A Beautiful Piece of Toroidal Literature -- ‘The last man’ (Le dernier homme, 1957)

One of the blog's regular readers sent me this beautiful snippet of literature the other day. I have not read the entire book, but I hope you will recognize the Simple Explanation's toroidal flow and Units of Consciousness at work in the following:

“Against you, motionless thought, everything that is reflected in us of everyone comes to assume form, shine, and then disappear. In this way we have the most people, in this way everyone is reflected in each of us by an infinite glimmering that projects us into a radiant intimacy from which each returns to himself, illuminated by being no more than a reflection of everyone else. And the thought that each of us is only the reflection of the universal reflection, this answer to our lightness, makes us drunk with that lightness, makes us ever lighter, lighter than ourselves, in the infinitely glimmering sphere which, from its surface to its single spark, is our own eternal coming and going.”

Maurice Blanchot, ‘The last man’ (Le dernier homme, 1957), translated by Lydia Davis.

“Contre toi, pensée immobile, vient prendre figure, briller et disparaître tout ce qui se réfléchit en nous de tous. Ainsi avons-nous le plus grand monde, ainsi, en chacun de nous, tous se réfléchissent par un infini miroitement qui nous projette en une intimité rayonnante d'où chacun revient à lui-même, illuminé de n'être que le reflet de tous. Et la pensée que nous ne sommes, chacun, que le reflet de l'universel reflet, cette réponse à notre légèreté nous rend ivres de cette légèreté, nous fait toujours plus légers, plus légers que nous, dans l'infini de la sphère miroitante qui, de la surface à l'étincelle unique, est l'éternel va-et-vient de nous-mêmes”.

Maurice Blanchot, Le dernier homme, 1957