Abstract

When Blanchot talks about authentic literature he does not mean high-culture literature, but literature that defies any kind of assessment. The encounter with such literature cannot be done with the help of any of the existing terminology or categories, because the space in which it is created resides beyond the bounds of their influence. It is the space of living experience of the author, or more precisely, the space of the living experience that has replaced the author, not in the sense that it is the same new, more intense presence, but rather the author’s absence – the absence of everything that we experience when we encounter authentic literature.