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A searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship.
Guilty is a searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship. It takes the form of a diary, recording the earliest days of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, but this is no ordinary day book: it records the author’s journey through a war-torn world without transcendence. Bataille’s spiritual journey is also an intellectual one, a trip with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Blake, Baudelaire and Nietzsche as his companions. And it is a school of the flesh wherein eroticism and mysticism are fused in a passionate search for pure immanence. Georges Bataille said of his work: “I teach the art of turning horror into delight.” This new translation of Guilty is the first to include the full text from Bataille’s Oeuvres Complètes. The text includes Bataille’s notes and drafts, which permit the reader to trace the development of the book from diary to draft to published text, as well as annotations of Bataille’s source materials. An extensive and incisive introductory essay by Stuart Kendall situates the work historically, biographically, and philosophically. Guilty is Bataille’s most demanding, intricate, and multilayered work, but it is also his most personal and moving one.
Guilty is a searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship. It takes the form of a diary, recording the earliest days of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, but this is no ordinary day book: it records the author’s journey through a war-torn world without transcendence. Bataille’s spiritual journey is also an intellectual one, a trip with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Blake, Baudelaire and Nietzsche as his companions. And it is a school of the flesh wherein eroticism and mysticism are fused in a passionate search for pure immanence. Georges Bataille said of his work: “I teach the art of turning horror into delight.” This new translation of Guilty is the first to include the full text from Bataille’s Oeuvres Complètes. The text includes Bataille’s notes and drafts, which permit the reader to trace the development of the book from diary to draft to published text, as well as annotations of Bataille’s source materials. An extensive and incisive introductory essay by Stuart Kendall situates the work historically, biographically, and philosophically. Guilty is Bataille’s most demanding, intricate, and multilayered work, but it is also his most personal and moving one.
161 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 1944
About the author
Georges Bataille
214 books2,151 followersFrench essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 29, 2023
As Stuart Kendall notes in his introduction to the translation, this is a strange book. That is saying quite a bit when a Bataille scholar says that. I think that other works/essays are probably "stranger" as far as weird imagery and hard to interpret (The Pineal Gland, the Obelisk....mostly stuff in his book Visions of Excess) but I think Guilty is strange because it is so highly personal and humanizes Bataille - someone who i previously thought of as a rather enigmatic and strange figure. In this book he talks about his deep depression, anguish, and solitude after his lover Laure died and World War 2 broke out. He was also sick with tuberculosis - as he makes note a couple times about being a sick man, etc.
Mixed in with these quasi-diary entries (in the notes to the Kendall translation you get the unabridged diary I presume - Bataille purposely cut out pieces to Guilty) are ruminations on anguish, the night, chance, laughter, ecstasy. He talks about eroticism a bit, of course, but to me it seems like the central theme of the book is essentially despair. I feel like Bataille constructs his theory of laughter in order to continue living in the horrible conditions he was in. Not that it is outrageous - I think it is very interesting. He says something like laughter brings us to the abyss (death). He says multiple times he is afraid of death, and a couple times notes how only someone other than him will know how he dies and when. Thus, it seems as though if he does not laugh, he will die. Along with these ruminations you will sometimes get poetry (mostly his own) and quotations from novels/journals interspersed between paragraphs. Perhaps Kendall thought it was strange because of how heterogeneous it is. I would agree with him here.
I think all the chapters are good, but in my opinion it really picks up in his chapter "The Attraction of Gambling" which I feel like is one of the best Bataille "essays" I've ever read. This is where he talks about chance. His chapter on laughter and ecstasy are great too. If you have the Kendall version the notes are definitely worth reading, though they are almost a separate book on its own.
I can't say I understood everything (perhaps even most) of what Bataille was getting at, but you definitely get a sense that it was written on a deathbed and this immense shadow is both latent and manifest within the text. Recommended to no one in particular but everyone generally
Mixed in with these quasi-diary entries (in the notes to the Kendall translation you get the unabridged diary I presume - Bataille purposely cut out pieces to Guilty) are ruminations on anguish, the night, chance, laughter, ecstasy. He talks about eroticism a bit, of course, but to me it seems like the central theme of the book is essentially despair. I feel like Bataille constructs his theory of laughter in order to continue living in the horrible conditions he was in. Not that it is outrageous - I think it is very interesting. He says something like laughter brings us to the abyss (death). He says multiple times he is afraid of death, and a couple times notes how only someone other than him will know how he dies and when. Thus, it seems as though if he does not laugh, he will die. Along with these ruminations you will sometimes get poetry (mostly his own) and quotations from novels/journals interspersed between paragraphs. Perhaps Kendall thought it was strange because of how heterogeneous it is. I would agree with him here.
