>> ^dgandhi:

>> ^marbles:
No one decides. They’re inherent. They evolved in the human mind long before the organization of human society.
Okay, I just have to add, this claim re:property displays an absurd degree of historical illiteracy.
1) Nomadic human societies tend to use a possession scheme, where its yours if you have it.
2) As people began to settle land they started using a usufruct scheme where it's yours only while you maintain it.
3) As settlements and their governments became more powerful they created property in perpetuity to consolidate their own power.
Property, as you defend it, is the result of a statist powergrab.
If there exists an inherent set of human rights to things, history shows that to be by physical possession only.


And all this time you've been denying the concept of property exists. Like I've previously eluded to: Government force is not always consistent with liberty. And that's the point. Government force should always be consistent with liberty.

>> ^gwiz665:

Bukowski wrote that? Huh, guess I should reevaluate my position on him.


This is one of my favorite short stories of all time:

http://plagiarist.com/poetry/194/

Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl in town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes to go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that would not hold her. Her hair was black and long and silken and whirled about as did her body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not. And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men.

Her sisters accused her of misusing her beauty, of not using her mind enough, but Cass had mind and spirit; she painted, she danced, she sang, she made things of clay, and when people were hurt either in the spirit or the flesh, Cass felt a deep grieving for them. Her mind was simply different; her mind was simply not practical. Her sisters were jealous of her because she attracted their men, and they were angry because they felt she didn't make the best use of them. She had a habit of being kind to the uglier ones; the so-called handsome men revolted her- "No guts," she said, "no zap. They are riding on their perfect little earlobes and well- shaped nostrils...all surface and no insides..." She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some call insanity. Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the girls alone. The girls went to a relative who placed them in a convent. The convent had been an unhappy place, more for Cass than the sisters. The girls were jealous of Cass and Cass fought most of them. She had razor marks all along her left arm from defending herself in two fights. There was also a permanent scar along the left cheek but the scar rather than lessening her beauty only seemed to highlight it. I met her at the West End Bar several nights after her release from the convent. Being youngest, she was the last of the sisters to be released. She simply came in and sat next to me. I was probably the ugliest man in town and this might have had something to do with it.

"Drink?" I asked.

"Sure, why not?"

I don't suppose there was anything unusual in our conversation that night, it was simply in the feeling Cass gave. She had chosen me and it was as simple as that. No pressure. She liked her drinks and had a great number of them. She didn't seem quite of age but they served he anyhow. Perhaps she had forged i.d., I don't know. Anyhow, each time she came back from the restroom and sat down next to me, I did feel some pride. She was not only the most beautiful woman in town but also one of the most beautiful I had ever seen. I placed my arm about her waist and kissed her once.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked.

"Yes, of course, but there's something else... there's more than your looks..."

"People are always accusing me of being pretty. Do you really think I'm pretty?"

"Pretty isn't the word, it hardly does you fair."

Cass reached into her handbag. I thought she was reaching for her handkerchief. She came out with a long hatpin. Before I could stop her she had run this long hatpin through her nose, sideways, just above the nostrils. I felt disgust and horror. She looked at me and laughed, "Now do you think me pretty? What do you think now, man?" I pulled the hatpin out and held my handkerchief over the bleeding. Several people, including the bartender, had seen the act. The bartender came down:

"Look," he said to Cass, "you act up again and you're out. We don't need your dramatics here."

"Oh, fuck you, man!" she said.

"Better keep her straight," the bartender said to me.

"She'll be all right," I said.

"It's my nose, I can do what I want with my nose."

"No," I said, "it hurts me."

"You mean it hurts you when I stick a pin in my nose?"

"Yes, it does, I mean it."

"All right, I won't do it again. Cheer up."

