… Truth would dispel error, were they to meet. But there is an error of sorts that ruins in advance all power of encounter. To err is probably this: to go outside the space of encounter.
… Speech and error are on intimate terms.
… Note that etymologies — important because they show the facetious force of language, and the mysterious play that is an invitation to play — have no other purpose than to close the word rapidly up upon itself again in the manner of those shelled creatures that withdraw as soon as one inspects them. Words are suspended; this suspense is a very delicate oscillation, a trembling that never leaves them still.
This is from The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot (1993; originally published in 1969):
– Searching and error,then, would be akin. To err is to turn and to return, to give oneself up to the magic of the detour. One who goes astray, who has left the protection of the center, turns about, himself, adrift and subject to the center, and no longer guarded by it.
[ ... ]
– And he is not at the same point, although being there by returning. This is worth considering. The return effaces the point of departure; being without a path, error is that arid force that uproots the landscape, ravages the wilderness, ruins the site.
[ ... ]
– Above all, an advance that opens no path and corresponds to no opening; error designates a strange space where the hiding-showing movement of things has lost its directing force. Where I am through error there no longer reigns either the benevolence of welcome or the rigor, itself reassuring, of exclusion.
[ ... ]
– With the term ‘error,’ you mean to say that things neither show nor hide themselves, not yet belonging to the ‘region’ where there is a place for unveiling and veiling.
– Did I say that? I would say rather: error is an obstinacy without perseverance that, far from being a rigorously maintained affirmation, pursues itself by diverting the affirmation toward what has no firmness. Essential error is without relation to the true, which has no power over it. Truth would dispel error, were they to meet. But there is an error of sorts that ruins in advance all power of encounter. To err is probably this: to go outside the space of encounter.
– I confess to not understanding well your ‘error.’ There would be two kinds: one being the shadow of the true; the other — but this other, I wonder how you can speak of it.
– This is perhaps the easiest. Speech and error are on intimate terms.
– I see nothing but banter here: as though you were recalling that one would not deceive if one did not speak. Speech, we well know, is the resource and, etymologically, even the origin of the devil.
– Of the words ball and ballistics as well — all diabolical works. Note that etymologies — important because they show the facetious force of language, and the mysterious play that is an invitation to play — have no other purpose than to close the word rapidly up upon itself again in the manner of those shelled creatures that withdraw as soon as one inspects them. Words are suspended; this suspense is a very delicate oscillation, a trembling that never leaves them still.
– And yet, they are also immobile.
– Yes, of an immobility that moves more than anything moving. Disorientation is at work in speech through a passion for wandering that has no bounds. Thus it happens that, in speaking, we depart from all directions and all path, as though we had crossed the line.
– But speech has its own way, it provides a path. We are not led astray in it, or at most only in relation to the regularly traveled routes.
– Even more than that perhaps: it is as though we were turned away from the visible, without being turned back round toward the invisible. I don’t know whether what I am saying here says anything. But nevertheless it is simple. Speaking is not seeing. Speaking frees thought from the optical imperative that in the Western tradition, for thousands of years, has subjugated our approach to things, and induced us to think under the guaranty of light or under the threat of its absence. I’ll let you count all the words through which it is suggested that, to speak truly, one must think according to the measure of the eye.
Mr. Blanchot, may I introduce you to Mr. Lakoff?
My most recent previous post from Blanchot’s book is here.
-Julie
