Bataille Madame Edwarda Eng

Madame Edwarda by

Pierre Angélique Preface by

Georges Bataille

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (September 2009) [email protected]

If you’re afraid of everything, read this book − but listen to me first: if you laugh, it’s because you are afraid. A

This translation is dedicated to Claire Harrison in memory of the nights it describes

book, you think, is something inert. That’s possible. And yet what if, as is the case, you do not know how to read? Would you begin to doubt . . . ? Are you alone? Do you shake with the cold? Do you know to what point man is ‘yourself’? A fool − and naked?

PREFACE Death is of all things the most terrible, and maintaining the work of death is what demands the greatest strength. − G. W. F. Hegel

The author of Madame Edwarda has himself drawn attention to the gravity of his book. It seems important to me, nevertheless, to insist on the fact, if only because of the levity with which we are accustomed to treating writings whose theme is man’s sexual life. Not that I hope − or intend to try − to change anything in those customs. But I ask the reader of this preface to reflect for a moment on the attitude traditionally adopted towards pleasure (which, in the play of the sexes, attains a mad intensity) and suffering (which death finally relieves, of course, but which, before that, it pushes to its extreme limit). A combination of conditions leads us to make of man (of humanity) an image as distant from extreme pleasure as it is from extreme suffering: the most common interdictions are observed, on the one hand, towards man’s sexual life, on the other, towards his death; to the extent that around these realms a single sacred domain has formed that is at the origin of religion. The difficulty began when the interdictions surrounding the disappearance of a human being were the only ones to be accorded grave respect, while those surrounding the appearance of a human being − which is to say, all genetic activity − came to be taken lightly. I don’t want to protest against the profoundest tendencies of the majority of people: it is an expression of the destiny which has made man laugh at his own reproductive organs. But this laughter, which accentuates the opposition between pleasure and suffering (that suffering and death are worthy of respect, while pleasure

is derisory, worthy only of our contempt), also indicates their

The preface to this little book − in which eroticism is clearly

fundamental kinship. Laughter is no longer a sign of respect,

shown as opening onto the consciousness of the wound in

but it may be a sign of horror. Laughter is the attitude of

being − is for me the occasion of an emotional appeal. Not that I

compromise which man adopts in the presence of something

find it surprising that the mind should turn away from itself,

which repels him, but whose appearance is not particularly

and with its back turned, so to speak, become the obstinate

grave. Thus, when eroticism is considered with gravity, is

caricature of its own truth. If man needs to lie, after all, he is

envisaged tragically, it represents a complete reversal in our

free to lie! Perhaps the man who, in his pride, is swallowed in

way of thinking.

the human mass . . . But in the end, I shall never forget what binds me to violence and marvels, nor the will to open my eyes

I must start by making clear the futility of those banal

wide and look, face to face, at what is happening, at what is.

assertions to the effect that sexual interdictions are nothing

And I should never know what is happening if I knew nothing of

more than a prejudice, and it is time we rid ourselves of them.

extreme pleasure, nothing of extreme suffering!

According to this view, the shame and modesty which

Let us understand each other. Pierre Angélique takes care

accompany the strong sensation of pleasure are merely proofs

to say it: we know nothing, and we are lost in the depths of the

of a lack of higher intelligence. One might just as well say that

night. But we can at least see what it is that deceives us, what

we should wipe the table clean and return to the days of our

it is that diverts us from knowing our distress, from knowing,

animality, to devouring what we wish and being indifferent to

more precisely, that joy is the same thing as suffering, the same

filth and ordure; as though the whole of humanity did not

thing as death.

emerge from powerful and violent impulses of revulsion and

What this laughter diverts us from, what incites our joking

attraction, to which our peculiarly human sensibility and

attitude, is the identity between extreme pleasure and extreme

intelligence are intimately bound. But without wishing in any

suffering, between being and death, between the knowledge

way to oppose the laughter caused by indecency, we are free to

that ends with this dazzling view and a definitive darkness. No

return − at least partially return − to an attitude which laughter

doubt we could end by laughing at such a truth, but it would

alone introduces.

be with an absolute laughter, one that does not stop at our

It is laughter, in fact, that justifies a form of condemnation that does us no honour. Laughter leads us along this path on

contempt for something repulsive, but in which our disgust would penetrate our very being.

which the principle of the interdiction, of necessary and inevitable decency, is transformed into blind hypocrisy and

