Spotlight on … Georges Bataille Blue of Noon (1946)

 

‘His non-conformist mind was marked by what it was not yet customary to call black humor. Somewhat thin, with a style both romantic and of his time, he possessed (in a more youthful form of course, and less discreetly) the elegance he would never loose. His close-set, darkened eyes, brimming with all the blue of noon, went with his teeth that oddly suggested a forest animal, often uncovered by a laugh that (perhaps wrongly) I judged to be sarcastic’. Neither ‘flamboyantly attired’ nor ‘extravagant’, elegant but conservatively dressed (‘I always knew Bataille dressed in a very Bourgeois way’; ‘there was nothing Bohemian about him’). There was nothing Bohemian about him, but, as photographs of the time show, he displayed an elegance that was close to dandyism, a cynical dandyism.’ — Michel Leiris

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Corpses are the things of nightmares, figures that vibrate perpetually with the deafening echo of the last breath of presence. Georges Bataille’s 1935 novel The Blue of Noon is inundated with literal and metaphorical descriptions of corpses, which are used to convey the narrator’s self-ravaging tides of fear and desire. Simultaneously, the novel is interjected with strangely removed (despite the narrator’s physical proximity) observations of the political events leading up to World War II. When viewed in the context of its author’s biography and the period in which it was written, the disjointed poetic narrative that it unfurls is both personal and prolific.

‘Like all of Bataille’s narrative works, The Blue of Noon is in part a self-mediated biography, told through the thinly veiled voice of his male narrator Henri Troppmann. Although the implications will not be thoroughly explored here, the question of what requisites lend momentum to societies transgressions looms darkly in the background. Death exposes a very particular, and perhaps a penultimate, chaos; to surpass tears with momentary satiation does not escape comprehension. I would like to use specific passages from The Blue of Noon to discuss Bataille’s personal and authorial transgression of the Impossible, and more precisely to study his use of corpses as signifiers for this exploration of threshold and how to implement language in describing this struggle. From his notions on expenditure, to the death of philosophy, Bataille waged a war on limits. Before aging into the figure we study here, Bataille was a young adult on the path to becoming a monk.

‘Between the years 1920-1924, Georges Bataille’s belief system underwent a dramatic shift. A series of encounters during this period helped set into motion a dizzying struggle with paradox Bataille attempted to both define and destroy for the duration of his life. Small cracks had begun to destabilize the foundation of a devout Catholicism he had presumably taken up as a means of insulating himself from the madness of his childhood; but it wasn’t until his initial readings of Nietzsche that he felt deeply confounded by an intellectual choice in obsessive pursuits. His reaction to Nietzsche was in fact so provocative, that his first response was to reject the material. Reflecting years later on this moment, Bataille stated, “It is natural for a man encountering the destiny which belongs to him to experience an initial moment of recoil.” The terror of his adolescence crashed over him for a second (and certainly not the last) time, but unlike his self-enclosing escape into religion, he chose to pursue this new and unnerving opening before him.

‘By yielding to the Death of God and the laughing whilst peering into the void, transgression became his anti-idealistic ideal for living, signifying the end of an upright value system, in which all subjects are interchangeable and every structure is offered up for transmutable inversion. In his personal life, this allowed for his most debased desires to be structured accordingly; the brothel would become his church, and every person, from himself, to his mother, to his lovers (prostitutes, wives, and mistresses alike) was ultimately, a corpse. Bataille’s association of human flesh to an ever-present mortality may be a holdover from his years of monistic study, but it also stems from childhood memories of his blind, syphilitic father, who deteriorated progressively into madness until his death. Bataille claims to have been in love with his father until the age of fourteen. At the onset of the new self-consciousness of puberty this adoration shifted to a deep hate.’ — DISCURSIVE BODIES: The Corpses of Georges Bataille’s The Blue of Noon

 

 

Anus Solaire [Poem by Georges Bataille]

 

 

