The Logic of the Lost Moment Prolegomena to a Logic of the Lost Moment Georges Bataille writes of a certain moment perdu in Histoire de rats and Dianus, which, with L'Orestie, comprise both La Haine de la Poésie and its retitled but little altered second edition, L'impossible. This lost moment, of which Bataille writes in the voice of his erstwhile pseudonym, Dianus1, is of cardinal importance to any understanding of this book and of Bataille's thought. It will be necessary to draw theoretical connections between Bataille's text, certain essays by Freud, and Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety, and to additionally refer at points to Proust and his parallel and contrasting conceptions of les temps perdu and les temps retrouvé. Furthermore, we must view the moment perdu in the context of the associated moment du retour and moment suspendu. The loss and pursuit of the moment perdu constitute an essential condition of living. However, as a moment which one is compelled and condemned to seek out and repeat, this would also embody the work of the Freudian death-drive: one might say that it is necessary to allow the deathdrive to operate so that one may live. Furthermore, the logic of the lost moment is paradoxical on another level, for Bataille writes: à la vérité nous atteignons; nous atteignons soudain le point qu'il faillait et nous passons le reste de nos jours à chercher un moment perdu; mais que de fois nous le manquons, pour cette raison précisément que le chercher nous en détourne, nous unir est sans doute un moyen... de manquer à jamais le moment du retour...2 That is, one can only attain or return to the lost moment on condition that one relinquishes the attempt to grasp and fix it, to retain it; the moment of return, if attained, is only attained on condition that it be immediately lost again. One is thus condemned to repetition and to loss, as the moment eludes any attempt to grasp it. In a note to the previously cited passage in the 2004 Pleiade edition of Bataille's collected fiction, Gilles Ernst highlights the significance of the expression “lost moment” in the broader context of Bataille's work, writing that “l'expression désigne l'expérience du temps propre à tous les héros de Bataille: par
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Bataillepublished L ' Amitié in1940 under thisname;Le Coupable,published in1944,isintroduced by a few lines signed by Bataille which read “Un nommé Dianus ecrivit ces notes et mourut.” (pg.9) whilean earlierabandoned titlehad been L ' Amitié: Notes de Dianus. (Lettre à Raymond Queneau,inGeorges Bataille,Choix de lettres (Paris:Gallimard,1997),pp.191-2).Finally,inthe same year (1947) thatHistoire de rats (subtitled Journal de Dianus),Dianus,and La Haine de la Poésie were published,Bataillealso published L' Alleluia: Catechisme de Dianus.In Histoire and Dianus,Dianus now appears as an embodied actor/narrator. Georges Bataille,L 'Impossible (Paris:Éditions de Minuit,1962),pg.31.
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opposition à l'être du « Possible » qui vit dans le projet, et ne veut pas perdre le/son temps, le héros de Bataille choisit le « moment »i, rupture dans la continuité du temps et fixation dans le présent.”3 It ought to be noted that an essential tension is here brought to the fore – between the respective temporalities of the possible and the impossible, between a time in which nothing is lost, and in which that which is grasped constitutes the limitations of possibility, and the time of loss, of the moment, and of the rupture of all limits. On the other hand, it is unclear whether the aforementioned “fixation dans le présent,” should be understood in a straightforward manner – in fact, the case may in fact be the opposite, that Bataille's protagonists choose rather to seek the present, for the moment eludes any such grasping attempt. This would be to say that Bataille's heroes are neurotics struggling to free themselves of the intrusion of the past, while at the same time compelled to repeat a moment which demands its own relinquishment – condemned to eternal melancholia or to death. In Sur Nietzsche, written at roughly the same time as Histoire de rats and published two years earlier, Bataille writes apropos of neurosis: Ce qui m'arrête dans la névrose est qu'elle nous force à nous dépasser. Sous peine de sombrer. D'où l'humanité des névroses, que transfigurent des mythes, des poèmes ou des comédies. La névrose fait de nous des héros, des saints, mais sinon des malades. Dans l'héroïsme ou la sainteté, l'élément de névrose figure le passé, intervenant comme une limite (une contrainte) à l'intérieure de laquelle la vie se fait 'impossible.' Celui qu'alourdit le passé, auquel un attachement maladif interdit le passage facile au présent, ne peut plus accéder au présent en prenant l'ornière. C'est par là qu'il échappe au passé, quand un autre, qui n'y tient guère, se laisse pourtant guider, limiter par lui. Le névrosé n'a qu'une issue : il doit jouer. La vie s'arrête en lui. Elle ne peut suivre un cours réglé dans des tracés. Elle s'ouvre une voie neuve, elle crée pour elle-même et d'autres un monde neuf.4 It would seem that neurosis is thus a condition or consequence of having had a lost moment, and that the pursuit thereof which one must undergo so as not to succumb to despair is at the same time the pursuit of a new means of access to the present. It is thus that “pour atteindre ce moment la prison soit nécessaire et la nuit, le froid qui suivent ce moment!”5 Thus the need for such a moment so as not to fall prey to despair appears all the more clearly in light of the passage which follows the one in which the expression the moment perdu is introduced, in which Bataille writes of “le père A.,” the brother of Dianus: (A. ne rit, ne sourit que rarement, il n'est pas en lui de moment perdu à la recherche duquel il serait condamné il est désespéré (comme la plupart) d'ordinaire il subsiste un arrière-pensée de 3 4 5
Georges Bataille,Romans et Récits (ParisGallimard,2004),pg.1235 n 12. Georges Bataille,Sur Nietzsche,inOeuvres Complètes,Tome V I (Paris:Gallimard,1973),pg.143. L'impossible,pg.31.
