Georges Bataille cytaty

strona 2

„Wydawało mi się, że dziś wieczorem umrę z rozkoszy; to rozkosz mnie zabija, nie strach.”

„Nie wiemy nic o człowieku, dopóki nie przybrał on formy zdania.”

„Umysł porusza się w przedziwnym świecie, złożonym z trwogi i ekstazy.”

„Odrzucenie komunikowania jest sposobem komunikowania mniej przyjaznym, ale najpotężniejszym.”

„Erotyzm to przejście od stanu normalnego do stanu pożądania.”

„Nie ma nic ludzkiego, co by nie mogło posłużyć za pułapkę dla ludzi.”

„Tylko ludzie beznamiętni albo niewinni utrzymują, że przyzwyczajenie stępia zmysły…”

„I myślałem, że jestem żywy po to jedynie, aby lepiej wiedzieć, że jestem martwy.”

„Ale nawet z punktu widzenia najmniej znaczących rzeczy nie jesteśmy całością materialnie ukształtowaną, tożsamą dla wszystkich, którą każdy może po prostu sprawdzić niby hipotekę lub testament; nasza społeczna osobowość jest tworem cudzej myśli. Nawet akt tak prosty, który zwiemy „widzieć znajomą osobę’, jest po części aktem intelektualnym. Pozór fizyczny widzianej osoby wypełniamy wszystkimi pojęciami, które mamy o niej; a w ogólnym kształcie, jaki sobie tworzymy, pojęcia te mają z pewnością największy udział.”

„Tym mniej wszelako obawiam się zbłądzenia, że na nie przystaje.”

„Bóg się delektuje… To możliwe, ale to, czym on się delektuje jest, jak mi się wydaje, nienawiścią, którą odczuwa do samego siebie, i z którą żadna ziemska nienawiść nie może się równać.”

„Poezja prowadzi od znanego ku nieznanemu.”

„Moralność to zgrzybiałość.”

„U podstaw ludzkiego życia znajduje się zasada niewystarczalności.”

„Aby dojść kresu ekstazy, gdzie zatracamy się w rozkoszy, musimy doraźnie wytyczyć jej granicę – jest nią groza.”

„Daremnie miłość próbuje objąć to, co przestaje istnieć.”

„Dopominając się dla siebie praw człowiek zapomina, ze jest zwierzęciem: jest nim koniecznie, lecz bez praw i czuje się zmuszony to ukrywać.”

„Dla zwierzęcia, które nie wpada w pułapkę ja, nie istnieje nic tragicznego.”

„Wyjątkowej odwagi potrzeba, aby nie poddać się przygnębieniu i dalej trwać.”

„Dla nas, bytów nieciągłych, śmierć ma znaczenie ciągłości bytu: rozmnażanie prowadzi do nieciągłości istot, zarazem jednak łączy się ze sprawą ich ciągłości, czyli jest ściśle ze śmiercią związane. Mówiąc o rozmnażaniu i o śmierci, spróbuję ukazać tożsamość ciągłości bytów i śmierci – obie są jednakowo fascynujące, a fascynacja nimi włada erotyzmem.”

„Czas oznacza jedynie ucieczkę przedmiotów, które wydawały się prawdziwe.”

„Sfera erotyzmu to dziedzina przemocy i gwałtu.”

„Jak pięknie, jak wstrętnie jest wiedzieć. A jednak chciałem tego, za wszelką cenę, chciałem WIEDZIEĆ.”

„Nie jestem skłonny sądzić, że zasadniczą sprawą na tym świecie jest lubieżność, człowiek nie kończy się na narządzie rozkoszy, niemniej to narzędzie wyjawia jej tajemnicę.”

„Dziedzina erotyzmu nieodłącznie skazana jest na fortele.”

„To, czego uczę […], jest upojeniem, a nie filozofią: nie jestem filozofem, ale świętym, może szaleńcem…”

„Nasze istnienie jest rozpaczliwą próbą dopełnienia bytu.”

„Żyje wrażliwym doświadczeniem, a nie logiczną ekstazą.”

„Wykręcać się od istnienia to nie umierać, ale już być martwym.”

„Uczyniłem moje milczenie nieznośnym, ale to właśnie zwalniało mnie z obowiązku milczenia.”

„Nie jesteśmy wszystkim i naprawdę tylko 2rzeczy są pewne na tym świecie, ta pierwsza właśnie, i druga – że umrzemy.”

„Nie można szukać dobra, jeśli nie zapomni się życia i jego warunków.”

„Życie seksualne, rozumiane ze względu na cele, jest niemal w całości zbytkiem.”

„Dopiero w chwili gdy nadejdzie śmierć, będę wiedział niezbicie o co chodzi.”

„Miłość ludzka to najbardziej uderzający z paradoksów – istota wybrana staje się nią dzięki wartości, którą posiada tylko dla kochającego.”

„Cóż pozostało we mnie, gdy stał się cień…?”

“Inevitably linked with the moment of climax, there is a minor rupture suggestive of death; and conversely the idea of death may play a part in setting sensuality in motion.”

“Philosophy … finds itself to be no longer anything but the heir to a fabulous mystical theology, but missing a God and wiping the slate clean.”

“We can’t rely on anything. Except ourselves. Ludicrous responsibility devolves on us, overwhelms us. In every regard, right up the present, people always have relied on each other—or God.”

