice require a moment where the writer forgets all the work, effort and patience that led him or her to that point. In the look back, the writer seems to act more like a reader, or even to respond to reading’s demand.

      While the reader first approaches the book in a state of disappearance where he or she has no particular identity, reading soon seems to have a mission. In reading’s approach to the book, something becomes apparent: “The book is there, then, but the work is still hidden. It is absent, perhaps radically so; in any case, it is concealed, obfuscated by the evident presence of the book, behind which it awaits the liberating decision, the ‘Lazare, veni foras’” (195). This reference to Jesus’s resurrecting call to Lazarus evokes Blanchot’s earlier use of the command Noli me legere, which plays off of Jesus’s warning to Mary that she not touch him. Whereas Noli me legere represents a refusal—particularly the denial of the writer when he or she tries to read the work—Lazare veni foras would seem to suggest the reader’s power to make something appear in his or her approach to the book. The reader, who first opens the book in anonymity and lightness, soon experiences the book as the concealment of the absent work. Blanchot continues: “To make this stone fall seems to be reading’s mission: to render it transparent, to dissolve it with the penetrating force of the gaze which unimpeded moves beyond” (195). And reading thus calls forth the work, seeking to make it appear from behind the stone, through the power of its gaze. If the reader’s gaze was light and casual at first, it now takes on the seriousness of a task. And where Orpheus fails (in the sense that his gaze and attempt to resurrect Eurydice send her infinitely away), Jesus succeeds in bringing the dead Lazarus back to life. It would seem that reading has become the power to make absence appear.

      Blanchot further explores the resurrecting power of reading by examining the significance of the speaking, breathing Lazarus:

      To roll back the stone, to obliterate it, is certainly something marvelous, but it is something we achieve at every moment in everyday language. [ . . . ] In his well-woven winding sheet, sustained by the most elegant conventions, [Lazarus] answers us and speaks to us within ourselves. But what answers the call of literary reading is not a door falling open or becoming transparent or even getting a bit thinner. It is, rather, a ruder stone, better sealed, a crushing weight, an immense avalanche that causes earth and sky to shudder. (195)

      Picking up the book, the reader becomes aware of the presence of the massive stone that hides the work and seeks to get beyond this stone by beckoning the work to appear. And in the Biblical story, Lazarus indeed emerges from behind the stone once again to take part in the world of the living. Blanchot, though, compares the resurrection of Lazarus to everyday language, which causes us to reconsider the significance of what is made to appear. Everyday language negates what it names in order to give rise to the concept, but what appears bears the absence of what has disappeared in the act of naming. Lazarus, then, appears—but as a sort of replacement or stand-in for what has been called forth from behind the stone; moreover, this resurrected Lazarus appears as the profound concealment of the dead Lazarus. One has to kill the already dead Lazarus in order to bring him into the light of day, and the resurrected Lazarus paradoxically bears the death of the dead Lazarus at the same time that he hides it by appearing alive, cleanly clothed, and full of life. In The Infinite Conversation, Blanchot continues his reflections on the resurrection of Lazarus:

      But what does this Lazarus saved and raised from the dead that you hold out to me have to do with what is lying there and makes you draw back, the anonymous corruption of the tomb, the lost Lazarus who already smells bad and not the one restored to life by a force that is no doubt admirable, but that is precisely a force and that comes in this decision from death itself? (36)

      Although the story of Lazarus’s resurrection at first seems to contrast the myth of Orpheus, Blanchot encourages us to see the calling forth of Lazarus in terms of constructive negativity. While Lazarus appears, through the force of a marvelous power, he announces the absence of what remains concealed.

      Returning specifically to the relation of the Lazarus story to reading, we can see that reading’s mission to “roll back the stone” might