Friendship/ Blanchot

Blanchot: “The distance that affirms itself in proximity” & “We must give up tying to know those by whom we are linked by something essential”

As I move toward the friend her distance from me, which would otherwise have been hidden, emerges and is measured. This specific distance is the secret which the friendship discloses. It is the creature of intimacy.

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Learn to keep silent, O friend. Speech is like silver, but to be silent at the right moment is pure gold. (Beethoven)

I was wondering about a phrase (re Nietzsche) from Friday’s conference on friendship: “There are truths in friendship that are better left unknown”. Is this significantly different from “There are truths that are better left unsaid”. Surely yes: it's not saying 'don't disclose' but - in certain areas - don't begin to question or interpret. To choose not to know.. (The friend is the one who knows when to say ‘I don’t want to know!’.)

This reminds me of two things not directly concerned with friendship. Rilke’s decision not to go through with psychoanalysis so that the invisible ground of his writing would not be exposed (and therefore ruined). The ‘dispute’ between Breton and CAillois about the Mexican jumping bean. Caillois wanting to open the bean and examine its secret, Breton insisting it remain closed – ‘I don’t want to know’ the effects are sufficient (poetry, mystery etc). We require certain blindspots; let us keep them blind even if it involves a certain artifice.

And might the ‘unknown’ refer not to uncomfortable facts about each friend, but to something ‘unknown’ to both friends, something about the friendship itself, perhaps even concerning the very basis of the friendship. Someone at the conference mentioned the idea of an algorithm, which produces a program without being directly present therein. So, if I have misunderstood him correctly, couldn’t this be used to think about a friendship, the algorithm which having facilitated the friendship must remain hidden.