Collected Poems of Georges Bataille

As in his erotic novels, much of Georges Bataille's poetry affirms his basic worldview of "negative theology". Obsessed with the duality of "sacred" versus "profane" he elevates acts of depravity and desecration to holy status. Believing that willfully violating taboos will give him access to the holy, he handily breaks the taboos in his erotic writing. His collected poems run from the philosophical, to the mildly erotic, to explicit, to scatological and finally to downright blasphemous. While the wide variety of poetry provides an insight into his personal beliefs and history, because of this diversity, this collection is difficult to read more than a few poems at a time.

Consider several of his erotic poems:

Mademoiselle My Heart

Mademoiselle my heart
placed naked in lace
with a perfumed mouth
pee flowing down her legs

The cosmic scent of her slit
is left to the heavenly wind

a cloud
in the head

is reflected in reverse
a marvelous star
falls
heart crying like a mouth

the heart fails
a lily is burning
throat opened by the sun.

This is fairly mild as erotic poems go, with several stunning phrases. "The cosmic scent of her slit / is left to the heavenly wind" is stunning, yet juxtaposed against the "…pee flowing down her legs" seems strangely out of place. Another of his poems is a bit more graphic:

I Place My Cock…

I place my cock against your cheek
the tip brushes your ear
lick my balls slowly
your tongue is soft like water

your tongue is as raw as a butcheress
it is as red as a leg of lamb
its tip is a coo-coo bird crying out
my cock sobs with saliva

your bottom is my goddess
it opens like your mouth
I worship it like the sky
I venerate it like a fire

I drink from your gash
I spread your naked legs
I open them like a book
where I read what kills me.

While these poems, which appear early in the collection, do not tread on many taboos, further into the collection the poems get more scatological and blasphemous. Much of these more intense poems grew out of the same obsessions that he detailed so graphically in his erotic novels: Story of Eye and Blue of Noon. When Bataille was born, his father was already blind from syphilis and as time passed the disease worsened. Bataille was forced to tend to his increasingly invalid father, including aiding him in all manner of bodily functions. As detailed in the afterward to Story of Eye:

"Since he could not see anything, his pupils very frequently pointed up into space, shifting under the lids, and this happened particularly when he pissed. Furthermore, he had huge, ever-gaping eyes that flanked an eagle nose, and those huge eyes went almost entirely blank when he pissed…" "In any case, the image of those white eyes from that time was directly linked, for me, to the image of eggs, and that explains the almost regular appearance of urine every time eyes or eggs occur in the story."

While the obsession with eyes and eggs are not as prevalent in his poetry, Bataille's obsession with urine is clearly evident. In fact he titled one poem Pee:

Pee

Magpie devouress of stars
fatigue devouress of earth
the exhaustion of all

rapacious sky
cursed sky
patron of the hospital

a raven on stilts
goes into the eye

flaming ruby heart
pee on my naked thigh
shiny wet behind
I get hard and I cry

black wing of the grave
politeness of the crypt.

While the eye is also mentioned in this poem, it does not become an un-socketed object of sexual play as it does in Story of Eye. In addition to urine, Bataille includes other bodily fluids in his poems:

from The Washing

The dead sun was illuminating the hairy shadow
with a trail of bitter sperm
the head of your tongue with eyes of blood


swollen like a dick my tongue
in your throat of pink love.

My vulva is my butchery
red blood awash in sperm
sperm swimming in blood.

Although, some of the poems get lost in the fluids and his odd and sometimes incomprehensible philosophical rhetoric, others are nicely uncomplicated and humorous:

The Bald Man

Your penis-hole is the laughter
and its balls are the dawn.

Mildly amusing in the above poem, this poem is within a page or two of his profane and arguably blasphemous "Solitude":

Solitude

Thumb in cunt
Eucharist upon your naked breasts
my ass soils the altercloth
my mouth implores Oh Christ
the charity of your thorn.

This poem, and it is not the worst, comes from a man who after converting to Catholicism at 17, aspired to be a priest, attending a year as a seminarian. Though he continued to believe in the Church, his "negative theology" somehow gave him free reign in his writing:

The Church

Icy winter wind
oh my dying sister
gleam of wolf bite of hunger
frozen stone flush against the naked heart

ah indifferent spit
ah sky insulting to all hearts
ah cold emptier than death.

Georges Bataille was never recognized as a major figure of the twentieth century avant-garde. It was not until after his death that he was recognized for his, now classic, erotic novels and for his philosophy. He was a disciple of the Marquis de Sade and friends with many "dissident Surrealists". Though better known for his prose, Bataille's poetry offers a wide range of profane eroticism that, while at times is pleasing, often seems shockingly obscene. The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille is available new from Amazon. com.

from Night is My Nudity

Night is my nudity
Stars are my teeth
I hurl myself among the dead
dressed in white sun.

Death lives in my heart
like a little widow
she sobs she is cowardly

I am afraid I could vomit
the widow laughs herself to the sky
tearing open the birds.


References

1.Wolin, Richard "The Story of I, Unearthing Georges Bataille", www. bookforum.com/wolin.html Wolin, Rich