G. Bataille - Madame Edwarda

MY MOTHER A iso by Georges Bataille L'Abbe C (fictio n) Blue of N oon (fict io n)

MADAME EDW ARDA THE DEAD MAN

Lireraru re and Evil (cri tic ism) Sto ry of the Eye (fictio n w ith essays by Susa n So ntag and Rol and Barthes) Eroticis m (phi losophy)

Georges BATAILLE Trans lated by Au stryn Wai nho use with essays by Yukio Mi shima and Ken Hollings

MA R I ON

BOYARS

L O ND ON · N E W Y ORK

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PREFACE

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eath is the most terrible of ail things ; and to maintain its works is what requires the greatest of ail strength. Hegel

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he author of this book has himself insisted upon the gravit y ofwhat he has to say". Nonetheless, it would seem adv isable to underscore the seriousness of it, if only beca use of the widespread custom of making light of those writings that deal with the subj ect ofsexuallife. Notthat 1 hope-orintend to try - to change anything in customs that prevail. But 1 invite the reader of this preface to turn his thoughts for a moment to the attitude traditionally observed towards pleasure (which , in sexual play, attains a wild intensity, an insanity) and towards pain (finall y assuaged by death, of course, but which, before that, dying winds to the highest pitch). A combination of conditions leads us to entertaina picture of.mankind as it ought to be, and in that picture man appears at no less great a remove from extreme pleasure as from extreme pain: the most ordinary social restrictions and

.. Bataille wrote Madame Edwarda under the pseudon ym, Pierre Angélique. See publisher's not e.

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prohibition s a re, with eq ua l force, aimed so rne agai ns t sexu al life, so rne agains t d eath , with th e result that eac h ha s co me to comprise a sa nc tified dorn ain ça sa cred area wh ich lies under religiou s jurisdi ct ion . The g reate r diffi culties began whe n th e proh ibition s co nnec ted with th e circ ums ta nces a tte nd ing th e dis appea rance of a per sori's life were alone all owed a se rio us cha racte r, whilst th ose tou ching th e circ u rns ta nces wh ich surro und th e co m ing into bein g ofl ife - th e en tirety of ge n ita l ac tivity - tend ed to be tak en un seriou sly. It is not a prot est agains t th e profound ge ne ra l inclination th at 1 h av e in mind: thi s inclination is a no ther expression of th e hum an d estiny whi ch would mak e man 's rep rodu cti ve organs th e object of lau ghter. But this lau ght er , wh ich accentuates th e pleasurepa in op pos ition (pain a nd d eath merit respect, wh ereas pleasure is d eri sory, d eserving of co n te m p t), al so und ers cores th eir fund am ental kin ship. M an ' s rea ction has cea sed to bet oken respect : his lau ghter is th e sign of aversion , of horror . Laughter is th e .com prom ise a ttit ude man a dop ts wh en confro n ted by so me th ing whose a p pe a ra nce repels h im , but whi ch a t th e sam e tim e does not strike him as pa rti cularl y g rave. And thus whe n ero ticism is considered with g ravity, conside red tragi call y, thi s re presen ts a complet e reversai of th e ordi nary situation. 1 wish right away ta mak e clear th e total futility of th ose often-re peated st at ern ents to th e effec t that sex ual prohibition s boil d own to no mor e th an prejudices which it is high tim e we ge t rid of. The shame, the mod esty se nsed in con nec tion w ith th e stro ng se nsatio n of pl easure, would be, so th e a rg ume n t runs, mere proofs of backwardness a nd uni nt elligen ce. Whi ch is th e eq uiva len t of saying th at we oug h t to undertake a th orou gh hou secl eaning, se t fire to our h ou se a nd tak e to th e woo ds, returning to th e good old d a ys of a nimalis rn, of d evouring whoever we please a nd wha teve r ord ures . Whi ch is th e eq uivalent of forgetting that wh at we cali humanity, rnankind, is the direct result of poign ant , indeed violen t impulses, a lte rnately of revulsion a nd a t tra c-

