Eratio

Issue 22

 

 

 

from the blanchot variations

 

Colin Campbell Robinson

 

 

 

Let us share eternity

make it transitory

         —Maurice Blanchot

 

 

 

These variations are part of a longer piece based on my reading of Maurice Blanchot’s The Writing of the Disaster.  The passages in italics are Blanchot’s own words. 

 

 

 

1. Say nothing, speak in order to say nothing; fail without fail, count on disarray, play; out play.

 

2. detached from

everything

including detachment

 

3. Excluding himself from creation he creates, but not as God.

 

4. Always poised at the point of abandonment or, rather, at the trembling edge.

 

5. be patient

a simple motto

very demanding

 

6. A foreign night: live a time without present.

 

7. the silent rupture of the fragmentary

 

8. Is there passivity beyond disquietude?

 

9. Juggle the even with the uneven.

 

10. to speak the unknown

 

11. At table, illuminated by screens, all in another world not on this rain filled night.

 

12. Passivity interrupts reason and speech. Ask; what remains of experience?

 

13. Here not there, wherever there is or isn’t. The place where everything is recorded for-ever, the eternity of the not-now, the ersatz now.

 

14. Giving up, abandoned, destroyed by ‘preferring not to’.

 

15. A formless obsession with form; what comes into the mouth not what comes out. Lips massaged, satisfied by the final ashen taste.

 

16. speech that speaks

without exercising

any form of power

 

17. The impending catastrophe, surely not, prefer not to.

 

18. Faithless

Spiritless

Blank

 

19. Beauty: can it be said or only paid for?

 

20. Is the show convincing and on what level?

 

21. Are all stories available but forgotten?

 

22. Live a sabbatical existence, said Levinas.  Pause, break from use or being used, or using. This is creation's rest.

 

23. Among the igneous out thrown, cooled by endless flows, the Celtic Sea calls.

 

24. Crystal suspension prays before the darkened horizon.

 

25. what remains

without remains

 

26. Those who have gone are still here, standing in the wings,

waiting for a cue.

 

27. Sadness can only be observed slowly.

 

28. For otherness is but the feeling of otherness rendered intuitive, or alterity visually represented, as Coleridge said all those romantic years ago.

 

29. All the bodies, all the expectations allowing those to serve the itch, the bite, always the right size, always purchase but no grip.

 

30. saying

is no game

 

31. Looking at time, a diversion via the camp, unease spread.

Even so, some giggled.

 

32. the interruption

of the incessant

 

33. Future, past, both without present: destroyed, without destruction, invisible when seen, speaking the other voice, out of reach.

 

34. Why wound, exhaust, hound, spaniel at heel?

 

35. Exiled from experience, rescued from benign waves.

 

36. can the disaster

be interrogated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colin Campbell Robinson is an Australian writer currently resident in the Celtic extremity of Kernow.  He has been published in numerous journals around the world, most recently in BlazeVox 15, Stylus and Ink Sweat and Tears.  His book, Blue Solitude a self portrait in six scenarios is a forthcoming publication from Knives Forks and Spoons Press. 

 

 


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