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The Most High
"Blanchot describes a world where the Absolute has finally overcome all other rivals to its authority. The State is unified, universal, and homogenous, promising perfect satisfaction. Why then does it find revolt everywhere? Could it be the omnipresent police? The plagues? The proliferating prisons and black markets? Written in part as a description of post-World War II Europe, Blanchot's dystopia charts with terrible clarity the endless death of god in an era of constantly metamorphosing but strangely definitive ideologies."-Translation Review
258 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 1948
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About the author
Maurice Blanchot
146 books602 followersMaurice Blanchot was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. Blanchot was a distinctly modern writer who broke down generic boundaries, particularly between literature and philosophy. He began his career as a journalist on the political far right, but the experience of fascism altered his thinking to the point that he supported the student protests of May 1968. Like so many members of his generation, Blanchot was influenced by Alexandre Kojeve's humanistic interpretation of Hegel and the rise of modern existentialism. His “Literature and the Right to Death” shows the influence that Heidegger had on a whole generation of French intellectuals.
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March 24, 2022Registering as a 7 on my personal Blanchot Opacity Scale™ (taking 4 months to read it likely increased the rating by at least a point), The Most High superficially resembles other Blanchot fictions in its fluctuating comprehensibility—at least for those of us lacking a penetrating knowledge of Hegelian philosophy and an intimate understanding of the zeitgeist of immediate post-WWII Europe. Sure, I've read a lot of novels written during and reflective of this time period, but what must it have been like to actually be there and put pen to paper in response (as a politically drifting, mostly anarchist intellectual)? Maybe reading The Most High comes closer to getting at the murky ambiguity of that experience than, say, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was written at the same time. Translator Allan Stoekl's introduction certainly helps parse the possibilities of interpretation, but my head remains wreathed in a fog of intrigued bewilderment, as is often the case when I read Blanchot. [no stars because wtf how do you rate this...]
June 15, 2017
80 sayfa ancak dayanabildim. Demek ki Blanchot bana göre değilmiş. Sevenlerine, sabır gösterenlere selam olsun. Okumayı eziyet çekme değil keyif alma için görme fikrine giderek daha alışıyorum galiba. Tabii keyif derken mutlaka hafif kitap olacak anlamı çıkmasın. Bazı ağır kitaplar da gayet güzel keyif verebiliyor. Örnek Kafka, Bernhard ... vs. Blanchot beni mutsuz etti, içimi sıktı. Pişman değilim:)
February 12, 2009
what a book! a bible! a MOBY DICK! at the same time, an epic bore. a droning monologue of fatigue and sickness…
THE MOST HIGH is an awesome failure — in the sense that PIERRE is a failure or that kafka is. that is to say, not at all — except in the sense that a pure ambition to representative truth must fall abysmally short.
blanchot might’ve given a snort at the idea that his project had anything to do with representing truth. this sorrentino review (in the NYTimes–evidently such a thing was possible but a scant two decades ago) of a number of blanchot’s translations from station hill press argues that blanchot above all believed in the paradoxical lie of language, its inherent corruption and artificiality.
nonetheless this novel, published in 1948, seems to want to capture a certain philosophical hell particular to its post-war era, which nonetheless uncannily resonates with our current moment. in its political theory it has antecedent in CANDIDE’s horrific picaresque within the best of all possible worlds; the translator’s preface mentions the work’s cousins in camus’ THE PLAGUE and orwell’s 1984; and in its use of the state as self-created disease it has intellectual descendants in, among others, saramago’s BLINDNESS and naomi klein’s SHOCK DOCTRINE.
but there’s no use trying to reduce it. the story of a civil servant, henry sorge, and his descent into a bureaucratic hell and plague defies summary. the same end-of-history ideas that spawned contemporary neoconservatism and arguably our current atrocious wars of imperialism are shown here (in 1948!) to be an ideological prison of hypocrisy and inescapable doubletalk. as well and importantly, it’s an indictment of our tacit complicity in these daily repressions and horrors.
…nothing’s higher than the law. Really, all offenses are plots against the law: you’d like to disobey it, but since that isn’t possible, you have to rebel against its legitimacy. A long time ago you could steal and leave it at that; now you’re committing through the theft an infinitely more serious crime, the most terrible of all and, besides, a crime that can’t be carried out, that fails. Of that crime there remains, precisely, only an insignificant trace — the theft (41).
(i should also say that i’ve tried blanchot many times over the past decade and just couldn’t get through it. to me, THOMAS THE OBSCURE was. and i seem to have absolutely no stomach for the straight-up theory (though friends have said THE WRITING OF THE DISASTER is also a must.) i only mention this to say THE MOST HIGH i found much more readable. even though it has a fractured structure, dialogues or situations more than plot, seems to shift fundamental style each chapter, and has looooong blocks of abstruse monologue-ing — i was drawn in by the continuity of its purpose… and maybe i’m still untrained and the others in fact do await my arrival like sanctuaries in time. nice to think.)
another quote, along the same theme:
For the State will know how to use your insubordination, and not only will it take advantage of it, but you, in opposition and revolt, will be its delegate and representative as fully as you would have been in your office, following the law. The only change is that you want change and there won’t be any. What you’d like to call destruction of the State will always appear to you really as service to the State. What you’ll do to escape the law will still be the force of the law for you. And when the State decides to annihilate you, you’ll know that this annihilation doesn’t sanction your error, doesn’t give you, before history, the vain arrogance of men in revolt, but rather that it makes you one of these modest and correct servants on the dust of whom rests the good of all — and your good as well (137).
if you’ve some time, you really should check it out.
