Did Blanchot create the canon [a certain canon] of modern European poetry by linking Mallarmé and the symbolist tradition with Holderlin (as read by Heidegger)? Or did he simply represent the educated consensus of the epoch? I am inclined to believe that this canon took shape for the first time in his essays, but I don't know enough about what other critics might have influenced him at an early date. He often quotes someone named "Brice Parain" in his early essays. Maybe Brice Parain is the proto-Blanchot.