Blanchot at 100 - 1

In November 2007, members of the Blanchot community gathered at Bard College to celebrate, in words and music, the hundredth anniversary of Maurice Blanchot’s birth. Éric Trudel, a French professor at Bard, gave a brief introduction and overview of Blanchot’s work. Students of the Bard College Conservatory of Music then played the first two movements of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major. George Quasha, poet and artist and owner of Station Hill Press, talked about how he first encountered Blanchot’s work, and how he came to publish all the Station Hill Blanchot books. Pierre Joris, poet and translator, read from his translation of Blanchot’s La communauté inavouable. Robert Kelly, poet, read a tribute to Blanchot written by P. Adams Sitney, who arranged for the first publication of Blanchot in America. Charlotte Mandell read from her translation of Une voix venue d’ailleurs, followed by Éric Trudel reading the same passage in French. Finally, Shawn Moore (violin) and Allegra Chapman (piano) played a movement (Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus) from Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps.