Fragment movement and the impossible: reading Shestov through Valéry and Blanchot

The paper explores the relation between fragmentary writing and the category of the impossible, focusing on Lev Shestov’s early work. Based on a comparative reading of Shestov’s The Apotheosis of Groundlessness alongside selected works by Paul Valéry and Maurice Blanchot, the paper presents three distinct movements through which fragmentary writing approaches the impossible. The paper argues that each author understands the impossible differently, leading their fragments to enact different movements: for Valéry, fragments trace controlled paths through mental states that would otherwise exceed our control; for Blanchot, they maintain a distance that lets the unknown remain unknown while keeping a relation to it. Against this background, the paper highlights Shestov’s distinctive position, claiming that for him, the impossible is produced by the self-imposed limits of rational necessity—it is not a separate domain, but a category existing only in relation to reason. Shestov’s fragmentary writing both questions this rational boundary and insists on what lies beyond it. The paper argues that his fragmentary, nonsequential writing severs the connections generating rational necessity and thus refuses to rule anything out as impossible. This allows for a claim to the impossible without turning it into a doctrine or a guarantee that the impossible will actually occur. On this basis, the paper offers a nonskeptical reading of early Shestov.