Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataillewas a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including post-structuralism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth16 September 1897
CountryFrance
Georges Bataille quotes about
Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.
It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.
Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.
I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
The preceding criticism ... justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.
Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.
[Zarathustra] never abandoned the watchword of not having any end, not serving a cause, because, as he knew, causes pluck off the wings we fly with.
We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.
Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.
In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote "with his blood," and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. ... It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.
You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.
I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.