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bonheur accessible). 6 Without neurosis, thus, one is left (like most) in a state of despair. There is no possibility of access to the present in the strong sense, for this is the time of most intense life – of the affirmation of life unto the point of death, as Bataille would later formulate it – the present is reduced to a moment of limited action bound by future possibilities. There is no room left in such despair7 for those moments in which the sense of such living is given to experience: Ces moments d'ivresse où nous bravons tout, où l'ancre levée, nous allons gaîment vers l'abîme, sans plus de souci de l'inévitable chute que des limites données dans l'origine, sont les seuls où nous sommes tout à fait délivrés du sol (des lois)... Rien n'existe qui n'ait ce sens insensé – commun aux flammes, aux rêves, aux fous-rires – en ces moments où la consumation se précipite, au-delà du désir du durer. Même le dernier non-sens à la limite est toujours ce sens fait de la négation de tous les autres.8 This sens insensé is common also to the lost moment and to that moment in which the lost moment is suddenly attained – for in order to attain the moment, to reach the present for but a moment, one must venture “au-delà du désir du durer,” and relinquish the desire to fix and grasp the moment. Proust, Freud and the Histoire de rats The title Histoire de rats refers directly to a story told by Dianus in the second part of the récitii, a story about one “X.” who has been dead for some twenty years. Again, the notes to the Pleiade edition are instructive, and all the more so in this case – for there we read that: Dans le titre, d'abord, où rats ne renvoie sans doute pas uniquement à l'«histoire » du rituel pervers de Proust faisant piquer des rats. Les rats, si songe à L'homme aux rats de Freud, pourraient être aussi les animaux liés au père. 9 It is evident that “X.” in the story is indeed Proust, for Bataille writes of him that “il est, mort depuis vingt ans, le seul écrivain de nos jours qui rêva d'égaler les richesses des Mille et une Nuits,”10 for, in L'expérience intérieure, he writes “Je lui donnerai [la poésie] un horizon plus vaste, et plus vague : celui des modernes Mille et une nuits que sont les livres de Marcel Proust.”11 It is thus evident that we must consider Bataille's “le 6 7
8 9 10 11
L'impossible,pg.31-2. We must here understand despairina Kierkegaardian sense – as “the sickness unto death.” Itisknown thatBatailleread The Concept of Anxiety inFrench translation around the time atwhich thiswas written;indeed,Bataillehad thought to publish Le Mort,written during the same period,under the pseudonym “VigiliusParisiensis.”Oeuvres Completes, Tome I V (Paris:Gallimard,1971),pg.363. L'Impossible,pg.26. GillesErnst,“L'impossible:Notice,”inRomans et récits,pg.1219-20. L'impossible,pg.44. Georges Bataille, L'expérience intérieure, inOeuvres Complètes, Tome V ,pg.158.
