Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataillewas a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including post-structuralism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth16 September 1897
CountryFrance
Georges Bataille quotes about
Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.
Realism gives me the impression of a mistake. Violence alone escapes the feeling of poverty of those realistic experiences. Only death and desire have the force that oppresses, that takes one's breath away. Only the extremism of desire and death enable one to attain the truth.
If I want to realize totality in my consciousness, I have to relate myself to an immense, ludicrous, and painful convulsion of all of humanity.
When my face is flushed with blood, it becomes red and obscene. It betrays at the same time, through morbid reflexes, a bloody erection and a demanding thirst for indecency and criminal debauchery.
Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.
Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.
I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.
Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.
It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.
Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.
I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
The preceding criticism ... justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.