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tion , to whi ch se nsibility a nd in tel lige nce a re insep arably a ttached . But without wishing in a ny sense ta gainsay the laugh ter th at is roused by th e ide a or s pec tacle of indecency, we . ma y legitimately re turn - pa rt iall y ret u rn - to a n. a ttitude wh ich ca me to be thrOugh th e operatio n ofla ug h ter. 1t is indeed in laughter th at we find th e j us tifica tion for a for m of castigat ion , of obloquy. Laughter launch es us alo ng th e path th a t leads to th e tr ansform in g of a prohibition 's prin cipl e, of necessary and m and atory d écen cies, into an iron- clad hyp ocrisy, into a la ck of und erst anding or a n un willin gn ess to und erst and wh at is in volved . Extrerne licen ce wedded with a joking mood is accom pa nied by a refusai to tak e th e und erl yin g truth of ero ticis m se rious ly: by seriously 1 m ean tragicaLIy. 1 sho uld like to mak e this prefa ce th e occasion o f à pathetic ap pea l (in th e stron gest se nse); for , in this little book , eroticis m is plainly sh own as o pe ning directly ou t up on a certain vista of a ng u ish, up on a certain la cer a ting consciousness ofdis tress . Not th at 1 think it surprising tha t, most often, th e mind sh u ts itself off to this di stress a nd to itseIf, and so ta speak turnin g its ba ck , in its st ub bornness becom es a ca rica ture ofi ts own truth , Ifman nee ds lies . . . why , th en let ma n lie. Ther e are, afte r a il, men eno ug h who are proud to d rown th ernselves in th e indifferen ce of the anony mous rnass .. . But th ere is al so a will , with its puissant and wonderful qu alities, to ope n wid e th e eyes , ta see for th rightly a nd fully whatis happening, what is. And th ere would be no kn owing wh at is h appening if one wer e ta kn ow nothing of th e extre me st pleasure, if o ne kn ew nothing of extrernest pain . No t let us be clear on th is. Pi erre Angéliq ue is ca re ful to say so: we kn ow nothing, we a re sunk in the d ep th s ofig no ra nce's d arkn ess, But we.can at least see wh a t is d eceivi ng us, wh a t di verts us fro m kn owl ed ge of o ur di str ess, from kn owin g, mor e precisely, that j oy is th e sarn e thing as suffering, th e sa me thing as d ying, as d eath . Wh at th e h earty laugh, screens from us, wh a t fet ch es up th e

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bawdy j est , is the id entity that exists bctwcen the utmost i pleasure and the utmost in pain: the identity between bein and non-being, between th e living and the death-strickci being, between the knowledge which brings one before thi. dazzling realization and d efinitive, concluding darkness. To be sure, it is not impossible that this truth itself evo kes a final laugh; but o ur laughter here is absolute, going far beyond scorn ing ridicule of som ething which may perhaps be repugnant, but disgust for which digs deep under our skin. If we are to follow a il th e way through to its last the ecstasy in whi ch we lose ourselves in love-play , we have go t constan tly to bear in mind wh at we set as ecs tasy' s immediate limit: horror. Not only ca n th e pain 1 or others feel, drawing me doser ta th e point wh er e horror will force me to recoil , enable me to rea ch th e sta te wh ere joy slips into delirium ; but when horror is un abl e to qu ell, to destroy the object that attracts, th en horror increases th e o bj ect' s power to charm. Danger paralyzes ; but , wh en not ove rpoweringly strong, danger ca n arouse d esire. We d o not attain to ecstasy save wh en before th e how ever remote prosp ect ofd eath, of tha~ whi ch destroys us. Man differs from animal in that he is able to experience certain se nsa tions th at wound and melt him to the co re . These sensation s va ry in keeping with th e individ ua land with his sp ecifi e wa y of living . But, for example, the sight ofbl ood, th e odor of vom it, whi ch a ro use in us the dread of death , sornetirnes introduce us into a kind of nauseous state whi ch hurts more crue lly than pain. Those sensations associated with th e s up reme giving- way, th e final colla pse, are unbearable. Ar e th ere not sorn e p ersons who daim to prefer d eath to tou ching a n eve n co m p letely harmless snake? There seems to exist a domain w he re d eath sig n ifies not on ly decease and di sappearan ce, but th e unbearable process by which we disappear despite ourselues and eve rything we ca n do , eve n though , at al! costs, we must not di sappear. It is precisely thi s despite ourselues, this at all costs which distinguish th e moment of

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«xtrcmc joy and of indescribable but mira culous ecstas y. If there is nothing that surpasses our pow ers and our nnderstanding, if we do not ackno wledge some th ing grea ter th an ourselves, g rea ter than we are despite ourseloes, some thing which at all costs must not be, th en we d o not rea ch th e insensate mom ent towards which we strive with ail that is in our power and whi ch at th e same time we exert ail our p ow er to stave off. Pleasure would be a puny a ffa ir were it not to inv olv e this leap , this staggering overshooting of the mark whi ch com mon sense fixes - a leap that is .not confined alone to sexual ecs tasy, on e thar is known also to the m ystics of vari ous reli gions , one that above ail Christian mystics expe rienced, a nd experienced in this same way. The act wh ereby being existe nce - is bestowed upon us is an unbearable surpassing of bein g, an a ct no less unbearable than that ofdying . And sirice , in d eath , bein g is taken away from us 'at th e sa me time it is give n us , we must seek for it in the feeling of d ying , in those unbearable moments wh en it seems to us that we are dying because th e existe nce in us , during th ese interludes, exists throu gh nothing but a susta inin g and ruin ou s excess , wh en the fulln ess of horror and that ofjoy co incide . Our minds' operations as weil never reach their final culm ina tio n save in ex cess . Wh at, leaving aside th e representation of excess , what does truth sig nify if we do not see th at which exceeds sight's pos sibilities, that which it is unbea rable to see as , in ecstasy, it is unbearable to know pleasure? what, if we do not think th at whi ch exce eds th ou ght's possibilities? . . 1 At th e furth er end of this patheti c m editation - whi ch , with a cry, undoes it self, unravelling to drown in selfrepudiation , for it is unbearable to its own self - we rediscover God . That is th e m eaning , th at is th e eno rm ity of thi s insensate - this mad - book : a book which lead s God up on the stage; God in th e plenitude of His a t t rib ute s; a nd this G od , for a il th at, is what? A public wh ore, in n o way different from any other public wh ore. But wh at my sticism co uld not

