Reviews

Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille

art_humaniser's review against another edition

2.0

The act of sex, depending on whom you're speaking changes its interpretation. For some, it's an animalistic craving for pleasure, for others maybe a metaphorical exploration of death. However, in the name of philosophical inquiry, I don't have the appetite to see gullible lives as meaningless shreds of meat.

tristansreadingmania's review against another edition

4.0

“And it struck me that death was the sole outcome of my erection, and if Simone and I were killed, then the universe of our unbearable personal vision was certain to be replaced by the pure stars, fully unrelated to any external gaze and realizing in a cold state, without human delays or detours, something that strikes me as the goal of my sexual licentiousness: a geometric incandescence (among other things, the coinciding point of life and death, being and nothingness), perfectly fulgurating.”

There’s something to be said for perusing Monsieur Bataille’s notorious erotic fantasy surrounded by half-naked bodies gleefully committed to a ballet of water play underneath a scorching sun on the Côte d’Azur coast while munching on a hard-boiled egg. Do try it if you can, it is extraordinarily singular as far as experiences go.

Anyway. As can be inferred from the title, and in the knowledge one is dealing with a work of pornography, it is to be expected that a perverse obsession with a peculiarly specific piece of the human anatomy is given voice to. Perhaps a random choice at first, but making a lot more sense once you know some background, which I'll comment on later.


Illustration for rare French edition, Hans Bellmer

Following a cast of intrepid teenaged explorers of the realm of the transgressive, the reader of Histoire de l’Oeil (1928) is being taken on a delirious journey of childlike abandonment dotted with a healthy amount of bizarre, seemingly haphazard imagery and libertine degeneracy, to watch it all culminate in one act of abject, supreme wickedness from which there is no coming back. Specifics on what those acts constitute exactly, you can find in other reviews if so desired. I see no need to detail them here, for they in themselves really aren’t the point, but mere vehicles for conveying larger concepts.

Indeed, staring oneself blind on them would form a quite superficial reading of the text, and does it quite the disservice to my mind. I know this, because initially I was guilty of it myself. Mea culpa. The subtext, the philosophical underpinning someway, somehow escaped my notice, hidden as it was beneath the various, lurid descriptions of the pleasures of the flesh. In the spirit of full transparency I here offer the brief thoughts that I, in a state of slight disappointment scribbled down just moments after finishing the novella:

“While mildly amusing at times for its sheer outrageousness, this comes across as a rather pointless exercise, painfully juvenile even. Not much there in terms of substance. It feels more of a prelude to a larger work, ending doesn’t satisfy at all. Of all literary genres, surely you’d not be unreasonable in expecting a piece of pornography to at the very least furnish a big finish.”

Quite embarassing, yes. I suspect flying through it at such blinding speed caused me to not "get it" at first. At least, not until after devouring the extensive supplementary material ( the author’s afterword, two excellent essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes), and reserving some time to digest it all while laying alone on my back in a placid pool at 7 am, staring in quiet rumination at a bloody red sun. Only then did it dawn on me what Bataille was going for. Or did it?

There lies merit in the attempt, or so they say, so here goes. To me his novella (its authorship of which only became known 5 years after Bataille's death) portrays the quest for the furthering, indeed, the deepening, of human experience. Any experience, with as its final goal to arrive at a whole different conception of what is human. Radical freedom is what it represents, freedom from - and to do - anything. No constrictions, no boundaries, no heed given to those "pesky morals of decent society”.

Yet Bataille is being clever about how to present this implicitly frightening concept. By taking teenagers as his main protagonists, who can’t fully break out of their constraining mold in an intellectual fashion just yet, but can do carnally on a purely instinctive basis, he illustrates this concept in visually striking ways, instead of bogging the narrative down with tedious philosophizing. It just so happened that this genre was the appropriate one for his aim to succeed. Intentionally crafting a piece of pornography to merely titillate an audience I don’t believe ever was a consideration of his, or at least not the main one.

More interesting though, is that he doesn’t even particularly condone this enterprise of wild, erotic experimentation. On the contrary, it’s clear he considers it to be fraught with dangers for its participants, and naturally it is also ruinous to others if pushed too far. Some who do enter this perilous arena just can’t handle it, go mad from it, often ending up as a suicide, a lot that tragically befalls one of the characters in the book.

Conventions exist for a reason, and only a precious few have the strength of will to remain in control, he seems to say. Far from a puritan (for obvious reasons), but an advocate of boundless anarchy he isn’t at all either. More of a jester perhaps, just tempting you, inviting you to join the game, but to then suddenly pull the rug out from under your feet, revealing a gaping abyss below.