Translation: Journalist: What is the Evil you’re talking about? G. Bataille: There are, I believe, two sorts of Evil basically contrasting. On the one hand, one is linked to the necessity that everything goes right and succeed. On the other hand, the other one consists in positively breaking what is forbidden, like for instance, the ban on murder, or several sexual possibilities. J.: Does the title mean that Literature and Evil are inseparable? B.: I believe yes. Of course this isnt clear at first sight, but I think that if Literature goes away from Evil it becomes quickly boring. It is important to underline that Literature must deal with anguish, that this very anguish is based upon something that goes wrong, and eventually seriously bad. In leading the reader in some unpleasant perspective, I take the example of a novel, Literature avoids to get boring. J.: Thus a writer is always guilty of writing..? B.: Most of writers aren’t fully aware of this, but I do believe in that profound guilt. Writing is basically the opposite of working. It might not appear so logical, although every amusing books are efforts submited to work. J.: Could you name 1 or 2 writers that might have felt guilty of writing? B.: Well, two of them, which I named in my book, are clearly distinct in that matter. Baudelaire and Kafka, both felt guilty being in the common “wrong” side. It is obvious for Baudelaire who chose the very name “les Fleurs du Mal” to describe his deepest thoughts. Kafka expressed himself even more clearly, he thought that by writing he was disobeying to his fellows and put himself in a situation of guilt. […] J.: But being a writer and being guilty for Baudelaire or Kafka is because it’s not a serious occupation, that’s what their parents meant. They felt guilt being childish because they were writing. Do you think that Baudelaire and Kafka felt guilty by the very process of writing? B.: I think that expressly, even clearly pointed out by them a few times, they felt in the situation of a child towards his parents. The child disobeying to his parents and by then putting himself in a guitly conscience because he remember his affective parents who told him constantly what not to do, that it was bad ; in the strongest sense of the word. J.: If Literature is childish, you probably think that it is very puerile? B.: I Believe there is something essentially puerile within Literature. That may seem irreconcilable with one’s admiration for it, which I share. But I think it is fundamental, that one cannot fully understand what Literature is all about if we do not put it on the childhood side. Which doesn’t mean we put it on an inferior level. J.: You wrote a book about erotism, is erotism a childish behaviour in Literature? B.: I dont know if Literature distinguishes from erotism in general. But I think it is essential to underline the childish character of erotism as a whole. To be erotic is to be fascinated like a child with a game, a forbidden game. The man fascinated by erotism definitly is in the situation of a child towards his parents who is frightened of what might happen. He goes always far enough to be frightened. He doesn’t content himself with what wealthy adults do, he must be frightened, he must put himself in the same situation than when he was a child always threatened of being told off harshly ; in an unbearable, intolerable way. J.: We may have understood that you are condemning this puerility and childish behaviour, but I think we should go back to the title of your book, Literature and Evil. This is not a condemnation of Literature and Evil. I’d like you to give us the bottom line of this book. B.: It is obvious that it’s a warning, in this sense that we must warn against a danger, although it is possible that once we warned someone against a danger, we give him reasons to face it, and I think it is essential for us to face the danger which is Literature. I think it is a great and serious danger. But one is really a man only by facing this danger. Its within Literature that we aprehend human perspectives under their fullest shape, since Literature doesn’t let us live without aprehending human things through their most violent perspectives. Wether it be tragedy, Shakespeare and so on. It is mainly Literature that allows us to see the worst. And to know how to face it, how to overcome it. on the whole the man who play finds in the game the strength to overcome what the game leads of horror.

 

 

Anselm Kiefer ‘For Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon’, 2013

 

 

 

‘Narrative pathways through Le Bleu du ciel are never straightforward. Moving through the text involves negotiating one unstable, disorientating space after another, passing through an elaborate network of symbolic spaces – basements, recesses, cells, and tombs – whose borders touch each other and whose limits are continuously lacerated and transgressed. The text itself becomes labyrinthine and circuitous, subject to what Bataille himself refers to in the novel’s foreword as ‘monstrueuses anomalies’ [‘freakish anomalies’]. Through a study of the treatment of space in the Le Bleu du ciel – spaces constantly shifting between light and dark, openness and enclosure, form and the formless, this essay has examined some of the novel’s ‘anomalies’ and obsessions, looking at their place in relation to ideas explored in the broader corpus of Bataille’s thought. Seen in this context, what has become apparent is that such anomalies are not anomalies at all, but rather nodal points in a system of thought itself devoted to an interrogation of notions of impossibility and contradiction. Reference to the work of Blanchot, itself linked to the territory inhabited by Bataille through numerous biographical and textual connections, expands the scope of this interrogation, helping to show how the spaces of Le Bleu du ciel might be seen to relate to experiences outside the limits of that book, and ultimately to a broader understanding of the unstable, vertiginous experience of reading itself.’ — Michael Eades

