Blanchot lays out his question about language as image :

or consider. ...  Blanchot lays out his question about language as image :

So we must express what we are seeking differently : in literature, doesn't language itself become altogether an image? We do not mean a language containing images or one that cast reality in figures, but one which is its own image, an image of language (and not a figurative language), or yet again, an  imaginary language, one which no one speaks; a language that is, which issues from its own absence, the way the image emerges on the absence of the thing; a language addressing itself to the shadow of events as well, not to their reality, and this because of the fact that the words which express them are, not signs, but images, images of words, and words where things turn into images.

Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.