What quickly becomes apparent, then, when one looks closely at, or rather when one listens closely to, Blanchot’s work is just how sonorous it is. Or, as Fort explains, the shadowy reality of the literary image is always a “sonic image” (161): it reverberates with the echoes of what is left behind. Heine is right that Blanchot appeals to sound when describing these nocturnal spaces because it is through sound that he is able to capture what lies beneath the image – an anonymous rumbling. It is true that when everything falls into darkness – when the insomniac lies awake in this other night where sleep is impossible and the emergence of the day is delayed – an indistinguishable sound can nevertheless be heard.

Similarly, as Leslie Anne Boldt suggests, texts like Thomas the Obscure are shot through with scenes of “limited vision, diminished perspectives, and a blurred horizon” (126) at which point there is an appeal to the auditory. More importantly for this collection, Stefanie Heine argues in her contribution that Blanchot’s account of the nocturnal space of literature becomes “most palpable when Blanchot sketches it in terms of sound” (59). Like when Orpheus turns to cast his gaze on Eurydice on their ascent from the underworld, there is the sense that vision cannot hold on to what it sees in the experience of literature. References to vision in Blanchot’s work are not without unease.

It is toward these metaphors and images that one typically turns when trying to discuss Blanchot’s work. And then there is the analogy of the night and the darkening of familiarity in the experience of literature. Similarly, he meditates on the oscillation between appearance and disappearance through the power of the image. For instance, Blanchot regularly likens the entry into the region of literature to a plunge into subterranean darkness where the reader will gaze upon the dead, like Orpheus. Blanchot is, after all, known primarily for his engagement with literature and not music and, crucially, this engagement draws heavily on visual metaphor. For anyone even passingly familiar with Maurice Blanchot, it might initially seem surprising to encounter a collection dedicated to exploring sonic encounters with and resonances of or from his work.

Blanchot gaze of orpheus pdf files