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Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
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Story of the Eye (original 1928; edition 2001)

by Georges Bataille (Author), Dovid Bergelson (Translator)

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2,398536,311 (3.53)90
Caligula: I want a bedtime story.
Georges Bataille: Okay ( )
1 vote shawndotbailey | Jan 11, 2022 |
English (46)  Spanish (2)  Dutch (1)  Hebrew (1)  French (1)  All languages (51)
Showing 1-25 of 46 (next | show all)
Before I read this work, I'd already read Bataille's "Erotism Death and Sensuality" (1957) ("EDAS") which amazed and confounded me. "Story of The Eye" ("SOTE") was written twenty-nine years before EDAS and yet the link between the two works is obvious. As other reviewers / critics have noted, it appears that Bataille ultimately derived his fully fleshed-out concepts (pun intended) from the ideas that are present in SOTE. This book ends up resembling a satire of pornography; it's so extreme as to be ridiculous. The reader is introduced to vaguely-sketched characters whose participation in drastic objectification overtakes their respective personalities. All of these "non-characters" are very young, precocious and seemingly lacking in innocence. They use each to other live out their fantasies, by means of bizarre fetishes, that fuel an ongoing excitement that inevitably doubles as torment. By doing so, the main players melt and meld into a Dionysian "oneness" where personality disappears and the reptile brain takes over. Within SOTE, the characters break away from the confines of any previous social conditioning. Nothing herein is appropriate; the artifice of civilized decorum plays no part in this work. The reader immediately becomes the "voyeur" in a world where behavior resulting from uninhibited sexual appetite can result in grave consequences -- Particularly within the context of transgression. In Closing: the moral of this story is: Since sexuality is amoral -- Anything goes. Although hopefully one can accept the fact that "anything goes" can be disgusting as well as inhuman. But to each his own: One man's / woman's revulsion is another's stimulation. ( )
  stephencbird | Sep 19, 2023 |
Even with the Barthes essay (read that first, and knowledge_lost's review below), this can't raise itself above "an edgy blogpost", which these days you'd expect if you asked GPT to write something to offend 4chan. The writing process must have been something similar: no real narrative, certainly no "erotica", just choose the next phrase on the basis of what would be most outrageous.

The Sontag essay adds little, as it's primarily about a different text (The Story of O) and most of its points just can't be applied to a text as fragmented as this one. ( )
  Andy_Dingley | Mar 30, 2023 |
I'll be the first to admit, I should have read a few reviews, and maybe the blurb again before picking up this book. It was only after I was finished, that I realized this author also write Mexican Gothic, which I did not totally enjoy, and that's on me.

What the blurb isn't telling you, is that this is a coming of age romance. The story is centered around Doctor Moreau's daughter, and her becoming a woman, and discovering the true nature of men in her life, and in general.

It took me a month to read it because at no point was any part of the plot drawing me forward. It was interesting to see this take on Doctor Moreau, and the author paints a beautiful world, with ties to real life troubles of the area in historical lights, but the plot did not have any hook.

The last 25% of the book is where the 'action' happens, but is more of reactions, which falls flat. There are great bones to this story, it just wasn't the adventure I had hoped for.

If you are looking for a coming of age story, with twists this is a book that you'll love. Especially if you are interest in historical fiction based in Mexico books.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing me with a copy of this book. ( )
  buukluvr | Feb 14, 2023 |
Essentially an edgy blogpost which probably served as blueprint for what was being posted on Tumblr around 2015. ( )
1 vote polusvijet | Jan 8, 2023 |
~ First buddy read with Raspberry

