Ulysses

Thomas Carl Wall, from his lovely Radical Passivity:

So alluring, Blanchot’s texts remain ambiguous, void of content, hesitant, and of an uncertain status (are they poetic? Philosophic? Critical?). One can approach them, to be sure, in the manner of Ulysses, by strapping oneself to the sturdy mast of Hegel, Heidegger, Kojève, or whomever. (98)

I like this formulation very much. When I read it, I thought: but that is what I have done. But then I thought: isn’t Blanchot also Ulysses – and doesn’t he require of all of us who comment, or write, that we too are Ulysses? And doesn’t he also insist that all of us undergo the death of the ‘other’ Ulysses who drowns when his boat his wrecked against the Sirens’ shore?