Notes Toward Sinaism
It is as if, cast out of the world, into the error of infinite migration, [Kafka] had to struggle ceaselessly to make of this outside another world and of this error the principle, the origin of a new freedom. . . . He already belongs to the other shore, and wandering does not consist in nearing Canaan, but in nearing the desert, the truth of the desert—in going always further in that direction. . . - Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature Nothingness opens on to everything. The city closes man in on himself; the desert opens him up to the Other. The polytheist prefers the vegetal, embellishments and valleys; his despiser prefers the mineral, abrupt canyons, limestone cliffs limned with geological phantasmagoria. The mountain, which is the desert on high for people of the plain, offers a variant of that ageless affinity evidenced in more clement climates. . . . in a temperate country, one can place one's Sinai in the snow, provided that it be set apart, combining sterility and s...