The Castle of Communion

by Bernard Noël, Paul Buck (Translator), Glenda George (Translator)

When Le Château de Cène (here translated as The Castle of Communion) first appeared in France in 1969, under the sonorous pseudonym of Urbain d’Orlhac, it created a sensation. Immediately recognised as being among the finest works of French literary eroticism (along with, say, Bataille’s Story of the Eye, or Reage’s Story of O), its author was soon the poet and essayist Bernard Noël, born in 1930. The author recounts an intense initiatory sexual quest which occurs on a mysterious remote island. Chosen as the moon’s lover the hero undertakes a Dantesque voyage through sucessive levels of pain and ecstasy. The book’s climax is a beatific rite of sexual purification in the Castle of Communion, which is described in a poetic language at once incantatory, crude and almost mystical. The intensity of the book matches its method of dictated into a tape recorder and finished in only 3 weeks, and written as a partial response to the atrocities of the French authorities in Algeria. This edition is postfaced by Noël’s essay The Outrage Against Words, his thoughts on the government’s unsuccessful attempts through the courts to supress the novel for "outraging public morals." He illuminates the intimate connection between writing and censorship in general.

Genres: Erotica, Fiction, France

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Bernard Noël was a French writer and poet. He received the Grand Prix national de la poésie (National Grand Prize of Poetry) in 1992 and the Prix Robert Ganzo (Robert Ganzo Prize) in 2010.

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a very dirty book, and this review contains spoilers, but I'm not hiding it. You've been warned.

"The group works thus to make itself clairvoyant by a long, immense and reasoned exhaustion of reality, for the only thing that interests us is the point where we feel everything is concealed and where indeed we learn to understand ourselves in the suffocating, marvelous absence of everything that is hidden -- which is never done with being hidden, and will never cease to be so."

Huh? Come again?

I mean, where do I even begin with this book?

The passage I quoted was from page 90, close to the end, and having endured such tedious nonsensical pseudo philosophical prattle in the worst French prosiac vein for its entire length, I could be excused when I started speed skimming huge swaths of this eye-glazing stuff. This is the kind of prose you can expect from 50 percent of this book. The other 50 percent is highly debauched erotica--which in and of itself I have no issue with, as I am hardly a prude and love transgressive fiction, the sicker the better. But, for something billed as erotica, this thing made me hard not once, probably because descriptions of monkeys and wolves sucking off our poorly defined hero just don't do it for me. Thank God.
But even the erotic passages are confusingly and poorly described; I honestly didn't know what holes were being fucked and sucked or licked or fingered or whatever, partly due to Noel's interchangeable uses of the word mouth and lips to mean either mouth or vagina or asshole. I couldn't believe such outrageously violent and sexual scenarios could be so tediously and confusingly described. This book made me believe it possible.
The story is without any kind of apparent context, and what narrative there is could have been told in about 20 pages. In a nutshell, some guy sails onto some remote island, gets friendly with the natives, finds himself chosen to deflower a virgin in a Wicker Man-style rite in which he's beaten with sticks by the village celebrants, spies a gorgeous redhead who seems to lead the proceedings and who we learn is the powerful and mysterious Mona who provides sustenance for the village and who lords it over another island a short hop away. After having a great night of sex with his virgin bride, our hero's curiosity get the best of him and he does the forbidden thing of rowing over to Mona's place where he enters a castle where the walls have hair, and he seems to float around by what means I know not, and watches dogs and black men do violent things to other people while they suck him off. Then Mona starts her ritualistic shenanigans with our hero and it all caps off with some kind of "communion" ceremony involving the deballing and boiling of a black man's balls--which is supposedly some kind of anti-colonial statement. The end.
A lot of this story plays like a really bad 1930s movie serial, and one wishes for Gene Autry or Flash Gordon to ride in and save the day, but that might actually be half interesting. I'm not sure if this thing is supposed to be a bad dream, a pseudo mythological parable, a sci-fi tale, or what. It doesn't help me to have a story which seems to have no basis in any credible reality whatsoever, because otherwise I simply cannot buy erotica in any other context.
Mostly it was just tedious and outrageous, thereby affording no satisfaction of either the mind or the groin.
An excruciating experience. And Noel's convoluted essay attempting to defend the book against the censors is no better.

[Virginie Rainville · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je voulais lire ce livre lorsque j'étais encore dans ma maîtrise puisque son nom apparaissait dans les ouvrages théoriques que je lisais.
Un gros WTF. Je comprend pourquoi la nouvelle a fait outrage aux moeurs de l'époque 😅
Mes étoiles sont dédiées aux parties nommées "L'outrage aux mots" et "La pornographie" puisqu'on y retrouve la pensée derrière l'écriture, que j'ai trouvé bien plus intéressante.

