72
PARTISAN REVIEW
French painting between 1909 and 1940. It is the modernism you herald–
ed that rediscovered in Blanchot the nihilistic abstraction of the word, the
absent and blank "ecriture" that could invoke Mallarme.
ps:
There also have been intense moments of negativi ty. The ques tion is,
towards what will this negative turn? As a matter of fact, almost all of
Mallarme's followers turned away from him. The "Igitur catastrophe," as
Claude! would say, did not prevent Proust from embarking on his long
narrative. In this case, the rise of such a negative, that would serve as a vac–
cine for those who came later, was inevitable.
MF: The ideological short-circuit between Mallarmean negativity and the
totalitarian inhumanity of Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, in which many saw
strokes of genius rather than the blink of an eye, partly extinguished the
light of French li terature. Yves BOImefoy , Mallarme's most authentic heir,
did not take part in these extravagances. Despi te its nocturnal and negative
side, Bonnefoy's poetry attempts to save what he calls the "presence," that
is, the being or even the divine nature to be shared.
ps:
In order to understand, we must remember how strong the French
Communist Party's presence was in those years. At that time, the strategy
was to defend everything the enemy attacked and to attack everything he
defended. The danger in such a case is to be contradictory, to mix every–
thing up and destroy our few surviving areas of civilization. That's the risk
of the negative.... I took that risk, and I don't regret it.
LE
DEBAT:
You're saying that you meant your defense of Maoism to be a
strategic opposition to Communism?
PS:
Not only Communism, but the inherently Communist society that
went with it. I will add something that is at this point relevant to
Heideggerean historicity: China's appearance on the world scene.
MF: Even retrospectively, what you are saying is astonishingly confused .
China's grandeur is its very long literary tradition - which may be the
longest in the world. This tradition was literally shattered during the
CuI tural Revol ution - and physically shattered when the Chinese Ii terati
were pummeled and martyred by the Red Guard. Meanwhile in Paris,
Godard's
La
Chinoise
and Sollers's
Tel qllel
presented the Cultural
Revolution as part of the "historicity" that provided niches for Sorbonne
professors. Like Simon Leys, I have no sense of humor. ... Let me bring
opposite'S together and point to a parallel between the Chinese tragedy and
the tragedy of our national
Ii
terature, already suffering from defeat and
collaboration, but especially harmed by the stupitying intellectual fiddling
performed by its most brilliant and noisy talents.