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moment perdu” in contrast to “les temps perdu” in Proust. Moreover, it would be appropriate to here draw upon Freud to extend the analysis, for in addition to the indication given by the necessity of repeating the lost moment (i.e. an indication which recalls Freud's discussions of the compulsion to repeat and the deathdrive in Beyond the Pleasure Principleiii), the rats which X. pierces, pins down, are “« symboles les plus puissants [...] ...symbolisent les « parents défunts » de Proust,”12 that is, at once Oedipal symbols and at the same time symbols of past times. It is further a quintessentially ritualistic and repetitive act, which again recalls the aforementioned text by Freud. It is imperative to fully understand this episode in order to give an understanding to the symbolic significance of the rat's tail, which recurs throughout the subsequent pages of Histoire and is the final image evoked before its end; it is equally necessary to have recourse to Freud in order to elucidate this, the meaning of the story the story and Bataille's critical relation to Proust. In Proust, it would seem that there is indeed a search for a moment which has been lost. The first return of this moment is put on display in the emergence of involuntary memory in the famous madeleine episode of the first book of A la recherche du temps perdu. It is, however, Les Temps Retrouvé, the final book in which Proust's narrator succeeds in recapturing les temps perdu in his vocation as a writer, which Bataille found most interesting and had discussed at length in L'expérience intérieure and Sur Nietzsche. In Proust, that which is lost is, in the end, regained and fixed in the present – which, according to Bataille would constitute not merely an illusion, but rather the decisive and final loss of the moment. This is evident in a passage which follows on the heels of Dianus' telling of the story of rats: Le pire est sans doute une durée relative, donnant l'illusion qu'on saisit, qu'on saisira du moins. Ce qui reste dans les mains est la femme et, de deux choses l'une, ou elle nous échappe ou la chute dans le vide qu'est l'amour nous échappe : nous nous rassurons dans ce dernier cas mais comme des dupes. Et le mieux qui nous puisse arriver, c'est d'avoir à chercher le moment perdu13 If thus the best that can happen is to be in pursuit of the lost moment, it is indisputable that it is necessary to relinquish the Proustian attempt to satisfyiv the desire to recapture, fix and make enduring this moment. This is, in Bataille's account, merely an illusion of that which is worst – the relative endurance of the moment in which the lost returns – worst because it induces one to abandon the search, to decisively turn away from the lost moment and into despair. 12 13
Romans et récits,pg.1236 n 21. L'impossible,pg.45-6.
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Turning thus away from the lost moment scarcely constitutes “healthy” mourning, in the sense which Freud gives it in “Mourning and Melancholia,” in which “the work of mourning is completed [and] the ego becomes free and uninhibited again.”14 But neither does it constitute melancholia, properly speaking, for the melancholic has refused to relinquish his/her lost object,v in this case, a lost moment. It is thus that the one who has grasped, or thinks to have grasped that moment has neither mourned, nor is melancholic, but rather has only an illusory object. By contrast, one who, rather than grasping, seeks his/her lost moment, is both melancholic and, in searching, undergoes the “work of mourning.” However, upon the conclusion of this search, the ego is freed in a manner which is anything but the return to a state of psychic health of which Freud wrote. To this point we shall return in the section which follows. It is telling that Bataille later writes of the lost moment in terms of expectation and déjà vu, for this calls attention to particular passages of Freud's essay on “The Uncanny,” which are relevant here. Reference to “The Uncanny”vi is suggested by both Bataille's mysterious discussions of his “ancestors” and by the numerous structures of doubling present in this narrative.vii Moreover, according to Freud's discussion of the uncanny, wherein he writes: “...in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life”15; thus, were Proust's experience not within the bounds of literature, the experience of involuntary memory would evoke a feeling of uncanniness, for the manner in which Freud describes one form of the uncanny could just as well have been written of Proust: If we take another class of things, it is easy to see that there, too, it is only this factor of involuntary repetition which surrounds what would otherwise be innocent enough with an uncanny atmosphere, and forces upon us the idea of something fateful and inescapable when otherwise we should have spoken only of 'chance'. ...the impression is altered if two such events, each in itself indifferent, happen close together... We do feel this to be uncanny. And unless a man is utterly hardened and proof against the lure of superstition, he will be tempted to ascribe a secret meaning to this obstinate recurrence of a number; he will take it, perhaps, as an indication of the span of life allotted to him.16 The matter is rather different in Bataille, for he insists that the moment of return, as nearly identical in some respects to the lost moment, signifies not some irretrievable past, but the unknown of the future in
14
15
16