I think all the chapters are good, but in my opinion it really picks up in his chapter "The Attraction of Gambling" which I feel like is one of the best Bataille "essays" I've ever read. This is where he talks about chance. His chapter on laughter and ecstasy are great too. If you have the Kendall version the notes are definitely worth reading, though they are almost a separate book on its own.
I can't say I understood everything (perhaps even most) of what Bataille was getting at, but you definitely get a sense that it was written on a deathbed and this immense shadow is both latent and manifest within the text. Recommended to no one in particular but everyone generally
December 10, 2020
Sharp serenity, the sky before me black, star-filled, the hill black and so too the trees: I've found out why my heart's a banked fire, though inside still alive. There's a feeling of presence in me irreducible to any kind of notion—the thunderbolt that ecstasy causes. I become a towering flight from myself as if my life flowed in slow rivers through the inky sky. I've stopped being ME. But whatever issues from me reaches and encloses boundless presence, itself similar to the loss of myself, which is no longer either myself or someone else. And a deep kiss between us, in which the distinction of our lips is lost, is linked to that ecstasy and is dark, familiar to the universe as the earth wheeling through heaven's loss.
The Sacrifice can begin at that instant. At that instant Non-satisfaction, Wrath, and Pride recommence. In silence and charged with self-loathing, a crow awkward as it flies, burdened down with loathing even for itself, greedy to abolish what is called Affection and Love; this ecstasy is intolerable now and what's left to subsist is an empty manliness.
March 28, 2020
Some of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. Worth it but it's a difficult read. It is a book to meditate rather than to explain. There is no central narrative, it's a set of disparate experiences about the difficulty of living.
Written during the war, Bataille tells us that there is a more important battle to be fought: our own internal struggle.
"L'idée de fuir n'est à la vérité ni folle ni lâche. Nous voulons trouver ce que nous cherchons, qui n'est qu'être délivrés de nous-mêmes. C'est pourquoi, rencontrant l'amour, nous avons de si pures ivresses - de si grands désespoir le manquant. Chaque fois l'amour est l'autre planète, nous y sombrons libérés du vide des tapotements et du malheur. En effet, dans l'amour nous cessons d'être nous-mêmes."
Written during the war, Bataille tells us that there is a more important battle to be fought: our own internal struggle.
"L'idée de fuir n'est à la vérité ni folle ni lâche. Nous voulons trouver ce que nous cherchons, qui n'est qu'être délivrés de nous-mêmes. C'est pourquoi, rencontrant l'amour, nous avons de si pures ivresses - de si grands désespoir le manquant. Chaque fois l'amour est l'autre planète, nous y sombrons libérés du vide des tapotements et du malheur. En effet, dans l'amour nous cessons d'être nous-mêmes."
March 28, 2021
O culpado é o volume II da Suma Ateológica, apesar de ter sido escrito antes d'A experiência interior. O culpado é do imediato pré-Guerra e do durante a Guerra. Bataille, de luto por Laure e pela Acéphale, está muito mais angustiado que no volume I, o que transparece mais pelo estilo misto da escrita: autobiografia em formato de diário e ensaio filosófico. Por ter sido muito editado ao longo dos anos, o texto é acompanhado de trechos que foram tirados da versão final: ou seja, temos quase 100 páginas de notas.
É uma experiência de leitura realmente intrigante: o texto é à todo tempo complementado e confrontado com as notas. A sensação de estar lendo dois livros ao mesmo tempo é bastante interessante. Além disso, os temas que Bataille mobiliza, apesar de similares aos do volume I (o não-saber, a angústia, o riso, o êxtase, as lágrimas, a escrita, o limite), estão aqui de forma muito mais brutal: a narrativa pessoal de Bataille é por vezes cômica, por vezes extremamente angustiante e deprimente. O trecho que descreve uma visita ao túmulo de Laure e uma experiência dilacerante numa caminhada à noite são especialmente enervantes, no melhor sentido. É, sem dúvidas, uma escrita de muita dor e esgotamento, indo até a culpa e o pecado; uma escrita de potência na impotência, do colocar em ação e em questão.
O ponto alto do livro são essas misturas: em meio às experiências pessoais de êxtase erótico (as descrições de atos sexuais são frequentes, poéticas, alusivas e por vezes assustadoras - beiram imagens de sacrifícios e assassinatos, algo obviamente intencional - especialmente em A aleluia, que lembra muito O erotismo) e muita dor (de todas as formas), Bataille mergulha nos buracos mais escuros do não-saber, do êxodo, da solidão, do sacrifício, da morte. A desgraça da guerra tem um papel de quase-maldição: uma ameaça que confunde o desejo e o medo da morte.