To reach the point of ecstasy, the moment when we lose

complete incomprehension of what the interdiction brings into

ourselves in the joys of the flesh, we must always posit an

play. Complete licence combined with joking is always

immediate limit to this joy: this limit is horror. Not only the

accompanied by a refusal to take seriously − by which I mean

suffering of others but also my own suffering, pushing me to

tragically − the truth of eroticism.

the moment when my horror arouses me, can help me reach

the state where joy slides into delirium; but then there is no

Being is given to us in an unbearable surpassing of being, no

form of revulsion whose affinity with desire I do not perceive.

less unbearable than death. But since, in death, being is taken

Not that horror is never confused with attraction; but if it

away from us at the same time that it is given, we must search

cannot inhibit or destroy it, horror increases the attraction.

for it in the feeling of death, in those unbearable moments

Equally, danger typically paralyses us; but when it lacks the

when, no longer being within us except through an excess of

power to do so, danger excites our desire. We never reach

being, it seems that we are dying, and the fullness of our horror

ecstasy except when, however remotely, we are faced with the

coincides with the fullness of our joy.

prospect of death, with the prospect of what destroys us. A man differs from an animal in that certain sensations

Even thought (reflection) only ends with its own excess. What, beyond the representation of excess, does truth signify if

wound him and reduce him to the intimacy of his being. These

we do not see what exceeds the possibilities of seeing, what it is

sensations vary according to the individual and his way of life.

unbearable to see − just as, in ecstasy, it is impossible to attain

But the sight of blood or the odour of vomit, which arouse in us

pleasure? What, if we do not think that which exceeds the

the horror of death, can force us to experience a state of nausea

possibilities of thought . . . ?*

which afflicts us more cruelly than any suffering. The sensations associated with the final vertigo are literally

At the end of this pathetic meditation − silenced, with a

unbearable. There are persons who prefer death to touching a

despairing cry, as it is swallowed in the impossibility of

snake, however harmless it may be. There exists a domain in

sustaining itself − we rediscover God. This is the meaning, the

which death signifies not only our disappearance, but the unbearable process by which, despite ourselves, we disappear, even when, at all costs, we must not disappear. It is precisely this at all costs, this despite ourselves, that distinguishes the

*

I apologise for adding here that this definition of being and excess

cannot rest on a philosophical foundation, since excess, by definition, exceeds every foundation. Excess is that through which being, before it is

moment of extreme joy and an indescribable but miraculous

anything else, is beyond all limits. Being undoubtedly also exists within

ecstasy. If there is nothing which surpasses man, which

limits: it is these limits that permit us to speak of it (I speak also, but in

surpasses us despite ourselves, which, at all costs, must not be, we will never attain the insensate moment towards which we

speaking I do not forget not only that speech will elude me, but that it is eluding me now). These methodically arranged sentences may be possible (largely because excess is the exception, it is the marvellous, the

strive with all our strength, but which, at the same time, we

miraculous; excess designates attraction − attraction, if not horror,

use all our strength to avert.

everything, in short, which is more than that which is) but their impossibility is taken as given from the first. As a result, no chains bind me, never am I enslaved; I retain a sovereignty from which only my death − which will

Pleasure would be contemptible were it not also this

demonstrate the impossibility of limiting myself to being without excess –

appalling surpassing of limits, which is not confined to a sexual

will separate me. I do not reject consciousness − without which I could not

ecstasy which the mystics of various religions − but the Christian mystics above all − have known in the same manner.

write − but this hand that writes is dying, and only through the death to which it is promised can it escape the limits it accepts in writing (accepted by the hand that writes but refused by the hand that dies).

enormity, of this insensate little book: its narrative brings onto

secret.† Since sexual joy relies upon opening the mind to a

the stage God himself, with all his attributes; yet this God is a

potentially harmful perspective, we usually deceive ourselves,

public whore, no different from any other whore. But what

attempting to reach our joy on a path as distant as possible

mysticism could not say (at the moment of speaking it fell into

from horror. The images which excite our desire or provoke the

a swoon) eroticism can: God is nothing if he is not, in every

final spasm are typically dubious or equivocal: if they depict

sense of the word, the surpassing of God − in the sense of

horror or death it is always in an underhand manner. Even

vulgar being, in the sense of horror and impurity, in the sense,

from Sade’s perspective death is diverted onto the other, and

finally, of nothing . . . We cannot, with impunity, incorporate

the other, at least initially, is a delicious expression of life. The

into language the word which surpasses words, the word God;

domain of eroticism is inescapably sworn to ruses. The object

the moment we do so, this word, surpassing itself, vertiginously

which provokes the urges of Eros appears in other guise to its

destroys its own limits. What this word signifies recoils before

true identity. So much so that in erotic matters it is the ascetics

nothing. It is everywhere it is impossible to expect it to be: it is,

who are right. They say of beauty that it is the snare of the

in short, enormity. And he who even suspects as much,

devil: beauty alone, in effect, makes bearable our need for

instantly falls silent. Or, seeking for a way out but knowing that

disorder, for the violence and indignity that are at the root of

he is trapped, he searches within himself for that which, having

love. I cannot examine here the details of deliriums whose

the power to destroy him, renders him similar to God, similar to

forms continue to multiply, the most violent of which are made

nothing.*

known to us, slyly, in pure love − carrying the blind excess of life to the very limits of death. Undoubtedly the ascetic

