ABSTRACT
There is little circumstantial evidence to help us plot the coordinates of Jean Paulhan and Maurice Blanchot's interactions. Like so many others, Blanchot corresponded with the editor of the NRF, but he refused to give authorization for these letters to be consulted by researchers. Doubt governs the whole of the adjutant's private monologue. He doubts his feelings for Raymonde, and hers for him; he doubts even the key to the whole story that he offers at the end. The discovery of the impossibility of self-sufficiency or self-definition is the main psychic event in the text. This is made most explicit in Aytre's case, when the adjutant decides that his sergeant is guilty of Raymonde's murder because his writing in the logbook begins to express a need for confirmation from others. It is clear that both Aytre and the adjutant suffer from guilt, hut equally people have to acknowledge that this suffering is a powerful glue.