Gostei especialmente do capítulo sobre a 'chance' (ou talvez a fortuna, em maquiavelês): aqui temos uma ponte interessantíssima com a discussão filosófica sobre a contingência, sobre os lances de dados, sobre o além do ser, sobre o aleatório (o 'calhar' de Bataille) e sobre o encontro (o 'gancho'). Trechos brilhantes E obscuros que tem um valor sagrado: a comunicação com a realidade indefinida por um lado, a nostalgia de retirar-se do jogo ao falar de Deus por outro (a própria oposição é tensionada, a má-chance intervém na chance).
Outra discussão interessantíssima que tem seu ápice no Apêndice é da relação entre o riso e a linguagem na questão da interrogação infinita característica da existência humana - a partir da questão do isolamento, da angústia da morte, da noite (me lembra o início d'O ser e o nada, mas traçando caminhos diferentes). Bataille discute a questão dos limites da linguagem, do logus, de Deus ou a razão como meio-termo entre o homem e a natureza; propondo uma posição intrigante: o riso (ou o êxtase) é a expressão da autonomia ou da soberania, nos mostra o limite e a destruição da linguagem, a ruptura de um sistema por um contato violento e a fusão que introduz um outro a mim na comunicação, um ser ao além dos seres. Combate-se a linguagem servindo-se dela, dando-lhe sua posição; o homem não responde à interrogação infinita, mas formula o vazio ao realizar sua potência autônoma - a resposta apenas fornece um novo dado, apenas cristaliza a linguagem.
É um livro incrível, tão bom quanto O erotismo. A mistura de estilos produz um excesso indescritível, uma mutação embriagada e imunda, no melhor sentido. Bataille nos propõe a ir além do conhecimento, da razão, da palavra, ao limite do possível: nos leva a negatividade como ação e a ruptura dos sistemas fechados; nos leva a dar chance ao jogo, a beleza dilacerada entre o sol e a noite.
É uma experiência de leitura realmente intrigante: o texto é à todo tempo complementado e confrontado com as notas. A sensação de estar lendo dois livros ao mesmo tempo é bastante interessante. Além disso, os temas que Bataille mobiliza, apesar de similares aos do volume I (o não-saber, a angústia, o riso, o êxtase, as lágrimas, a escrita, o limite), estão aqui de forma muito mais brutal: a narrativa pessoal de Bataille é por vezes cômica, por vezes extremamente angustiante e deprimente. O trecho que descreve uma visita ao túmulo de Laure e uma experiência dilacerante numa caminhada à noite são especialmente enervantes, no melhor sentido. É, sem dúvidas, uma escrita de muita dor e esgotamento, indo até a culpa e o pecado; uma escrita de potência na impotência, do colocar em ação e em questão.
O ponto alto do livro são essas misturas: em meio às experiências pessoais de êxtase erótico (as descrições de atos sexuais são frequentes, poéticas, alusivas e por vezes assustadoras - beiram imagens de sacrifícios e assassinatos, algo obviamente intencional - especialmente em A aleluia, que lembra muito O erotismo) e muita dor (de todas as formas), Bataille mergulha nos buracos mais escuros do não-saber, do êxodo, da solidão, do sacrifício, da morte. A desgraça da guerra tem um papel de quase-maldição: uma ameaça que confunde o desejo e o medo da morte.
Gostei especialmente do capítulo sobre a 'chance' (ou talvez a fortuna, em maquiavelês): aqui temos uma ponte interessantíssima com a discussão filosófica sobre a contingência, sobre os lances de dados, sobre o além do ser, sobre o aleatório (o 'calhar' de Bataille) e sobre o encontro (o 'gancho'). Trechos brilhantes E obscuros que tem um valor sagrado: a comunicação com a realidade indefinida por um lado, a nostalgia de retirar-se do jogo ao falar de Deus por outro (a própria oposição é tensionada, a má-chance intervém na chance).
Outra discussão interessantíssima que tem seu ápice no Apêndice é da relação entre o riso e a linguagem na questão da interrogação infinita característica da existência humana - a partir da questão do isolamento, da angústia da morte, da noite (me lembra o início d'O ser e o nada, mas traçando caminhos diferentes). Bataille discute a questão dos limites da linguagem, do logus, de Deus ou a razão como meio-termo entre o homem e a natureza; propondo uma posição intrigante: o riso (ou o êxtase) é a expressão da autonomia ou da soberania, nos mostra o limite e a destruição da linguagem, a ruptura de um sistema por um contato violento e a fusão que introduz um outro a mim na comunicação, um ser ao além dos seres. Combate-se a linguagem servindo-se dela, dando-lhe sua posição; o homem não responde à interrogação infinita, mas formula o vazio ao realizar sua potência autônoma - a resposta apenas fornece um novo dado, apenas cristaliza a linguagem.