On the incredible journey to which this most incongruous

condemnation is coarse, it is cowardly and cruel, but it accords

of books invites us, there may, nevertheless, still be some

with the trembling without which we distance ourselves from

discoveries for us to make.

the truth of the night. There is no reason why sexual love

For example, by chance, happiness . . .

should be invested with an eminence which only belongs to the

Joy is found precisely within the perspective of death (thus,

entirety of life, but if we do not bring the light to bear on the

it is masked under the appearance of its opposite, sorrow).

very point where night falls, how should we know ourselves to

I am in no way inclined to argue that sensual pleasure is the essential thing in this world of ours. Man is not limited to the organ of pleasure. But this unavowable organ teaches him his

†

I could point out, moreover, that excess is the very principle of sexual

reproduction: in effect, Divine Providence willed that, in its works, its secret should remain legible! Could man be spared nothing? The very day he notices that the ground has gone from beneath his feet, he is told that it is has been

*

Here, therefore, is the first theology proposed by a man whom laughter

removed providentially! But even if the sins of his blasphemy are visited upon

has illuminated, and who refuses to limit that which does not know what the

him, it is by blaspheming − by spitting on his own limits − that the most

limit is. Mark the day when you read by a pebble of fire, you who have paled

unhappy of men finds his enjoyment, it is in blaspheming that he is God. In

over the texts of philosophers! How should he who would silence them

truth, creation is inextricable, irreducible to any movement of the spirit other

express himself, if not in a manner which to them is inconceivable?

than the certainty, being exceeded, of exceeding.

be, as we are, the projection of being into horror? If being is swallowed in the sickening void from which, at all costs, it must flee . . . ? Nothing, surely, is more dreadful than this! How ludicrous, in comparison, must the scenes of hell above church doors appear to us! Hell is the feeble image of himself that God has involuntarily inspired! But on the scale of unlimited loss we rediscover the triumph of being, from which nothing has ever been lacking save its consent to the movement that makes it perish. Being, of its own accord, joins in the terrible dance whose syncopation is the dancer’s rhythm, and which we must learn to accept for what it is − knowing only the horror with which it is in perfect harmony. If we lack the courage to do so, no greater torture exists for us. And the moment of torture will never fail to arrive: how, if it failed to do so, should we overcome it? But the open spirit − open to death, to torture, to joy − without reserve, the open and dying being, suffering and happy, already appears in a veiled light: the light of the divine. And the cry which, from a twisted mouth, may twist and wring the being that utters it, is an immense alleluia − lost in a silence without end. − Préface de Madame Edwarda (1956)

− Hans Bellmer, Madame Edwarda (1966)

ANGUISH IS THE ONLY ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGN.

THE

SOVEREIGN IS NO LONGER A KING: HE IS HIDDEN IN THE GREAT CITIES. HE SURROUNDS HIMSELF WITH SILENCE, CONCEALING HIS SORROW. HE LURKS IN WAIT FOR SOMETHING TERRIBLE

− AND YET HIS SORROW LAUGHS AT

EVERYTHING THAT COMES TO PASS.

I At the corner of the street, anguish, a foul and intoxicating anguish, attacked me (perhaps because I had just seen two furtive girls on the steps of a urinal). At moments like this I am overwhelmed by the urge to vomit. I suddenly felt that I had to be naked, then and there − either that, or strip naked the girls I lusted after: only the warmth of stale flesh can sate me. But this time I resorted to more impoverished means. I ordered a Pernod at a bar, downed the glass in one gulp, then went from counter to counter, until . . . The night finished falling. I began to wander through the narrow streets which run between Rue Poissonniére and Rue Saint-Denis. Loneliness and the darkness completed my drunkenness. The night itself was laid bare in those deserted streets, and I wanted to be just as naked: I took off my trousers and draped them over my arm. I wanted to feel the coolness of the night air on my loins, and a sudden wave of freedom carried me along. I felt myself getting bigger, and held my erect cock in my hand. (My entry into the matter is hard. I could have avoided all this and still made my tale sound ‘plausible’. It would have been in my interest to take detours. But this is how it has to be − a beginning without diversions. I continue . . . and it gets harder . . . ) Worried about attracting trouble, I put my trousers back on and headed for a place I knew called Mirrors: on entering, I found myself in the light again. Amidst a swarm of girls, Madame Edwarda, completely naked, looked bored

