The art of criticism

Criticism is no longer an external judgement placing the literary work in a position of value and bestowing its opinion, after the fact, on this value. It has come to be inseparable from the internal working of the text, belonging to the movement when it becomes what it is. Criticism is the search for and experience of this possibility.

Blanchot from 1963, via Philosophical Conversations.

PS: I've only just realised that the essay from which this quotation comes also features the line that inspired the title of this blog: "Critical discourse is this space of resonance within which the unspoken, indefinite reality of the work is momentarily transformed and circumscribed into words".