É um livro incrível, tão bom quanto O erotismo. A mistura de estilos produz um excesso indescritível, uma mutação embriagada e imunda, no melhor sentido. Bataille nos propõe a ir além do conhecimento, da razão, da palavra, ao limite do possível: nos leva a negatividade como ação e a ruptura dos sistemas fechados; nos leva a dar chance ao jogo, a beleza dilacerada entre o sol e a noite.
May 9, 2019
"Only the wounded, the exhausted reach this point. Life cannot maintain itself at this height, and in the end the ground always slips out from under one’s feet. Who could decide if this is good luck or bad ? But everything, at the slightest doubt, is lost."
"What I liked about the absurd, the strange, was its brightness, the desire to blind, the foolish easy life."
"Great and terrible events are hard to bear. At the same time they are also those that I would not have wanted to live without, they brought me the worst, hour by hour."
"I lay down in the immense light of my night, in my cold drunkenness, in my anguish; I bear it only by knowing that everything is in vain."
"I write like a bird singing at daybreak, unfortunately, with a tightening of anguish, of nausea: exhausted by the night’s dreams !"
"Writing is never more than a game played with an ungraspable reality."
"I clench my teeth, unclench them and go to sleep."
"Dying, I can no longer cry out: because the cry that I scream out is endless silence."
"I grasp the object of my desire. I even bind myself to that object; I live in it. It is as sure as light, and like the first hesitant star at night, it is a marvel. Whoever would like to know this object with me, must access my darkness."
"Living is like throwing the dice, madly, without return."
"Chance is hard to bear. It is common to destroy it and sink. Chance wants to be impersonal (or it’s vanity, a caged bird), ungraspable, melancholic, it slips into the night, like a song …"
"I am deaf in the depths of my solitude, where the chaos exceeds that of the war. Even the cries of agony seem empty to me."
"I am deaf in the depths of my solitude, where the chaos exceeds that of the war. Even the cries of agony seem empty to me."
"Dying, I can no longer cry out: because the cry that I scream out is endless silence."
"In every accessible reality, in each being, the place of sacrifice, the wound must be found. A being is only touched at the point where it succumbs …"
"A nightmare is my truth, my nakedness … I voluntarily wrap myself in the sheets of fog, of indistinct reality, at the heart of this new world that I am part of. What makes a fog as dirty as this intolerable (enough to scream) … I remain alone, drowned in a rising sea: hilarity as gentle, as friendly as the movement of the sea."
"What I liked about the absurd, the strange, was its brightness, the desire to blind, the foolish easy life."
"Great and terrible events are hard to bear. At the same time they are also those that I would not have wanted to live without, they brought me the worst, hour by hour."
"I lay down in the immense light of my night, in my cold drunkenness, in my anguish; I bear it only by knowing that everything is in vain."
"I write like a bird singing at daybreak, unfortunately, with a tightening of anguish, of nausea: exhausted by the night’s dreams !"
"Writing is never more than a game played with an ungraspable reality."
"I clench my teeth, unclench them and go to sleep."
"Dying, I can no longer cry out: because the cry that I scream out is endless silence."
"I grasp the object of my desire. I even bind myself to that object; I live in it. It is as sure as light, and like the first hesitant star at night, it is a marvel. Whoever would like to know this object with me, must access my darkness."
"Living is like throwing the dice, madly, without return."
"Chance is hard to bear. It is common to destroy it and sink. Chance wants to be impersonal (or it’s vanity, a caged bird), ungraspable, melancholic, it slips into the night, like a song …"
"I am deaf in the depths of my solitude, where the chaos exceeds that of the war. Even the cries of agony seem empty to me."
"I am deaf in the depths of my solitude, where the chaos exceeds that of the war. Even the cries of agony seem empty to me."
"Dying, I can no longer cry out: because the cry that I scream out is endless silence."
"In every accessible reality, in each being, the place of sacrifice, the wound must be found. A being is only touched at the point where it succumbs …"
"A nightmare is my truth, my nakedness … I voluntarily wrap myself in the sheets of fog, of indistinct reality, at the heart of this new world that I am part of. What makes a fog as dirty as this intolerable (enough to scream) … I remain alone, drowned in a rising sea: hilarity as gentle, as friendly as the movement of the sea."
February 18, 2023
“bury me in the sun
bury every girlfriend i’ve had
bury my wife and her nakedness
in the sun
bury the kisses i’ve given
and the white drool on my mouth”
de data asta chiar am scris foarte mult, dar este primul text al lui Bataille care primeste cinci stele de la mine si asta pentru cat de bine concentreaza tot ce putea sa insemne pentru mine opera lui pana acum. si sunt destule lucruri pe care voiam sa le strang macar pentru mine intr-un singur loc
"How can I describe the anguish in which I'm sinking? Only exhaustion speaks for me! My face so wholly expressing fear, my mood so depressed, ruin so entirely winning in me, I might as well think of myself as dead already. Each day trying to think the unthinkable, in debauch after debauch looking for...coming so close to the void I almost die."