to death. She was, to my taste, ravishing. I chose her, and

in, only that in the midst of that tumult of lights, the night

she came and sat down next to me. I hardly took the time

descended upon me! I wanted to turn the table over, smash

to respond to the waiter when he asked me what I wanted.

everything − but it was fixed to the floor and wouldn’t

I seized Madame Edwarda, and she gave herself up to me

budge. Has any man faced a more farcical situation? Then

immediately, our two mouths meeting in a sickly kiss. The

everything began to dissolve, the room and Madame

room was packed with men and women: such was the

Edwarda. Only the night remained . . .

wasteland in which our game was played out. In an instant her hand slid, and I broke suddenly like a pane of glass,

An all-too-human voice dragged me out of my stupor.

trembling in my trousers; at the same moment I felt

Madame Edwarda’s voice, like her slender body, was

Madame Edwarda, whose buttocks I clasped in my hands,

obscene:

break in two: her wide, upturned eyes filled with terror, and from her throat came a long, strangled cry.

‘I suppose you want to see my rags’, she said. Gripping the table with both hands, I turned to face her. Still sitting, she lifted one leg high and wide above her

I remembered my desire for scandal − or rather, that it

head, and to open her gash still further, used the fingers of

would be necessary, at all costs, to be scandalous that

both hands to draw the folds of skin apart. Thus, Madame

night. I could hear laughter over the tumult of voices,

Edwarda’s ‘rags’ looked at me, hairy and pink, and as full

reaching me through the lights and the smoke. But nothing

of life as some revolting squid. I stammered softly:

mattered anymore. I took Madame Edwarda in my arms,

‘Why are you doing that?’

and she smiled at me. Transfixed, I experienced a new

‘You can see,’ she said, ‘I am GOD’.

shock as a sort of silence fell on me from above, freezing me

‘I’m going crazy.’

to the spot. I seemed to be borne aloft in a flight of angels

‘Oh no you’re not, you’ve got to see: look!’

with neither bodies nor heads, but shaped from something

Her harsh voice sweetened, becoming almost childlike

like the gliding of wings through the air − only more simply.

as she said with such weariness, with the infinite smile of

Suddenly I grew unhappy and felt myself forsaken, as one

abandon:

is in the presence of GOD. It was far worse and more crazy

‘Darling, the fun I’ve had . . .’

than simple drunkenness. At first I even felt sad that the grandeur descending upon me was robbing me of the pleasures I had counted on tasting with Madame Edwarda.

Holding her provocative position, her leg still raised in the air, she spoke to me with an air of command: ‘Kiss me!’

I told myself I was being ridiculous: Madame Edwarda and I hadn’t exchanged two words yet. I experienced a moment of doubt. I could say nothing about the state I was

‘But . . . ,’ I protested, ‘in front of all these people?’ ‘Of course!’

I trembled. I stared at her, motionless, and she smiled

...............................................

back so sweetly that I trembled again. At last, staggering

...............................................

forward, I got down on my knees and pressed my lips to

...............................................

that living wound. Her naked thigh caressed my ear and I

...............................................

thought I heard the sound of a sea swell, the same sound

...............................................

you hear when you put your ear to a large conch shell. In

...............................................

the absurdity and confusion of the brothel (I felt I was

...............................................

choking, flushed and sweating with the heat) I remained

...............................................

strangely suspended, as if Madame Edwarda and I were

...............................................

losing ourselves on a night of wind, alone together at the

...............................................

edge of the ocean.

