Oops! Thanks for the heads up, man.

As for yer blind kid -- you're supposed to wait a day or two before you swim in a freshly chlorinated pool. I'm sure it's only temporary. Hey, but look at the bright side: if he is permanently blind you won't need to worry about him ever becoming addicted to internet porn.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
You forgot to vote for your own video: http://videosift.com/video/Playing-Drums-While-Juggling-Drum-Sticks

And you put to much chlorine in last time. Now my kid's blind.

Wonder woman wouldn't approve of the new girl. Not in the slightest.

Brings a tear to my eye every time...
In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:

I'm a Chargers fan, so I need a girl that can shank and run. She's too bulky...
In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Dump your girlfriend and move to Chicago. Right now. I've found the woman of your dreams. And don't tell me you can't because your a Padres fan. The Padres are the west coast Cubs. Only worse.

Wow. Switch that 2nd place tie with the first place pick and we're one in the same. Yea "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals" are, by far, their best albums. Of course Dark Side Of the Moon is in there too, but I think I've just been played out of that one. There's something about 10+ minute songs that take you on that journey.

I haven't heard anything after The Wall (except for Division Bell which BLOWS). Hard to believe they're the same band.
In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
My favorite is Dark Side of the Moon, making me part of the herd, I suppose. Tied for second would be Wish You Were Here and Animals, followed by Meddle, then The Wall, and beyond that you probably don't care, though I'll tell you if you want to know. Least favorite would probably be More or Obscured By Clouds.

What's yours?

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
what's your favorite Floyd album?

what's your favorite Floyd album?

Thanks KP, I get tired of having to beat them all off with a stick.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Another @Zifnab ho, I see. I wonder if his wife knows about all his hussies. YOU ARE A HOMEWRECKER, LADY!

In reply to this comment by goodreal:
glory1_realdukson@yahoo.co.uk
My name is glory i saw your profile
today atzifnab.videosift.com and became intrested in you,i
will also like to know you more,and
if you can send an email to my email
address,i will give you my pictures
here is my email address
(glory1_realdukson@yahoo.co.uk) I believe we
can move from here! Awaiting for your
mail to my emai1_ address above.
Miss glory
PLS PLS CONTACT ME DIRECTLY TO MY EMAIL

(glory1_realdukson@yahoo.co.uk)

I have seen it, and it is hilarious! The opening could fool you into thinking you are watching a bad parody of The Blair Witch Project, but you would be sorely mistaken. It's mostly a parody of conspiracy theories and naïve journalism students. Some of the humour is based on references to norwegian folklore and funny norwegian synonyms for 'troll', but a lot of it is accesible to foreigners as well. Otto Jespersen (a well-known norwegian comedian) is brilliant in his parody of a grumpy old loner. Besides, you get a lot of bonus footage of beautiful norwegian nature.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Have you seen this, or heard anything about it? It looks like fun, but sometimes mockumentaries just fall flat.

I don't know why I rely on that dupe-finder before I submit videos. I guess I just suspected a video about a movie called "The Troll Hunter" would be recognized by siftbot as a suspiciously similar video also called "The Troll Hunter". I must be too much of a dreamer.
In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
And it's a dupe. Thanks for making me waste my power points. Asshole.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/The-Troll-Hunter

Also, that 'Story of the Eye' is worth a read. It's very fucked up, surreal and sexual... in a good way.

It sounds to me, without knowing any context, like this is a piece of sardonic political commentary, with the intention of being offensive to the ear. Not sure if it's pro or con - if he weren't an avant-garde jazz musician, I'd go with con.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
To my untrained ear this is just painful, but maybe you, as a musician, could appreciate it? Just way too much dissonance for my taste.

I like that wonder woman is giving it to flash in your picture. Very empowering.

V - Looks like I found the length limit to comments.

