BLANCHOT, MAURICE

BLANCHOT, MAURICE (1907–2003), French writer, novelist, essayist, and literary critic, Blanchot began his career as a young monarchist and right-wing journalist in the Journal des Debats. While studying German literature and philosophy in Strasbourg, he became a close friend of emmanuel levinas , who introduced him to Heidegger's thought. During the 1930s, despite this friendship, Blanchot wrote in various right-wing newspapers, most of them related to Maurras' Action Francaise, which he admired, and his articles were occasionally antisemitic in tone, describing for example Leon Blum in 1937 as "a wog"; but Blanchot was critical of the persecution of the Jews as early as 1933. He also wrote in Thierry Maulnier's Combat review, which was anti-Hitlerian but favored a "rational antisemitism." In 1940, he joined the Jeune France movement, a cultural association set up by the Vichy regime. In 1942 he published his novel Aminadab, named for a brother of Levinas murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania. After the war, Blanchot began a journey towards Jewish philosophy and literature, following in the footsteps of Levinas, whose concepts and philosophical language impregnated Blanchot's literary criticism. This turn towards Judaism, clearly perceptible in L'Entretien infini, to the point that Philippe Mesnard wrote that Blanchot "tries to think Jewish like Holderlin tried to think Greek," may be seen as an endeavor to cope with the horrors of genocide. Blanchot commented on Kafka, Edmond Jabes, and Martin Buber. In the wake of the May '68 movement, Blanchot joined the extreme left wing, but ultimately left it when French left-wingers became increasingly anti-Israel. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Collins, Maurice Blanchot et la question de l'écriture (1986); E. Levinas, Sur Maurice Blanchot (1975); A. Toumayan, Encountering the Other: the Artwork and the Problem of Difference in Blanchot and Levinas (2004). (Dror Franck Sullaper (2nd ed.)