I am never sure of the gap between what I say and how it is read. “The writer who experiences this void believes only that the work is unfinished, and he thinks that a little more effort, along with some propitious moments, will permit him and him alone to finish it. But what he wants to finish by himself remains interminable; it involves him in an illusory task” (Blanchot, 23).
In writing I try to organise myself into being – a way of telling my own story, of legitimating my existence. Like Philip Wroth and Henry James – either committed to preservation or revision but both “interested in maintaining the integrity and relevance of their writing” (Murphy, 163) – what is really at stake is identity. How to adequately represent the self in the text even though both author and context continue to change?
I’m lost. A case of traumatic amnesia: “the unfortunate one who finds that she has forgotten her story does not know who she is, having lost the text of her identity” (Cavarero). I am not sure how to separate one kind of interest or thought from another. How are the ideas for this course different from all the other ideas? Is it a formal and informal distinction, the length of the piece, the use of references?
How do I distinguish the dialogue with myself from the dialogue that is worth having with the world? Only parts are worth communicating beyond the momentary action of writing. I don’t know where to start. The ideas repeat themselves without reference to a structure. I tell my story over and again until it is entirely mutable. Vast volumes disappear without recognition, endlessly dispersing self into nothing.
It comes back to the fear that I don’t know enough, that I won’t be in control of representation. I feel too vulnerable for exposure. I don’t want to commit because I’m afraid. I want a perspective on myself that I can’t possibly have. But I need to accept that it is a process of becoming, that I am still learning.
I remind myself that unless I am transparent I will never become universal. It must be a total disclosure – to the point where self is erased. We “require this silence precisely, this vigorous force by which the writer, having been deprived of himself, having renounced himself, has in this effacement nevertheless maintained the authority of a certain power: the power decisively to be still, so that in this silence what speaks without beginning or end might take on form, coherence, and sense” (Blanchot, 27).
- Blanchot, Maurice (1982 [1955]) The Space of Literature, Ann Smock (trans.), Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press
- Cavarero, Adriane “The Desire for One’s Own Story”, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood
- Murphy, Stephen (2008) “Revision as a “Living Affair” in Henry James’s New York Edition”, The Henry James Review, 29; 2, 163-180.