Sigmund Freud,“Mourning and Melancholia,”inThe Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,Volum XIV,Translated by James Strachey (London:The Hogarth Press,1971),pg.245 Sigmund Freud,“The Uncanny,”inThe Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,Volum XVII,Translated by James Strachey (London:The Hogarth Press,1971),pg.249 “The Uncanny”,pp.237-8
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the present. Therefore, we should first take into view the relevant passage from L'impossible: La nudité de B. met en jeu mon attente, quand celle-ci a seule le pouvoir de mettre en question ce qui est (l'attente m'arrache au connu, car le moment perdu l'est à jamais; sous le couvert du déjà vu, j'en cherche à âprement l'au-delà : l'inconnu).17 In the nudity of B. (the lover of both Dianus and of A.), Dianus' expectation is in play, which calls into question that which is – that is, calls into question that which is known and subject to the operations of lucid, instrumental reason. The lost moment is lost – lost forever – and yet it is the object after which Dianus searches, knowing full well that any retrieval or return would differ at least infinitesimally, that difference which marks déjà vu as different from any original moment of which it may be a repetition, but this difference, beyond the lost moment, beyond the experience of déjà vu, is precisely the unknown. This is to say that the moment in which the lost moment returns is uncanny in the precise sense, as Freud writes in his essay: The factor of the repetition of the same thing ... does undoubtedly, subject to certain conditions and combined with certain circumstances, arouse an uncanny feeling, which, furthermore, recalls the sense of helplessness experienced in some dream-states.18 Is not repetition that which Dianus seeks, in seeking his lost moment – that moment which he remembers as the time of M.'sviii death? It is indeed the absolute unknown that irrupted in the moment, and which the moment of return would unleash: Il y avait, dans la chambre de la morte, un silence de pierre, reculant les limites des sanglots, comme si, les sanglots n'ayant plus de fin, le monde en entier déchiré laissait, par la déchirure, deviner la terreur infinie.19 Further, this moment of the irruption of the unknown into knowledge is unheimlich in the sense of the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar combined in a single moment. The unknown irrupting into knowledge, into writing, would be precisely such a moment. The experience recounted in the foregoing citation was precisely of this nature, and in returning to this moment, Dianus finds for a fleeting moment that sens insensé of living: Je ne voulais plus rien sinon savoir... le froid qui me coupait des lèvres était come la rage de la mort : c'était de l'aspirer de le vouloir, qui transfigurait ces pénibles instants. Je retrouvais dans l'air, autour de moi, cette réalité éternelle, insensée, que je n'avais connu qu'une fois, dans la chambre d'une morte : une sorte de saut suspendu.20 17 18 19 20
L'impossible,pg.48-9. “The Uncanny,”pp.236-7. L'impossible,pg.78. L'impossible,pg 78.
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That moment, a moment in which one escapes neurosis by finding a way to the present, flees like a rat, like the moment which was lost. This moment, too, is subject to the same law of repetition – like the lost moment, “en cet instant suspendu... je ne doute pas cependant que si je ne l'aimais comme je fais, je n'aurais pu connaître mon état.”21 Knowledge slips through the fingers of Dianus. The preceding metaphors were not chosen by chance or whim, but rather because it appears that the tail of the rat signifies, in Histoire, the transitory nature of the moment. Moreover, beyond indicating a particular characteristic of the lost moment as such, Bataille draws this figure into connection with the lost moment so dear to Dianus, the time which he spent with M. while she was alive and the moments following her death. The following lines give us a nearly complete understanding of this figure: ... si maintenant je pense – en ce moment le plus lointain d'une défaillance, d'un dégoût physique et moral – à la queue rose d'un rat dans la neige. Il me semble entrer dans l'intimité de “ce qui est”, un léger malaise me crispe le coeur. Et certainement je sais de l'intimité de M., qui est morte, qu'elle était comme la queue d'un rat, belle comme la queue d'un rat! Je le savais déjà que l'intimité des choses est la mort.22 The tail of the rat does indeed signify intimacy with that which is, but it equally signifies intimacy with death and the slippage from the known into the absolutely unknown. That is – the queue d'un rat signifies the suspended return of the lost moment. Furthermore, as though more evidence were necessary, the entire narrative concludes with the line “(...les plus tendres baisers ont un arrière-goût de rat.)”23 That cold moment after the leap, when non-ground gives way to ground, has the aftertaste of rat.
Of Return, Repetition and Farce The episode mentioned previously occurs immediately prior to the end of the second section of Histoire de rats. Dianus collapses in the snow and is by chance discovered almost immediately by B. and A. returning to town to retrieve him. They take him to convalesce in the castle which he had sought in his impossible search for B. He awakes in le coeur du château24 - he has attained the lost moment. Having attained his lost moment, one whose experience is suffused in memories of M. and her death, Dianus is left 21 22 23 24
L'Impossible,pg.64-5. L'Impossible,pg.68. L'impossible,pg.100. L'impossible,pg.92.