Georges Bataille
STORY OF THE EYE by Lord Auch Translated by Joachim Neugroschel
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS San Francisco
Originally published in France in 1928 as Histoire de l'oeil
© 1967 by Jean Jacques Pauvert, Paris © This translation Urizen Books, 1977 First City Lights Edition 1987
Cover photograph and design by Gent Sturgeon and Rex Ray
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962. Story of the eye.
Translation of: Histoire de l'oeil. I. Title.
PQ2603 .A695H4813 1987 843'.912 87-9242 ISBN: 0-87286-209-7
City Lights Books are available to bookstores through our primary distributor: Subterranean Company.P.O. Box 160,265 S. 5th St., Monroe, OR 97456.541-847-5274. Toll-free orders 800-274-7826. FAX 541-847-6018. Our books are also available through library
jobbers and regional distributors. For personal orders and catalogs, please write to City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J.Peters and published at the City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.
� Contents
Translator'snote .......................... vii Part One: THE TALE ....................... 1 Part Two: COINCIDENCES. . ................ 87 WC.-Preface to Story of the Eye
from Le Petit: 1943 . ..................... 97 Outline of a sequel ....................... 102
I Translator's Note
Story of the Eye was George Bataille's first novel, and there were four editions, the first in 1928. The other three, known as the "new version," came out in 1940, 1941, and 1967. The "new ver­ sion" differs so thoroughly in all details from the first edition that one can justifiably speak of two distinct books. Indeed, the Gallimard publication of the complete works includes both versions in its opening volume.
This American translation is based on the
vii
original version, but the "Outline for a Sequel" comes from the fourth edition.
Of all the editions, only the final, posthum- 0us one bore the author's name. The other three were credited to Lord Auch, a pseudonym ex­
plained in Bataille's short prose piece Le Petit (1943). (This section from Le Petit is included at the end of this volume.)
J.N.
� Part One THE TALE
viii
I CHAPTER ONE The Cat's Eye
I grew up very much alone, and as far back as I recall I was frightened of anything sexual. I was nearly sixteen when I met Simone, a girl my own age, at the beach in X. Our families being distantly related, we quickly grew intimate. Three days after our first meeting, Simone and I were alone in her villa. She was wearing a black pinafore with a starched white collar. I began realizing that she shared my anxiety at seeing her, and I felt even more anxious that day because I hoped she would be stark naked under the pinafore.
3
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
without even touching one another. But when her mother came home, I was sitting in a low armchair, and I took advantage of the moment when the girl tenderly snuggled in her mother's arms: I lifted the back of her pinafore, unseen, and thrust my hand under her cunt between her two burning legs.
I dashed home, eager to jerk off some more, and the next day there were such dark rings around my eyes that Simone, after peering at me for a while, buried her head in my shoulder and said earnestly: "I don't want you to jerk off any­
more without me."
Thus a love life started between the girl and myself, and it was so intimate and so driven that we could hardly let a week go by without meeting. And yet we virtually never talked about it. I realized that her feelings at seeing me were the same as mine at seeing her, but I found it difficult to have things
out. I remember that one day, when we were in a car tooling along at top speed, we crashed into a cyclist, an apparently very young and very pretty girl. Her head was almost totally ripped off by the wheels. For a long time , we were parked a few yards beyond without getting out, fully absorbed in the
sight of the corpse. The horror and despair at so much bloody flesh, nauseating in part, and in part very beautiful, was fairly equivalent to our usual impression upon seeing one another. Simone was tall and lovely. She was usually very natural; there
She had black silk stockings on covering her knees, but I was unable to see as far up as the cunt (this name, which I always used with Simone, is, I think, by far the loveliest of the names for the va­ gina). It merely struck me that by slightly lifting the pinafore from behind, I might see her private parts unveiled.
Now in the corner of a hallway there was a saucer of milk for the cat. "Milk is for the pussy, isn't it?" said Simone. "Do you dare me to sit in the saucer?"
"I dare you," I answered, almost breathless.
The day was extremely hot. Simone put the saucer on a small bench, planted herself before me, and, with her eyes fixed on me, she sat down without my being able to see her burning buttocks under the skirt, dipping into the cool milk. The blood shot to Ply head, and I stood before her awhile, immobile and trembling, as she eyed my stiff cock bulging in my pants. Then I lay down at her feet without her stirring, and for the first time, I saw her "pink and dark" flesh cooling in the white milk. We remained motionless, on and on, both of us equally overwhelmed . . . .
Suddenly, she got up, and I saw the milk dripping down her thighs to the stockings. She wiped herself evenly with a handkerchief as she stood over my head with one foot on the small bench, and I vigorously rubbed my cock through the pants while writhing amorously on the floor. We reached orgasm at almost the same instant
4
5
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
was nothing heartbreaking in her eyes or her voice. But on a sensual level, she so bluntly craved any upheaval that the faintest call from the senses gave her a look directly suggestive of all things linked to
deep sexuality, such as blood, suffocation, sudden terror, crime; things indefinitely destroying human bliss and honesty. I first saw her mute and absolute spasm (which I shared) the day she sat down in the saucer of milk. True, we only exchanged fixed stares at analogous moments. But we never calmed down or played except in the brief relaxed minutes
after an orgasm. I ought to say, nevertheless, that we waited a
long time before copulating. We merely took any opportunity to indulge in unusual acts. We did not lack modesty-on the contrary-but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible. Thus, no sooner had she asked me never to jerk off again by myself (we had met on top of a cliff), than she pulled down my
pants and had me stretch out on the ground. She tucked her dress up, mounted my belly with her back towards my face, and let herself go, while I thrust my finger, lubricated with my young jizm, into her cunt. Next, she lay down with her head under my cock between my legs, and thrusting her cunt in the air, she brought her body down towards me, while I raised my head to the level of that cunt:
her knees found support on my shoulders.
"Yes," I answered, "but with you like this, it'll get on your dress and your face."
, again, this time with fine white come.
Meanwhile, the smell of the sea mixed with the smell of wet linen, our naked bodies, and the come. Evening was gathering, and we stayed in that extraordinary position, tranquil and motion­ less, when all at once we heard steps crumpling the grass.
"Please don't move, please," Simone begged.
The steps halted, but it was impossible to see who was approaching. Our breathing had stopped together. Simone's ass, raised aloft, did strike me as an all-powerful entreaty, perfect as it was, with its two narrow, delicate buttocks and its deep crevice; and I never doubted for an instant that the unknown man or woman would soon give
in and feel compelled to jerk off endlessly while watching that ass. Now the steps resumed, faster this time, almost running, and suddenly a ravish­ ing blond girl loomed into view: Marcelle, the pur­ est and most poignant of our friends. But we were too strongly contracted in our dreadful positions to move even a hair's breadth, and it was our un­
happy friend who suddenly collapsed and huddled in the grass amid sobs. Only now did we tear loose from our extravagant embrace to hurl ourselves upon a self-abandoned body. Simone hiked up the
6
7
"ean't you pee up to my cunt?" she said.
"So what," she concluded. And I did as she said but no sooner was I done than I flooded her
I
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
skirt, ripped off the panties, and drunkenly showed me a new cunt, as lovely and pure as her own: I kissed it furiously while jerking off Simone, whose legs closed around the hips of that strange Mar­ celle, who no longer hid anything but her sobs.
"Marcelle," I exclaimed, "please, please don't cry. I want you to kiss me on the mouth . . . ." Simone, for her part, stroked the girl's lovely smooth hair, covering her body with fond
kisses.
Meanwhile the sky had turned quite thun­ dery, and with nightfall, huge raindrops began plopping down, bringing relief from the harshness of a torrid, airless day. The sea was loudly raging, outroared by long rumbles of thunder, while flashes of lightning, bright as day, kept brusquely revealing the two pleasured cunts of the now silent girls. A brutal frenzy drove our three bodies. Two young mouths fought over my ass, my balls, and my cock, but I still kept pushing apart female legs wet with saliva and come, splaying them as if writhing out of a monster's grip, and yet that monster was nothing but the utter violence of my movements. The hot rain was finally pouring down and streaming over our fully exposed bodies. Huge booms of thunder shook us, heightening our fury, wresting forth our cries of rage, which each flash accompanied with a glimpse of our sexual parts. Simone had found a mud puddle, and was smear­ ing herself wildly: she wasjerking off with the earth
and coming violently, whipped by the downpour, my head locked in her soil-covered legs, her face wallowing in the puddle, where she was brutally churning Marcelle's cunt, one arm around Mar­ celle's hips, the hand yanking the thigh, forcing
8
9
it open.
� CHAPTER TWO The Antique
Wardrobe
That was the period when Simone devel­ oped a mania for breaking eggs with her ass. She would do a headstand on an armchair in the par­ lor, her back against the chair's back, her legs bent
towards me, while I jerked off in order to come in her face. I would put the egg right on the hole in her ass, and she would skillfully amuse herself by shaking it in the deep crack of her buttocks. The moment my jizm shot out and trickled down her
eyes, her buttocks would squeeze together and she
would come while I smeared my face abundantly in her ass.
Very soon, of course, her mother, who might enter the villa parlor at any moment, did catch us in our unusual act. But still, the first time this fine woman stumbled upon us, she was con­ tent, despite having led an exemplary life, to gape wordlessly, so that we did not notice a thing. I sup­ pose she was too flabbergasted to speak. But when we were done and trying to clean up the mess, we noticed her standing in the doorway.