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say (at the moment it began to pronounce its message, it entered it - entered its trance), eroticism does say: God is nothing if He is not, in every sense, the surpassing ofGod: in the sense of common everyday being, in the sense of dread, horror and impurity, and, finally, in the sense of nothing ... We cannot with irnpuniry incorporate the very word into our speech which surpasses words, the word Cod; directly we do so, this word, surpassing itself, explodes past its defining, restrictive limits. That which this word is, stops nowhere, is checked by nothing, it is everything and, everywhere, is impossible to overtake anywhere. And he who so much as suspects this instantly falls silent. Or, hunting for a way out, and realizing that he seals himself aIl the more inextricably into the impasse, he searches within himself for that which, capable of annihilating him, renders him similar to God, similar to nothing." ln the course of the indescribable journey upon which this most incongruous of books invites us to embark, we may perhaps make a few more discoveries. For example, that, perchance, ofhappiness, of delight ... And here indeed joy does announce itself within the perspective of death (thus is joy made to wear the rnask of its contrary, grief). 1 am by no means predisposed to think that voluptuous pleasure is the essential thing in this world. Man is more than a creature limited to its genitals. But they, those inavowable parts of him, teach him his secret. 3 Since intense pleasure depends upon the presence of a deleterious vision before the mind's eye, it is likely that we will be tempted to try to slink in by sorne back way, doing our best to get atjoy by a route that keeps us as far away as possible from horror. The images which quicken desire or provoke the critical spasm are usually equivocal, louche: if it be horror, if it be death these images present, they always.present them guilefully. Even in Sade's universe, death's terrible edge is deflected away from the self and aimed at the partner, the victim, at the other - and,

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contradictorily, Sade shows the other as the most eminently delightful expression of Iife. The sphere of eroticism is inescapably plighted to duplicity and ruse. The object which causes Eros to stir cornes guised as other th an truly it is. And so it does appear that, in the question of eroticism, it is the ascetics who are right. Beauty they cali a trap set by the Devil: and only beauty excuses and reriders bearable the need for disorder, for violence and for unseemliness which is the hidden root oflove. This would not be the place to enter into a detailed discussion of transports whose forms are numerous and of which pure love slyly causes us ta experience the most violent, driving the blind excess of life to the very edge of death. The ascetic's sweeping condemnation, admittedly, is blunt, it is craven, it is cruel, but it is squarely in tune with the fear and trembling without which we stray farther and farther away from the truth darkness sequesters. There is no warrant for ascribing to sexual love a pre-eminence which only the whole oflife actually has, but, again, ifwe were to fail to carry the light to the very point where night falls, how should we know ourselves to be, as we are, the offspring, the effect of being hurling itselfinto horror? ofbeing leaping headlong into the sickening emptiness, into the very nothingness which al ail costs being has got to avoid ... Nothing, certainly, is more dreadful th an this faIl. How ludicrous the scenes ofhell above the portals of churches must . seem to us! Hell is the paltry notion God involuntarily gives us ofHimself. But it requires the scale oflimitless doom for us to discover the triumph ofbeing-whence there has never lacked anything save consent to the impulse which would have been perishable. The nature of our being invites us of our own accord to join in the terrible dance whose rhythm is the one that ends in collapse, and which we must accept as it is and for what it is, knowing only the horror it is in perfect harmony with. If courage deserts us,' if we give way, then there is no greater torture. And never does the moment of torture fail to arrive: how, in its absence, would we withstand and overcome

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it? But the unreservedly open spirit - open to death, to torment, to joy - , the open spirit , open and dying, sufTering and dying and happy, stands in a certain veiled light: that light is divine. And the cry that breaks from a twisted mouth may perhaps twist him who utters it, but what he speaks is an immense alleluia, flung into end less silence, and lost there. Georges Bataille

