Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

Author:Georges Bataille
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780141913674
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

W.C.

[Preface to Story of the Eye from Le Petit: 1943]

A year before Story of the Eye, I had written a book entitled W.C.: a small book, a rather crazy piece of writing. W.C. was as lugubrious as Story of the Eye was juvenile. The manuscript of W.C. was burnt, but that was no loss, considering my present sadness: it was a shriek of horror (horror at myself, not for my debauchery, but for the philosopher’s head in which since then … how sad it is!). On the other hand, I am as happy as ever with the fulminating joy of The Eye: nothing can wipe it away. Such joy, bordering on naive folly, will forever remain beyond terror, for terror reveals its meaning.

A drawing for W.C. showed an eye: the scaffold’s eye. Solitary, solar, bristling with lashes, it gazed from the lunette of a guillotine. The drawing was named Eternal Recurrence, and its horrible machine was the cross-beam, gymnastic gallows, portico. Coming from the horizon, the road to eternity passed through it. A parodic verse, heard in a sketch at the Concert Mayol, supplied the caption:

God, how the corpse’s blood is sad

in the depth of sound.

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