............................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mirrors

I heard another voice, coming from a strong and beautiful woman dressed in respectable clothes. ‘Come my children,’ she said in a masculine voice, ‘it’s time you went upstairs’. The sous-madame took my money and I rose and

that covered the walls of our room from floor to ceiling, and from which the ceiling itself was made, multiplied the image of our animal coupling, and at the slightest movement our pounding hearts were opened to the void into which we disappeared in the infinity of our reflections.

followed Madame Edwarda, whose tranquil nudity guided me across the room. Yet this simple passage between

Pleasure, finally, shattered us. Rising from the bed, we

densely packed tables of girls and clients, this vulgar rite of

looked at each other gravely. Madame Edwarda held me

‘The Lady Ascending’ followed by the man who will make

spellbound: I had never seen a prettier girl − nor one more

love to her, took on for me, at that moment, nothing less

naked. Without taking her eyes off me, she took a pair of

than a hallucinatory solemnity. The click of Madame

white silk stockings out of a bottom drawer, sat on the edge

Edwarda’s spiked heels on the tiled floor; the swaying of

of the bed and slowly pulled them on. But the delight at

her long, obscene body; the acrid odour of an aroused

being naked took hold of her again: she parted her legs and

woman in my nostrils, issuing from that pale body . . .

offered herself to me, and the acrid nudity of our bodies

Madame Edwarda went ahead of me . . . rising into the

pushed us to the same exhaustion of hearts. She put on a

clouds. The room’s noisy indifference to her happiness, to

white bolero and concealed her nakedness beneath a

the measured gravity of her step, was both a royal

domino; pulled the hood of the domino over her head, and

consecration and a flowering festival: death itself was

hid her face behind a black mask lined with a beard of lace.

present at the feast in the guise of what is called, in the

Thus arrayed, she sprang away from me:

nakedness of the brothel, ‘the butcher’s cut’.

‘Let’s go!’

‘But . . . are you allowed out?’ I asked stupidly.

II

‘Hurry up, fifi,’ she replied gaily, ‘you can’t go out naked!’

At that hour of the night the streets were deserted. All of a

She tossed me my clothes and helped me to get

sudden, wildly and without a word, Madame Edwarda ran

dressed: but as she did so, out of whim, a sly exchange

on alone. The vast arch of the Porte Saint-Denis loomed

passed now and then between her flesh and mine. We

before her and she stopped. I hadn’t moved a step, and

descended a narrow staircase at the rear of the building,

standing now as still as I was, Madame Edwarda waited for

encountering only the chambermaid. In the sudden

me under the gateway, in the middle of the arch. She was

darkness of the street I was surprised to find Madame

completely and utterly black, as full of anguish as a hole. I

Edwarda fleeing my side, draped in the black of the night.

realized that she was no longer laughing, and that, beneath

She ran off, evading my grasp: it was as if the mask she

the clothes giving her form, she was now absent. All the

wore had turned her into an animal. It wasn’t cold, yet

drunkenness drained out of me: I knew then that She had

suddenly I shivered. Madame Edwarda had become

not lied, that She was GOD. Her presence had the

something alien, and looking up I saw a starry sky, empty

unintelligible simplicity of a stone: in the middle of that

and mad, open darkly over our heads. For a moment I

city, I had the feeling of being in the mountains at night,

thought I was going to stumble − but I kept on walking.

lost in the midst of a lifeless solitude. I felt I was free of Her – alone before this black rock. I trembled, seeing before me what is bleakest in this world. No aspect of the comic horror of my situation escaped me: that the sight of this woman whose appearance petrified me now, the instant before had . . . And the change had occurred the way one slips over. Within Madame Edwarda, grief – a grief without suffering or tears − had turned into an empty silence. And yet, I still wanted to know: this woman, so naked a moment ago, who had gaily called me ‘fifi’ . . . I crossed the street: my anguish told me to stop, but I went on. Silently she slipped away, retreating to the pillar on the left. I was no more than two paces from that monumental gateway: when I passed under the stone arch, the domino

vanished noiselessly. I listened without breathing. I was amazed at being able to grasp it all so clearly. I had known, when Madame Edwarda had run off, that no matter how

As if I had woken her up, she murmured in a lifeless voice: ‘Where am I?’

quickly, she must have ran under the arch; and, when she stopped, that she had been suspended in a sort of trance,

Desperately, I pointed to the empty sky above us. She

far beyond the possibility of laughter. But I could no longer

looked up, and for a moment she stood still, her eyes vague

see her. A deathly darkness descended from the vault.

under the mask, lost in the field of stars. I supported her

Without giving it a moment’s thought, I ‘knew’ that a

gently, and her two hands clutched the domino in a sickly

season of agony had begun for me. I accepted it, I wanted

manner. She began to shake convulsively. She was

to suffer − to go further, to go, even though I should be

suffering − I thought she was crying, but it was as if the

struck down, to the ‘void’ itself. I knew, I wanted to know,

world and her anguish were being strangled within her,

lusting for her secret, without doubting for an instant that

unable to melt into sobs. Gripped by a strange disgust, she

it was death’s kingdom.

pushed me away: then, suddenly demented, she lurched forward, stopped short, threw her cloak up, flashed her