~ADA~ E

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NOTES ON PREFACE

1 regret ha ving to add tha t thi s definition of being and of excess cannot repose upon a phil osophical basis, excess surpassin g any foundational basis: excess is no other than that wh ereby the being is firsti y and a bove ail else conveyed beyond ail circumscribing restrictions . Being is also, doubtless, su bject to certain other limits: wer e thi s not so, we should not be able to speak (1 too speak, but a s 1 spea k 1 d o not forget that not only will speech escape me, but that it is esca ping me now). These methodically arranged senten ces a re possibl e (in a large measure possible since excess is rather the exception th an the mie, since excess is th e ma rvellous, th e miraculous . . .; and excess designates the attractive, if not the horrible, attraction, if not horror designates every thing which is more than what is, than what exists), but their impossibility is also fund am ental. Thus : no tie ever binds me , never am 1 ens lave d , subjugated , 1 alw ays retain my sovereignty, a sovercignty only my death which will dem onstrate my inability to limit my self to being without excess - separa tes from me. 1 do not dec1ine, 1 do not challenge con sciousness, lacking which 1 cannot write, but this hand that writ es is dying from the death promised unto it as its own , this hand esca pes th e limits it acce p ts in writing (Iimits accepted by th e hand that writes, but refused by th e hand that dies ). 2 H ere then is the primary th eological attitud e which would be propounded by a man in whorn laughter is illumination and who disdains to impose limits, or to accept them : he who knows not what a limit is. 0 mark th e day when you read by a pebble offire, you who hav e waxed pal e over the text s of the philosophers! How may he express himself who bids these voices be still , unless it be in a way that is not con ceivabl e to th em? 3 1 could also point out, rnor eover , that excess is th e very prin cipl e and engine of sexua l reprodu ction : ind eed, divine Prooidence willed that ·in its work s its secret remain impenetrable! Were it th en possible to sp ar e man nothing? The sa mc day when he perceives

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that the ground he stands on has fallen out from under his feet, he is told that it has been prooidentially removed! But would he hav e issue of his blasphemy, it is with blasphemy, it is in spitting defiance upon his own limitations, it is with blasphemy in his mouth that he makes himselfGod.

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nguish only is sovereign absolute. The sovereign is a king no more : it dwells low-hiding in big citie s. It knits itself up in silence, obscuring its sorrow . Crouching thi ck-wrapped , there it waits, lies waiting for the advent of him who shall strike a general terror; but meanwhile and even 50 its sorrow scornfull y mo cks at ail that co rnesto pass, at ail ther e is.

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here - 1 had come to a street corner - there a foul dizzying anguish got its na ils into me (perhaps because l'd been staring at a pair offurtive whores sneaking down the stair of a urinal). A great urge to heave myself dry always comes over me at such moments. 1 feel 1 have got to make myself naked , or strip naked the whores 1 covet: it's in stale fleshs tepid warmth 1 always suppose l'Il find relief. But this time 1 soothed my guts with the weaker remedy: 1 asked for a pernod at the co unter, drank the glass in one gulp, and then went on and on, from zinc counter to zinc counter, drinking un til ... The night was done falling. 1 began to wander among those streets - the propitious on es - which run between the Boulevard Poisonnière and the Rue Saint-Denis. Loneliness and the dark strung my drunken excitement tighter and tighter. 1 wanted to be laid as bare as was the night there in those empty streets: 1 slipped off my pants and moved on, carrying them draped over my arm. Numb, 1 coasted on a wave ofoverpowerinp freedom , 1 sensed that l'd got bigger. In my hand 1 held my straight-risen sex. (The beginning is tough . My way of telling about these things is raw. 1 could have avoided that and still made it sound plausible. 1t would have seemed 'likely' , detours would have been to my advantage. But this is how it has to be, there is no beginning by scuttling in sidewise. 1 continue . . . and it gets tougher.)

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Not wanting trouble, 1 got back into my pants and headed toward the Mirrors. 1 entered the place and found myself in the light again . Amidst a swarm of girls, Madame Edwarda, naked, looked bored to death. Ravishing, she was the sort 1 had a taste for. So 1 picked her. She came and sat down beside me. 1 hardly took the time to reply when the waiter asked what it was to be, 1 clutched Edwarda, she surrendered herself: our two mouths met in a sickly kiss . The room was packed with . men and women, and that was the wasteland wh ere the game was played. Then, at a certain moment, her hand slid , 1 burst, suddenly, like a pane of glass shattering, flooding my clothes. My hands were holding Madame Edwarda's buttocks and 1 felt her break in two at the same instant: and in her starting, roving eyes, terror, and in her throat, a long-drawn whistled rasp. Then 1 remembered my desire for infamy , or rather that it was infamous 1 had at ail costs to be. 1 made out laughter filtering through the tumult of voices, of glare, of smoke. But nothing mattered any more . 1 squeezed Edwarda in my arms; immediately, icebound, 1 felt smitten within by a new shock. From very high above a kind of stillness swept down upon me andfroze me. It was as though 1 were borne aloft in af1ight of headless and unbodied angels shaped from the broad swooping of wings, but it was simpler th an that. 1 became un happy and felt painfully forsaken, as one is when in the presence of GOD. It was worse and more of a letdown chan too much to drink. And right away 1 was filled with unbearable sadness to think that this very grandeur descendingupon me was withering away the pleasure 1 hoped to have with Edwarda. 1 told myselfl was being ridiculous. Edwarda and 1 having exchanged not one ward, 1 was assailed by a huge uneasiness . 1 couldn't breathe so much as a hint of the state 1 was in, a wintry night had locked round me . Struggling, 1 wanted to kick the table and send the glasses flying, to raise the bloody roof, but that table wouldn't budge, it must have been bolted

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to the floor. 1 don't suppose a drunk can ever have to face anything more comical. Everything swam out of sight. Madame Edwarda was gone, so was the room.

