10/2016, Speech that Rises, trans.

Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy]

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Maurice Blanchot
Speech that Rises:
Are We Still Worthy of Poetry?
Translated by Wanyoung Kim

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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Originally published as La Parole Ascendante, 1984

Copyright 2016, Wanyoung Kim, under Creative

Commons License 1984, Hermann (France)

Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution: No Derivatives 4.0 International

Speech that Rises, is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016

Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy]
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1When Mallarm

says, "Only the poet can speak", and Valry says,

"The true writer is a man who does not find his words, so he seeks them," I myself
am ready for a statement that leaves me far from what is at stake for me, in what
we call poetry (it is called, it does not respond). But when I read the end of a text
by Vadim Kozovo: "Between two points of pain, poetry is the shortest route; short
so that at his lonely grave, the time was beheaded, I feel challenged by the torment
of a riddle whose primary effect, clearly, is to confuse me - to make me feel that
there is not a 'definition' of poetry, that the latter exhausts any definition. I agree
(not only in my mind, but in my life - writing - mind) to ultimate crisis, due to the
indefinite quality it
incessantly provokes.
Who could say to himself, "I am a poet," as if "I" could attribute poetry to itself?
Such a
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rich opportunity that would be, among others: its glory and dependence, and without
immediately being disqualified and disastrous, rather than enhanced or
disqualified by the inappropriate attribution. The ancient cursed poet is none
other than someone with the impossibility of being recognized elsewhere than by a bad
name; bad in terms of a common a n d s o c i a l l y a c c e p t a b l e
language, which despite disturbing no one and nothing, becomes forgotten.

1It

should be mentioned, as it reads in the letter: "The poetic fact itself consists in
grouping quickly ["quickly," a word to meditate upon], a certain number of lines of equal
traits, to adjust them; such thoughts that are otherwise distant and scattered, which
explode and rhyme together, so to speak. Then one must, above all, dispose of the
common measure that it has to do with, as in the Verse. The poem remains short,
multiplies in a book; its fixity becomes a norm, as the Verse. This, at least, is my vision.
Now, for the proportionate emotional notation, I tasted it absolutely, but as much as a
prose; delicate, nude, pierced. The poetic operation of the common measure fails, or it is
not a game." (Letter to Charles Bonnier, in March 1893, Correspondence, Volume VI,
Gallimard).
Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],
Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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On one hand, the poet is honored; poetry deserves reverence. "Only the
Poet [essentially in uppercase] can speak." On the other hand, he is wandering without a
place, the pursuer whom one persecutes, a defaulting based only on his
own refusal (still unsafe to be assured); the hermit vainly seeking solitude, with
uninhabitable remains. No, he is not victorious; if in distress he has courage, and if in

fear he receives the life of incompleteness. He finds no wealth in his poverty, he who is
called obscure, because he brings the generosity of a new day to the "night for naught."

As a poet, he senses the relation between the terror and the word, and still the
ancient Pythia that embodies the proper horror of saying everything; the monstrousness
that is choked with the impossible voice, unable to utter anything, and, thereby
suggesting what precedes every word; that terrible antecedence that calls and devastates
the expression, until it welcomes the temper by setting it to the beat. But the rhythm,
always in connection with the furious origin, extends it by the same scanning so that no
ultimate meaning thwarts it or rests there. There we have poetic intra-translation, not in
the difficult passage from one language to

another, but rather in the original language itself; what is concealed while
working there or delegable to the previous track that always fades away. (Let us
recall that Jules

Renard

depicts

mind

without mind: "Mallarm

is

untranslatable, even in French." I add: "Especially in French.")

But what does

Mallarm

himself,

have to say u p o n this? T h e r e

is

n othing that stops h i m . It does not escape from the national language, except to the
point of strangeness contained within in it ,old as it is new: old because it is
Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],
Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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"innate" (the idiomatic generator) and more than new, as it uncovers untold intonations

or issues new agreements. "Having provided the voice to unheard intonations to just to
themselves... and actually rendering to the national
instrument such that new agreements are innately recognized; he constitutes the poet in
the extension of his task and prestige." A possibly disappointing phrase, if it was related
to the now-established poet, belonging to the institution that he
elevates to crumble. But what is it that without membership, does not have
language "except in the abolition of the text, subtracting the image from itself"?
Perhaps he is carried by a trans-national rhythm or trans-linguistic rhythm
which defeated the linear phrase - the syntactic space - just to reach the
fragmented energy "where everything is in suspense", at the same time (the same
time?) that it interrupts time and substitutes in
circumstances"

or the short-circuit

metric-: the clash

that

of that which escapes measurement -the

of "decapitated"

expectation.

of a heritage or anticipation of an abstract

rather the rupture

it "the shipwreck of eternal

of a refractory

The poetic language is never

or completed universality, but

Speech, without which, as previously said,

there would not even be silence.