Guilty nu a fost scrisa in cea mai buna perioada din viata lui Bataille si e de inteles - razboiul, moartea iubitei lui, Colette Peignot - nu ma mir de ce foloseste cuvintele death si anguish de atatea ori,
dar e si o carte extrem de personala (in mare parte un jurnal) si e prima carte care se concentreaza mai mult pe latura umana a lui Bataille decat sa exprime violenta si lipsa lui de autocontrol.
Unele pasaje sunt atat de pline de lumina, despre o iubire disperata de viata pe care nu cred ca am mai intalnit-o explicit in alte scrieri de-ale lui si imi aduc aminte de Nunta lui Camus:
“Life’s a delight, a feast, a celebration, it’s an incomprehensible and oppressive dream with charms I’m hardly blind to. Others don’t love life with such an anguished drunkness”
"My will: relaxing out in sunlight, in shade, reading, a little wine, the hazy empty sun-drenched countryside(...)” (la fel !!!)
"Incomprehensible joy, inner recesses of my heart, Negro spider...poppies of the field, sun, stars, can I be something more than heaven's wildness? Then to go deep inside me and discover endless grief, night...and death...and desire for grief, night, and death" - toata pasiunea lui Bataille, indiferent daca e vorba de cea pentru viata sau pentru moarte isi are originea in aceeasi nevoie de autoconsum, “the desire to burn up” care il obsedeaza; toate vin din interiorul lui.
Mi se pare foarte important ca desi Bataille face pe tot parcursul operei lui referinte la extazul produs de experientele religioase si la cel pe care el insusi il cauta in stilul lui de viata “debaucherous” nu le confunda pe una cu cealalta - “i don’t like to mix my enthusiasms” si nu se comporta de parca sexualitatea i-ar aduce vreun fel de iluminare spirituala -
“Mystical and erotic experiences differ in that the former is totally successful. Erotic licentiousness results in depression, disgust and the inability to continue. Unsatisfied sexual need completes suffering(...) To give up my sexual habits would mean I’d have to discover some other means of tormenting myself, though this torture would have to be as intoxicating as alcohol”. Pentru el “pleasure mimes death” si toate astea (duse la extrema desigur) sunt felul lui de a experimenta ceea ce stia ca ratiunea nu o sa ii aduca.
Revenind la religie, cand am citit “Partea blestemata” a lui m-a pufnit rasul cand pe spatele cartii am vazut scris “Bataille e mai degraba un sfant decat un filosof”. Nu ca nu as intelege comparatia, dar el insusi zice “I live like a pig according to Christians. (...) I honestly try to find out what makes saints so passionate and intense, but their “recquiescats” are too final for my unholy lightheartedness. I’ve had my own peaceful ecstasies and insights; a half-glimpsed realm that, even if it could buy me stability, I’d end up cursing”
Si chiar daca este atat de atras de sacrificiu si meditatie asta nu se aplica si in cazul ideii unui dumnezeu absolut (pe care la fel ca Nietzsche o vede ca pe angajamentul unui sclav) “if people think of my life as a sickness to be cured only by God, they should just keep quiet for a minute. And if they then discover real silence, i’m asking them not to be reluctant to back off”;
“I can’t respect Jesus. Just the opposite. I can only feel complicity in my hatred for apathy or dour faces. That God could arise from feelings of being miserable puts a bad light on the human condition.”
Ce au in comun cele doua experiente, religia si dragostea este comunicarea cu ceva din exteriorul nostru, pentru ca Bataille uraste izolarea. Asociaza dragostea cu sacrificiul - “rather than eat, my desire is to be eaten” si spune intr-un mod poate stereotip “there is no greater desire than a wounded person's need for another wound” - “Lovers discover each other only in mutual laceration. Each of the two craves suffering. Desire desires in them what's impossible”.
Si pentru final daca tot am vorbit atat despre extaz ca tema in opera lui “Life is a result of disequilibrium and instability. Stable forms are needed to make it possible however. Going from one extreme to the other, from one desire to another, from one state of collapse to frantic tension if the movement speeds up, there can only be ruin and emptiness. To shrik from fundamental stability isn’t less cowardly than to hesitate about shattering it.”
un pupic din partea mea daca ati citit toata aceasta disertatie!!
bury every girlfriend i’ve had
bury my wife and her nakedness
in the sun
bury the kisses i’ve given
and the white drool on my mouth”
de data asta chiar am scris foarte mult, dar este primul text al lui Bataille care primeste cinci stele de la mine si asta pentru cat de bine concentreaza tot ce putea sa insemne pentru mine opera lui pana acum. si sunt destule lucruri pe care voiam sa le strang macar pentru mine intr-un singur loc
"How can I describe the anguish in which I'm sinking? Only exhaustion speaks for me! My face so wholly expressing fear, my mood so depressed, ruin so entirely winning in me, I might as well think of myself as dead already. Each day trying to think the unthinkable, in debauch after debauch looking for...coming so close to the void I almost die."