1 was pulled out of my dazed confusion by an only too human voice . Madame Edwarda's thin voice, like her slender body , was obscene: '1 guess what you want is to see the old rag and ruin,' she said. Hanging on to the tabletop with both hands, 1 twisted around toward her. She was seated, she held one leg stuck up in the air, to open her crack yet wider she used fingers to draw the folds of skin apart. And so Madame Edwarda's 'old rag and ruin' loured at me, hairy and pink, just as full of life as sorne loathsome squid. 'Why, ' 1 stamrnered in a subdued tone, ' why are you doing thar? ' 'Y ou can see for yourself, ' she said, 'l'm GaD.' 'l'm going crazy - ' 'Oh, no you don ' t, you've got to see, look .. .' Her harsh , scraping voice mellowed, she became almost childlike in order to say, with a lassitude, with the infinite smile of abandon : 'Oh, listen, fellow! The fun l've had ... ' She had not shifted from her po sition , her leg was still cocked in the air. And her tone was commanding: 'Come here.' 'Do you mean, ' 1 protested, 'in front ofail these people?' 'Sure,' she said , 'why not?' 1 was shaking, 1 looked at her: motionless, she smiled back so sweetly that 1 shook. At last , reeling, 1 sank down on my knees and feverishly pressed my lips to that running, teeming wound. Her bare thigh caressingly nudged my ear, 1 thought 1 heard a sound of roaring seasurge, it is the same sound you hear when you put your ear to a large conch shell. In the brothel's boisterous chaos and in the atmosphere of corroding absurdity 1 was breathing (it seemed to me that 1 was choking, 1 was flushed, 1 was sweating) 1 hung strangely suspended , quite as though at that same point we, Edwarda and l , were losing ourselves in a wind-freighted night, on the edge of the ocean. 1 heard another voice, a woman's but mannish . She was a

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robust and handsome person, respectably got up.'Well now, my children, ' in an easy, deep tone , 'up you go.' The second in commandof th e house collected my money. 1 rose and followed Madame Edwarda whose tranquil nakedness was already traversing the room . But this so ordinary pas sage between the close-set tables , through the dense press ofclients and girls , this vulgar ,ritual of'the lady going up' with the man who wants her in tow, was , at that mom ent, nothing short of an hallucinating sol ernniry for me: Madame Edwarda's sharp heels clicking on the tiled floor , the smooth advance of her long obscene body, the acrid smell 1 drank in , the smell of a woman in th e throes of joy, of that pale body ... Madame Edwarda went on ahead ofme, raised up unto the very clouds . . . The room 's noisyunheeding of her happiness , of the measured gravity of her st ep , was royal consecration and triumphal holiday: death itself was guest at the feast , was th ere in what whorehouse nudity terms th e pig-sticker's stab ...................................... .................... ............ . ~

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

..... ............ ... ................... ................ the mirrors wh erewith the room's wall s were everywhere sh eathed and the ceiling too , cast multiple reflections of an animal coupling, but, at each least mov ement, our bursting hearts wou Id strain wid e-open to welcome ' the emptiness ofh eaven.' Making that love liberated us at last. On our feet, we stood gazing soberly at each other: Madame Edwarda held me spellbound, nev er had 1 seen a prettier girl - nor one more naked. Her eyes fastened steadily upon me , she removed a pair ofwhite silk stockings from a bureau drawer, sh e sat on the edge of th e bed and drew them on. The delirious joy of being naked poss essed her: once again sh e parted her legs, opened her crack, the pungent odor of her flesh and mine commingled flung us both into the same heart's utter exhaustion. Sh e put on a white bolero, beneath a domino cloak she disguised her nak edness. The domino's hood cowled her head, a black velvet mask , fitted with a beard oflace, hid

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her face. So arrayed , she sprang away from me , saying: 'Now let's go.' 'Go? Do they let you go out?' 1 asked. 'Hurry up , fifi,' she replied gaily , 'you can 't go out undressed.' She tossed me my clothes and helped me climb into them, and as she did so, from her caprice, there now and then passed a sly exchange, a nasty little wink darting between her flesh and mine. We went down a narrow stairway, encountered nobody but the chambermaid. Brought toa hait by the abrupt darknessofthe street, 1 was startled to discover Edwarda rushing away, swathed in black. She ran , eluded me , was off, the mask she wore was turning her into an animal. Though the air wasn't cold , 1 shivered. Edwarda..something alien; above our heads, a starry sky, mad and void . 1 thought 1was going to stagger, to fall, but didn't, and kept walking.

