Notes on the Story of the Eye

The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille is the most disgusting book I've ever read. I get that there is some value to his claims, but the language he uses is disturbing. But, since I have a newfound interest in Surrealism in Literature I suffered through it. And, while I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone that I know, I did find some interesting things in it.

"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 names for the vagina)" (Bataille, 4). This pretty much sets the tone for the book. It works to shock, which isn't that bad in and of itself. But, my problem with shock is when it is used for the sake of shock itself.

"And indeed, we blithely strolled out as though the woman had been reduced to a family portrait" (Bataille, 11). After witnessing her daughter's lewd sex acts the woman was frozen. I like the sentence and I think it's a good description of what would happen. It also has a vivid imagery.

"Little by little, I even thought I might kill myself, and, taking the revolver in hand, I managed to lose any sense of words like hope or despair" (Bataille, 18). I like that lack of emotional context, the moment where you simply exist without hope or despair. Brute fact.

"We pedalled rapidly, without laughing or speaking, peculiarly satisfied with our mutual presences, akin to one another in the common isolation of lewdness, weariness, and absurdity" (Bataille, 31). I think this sentence sums up about what I don't like about this book. It isn't just that its shocking, or even that it's shocking solely for the sake of being shocking. It is that Bataille is celebrating what ought to be condemned. His characters are reveling in the isolation that their lewdness brings about.

"And it struck me that death was the sole outcome of my erection, and if Simone and I were killed, the the universe of our unbearable personal vision was certain to be replaced by the pure stars, fully unrelated to any external gazes and realizing in a cold state, without human delays or detours, something that strikes me as the goal of my sexual licentiousness: a geometric incandescence (among other things, the coinciding point of life and death, being and nothingness), perfectly fulgurating" Bataille, 33). Here again, I find why this book disturbs me so much. Once again, Bataille is celebrating what shouldn't be celebrated. Death was going to be the outcome of his erection, but in that death he was finding nirvana. He found the point of nothingness and being colliding to be so desirable that he was willing to debase himself in any means necessary to get there.

What is also disturbing is some of his descriptions. It's a lengthy section so I'm just going to paraphrase. Bataille states that "I began writing with no precise goal, animated chiefly by a desire to forget, at least for the time being, the things I can be or do personally. Thus, at first, I thought that the character speaking in the first person had no relation to me" (Bataille, 89). Fine, sometimes I come up with sick things on paper, things that I never intended because I wrote something with no precise goal in mind. That's how I normally write a story. But, when you find a connection between an innocent event like your brother scaring you and a group of girls in childhood and the things written in the book there is a sickness underlying your thought process.

"I never linger over such memories, for they have long since lost any emotional significance for me. There was no way I could restore them to life except by transforming them and making them unrecognizable, at first glance, to my eyes, solely because during that deformation they acquired the lewdest of meanings" (Bataille, 96). I found much of this book absolutely repugnant. But, this paragraph I found to be profoundly sad. To reignite his memories he had to deform them and debase them. That is truly a sad thing to me.

"In 1920, I changed again, I stopped believing in anything but my future chances. My piety was merely an attempt at evasion: I wanted to escape my destiny at any price, I was abandoning my father. Today, I know I am 'blind', immeasurable, I am man 'abandoned' on the globe like my father at N. No one on earth or in heaven cared about my father's dying terror. Still, I believe he faced up to it, as always. What a 'horrible pride,' at moments, in Dad's blind smile!" (Bataille, 101). I found this profoundly sad again. First, I disagree wholly with the premise that religion is an attempt at evasion. That is simply philosophically unfounded in spite of years of trying to make this fact. Second, to hold on to pride in the face of such things for pride's sake solely is as revolting and wrongheaded as to be shocking for the sake of being shocking.