"Pretend there's no one there," Simone told me, and she went on wiping her ass.
And indeed, we blithely strolled out as though the woman had been reduced to a family portrait.
A few days later, however, when Simone was doing gymnastics with me in the rafters of a gar­ age, she pissed on her mother, who had the misfor­ tune to stop underneath without seeing her. The sad widow got out of the way and gaped at us with such dismal eyes and such a desperate expression that she egged us on, that is to say, simply with Simone bursting into laughter, crouching on all fours on the beams and exposing her cunt to my face, I uncovered that cunt completely and jerked off while looking at it.
More than a week had passed without our seeing Marcelle, when we ran into her on the street one day. The blonde girl, timid and naively pious,
10
11
Story of the Eye
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
blushed so deeply at seeing us, that Simone embraced her with uncommon tenderness.
"Please forgive me, Marcelle," she mur­ mured. "What happened the other day was absurd, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends now. I promise we'll never lay a hand on you again."
Marcelle, who had an unusual lack of will­ power, agreed to join us for tea with some friends at our place. But instead of tea, we drank quanti­ tites of chilled champagne.
The sight of Marcelle blushing had com­ pletely overwhelmed us. We understood one an­ other, Simone and I, and we were certain that from now on nothing would make us shrink from achiev­ ing our ends. Besides Marcelle, there were three other pretty girls and two boys here. The oldest of the eight being not quite seventeen, the beverage soon took effect; but aside from Simone and myself, they were not as excited as we wanted them to be. A phonograph rescued us from our predica­ ment. Simone, dancing a frenzied Charleston by
herself, showed everyone her legs up to her cunt, and when the other girls were asked to dance a solo in the same way, they were in too good a mood to require coaxing. They did have panties on, but the panties bound the cunt laxly without hiding much. Only Marcelle, intoxicated and silent, refused to dance.
Finally, Simone, pretending to be dead drunk, crumbled a tablecloth and, lifting it up, she offered to make a bet.
"I bet," she said, "that I can pee into the tablecloth in front of everyone."
It was basically a ridiculous party of mostly turbulent and boastful youngsters. One of the boys challenged her, and it was agreed that the winner would fix the penalty . . . . Naturally, Simone did not waver for an instant, she richly soaked the
tablecloth. But this stunning act visibly rattled her to the quick, so that all the young fools started gasping.
"Since the winner decides the penalty," said Simone to the loser, "I am now going to pull down your pants in front of everyone."
Which happened without a hitch. When his pants were off, his shirt was likewise removed (to keep him from looking ridiculous). All the same, nothing serious had occurred yet: Simone had scarcely run a light hand over her young friend, who was dazzled, drunk, and naked, yet all she
could think of was Marcelle, who for several mo­ ments now had been begging me to let her leave.
"We promised we wouldn't touch you, Mar­ celle. Why do you want to leave?"
"Just because," she replied stubbornly, a violent rage gradually coming over her.
All at once, to everyone's horror, Simone fell upon the floor. A convulsion shook her harder and harder, her clothes were in disarray, her ass stuck in the air, as though she were having an epi­ lectic fit. But rolling about at the foot of the boy she
12
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GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
had undressed, she mumbled almost inarticulately: "Piss on me . . . Piss on my cunt . . ." she
repeated, with a kind of thirst. Marcelle gaped at this spectacle: she blushed
again, her face was blood-red. But then she said to me, without even seeing me, that she wanted to take off her dress. I half tore it off, and hard upon it, her underwear. All she had left was her stockings and belt, and after I fingered her cunt a bit and kissed her on the mouth, she glided across the room to a large antique bridal wardrobe, where she shut herself in after whispering a few words to Simone .
She wanted to j erk off in the wardrobe and was pleading to be left in peace.
I ought to say that we were all very drunk and completely bowled over by what had been going on. The naked boy was being sucked by a girl. Simone, standing with her dress tucked up, was rubbing her bare cunt against the wardrobe, in wh ich a girl was audibly j e rking off with b rutal gasps. All at once, something incredible happened, a strange swish of water, followed by a trickle and a stream from under the wardrobe door: poor Mar­ celle was pissing in her wardrobe while jerking off. But the explosion of totally drunken guffaws that ensued rapidly degenerated into a debauche of tumbling bodies, lofty legs and asses, wet skirts and come. Guffaws emerged like foolish and involun-
tary hiccups but scarcely managed to interrupt a brutal onslaught on cunts and cocks. And yet soon we could hear Marcelle dismally sobbing alone, louder and louder, in the makeshift pissoir that was
now her prison.
Half an hour later, when I was less drunk, it dawned on me that I ought to let Marcelle out of her wardrobe: the unhappy girl, naked now, was in a dreadful state. She was trembling and shivering feverishly. Upon seeing me, she displayed a sickly but violent terror. After all, I was pale, smeared with blood, my clothes askew. Behind me, in
unspeakable disorder, ill bodies, brazenly stripped, were sprawled about. During the orgy, shards of glass had left deep bleeding cuts in two of us. A young girl was throwing up, and all of us had exploded in such wild fits of laughter at some point or other that we had wet our clothes, an armchair, or the floor. The resulting stench of blood, sperm, urine, and vomit made me almost recoil in horror,
but the inhuman shriek from Marcelle's throat was far more terrifying. I must say, however, that Simone was sleeping tranquilly by now, her belly up, her hand still on her beaver, her pacified face almost smiling.
Marcelle, staggering wildly across the room with shrieks and snarls, looked at me again. She flinched back as though I were a hideous ghost in a
14
15
GEORGES BATAILLE
nightmare, and she collapsed in a jeremiad of howls that grew more and more inhuman.
Astonishingly, this litany brought me to my I senses. People were running up, it was inevitable. But I never for an instant dreamt of fleeing or les­ sening the scandal. On the contrary, I resolutely strode to the door and flung it open. What a spec­ tacle, whatjoy! One can readily picture the cries of dismay, the desperate shrieks, the exaggerated threats of the parents entering the room! Criminal
court, prison , the guillotine were evoked with fiery yells and spasmodic curses. Our friends themselves began howling and sobbing in a delirium of tearful screams; they sounded as if they had been set afire as live torches. Simone exulted with me!
And yet, what an atrocity! It seemed as if nothing could terminate the tragicomical frenzy of these lunatics, for Marcelle, still naked, kept ges­ ticulating, and her agonizing shrieks of pain expressed unbearable terror and moral suffering; we watched her bite her mother's face amid arms vainly trying to subdue her.
Indeed, by bursting in, the parents man­ aged to wipe out the last shreds of reason, and in the end, the police had to be called, with all the neighbors witnessing the outrageous scandal.
16
CHAPTER THREE
Marcelle's Smell
My own parents had not turned up that evening with the pack. Nevertheless, I judged it prudent to decamp and elude the wrath of an awful father the epitome of a senile Catholic general. I
enter�d our villa by the back door and filched a certain amount of money. Next, quite convinced they would look for me everywhere but there, I took a bath in my father's bedroom. Finally, by around ten o'clock, I was out in the open countr�,
having left the following note on my mothers night table: "I beseech you not to send the pol�ce after me for I am carrying a gun, and the fIrst
17
GEORGES BATAILLE
StoryoftheEye
bullet will be for the policeman, the second for myself. "
I have never had any aptitude for what is known as striking a pose, and in this circumstance in particular, I only wished to keep my family at bay, for they relentlessly hated scandal. Still, hav­ ing written the note with the greatest levity and not without laughing, I thought it might not be such a bad idea to pocket my father's revolver.
I walked along the seashore most of the night, but without getting very far from X because of all the windings of the coast. I was merely trying to soothe a violent agitation, a strange, spectral delirium in which, Willy-nilly, phantasms of Simone and Marcelle took shape with gruesome expres­ sions. Little by little, I even thought I might kill myself, and, taking the revolver in hand, I man­ aged to lose any sense of words like hope or des­ pair. But in my weariness, I realized that my life had to have some meaning all the same, and would have one if only certain events, defined as desirable, were to occur. I finally accepted being so extraordinarily haunted by the names Simone and Marcelle. Since it was no use laughing, I could keep going only by accepting or feigning to imagine a phantastic compromise that would confusedly link my most disconcerting moves to theirs.
I slept in a wood during the day, and at nightfall I went to Simone's place: I passed through
the garden by climbing over the wall. My friend's bedroom was lit, and so I cast some pebbles through the window. A few seconds later she came down and almost wordlessly we headed towards
the beach. We were delighted to see one another again. It was dark out, and from time to time I lifted her dress and took hold of her cunt, but it didn't make me come-quite the opposite. She sat down and I stretched out at her feet. I soon felt that
I could not keep back my sobs, and I really cried for a long time on the sand.
"What's wrong?" asked Simone.
And she gave me a playful kick. Her foot struck the gun in my pocket and a fearful bang made us shriek at the same time. I wasn't wounded but I was up on my feet as though in a different world. Simone stood before me, frighteningly pale.
That evening we didn't even think ofjerking each other off, but we remained in an endless embrace, mouth to mouth, something we had never done before.
This is how I lived for several days: Simone and I would come home late at night and sleep in her room, where I would stay locked in until the following night. Simone would bring me food. Her mother, having no authority over her (the day of