At that hour of the night the street was deserted. Suddenly gone wild, mute, Edwarda raced on alone. The Porte Saint-Denis loomed before her, she stopped. 1 stopped too, she waited for me und erneath the arch - unmoving, exactly under the arch. She was entirely black , sim ply there, as distressing as an emptiness, a hole, 1 realized she wasn't frolicking, wasn't joking, and indeed that, beneath the garment enfolding her, she was mindless: rapt, absent. Then ail the drunken exhilaration drained out of me, then 1 knew that She had not lied, that She was GOD. Her presence had about it the unintelligible out-and-out simplicity of a stoneright in the middle of the city 1 had the feeling of being in the mountains at nighttime, lost in a lifeless, hollow solitude. 1 felt that 1 was free of Her - 1 was alone, as if face to face with black rock. 1 trembled, seeing before me what in al! thi s world is most barren , most bleak . In no way did the comic horror of my situation escape me: She , the sight of whom petrified me now, th e instant before had .. . And the transformation had occurred in the way something glides. In

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Madame Edwarda, grief - a grief without tears or pain had glided into a vacant silence. Nonetheless, 1 wanted to find out: this woman, so naked just a moment ago, who lightheartedly had cal!ed me 'fifi' . .. 1 crossed in her direction, anguish warned me to go no farther , but 1 didn't stop. Unspeaking, she slipped away, retreating toward the pillar on the left, Two paces separated me from that monumental gate, when 1 passed under the stone overhead , the domino vanished soundlessly. 1 paused, listening, holding my breath. 1 was amazed that 1 could grasp it ail so clearly: when she had run off 1 had known that, no matter what, she had had to run , to dash under the arch, and when she had stopped, that she had been hung in a sort oftrance, an absence, far out of range and beyond the possibility ofany laughter. 1 couldn't see her any longer: a deathly darkness sank down from the vault. Without having given it a second 's thought , l 'kn ew' that a season ofagony was beginning for me. 1 consented to suffer , 1 desired to suffer, to go farther , as far as the 'emptiness' itself, even were 1 to be stricken , destroyed, no matter. 1 knew , 1 wanted that knowing, for 1 lusted after her secret and did not for one instant doubt that it was death's kingdom. 1 moaned underneath the stone roof, then, terrified, 1 laughed: 'O r a l! men, the sole to traverse the nothingness of this arch!' 1 trembled at the thought she might fly, vanish forever . 1 trembled as 1 accepted that, but from imagining it 1 became crazed: 1 leaped to the pil!ar and spun round it. As quickly 1 circled the other pil!ar on the right: she was gone . But 1 couldn't believe it. 1 remained woestruck before the portal and 1 was sinking into the last despair when upon the far side of the avenue 1 spied the domino, immobile, just faintly visible in the shadow: she was standing upright, entranced still , planted in front ofthe ranged tables and chairs of a café shut up for the night. 1 drew near her : she seemed gone out of her mind, sorne foreign existence, the creature apparently ofanother world and, in the streets ofthis one, less

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than a phantom, less than a lingering mist. Softly she withdrew before me until in her retreat she touched against a table on the empty terrace . A little noise . As if 1 had waked her, in a lifeless voice she inquired: 'Where am I?'

Desperate, 1 pointed to the empty sky curved above us. She looked up and for a brief moment stood still, her eyes vague behind the mask, her gaze lost in the fields of stars. 1 supported her, it was in an unhealthy way she was clutching the domino, with both hands pulling it tight around her. She began to shake, to convulse. She was sufTering. 1 thought she was crying but it was as if th e world and the distress in her, strangling her, were preventing her from giving way to sobs. She wrenched away from me, gripped by a shapeless disgust; suddenly lunatic, she darted forward, stopped short, whirled her cloak high, displayed her behind, snapped her rump up with a quick jerk of her spine, then came back and hurled herself at me . A gale of dark savagery blew up inside her, raging, she tore and hammered at my face, hit with clenched fists, swept away by a demented impulse to violence. 1 tottered and fel!. She fled. 1 was still getting to my feet - was actually still on my knees - when she returned , She shouted in a raveled , impossible voice, she screamed at the sky and, horrified , her whirling arms flailing at vacant air: '1 can't stand any more,' she shrilled, 'but you, you fake priest. 1 shit on you-' That broken voice ended in a rattle, her outstretched hands groped blindly, th en she collapsed. Down, she writhed , shaken by respiratory spasms . 1 bent over her and had to rip the lace from the mask, for she was chewing and trying to swallow it. Her thrashings had left her naked, her breasts spilled through her bolero ... 1 saw her flat, pallid belly , and above her stockings , her hairy crack yawned astart. This nakedness now had the absence of meaning and at the same time the overabundant meaning of

