… He was listening to the speech of the everyday … — the speech of temporal eternity saying: now, now, now.
This is from the beginning of The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot (1993; originally published in 1969). He heads his introductory chapter with quotes from Nietzsche:
“Because, for us, something might appear in the heart of the day that would not be the day, something in an atmosphere of light and limpidity that would represent the shiver of fear out of which the day came?”
Speaking is a fine madness: with it man dances over and above all things. (Nietzsche)
Now to extracts from Blanchot’s text:
… You know very well that the only law — there is no other — consists in this unique, continued, universal discourse that everyone, be he separated from or united with others, be he speaking or silent, receives, bears, and sustains through an intimate accord prior to any decision; an accord such that any attempt to repudiate it, promoted or willed always by the very will of discourse, confirms it, just as any aggression makes it more sure and any arrest makes it endure. — I know. — You know, then, that when you speak of these interruptions during which speech would be interrupted, you do speak of them, immediately and even in advance returning them to the uninterrupted force of discourse. …
[ ... ]
… He was listening to the speech of the everyday, grave, idle, saying everything, holding up to each one what he would have liked to say, a speech unique, distant and always close, everyone’s speech, always already expressed and yet infinitely sweet to say, infinitely precious to hear — the speech of temporal eternity saying: now, now, now.
How had he come to will the interruption of discourse? And not the legitimate pause, the one permitting the give and take of conversation, the benevolent, intelligent pause, nor that beautifully poised waiting with which two interlocutors, from one shore to another, measure their right to communicate. No, not that, and no more so the austere silence, the tacit speech of visible things, the reserve of those invisible. What he had wanted was entirely different, a cold interruption, the rupture of the circle. And at once this had happened: the heart ceasing to beat, the eternal speaking drive stopping.
-Julie