Guilty nu a fost scrisa in cea mai buna perioada din viata lui Bataille si e de inteles - razboiul, moartea iubitei lui, Colette Peignot - nu ma mir de ce foloseste cuvintele death si anguish de atatea ori,
dar e si o carte extrem de personala (in mare parte un jurnal) si e prima carte care se concentreaza mai mult pe latura umana a lui Bataille decat sa exprime violenta si lipsa lui de autocontrol.
Unele pasaje sunt atat de pline de lumina, despre o iubire disperata de viata pe care nu cred ca am mai intalnit-o explicit in alte scrieri de-ale lui si imi aduc aminte de Nunta lui Camus:
“Life’s a delight, a feast, a celebration, it’s an incomprehensible and oppressive dream with charms I’m hardly blind to. Others don’t love life with such an anguished drunkness”
"My will: relaxing out in sunlight, in shade, reading, a little wine, the hazy empty sun-drenched countryside(...)” (la fel !!!)
"Incomprehensible joy, inner recesses of my heart, Negro spider...poppies of the field, sun, stars, can I be something more than heaven's wildness? Then to go deep inside me and discover endless grief, night...and death...and desire for grief, night, and death" - toata pasiunea lui Bataille, indiferent daca e vorba de cea pentru viata sau pentru moarte isi are originea in aceeasi nevoie de autoconsum, “the desire to burn up” care il obsedeaza; toate vin din interiorul lui.
Mi se pare foarte important ca desi Bataille face pe tot parcursul operei lui referinte la extazul produs de experientele religioase si la cel pe care el insusi il cauta in stilul lui de viata “debaucherous” nu le confunda pe una cu cealalta - “i don’t like to mix my enthusiasms” si nu se comporta de parca sexualitatea i-ar aduce vreun fel de iluminare spirituala -
“Mystical and erotic experiences differ in that the former is totally successful. Erotic licentiousness results in depression, disgust and the inability to continue. Unsatisfied sexual need completes suffering(...) To give up my sexual habits would mean I’d have to discover some other means of tormenting myself, though this torture would have to be as intoxicating as alcohol”. Pentru el “pleasure mimes death” si toate astea (duse la extrema desigur) sunt felul lui de a experimenta ceea ce stia ca ratiunea nu o sa ii aduca.
Revenind la religie, cand am citit “Partea blestemata” a lui m-a pufnit rasul cand pe spatele cartii am vazut scris “Bataille e mai degraba un sfant decat un filosof”. Nu ca nu as intelege comparatia, dar el insusi zice “I live like a pig according to Christians. (...) I honestly try to find out what makes saints so passionate and intense, but their “recquiescats” are too final for my unholy lightheartedness. I’ve had my own peaceful ecstasies and insights; a half-glimpsed realm that, even if it could buy me stability, I’d end up cursing”
Si chiar daca este atat de atras de sacrificiu si meditatie asta nu se aplica si in cazul ideii unui dumnezeu absolut (pe care la fel ca Nietzsche o vede ca pe angajamentul unui sclav) “if people think of my life as a sickness to be cured only by God, they should just keep quiet for a minute. And if they then discover real silence, i’m asking them not to be reluctant to back off”;
“I can’t respect Jesus. Just the opposite. I can only feel complicity in my hatred for apathy or dour faces. That God could arise from feelings of being miserable puts a bad light on the human condition.”
Ce au in comun cele doua experiente, religia si dragostea este comunicarea cu ceva din exteriorul nostru, pentru ca Bataille uraste izolarea. Asociaza dragostea cu sacrificiul - “rather than eat, my desire is to be eaten” si spune intr-un mod poate stereotip “there is no greater desire than a wounded person's need for another wound” - “Lovers discover each other only in mutual laceration. Each of the two craves suffering. Desire desires in them what's impossible”.
Si pentru final daca tot am vorbit atat despre extaz ca tema in opera lui “Life is a result of disequilibrium and instability. Stable forms are needed to make it possible however. Going from one extreme to the other, from one desire to another, from one state of collapse to frantic tension if the movement speeds up, there can only be ruin and emptiness. To shrik from fundamental stability isn’t less cowardly than to hesitate about shattering it.”
un pupic din partea mea daca ati citit toata aceasta disertatie!!