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death-shrouds . Strangest ofall- and most disturbing- was the silence that ensnared Edwarda- owing to the pain she was in, further communication was impossible and 1 let myselfbe absorbed into this unutterable barrenness - into this black night hour of the being's core no less a desert nor less hostile than the empty skies. The way her body flopped like a fish, the ignoble rage expressed by the ill written on her features cindered the life in me, dried it down to the lees ofrevulsion. (Let me explain myself. No use laying it ail up to irony when Lsay of Madame Edwarda that she is GOD. But GOD figured as a public whore and gone crazy - that, viewed through the optic of 'philosophy,' makes no sense at ail. 1 don't mind having my sorrow derided if derided it has to be, he only will grasp me aright whose heart holds a wound that is an incurable wound , who never, for anything, in any way, would be cured ofit ... And what man, ifso wounded, wou Id ever be willing to 'die' of any other hurt?) The awareness of my irreparable doom whilst, in that night, 1 kneJt next to Edwarda was not less clear and not less imposing than it is now, as 1 write . Edwarda's sufferings dwelt in me iike the quick truth of an arrow: one knows it will pierce the heart, but death will ride in with il. As 1 waited for annihilation, ail that subsisted in me seemed to me to be the dross over which man's life tarries. Squaredagainst a silence so black, something leaped in my heavy despair's midst. Edwarda's convulsions snatched me away from my own self, they cast my life into a desert waste 'beyond', they cast it there carelessly, callously, the way one flings a living body to the hangman . ·A man condemned to die, when after long hours ofwaiting he arrives in broad daylight at the exact spot the horror is to be wrought, observes the preparations, his too full heart beats as though to burst; upon the narrow horizon which is his, every object, every face is clad in weightiest meaning and helps tighten the vice whence there is no time left hirn to escape. When 1 saw Madame Edwarda writhing on the pavement, 1

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entered a similar state of absorption, but 1 did not feel imprisoned by the change that occurred in me. The horizon before which Edwarda's sickness placed me was a fugitive one, fleeing like the object anguish seeks ta attain. Torn apart, a certain power wel1ed up in me , a power that would be mine upon condition 1 agreeto hate myself. Ugliness was invading all of me. The vertiginous sliding which was tipping me into ruin had opened up a prospect of indifference, of concerns, of desires there was no longer any question: at this point, the fever 's desiccating ecstasy was issuingout ofmy utter inability to check myself. (Ifyou have to lay yourselfbare, then you cannot play with words, trifle with slow-marching sentences. Should no one unclothe what 1 have said , 1 shal1 have written in vain. Edwarda is no drearn 's airy invention , the real sweat of her body soaked my handkerchief, so real was she that, led on by her, 1 carne to want to do the leading in my turn. This book has its secret, 1 may not disclose it. Now more words.)

Finally, the crisis subsided. Hel' convulsions continued a little longer, but with waning fury , she began ta breathe again, her features relaxed, ceased to be hideous. Drained entirely of strength, 1 lay ful1length down on the roadway beside her. 1 covered her with my clothing. She was not heavy and 1 decided to pick her up and carry her.. One of the boulevard taxi stands was not far away. She lay unstirring in my arms. It took time ta get there, thrice 1 had to pause and l'est. She came back to life as we moved along and when we reached the place she wanted to be set down . She took a step and swayed . 1 caught her, held her, held by me she got into the cab. Weakly, she said: ' ... not yet ... tell him to wait.' 1 told the driver to wait. Half dead from weariness, 1 climbed in too and slumped down beside Edwarda. For a long time we remained without saying anything. Madame Edwarda, the driver and 1, not budging in our seats,

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as though the taxi were rolling ahead. At last Edwarda spoke to me. '1 want him to take us to Les Halles.' 1 repeated her instructions to the driver, and we started off. He took us through dimly lit streets. Calm and deliberate, Edwarda loosened the ties of her cloak, it fell a wa y from her. She got l'id of the .rnask too , she removed her bolero and , for her own hearing, murmured : 'Naked as a beast. ' She rapped on the glass partition , had the cab stop, and got out. She walked round to the driver and when close enough totouch him, said: 'Vou see .. . l 'm bare-assed, Jack. Let's fuck. ' Unmoving, the .d river looked at that beast. Having backed off a short distance, she had raised her left leg , eager ta show him her crack . Without a word and unhurriedly, the man stepped out of the car. He was thickset, solidly built. Edwarda twined herself around him, fastened her mouth upon his, and with one hand scouted about in his underwear. 1t was a long heavy member she dragged through his fly. She eased his trousers down ta his ankles. 'C ome into the back seat, ' she told him. He sat down next to me. Stepping in after him, she mounted and straddled him. Carried away by voluptuousness, with her own hands she stuffed the hard stave into her hol e. 1 sat there, lifeless and watching: her slithering movements were slow and cunning and plainly she gleaned a nerve-snapping pleasure from them. The driver retaliated , struggling with brute heaving vigor; bred of their naked bodies' intimacy, little by little that embrace strained to the final pitch ofexcess at which the heart fails . The driver fell ba ck , spent and near to swooning. 1 switched on the overhead light in the taxi. Edwarda sat boit upright astride the still stiff member, her head angled sharply back, her hair straying loose . Supporting her nape, 1 looked into her eyes: they gleamed white. She pressed against the hand that was holding her up , the tension thickened the wail in her throat. Hel' eyes swung to rights and then she seemed to grow easy. She saw me , from her stare, then , at that moment, 1 knew she was drifting home from the 'impossible' and in her nether depths 1 could discern