“Man's secret horror of his foot is one of the explanations for the tendency to conceal its length and form as much as possible. Heels of greater or lesser height, depending on the sex, distract from the foot's low and flat character. Besides the uneasiness is often confused with a sexual uneasiness; this is especially striking among the Chinese who, after having atrophied the feet of women, situate them at the most excessive point of deviance. The husband himself must not see the nude feet of his wife, and it is incorrect and immoral in general to look at the feet of women. Catholic confessors, adapting themselves to this aberration, ask their Chinese penitents "if they have not looked at women's feet.
The same aberration is found among the Turks (Volga Turks, Turks of Central Asia), who consider it immortal to show their nude feet and whoe ven go to bed in stockings.
Nothing similar can be cited from classical antiquity (apart from the use of very high soles in tragedies). The most prudish Roman matrons constantly allowed their nude toes to be seen. On the other hand, modesty concerning feet developed excessively in the modern ea and only started to disappear in the nineteenth century. M. Salomon Reinarch has studied this development in detail in the article entitled Pieds pudiques [Modest Feet], insisting on the role of Spain, where women's feet have been the object of most dreaded anxiety and thus were the cause of crimes. The simple fact of allowing the shod foot to be seen, jutting up from under a skirt, was regarded as indecent. Under no circumstances was it possible to touch the foot of a woman.”

“An extreme, unconditional human yearning was expressed for the first time by Nietzsche independently of moral goals or of serving God. … Ardor that doesn’t address a dramatically articulated moral obligation is a paradox. … If we stop looking at states of ardor as simply preliminary to other and subsequent conditions grasped as beneficial, the state I propose seems a pure play of lightning, merely an empty consummation. Lacking any relation to material benefits such as power or the growth of the state (or of God or a Church or a party), this consuming can’t even be comprehended. … I’ll have to face the same difficulties as Nietzsche—putting God and the good behind him, though all ablaze with the ardor possessed by those who lay down their lives for God or the good. … I’ll admit that moral investigations that aim to surpass the good lead first of all to disorder.”

“Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety.”

“Experience is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being. Should he in this fever have any apprehension whatsoever, he cannot say: “I have seen God, the absolute, or the depths of the universe”; he can only say “that which I have seen eludes understanding”—and God, the absolute, the depths of the universe are nothing if they are not categories of the understanding.

If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.”

“The human foot is commonly subjected to grotesque tortures that deform it and make it rickety. In an imbecilic way it is doomed to corns, calluses, and bunions.”

“Entirety exists within me as exuberance … in empty longing … in … the desire to burn with desire.”

“Anyone wanting slyly to avoid suffering identifies with the entirety of the universe, judges each thing as if he were it. In the same way, he imagines, at bottom, that he will never die. We receive these hazy illusions like a narcotic necessary to bear life. But what happens to us when, disintoxicated, we learn what we are? Lost among babblers in a night in which we can only hate the appearance of light which comes from babbling. The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book.”

“What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn’t true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being.”

“Existence as entirety remains beyond any one meaning—and it is the conscious presence of humanness in the world inasmuch as this is nonmeaning, having nothing to do other than be what it is, no longer able to go beyond itself or give itself some kind of meaning through action.”

“To choose evil is to choose freedom—“freedom, emancipation from all restraint.””

“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.”

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

“Love then screams in my own throat; I am the Jesuve, the filthy parody of the torrid and blinding sun.
I want to have my throat slashed while violating the girl to whom I will have been able to say: you are the night.
The Sun exclusively loves the Night and directs its luminous violence, its ignoble shaft, toward the earth, but finds itself incapable of reaching the gaze or the night, even though the nocturnal terrestrial expanses head continuously toward the indecency of the solar ray.
The solar annulus is the intact anus of her body at eighteen years to which nothing sufficiently blinding can be compared except the sun, even though the anus is night.”

“The analysis of laughter had opened to me points of contact between the fundamentals of a communal and disciplined emotional knowledge and those of discursive knowledge.”

“Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.”

“It is through an “intimate cessation of all intellectual operations” that the mind is laid bare. If nor, discourse maintains it in its little complacency. … The difference between inner experience and philosophy resides principally in this: that in experience, … what counts is no longer the statement of wind, but the wind.”

“Inner experience … is not easily accessible and, viewed from the outside by intelligence, it would even be necessary to see in it a sum of distinct operations, some intellectual, others aesthetic, yet others moral. … It is only from within, lived to the point of terror, that it appears to unify that which discursive thought must separate.”

“Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.”

“Love expresses a need for sacrifice each unity must lose itself in some other which exceeds it. In erotic frenzy the being is led to tear itself apart and lose itself.”

“By inner experience I understand that which one usually calls mystical experience: the states of ecstasy, of rapture, at least of meditated emotion. But I am thinking less of confessional experience, to which one has had to adhere up to now, than of an experience laid bare, free of ties, even of an origin, of any confession whatever. This is why I don’t like the word mystical.”

“The total person is first disclosed … in areas of life that are lived frivolously.”

“There is no better way to know death than to link it with some licentious image.”

“We reach ecstasy by a contestation of knowledge. Were I to stop at ecstasy and grasp it, in the end I would define it.”

“The difficulty—that contestation must be done in the name of an authority—is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is.”

“Concern for this or that limited good can sometimes lead to the summit… But this occurs in a roundabout way. Moral ends … are distinct from any excesses they occasion. States of glory and moments of sacredness surpass results intentionally sought.”

“An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being.”