I canceled all that. I only add: that when Mallarme designates his target,
the

response

falls

decisively: "I

call it Transposition" - indeed, the first

transferring which is in another language, but also, in this language that is never given as
would be a mother tongue, the rhythmic trajectory which only counts

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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the passage, the voltage, the modulation and not the points by which one passes; the
terms that do not end. And poetry would be the requirement of a translation that makes it
impossible, or the perpetual transfer that it calls at the same time that it lacks or denies it.
Perhaps the response given by Joyce would be applicable: "Untranslatable? Nothing."
This means that it is nothing that doesnt write itself, or does not already have the work
of the laborious translator, as also the cheeky Commentator, who indefatigably helps hence there is the injunction of Vadim Kozovo: "Get rid of the other way". (Must I
remind you of Ren Char's early statement: "We are passively passing away into our
time, so as to cause trouble, impose our heat, and state our exuberance"?)

Mallarm -yes, him once again-: it took him time to abandon the distinction
between prose and verse; that is to say, to recognize that this division should be placed
elsewhere - where? it will remain problematic. In 1893, writer Charles Bonnier boldly
defines the poetic fact: "The poetic fact itself consists in quickly combining a certain
number of equal lines, so as to adjust them, such phrases that are otherwise distant and
scattered; but it explodes into rhyming together, or the Verse. It is therefore, above all,

having the common measure, that it happens to apply, or the Verse. The poem remains
short, and multiplies into a book..." Of course, Mallarm adapts what he thinks into
poems that he reads (those of Bonnier); where, despite the politeness, the exclusion of
emotional notation where he boldly says it is not any longer poetry, but prose (...): "The
poetic operation of the common measure is [thus] the default, where there is not a

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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game" 1. And yet (it is well-known), after "the memorable crisis") "Even if it was never
seen. We hit the verge"), he will say: "In the genre called prose there are sometimes
admirable verses, of all rhythms... "What, in the end, removes the prose and especially
dispels these hybrid ways that were called "poems in poems" or "free verse", while it is
established in 1895, with "The Mystery in the letters,"
"the critical Poem" or "the critical poems", etc.. But - they state more formalistically than
it is, only to break with all romanticism and perhaps even
with Baudelaire - he reaffirms it: "It's all about making music with his pain, which does
not directly matter. "(However, he should take into account the word
"directly": the pathetic quality or the pathos pretends
the expression.)
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immediately as if it refuses

Always Mallarm. Consideration should be

given to the meaning of

"Tuesdays," as the headquarters of poetry, as said by one of the participants. That does
not delight us. But despite the charm and enchantment, was it not Mallarm who, leaning
against the chimney, let unfold a word, from which one, in wonder, failed to recover;
Mallarm, who once joined the outside (perhaps Lacan and his seminar)? Or was it none
other Mallarm, who said something like: I am not related to the gentleman who carries
that name? Or saying how the word "poet" was disagreeable to him and affirming (before
Georges Bataille) that he hated the word poetry; adding after Fontainas - which is not a
guarantee --one must dream of eternal art and nonetheless a continuous growth, and
where man goes, there is not a gentleman whose whole life consists in being a poet; it
was the poet's day at

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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a time when the poem gave it a momentary existence (a breaking at the same time that it
contributes, whereas the stranger excludes or disperses it).
"Creating: exclusively" (Ren Char). "Author, creator, poet, this man never
existed" (Rimbaud). That the fury (the terror), the pure, impure violence, the explosive,
which one assigns, by frame, from the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) is able to

maintain in the still-traditional poem, Rimbaud, of course, attests: "And all revenge? Nothing! ... But if, all the same, / We want it! (...) / It is our due. The blood! Blood! The
golden flame! / All the war, revenge, terror..." The
poetic rage is at the extreme. Artaud did not add, except that he shattered the
syllabic language with spasms, arrhythmia, the pulsation without measurement,
and without the sudden spawning of the unattained form, expulsion and retaining the
void. But Rimbaud will remain eternally apart through solitary
indifference, the final oblivion where he is hiding, "staying alive from poetry" in the
poetry itself, not because one day he goes, but because he is always already outside:
"What is my nothingness other than the stupor that awaits you?" Poetry: a violence of
burglary where language refrains from opening itself up, due to shock or malfunction, or
the enigma of its improper gap. "It cannot be the end of the world moving forward."

Valry, who has not always attached great importance to Rimbaud, says
something about him: "The work of the poet is perhaps all the work where the greatest
impatience has essential necessity of the utmost patience." The particular sketches or
drafts of "Season in Hell" show that Rimbaud had time to reach the

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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short, tighter rhythm, the "beheaded time ," which was never added, but is still striking-10

as if the crude or brutal language and the sudden bitterness does not
first come into this too helpful and naturally friendly French language. Draft:
"Shut up, it is pride!" Final text: "Pride." Draft: "Ah! my God, I'm afraid, pity!" Final
text: "Lord, I'm afraid." etc.
That there is some difficulty and roughness (for us) in some of Vadim
Kozovos poems- and to better say, devastation - evokes the exigency of
impatience, the rhythmic breaking, the need to quickly depart which challenges the
judgment, and sometimes an accumulation of images that can be said to zoom into one
word. But just as the joking of Rimbaud, the percussive violence, the
non-incantatory shock, keeps an inner rhythm and a premeditated vibration, which
beyond lyricism and provocation, marks the momentum... (the
unknown?), and at the same time, in Vadim Kozovo, one must foresee rigor and
freedom, a terrible vehemence and an even more terrible sweetness, a furious movement;
uncontrollable, however controlled, perhaps intolerant revolt against any intolerance; that
is to say against oppression that prohibits sharing with this
eternal migrant, the poet, whose sole
reason that
disappear..."

job is to leave. "I watched, searching for the

he wanted so much to escape ... One day, maybe he will happily

Happily? Miserably? There

is no

difference. "Miserable miracle,"

Michaux has always warned us.