the scandal, she had gone for a walk the instant she heard the shrieks), accepted the situation without even trying to fathom the mystery. As for the ser­ vants, money had for some time been ensuring
18
19
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
their devotion to Simone. In fact,
cumstances of Marcelle's confinement and even the name of the sanitarium. From the very first day, ness,
getting to her, day, brusquely slipped away:
taken with a violent desire to fuck. But we no longer thought it could be done without Marcelle, whose piercing cries kept grating our ears, were linked to our most violent desires. Thus it was that our sexual dream kept changing into a night­ mare. Marcelle's smile,
sense of shame that made her redden and, fully red, lovely blond buttocks to impure hands, mouths,
made her lock herself in the wardrobe to jerk off with such abandon that she could not help pissing-all these things warped our desires, that they endlessly racked us. Simone,
duct during the scandal had been more obscene than ever (sprawled out, herself, Simone could not forget that the unforeseen orgasm provoked by her own brazenness,
celle's howls and the nakedness of her writhing limbs, had ever managed to picture before. And her cunt would not open to me unless Marcelle's ghost,
ing, zenness overwhelming and far-reaching, sacrilege were to render everything generally dreadful and infamous.
At any rate, (nothing resembles them more than the days of flood and storm or even the suffocating gaseous
all we wo the lonel
when I tr
but dreamy
"
, '
Marcelle!" "What are you talking about?" I asked,
appOinted, She came back affectionately and said in a
gentle, when she sees us . . . making it."
,
Obviously Simone and I were sometimes
"Listen,
20
21
"You're totally insane, I m not interested-here,
a housewife and mother! I'll only do it with
legs, watered her body, to the unchaste and faintly murmuring spurt on her skin. After thus flooding her cunt,
jizm all over her face. Full of muck, in a liberating frenzy. She deeply inhaled our pun­ gent and happy odor: "You smell like Marcelle " she buoyantly confided after a hefty climax, nose under my wet ass.
and when
I felt a hot,
GEORGES BATAILLE
eruptions of volcanoes, and they never turn active except, like storms or volcanoes, with something of catastrophe or disaster)-those hearbreaking re­ gions, like Simone, in an abandon presaging only violence, allowed me to stare hypnotically, were I nothing for me now but the profound, subterra­
CHAPTER FOUR
nean empire of a Marcelle who was tormented in prison and at the mercy of nightmares. There was only one thing I understood: how utterly the orgasms ravaged the girl's face with sobs inter­ rupted by horrible shrieks.
And Simone, for her part, no longer viewed the hot, acrid come that she caused to spurt from my cock without seeing it muck up Marcelle's mouth and cunt.
"You could smack her face with your come," she confided to me, while smearing her cunt-"till it Sizzles," as she put it.
A Sunspot
Other girls and boys no longer interested us. All we could think of was Marcelle, and already we childishly imagined her hanging herself, the
secret burial, the funeral apparitions. Finally, one evening, after getting the precise information, we took our bicycles and pedaled off to the sanitarium where our friend was confined. In less than an hour, we had ridden the twenty kilometers separat­
ing us from a sort of castle within a walled park on an isolated cliff overlooking the sea. We had learned that Marcelle was in Room 8, but obviously
22
23
.:
1
we would have to get inside the building to find her. Now all we could hope for was to climb in her window after sawing through the bars, and we were at a loss how to identify her window among thirty others, when our attention was drawn to a strange apparition. We had scaled the wall and were now in the park, among trees buffeted by a violent gust, when we spied a second-story window opening and a shadow holding a sheet and fastening it to one of the bars. The sheet promptly smacked in the gusts, and the window was shut before we could recog­ nize the shadow.
It is hard to imagine the harrowing racket of that vast white sheet caught in the squall. It greatly outroared the fury of the sea or the wind in the trees. That was the first time I saw Simone racked by anything but her own lewdness: she huddled against me with a beating heart and gaped at the huge phantom raging in the night as though dementia itself had hoisted its colors on this lugu­ brious chateau.
We were motionless, Simone cowering in my arms and I half-haggard, when all at once the wind seemed to tatter the clouds, and the moon, with a revealing clarity, poured sudden light on something so bizarre and so excruciating for us that an abrupt, violent sob choked up in Simone's throat: at the center of the sheet flapping and banging in the wind, a broad wet stain glowed in the translucent moonlight . . .
A few seconds later, new black clouds plunged everything into darkness again, but I stayed on my feet, suffocating, feeling my hair in the wind, and weeping wretchedly, like Simone herself, who had collapsed in the grass, and for the first time, her body was quaking with huge, child­ like sobs.
It was our unfortunate friend, no doubt about it, it was Marcelle who had opened that light­ less window, Marcelle who had tied that stunning signal of distress to the bars of her prison. She had obviouslyjerked off in bed with such a disorder of her senses that she had entirely inundated herself, and it was then that we saw her hang the sheet from the window to let it dry.
As for myself, I was at a loss about what to do in such a park, with that bogus chateau de plaisance and its repulsively barred windows. I walked around the building, leaving Simone upset and sprawling on the grass. I had no practical goal, I just wanted to take a breath of air by myself. But then, on the side of the chateau, I stumbled upon an unbarred open window on the ground floor; I felt for the gun in my pocket and I entered cau­ tiously: it was a very ordinary parlor. An electric flashlight helped me to reach an antechamber; then a stairway. I could not distinguish anything, I did not get anywhere, the rooms were not num­ bered. Besides, I was incapable of understanding
anything, as though I were hexed: at that moment,
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
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,,
'I
I could not even understand why I had the idea of removing my pants and continuing that anguish­ ing exploration only in my shirt. And yet I stripped off my clothes, piece by piece, leaving them on a chair, keeping only my shoes on. With a flashlight in my left hand and the revolver in my right hand, I wandered aimlessly, haphazardly. A rustle made me switch off my lamp quickly. I stood motionless, whiling away the time by listening to my erratic breath. Long, anxious minutes wore by without my hearing any more noise, and so I flashed my light back on, but a faint cry sent me fleeing so swiftly that I forgot my clothes on the chair.
I sensed I was being followed: so I hurriedly climbed out through the window and hid in a garden lane: but no sooner had I turned to observe what might be happening in the chateau than I spied a naked woman in the window frame; she
jumped into the park as I had done and ran off towards a thorn bush.
Nothing was more bizarre for me in those utterly thrilling moments than my nudity against the wind on the path of that unknown garden. It was as if I had left the earth, especially because the squall was as violent as ever, but warm enough to suggest a brutal entreaty. I did not know what to do with the gun which I still held in my hand, for I had no pockets left; by charging after the woman who had run past me unrecognized, I would obviously be hunting her down to kill her. The roar of the wrathful elements, the raging of the trees and the
26
sheet, also helped to prevent me from discerning anything distinct in my will or in my gestures.
All at once, I halted, out of breath: I had reached the bushes where the shadow had disap­ peared. Inflamed by my revolver, I began looking about, when suddenly it seemed as if all reality were tearing apart: a hand, moistened by saliva, had grabbed my cock and wasjerking it, a slobber­ ing, burning kiss was planted on the root of my ass,
the naked chest and legs of a woman pressed against my legs with an orgasmic jolt. I scarcely had time to spin around when come burst in the face of my wonderful Simone: clutching my revolver, I was swept up by a thrill as violent as the storm, my teeth chattered and my lips foamed, with twisted arms I gripped my gun convulsively,
and, willy-nilly, three blind, horrifying shots were fired in the direction of the chateau.
Drunk and limp, Simone and I had fled from one another and raced across the park like dogs; the squall was far too wild now for the gun­ shots to awake any of the sleeping tenants in the chateau, even if the bangs were heard on the inside. But when we instinctively looked up at Mar­ celle's window above the sheet slamming the wind, we were greatly surprised to see that one of the bullets had left a star-shaped crack in one of the
panes. The window shook, opened, and the shadow appeared a second time.
Dumbstruck, as though about to see Mar-
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GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
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GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
celIe bleed and fall dead in the windowframe we remained standing under the strange, ne�rlY motionless apparition. Because of the furious wind we were incapable of even making ourselves heard�
"What did you do with your clothes?" I asked Simone an instant later. She said she had been looking for me and, unable to track me down, she had finally gone to search the interior of t�e chateau; but before clambering through the wIndow, she had undressed, figuring she "would feel more free." And when she had come back out after me, terrified by me, she found that the wind had c�rried off her dress. Meanwhile, she kept observIng Marcelle, and it never crossed her mind to ask me why I was naked.
The girl in the window disappeared. A moment that seemed immense crawled by: she switched on the light in her room. Finally, she came back to breathe the open air and gaze at the ocean. Her sleek, pallid hair was caught in the wind, we could make out her features: she had not changed, but now there was something wild in her eyes, something restless, contrasting with the still childlike simplicity of her features. She looked thir­ teen rather than sixteen. Under her nightgown we could distinguish her thin but full body, firm' u�ob­ trusive, and as beautiful as her fixed stare.
When she finally caught sight of us, the sur- prIse seemed to restore life to her face. She called, but we couldn't hear. We beckoned. She blushed up to her ears. Simone, weeping almost, while I lov-
ingly caressed her forehead, sent her kisses, to which she responded without smiling. Next, Simone ran her hand down her belly to her beaver. Marcelle imitated her, and poising one foot on the
sill, she exposed a leg sheathed in a white silk stocking almost up to her blond cunt. Curiously, she was wearing a white belt and white stockings, whereas black-haired Simone, whose cunt was in my hand, was wearing a black belt and black
stockings. Meanwhile, the two girls were jerking off
with terse, brusque gestures, face to face in the howling night. They were nearly motionless, and tense, and their eyes gaped with unrestrained joy. But soon, some invtsible monstrosity appeared to be yanking Marcelle away from the bars, though
her left hand clutched them with all her might. We saw her tumble back into her delirium. And all that remained before us was an empty, glowing window, a rectangular hole piercing the opaque night, showing our aching eyes a world composed of
lightning and dawn.
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Story of the Eye
stream of light and blood, for Marcelle could climax only by drenching herself, not with blood, but with a spurt of urine that was limpid and even illuminated for me, at first violent and jerky like hiccups, then free and relaxed and coinciding with an outburst of superhuman happiness. It is not
t astonishing tha the bleakest and most leprous
aspects of a dream are merely an urging in that direction, an obstinate waiting for totaljoy, like the vision of that glowing hole, the empty window, for example, at the very moment when Marcelle lay sprawling on the floor, endlessly inundating it.
But that day, in the rainless tempest, Simone and I, our clothing lost, were forced to leave the chateau, fleeing like animals through the hostile darkness, our imaginations haunted by the despondency that was bound to take hold of Mar­ celle again, making the wretched inmate almost an embodiment of the fury and terror that kept driv­ ing our bodies to endless debauchery. We soon found our bicycles and could offer one another the irritating and theoretically unclean sight of a naked though shod body on a machine. We pedalled rapidly, without laughing or speaking, peculiarly satisfied with our mutual presences, akin to one another in the common isolation of lewd­ ness, weariness, and absurdity.
Yet we were both literally perishing of fatigue. In the middle of a slope, Simone halted, saying she had the shivers. Our faces, backs, and
I,
,!
� CHAPTER FIVE A Trickle ofBlood
Urine is deeply associated for me with salt­ peter; and lightning, I don't know why, with an antique chamber pot of unglazed earthenware, lying abandoned one rainy autumn day on the zinc roof of a provincial wash house. Since that first night at the sanitarium, those wrenching images
were closely knit, in the obscurest part of my brain, with the cunt and the drawn and dismal expression I had sometimes caught on Marcelle's face. But then, this chaotic and dreadful landscape of my imagination was suddenly inundated by a
30
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legs were bathed in sweat, and hands over one another, our soaked and burning bodies; despite a more and more vigorous massage, flesh and clattering teeth. I stripped off one of her stockings to wipe her body, odor recalling the beds of sickness or debauchery.
Little by little, more bearable state, and lips as a token of gratitude.
I was still extremely agitated. We had ten more kilometers to go,
we obViously had to reach X by dawn. I could barely keep upright and despaired of ever reaching the end of this ride through the impossible. We had abandoned the real world,
of dressed people, was already so remote as to seem almost beyond reach. Our personal hallucination now developed as boundlessly as perhaps the total nightmare of human society, atmosphere .
A leather seat clung to Simone's bare cunt, which was inevitablyjerked by the legs pumping up and down on the spinning pedals. Furthermore, the rear wheel vanished indefinitely to my eyes, not only in the bicycle fork but virtually in the
crevice of the cyclist's naked ass: the rapid whirling of the dusty tire was also directly comparable to both the thirst in my throat and my erection,
which ultimately had to plunge into the depths of the cunt sticking to the bicycle seat. The wind had died down somewhat, was visible. And it struck me that death was the sole outcome of my erection,
killed, sonal vision was certain to be replaced by the pure stars, realizing in a cold state, detours, my sexual licentiousness: a geometric incandes­ cence (among other things, the life and death, fulgurating.
Yet, contradiction of a prolonged state of exhaustion and an absurd rigidity of my penis. Now it was difficult for Simone to see this rigidity, because of the darkness, swift rising of my left leg, stiffness by turning the pedal. Yet I felt I could see her eyes, stantly, p o i n t o f m y b o d y, more and more vehemently on the seat, pincered between her buttocks. Like myself, she had not yet drained the tempest evoked by the shamelessness of her cunt, husky moans; she was literally torn away by joy, and her nude body was hurled upon an embank­ ment with an awful scraping of steel on the pebbles
GEORGES BATAILLE Story ofthe Eye
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GEORGES BATAILLE
and a piercing shriek.
I found her inert, he head hanging down, a thin trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth. Horrified to the limit of my strength, I pulled up one arm, but it fell back inert. I threw myself upon the lifeless body, trembling with fear, and as I clutched it in an embrace, I was overcome with bloody spasms, my lower lip drooling and my teeth bared like a leering moron.
Meanwhile, Simone was slowly coming to: her arm touched me in an involuntary movement, and I quickly returned from the torpor overwhelm­ ing me after I had besmirched what I thought was a corpse. No injury, no bruise marked the body, which was still clad in the garter belt and a single stocking. I took her in my arms and carried her down the road, heedless of my fatigue; I walked as fast as I could because the day was just breaking, but only a superhuman effort allowed me to reach the villa and happily put my marvelous friend alive in her very own bed.
The sweat was pissing from my face and all over my body, my eyes were bloody and swollen, my ears screeching, my teeth chattering, my tem­ ples and my heart drumming away. But since I had
just rescued the person I loved most in the world, and since I thought we would soon be seeing Mar­ celle, I lay down next to Simone's body just as I was, soaked and full of coagulated dust, and soon I drifted off into vague nightmares.
I
CHAPTER SIX
Simone
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35
the period following Simone's minor accident, which only left her ill. Whenever her mother came, I would step into the bathroom. Usually, I took
the first time the woman tried to enter, she was immediately stopped by her daughter:
man in there." missed before long, and I would take my place
One of the most peaceful eras of my life was
advantage of these moments to piss or even bathe;
"Don't go in," she said, "there's a naked Each time, however, the mother was dis-
GEORGES BATAILLE
again in a chair next to the sickbed. I smoked cigarettes, went through newspapers, and if there were any items about crime or violence, I would read them aloud. From time to time, I would carry a feverish Simone to the bathroom to help her pee and then I would carefully wash her on the bidet: She was extremely weak and naturally I never stroked her seriously; but nevertheless she soon delighted in having me throw eggs int� the toilet bowl, hard-boiled eggs, which sank, and shells sucked �ut in v�rious degrees to obtain varying
levels of ImmerSIon. She would sit for a long time gazing at the eggs. Then she would settle on th� toilet to view them under her cunt between the parted thighs; and finally, she would have me flush the bowl.
Another game was to crack a fresh egg on the edge of the bidet and empty it under her: sometimes she would piss on it, sometimes she had me strip naked and swallow the raw egg from the bottom of the bidet. She did promise that as soon as she was well again, she would do the same for me and also for Marcelle.
At that time, we imagined Marcelle, with her dress tucked up, but her body covered and her feet shod: we would put her in a bath tub filled with fresh eggs, and she would pee while crushing them Simone also daydreamed about my holding Mar� celle, this time with nothing on but her garter-belt and stockings, her cunt aloft, her legs bent, and
Story of the Eye
36
her head down; Simone herself, in a bathrobe drenched in hot water and thus clinging to her body but exposing her bosom, would then get up on a white enameled chair with a cork seat. I would arouse her breasts from a distance by lifting the tips on the heated barrel of a long service revolver that had been loaded and just fired (first of all, this would shake us up, and secondly, it would give the barrel a pungent smell of powder). At the same time, she would pour a jar of dazzling white creme fraiche on Marcelle's gray anus, and she would also urinate freely in her robe or, if the robe were ajar, on Marcelle's back or head, while I could piss
on Marcelle from the other side (I would certainly piss on her breasts). Furthermore, Marcelle herself could fully inundate me if she liked, for while I held her up, her thighs would be gripping my neck. And she could also stick my cock in her mouth, and what not.
It was after such dreams that Simone would ask me to bed her down on blankets by the toilet, and she would rest her head on the rim of the bowl and fix her wide eyes on the white eggs. I myself settled comfortably next to her so that our cheeks and temples might touch. We were calmed by the long contemplation. The gulping gurgle of the flushing water always amused Simone, making her
forget her obsession and ultimately restoring her high spirits.
At last, one day at six, when the oblique
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GEORGES BATAILLE
sunshine was directly lighting the bathroom, a half-sucked egg was suddenly invaded by the water, and after filling up with a bizarre noise, it was ship­ wrecked before our very eyes. This incident was so extraordinarily meaningful to Simone that her body tautened and she had a long climax, virtually drinking my left eye between her lips. Then, with­ out leaving the eye, which was sucked as obsti­ nately as a breast, she sat down, wrenching my head toward her on the seat, and she pissed noisily on the bobbing eggs with total vigor and satisfaction.