Groaning beneath the vault, terror overcame me, then I laughed:

buttocks with a quick slap of her arse, then came back and threw herself at me. A gale of savagery rose within her:

‘The only man to pass the nothingness of this arch!’

raging, she struck me in the face − struck me with

I trembled at the thought that she might run away,

clenched fists, carried away by an insane brawling. I

disappear forever. And I trembled at my calm acceptance,

stumbled and fell under her blows, and she fled into the

even in my imagination, that I would become mad. I leaped

night.

forward, circling the pillar. Just as quickly I circled the pillar on the right: she had disappeared, but I couldn’t

I was not yet on my feet, still groping on my knees,

believe it. I was left crushed before the door, and was just

when she returned. She raged in a rasping, impossible

sinking into despair when, on the other side of the

voice, yelling at the sky, her arms flailing the air in horror:

boulevard, I caught sight of the domino hidden in the shadows. Madame Edwarda was standing straight, yet still

‘I’m suffocating!’ she screamed. ‘But you, you fake priest, I SHIT ON YOU . . .

senseless, before a café terrace closed for the night. I crept

‘The broken voice ended in a sort of death rattle, her

towards her: she seemed out of her mind, a creature from

outstretched hands reached out to grab my throat − and

another world, and, in those streets, less than a phantom,

she collapsed.

less than a lingering mist. She withdrew softly before me until she stumbled into a table on the empty terrace.

Like an earthworm cut by a spade, she writhed on the ground, shaken by breathless spasms. I bent over her and

tore the lace from the mask; she had bitten it off and was

III

tearing at it now with her teeth. Her thrashing had left her naked to her bush: her nudity now had the absence of

The consciousness of this wound, when, during that night,

meaning − and at the same time the excess of meaning − of

I knelt down before Madame Edwarda, was no less clear

a death shroud. Strangest of all − and the most anguishing

nor less petrifying than it is now, in the hour when I write.

to me − was the silence which enclosed Madame Edwarda:

Her suffering was buried within me like the truth of an

no further communication of her suffering was possible,

arrow: I knew that she had pierced my heart, and that

and I let myself be absorbed into this absence of expression

death would follow. As I waited for nothingness, everything

− into this night of the heart that was no less of a desert

that continued to exist appeared as nothing more than the

nor less hostile than the empty void of the sky. The fish-like

dross over which my life lingers in vain. Confronted by so

flopping of her pale body, the primitive rage expressed on

black a silence, something leaped in the depths of my

her haggard face, burned the life in me until it was nothing

despair: the contortions of Madame Edwarda tore me out of

more than ashes, breaking it down till there was only

myself and flung me into a black beyond − mercilessly, the

disgust.

way one hands a condemned man over to the executioner.

(Let me explain myself. It is useless to dismiss it as

When, after an interminable wait, a man condemned to

ironic when I say of Madame Edwarda that she is GOD; but

death arrives in broad daylight at the very spot where the

to say that GOD is a public prostitute and mad − this makes

execution will be carried out, and he observes the

no sense at all. Strictly speaking, I’m happy for my sorrow

preparations, then his heart beats fit to bursting in his

to be an object of laughter: I will only be understood by

chest, and on his shrunken horizon each object, each face,

someone whose heart is wounded by an incurable wound,

takes on a weight of meaning that helps to tighten the

one that nothing, ever, will cure him of . . . And what man

noose from which there is no longer the time to escape.

who is wounded thus would ever consent to ‘dying’ of any

When I saw Madame Edwarda writhing on the ground, I

other wound?)

entered into a similar state of absorption, but the change that occurred within me did not enclose me: the horizon before which Madame Edwarda’s attack placed me was too elusive, like the object of my anguish; torn apart and broken down, I nevertheless felt a certain power stir within me − on the condition that, falling prey to the same sickness, I would despise myself. The vertiginous fall in which I had lost myself had opened onto a field of indifference; I no longer had either worries or desires, and

at the point I had reached, the parched ecstasy of my fever rose from the utter impossibility of halting my fall.

For a long while we remained sitting in silence, Madame Edwarda, the driver and I, motionless in our seats, as though the taxi were moving forward.