She kissed me, rather grinning through the kiss and holding the handkerchief to her nose. We left for my place at closing time. I had some beer and we sat there talking. It was then that I got the perception of her as a person full of kindness and caring. She gave herself away without knowing it. At the same time she would leap back into areas of wildness and incoherence. Schitzi. A beautiful and spiritual schitzi. Perhaps some man, something, would ruin her forever. I hoped that it wouldn't be me. We went to bed and after I turned out the lights Cass asked me,

"When do you want it? Now or in the morning?"

"In the morning," I said and turned my back.

In the morning I got up and made a couple of coffees, brought her one in bed. She laughed.

"You're the first man who has turned it down at night."

"It's o.k.," I said, "we needn't do it at all."

"No, wait, I want to now. Let me freshen up a bit."

Cass went into the bathroom. She came out shortly, looking quite wonderful, her long black hair glistening, her eyes and lips glistening, her glistening... She displayed her body calmly, as a good thing. She got under the sheet.

"Come on, lover man."

I got in. She kissed with abandon but without haste. I let my hands run over her body, through her hair. I mounted. It was hot, and tight. I began to stroke slowly, wanting to make it last. Her eyes looked directly into mine.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"What the hell difference does it make?" she asked.

I laughed and went on ahead. Afterwards she dressed and I drove her back to the bar but she was difficult to forget. I wasn't working and I slept until 2 p.m. then got up and read the paper. I was in the bathtub when she came in with a large leaf- an elephant ear.

"I knew you'd be in the bathtub," she said, "so I brought you something to cover that thing with, nature boy."

She threw the elephant leaf down on me in the bathtub.

"How did you know I'd be in the tub?"

"I knew."

Almost every day Cass arrived when I was in the tub. The times were different but she seldom missed, and there was the elephant leaf. And then we'd make love. One or two nights she phoned and I had to bail her out of jail for drunkenness and fighting.

"These sons of bitches," she said, "just because they buy you a few drinks they think they can get into your pants."

"Once you accept a drink you create your own trouble."

"I thought they were interested in me, not just my body."

"I'm interested in you and your body. I doubt, though, that most men can see beyond your body."

I left town for 6 months, bummed around, came back. I had never forgotten Cass, but we'd had some type of argument and I felt like moving anyhow, and when I got back i figured she'd be gone, but I had been sitting in the West End Bar about 30 minutes when she walked in and sat down next to me.

"Well, bastard, I see you've come back."

I ordered her a drink. Then I looked at her. She had on a high- necked dress. I had never seen her in one of those. And under each eye, driven in, were 2 pins with glass heads. All you could see were the heads of the pins, but the pins were driven down into her face.

"God damn you, still trying to destroy your beauty, eh?"

"No, it's the fad, you fool."

"You're crazy."

"I've missed you," she said.

"Is there anybody else?"

"No there isn't anybody else. Just you. But I'm hustling. It costs ten bucks. But you get it free."

"Pull those pins out."

"No, it's the fad."

"It's making me very unhappy."

"Are you sure?"

"Hell yes, I'm sure."

Cass slowly pulled the pins out and put them back in her purse.

"Why do you haggle your beauty?" I asked. "Why don't you just live with it?"

"Because people think it's all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won't stay. You don't know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it's for something else."

"O.k.," I said, "I'm lucky."

"I don't mean you're ugly. People just think you're ugly. You have a fascinating face."

"Thanks."

We had another drink.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing. I can't get on to anything. No interest."

"Me neither. If you were a woman you could hustle."

"I don't think I could ever make contact with that many strangers, it's wearing."

"You're right, it's wearing, everything is wearing."

We left together. People still stared at Cass on the streets. She was a beautiful woman, perhaps more beautiful than ever. We made it to my place and I opened a bottle of wine and we talked. With Cass and I, it always came easy. She talked a while and I would listen and then i would talk. Our conversation simply went along without strain. We seemed to discover secrets together. When we discovered a good one Cass would laugh that laugh- only the way she could. It was like joy out of fire. Through the talking we kissed and moved closer together. We became quite heated and decided to go to bed. It was then that Cass took off her high -necked dress and I saw it- the ugly jagged scar across her throat. It was large and thick.

"God damn you, woman," I said from the bed, "god damn you, what have you done?

"I tried it with a broken bottle one night. Don't you like me any more? Am I still beautiful?"

I pulled her down on the bed and kissed her. She pushed away and laughed, "Some men pay me ten and I undress and they don't want to do it. I keep the ten. It's very funny."

"Yes," I said, "I can't stop laughing... Cass, bitch, I love you...stop destroying yourself; you're the most alive woman I've ever met."

We kissed again. Cass was crying without sound. I could feel the tears. The long black hair lay beside me like a flag of death. We enjoined and made slow and somber and wonderful love. In the morning Cass was up making breakfast. She seemed quite calm and happy. She was singing. I stayed in bed and enjoyed her happiness. Finally she came over and shook me,

"Up, bastard! Throw some cold water on your face and pecker and come enjoy the feast!"

I drove her to the beach that day. It was a weekday and not yet summer so things were splendidly deserted. Beach bums in rags slept on the lawns above the sand. Others sat on stone benches sharing a lone bottle. The gulls whirled about, mindless yet distracted. Old ladies in their 70's and 80's sat on the benches and discussed selling real estate left behind by husbands long ago killed by the pace and stupidity of survival. For it all, there was peace in the air and we walked about and stretched on the lawns and didn't say much. It simply felt good being together. I bought a couple of sandwiches, some chips and drinks and we sat on the sand eating. Then I held Cass and we slept together about an hour. It was somehow better than lovemaking. There was flowing together without tension. When we awakened we drove back to my place and I cooked a dinner. After dinner I suggested to Cass that we shack together. She waited a long time, looking at me, then she slowly said, "No." I drove her back to the bar, bought her a drink and walked out. I found a job as a parker in a factory the next day and the rest of the week went to working. I was too tired to get about much but that Friday night I did get to the West End Bar. I sat and waited for Cass. Hours went by . After I was fairly drunk the bartender said to me, "I'm sorry about your girlfriend."

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, didn't you know?"

"No."

"Suicide. She was buried yesterday."

"Buried?" I asked. It seemed as though she would walk through the doorway at any moment. How could she be gone?

"Her sisters buried her."

"A suicide? Mind telling me how?"

"She cut her throat."

"I see. Give me another drink."

I drank until closing time. Cass was the most beautiful of 5 sisters, the most beautiful in town. I managed to drive to my place and I kept thinking, I should have insisted she stay with me instead of accepting that "no." Everything about her had indicated that she had cared. I simply had been too offhand about it, lazy, too unconcerned. I deserved my death and hers. I was a dog. No, why blame the dogs? I got up and found a bottle of wine and drank from it heavily. Cass the most beautiful girl in town was dead at 20. Outside somebody honked their automobile horn. They were very loud and persistent. I sat the bottle down and screamed out: "GOD DAMN YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH ,SHUT UP!" The night kept coming and there was nothing I could do.

@messenger

Males are not monogamous. Yes, I agree. Your words indicate that I said contrary, which I did not.

That doesn't mean monogamy is unnatural. (Swans are a good example. One mate, one life.) I was eluding to women being built towards one man taking care of his seed in a constantly reliable manner... Even if that one male is laying his seed all around.

What Savage is also saying, in addition to your point; around 60 years ago relationships began to lose the "property" aspect (A good thing.) "But instead allowing women to have the same sort of freedom and leeway as men we put the same limitations on men..."

In other words, instead of a free-free relationship, we moved from a master-slave relationship society to a slave-slave relationship society...

ah my friend...
remember it was you who asked me to help you understand my faith.
and i did so openly and honestly and with the total understanding that you would wholeheartedly disagree.
were you looking for some form of evidence?
i did not promise you any.
what we have here is a philosophical discussion.
i thought that was something self-evident.
we are discussion an intangible:faith.

reading your response i am puzzled at the volume of presumption based on very little.
much of which i had already addressed.
what were you trying to accomplish in your response?
what was your intent with all this?
i have been open,honest and put myself out there because you were respectful and curious.
i held no illusions you would ever agree with how i viewed things but i did think that maybe if i shared you would at least understand where i was coming from.
and that is always a good thing.

but i have to say for someone so adamant about evidence and research you presume volumes based on little or no information.you took it waaay past what i offered and formulated your own dynamic.
and while it kind of irritates me and i dont feel i should have to point this out,
i shall anyways...just because....

1.(No, I don’t suspect that you are anti-research, I suspect that you don’t value research or the scientific method as much as people should. If you did, you would find no value in faith.)
-i already stated that when new information is gained.the paradigm is changed.of course i value research but maybe i am not as schooled as you.maybe i dont have access or was unaware of certain research.
did this not even occur to you?
then you go on to ostracize EVERYBODY who does not value research the way you do and that if we did we would find no value in faith.then my friend..you dont have the first clue about faith (which means i have failed from the get-go..lol).but has the arrogance of this statement eluded you?you are judging people based on YOUR perceptions.

2.I suspect that you don’t read many science books, if any. I suspect that you don’t follow the most recent information coming out of neural science research labs.
-now on this i will agree.your suspicions would be correct.not because i avoid them but because i dont follow them.my studies are in cultural religious history,american history,world history,US and european governments and comparative religions.(and of course art,poetry and music).
if you have some suggestions and in video format i would be delighted to watch and learn.

3.I suspect that the only research that you are primarily interested in is the kind of research that supports your pre-existing idea of the nature of reality. I suspect that you don’t actually understand the scientific method. I suspect that you’ve never read “The Demon Haunted World”.
-and you base this presumption on what...exactly? when i have clearly stated the opposite.do i need to point out that i am a man of faith who frequents a predominantly atheist web site? i have never even heard of "demon haunted world" what is it about? it sounds interesting.

4.I suspect that you don’t really understand causation verses correlation.
-ok..now you are just being snide.many religious folk fall into this trap..i am not one of them."see? there is your evidence!".i thought you would understand what i was implying.i guess i was wrong.

5.I suspect that you generally aren’t very skeptically minded and that your definition of “evidence” is loosely constructed.
-again.what are you basing this on? because i have faith? is THAT what you are basing this presumption on? i addressed this in my letter to you.

6.I suspect that you aren’t actually doing anything to falsify your beliefs. I suspect that you identify with your beliefs to the degree that if realized that they weren’t true you would feel a sense of loss of personal identity. I suspect that you value any answer, even if it’s potentially incorrect, over no answer at all. I suspect that you would rather believe in “spirit” than to disbelieve it because, as I suspect, it makes you feel good and it gives you the answer that you want.
-are you projecting? or having a conversation with a different person and sent this to me? if my beliefs (which just by using that word means i have utterly failed to convey how i view things)were proven to be false..then they would be false.i would not curl into a ball and cry like a little girl.my faith is expressed through who i am but is not integrally me as a person.my faith is neither stagnant nor static but flows,drifts and morphs as time goes on.and to say how my faith in spirit makes me feel.well you are just guessing based on little or no information.i find this particularly hypocritical of how you present yourself.you have no idea HOW i feel or how i would react if it turns out that there is no spirit.come on man..you are better than this particularly nasty nugget.

7.I suspect that you like the writings of Deepak Chopra and that you probably like movies "The Secret" and "What the Bleep Do We Know". I suspect that you have very little respect for truth and that your beliefs are more about perception rather than what can be known to be factual.
-ok.here is where you literally take the gold for presumption.deepok chopra? really?
let me explain something so we are crystal clear here.every and all of my philosophies have been hard won.while the revelations may have been a gift my understanding of them has taken me on paths and roads you cannot even BEGIN to understand (or maybe you can.my turn to assume).my wisdom has been hard won,epic battles with my own self and the world around me.scars upon scars to garner the wisdom i now hold and the path i walk is a solitary one. NOT one i read from deepok fucking chopra.
i find the sciences fascinating and consume as often as i can with my limited understanding.i wish my curiosity for these things had not blossomed so late in my life but for 12 years i have been absolutely ravenous for information and for you to suggest that somehow i avoid the truth because it may disprove my beliefs..
aw fuck you man..thats hubris times ten and just plain fucking wrong.you are painting a picture on how you perceive me and i gotta tell ya man.that person you are picturing? it aint me.
i am a poet my friend and everything i do,say or relate to is all about the truth.in everything.. and that includes..ESPECIALLY..includes..self deception.
read my poem.its right here on my page under my favorite video.my first published actually.
and you included the SECRET? for real? let me tell ya and i say this often (ask my friends who read that garbage) if i ever meet the authors, i am slapping them dead in the face.may not be the same reason you would but we can do it as a dynamic duo../SMACK.

my friend,
you state the all importance of evidence.the absolute value of truth based on facts and testable results.yet what you have done to here is base your opinion on almost no evidence nor facts.
you have judged me falsely.

now.lets move on to the questions.understand i asked them not looking for the correct answer but rather how you would respond to them.because there really is no "correct" answer,only what we know up to this point.
1.What is ego? I don’t know. I don’t study neurological brain functions as much as I wish I had the time for. The thing is, I’m not the one providing a bunch of nonsense answer about how it’s some sort of separate entity apart from myself, or that it has its own wants and desires part from my own. The burden of proof rests on the person making those claims.
-berticus could answer this more scientifically than i could and since you do not believe in spirit any further discussion would be redundant.
my stance is that the ego is who you THINK you are,not who you actually are.i would elaborate but i dont think you would respect any of my conclusions.which are mostly anecdotal and not actual evidence.

2.What is reality? From Wikipedia “Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be.” I would use that definition. I would also say that we absolutely can know what is real vs. what is not real by performing rigorous investigations into phenomenon that we observe and that during these investigations we use the scientific method to keep us from lying to ourselves. Contrary to the beliefs of people of “spirituality” and post-modernists, there are things that we can call objectively real and there is such thing as truth, that knowing the truth requires hardcore investigation and that once you know the truth, at least to a very high degree of certainty, you can know what is not true. By definition, reality is the collection of things and phenomenon that are real. Things like fairies, unicorns, leprechauns, flying spaghetti monsters, gods, etc, aren't known to be real, they don't really exist, they aren't a part of reality. Sure, the idea of those things is real, but those things themselves aren't.
-we dont fully know.that is the correct answer.we only know what we know by our standards and abilities to date.reality keeps becoming more and more grander and complex as we dig deeper and reveal more.this is an ongoing project and the rabbit hole keeps getting deeper.this is something that really excites and fascinates me.look at how much of reality we have uncovered in the past 100 years.dont you find it all fascinating?what was once unknown is becoming known and things never even suspected are becoming possibilities.that is just too awesome.

3.What is consciousness? It sounds as if you’re asking me what consciousness is as if consciousness is a thing. Consciousness isn’t a thing; it’s a bi-product of certain biological systems and it can be affected and manipulated by various means. It’s a collective brain state. Consciousness doesn’t exist somewhere in the universe and we’re interacting with it and even if that were true, there isn’t any actual evidence of that being the case. In humans, it is just the sense of awareness of one’s self with respect to others and of the relationship between the mind and the world that we interact with. You talk about consciousness as if it’s some sort of mystical force; it just sounds like magical thinking, attributing animal qualities to the universe. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. This notion that consciousness and the ego are somehow “outside” of us or separate from who we “are” is just a fantasy similar to fairies and unicorns. I know people that believe in actual fairies, the kind with wings, who control certain aspects of our lives. I put spirituality in the same exact camp as belief in fairies, there just isn’t any evidence that it’s actually true.
-consciousness is a subject that is still discussed in philosophical and theosophical schools.just like the subject of reality we dont fully know.we suspect and there have been great strides in understanding but at the end of the day...still dont really know.and i do not speak of something "outside" sorry if i came across that way.must have been a tad confusing for you,but consciousness is another rabbit hole.the more we learn the bigger the picture gets.which again..fascinates me.if you want to play around with reality and consciousness drop some acid,or mescaline,shrooms even and let creation melt like a chocolate sundae on a hot summers day.there are levels of consciousness and awareness and everybodys is different.theories that plants have a form of consciousness and we all pretty much agree that animals have a consciousness.

4.Who am I? I could say that I am who I define myself to be based on what information that I have about myself combined with the model of myself that is retained in other people’s minds whom I interact with and also the collective actions that I’ve taken and continue to take. It just seems like you’re adding a layer of mysticism over the nature of humans, as if there is something magical about humans over other primates, or other carbon based life forms. Again, there is nothing mystical or magical about who people are.
do you let everyone tell you how to act?
i tease...
this is a very scientific..and BORING... answer.and very,very one dimensional.but it has the value of allowing me a peek into your inner workings.so i thank you.
this is actually an exercise in self-reflection.was meant to make you think about just you and who you were for a second (mostly i get people telling me their occupation).
short..to the point..and very boring.
while we may be more self-aware than other animals i never stated we were magical beings,unless you count my faith in spirit and if thats the case...fair enough.
i am nothing special and hold no hidden secret key to the temples of delight and neither are you.i deal with everybody based on that assumption.

now lets deal with your conclusion:
1.The reason why I suspect that you are not scientifically minded is because you’re prepared to dismiss ongoing research which may or may not be conclusive but you’re willing to provide your own answers and form your own beliefs based on your own subjective experiences.
-where have i dismissed science that has been proven to be factual?or even remotely hinted i was prepared to?where are you getting this from? if i gave you that impression then i apologize because that is not how i view things.
now i shared a very personal revelation with you that i normally do not share.please do not dishonor that trust with contempt or disdain.i understand you do not believe and that is your right but at least respect my offer of something valuable to me,even if it is garbage to you.
this is why it is called "faith" and not "evidence".i did not offer evidence,i offered a revelation given to me which is where my faith resides.and all of our experiences are subjective.

2.What good are those answers if they have no basis in reality. Just because there is no definitive consensus doesn’t mean that you can substitute in your own beliefs. Doing that, in and of itself, is irrational. Everything that you’ve said that you believe in has its basis in magical and wishful thinking, not in science, even though you're using scientific terms (incorrectly I might add).
-again.this is why it is called faith and faith in and of itself is irrational.i do understand these concepts and realize their implications.and whats up with the snide remark about my incorrect usage of scientific terms? then teach me correctly..or are you one of those people that will let a dude walk around with his fly open? come on man...uncalled for.

3.If there isn’t a conclusive answer, than why make one up? The only thing that individualized answers to these questions offers to me is evidence of how scientifically illiterate people actually are. Scientifically literate and rational people don’t answer questions that they don’t have objective and research driven answers to and if they do propose an answer when there isn’t something they can be objectively highly certain of, they submit it as conjecture, a mere hypothesis, very little more than an inconclusive guess.
--again i refer to faith.i get it man.you dont have any unless it is scientifically proven factual.
and most people are scientifically illiterate.you ever think instead of calling them retards (you didnt use those words but you may has well have)that maybe you could help them a bit? maybe share some of your understanding? point them in a direction that may answer their questions?
you are kind of being a douche in this last part,i dont think its intentional,but its very...douchey.
i mean..
you ask me a question.one in which i attempt to answer based on a revelation that was given to me over 30 years ago,and THEN turn around and basically say that im making shit up and that i am scientifically illiterate.
of course i am scientifically illiterate.
i am an ordained minister and a fucking poet!what did you expect?
but i own an insatiable curiosity.
i am constantly prodding the edges of my own understanding and attempting to further my knowledge base.
but i hold no illusions that i knew everything,nor do i look down upon those i disagree with.
i view every interaction as an opportunity to learn.

as i stated earlier.
i offered my faith,not certitude.
if the factual realm of science gives you comfort and makes you smile then i say ..good for you!
and might i suggest you share this passion with others?
i do not know what you meant to accomplish with your letter to me.
its tone is far different than our other transactions and some of its content and wording has me perplexed.
you have never been presumptuous with me before nor have you taken an arrogant tilt.
yet i find both of those in this letter.
meh../shrugs..text lacks the nuances of eye to eye conversation.
and being a person who uses words often i am fully aware of their total inadequacies to express ones thoughts/feelings/dreams at times.

just know that science reveals my understanding of creation to be spot on..
every..single..time.
and if you wish to call "god" the "universe"..
feel free.it is just as appropriate.
my path may be far different from yours but i still think your pretty cool.
while the fundamentalist stagnates in his own certitude..
i do not.
i am just me.
be well my friend.
namaste.

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
13
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
24
2S
_
I i
,,
'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-
27
GEORGES BATAILLE
Story of the Eye
.
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.
28
29
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
I
\
31
-j
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
32
33
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
34
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
37
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
39
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
40
41
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
42
43
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
44
45
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
46
47
.�I
r
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
48
49
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
57
� 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

>> ^JiggaJonson:

Did you even read the comment of mine you quoted??? I didn't say "THAT OFFICER" I said "the police." As in the police who planned an entire raid to arrest one guy; as in the police who planned unwarranted overexertion of power; as in the police who don't seem to care about civilian casualties. Not the one guy.
So yeah, now I DO think you're an idiot, but for different reasons than the ones you eluded to.

I just assumed you were talking about the specific action of the guy getting shot as the problem. I didn't know that the whole operation was unwarranted and that all of the police involved in the raid are to blame for it. I was under the impression that a "no-knock" warrant was issued by a federal judge and that the police involved in this incident only carried out the orders they received.

Did you even read the comment of mine you quoted??? I didn't say "THAT OFFICER" I said "the police." As in the police who planned an entire raid to arrest one guy; as in the police who planned unwarranted overexertion of power; as in the police who don't seem to care about civilian casualties. Not the one guy.

So yeah, now I DO think you're an idiot, but for different reasons than the ones you eluded to.

>> ^campionidelmondo:

Sure the policeman who shot the guy was a bit too trigger happy, but that's because he's trained to react in a split-second to any threat he might encounter. I'm not saying he handled the situation perfectly, but you need to look at the bigger picture. Why was a SWAT team sent to arrest one guy? What warranted an action like that? At what point will the government admit that it's fighting a war it cannot win, with civilian casualties piling up left and right?
That's just my opinion, if that makes me an idiot in your eyes so be it.

Why did this not shoot to the Top 15??? The mysteries of the Sift elude me.

I have no power points and no power. I would ^doublepromote if I could.

Hmmm, I'm annoyed or otherwise perturbed that Mohammad is the most popular name as well and that for the religious aspects-It's a gauge on the backward-thinking majority being kept slaves by a system of disinformation, economic servitude, etc. What's the most popular aristocratic European name? Hindi? Dutch? Who gives a damn but to know that the fact that Mohammad is popular is due to lack of knowledge regarding the origins of world religions and the grip those that know the truth have over masses of people.

People have used the race card with me as well when cogent, reasonable discourse eluded them-I usually end up telling them to go fuck themselves and shove their pompous, self-righteous bullshit, firmly in their assholes.

The allure of Minecraft absolutely eludes me.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Given your bullet reply I will do likewise...


I) I agree that culture may influence hypotheses that have a strong influence on popular ideas of the day. When considering your example, it was the church that was the main player on the opposing side, and ideas that go against the church doctrine, well... we all know what happens then. Climate change has similar implications, as it is rooted in politics and lifestyle - it may be influenced by culture. However, the supporting hypotheses are not largely influenced by culture because they are largely scientific in nature and do not have a direct influence on laymen. For example, the ecological hypothesis to which I eluded earlier concerning altitude and species' ranges is not debated on CNN or FOX. It's fairly obvious why. MOST (I'd wager 99%) scientific ideas are similar to this latter example.

a) I can agree with your point somewhat.. I agree that most people (including scientists) are subject to culture and view their world through the influence of it. However, just because this may be true, does not invalidate peer review. This is linked to my former point, if strong contrary data were to arise, it would greatly behoove a scientist to publish those data, not bow to the pressure of culture and hide it. Reviewers would be forced to view the evidence as it stands, in its raw naked truth, regardless of culture or influence - the editors, co-editors, and colleagues of the authors would demand it.
To your point about trends in science, I can also agree, yet climate change has more to do with the pressing nature of the matter then to a trend. This contrasts greatly with your example of Einstein and Newtonian theory. Climate change is "trending" at the moment, because we are forced to confront it - much like we were forced to confront the depletion of the ozone layer, we are confronting the loss of biodiversity in rainforests, the endangered species act, etc.

b) Indeed, I agree with you that it would not necessarily be "bad". However, you questioned if climate change would even be environmental in its effect. With the examples I provided, I hoped to show you that, indeed, it would be. Some ranges would increase, some would decrease, of course. However, as you surely know, evolution of unique taxonomic macroorganisms can take millions upon millions of years. It is not the increasing ranges with which we are concerned, it is the decreasing ones. Once they are gone, biodiversity decreases, even though it may increase for others. The health and environmental ramifications of that I surely do not need to explain.

c1) See my first point (I) - same argument, really.

c2) You're right and that is my fault - I misspoke (mistyped?). I meant that nobody has yet developed any strong evidence to the contrary. However, you have also committed a scientific falsity, which is one never "proves" anything in science. Therefore, a naysayer would never have to 'prove' that climate change is not occurring, but merely present his/her evidence of such to the contrary. He/She would then address the current models and present opposing ones (as many have done). The theory would quickly unravel, as many theories have done (e.g. Clemons vs. Gleason over the forest climax / succession model is a classic ecological theoretical battle that occurred in the early to mid 1900s. Clemons' theory was accepted for decades until a new hypothesis emerged from Gleason. The latter eventually racked up more evidence and is not generally accepted by the scientific community. [one more theory we never heard about in the papers, with practically no cultural influence]).

As you have even pointed out on more than one occasion those compound eyes, I doubt you have missed or do miss much.

Actually, I was alluding to Mycrofthomlz. Perhaps not wanting to seem presumptuous, I more like eluded....

In reply to this comment by ant:
One of our members? Who? Did I miss something?

Apparently, while this was happening, a giant sea creature came up from the waters on the other side of the boat. While the horrifying shrieks of sheer pain and panic can be heard, it eluded the camera once again.

*discuss (Not sure I can do this.)

I'm deeply disturbed that Sifters found this okay to Sift. gwiz665 gave pretty much every good reason in the world why this video does not belong here and Dag's only reply is some nonsense about "the noble use of the Internet." How garnering votes for linking to a video of a man being murdered is noble completely eludes me. Downvote.

My suggestion for rectifying this situation and actually abiding to Video Sifts own rules--replace the embed code for the current video with the one from schmawy's post above. That news video is graphic enough to give people the idea of what happened without showing the killing blow or subsequent "death rattle." It appeases Dag's "noble use of the Internet" standard (since it talks about how the police are investigating the incident) while removing an obvious snuff film from the Sift. Nomino gets to keep all his ill-gotten votes and people who want to get their kicks watching people get beaten to death can easily use the info in this thread to Google the original link for themselves.

>> ^NordlichReiter:
His strumming style still eludes me to this day.

He rakes on the upstroke, and then pops on the down stroke. Then does filler in between verses.
Amazing...


On a 12 string, no less...