 

 

 

Autopsia – Blue of Noon

David Sylvian – Blue of Noon

Guillaume Vallée – Blue of Noon

Krieg – Blue of Noon

Black Lake – Blue of Noon

 

 

 

 

 

‘Director André S. Labarthe, well-known as the co-founder and original developer of “Cinéma, de notre temps”, here portrays the French writer Georges Bataille (1897-1962), whose work ventures, at the same time, into the fields of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art. Initially broadcasted on 30 April 1997, the film contains interviews with Pierre Klossowski and Jacques Pimpanneau. The French title could be translated as As-Far-as-The-Eye-Can-See (At the Limit of Vision).

‘André Labarthe: “How to grasp with naked hands the most fiery thinking of the century? How to approach through film that which shies away whenever approached? How can the cinema – “the art of image” as we say – welcome and let live the intolerable images woven in stories such as Madame Edwarda and Blue of Noon? In short, how to talk about Georges Bataille in a film when we know that film to be impossible?”‘ — Amip-France 3

 

 

 

Blue of Noon (Marion Boyars)
translated by Harry Mathews

‘Blue of Noon is a novel that is as driven as a car whose driver has lost control. Troppmann the protagonist drinks to severe excess, womanises and is on the verge of despair. His wife Dirty who is introduced in the first chapter thoroughly drunk in the Savoy hotel in London is in an even more disgusting state than Troppmann and together they are driving each other to the brink. His wife separates from him and moves to Brighton leaving Troppmann to lead a dishevelled life of depravity and alcoholic excess in Paris. He visits Lazare a young communist whose ideology he finds as repugnant as her looks. Visiting friends in a nightclub he seduces Xenie by stabbing her in the thigh with a fork. He calls upon Xenie to visit him when he falls ill and scares her half to death whilst trying to seduce her. He visits Barcelona just as the General Strike is called and summons Xenie to him as well as his wife. Xenie gets caught up in the shooting and is terrified. Troppmann is reunited with his wife and together they make mad passionate love in the earth above a graveyard.’ — John Marcel, Resident Scholar

‘There’s at least one great missing film: the adaptation of Bataille’s Blue of Noon that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was planning to direct at the time of his death. I will always regret that this film never got made, for doubtless it would have shed a new and harsh light on the interplay of politics and sexuality and on the historical links between the fascist terror that Bataille confronted in the 1930s and the more diffuse and disguised forms of oppression and deprivation we continue to face today.’ — Steven Shaviro, Artforum

 

Excerpt

In London, in a cellar, in a neighborhood dive — the most squalid of unlikely places — Dirty was drunk. Utterly so. I was next to her (my hand was still bandaged from being cut by a broken glass.) Dirty that day was wearing a sumptuous evening gown (I was unshaven and unkempt.) As she stretched her long legs, she went into a violent convulsion. The place was crowded with men, and their eyes were getting ominous; the eyes of these perplexed men recalled spent cigars. Dirty clasped her naked thighs with both hands. She moaned as she bit into a grubby curtain. She was as drunk as she was beautiful. Staring at a gaslamp, she rolled round, irate eyes.

“What’s going on?” she shouted.

In the same instant, like a cannon going off in a cloud of dust, she jumped. From eyes that bulged like a scarecrow’s came a stream of tears.

She shouted again: “Troppmann!”

As she looked at me her eyes opened wider. With long dirty hands she stroked my sick head. My forehead was damp from fever. She was crying, with wild entreaty, the way one vomits. She was sobbing so hard her hair was drenched with tears.

The scene that preceded this nauseous carnival — afterwards, rats must have come crawling over the floor round the two sprawled bodies — was in every way worthy of Dostoevsky.

 

Drunkenness had committed us to dereliction, in pursuit of some grim response to the grimmest of compulsions. Before being wholly affected by drink, we had managed to retreat to a room at the Savoy. Dirty had noticed that the elevator attendant was very ugly (in spite of his handsome uniform, you might have taken him for a gravedigger.)