June 10, 2019
"For me, these words, "I will be dead," are breathtaking. My absence is the wind from outside. It is comical: suffering is comical. I am sheltered in my room."
"It is time that your madness knew how to perceive the opposite in each thing and in yourself; time for you to invert a sad and dull image of the world in the depths of your being. I would like you to already be lost in these abysses in which from horror to horror you reach the truth. A fetid river flows from the sweetest hole in your body. You avoid yourself, distancing yourself from this refuse. On the other hand, if you follow the sad wake for a moment, your unleashed nudity opens to the pleasures of the flesh."
"It is time that your madness knew how to perceive the opposite in each thing and in yourself; time for you to invert a sad and dull image of the world in the depths of your being. I would like you to already be lost in these abysses in which from horror to horror you reach the truth. A fetid river flows from the sweetest hole in your body. You avoid yourself, distancing yourself from this refuse. On the other hand, if you follow the sad wake for a moment, your unleashed nudity opens to the pleasures of the flesh."
September 8, 2018
"a finger pointing to the abyss": what all books should be, really.
October 1, 2022
The titular guilt only superficially pertains to Bataille's exclusion from military service, due to chronic health issues, but more profoundly relates to how WWII directly contested his active, personal conviction in confronting the limits of experience. Anyone who has experienced the brilliantly vigorous perversity of his prewar writings--"The Solar Anus", "The Pineal Eye", "The Obelisk", etc.--should be well aware of why this global event had been a particularly crucial challenge to one who had allied his thought with the forces of excess, particularly those of abjection and violence; for by considering this circumstantially forced turning point from the theory to the praxis of limit-experiences, the reader might sense a certain fear of submitting to the sort of idealistic escapism that Bataille had perceived and condemned in the surrealist movement during the relative comfort of the twenties.
But since this truly unclassifiable text contains so many uncompromising contemplations on the new possibilities of human communication in the wake of God's death, unconventional means of ecstatic meditation (including a few early passages on Bataille's notorious obsession with an image of a certain Chinese man suffering the "death by one thousand cuts"), and highly distinctive linkages of eroticism and morbidity, it seems safe to assume that he had remained true to his status as a thinker of the Impossible, refusing to capitulate his world-view to a first or final cause in any ontic form. Though not receiving an exclusive section or subsection, some of Bataille's most concise and lucid descriptions of the impossibility of a complete system of thought appear as self-consciously confounding threads that lead the reader further into the labyrinth of nonknowledge; to close, here is one example from page 24 of the original English translation published by Lapis Press:
There's the universe--and in the dead of its night, you discover its parts and in doing so discover yourself. When a person dies, his or her survivors are doomed to dismantle whatever that person believed in, to profane what he, she respected. I came to see the universe in a certain way, but future generations will inevitably see what was wrong. Completeness should be the basis of human knowledge. If it isn't complete, it isn't knowledge--it's only an inevitable, giddy product of the will to know.
But since this truly unclassifiable text contains so many uncompromising contemplations on the new possibilities of human communication in the wake of God's death, unconventional means of ecstatic meditation (including a few early passages on Bataille's notorious obsession with an image of a certain Chinese man suffering the "death by one thousand cuts"), and highly distinctive linkages of eroticism and morbidity, it seems safe to assume that he had remained true to his status as a thinker of the Impossible, refusing to capitulate his world-view to a first or final cause in any ontic form. Though not receiving an exclusive section or subsection, some of Bataille's most concise and lucid descriptions of the impossibility of a complete system of thought appear as self-consciously confounding threads that lead the reader further into the labyrinth of nonknowledge; to close, here is one example from page 24 of the original English translation published by Lapis Press:
There's the universe--and in the dead of its night, you discover its parts and in doing so discover yourself. When a person dies, his or her survivors are doomed to dismantle whatever that person believed in, to profane what he, she respected. I came to see the universe in a certain way, but future generations will inevitably see what was wrong. Completeness should be the basis of human knowledge. If it isn't complete, it isn't knowledge--it's only an inevitable, giddy product of the will to know.
August 21, 2021
I'm pretty OK with journalistic or aphoristic writing (Baudrilliard's Cool Memories series are among my favorites) but this seemed redundant, scattered, not interesting. Alternation between ecstasy and anguish with the verb "lacerate" used as much as possible. The scholarly edition with extra notes from his complete works probably hurts, if anything. I found the copious notes distracting and, in the end, read the book front-to-back including the notes, which contain some great content (e.g. his girlfriend Laure dying is totally absent from the main work). I'm just trying to read a book not reconstruct the author's psyche from crossed out handwriting.
If you're a Bataille scholar, go for it. If you want to get into him, start almost anywhere else.