(Since it is necessary to lay myself bare here, it would

At last Edwarda spoke to me:

be deceiving to play with words, to borrow the clumsiness

‘Tell him to take us to Les Halles.’

of phrases. If no-one strips back what I say to its naked

I repeated her directions to the driver and we set off.

state, removing the dress and form, I shall have written in

He took us through dimly-lit streets. Calmly and slowly,

vain. It’s just as well, as I’ve already said, that my effort is

Madame Edwarda removed the lace of her domino, which

hopeless, or the light that dazzles me − which strikes me −

slipped to the floor of the taxi; she no longer had the mask

would only have blinded my eyes. Madame Edwarda is not

on, and she now removed the bolero, murmuring to herself

the phantom of a dream; the sweat of her body soaked my

in a low voice:

handkerchief: and to the point where, led by her, I arrived, I would like, in my turn, to lead you. This book has its secret: I cannot reveal it, but it is far from all words.) The crisis finally subsided. Her convulsions continued for a while, but they had no more fury: her breathing

‘Naked as a beast.’ She rapped on the glass partition to stop the taxi and got out. She walked round to the driver’s window, close enough to touch him, and said in a deadpan voice: ‘You see, I’m stark naked . . . Come.’

returned to normal, her features relaxed, and she was no

Without moving, the driver regarded this beast:

longer hideous. At the end of my strength, I lay down on

standing back, she raised her leg to show him her gash.

the street beside her for a while, covering her with my

Without a word and without hurrying, the man stepped out

jacket. She was not heavy, and I decided to carry her; a taxi

of his car. He was large and thick-set. Madame Edwarda

stand on the boulevard was not far away. She lay

wrapped herself around him, clamped her mouth over his,

motionless in my arms the whole way. The journey took me

and with one hand fumbled in his trousers. Unloosening

a while, however, and I had to pause and rest three times;

the belt, she pulled them down to his ankles and said:

nevertheless, she slowly came back to life, and by the time

‘Come into the car.’

we reached the stand she wanted to stand up. She took a step and swayed. I held her up, and supported by me she

He came and sat next to me on the back seat. Getting in

got into the taxi.

behind, she mounted the driver, slowly and sensuously,

In a weak voice she murmured:

and slipped him inside her with her hand. I remained still,

‘Not yet . . . tell him to wait.’

watching; her movements were deliberate and subtle, and

I asked the driver not to move; then, almost out of my

she visibly gained a heightened pleasure from them. The

mind with weariness, I climbed in and slumped down next

driver responded, heaving with all the brute strength of his

to her.

body. Born of the naked intimacy of these two beings, little

by little their embrace reached that point of excess where

me with the exhausting sensation of witnessing a miracle.

the heart fails. The driver fell back, panting, and I turned

My own distress and fever seemed paltry in comparison −

on the overhead light in the taxi. Madame Edwarda was

yet that was all I had, the only emotions within me that

sitting upright astride the worker, her head thrown back,

could respond to the ecstasy of the one who, in the depths

her hair hanging down her back. Supporting her by the

of an icy silence, I called ‘my heart’.

nape of her neck, I looked into her blank eyes. She pressed

She was seized by some final shudders, but gently, and

against the hand that held her, and the tension thickened

her sweat-covered body finally relaxed. In the back of the

her moan. For an instant her eyes lowered in their sockets,

taxi the driver was sprawled out, drained. I still held

and she seemed to be at ease. Then she saw me: from her

Madame Edwarda by her neck: the cock slipped out and I

stare, at that moment, I knew that she was coming back

helped her to lie down, wiping the sweat from her body. Her

from the realm of the impossible, and I felt, at the very

eyes dead, she let me do as I please. I had switched off the

bottom of her, a vertiginous fixed point. From its source in

light in the taxi, and she was half asleep now, like a child.

the root, the sap that was rising through her sprang out in

The same drowsiness must have come over us, Madame

her tears − tears that ran streaming from her eyes. Love, in

Edwarda, the driver and me.

those eyes, was dead; only a cold morning dawned in them, a transparency in which I read death. Everything was

(Continue? I meant to, but now I don’t care. I’ve lost

bound together in that dreaming stare: the naked bodies,

interest. I speak of what oppresses me at the moment of

the fingers that prised open her flesh, my anguish, and the

writing: will everything I’ve written seem absurd, or might it

memory of saliva on lips − nothing did not contribute to

make some kind of sense? I’ve made myself sick thinking

this blind slipping into death.

about it. I wake up in the morning the same way millions of others do, men and women, children and old men − their

Madame Edwarda’s orgasm − a fountain of living water,

slumbers dispelled forever . . . Myself and these millions,

flowing through her till it broke her heart – was strangely

does our awakening have a meaning? Perhaps a hidden

prolonged: that stream of sensual delight did not cease to

meaning? Hidden, obviously! But if nothing has any

glorify her being, make her nakedness more naked, or her

meaning, I’ve written in vain, and I’ll make my retreat with

lewdness more shameful. Her body, her ecstatic face, was

the help of sly tricks. I could let my grip go, of course, and

abandoned to an unspeakable cooing, and, in the midst of

sell myself to the absence of meaning: but that, for me −

her sweetness, there broke a twisted smile: she was there

and not the shadow of hope − is the executioner who will

with me in the parched depths of my soul, and from the

torture and kill me. But what if there is meaning? Certainly

depths of my sorrow I felt the torrent of her joy released.