[Marius Ghencea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grandissima prosa, eccellenza assoluta. Surrealismo a pari di Bataille con sola differenza di gelide trasparenze che il romanzo suscita. Amo.

[Lukáš Palán · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je mi třicet. Zažil jsem docela dost šílených věcí. Krájel jsem chleba, utíral prach, jel autobusem, viděl psí hovno na ulici atd. Nic z toho mě ale nemohlo připravit na to, co je uvnitř této knihy. Vlastně, nemyslím si, že by někdo vůbec mohl být připraven na tuto knihu, leda že by si každé páteční ráno dopřával orál od svého bígla, zatímco mu sousedův vepř rozrážel hráz. A to nemluvím o rybnících. Hrad oběti začíná jako vcelku klasická, velmi švihlá, silně existencionální pornografická novela, která by se dala přirovnat k Henrymu Millerovi v nejlepších mrdech a rýmech. Jenže poté se hlavní hrdina dostane na ostrov kde má hraběnka hrad a jen velmi zřídka začne mrdat nebo být mrdán někým, kdo má vagínu, potažmo lidskou DNA. Musím říct, že se mi dělalo opravdu nevolno, když Noël věnoval orálnímu a análnímu styku rotvajler-rotvajler-hlavní hrdina celých devět stran. Opravdu to není něco, co chci číst v sedm ráno v metru po noci plný chlastání. Navíc nemusím zdůrazňovat, jak moc jsem se bál, že mi na chvilku houpne. Co bych potom dělal? Jel do útulku pro nějakýho oříška? Nicméně, pokračoval jsem v četbě, i když by se daly najít třeba i lepší činnosti, třeba zemřít nebo zvracet, a dostal jsem se až ke krásným chvilkám s hady a jednou velkou vopicí z Jižní afriky, která prý měla antický pyj. Bože. O neustálém znásilňování černochy ani nemluvě. Ještě teď se mi třese ruka, když piju kafe. Třicátý šestý. Jak mám z hlavy dostat knihu, ve které se za nejněžnější a nejnormálnější moment dá označit pasáž, ve které psi domrdají chlapa, pak ho napůl sežerou a pak mrdají jeho střeva a oči a hovna? Škoda, že hlavní hrdina nebyl ženského pohlaví. A že ji třeba někdo nenabombil pomocí tanku - v ten moment bych dokázal akceptovat i tu neskutečnou tunu existencionálního balastu kolem (a že je ho moc - cesta po chodbě tři metry zabere třeba i pět stran plných žblebtů o pnutí nebes).

[Inez Da Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jag gillade boken, helheten, även om jag inte fick några politiska associationer som kritiker så gärna utlovat. För mig var det bara en snuskig bok. Den smakade som det där äpplet i paradisträdgården. Återkommande känsla: Får man skriva så? Boken var min första i genren erotisk fiktion, och kanske därför kändes det som när jag förlorade oskulden. Samma typ av nervkittlande spänning. Rekommenderas - men bara om du aldrig läst erotisk fiktion förut!

[Meena Narag · Rating 4 out of 5]

ภาษาสวยงามเย้ายวน เนื้อหาดี

[jacmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

chef d'œuvre, j'ai failli vomir au chapitre 3.
il faut le lire rien que pour le texte annexe "L'outrage aux mots" qui théorise pour la première fois la notion de "sensure"

[Claes Ljungholm Barth]

Mycket fransk bok.

[Kristina Birath · Rating 1 out of 5]

Om möjligt den konstigaste bok jag läst.

[Astratow · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I have studied literature at PAP Słupsk, Krzysztof Piotrowski approached me with this book. He knew about my fascination about Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade and said: "You are going to love it". It's true. Noël goes in slightly different direction when it comes to sexual activities, but his story is complete, unlike 120 days of Sodom.
I liked surrealistic world, where main character travels and gets initiated into newer and stranger erotic practices, which are only an excuse to expose human weaknesses and strenghts.
In such a short novel Bernard Noël included a lot of content and this is great thing, as these days we have a lot of readers, who are impatient and want something short and strong - this is a book for those thirsty animals, they will get a lot quick.

[Václav · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book which is shocking even for a very open person would be just a collection of dream-like pornography and in my opinion would deserv rating somwhere between one or two stars. Extra star deservs an essey called The Outrage Against Words which is bundled with this book. In some points I fell that the authort put together this sick erotic and missleading iniciation book just to prepare space for his esseys.

[YL · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, but not really comparable to story of the eye or story of O, as far as death, sex, the absolute, something, goes.