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a dizzying fixity, The milky outpouring travelling through her, the jet spitting from the root, flooding her withjoy, came spurting out again in her very tears: burning tears streamed from her wide-open eyes. Love was dead in those eyes, they contained a daybreak aureate chill, a transparence wherein 1 read death's letters. And everything swam drowned in that dreaming stare: a long member, stubby fingers prying open fragile flesh , my anguish, and the recollection of scum-flecked lips- there was nothing which didn't contribute to that blind dyinginto extinction . Edwarda's pleasure - fountain ofboiling water, heartbursting furious tideflow -'- went on and on , weirdly, unendingly; that stream ofluxury, its strident inflexion, glorified her being unceasingly, made her nakedness unceasingly more naked, her lewdness ever more intimate. Her body, her face swept in ecstasy were abandoned to the unspeakable coursing and ebbing, in her sweetness there hovered a crooked smile: she saw me to the bottom of my dryness, from the bottom of my desolation 1 sensed her joy's torrent run free . My anguish resisted the pleasure 1 ought to have sought. Edwarda's pain-wrung pleasure filled me with an exhausting impression of bearing witness to a miracle. My own distress and fever seerned small things to me. But that was what 1 felt, those are the only great things in me which gave answer to the rapture of her whom in the deeps of an icy silence 1 called 'my heart'. Sorne last shudders took slow hold of her, then her sweatbathed frame relaxed - and there in the' darkness sprawled the driver, felled by his spasm. 1 still held Edwarda up, my hand still behind her head, the stave slipped out, 1 helped her lie down, wiped her wet body. Her eyes dead, she offered no resistance. 1 had switched off the light, she was half asleep, like a drowsy child . The same sleepiness must have borne down upon the threeofus, Edwarda, the driver and me . (Continue? 1 meant to. But 1 don 't care now . l've lost interest. 1 put down what oppresses me at the moment of writing: 'Would it all be absurd? Or might it make sorne kind ofsense? l've made myselfsick wondering about it. 1 awake in the morning - just the way millions do, millions of boys and

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girls , infants and old men, their slumbers dissipated forever . . . These millions, those slumbers have no meaning. A hidden meaning? Hidden, yes, 'obviously'! But ifnothing has any meaning, there's no point in my doing anything. l'Il beg off. l'Il use any deceitful means to get out ofit, in the end l'Il have to let go and sell myself to meaninglessness, nonsense: that is man's killer, the one who tortures and kills, not a glimmer of hope left. But ifthere is a meaning? Today 1 don't know what it is. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, who can tell? Am 1 going then to find out what it is? No, 1 can't conceive ofany 'meaning' other than ' my' anguish, and as for that, 1 know al! about it. And for the time being: nonsense. Monsieur Nonsense is writing and understands that he is mad . It's atrocious . But his madness, this meaninglessness - how 'serions' it has become aIl ofa sudden! - might that indeed be 'rneaningful'? [No, Hegel has nothing to do with a maniac girl's 'apotheosis' .] My life only has a meaning insofar as 1 lack one : oh, but let me be mad! Make something ofaIl this he who is able to, understand it he who is dying, and there the living 'self is, knowing not why, its tee th chattering in the lashing wind: the immensity, the night engulfs it and, aIl on purpose, that living selfis therejust in order. . . 'not to know'. But as for GOD? What have you got to say, Monsieur Rhetorician? And you, Monsieur Godfearer? - GOD, if He knew, would be a swine. * 0 Thou my Lord [in my distress 1 cali out unto my heart], 0 deliver me, make them blind! The .storv - how shall 1 go on with it?) But 1 am done. From out of the slumber which for so short a space kept us in the taxi , 1 awoke, the first to open his eyes ... The rest is irony, long, weary waiting for death ...

• 1 said ' GOD, if He knew wou Id be a swine.' He (He would 1 suppose be, at that particular moment, somewhat in disorder, his peruke would sit ail askew) would entirely grasp the idea . . . but what would there be of the human about him? Beyond, beyond everything ... and yet farther, and even farther still . . . HIMSELF, in an ecstasy, above an emptiness ... And now? 1 TREMBLE.