The Measure of the Outside

Of the over two hundred and fifty fragments from L’attente l’oubli, few prove as remote from its predominant themes as the passage above.The setting of Blanchot’s work is not the city, but a long and narrow hotel room: inside, a man and woman engage one another, each undertaking a series of measures in order to “make it so that she can speak to him.” Thoughts and depictions of the exterior are therefore altogether rare: only a single other fragment, for example, makes use of the word ville (AO 12/AwO 5).