As of now she could be regarded as cured, and she demonstrated her joy by speaking to me at length about various intimate things, whereas ordinarily she never spoke about herself or me. Smiling, she admitted that an instant ago, she had felt a strong urge to relieve herself completely, but had held back for the sake of greater pleasure. Truly, the urge bloated her belly and particularly made her cunt swell up like a ripe fruit; and when I passed my hand under the sheets and her cunt gripped it firm and tight, she remarked that she was still in the same state and that it was inordinately pleasant. Upon my asking what the word urinate reminded her of, she replied: terminate, the eyes, with a razor, something red, the sun. And egg?A calf's eye, because of the color of the head (the calf's head) and also because the white of the egg was the white of the eye, and the yolk the eyeball.
The eye, she said, was egg-shaped. She asked me to promise that when we could go outdoors, I would
38
Story of the Eye
fling eggs into the sunny air and break them with shots from my gun, and when I replied that it was out of the question, she talked on and on, trying to reason me into it. She played gaily with words, speaking about broken eggs, and then broken eyes, and her arguments became more and more unreasonable.
She added that, for her, the smell of the ass was the smell of powder, a jet of urine a "gunshot seen as a light;" each of her buttocks was a peeled hard-boiled egg. We agreed to send for hot soft­ boiled eggs without shells, for the toilet, and she promised that when she now sat on the seat, she would ease herself fully on those eggs. Her cunt was still in my hand and in the state she had described; and after her promise, a storm began brewing little by little in my innermost depth-I was reflecting more and more.
It is fair to say that the room of a bedridden invalid is j ust the right place for gradually rediscov­ ering childhood lewdness. I gently sucked Simone's breast while waiting for the soft-boiled eggs, and she ran her fingers through my hair. Her mother was the one who brought us the eggs, but I didn't even turn around, I assumed it was a maid, and I kept on sucking the breast contentedly. Nor was I ultimately disturbed when I recognized the voice, but since she remained and I couldn't pass up even one instant of my pleasure, I thought of pulling
down my pants as for a call of nature, not ostenta­ tiously, but merely hoping she would leave and
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GEORGES BATAILLE
delighted at going beyond all limits. When she finally decided to walk out and vainly ponder over her dismay elsewhere, ering,
bathroom. Simone settled on the toilet, each ate one of the hot eggs with salt. With the three that were left, ing them between her buttocks and thighs, slowly dropped them into the water one by one. Finally, white, seeing them peeled, her beautiful cunt), sion with a plopping noise akin to that of the soft­ boiled eggs.
But I ought to say that nothing of the sort ever happened between us again, exception, no further eggs ever came up in our conversations; nevertheless,
notice one or more, when our eyes met in a silent and murky in terrogation .
At any rate, thistale, thatthis
without an answer indefinitely, this unexpected answer is necessary for measuring the immensity of the void that yawned before us, without our knowledge, tainments with the eggs.
and
I
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marcelle aft and
By a sort of shared modesty, had always avoided talking about the most impor­ tant objects of our obsessions. That was why the word egg was dropped from our vocabulary, never spoke about the kind of interest we had in one another, to us. We spent all of Simone's illness in a bed­ room, to Marcelle, the end of the last class in school, talked about was the day we would return to the
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GEORGES BATAILLE
StoryoftheEye
chateau. I had prepared a small cord, a thick, knot­ ted rope, and a hacksaw, all of which Simone examined with the keenest interest, peering atten­ tively at each knot and section of the rope. I also managed to find the bicycles, which I had con­ cealed in a thicket the day of our tumble, and I meticulously oiled the various parts, the gears, ball bearings, sprockets, etc. I then attached a pair of toe-clips to my own bicycle so that I could seat one of the girls in back. Nothing could be easier, at least for the time being, than to have Marcelle living in Simone's room secretly like myself. We would simply be forced to share the bed (and we would inevitably have to use the same bathtub, etc.).
But a good six weeks passed before Simone could pedal after me reasonably well to the sanitar­ ium. Like the previous time, we left at night: in fact, I still kept out of sight during the day, and this time there was certainly every reason for remain­ ing inconspicuous. I was in a hurry to arrive at the place that I dimly regarded as a "haunted castle," due to the association of the words sanitarium and castle, and also the memory of the phantom sheet and the thought of the lunatics in a huge silent dwelling at night. But now, to my surprise, even though I was ill at ease anywhere in the world, I felt at bottom as if I were going home. And that was indeed my impression when we jumped over the park wall and saw the huge building stretching
out ahead beyond the trees: only Marcelle's win­ dow was still aglow and wide open. Taking some pebbles from a lane, we threw them into her chamber and they promptly summoned the girl, who quickly recognized us and obeyed our gesture of putting a finger on our lips. But of course we also held up the knotted rope to let her understand what we were doing this time. I hurled the cord up to her with the aid of a rock, and she threw it back after looping it around a bar. There were no diffi­ culties, the big rope was hoisted by Marcelle and fastened to the bar, and I scrambled all the way up.
Marcelle flinched when I tried to kiss her. She merely watched me very attentively as I started filing away at a bar. Since she only had a bathrobe on, I softly told her to get dressed so she could come with us. She simply turned her back to pull flesh-colored stockings over her legs, securing them on a belt of bright red ribbons that brought out an ass with a perfect shape and an exception­ ally fine skin. I continued filing, bathed in sweat because of both my effort and what I saw. Her back still towards me, Marcelle pulled a blouse over long, flat hips, whose straight lines were admirably terminated by the ass when she had one foot on a chair. She did not slip on any panties, only a pleated, gray woolen skirt and a sweater with very tiny black, white, and red checks. After stepping into flat-heeled shoes, she came over to the window
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GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
and sat down close enough to me so that my one hand could caress her head, her lovely short hair, so sleek and so blond that it actually looked pale. She gazed at me affectionately and seemed touched by my wordless j oy at seeing her.
"Now we can get married, can't we?" she finally said, gradually won over. "It's very bad here, we suffer . . . ."
At that point, I would never have dreamt for even an instant that I could do anything but devote the rest of my life to such an unreal apparition. She let me give her a long kiss on her forehead and her eyes, and when one of her hands happened to touch my leg, she looked at me wide-eyed, but before withdrawing her hand, she ran it over my clothes absent-mindedly.
After long work, I succeeded in cutting through the filthy bar. I pulled it aside with all my strength, which left enough space for her to squeeze through. She did so, and I helped her des­ cend, climbing down underneath, which forced me to see the top of her thigh and even to touch it when I supported her. Reaching the ground, she snuggled in my arms and kissed my mouth with all her strength, while Simone, sitting at our feet, her
eyes wet with tears, flung her hands around Mar­ celle's legs, hugging her knees and thighs. At first, she only rubbed her cheek against the thigh, but
then, unable to restrain a huge surge of joy, she finally yanked the body apart, pressing her lips to the cunt, which she greedily devoured.
However, Simone and I realized that Marcelle grasped absolutely nothing of what was going on and she was actually incapable of telling one situa­ tion from another. Thus she smiled, imagining how aghast the director of the "haunted castle" would be to see her strolling through the garden with her husband. Also, she was scarcely aware of Simone's existence; mirthfully, she at times mis­ took her for a wolf because of her black hair, her silence, and because Simone's head was docilely rubbing Marcelle's thigh, like a dog nuzzling his master's leg. Nonetheless, when I spoke to Marcelle about the "haunted castle," she did not ask me to explain; she understood that this was the building where she had been wickedly locked up. And when­
ever she thought of it, her terror pulled her away from me as though she had seen something pass through the trees. I watched her uneasily, and since my face was already hard and somber, I too frightened her, and almost at the same instant she asked me to protect her when the Cardinal returned.
We were lying in the moonlight by the edge of a forest. We wanted to rest a while during our trip back and we especially wanted to embrace and
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GEORGES BATAILLE
stare at Marcelle. "But who is the Cardinal?" Simone asked
her.
"The man who locked me in the wardrobe," said Marcelle. �
"But why is he a cardinal?" I cried.
She replied: "Because he is the priest of the guillotine."
I now recalled Marcelle's dreadful fear when she left the wardrobe, and particularly two details: I had been wearing a blinding red carnival novelty, a Jacobine liberty cap; furthermore, because of the deep cuts in a girl I had raped, my face, clothes, hands-all parts of me were stained with blood.
Thus, in her terror, Marcelle confused a cardinal, a priest of the guillotine, with the blood­ smeared executioner wearing a liberty cap: a bizarre overlapping of piety and abomination for priests explained the confusion, which, for me, has remained attached to both my hard reality and the horror continually aroused by the compulsiveness of my actions.
CHAPTER EIGHT
.j I
The Open Eyes of t h e De adwom an
For a moment, I was totally helpless after this unexpected discovery; and so was Simone. Marcelle was now half asleep in my arms, so that we didn't know what to do. Her dress was pulled up, exposing the gray beaver between red ribbons
at the end of long thighs, and it had thereby become an extraordinary hallucination in a world so frail that a mere breath might have changed us into light. We didn't dare budge, and all we desired was for that unreal immobility to last as long as
possible, and for Marcelle to fall sound asleep. My mind reeled in some kind of exhausting
