"What is sovereign in fact is to enjoy the present time without having anything else in view but this present time" - Georges Bataille.
- Lauren Oyler Getting savaged in reviews for her new collection No Judgment ( a frea...
- Lauren Oyler Getting savaged in reviews for her new collection No Judgment ( a frea...
Re. our debate about Wiki-fear and death of the author, Bataille's best work, the novel Blue of Noon, has an afterword (written about two decades after the original novel) where he asks the question "how can we linger over books to which their authors have manifestly not been driven?" Examples of novels that Bataille says fulfil that qualification include Wuthering Heights, The Trial, Remembrance of Things Past, The Red and the Black and Sarrasine, a short story by Balzac. From what I recall, it was Bataille's inclusion of Sarrasine that led Barthes to write S/Z, his analysis of Sarrasine. Indeed, Bataille had misspelt Sarrasine as Sarrazine, a typo that chimes with two of the main characters of Sarrasine being Sarrasine and Zambinella.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, could death of the author be an answer to Bataille's question? Who cares if the author was driven? The author is dead!
Only the word "driven" should have been in italics, and I can't be arsed to retype.
ReplyDeleteI've never read Blue Noon, the only fiction by Bataille I've read is Story of the Eye - mostly I know his philosophy (read the entirety of the very long Accursed Share).
ReplyDeleteWell clearly, Bataille would not subscribe to the death of the author theory and I'm probably with Bataille in that respect. Something is driving the writer to generate a/ the writing in the first place b/ the specific subject matter and how it's dealt with. Doesn't necessarily have be deep-rooted psychic torment, but obsessive energy. Ego but also other-directed interest / curiosity / etc.
I urge you to read Blue of Noon. I discovered it at random in a bookshop aged 16, and it's firmly one of the five books that changed my life. I've bought copies of it for numerous friends and partners throughout the years, and each has said it's something remarkable. Hell, I'll happily buy you a copy.
ReplyDeleteIt's Bataille's most human work, but by far his most nihilistic. Bataille extends his aesthetic of disgust's perverse allure to both communism and fascism. Story of the Eye is practically a comic book compared to Blue of Noon.
Oh, I forgot to tell you, I once devised a mathematical proof of death of the author. Not a joke.
ReplyDeleteI will check it out.
ReplyDelete"Driven" - I don't know, I'd have to read the full context, but it sounds like he's talking about when the imagination is possessed, when there's a compulsive need to write out it of your system, almost expulsively. Perhaps even a suggestion of automatism, like the work is writing itself. Which would bring it back around to a "death of the author" idea.
In the 1980s and early '90s, often when I interviewed bands, they'd say one of two things - that the music and sometimes the words too came from outside them - from some other realm or region, that they weren't responsible for it; and then the other thing was some variation on the idea of "if we didn't have this music as our way of venting, we'd probably be serial killers / mass shooters!". In the former case, it tended to be more like ethereal, Goth-lite or dreampop type artists; in the latter, it was those sort of noise-horror, ugly-side-of-life-obsessed bands of the Big Black type.
I suppose related to the idea of "getting my demons out", or "we all have our demons" is similar - possession / exorcism / catharsis - creativity rooted in some kind of deep malevolence or turbulence within.
Whereas the ethereal, It Comes From Beyond types, the inflection is angelic rather than demonic. Getting my sprites out.
Regarding "driven", I think we're talking at cross purposes somewhat.
ReplyDelete