She pointed this out to me with a distracted laugh. Her speech was already awry — she spoke like a drunk woman.

“You know — “, racked as she was by hiccups, she kept stopping short, “when I was a kid . . . I remember . . . I came here with my mother. Here. About ten years ago. So I must have been twelve . . . . My mother was a faded old lady, sort of like the Queen of England . . . So, as it happened, coming out of the elevator, the elevator man — we just saw him —”

“Who — him?”

“Yes. The same one as today. He didn’t stop it level — the elevator went up too far — she fell flat on her face. She came tumbling down — my mother —”

Dirty burst out laughing, like some lunatic. She couldn’t stop.

Struggling to find my words, I said to her, “Don’t laugh any more. You’ll never get through your story.”

She stopped laughing and began shouting: “Oh, my, I’m getting silly — I’ll have to . . . No, no, I’ll finish my story. My mother. Not stirring, with her skirt over her head, that enormous skirt of hers. Like someone dead. Not another stir out of her. They picked her up and began putting her to bed. She started to puke — she was stewed to the eyebrows, except that one second earlier you couldn’t tell — that woman . . . She was like a mastiff. She was scary. ”

I said to Dirty, abjectly: “I’d like to fall down in front of you, just the way she did. . .”

“Would you throw up?” Dirty asked me, without even a smile. She kissed me inside the mouth.

“Maybe.”

 

I went into the bathroom. I was very pale. For no reason at all I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time; I was horribly unkempt, almost coarse, with swollen features that were not even ugly, and the rank look of a man just out of bed.

Dirty was alone in the bedroom. It was a huge room lighted by a multitude of ceiling lamps. She wandered around, walking straight ahead, as though she would never stop. She seemed literally crazy.

Her shoulders were bare to the point of indecency. In that light I found the glitter of her blond hair unbearable. She gave me a feeling of purity nonetheless. Even in her debauchery, there was such candor in her that I sometimes wanted to grovel at her feet. I was afraid of her. I saw that she was worn out. She was on the point of falling down. She began gasping for breath, panting like an animal; she was suffocating. Her mean, hunted look was driving me insane. She stopped — I think her legs were squirming under her dress. There was no doubt she was about to start raving. She rang the bell for the maid.

 

After a few moments, a redhaired, fresh-complexioned, and rather pretty maid came in. She seemed to gag on the smell. It was a highly unusual smell for so opulent a place: that of a lowdown brothel. Dirty had given up trying to stand on her feet unless she had a wall to lean on. She seemed to be in horrible pain. I don’t know at what point in the day she had smothered herself in cheap perfumes, but in addition to the indescribable state she had gotten herself into, she gave off a sour smell of armpit and crotch which, mingling with the perfume, recalled the stench of an infirmary. She also reeked of whisky, and she was belching…

The English girl was aghast.

“You’re just the person I need,” Dirty announced, “but first you have to get the elevator man. There’s something I want to tell him.”

The maid vanished; Dirty, now staggering, went and sat on a chair. With great difficulty she managed to set down a bottle and a glass on the floor beside her. Her eyes were growing heavy.

Her eyes tried to find me. I was no longer there. She lost her head. In a desperate voice she called out, “Troppmann!”

There was no reply.

She got up and several times nearly fell. She made it to the bathroom door; she saw me slumped on a bench, haggard and white. In my drunkenness I had just reopened the cut in my right hand. The bleeding, which I was trying to stanch with a towel, was dribbling rapidly onto the floor. Dirty, in front of me, was staring at me with eyes like an animal’s. I wiped my face, thus smearing blood over my forehead and nose. The electric light was getting blindingly bright. It was unbearable, this light that wore out the eyes.

There was a knock at the door. The maid came in, followed by the elevator attendant.

Dirty slumped onto the chair. After what seemed to me like a very long time, her eyes lowered and unseeing, she asked the elevator attendant, “You were here in 1924?”

The attendant answered yes.

“I want to ask you — the tall old lady . . . The one who fell down getting out of the elevator and vomited on the floor . . . You remember?”

Dirty was articulating through dead lips, seeing nothing.

In fearful embarrassment the two servants cast sidelong glances, questioning and observing one another.

“I do remember,” the attendant admitted. “It’s true.”

(This man, who was in his forties, may have had the face of a thieving gravedigger, but it was of such an unctuosity that it seemed to have been pickled in oil.)