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GEORGES BATAILLE
StoryoftheEye
vertigo, have been if Simone, cheted between my eyes and Marcelle's nudity, not made a sudden, her thighs, hold back any longer.
She soaked her dress in a long convulsion that fully denuded her and promptly made me spurt a wave ofjizm in my clothes.
I stretched out in the grass,
large, the milky way, and heavenly urine across the cranial vault formed by the ring of constellations: that open crack at the summit of the sky, cal vapors shining in the immensity (in empty space, where they er's crow in total silence), eye, rock, ity. The nauseating crow of a rooster in particular coincided with my own life, that Cardinal, discordant shrieks he provoked in the wardrobe, and also because one cuts the throats of roosters.
To others, because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened
by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, sures of the flesh" only on condition that they be insipid .
But as of then, did not care for what is known as "pleasures of the flesh" because they really are insipid; I cared only for what is classified as "dirty." On the other hand, I was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, lime and perfectly pure is left intact by it. My kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, course, which merely serves as a backdrop.
I associate the moon with the vaginal blood of mothers,
Sickening stench . . . . I loved Marcelle without mourning her. If
she died, if I sometimes locked myself up in a cellar for hours at a time preCisely because I was thinking ab out Marcelle, pared to start all over again, ing her hair, she is dead, trophes that bring me to her at times when I least expect it. Otherwise, the least kinship now between the dead girl and
and
sa
flat ro
or my o bounci
be
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GEORGES BATAILLE
Story ofthe Eye
myself, which makes most of my days inevitably dreary.
will merely report here that Marcelle hanged herself after a dreadful incident. She rec­ ognized the huge bridal wardrobe, and her teeth started chattering: she instantly realized upon looking at me that I was the man she called the Cardinal, and when she began shrieking, there was no other way for me to stop that desperate howling than to leave the room. By the time Simone and I returned she was hanging inside the wardrobe . . . .
I cut the rope, but she was quite dead. We laid her out on the carpet. Simone saw I was get­ ting a hard-on and she startedjerking me off. I too stretched out on the carpet. It was impossible to otherwise; Simone was still a virgin, and I fucked her for the first time, next to the corpse. It was very painful for both of us, but we were glad precisely because it was painful. Simone stood up and gazed at the corpse. Marcelle had become a total stranger, and in fact, so had Simone at that moment. I no longer cared at all for either Simone or Marcelle. Even if someone had told me it was I who had just died, I would not even have been astonished, so alien were these events to me. I observed Simone, and, as I precisely recall, my only pleasure was in the smutty things Simone was doing, for the corpse was very irritating to her, as though she could not bear the thought that this
creature, so similar to her, could not feel her any­ more. The open eyes were more irritating than anything else. Even when Simone drenched the face, those eyes, extraordinarily, did not close. We were perfectly calm, all three of us, and that was the most hopeless part of it. Any boredom in the world is linked, for me, to that moment and, above all, to an obstacle as ridiculous as death. But that won't prevent me from thinking back to that time with no revulsion and even with a sense of com­ plicity. Basically, the lack of excitement made everything far more absurd, and thus Marcelle was closer to me dead than in her lifetime, inasmuch as absurd existence, so I imagine, has all the prerogatives.
As for the fact that Simone dared to piss on the corpse, whether in boredom or, at worst, in irritation: it mainly goes to prove how impossible it was for us to understand what was happening, and of course, it is no more understandable today than back then. Simone, being truly incapable of con­ ceiving death such as one normally considers it, was frightened and furiOUS, but in no way awe­ struck. Marcelle belonged to us so deeply in our isolation that we could not see her as j ust another corpse. Nothing about her death could be mea­ sured by a common standard, and the contradic­ tory impulses overtaking us in this circumstance neutralized one another, leaving us blind and, as it were, very remote from anything we touched, in a
50
51
GEORGES BATAILLE
rI
world where gestures have no carrying power, like voices in a space that is absolutely soundless.
52
� CHAPTER NINE LewdAnimals
To avoid the bother of a police investiga­ tion, we instantly took off for Spain, where Simone was counting on our disappearing with the help of a fabulously rich Englishman, who had offered to support her and would be more likely than anyone else to show interest in our plight.
The villa was abandoned in the middle of the night. We had no trouble stealing a boat, reach­ ing an obscure point on the Spanish coast, and burning up the craft with the aid of two drums of gasoline we had taken along, as a precautionary
53
-I
measure, from the garage of the villa. Simone left me concealed in a wood during the day and went to look for the Englishman in San Sebastian. She only came back at nightfall, but driving a magnifi­ cent automobile, with suitcases full of linen and rich clothing.
Simone said that Sir Edmond would join us in Madrid and all day long he had been plying her with the most detailed questions about Marcelle's death, making her draw diagrams and sketches. Finally he had told a servant to buy a wax manne­ quin with a blonde wig; he had then laid the figure out on the floor and asked Simone to urinate on its face, on the open eyes, in the same position as she had urinated on the eyes of the corpse: during all that time, Sir Edmond had not even touched her.
However, there had been a great change in Simone after Marcelle's suicide-she kept staring into space all the time, looking as if she belonged to something other than the terrestrial world, where almost everything bored her; or if she was still attached to this world, then purely by way of orgasms, that were rare, but incomparably more violent than before. These orgasms were as differ­ ent from normal climaxes as, say, the mirth of sav­ age Africans from that of Occidentals. In fact, though the savages may sometimes laugh as mod­ erately as whites, they also have long-lasting jags,
with all parts of the body in violent release, and
GEORGES BATAILLE
54
Story of the Eye
they go whirling willy-nilly, flailing their arms about wildly, shaking their bellies, necks, and chests, and chortling and gulping horribly. As for Simone, she would first open uncertain eyes, at some lewd and dismal sight . . . .
For example, Sir Edmond had a cramped, windowless pigsty, where one day he locked up a petite and scrumptious streetwalker from Madrid; wearing only cami-knickers, she collapsed in a pool of liquid manure under the bellies of the grunting swine. Once the door was shut, Simone had me fuck her on and on, in front of that door, with her ass in the mud, under a fine drizzle of rain, while Sir Edmond jerked off.
Gasping and slipping away from me, Simone grabbed her own ass in both hands and threw back her head, which banged violently against the ground; she tensed·breathlessly for a few seconds, pulling with all her might on the fingernails buried in her ass, then tore herself away at one swoop and thrashed about on the ground like a headless chicken, hurting herself with a terrible bang on the
door fittings. Sir Edmond gave her his wrist to bite on and allay the spasm that kept shaking her, and I saw that her face was smeared with saliva and blood.
After these huge fits, she always came to nestle in my arms; she settled her little ass comfort­ ably in my large hands and remained there for a
55
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
long time without moving or speaking, huddled like a little girl, but always somber.
Sir Edmond deployed his ingenuity at pro­ viding us with obscene spectacles at random, but Simone still preferred bullfights. There were actu­ ally three things about bullfights that fascinated her: the first, when the bull comes hurtling out of the bullpen like a big rat; the second, when its horns plunge all the way into the flank of a mare; the third, when that ludicrous, raw-boned mare gallops across the arena, lashing out unseasonably and dragging a huge, vile bundle of bowels between her thighs in the most dreadful wan colors, a pearly white, pink, and gray. Simone's heart throbbed fastest when the exploding bladder dropped its mass of mare's urine on the sand in one quick plop.
She was on tenterhooks from start to finish at the bullfight, in terror (which of course mainly expressed a violent desire) at the thought of seeing the toreador hurled up by one of the monstrous lunges of the horns when the bull made its endless, blindly raging dashes at the void of colored cloths.
And there is something else I ought to say: When the bull makes its quick, brutal, thrusts over and over again into the matador's cape, barely grazing the erect line of the body, any spectator has that feeling of total and repeated lunging typical of the game of coitus. The utter nearness of death is also
felt in the same way. But these series of prodigious passes are rare. Thus, each time they occur, they unlease a veritable delirium in the arena, and it is well kn own that at such thrilling instants th e women jerk off by merely rubbing their thighs together.
Apropos bullfights, Sir Edmond once told Simone that until quite recently, certain virile Spaniards, mostly occasional amateur toreadors, used to ask the caretaker of the arena to bring them the fresh, roasted balls of one of the first bulls to be killed. They received them at their own seats, in the front row of the arena, and ate them while watching the killing of the next few bulls. Simone took a keen interest in this tale, and since we were attending the first major bullfight of the year that Sunday, she begged Sir Edmond to get her the balls of the first bull, but added one condition: they had to be raw.
"I say," objected Sir Edmond, "w?atever d� you want with raw balls? You certaInly don t intend to eat raw balls now, do you?"
"I want to have them before me on a plate," concluded Simone.
56
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� CHAPTER TEN Granero'8 Eye
On May 7, 1922, the toreadors La Rosa, Lalanda, and Granero were to fight in the arena of Madrid; the last two were renowned as the best matadors in Spain, and Granero was generally considered superior to L