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in a room adjoining the state room in which B.'s dead father lay. The moment has indeed returned, he has reached the impossible destination of the château and has been reunited with B., and yet, how could such a repetition not be seen as farcical? The château, reunion with B. and the attainment of the moment of return are no longer impossibilities – rather, Dianus is there – beyond all limits, suspended after a leap with no ground upon which to fall. “...Nous unir est sans doute un moyen... de manquer à jamais le moment du retour.”25 Why then is it, at the moment of reunion, that the moment of return is held in suspense and exposed as a mere farce, a simulacrum? It is so in the first instance because the compulsion to repeat le moment perdu is governed by an “instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces,”26 and the state which has been achieved differs materially from that of which it is a repetition. Like the young child, no pleasure arises out of this modified repetition. Moreover, joining together, which obviously is a term used euphemistically, is unique in Freud's discussion in that it runs counter to, or at least temporarily obstructs, the work of the death-drive which is also the work of the compulsion to repeat. Thus, while the perpetual quest in search of le moment perdu is a fundamental condition of life and access to the boundless freedom of the present moment, it is also at the same time true that this search has as its goal: ...an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is striving to return by the circuitous paths... ...[taking] ever more complicated détours before reaching its aim of death. These circuitous paths to death, faithfully kept to by the conservative instincts, would thus present us to-day with the picture of the phenomena of life.27 That is, it must not go without noting that we have here in superposition the fundamental condition of (non-neurotic or non-despairing) life and the very real instinctual drive which has death and the past as its goal. To some degree, perhaps, it is due to its imbrication with the death-drive that the search must have an object, a moment, from the past as its aim. The moment of return is thus never that which is sought. The following passage from Beyond the Pleasure Principle articulates virtually verbatim the dilemma in which Dianus is caught at le coeur du 25 26
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L'impossible,pg.31. Sigmund Freud,Beyond the Pleasure Principle,inThe Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,Volum XVIII,Translated by James Strachey (London:The Hogarth Press,1955),pg.36. Beyond the Pleasure Principle,pp.38-9
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château: What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct’s persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet’s words, ‘ungebändigt immer vorwärts dringt’.¹ The backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is still free - though with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal.28 Disappointing thus, this moment of return could perhaps best be described by the words of Monsignor Alpha in Dianus, which takes place the day following the not entirely explained suicide of D. (which took place in the unspecified duration that elapses between the two narratives), when Bataille thus writes in the voice of Alpha of a: “moment de complicité et d'intimité, les mains dans les mains de la mort. Moment de légèreté au bord de l'abîme. Moment sans espoir et sans ouverture.”29 While this is the return of the lost moment, by returning the moment changes irrevocably, the infinitesimal difference between an original experience and the experience of déjà vu freezes the returning lost moment mid-leap into the present; it can now be seen in its truth, as Dianus writes “A ce moment suspendu... je pensais : “je trichais dans la neige hier, ce n'était pas le saut que j'ai cru.”30 The impossible and the moment of return had thus been attained by a mere ruse, a self-deception, and became in turn possible and real. Despair and The Logic of the Lost Moment We have thus seen a fundamental paradox essential to the logic of the moment perdu: it and the compulsion to seek its repetition are both essential to living in the robust sense, while at the same time the compulsive search manifests the work of the death-drive. A further paradoxical tension is established between the moment perdu and désespoir, the state which results from lacking a moment or having turned away from the search. Put crudely, one is suspended between eternal melancholia and a state of despair. This latter tension bears further discussion, and is introduced in the following passsage: Au cours de la conversation... J'avais la tentation de parler : à ma tentation répondait un visage railleur (A. ne rit, ne sourit que rarement, il n'est pas en lui de moment perdu à la recherche duquel 28 29 30
Beyond the Pleasure Principle,pg.42. L'impossible,pg.120. L'impossible, pg.98.
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il serait condamné il est désespéré (comme la plupart) d'ordinaire il subsiste un arrière-pensée de bonheur accessible).31 If it is true then that having a moment perdu, the repetition and return of which one is condemned to search out as a condition of living in the vertiginous proximity to the impossible, death and the unknown, then what must we make of its dialectical opposite, the désespoir of A. who lacks such a moment? From the standpoint of etymology, désespoir would amount to meaning “to be cut off from hope,” that is to say, cut off from the future, or rather, the present; nevertheless, in either case, désespoir would signify the past in the guise of knowledge placing limits upon present and future possibilities. Moreover, knowing that at this point in his trajectory, Bataille had become deeply influenced by Kierkegaardix one is led to introduce, by way of The Sickness Unto Death the Germanic etymology of despair as being split into twox - one is thus doubly cut, cut off from access to the present, as in neurosis, but also at the same time divided again from oneself (and it is in this light that we may read Dianus and Father A. as doubles of one another). 32 It is precisely the lucidity, seriousness and clear rationality of A. that results in such despair. Furthermore, as Anti-Climacus repeats, “despair is the sickness unto death,” we are once again face-à-face with the paradoxical relationship of the quest which refuses despair and yet performs the work of the death-drive. Within le coeur du château we witness the febrile reflections of Dianus on the topic of the lucid, despairing reflectivity of A., first observing: A l'idée qu'il donne de lui, je mesure mal la misère d A. J'imagine une réflexion calme, insérant dans l'univers son ennuyeuse limpidité. Ar ces lents travaux de l'action et de la réflexion se succédant, par ce jeu d'audaces qui ne sont, dans le fond, qu'autant de prudences lucides, que peut-il atteindre?33 What indeed can A. attain? At least from the perspective of Dianus and the lost moment? He can attain no more than material consequences, Dianus continues, for “Nul d'entre nous n'est davantage un dé, tirant du hasard, du fond d'un abîme, quelque dérision nouvelle.”34 By contrast to the unlimited impossibilities given by chance, A. is subject to the limits of possibility given by the past – he is despairing insofar as he is unable to forge a new path to the present moment and can only act in view of a future possibility. This, moreover,
31 32
33 34
L'impossible,pg.31-2. Concerning thisphenomenon of doubling,particularlythatof the narrator,Dianus,and lePère A.,see the visualappendix and endnote xii. L'impossible,pg.92-3. L'impossible, pg.93.
