Maurice Blanchot: The Space of Literature (1955–) [FR, EN, CZ, ES, RU]

Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers—among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness.

The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot’s thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarmé, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot’s discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.

L’espace littéraire
Publisher Gallimard, Paris, 1955
ISBN 2070324753
295 pages

English edition
Translated, with an Introduction, by Ann Smock
Publisher University of Nebraska Press, 1983
ISBN 080321166X
280 pages

publisher (EN)
google books (EN)

L’espace littéraire (French, 1955, no OCR)
The Space of Literature (English, trans. Ann Smock, 1983)
Literární prostor (Czech, trans. Marie Kohoutová and Michal Pacvoň, 1999)
Le Espacio Literario (Spanish, trans. Vicky Palant and Jorge Jinkis, 2002, no OCR)
Prostranstvo literatury (Russian, trans. V.P. Bolshakov, et al., 2002, added 2014-12-6)