Ecclesiastes

Chapter 1

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
[edit] Chapter 2

1 I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.

2 I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?

3 I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life.

4 I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:

5 I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits:

6 I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees:

7 I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me:

8 I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.

9 So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.

10 And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour.

11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

12 And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done.

13 Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.

14 The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.

15 Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.

16 For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.

17 Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

18 Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

19 And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.

20 Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.

21 For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil.

22 For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?

23 For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.

24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

25 For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?

26 For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.
[edit] Chapter 3

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?

10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.

11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.

13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.

15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

16 And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.

17 I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.

18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

22 Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?
[edit] Chapter 4

1 So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.

2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

3 Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

4 Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit.

5 The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.

6 Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

7 Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.

8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.

9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.

10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?

12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

13 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.

14 For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.

15 I considered all the living which walk under the sun, with the second child that shall stand up in his stead.

16 There is no end of all the people, even of all that have been before them: they also that come after shall not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and vexation of spirit.
[edit] Chapter 5

1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.

2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.

3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.

4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.

5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?

7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.

8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.

9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.

10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.

11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?

12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.

14 But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.

15 As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.

16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?

17 All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.

18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.

19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.

20 For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.
[edit] Chapter 6

1 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men:

2 A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.

3 If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

4 For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness.

5 Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.

6 Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good: do not all go to one place?

7 All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.

8 For what hath the wise more than the fool? what hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living?

9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity and vexation of spirit.

10 That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man: neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he.

11 Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what is man the better?

12 For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
[edit] Chapter 7

1 A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth.

2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

3 Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

5 It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.

6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.

7 Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart.

8 Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

9 Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.

10 Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.

11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance: and by it there is profit to them that see the sun.

12 For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.

13 Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?

14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.

15 All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.

16 Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?

17 Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?

18 It is good that thou shouldest take hold of this; yea, also from this withdraw not thine hand: for he that feareth God shall come forth of them all.

19 Wisdom strengtheneth the wise more than ten mighty men which are in the city.

20 For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.

21 Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee:

22 For oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others.

23 All this have I proved by wisdom: I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me.

24 That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?

25 I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness:

26 And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.

27 Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account:

28 Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.

29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
[edit] Chapter 8

1 Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed.

2 I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.

3 Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him.

4 Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?

5 Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment.

6 Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.

7 For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?

8 There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.

9 All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.

10 And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.

11 Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

12 Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him:

13 But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.

14 There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.

15 Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.

16 When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)

17 Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.
[edit] Chapter 9

1 For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them.

2 All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.

3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.

8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.

9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.

10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

13 This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me:

14 There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:

15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.

16 Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

17 The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.

18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.
[edit] Chapter 10

1 Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.

2 A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left.

3 Yea also, when he that is a fool walketh by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to every one that he is a fool.

4 If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place; for yielding pacifieth great offences.

5 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, as an error which proceedeth from the ruler:

6 Folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low place.

7 I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.

8 He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.

9 Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby.

10 If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.

11 Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better.

12 The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.

13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness.

14 A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him?

15 The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city.

16 Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!

17 Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!

18 By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.

19 A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

20 Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.
[edit] Chapter 11

1 Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.

2 Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.

3 If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.

4 He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

5 As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

6 In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.

7 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun:

8 But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.

9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.

10 Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.
[edit] Chapter 12

1 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

3 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

4 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

9 And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.

10 The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth.

11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.

12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
>> ^blankfist:

I'm pretty sure I'm not confusing free markets with free people. Free market as a colloquial definition is nearing equivalence to capitalism and corporatism, but that doesn't make it the correct meaning. It's a terrible revisionist definition. A market is a trade, not an economic system. A free market is a voluntary trade/exchange that doesn't imply the trade of money, working from capital, or the legitimization of corporations. It's all in the definitions.
So, if we're getting caught up on language, then that's one thing we can get around. But if we're getting caught up on ideological differences, then that's something completely different. When you say things like "free market reforms have been implemented by a government" and "It is obsessed with keeping people from organizing" when speaking of a free market, it tells me we're probably not even close to being on the same page in how we're defining simple terms. Mainly because voluntary exchanges amongst people don't work that way and can not. It sounds like you're angry with corporations (and corporation/government collusion), and in that way your complaints are warranted and supported by me.
I promise to research more about Friedman in regards to your claims below. If there's truth to your claims, and it's not just circumstantial or associated relevances, it would be seriously in dire opposition to ideas of liberty. Claims like this, "hijacked the IMF and World Bank and have been using those institutions to beat down poor nations and force them to sell of their natural resources to multinational corporations."
But I'll look into my own way as I don't want to be spoonfed by a social democrat.
Somewhat surprising, Wikipedia has some good information on the view of free markets as it pertains to faction ideology and history:

In Marxist theory, the idea of the free market simply expresses the underlying long-term transition from feudalism to capitalism.
-cited

Support for the free market as an ordering principle of society is above all associated with liberalism, especially during the 19th century. (In Europe, the term 'liberalism' retains its connotation as the ideology of the free market, but in American and Canadian usage it came to be associated with government intervention, and acquired a pejorative meaning for supporters of the free market.) Later ideological developments, such as minarchism, libertarianism and Objectivism also support the free market, and insist on its pure form. Although the Western world shares a generally similar form of economy, usage in the United States and Canada is to refer to this as capitalism, while in Europe 'free market' is the preferred neutral term. The advocates of modern liberalism (American and Canadian usage), and in Europe those of social democracy, seek ostensibly only to mitigate what they see as the problems of an unrestrained free market, and accept the existence of markets as such.
To most libertarians, there is simply no free market yet, given the degree of state intervention in even the most 'capitalist' of countries. From their perspective, those who say they favor a "free market" are speaking in a relative, rather than an absolute, sense — meaning (in libertarian terms) they wish that coercion be kept to the minimum that is necessary to maximize economic freedom (such necessary coercion would be taxation, for example) and to maximize market efficiency by lowering trade barriers, making the tax system neutral in its influence on important decisions such as how to raise capital, e.g., eliminating the double tax on dividends so that equity financing is not at a disadvantage vis-a-vis debt financing. However, there are some such as anarcho-capitalists who would not even allow for taxation and governments, instead preferring protectors of economic freedom in the form of private contractors.
-cited

Not cited to refute or embolden either of our claims.
In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
You confuse free markets with free people. Where free market reforms have been put into place in Chile, Argentina, Russia, Bolivia and here at home in the states, you see a pattern of hyper-inflation, massive unemployment, low wages, massive income inequality, the gutting of the middle class, labor exploitation, abuse and attacks (physical or economic) on unions and the diminishing of civil rights. I know that your free market intentions are pure, but as Milton Friedman himself said "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
Free markets provide liberty to employers at the expense of employee liberty; they provide liberty to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. It's the Soviet communism of the rich.
I know you draw a big distinction between free markets and corporatism in your mind, but historically, free markets always lead to corporatism and generally require violence and authoritarianism to implement and sustain.
Corporations latched on to Milton Friedman, because he was able to make a persuasive moral argument in favor plutocracy that could be embraced by people who do not benefit from corporatism (like you). Rather than say the rich should be free to dominate, he makes it an issue of 'individual liberty'. If "individual liberty" just so happens to lead plutocracy, it's not Uncle Miltie's fault, because "Freedom is dangerous" as you have said many times.
I know I sound like a broken record, but you need to read that book. Friedman and his Chicago school of economics cronies repeatedly worked closely with despotic governments (including our own) and despotic businesses. You'll be "shocked". He and his colleagues hijacked the IMF and World Bank and have been using those institutions to beat down poor nations and force them to sell of their natural resources to multinational corporations.
I don't have a problem with capitalism, just so long as it does not have a monopoly over the system. I think capitalism has many good traits, but that it is not capable of performing tasks in which value cannot be measured in dollars, like health, education, infrastructure and other social programs. I want a system where government is free to do what it does best, and where business if free to do what it does best. Balance > Ideological monopolies.
Top ten clues that the Free Market movement is a racket.
1. It states that altruism and empathy are bad; greed and selfishness are good.
2. It claims to be anti-corporate, yet is completely funded by corporations from the ground up.
3. It claims to be about liberty, volunteerism and non-aggression, but can only be implemented through force and terror.
4. It promotes irrational/anti-scientific thinking when science gets in the way of business. (read: Global Climate Change).
5. It is largely embraced by Republicans, whom are easily manipulated into believing corporatist falsehoods on a regular basis.
6. It is obsessed with keeping people from organizing, under the guise of 'individualism'. Corporatists know that we are much easier to dominate as separate individuals.
7. In cases where free market reforms have been implemented by a government, it has resulted in plutocracy.
8. In failed states where no government or taxes exist, chaos reigns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmn9asN-8AE
9. There is no empirical evidence to prove the merit of Free Market doctrine, and plenty of evidence against.
10. It is embraced by the biggest propagandists of our times, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Ayn Rand, etc.

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