I know nothing of it today. And tomorrow? What do I know

Yet my anguish refused the pleasure for which I should

of tomorrow! I cannot conceive of a meaning other than

have yearned: Madame Edwarda’s agonising pleasure filled

‘my’ own torture, and as for that − I know it well already!

But for now, at this moment, there is only nonsense, the absence of meaning. Monsieur Nonsense is writing, and he understands that he is mad: how appalling! But his madness, this nonsense − how ‘serious’, all of a sudden, it has become! Might that, precisely, be ‘meaning’? (No, Hegel has nothing to do with the ‘apotheosis’ of a mad woman.) My life has meaning only on condition that it is lacking one: but let me be mad! Let him understand me who can, let him understand me who is dying . . . Being is there, not knowing why it is, and left trembling in the cold; the immensity of the night surrounds it, and it is there precisely in order . . . ‘not to know’. But GOD? What have you to say, Monsieur Rhetorician, and you, Monsieur Believer? Would GOD, at least, know? GOD, if he ‘knew’, would be a pig.* O Lord (I call to you, in my distress, from ‘my heart’) deliver me, make them blind! The narrative, should I continue with it?) I’ve finished. From out of the slumber which, for a short time, left us asleep in the back of the taxi, I was the first to awaken, sick . . . The rest is irony, the long wait for death . . . − Madame Edwarda (1941)

*

I said: ‘GOD, if he ‘knew’, would be a pig’. He (I suppose, at that moment, he

would be unwashed, his hair unkempt) who would grasp this idea to its end − what would be human about him? Beyond everything . . . further, and further still . . . HIMSELF, in ecstasy above the void. And now? I tremble . . .

− Hans Bellmer, Madame Edwarda (1966)

NOTE Madame Edwarda was written by Georges Bataille in September 1941, during the darkest days of the Occupation of Paris, and appeared at the end of that year, under the pseudonym of Pierre Angélique, in an underground edition published by Éditions Solitaire. As a precautionary measure it was back-dated to 1937. Following the Liberation a second edition was issued by the same publisher in 1945, again backdated to 1942, and illustrated with thirty-one engravings attributed to Jean Perdu, a pseudonym for Jean Fautrier. A third edition, published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, appeared in 1956 under the same pseudonym, to which Bataille appended a preface in his own name. In 1966, four years after his death, a fourth edition, also published by Pauvert, and accompanied by twelve engravings by Hans Bellmer, finally appeared under Bataille’s own name. On its first publication the book was reviewed by Maurice Blanchot, who called it ‘the most beautiful narrative of our time’. Bataille himself called Madame Edwarda the ‘lubricious key’ to his war writings, and his return to it late in his life suggests the importance he accorded it in his oeuvre. It is possible to see in the character of Madame Edwarda a

− Eugène Atget, Porte Saint-Denis (c. 1920)

composite figure in which Bataille brought together several women dear to him: Violette, a young prostitute with whom he had fallen in love in 1931, and whose release from her brothel he had tried, in vain, to purchase; Laure, the dark sovereign who had reigned over his pre-war years, and who had died of tuberculosis in 1938; Angela of Foligno, the thirteenth-century Italian mystic whose ecstatic account of the theopathic state informed so much of Bataille’s vocabulary here; and Madeleine, an ecstatic at the Salpêtrière to whom the psychologist Pierre Janet, Bataille’s one-time collaborator before the war, had

dedicated his most famous study, De l’angoisse à l’extase. When Bataille came to write a preface to his narrative, however, some fifteen years after its first publication, it was to a famous passage in the preface to Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes that he turned for his epigraph. Beyond the particularity of its human

elements,

the

shared

language

of

its

textual

antecedents, it is the figure of consciousness Hegel describes in this passage that Bataille sought to embody in the character of Madame Edwarda: a figure which, in Hegel’s words, ‘attains its truth only when it finds itself in absolute laceration’, when the life of the spirit ‘contemplates the negativity of death face to face and dwells with it’.

Back cover: ‘The Sorcerer’, c. 13,000 B.C. Rock painting and engraving. Caverne des Trois Frères, Montesquieu-Avantès, Ariège.