Abstract

This study, which engages with the writing of Friedrich Holderlin and Maurice Blanchot, takes as its point of departure the following thesis: Blanchot's critical assessment of Holderlin fails to adequately respond to the complicated course of the latter's poetic development precisely at the moment at which both authors resemble each other most strikingly. The work of both, ironically , suggests the same: self-sacrifice is constitutively impossible inasmuch as the self cannot secure mastery over its "own" mortality. ;One cannot do justice to the logic of sacrifice without at the same time calling attention to the possibility of its impossibility. Holderlin and Blanchot almost say this, and it is the aim of this study to examine the point at which the scene of sacrifice in the work of both authors breaks off: primarily, in the fragmentary and perhaps necessarily incomplete texts variously entitled, Der Tod des Empedokles and Empedokles auf dem Aetna and both versions of Thomas l'Obscur. Holderlin's "theory" of sacrifice is traced back to its origins in German Idealism. The study explores some of the most prominent lines in the critical reception of Holderlin's Empedokles project, with particular attention to the martial manner in which German-nationalist critics have presented the fate of Empedokles . It is argued that Holderlinian scholarship---one of the most powerful representatives of which is Blanchot himself---has failed to come to terms with the failure of sacrifice in Holderlin: almost invariably, Empedokles' sacrifice has been interpreted as a fait accompli, despite its complete absence from the texts in question. This project attempts to counter this dominant interpretation by suggesting that one must begin from the absence of sacrifice in order to understand the logic of sacrifice in the work of both authors