If you're a Bataille scholar, go for it. If you want to get into him, start almost anywhere else.
April 16, 2022
If you already like Bataille, you’ll like this book. It’s very Bataille! If you don’t already like Bataille, this book will not make you like him. Most of the work is obviously preliminary, and there is no unifying thesis. Ask a Bataille-loving friend to find the most moving passages for you, and discard the rest.
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December 24, 2023I always find Bataille relatable & profound. When reading Bataille I find myself stumbling along my own memories, trying to make sense of it all, but end up falling down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.
Guilt as a mechanism for changing seemingly involuntary thought patterns is worth meditation. Not sure if that came from Bataille or Kierkegaard, as I was reading them around the same time.
Guilt as a mechanism for changing seemingly involuntary thought patterns is worth meditation. Not sure if that came from Bataille or Kierkegaard, as I was reading them around the same time.
June 26, 2020
Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commrnce from that point on.
August 1, 2022
Considering the content, the title may very well be ironic.
October 21, 2021
There's no truth when people look at each other as if they're separate individuals. Truth starts with conversations, shared laughter, friendship and sex, and it only happens going from one person to another.
February 9, 2023
maybe humankind's a pinnacle, but only a disastrous one, like a delirium of sunset, the dying person sinks into a magnificence that escapes him and escapes to the degree that enlarges him
i become a towering flight from myself as if my life flowed in slow rivers through the inky sky
my breath quickens as i think of the soul of the world buried there, glorified in the architecture of les invalides, I easily evade what dazes simpler souls, but this hegelian structure, fallen twice, finds faint echoes in me. Glory, disaster, and silence combined in ungraspable mystery, from the depths of which the obelisque rises. Since the war twice I've come to the foot of the monolith, which I've never seen in this darkness. Failing a nighttime visit like this one, its utter majesty escapes you. From the base, I saw the granite block lost deep in the sky, the angles outlined on scatterings of stars.
I'm not writing for this world, I write for a different world, one that's indifferent to anything, anybody. I haven't any wish to impose myself on it and think of being there quietly as if absent.
i become a towering flight from myself as if my life flowed in slow rivers through the inky sky
my breath quickens as i think of the soul of the world buried there, glorified in the architecture of les invalides, I easily evade what dazes simpler souls, but this hegelian structure, fallen twice, finds faint echoes in me. Glory, disaster, and silence combined in ungraspable mystery, from the depths of which the obelisque rises. Since the war twice I've come to the foot of the monolith, which I've never seen in this darkness. Failing a nighttime visit like this one, its utter majesty escapes you. From the base, I saw the granite block lost deep in the sky, the angles outlined on scatterings of stars.
I'm not writing for this world, I write for a different world, one that's indifferent to anything, anybody. I haven't any wish to impose myself on it and think of being there quietly as if absent.
February 7, 2009
This book is perhaps my favorite of all of Bataille's work. This is more a collection of journal entries dating from the time just after the Acephale group demise and the death of one of Bataille most intense relationships with Laure -Colette Peignot. Richly translated by Bruce Boone and woefully out of print, Boone also translated "On Nietzsche" which is another book in Bataille's collection of writings dubbed Summa Atheologica based in contrast to Saint Thomas Aquinas's work of similar title. If only Bruce had been able to re translate the horrendous Inner Experience, the world of the Bataille reader in English would be a better place. Perhaps Stuart Kendall will take up that torch. Digressions aside, this book is an excellent study in the struggle of the various issues Bataille was wrestling with at the time when the West was dealing with the clash of Modernization: The World at war, rising fascism, the writings of Nietzsche, Hegel and de Sade and an overwhelming sense of death.
March 24, 2022
When did I read this.. a long time ago when on a Bataille kick (and not updating GR it seems) ergo when searching for a book I've long lost the title for I come upon many that I've read and not marked. Guilty, I've owned and it went wayside with 90 percent of owned volumes, moving is such a bitch. Anyhoo, Bataille is frankly above my pay grade. However, even when I felt that I didn't comprehend what I was reading the words would seep in later... A terrible review this is, far from a critique, however it is a note of encouragement for anyone who happens along and wonders will this be of interest. I say, writers like Bataille are perhaps not enjoyable per se, but damn.. your brain will thank you for expanding the capsule in a new direction.
May 1, 2015
I love these new translations by Stuart Kendall. His introductions give an exhaustive and readable account of the complicated details of the drafting and publication history of these writings and also include additional material that accompanied the primary material as Bataille re-conceived them in the definitively published versions within Bataille's life. I enjoy Kendall's approach to Bataille's writings which feel free of a specific lens of interpretation and instead focuses on influences Bataille had at the time of writing the work. The end product of these new translations are that they will remain definitive versions going forward. Highly recommended!
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