The Absence of Myth Writings on Surrealism --------- ♦--------- GEORGES BATAILLE Edited, translated and introduced by Michael Richardson V VERSO London • New York Translation and Introduction © Michael Richardson 1994. This edition © Verso 1994. From Georges Bataille, Oeuvres computes, © Editions Gallimard, 19.76-1988. All rights reserved Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1V 3HR USA: 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001-2291 Verso is the im print o f New Left Books ISBN 0-86091-419-4 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicadon Data Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962. [Selections. English. 1994] The absence o f myth: writings on surrealism/Georges Bataille: edited, translated, and introduced by Michael Richardson, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-86091-419-4 (pbk.) 1. Avant-garde (Aesthetics) 2. Surrealism. I. Richardson, Michael, 1953- . II. Title. BH301.A94B38 1994 149~dc20 94-964 C1P Typeset by York House Typographic Ltd, London W13 Printed in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 The Castrated Lion 28 ---- Notes on the Publication of ‘Un Cadavre’ 30 —’ Surrealism from Day to Day 34 —~ The Absence of Myth 48 •— On the SubJect of Slumbers 49 —- The Surrealist Revolution 52 — ' Surrealism 54 —— Surrealism and How It Differs from Existentialism 57 «■" Surrealism in 1947 68 ---- The Surrealist Religion 71 Initial Postulate 91 Take It or Leave It 96 The Problems of Surrealism 97 —^ The Moral Meaning of Sociology 103 War and the Philosophy of the Sacred 113 Poetry and the Temptation of the End of the World 123 Henri Pastoureau: La blessure de Vhomme 127 Rene Char and the Force of Poetry 129 Max Ernst, Philosopher! 134 From the Stone Age to Jacques Prevert 137 ^ Andre Breton: Ode to Charles Fourier 155 The Age of Revolt 158 Andre Masson 177 Surrealism and God 182 Happiness, Eroticism and Literature 186 Index 209 Introduction The fever pitch at which surrealism unfolded in its early years can be deceptive. Constant interrogation of motives and calling to order may lead us to perceive that the aim was the establishment of a closed circle, or allegiance to a sterile ideology. However, nothing could have been further from the truth, for one of the issues raised most forcibly by surrealism was the nature of freedom itself in a collective context. The surrealists were soon faced with a paradoxical truth: that if it is to be realized, liberty has need o f a moral basis, and has no meaning except in relation to a disciplined attitude. No one recognized this more than Georges Bataille, one of the early victims of Andre Breton’s deter­ mination to establish an authentic basis for surrealist activity. As Bataille wrote: ‘It was Andre Breton who rightly recognized that a poet or a painter does not have the power to say what is in his heart, but that an organization or a collective body could.’1 Bataille’s relation to surrealism is controversial, and he is often placed among its enemies, especially by those who have seen him as a precursor of ‘postmodernism’, who make a point of dissociating Bataille from contamination with surrealism. This goes against Bataille’s affirmation of his fundamental solidarity with it, and his general agreement with the thinking of Andre Breton. It is therefore opportune to gather together Bataille’s own writings on surrealism, especially since he had at one point intended to write a book on a subJect which had intrigued him throughout his life and had a pivoted place there, even if he also displayed a certain ambivalence in relation to it. He called himself its ‘old enemy from within’, and defined his position as lying ‘at the side of surrealism’. In a letter written in December 1948, Bataille informed the pub­ lishers Gallimard that he was working on a book to be called Surrealist Philosophy and Religion. It never appeared, and he seems to have abandoned the proJect sometime around 1951 (it is unclear whether 2 Introduction ‘Surrealism from Day to Day’, apparently written in 1951, is the first chapter of this work or a quite separate proJect that equally never saw the lig h t o f day). Even though the book itself was not written, from 1945 until 1951 surrealism was central to Bataille’s thought, and a considerable collec­ tion of material - both published and unpublished - bears witness to the fact. This presumably constituted the research he intended to use for the aborted book, and it is surprising that he abandoned the proJect, since this material is so rich and clearly delineated that it would not have required a great deal o f fu rth e r work to assemble it. I t is collected here for the first time, and gives us a rich insight into