The poetic enigmawhether

it

is

Mallarm is thus: "The work involves the elocutionary

poet ..." But
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the most

certain statement

of

disappearance of

the

Speech that Rises, trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],

Speech that Rises,,trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy],
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Valry (1941) refers to the strangeness of Mallarm saying exactly the opposite:
"How and where was the strange and unshakable certainty born, on which Mallarm has
founded his whole life - his sacrifice, his incredible temerity ... -to
be- .... the man himself of a work that he has not accomplished and he knew not the
power to be?"

In other words (because there is always an "alternative"): for Mallarm, the work
is the ultimate denial of the author, and the progressive deletion (which has the sense of
a grand urgency); but Valry sees in Mallarm nothing but an author without his work,
some man of an unfinished work, where he dedicates a lifetime for nothing besides
work: (i.e.: Mallarm was wonderful and crazy, wonderful for having shared his
madness to someone who was the least willing to read it, said Valry). But dont we, in
this duplicity, have the same force of poetic enigma that has a share of the impossible?

Valery's judgment of Rimbaud (at the least, "Season in Hell"). The immense fire
that he lit leaves him "cold." There's nothing outrageous here. I do not assume that
poetry is pure subjectivity, but it is not a "value" that can be recognized: it escapes one
by awaiting an effect. Rimbaud was too impatient, too foreign to others and to himself
for wishing to exert effects on anyone. His books are rotting in a cellar. He forgets them,

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he forgets himself, he goes. He is perhaps a Hebrew; perhaps a prophet without people

and without God, called by no name, attracted by the bitter risk of the unknown where
others would not take shape - and the man who ignores most relations, destroyer of
solidarity though he

Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016

Speech that Rises, Trans. Wanyoung Kim [Readers Copy], 10/2016
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is still deprived of solitude. Moreover, Valry speaks differently: "All known literature
is written in the language of common sense. Excluding Rimbaud, who
states: "However he is clearly not upset2. Mallarm was so, at least; one feels that he
was. Maybe one cannot love a single poet - polygamy being prohibited: in one poet, the
only one who would be everything; not totality, but the poetic infinity.
It is here that it translates, "this madness," that it comes back to us as the
impossible necessity. Translating especially the untranslatable: when the text does not
only carry an autonomous meaning which alone would be important, but when the sound,
the image, the voice (phonological) and especially the principality of rhythm are
predominant compared to the meaning or making of good sense, so that the meaning is
always in action, in formation, or else "the nascent state" cannot be dissociated by what
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by itself is not stored in semantics. And this, this is the poem. Certainly, no translator, no
translation will not pass, intact, from one language to another, and will not permit itself to
be read or heard as if it were transparent. And I would add: happily so. The poem in its
original language, is always already different from the language, whether it restores or
establishes it; and it is this difference, the otherness, where the translator grabbed it or
where it is grabbed by him, modifying in its turn its own

An adjective that of course does not suit him. Yet, he writes:

"Mallarm struck me." - Hit, this is a very strong term; he took a blow.
And one morning, he wrote: "I loved this extraordinary man ..."
2

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language, making it dangerously moving, paring down its identity and

transparency to its "common sense," as Valry says.
Opacity? Opacity of sense? Opacity as meaning? It is neither one nor the other.
The opacity has multiple layers of language through which they walk and form what
eventually - in infinity - mean: strata that simultaneously flicker or darken by meaning,

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moments by themselves neglected in common parlance, transformed just to make another

form of agreement comprehensible, the unlimited agreement that breaks the ordinary
trade. Hence, perhaps, the poetic loneliness (has anyone been there to understand it? Is it
infinitely enough to hear it?); hence also the poetic brotherhood ("sovereign
conversation"), since, by the poem, we are called to the urgency of interminable relation
where the "I" has always faded away to the other, and where speech, writing, and sign
collapse without constantly pursuing the anticipation that dissolves them and
mysteriously remains there by a frightening dispersion.

To finish (but well havent I just begun?) I will quote this episodic remark by
Valry: "I confess that I do not think every day about the future of poetry." How does one
believe it and how does one believe it without any future? I then quote Ren Char:
"...How is one to deliver the poetry of one's oppressors? Poetry that is enigmatic clarity
and the haste of rushing, in discovering them, cancelling them. "May the poems of Vadim
Kozovo, in his language unknown to us, in our language, which is not solely ours, bring
us the promise against the oppressors -- [they are everywhere, the threat is not without
name]: the household of

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"decapitated time," once again, for another time, where, despite our disappointments, we
continue in hoping for the hopeless ones we have loved, our only survival which we
could not deny.

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