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passes for intelligence and wisdom, in the specifically Hegelian sense, for: L'intelligence la plus grand est au fond la mieux dupée: penser qu'on appréhende la vérité quand on ne fait que fuir, et vainement, l'évidente sottise de tous. Et personne n'a vraiment ce que chacun pense: quelque chose de plus. Puérile croyance à leur talisman des plus rigoreux.35 Like Proust, A. seeks to grasp, to conceptualize and to speak, while Dianus, in opposition can only write in an attempt to indicate that passage into the unknown that lies dormant within the world of words. Finally, the passage with which this section commences is without a doubt linked to a particular episode in L'orestie, entitled “Le Toit du Temple,” which in Bataille's manuscripts was substantially enlarged and placed a greater emphasis on the temptation to which the episode alludes.xi Moreover, the phrase “la tentation de parler” or “la tentation à parler” recurs several times throughout Histoire and Dianus – we must ask, what is this temptation, and to what does it tempt? What can be said at the outset is that speech, considered as banal communication through the use of mutually intelligible language represents a reduction of that which is said to the order of known things and knowledge which limits possibility. On the other hand, writing, particularly of the poetic type which Bataille does place in a position of privilege rather constitutes an opening unto the unknown, the impossible, and thus the authentic present, within the false transcendence (or, alternatively false immanence) of language. When thus faced with this temptation to speak, one's sole proper response would be to say, with Dianus, “je sais que je devrais me taire: je recule, en parlant, le moment de l'irrémédiable.36” Epilogue: la mort de Dianus The following epigraph is found immediately preceding the first section of Le Coupable, another book attributed to Dianus. Tellingly, the epigraph, in the manuscript, bears the latest date found within, October 1943, and is, in fact, two strophes drawn from Bataille's “epic poem” of the same year, L'Archangélique. In light of the foregoing, and knowing from the preface that Dianus is by this time dead, we may well reasonably read these lines, and the poem as a whole, as the swan song, or suicide poem of Dianus: ...dans un bol de gin une nuit de fête les étoiles tombent du ciel 35 36
L'impossible,pg.94. L'impossible,pg.49-50.
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je lampe la foudre à longs traits je vais rire aux éclats la foudre dans le coeur37 Le coeur du château, now a possible place like any other, with B. available as any other woman, Dianus has no longer any raison d'être – he has permitted the death-drive to operate by pursuing the repetition of a lost moment which he discovers, in its return, to be a void, another loss. This time, it is the loss of time itself, no longer knowing what to do, or for what reason to act. This presents a situation of total disarray, for as Bataille writes also in the voice of Dianus: Chaque être est inséré dans l'ordonnance de l'universe, chacun emploie le temps comme il convient. Moi pas, “mon” temps est d'habitude béant, en moi béant comme une bleassure. Tantôt ne sachant que faire et tantôt me précipitant, ne sachant où commence, où finit ma besogne, m'agitant fébrile et désordre, à demi-distrait. Pourtant, je sais m'y prendre... Mais l'angoisse est latente et s'écoule en forme de fièvre, d'impatience, d'avarice (peur imbécile de perdre mon temps).38 Now, not only is moment, but time itself is lost and disordered – and yet, his time open as a wound, he knows better than to fear the loss or waste of his time. This loss or waste is necessary to continue with life. However, at the end of Le Coupable, this wound in time unexpectedly closes, it closes for lack of caring any longer whether the moment or time is wasted, but for caring only to carry himself beyond all limits given in advance. It is thus that Dianus must commit suicide, for he must either do so or succumb to despair, insofar as he now knows precisely what to do and is now active. It is thus that after the last notes of Le Coupable (apparently dated months after the presumable date at which Histoire ends) that Dianus comes to will and enact his own downfall, for the final note of Le Coupable reads: Un désir hagard (celui de m'exprimer jusqu'au bout) à la fin je m'en soucie comme d'une pomme. Ce qu'on aime arrive comme on éternu. Mon absence de souci s'exprime en volonté. J'ai vu que je devrais faire ceci ou cela : je le fais (mon temps n'est plus béant). 194339 Here, at the end of the story of Dianus, we can see clearly the opposition between him and Proust's narrator – there is a return of that lost moment, but rather no full recuperation of time, as in the latter case. For the difference is spoken most clearly by citing the very words with which Proust concludes Les Temps Retrouvé: Du moins, si elle m'etait laissée assez longtemps pour accomplir mon oeuvre, ne manquerais-je pas d'abord d'y décrire les hommes... comme occupant une place si considérable, à côté de celle 37 38 39
Georges Bataille,Le Coupable (Paris:Gallimard,1944),pg.13. Le Coupable,pg.146 Le Coupable,pg.176.