“A glass of whisky?” Dirty asked.

No one answered. The two characters stood there in deferential, painful expectancy.

 

Dirty asked to be given her purse. Her gestures were so sluggish it took a long minute for her hand to reach the bottom of the purse; as soon as she found the stack of banknotes, she tossed it on the floor, saying merely, “Go shares.”

The gravedigger had found something to do. He picked up the precious stack and began
counting out the pounds aloud. There were twenty in all. He handed ten to the maid.

“We may leave?” he asked after a while. “Oh, no, not yet. Please, sit down.”

She seemed to be suffocating; blood was rushing to her face. Showing great deference, the two servants had remained standing; but they too became red and anxious, partly because of the staggering size of the tip, partly because of the implausible, incomprehensible situation.

Dirty remained mutely perched on the chair. There was a long silence: you could have heard our hearts inside their bodies. I walked over to the door, pale and sick, my face smeared with blood; I was hiccupping and on the point of vomiting. In terror the servants saw that water was trickling across the chair and down the legs of their beautiful guest. While the urine was gathering into a puddle that spread over the carpet, a noise of slackening bowels made itself ponderously evident beneath the young woman’s dress — beet-red, her eyes twisted upwards, she was squirming on her chair like a pig under the knife.

 

The trembling, nauseated maid had to wash Dirty, who seemed calm and content once again. She let herself be wiped and soaped. The elevator man aired the room until the smell had completely disappeared. He then bandaged my cut to stop the bleeding. Things were all back in their proper place. The maid was putting away the last articles of clothing. Washed, perfumed, more beautiful than ever, Dirty was stretched out on the bed, still drinking. She made the attendant sit down. He sat next to her in an armchair. At this point, drunkenness gave her the forsaken candor of a child, of a little girl. Even when she remained silent, she seemed forsaken. Occasionally she would laugh to herself.

“Tell me,” she at last said to the elevator attendant, “during all the years you’ve been at the Savoy, you must have had lots of repulsive experiences.”

“Oh, not all that many, “he replied, although not before finishing his whisky, which seemed to give him a boost and restore his composure. “The guests here are
well-behaved, as a rule.”

“Oh, well-behaved — that’s a whole way of life isn’t it? Just like my departed mother when she took a tumble in front of you and puked all over your sleeves…”

And Dirty burst into dissonant laughter, to which, in that emptiness, there was no response.

She went on: “And do you know why they’re all well-behaved? They’re scared, do you understand? Their teeth are chattering — that’s why they never dare let anything show. I can sense that because I’m scared myself — yes, my good man, I am. Can’t you tell? Even of you. Scared to death.”

“Wouldn’t Madame like a glass of water?” the maid asked fearfully.

“Shit!” Dirty curtly answered, sticking out her tongue at her, “I happen to be sick, don’t forget that. I also happen to have a few brains in my head. “Then: “You don’t give a fuck, but things like that make me want to vomit, do you hear?”

With a mild gesture I managed to interrupt her. As I made her take another swallow of Scotch, I said to the attendant, “Admit that if it was up to you, you’d strangle her.”

“You’re right,’ Dirty yelped, “look at those huge paws, those gorilla’s paws of his. They’re hairy as balls.”

“But, Madame,” the attendant protested “you know I’m here to oblige you.”

“What an idea! No, you idiot, I don’t need your balls. I’m feeling sick to my stomach.”

As she chortled, she belched.

 

The maid dashed out and came back with a basin. She seemed all servility, and utterly decent. I sat there pale and listless. I kept drinking more and more.

“And as for you — you, the nice girl, ” Dirty began, this time addressing the maid, “you masturbate, and you look at the teapots in shopwindows for when you’ll set up housekeeping. If I had a fanny like yours I’d let everybody see it. Otherwise, one day you’ll happen to find the hole while you’re scratching and die of shame.”

Appalled I abruptly told the maid, “Sprinkle some water on her face — can’t you see she’s getting all hot?”

The maid immediately started bustling about. She put a wet towel on Dirty’s forehead. Dirty dragged herself over to the window. Beneath her she saw the Thames and, in the background, some of the most hideous buildings in London, now magnified in the darkness. She quickly vomited in the open air. In her relief she called for me, and, as I held her forehead I stared at that foul sewer of a landscape: the river and the warehouses. In the vicinity of the hotel the lights of luxury apartments loomed insolently.