Bataille’s thinking at this key moment of his life, as well as providing many profound reflections on surrealism. Bataille’s understanding concentrates on elements within surrealism that few critics have recog­ nized, and thus gives us a new perspective on what surrealism may mean. The period o f these writings was the most active (from a publication point of view) in Bataille’s life. He published UAlleluiah, Catechisme de Dianus; Methode de la meditation; Haine de la poesie; La part maudite; La scissiparite; and L ’Abbe C; in addition to editing Critique, in which he published a vast number of articles. In many ways surrealism was the key to most of this work, and it is especially significant to the themes of La part maudite and Theorie de la religion (written during the same period, but not published until after his death). It may seem surprising that Bataille should have been so concerned with surrealism at this time, for the cultural context was hardly propitious to this movement that had been so important during the interwar period, but was then becoming intellectually marginal­ ized. In the immediate aftermath of the war it had retained a great prestige, but this was soon eclipsed as the French Communist Party gained ascendancy over French cultural and social life. Equally, the rise of existentialism tended to subsume surrealism in the intellectual domain. For a long time the surrealists had been consistent in their opposition to Stalinism, and could expect no favours from the Com­ munists, while the basis o f existentialism was also largely hostile to the basis o f the surrealist sensibility. By 1948 the surrealists had become peripheral to the currents of French cultural life and, for those conscious o f trends, its moment had passed. Considered an interwar indulgence, it was seen to be irrelevant to the needs o f the time. Bataille took the opposite view. Having often been disparaging and sometimes hostile towards surrealism before the war, in the late 1940s he came to view it differently and consider it to be more vital than ever. This was doubtless due in part to Bataille’s evident distaste for the Introduction 3 mood of the time, for a postwar euphoria heavily marked by guilt and spite. Retribution for the perceived humiliation of France during the war hung heavily in the air. In this atmosphere surrealism alone seemed to have retained its prewar generosity of spirit, so that it pointed the way towards the questions Bataille wished to address, and it is perhaps prim arily for this reason that he came to re-evaluate what surrealism had been and could be. Bataille had no time for the idea that surrealism was dead. On the contrary, it had barely come into being — it was almost the embryo for a potentiality that could be realized only in the future. This above all marks Bataille’s own surreal­ ism: it was a potentiality to be realized. Before the Second World War, Bataille’s relations with surrealism had been close but strained. Although he was imbued with its spirit, and numbered many of the surrealists among his close friends, he did not then appear to take surrealism itself entirely seriously. It was admir­ able, he appears to have felt, as the embodiment of a principle of refusal and revolt, but he seems to have been contemptuous of its pretensions in the realm o f ideas. Having denounced it in 1929 as an idealism, he appears to have continued to view it as such throughout the 1930s, and did not pay much further attention to it. As Michel Surya says, he ‘pre-Judged [surrealism] as fraudulent’.2 It seems likely that Bataille was drawn closer to surrealism after the war by his friend Michel Fardoulis-Lagrange, who, although he was never a member of Breton’s group, was an important figure on its margins, animating the Journal Tromkme convoi, o f which five issues were published between 1945 and 1951 and in which Bataille pub­ lished three articles (including ‘On the SubJect of Slumbers’ and Take It or Leave It’, in the present collection). The first of these texts is particularly significant, for it signals the change in Bataille’s percep­ tion and the fact that he believed a reappraisal of surrealism had become necessary. Describing himself as ‘surrealism’s old enemy from within’, he remains highly critical o f surrealist practice, which he views as being too concerned with a place in the world: he considers that with its books on the shelves and its paintings on the walls, a great surrealism begins. This is by no means a compliment. Such ‘great surrealism’ suggests that surrealism has lost its vigour and surrendered to the necessities o f u tilitarian society.3 But if he perceives this negative aspect, he does not use it to dismiss surrealism.