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si restreinte qui leur est réservée dans l'espace, une place au contraire prolongée sans mesure... dans le Temps.40
40
MarcelProust,A la recherche du temps perdu: Vol. V II: Les Temps Retrové (Paris:Gallimard,1954),pg.443.
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Visual Appendix
(Illustrations from Histoire de rats by Alberto Giacometti)xii
(Cover of Histoire de rats as it appeared prior to incorporation into La Haine de la Poésie)
14
Bibliography Georges Bataille, Choix de Lettres (Paris: Gallimard, 1997). Le Coupable (Paris: Gallimard, 1944). Somme Athéologique II: Le Coupable, suivie de L'alleluia (Paris: Gallimard, 1961) La Haine de la Poésie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1947). L'impossible (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1962). Oeuvres Complètes, 12 Tomes (Paris: Gallimard, 1971-1988). Romans et récits (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). Maurice Blanchot, The Book To Come, Translated by Charlotte Mandell (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003). Gilles Ernst,
Georges Bataille: Analyse du récit de mort (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993)
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,”in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIV, Translated by James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955).
The
“The Uncanny,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XVII, Translated by James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1955). Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XVIII, Translated by James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955).
Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Translated by Reidar Thomte and Albert B. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Anderson
The Sickness Unto Death, Translated and Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Le concept de l'angoisse, Trad. Knud Ferlov & Jean-J. Gateau (Paris: Gallimard, 1935). Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Vol. VII: Le Temps Retrouvé (Paris: Gallimard, 1954). Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: La Mort A L'Oeuvre (Paris: Librarie Séguier, 1987)
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A particularterminologicaldifficultyispresented by Bataille'suse of both “lemoment” and “l'instant” inconstructing various expressions.In the French translations Nietzsche which Batailleisknown to have read,the German “Augenblick” istranslated by “l'instant,”as isKierkegaard'sDanish for mo ment. As there isno obvious conceptualdifference involved inBataille,and the words appear to be used interchangeably,they willbe understood as having atmost an insignificantdifference. In Georges Bataille: Analyse du récit de mort,GillesErnstnotes “Rappelons que dans letexte...se chevauchent deux grandes subdivisions : l'une,fondée sur lanumérotation romaine,lepartage en troisparties,etl'autre,portée en italique sous leschiffresromains,ledivise en deux Carnets transcendant lapremière partition.Cette double distribution apparaitaussidans [lemanuscritd'Austin],où la numérotation romain coiffe de plus des sous-titres:Rose [biffé :la fille de Rose],Rat [biffé :la fille de Rat],etCœur.Rose – Rat – Cœur : on regrettera lasuppression de ces titresdont au moins deux,Rat etCœur,convenaientparfaitement au contenu de leurpartie,à cause de l'c é rivaine aux ratsévoqué en partieII,etparce que lapartieIIIrelatel'arrivée de Dianus au «cœur du château »” (GillesErnst,Georges Bataille: Analyse du récit du mort (Paris:Presses Universitairesde France,1993),pg.224).That is,the second,centraldivision of Histoire de rats was,inmanuscriptform, to foreground even furtherthisstory,which,itisalso worth noting isa double story. Between the records of books borrowed by Bataillefrom the Bibilothèque Nationale,included inTome XII of hisOeuvres Complètes (pp.551-621) and hisscattered directcitations of Freud,itisknown thathe read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Totem and Taboo in French translation,and also “Mourning and Melancholia” inthe originalGerman. It bears noting, although it is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss its ramifications, that Bataille's use here of the verb saisir can only be read as alluding to the satisfaction of desire by means of action in Hegel. Although itappearsintuitive thatBataille's“lostmo ment” istied to the Freudian “lostobject,”intuition isinsufficientto justifythis equivalence.The equivalence is,however,valid,on the basisof the factthatinnotes and schemata written inpreparation forSur Nietzsche,Bataillemakes use of the specificterm “objectperdu,” which he characterizes as the “objectdétruit'which “devientpositif.” (Oeuvres Complètes, Tome V I ,pg.460. W hile “The Uncanny” isabsent from the writings of Freud known to have been read by Bataille,as noted above,itishardly improbably thathe had read the essay.Both Totem and Taboo and Beyond the Pleasure Principle are intimatelyrelated to the discussions in “The Uncanny,”and are known to have been read by Bataille,and he isknown to have read the journalinwhich the essay was first published,although no record