Gazing out at London, I almost wept, I was so distraught with anxiety. As I breathed in the cool air, childhood memories — of little girls, for instance, with whom I used to play at telephone and diabolo — merged with the vision of the elevator attendant’s apelike paws.

What was happening, moreover, seemed to me trivial and somehow ludicrous. I myself was empty. I was scarcely even capable of inventing new horrors to fill the emptiness. I felt powerless and degraded. It was in this uncompliant and indifferent frame of mind that I followed Dirty outside. Dirty kept me going; nevertheless, I could not conceive of any human creature being more derelict and adrift.

This anxiety that never for a moment let the body slacken provided the only explanation for a wonderful ability: we managed, with no respect for conventional pigeonholes, to eliminate every possible urge, in the room at the Savoy as well as in the dive, wherever we had to.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Oh, does Scotland encourage sugar teeth? Interesting. Of course now I must hunt down Tangfastics. Yes, the murdering natal nurse has been news here too. That sweetly smiling photo that the news uses of her is seriously scary. ** Misanthrope, Maybe gummies are the key to a long life? Weirder things have been discovered and proven. It’s true: time management and confidence are the #s 1 & 2 of writerly success. Talent is probably #8 or 9. Well, that’s something of a positive report on David relative to his ‘will he wake up tomorrow?’ phase. And the online journalism thing is pretty cool. Yeah, that’s something. Almost but not quite enough to make me finally break down and do Instagram. ** Cody Goodnight, I’m a bit frantic, but I’m okay, I guess. ‘Sexy Beast’ is worth it for the performances. Especially Kingsley’s, which is kind of jaw dropping. And it’s stylish and holds the eye. How did ‘Angst’ sit with you? I almost went to see that film that won Cannes this year, but then the absence of English subtitles made me think twice. I hereby declare Monday is yours. ** Dominik, Hi!! Ha ha, that’s hilarious about your dog. I’m going to think of gummys as not food from now on. Yes, the shit one is real apparently. Maybe that would be the one to change your dog’s mind, ha ha? I’m positive your sequel to ‘Bullet Train’ would fix all the could-be-better moments in it. And I’m sure you can think up a genius mastermind character who could restart Aaron’s character. I’m trying to think of what the proper behavior would be for a sad person. Huh. I’m sure love can figure that out. Love making me have checked on the terrifyingly soon deadline for submissions for the Rotterdam Film Festival a month ago instead of yesterday, G. ** Armando, Hey, big A! Dude, so nice to see you, it’s been ages. I’m alright basically. The film itself goes really well, but the funding to finish it and everything to do with the administrative aspect is hell on earth. We need to have a watchable if unfinished version ready by our first festival deadline on September 20, and then I think we’ll have it totally finished by the end of the year. I like the gummys that have the, like, a smear of marshmallow on one side of them. I can’t remember what they’re called. There are probably a bunch of ones that qualify. How are you? What are you up to? Are you writing? What’s going on? Love, me. ** Steve Erickson, Rozz could definitely make for an interesting doc. Here’s hoping. I talked to friends in LA yesterday. They seemed both prepared but pretty nonchalant. And from what I’ve heard so far, it’s just been a little rainier than usual. Yes, apparently the desert area where we shot the film is in the direct line of the tropical storm. It’s gonna very messy, if so. I don’t what the deal is about the gummy Melatonin, etc. thing. France is very strict and old fashioned about that kind of stuff, so I’m pretty positive that such things aren’t in the stores here. ** Montse, Hi!!! I’ve had Haribo addiction periods. Zac and I went to a Haribo factory in southern France. Except it wasn’t much of a factory, but they did have a store that sold every kind of Haribo candies in the entire world and 6 foot tall gummy bears and so on, and that was heavenly. Gare de Nord, that’s easy. Just hit me up when you’re here and settled, and we’ll sort it out. I’m ok until I need to be home at 6 pm today. Wow, see you ultra-soon. Love, me. ** Right. How about a spotlight on Georges Bataille’s second best (in my opinion) novel as your daily DC’s reckoning? Because that’s what you’re saddled with. See you tomorrow.