Le Dasein ne pourra jamais « être » son « là ». Une telle remarque pourra surprendre. Toutefois, dès lors que la totalité ou la plénitude d'un « là » soient pensées, ce dernier se révèle transi de néant. Or, parler du néant implique une méthode propre, car c’est l’absence de tout « phénomène ». Devons-nous plutôt, et « déjà », constater la mort de la phénoménologie, son incapacité de « dire » ce qui est radicalement « sans » phénomène, même à entendre ce qu’elle nous aura enseigné ? C'est alors une Méthode du Néant qui se « donne » – ou plutôt « qui se sera déjà donnée », maintenant, comme dans l’Histoire – comme reste irréductible, têtu et tenace. Ce Néant implique qu’il est tant sans « temporalité » que sans « spatialité ». Il nous importe, par conséquent, de pouvoir « penser » le « non-lieu » et d’entendre à nouveaux frais ce que l’histoire nous en informe, notamment dans la pensée de Sohravardî. Le paradoxe est que cette histoire est peut-être elle-même hors histoire. / The Dasein cannot « be » its « be-ing-there ». Such a proposition may surprise us. However, where the totality of a « there » is considered, the latter reveals itself as kneaded by « nothingness ». Further, nothingness would imply its own method. Here, one is dealing with the absence of all phenomena. Should we, and « already », find in favour of the death of phonemenology, of its incapacity to « say » what is radically « without » phenonmenon, even where we are to heed what this tradition has taught us ? A Method of Nothingness, the kind which is sought here, seems to propose itself – or rather « has already proposed itself », as it is within History – as an irreducible, stubborn and tenacious one. Nothingness does imply the absence of « temporality » as well as « spatiality ». Consequently, we are driven to « think » the « no-where » and to heed afresh what history has taught us, namely the thought of Sohravardî on the matter. The paradox is this may bring us outside history itself.

This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truthfalsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence, but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies. In the first case, this dissertation offers a theoretical background to the concept of intermediality, seen in its theological, phenomenological, aesthetic and ethical significances. In the second case, it presents the reader with a heuristic apparatus for approaching this problematic in the field of literary interpretation and provides examples of ways in which such an analysis can become relevant. The primary texts discussed here are all examples of attempts to redefine the notion of representation away from the truth-falsity or subject-object oppositions, as well as to create an aesthetic space with its own particularities, at the limit between visibility and invisibility, excessive presence and absence. Nicholas of Cusa’s “Preface” to The Vision of God proposes an ethics of reading defined by admiratio (the consubstantiation of immediacy and distance) under the aegis of the all-seeing icon of God. Louis Marin’s reading of the episode of the Resurrection reveals that history and narrative arise from the conjunction of the excessive absence of the empty tomb of Jesus and the excessive presence announcing the resurrection of Christ. Sohravardî’s “Recital of the Crimson Angel” is a presentation of the space-between of revelation, between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina. Walter Benjamin’s “Agesilaus Santander” restores the connections between the exoteric and the esoteric under the patient gaze of “Angelus Novus”. Paul Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’Architecte explores the aesthetic of “real appearance” in the space-between the image and the perceiving eye. Poe and Malamud’s short stories reveal the affinities between poetic language and angelophany. Elie Wiesel’s Les portes de la forêt expands the apophatic itinerary from the self to the radically other in a hermeneutical gesture which has the angel as its initial and final guide. Finally, Rafael Alberti’s Sobre los ángeles shows that the aphaeretic function of poetic language is very similar to the apophatic treatment of the world as representation; in this last sense too, the angels are indispensible guides.

This dissertation examines the reconfiguration of the limits of representation in reference to the intermediary function of angels. The Modernist engagement with the figure of the angel entailed, primarily, a reconsideration of the problem of representation as well as an attempt to trace the contours of a poetics that plays itself outside the mimetic understanding of representation. My contention is that this transformation of literary referentiality was not simply a disengagement of art from reality but, rather, from the truthfalsity, reality-fiction, subject-object dichotomies. The angel, defined as the figure of passage par excellence, but also as the agency that induces the transformation of the visible in the invisible and vice versa, appears both as a model/archetype and as a guide towards the illumination of this intermediary aesthetic. Working with the joined perspectives from angelology, contemporary phenomenology, and poetics, this dissertation is an extended overview of the notion of intermediary spaces, as well as an attempt to probe the relevance of this concept for the field of literary studies. In the first case, this dissertation offers a theoretical background to the concept of intermediality, seen in its theological, phenomenological, aesthetic and ethical significances. In the second case, it presents the reader with a heuristic apparatus for approaching this problematic in the field of literary interpretation and provides examples of ways in which such an analysis can become relevant. The primary texts discussed here are all examples of attempts to redefine the notion of representation away from the truth-falsity or subject-object oppositions, as well as to create an aesthetic space with its own particularities, at the limit between visibility and invisibility, excessive presence and absence. Nicholas of Cusa’s “Preface” to The Vision of God proposes an ethics of reading defined by admiratio (the consubstantiation of immediacy and distance) under the aegis of the all-seeing icon of God. Louis Marin’s reading of the episode of the Resurrection reveals that history and narrative arise from the conjunction of the excessive absence of the empty tomb of Jesus and the excessive presence announcing the resurrection of Christ. Sohravardî’s “Recital of the Crimson Angel” is a presentation of the space-between of revelation, between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina. Walter Benjamin’s “Agesilaus Santander” restores the connections between the exoteric and the esoteric under the patient gaze of “Angelus Novus”. Paul Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’Architecte explores the aesthetic of “real appearance” in the space-between the image and the perceiving eye. Poe and Malamud’s short stories reveal the affinities between poetic language and angelophany. Elie Wiesel’s Les portes de la forêt expands the apophatic itinerary from the self to the radically other in a hermeneutical gesture which has the angel as its initial and final guide. Finally, Rafael Alberti’s Sobre los ángeles shows that the aphaeretic function of poetic language is very similar to the apophatic treatment of the world as representation; in this last sense too, the angels are indispensible guides.