'Can one live these two lives? Whether or not one can, one must. One life is tied to the future of communication when the relations between men will no longer, stealthily or violently, make things out of them; but for this it engages us, profoundly, dangerously, in the world of things, of "useful' relations", of "efficient" works, in which we always risk losing ourselves. The other greets communication outside the world, immediately, but on condition that this communication be a disruption of the "immediate," an opening, a wrenching violence, a fire that burns without pause, for communist generosity is also this, is first this, this inclemency, this impatience, the refusal of any detour, of any ruse, and of all delay: an infinitely hazardous freedom. Only the first life, of course, has a relation to a possible "truth," it alone moves- but by means of what vicissitudes and what pains?- toward a world. That it takes little account of the second life, one can easily see: the intimate life- because it does not belong to the day- is without justification; it cannot be recognized and could be only if it misrepresented itself as value. Who does not know that this results in tragic, perhaps unbearable, divisions? The tragedy of our age would be here.
Thus we have two lives and the second is without rights but not without decision.'
Maurice Blanchot, 'On One Approach to Communism.'
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