THE MOST HIGH is an awesome failure — in the sense that PIERRE is a failure or that kafka is. that is to say, not at all — except in the sense that a pure ambition to representative truth must fall abysmally short.
blanchot might’ve given a snort at the idea that his project had anything to do with representing truth. this sorrentino review (in the NYTimes–evidently such a thing was possible but a scant two decades ago) of a number of blanchot’s translations from station hill press argues that blanchot above all believed in the paradoxical lie of language, its inherent corruption and artificiality.
nonetheless this novel, published in 1948, seems to want to capture a certain philosophical hell particular to its post-war era, which nonetheless uncannily resonates with our current moment. in its political theory it has antecedent in CANDIDE’s horrific picaresque within the best of all possible worlds; the translator’s preface mentions the work’s cousins in camus’ THE PLAGUE and orwell’s 1984; and in its use of the state as self-created disease it has intellectual descendants in, among others, saramago’s BLINDNESS and naomi klein’s SHOCK DOCTRINE.
but there’s no use trying to reduce it. the story of a civil servant, henry sorge, and his descent into a bureaucratic hell and plague defies summary. the same end-of-history ideas that spawned contemporary neoconservatism and arguably our current atrocious wars of imperialism are shown here (in 1948!) to be an ideological prison of hypocrisy and inescapable doubletalk. as well and importantly, it’s an indictment of our tacit complicity in these daily repressions and horrors.
…nothing’s higher than the law. Really, all offenses are plots against the law: you’d like to disobey it, but since that isn’t possible, you have to rebel against its legitimacy. A long time ago you could steal and leave it at that; now you’re committing through the theft an infinitely more serious crime, the most terrible of all and, besides, a crime that can’t be carried out, that fails. Of that crime there remains, precisely, only an insignificant trace — the theft (41).
(i should also say that i’ve tried blanchot many times over the past decade and just couldn’t get through it. to me, THOMAS THE OBSCURE was. and i seem to have absolutely no stomach for the straight-up theory (though friends have said THE WRITING OF THE DISASTER is also a must.) i only mention this to say THE MOST HIGH i found much more readable. even though it has a fractured structure, dialogues or situations more than plot, seems to shift fundamental style each chapter, and has looooong blocks of abstruse monologue-ing — i was drawn in by the continuity of its purpose… and maybe i’m still untrained and the others in fact do await my arrival like sanctuaries in time. nice to think.)
another quote, along the same theme:
For the State will know how to use your insubordination, and not only will it take advantage of it, but you, in opposition and revolt, will be its delegate and representative as fully as you would have been in your office, following the law. The only change is that you want change and there won’t be any. What you’d like to call destruction of the State will always appear to you really as service to the State. What you’ll do to escape the law will still be the force of the law for you. And when the State decides to annihilate you, you’ll know that this annihilation doesn’t sanction your error, doesn’t give you, before history, the vain arrogance of men in revolt, but rather that it makes you one of these modest and correct servants on the dust of whom rests the good of all — and your good as well (137).
if you’ve some time, you really should check it out.
March 15, 2017
Everything he - "truth" says is a lie and if there is a truth, it disappears when we try to get closer...
September 3, 2018
Truly strange and alienating.
June 28, 2019
I read this book a long time ago and remember having a lot of thoughts about it. That is all.
December 17, 2023
The Trial 2.0
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2021
守望者是不是没有营销编辑啊，我竟然不曾在任何一份“疫情书单”里见过这本书。《至高者》中描述了主人公因瘟疫被隔离在一栋大楼里，而就此探求自我、厘清人与人之间的关系、批判政府专员成为“至高者”以及这种爱国主义的意义。
不似《亚米拿达》里如迷宫般一个房间接一个房间，在《至高者》中，布朗肖直接取用这一栋大楼的一面墙来对话。这一次他还使用了第一人称、以大量的对话行文，所以这部作品不像布朗肖的其他作品那样艰涩难懂。大段大段的意识流描写好像直直跃进我的脑袋里跟我讲话，时不时遇到一段妙言，触碰一个重音，惊起一阵共鸣。不过，他的观察与思考也更加聚焦，甚至会与一块浸水的抹布产生亲密感又因此而感到害怕。
在布朗肖笔下，主人公亨利·左尔格遭到的撞击、拉扯、轻蔑都被抽象化，但却又能让我产生疼痛的实感，是很难得的阅读体验。
不似《亚米拿达》里如迷宫般一个房间接一个房间，在《至高者》中，布朗肖直接取用这一栋大楼的一面墙来对话。这一次他还使用了第一人称、以大量的对话行文，所以这部作品不像布朗肖的其他作品那样艰涩难懂。大段大段的意识流描写好像直直跃进我的脑袋里跟我讲话，时不时遇到一段妙言，触碰一个重音，惊起一阵共鸣。不过，他的观察与思考也更加聚焦，甚至会与一块浸水的抹布产生亲密感又因此而感到害怕。
在布朗肖笔下，主人公亨利·左尔格遭到的撞击、拉扯、轻蔑都被抽象化，但却又能让我产生疼痛的实感，是很难得的阅读体验。
January 19, 2016
This book! Loved each and every word.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews