English

" Reading does not consist in receiving the communication of the work, but in allowing the work to communicate itself, and to communicate itself within us. To read is not to add something to what we are, but to expose ourselves to that which, in the work, withdraws us from ourselves. Reading is that approach in which what is written remains at a distance and yet already acts upon us, draws us into its own space, makes us enter into the movement where there is no longer either outside or inside. The one who reads is no longer the one he was before reading; he becomes the place where the work is produced, where it occurs, where it finds its provisional fulfillment. To read is to remain within this transformation in which meaning does not present itself as an object, but as a power that displaces us and opens us to what was not yet."

 

Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature (L’Espace littéraire) 

 

 

 

 

Reading is an experience in the most ancient sense of the word. Not because reading would add content to the mind, but because it constitutes a passage. The word experience, from the Latin experiri, means to test, to attempt, to expose oneself to a trial. It contains the prefix ex-, which indicates going out, and a root linked to risky passage, to crossing. Reading, when it is not merely deciphering but truly entering into a text, corresponds exactly to this movement: something makes us leave our initial position, carries us elsewhere, and then returns us transformed, even if this transformation is not immediately visible.

A text is not an immobile object. It acts like a medium one passes through. As long as words remain at a distance, they remain external signs, comparable to forms glimpsed through glass. But at a moment almost imperceptible, the distance ceases. The reader no longer looks at the text: he moves within it. This transition marks the beginning of the experience. It does not depend on the complexity of the text, but on the quality of exposure. In other words… on the qualities of the reader.