- Paperback: 140 pages
- Publisher: Dufour Editions (Dec 21 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802313256
- ISBN-13: 978-0802313256
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.1 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 240 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,202,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
Bataille (1897-1962), French avant-garde critic, editor, and novelist, is best known for provocative "erotic" novels and offbeat philosophical theories. His overlooked poetry, here translated into English for the first time, mingles religious and scatological imagery. Nonbelieving, anti-Puritan, aspiring to freedom of thought without "moral and social constraint," Bataille's world is one in which love and passion are obstacles to openness of mind. Using X-rated erotic motifs, Bataille turns visceral functions into a "headless bird with wings that beat the night"; idealism becomes the "funereal immodesty of dead bones," and stars "anguish beyond compare." Like the better-known Jean-Paul Sartre, Bataille fends off "self-annihilation" by envisioning a beleaguered and austere existence: "the immense universe is death/ I am the fever/ the desire." Confronting "the void," Bataille bravely concludes, "I was grimacing and laughing, lips wide apart, teeth naked." This is the audacious, frightful side of surrealism.?Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
This is the first collected English translation of Bataille's poems. Bataille's poetry is definitely the poetry of a philosopher, but it is also a poetry with an obsessively erotic, often scatological edge, frequently pushing the boundary of what is or isn't obscene. Bataille believed that everything relates to the workings of desire and death in sexuality, but he also believed that poetry was the product of "hate" (and other extreme emotions), just as much as erotic pleasure accedes to self-annihilation. But Bataille was interested in actual action, not just disengaged hypothesis concerning the sexual act. Dufour Editions is pleased to bring Bataille's poetry to print in English. "This is the audacious, frightful side of surrealism."-Library Journal "Bataille produced some of the most transcendent, pointedly filthy literature of the century, and these poems, together in English for the first time, are no exception."-Publishers Weekly
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cute, Feb 1 2005
By M. Hori "Jesse Glass" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille (Paperback)
I'm a fan of Bataille, but I'm afraid that in most translations into English this major thinker comes across as being merely silly about sex and excrement and the Absolute. From his own febrile, pathological alluvium located in a fertile triangle between Eros and Thanatos, anus and genitals, Bataille (said in the helpful introduction by the translator to be using poetry to reach the Eternal) comes up with cuties like these:The Wall
A hatchet
give me a hatchet
so I can frighten myself
with my shadow on the wall
ennui
feeling of emptiness
fatigue.
I have to admit feeling like that myself recently. And:
Laughing
To laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the pebbles
at the ducks
at the rain
at the pope's p**
at mommy
and a coffin full of sh**.
It doesn't get any better than that folks, although Bataille makes lots of references to the void, Zarathrustra, Heraclitus, and other touchstones of modern Western culture. I do admire his mixture of profundity and scatology and wish that more post-modern writers would follow Bataille's example. Why let the makers of popular movies and television sit-coms get a jump on the rest of us?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Death + Sex + More Death, Jun 21 2001
By Joe - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille (Paperback)
Bataille's poetry is often beautiful, using words and ideas to paint vague emotional pictures. You might get bored when he goes on and on about immensity or death, but it's worth it for the good parts.
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