The iconography and use of metaphor is worth commenting on here. It’s not just eyes that are the focus of sexually perverse obsession here, but really any globular object, such as an egg or a bull’s testes, which are to be fondled, inserted in various orifices, digested. The latter are of course primarily associated with reproduction, with birth, and thus sex. The frequent, compulsive urinating as a way of sexual gratification is to be linked to Bataille’s blind syphilitic father (the story of which he relates in his afterword), who because of his excruciating condition often had to urinate in public. When doing so, his milky eyes would often stare vacantly in the air above. The inclusion of these acts of urination clearly was a way of metamorphosing this painful personal memory into an almost playful erotic fantasy, turning it from something embarrassing into something jubilant. Birth, sex, death, the intimate relationship between them, these three core themes absolutely infuse the work.

Perhaps paradoxically, to Bataille eroticism, when given full dominion, can only end in death, while the threat of death simultaneously reinforces, makes ever more alluring, that very same erotic impulse. Sex in this book isn’t sexy, but a dirty, lethal contagion. Can it then still be called a work of pornography and judged on those terms?

As is probably abundantly clear by now, The Story of the Eye remains a puzzling mystery, probably forever unsolved. Is its message, if any, one of joyous liberation or one of profound pessimism? I’m honestly not certain. It can very well be both. I do know one thing though, which is that me and Bataille are not done yet. It'll be a most glorious madness for sure.

So thank you, Georges. Now I’ll never look at eggs the same way again. Bravo. The contagion has been passed along with inordinate succes.

alexslebooks's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Truly bizarre 😂 but interesting given its context and being written in the 1920’s

seabroom's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, Excrement, and Sexual content

ionm's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

An orgy of piss, semen, blood and vomit awaits the reader in "Story of the Eye" by Georges Bataille. The most erudite pornographic work of literary art is a graphic exploration of sexual desire in the absolute, rich in its obscenity and shock value. Its artistry is not in the raw depiction of sex, but rather in its hidden meaning, overtly described by the title. This is the story of the birth, development, transgression and ultimate death and rebirth of the Eye, a potent metaphor for existence, and possibly art itself.

Bataille narrates the story from the perspective of a male teenager discovering all aspects of sexuality with his friend Simone. Together they use sex as a narcotic to define their reason for being. Each experience takes them from innocence to murder and defilement, without ever bearing any consequences for their actions, for, ultimately, they are the gods in charge of their sexual universe, at the centre of which, through a sequence of metamorphoses, we find the everlasting Eye, ever perpetuating, ever changing, and forever the unspoken object of ultimate desire.

In his essay, "The Metaphor of the Eye" (included in this edition), Roland Barthes traces the circular trajectory of the different states of the eye and the plethora of human fluids, to conclude that Bataille's novel is about the development of literature. Whereas convincing, Barthes fails to see that the same circularity can be extended to the entire concept of the development of human civilisation. The sexual acts are a third metaphor that triggers the constant cycle of birth and death with all its pleasure, purity and violence.

"Story of the Eye", born out of similes from the author's own upbringing (as we learn from Bataille's essays accompanying the novella), through the gutter of fifth, elevates itself into a parable that describes our society in the most original form.

Few may find this book tolerable (based on private taste and prejudice). Nonetheless, this is a masterpiece of Western literature that must be compulsory reading. To negate its role based on its pornographic content would be a failure of intellect. A key essay elaborating this point can be found in this book also, namely Susan Sontag's "The Pornographic Imagination". Analysing a number of key works of pornographic literature, of which "Story of the Eye" is "the most accomplished artistically" according to her, Sontag puts foreword a powerful defence towards accepting these types of work equally as any other forms of knowledge. Refusing to do so would make any other defence of knowledge-building a hypocritical act. 

rakhas's review against another edition

challenging dark funny reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

charhuyn's review against another edition

5.0

Incredibly erotic, lewd, and disturbing, yet at its core, not really about sex but rather as the erotic as literature, art, language, symbolism, combined with Freudian psychosexuality. A lot to digest and think about. Will not be reading again.

mentallyillescapist's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

stolb's review against another edition

4.0

Prefácio bem interessante, tendo o autor relatado algumas tristes experiências com o pai cego e paraplégico e sua mãe perdida.

Livro bem à frente do seu tempo, com cenários vampirescos e personagens depravados, mas enigmáticos.

ezrasupremacy's review against another edition

2.0

no idea what i just read, but the concept of this having been written in 1928 is honestly the only thing that makes it halfway interesting, if it had been written recently i would definitely not have stuck it through lmao