El pequeño

by Georges Bataille

...fête à laquelle je m'iinvite seul, où je casse à n'en plus pouvir le lien qui me lie aux autres. Je ne tolère aucune infidélité à ce lien....

(Ce livre tiré à cinquante exemplaires fut publié par Georges Bataille pour la première fois, vers 1943, hors-commerce, sous le pseudonyme de Louis Trente.)

Genres: Fiction

empastado

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.

Reviews

[la poesie a fleur de peau · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Eu tinha-o perdido, mas conhecendo o segredo das palavras, mantinha entre nós o vínculo da escrita."

Georges Bataille

***

Aquilo que mais me agrada aqui é a exposição: a fina linha onde sagrado e profano se encontram, a manifestação aberta e clara de desejos e de potências, sem pudores, sem artifícios...
Para além do conteúdo do livro queria ressalvar que estou absolutamente rendida às edições do Sr. Teste, adoro estes livros!

[zarza · Rating 4 out of 5]

casi 4. enigmático y asqueroso.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schrijven is zoeken naar zijn gelukskans, zegt Bataille. Die ligt verborgen in de droefheid van dit boekje, dat een zweem van Freud en Nietzsche uitademt.

[Freddie Murfin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in 1943, this is a very short piece of prose which I can only really, and very loosely, describe as 'theological nihilism', whereby one does not divorce God from the destitution of selfhood, but pries open the concept itself, thereby not bringing the concept to its own dissolution, but our very own. This is about erasing selfhood, at the limit of the 'possible', and our wearing ourselves out in the process, - and thus the vague addition of erotic vignettes throughout this piece to drive into this innate transient quality behind any remote search for getting a grip on whatever the fuck this all amounts to anyway.

Moving on. When I read through some of his writings influenced by the Christian mystics, as an undergrad, his work always felt like an attempt to relay a necessary 'existential' grounding behind any firm treatment of the 'negative way', liturgically, as in short, - if we have to continually turn back towards the Mass, from our always fucking up again and again, which thereby necessitates the repetition itself, anamnesis, Bataille seems not driven by the forgiveness found in that recall (and response), but through a long drawn-out reproach. That is where he finds himself. He is not sat inside on a church pew, praying, but outside in the rain, seeming to find the whole idea of having to return, and himself, wretched. Failure achieved a very idempotent quality in Bataille's philosophy. And there is something very distinctive to be found in that.


I'll leave some of the cryptic remarks I've translated...

‘Neurosis is the timid apprehension of an impossible background to which we give some accidental cause, instead of accepting its inevitable nature.’

‘This God who animates us under his clouds, maddeningly…’

‘Divine anguish: no duty, no task to fulfil, no good to be realised. All is consumed, and nothing more than the radiance of this agony.’

‘The depths of suffering, where one cannot imagine a desirable outcome, where the possible sojourns a lifeless face (où le possible a toujours un visage sans vie).’

‘If we say that ‘God is evil,’ this is by no means what some so easily imagine. It’s the most tender truth, a friendship unto death, a slide into emptiness, into absence.’

‘The remorse is in me, the past gnaws at me. What God does not endure, - the past, the irremediable. God finds himself in not being the horror of my memory.’

‘…but the past, the irremediable… and so grey, a filth that can’t be washed away, on which you have to live.’

‘Memory, the machinery of suffering (thereby the joys related to suffering, to its limits, to the isolation of being), at the limits of being, remains plagued by the future’s entirety.’

‘It is the peculiarity of suffering to drive being out of the present: the remorse that persists in unhappiness is always threatened by the machinery where memory persists.’

[Kas Molenaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Als denker heeft Bataille mijn sympathie, en met enige achtergrondkennis is dit vreemde werkje een aardige verzameling krankzinnige aforismen. Toch, als je op zoek bent naar iets van Bataille om te lezen, kan deze wat mij betreft onderop de stapel. De inhoud is associatief, verwijst impliciet naar veel van Batailles invloeden, en heeft een vulgariteit aan de oppervlakte die niet voor iedereen zal uitnodigen om verder te graven.

Daarnaast krijgt deze specifieke vertaling wat kritiek in deze recensie van Frank Vande Veire, waardoor betekenissen van specifieke aforismen drastisch kunnen veranderen. Mijn Frans is te pover om een inhoudelijk oordeel te vellen, maar wees alert bij het lezen.

[Décio Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Apercebi-me que tenho a nostalgia de morrer, de me tornar estranho às leis, livre como um moribundo que está acima disto e que já não tem nada a ver com o tempo por vir."

[amélie]

ma fêlure est un ami
aux yeux de vin fin
et mon crime est une amie
aux lèvres de fine

je me branle de raisin
me torche de pomme

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dia, uma rapariga nua nos meus braços acariciava com os seus dedos a racha do traseiro. Falei-lhe docemente do "pequeno". Compreendeu. Ignorava que era assim que O chamavam, por vezes, nos bordéis.