Le regard d’Orphée ou la vision iconoclaste

The aim of this paper is to explore Blanchot’s rewriting of the myth of Orpheus as an experience of loss generating the space of literature. In this sense, the failure of every form of representation to express the plenitude of Being is at the bases of the literary experience, which is grounded in the essential absence of the presence. Eurydice stands for this presence that Orpheus tries to reach trough the night, the “other night”, but fails to save because of his desire to see. The restless night involves the loss of vision and the spectrality of the presence. This fundamental iconoclasty brings about the necessity of invisibility and inexpressibility as the original condition of writing