existsof hishaving read thatparticularnumber. Itisbeyond the scope of thisessay to discuss inany depth the play of doubles and doppelgangers inStory of rats and Dianus,however, itbearsnote thatone could readilyconsidereither Dianus and A. to be doubles,or A. and B. as doubles.Moreover,the structural elements of the Story suggestsuch doublings,forthe story isdivided twice,firstby sections marked by roman numerals,and second by the division of the story into two notebooks. M. = Lauré In the records reprinted inOC X II,we see thatBataillehad checked out Le Concept d'angoisse on numerous occasions,as wellas In Vino Veritas and Crainte et Tremblement (upon the titleof the lastof which Batailleplays ina chapterof Le Coupable,entitled “Rire et Tremblement.” In thislight,one might develop an intriguing reading of La Scissiparité,a piece of shortfiction published by BatailleinCaheirs de la Pleiade inSpring,1949.(Reprinted inOeuvres Complètes, Tome III). The relevant deleted or modified passages are reproduced here inmy translation. From Oeuvres Complètes,Tome III,pp.529-531: Long conversation with T. (anguish, chance, the night out of which we emerge surrounding us...) Pursued by an intimate « ultimatum »: I find myself on the temple roof – in flight. At my feet, the world and the temptation of its deafness! At the hight of my little edifice. – T. beside me. We ignore the world at our feet. It is equally ignorant of the night where we find ourselves. This night is all the more total than people, besides him and myself, would suspect. I could not dwell upon myself, but I can thus only wager, put my life at stake. To become what? In demi-solitude my position is itself the guarantee of a definitive solitude. In the same temple, death, sorrow, and the inevitable reign. The indifference that we hold toward death... is that of the infinitely heavy, surrounding sleep of the «sanctified place». Upon the roof of my « ultimatum » the response that the night withholds, could I withhold it from myself? Anguish awaiting the response of the night already knows that the night can respond only to the inexhaustible contestation of anguish. Aside from T. no one understands me. T. understands me: his silence assures me of the quality of my solitude. He is like a reminder: if somehow death calls his position into question, the simple fidelity of the coffin would remind him. In that which reaches the others, only that part which ignorant of themselves could respond to us... Only me, inaccessible, impenetrable, and...
The feeling of a decisive struggle from which nothing now could divert me. In the certainty of combat, I vacillate. The response, it would be would be « to forget the question »? In God I find nothing but my weakness. I stumble on, and with such difficulty! I have but one provisional escape, an instant that stops me, in which I think of nothing. After some time I am nothing but one madly irritated. IN THIS FIGURATIVE PLACE OF DOUBLE SOLITUDE AND NAKEDNESS IN THE COLD AT THE HIGHT OF WHICH, IN SPITE OF THE NIGHT, I SEE THE EXPANSE OF THE WORLD, THE
POSSIBLITIES OF BEING HOW CAN I EXPRESS MY FEELING?
It seems to me that I have spoken to my mirror, it was the anticipation of absence, my interlocutor had the appearance and not the warmth of life. Yesterday T. remained squeezed into a corner, a little light illuminated his visage (fair, pink, thin lips) and his body (the appearance of empty clothes). It appeared to my perception, afar, like a bolt of lightning, the regions where anguish has led; a feeling introduced by a phrase: the phrase was accompanied by an imperceptible change, a click breaking a link, the movement of distance which had captivated T. (and myself with him?) quickly resumed. A movement of recoil as disappointing as that of a supernatural being, of a demon, of an enchanter of children, or of rats. Nothing further from nor more contrary to malevolence. In the course of the conversation T. said to me: « I can speak in such a way that it would be as if nothing had been said. »
My anguish represents to me the impossibility of ever annulling my affirmations... The conversation was slow and, as if some unacceptable oppression held us back, we sought at length for words. I would have liked, at any cost, for T. to see the implication of anguish in chance – without which anguish would be hidden from being properly placed in question (they would be taken out of play if they weren't at the mercy of chance). In my anguish it seems to me that T. never laughs at chance, and my powerlessness overcomes me. My effort lost itself in the rarefied air of regions toward which despite himself T. followed me. A noise disturbed us and T. arose and departed without delay (he left after an hour had passed). I remain, reading, overwhelmed by a feeling of absence. xii
In the caption to the reproduction of these images inGeorges Bataille: La Mort A L'Oeuvre,MichelSurya statesthatthe portraitsof A. and D. both depictBataillehimself,whilethatof B. depictshiswife,Diane.Following thissuggestion,itisallthe more aptto read thisstory interms of “The Uncanny” for thiswould demonstratethe relationship of doubling between A. and D. (“Portraitsde Georges etDiane Bataille,”MichelSurya,pg.540).