... I can't even. What the actual f**k is this?
This is a whole bunch of nonsense, if you want to know my humble opinion (I don't care if you don't, just sayin' lmao), PERIOD. I just need to sleep over it right now u.u ( )
  XSassyPants | Jun 11, 2022 |
I just don't know.
  zahli | Jan 23, 2022 |
Caligula: I want a bedtime story.
Georges Bataille: Okay ( )
1 vote shawndotbailey | Jan 11, 2022 |
English teacher said it was important to read the bible to understand european literature, especially if you're not religious. It's important to read story of an eye to understand french literature, especially if you're not into watersports ( )
  .json | Mar 21, 2021 |
Eyes, eggs, etc. ( )
  drbrand | Jun 8, 2020 |
Highly erotic at first, after several chapters it became merely tiresome until, finally, it was too gross even for me. ( )
  chaosfox | Feb 22, 2019 |
the tension i felt in my own body is what made this so wonderful. ( )
  adaorhell | Aug 24, 2018 |
Bataille realmente gostava de cus, fiquei esperando ele mencionar vaginas e nada por um bom tempo, só no meio da história finalmente apareceu uma vulva! Enfim, é um livro interessante, mas não causa o rebuliço filosófico que um Sade provoca por exemplo, mas a novela de Bataille é extremamente freudiana, fruto inclusive de um ano de terapia.
A edição da Cosac oferece incentivos a mais: Os excelentes textos do Apêndice: Michel Leiris faz uma análise biográfica da História do Olho, enquanto Roland Barthes faz uma análise linguística e Julio Cortázar fecha com uma poética crônica sobre os selins de bicicleta. Só faltou algum texto mais psicológico, psicanalítico que seja, muito embora o trecho “Reminiscências” já tenha uma veia psicológica o suficiente, mas algum texto do Michel Foucault sobre o Bataille também teria sido bem vindo.
( )
  Adriana_Scarpin | Jun 12, 2018 |
I've never been that interested in other people's dreams. Not that I think its good thing that I don't uh... give a shit. Is it a good thing to not care about people's idiosyncratic inner worlds, when it gets all surrealistic and magic and crazy and shit? And then giving it meaning. I know; weird, right?

It's like my brain goes... all conclusions: tenative. Await further confirmation. And then my mouth goes... yeah. that was weird. you're right. wow. interesting. you want me to talk about what I think eggs represent, ect? uh... sure.

BORED. so bored.

I think my update about 1/4 through the text put it better:
"So there is a lot of urine in this, and eggs. And milk. cum. organic fluids everywhere. I imagine that this would be a lot of fun for people who like to talk about "well what do you think X symbolized?" but I guess I am not one of those people"

Steph should totally read this; this was meant for her. She loves talking about dreams and Isms, and the raunchy bits will actually shock her. And she has all these issues about her past Catholicism. Man, I gotta give this to her now. ( )
  Joanna.Oyzon | Apr 17, 2018 |
This is a book that I sat down and read in one sitting, I was so engrossed. That being said, this book is not for the squeamish, and if you're looking for steamy erotic scenes, again, not for you. However, if you're interested in the study of psychosexuality and Freudian psychoanalysis, then I would take a gander at Bataille's fantasy on the constellation of sex and violence. The imagery is both wonderful and disturbing--perhaps more frequently the latter--but in all cases vivid, which makes Bataille, for me, one of the more interesting (and often maligned or neglected) intellects to come out of 20th century France. He definitely would need less Prozac than Sartre or Camus would were they all living in today's world. ;-) ( )
  anna_hiller | Jun 22, 2016 |
Ok, I did a little research on this one, and I get that there’s surrealism and symbolism here that some would argue border on brilliance, but the package they’re wrapped in is so unpleasant that I have no desire to dig deeper into it. Being made uncomfortable by literature is one thing (and by no means a bad thing) but being repulsed by it is another thing entirely. I’m not generally easy to offend, but I only finished this because it was so short. ( )
  AmandaL. | Jan 16, 2016 |
0.5 stars. Disgusting about sums it up ( )
  JenPrim | Jan 15, 2016 |
Georges Bataille’s 1928 novella Story of the Eye has often been read for the graphic details of an increasingly inexplicable adventures of a pair of teenagers and their sexual perversions. Narrated by an unnamed male in his late teens, the book tells the story of his passionate affair with Simone, his primary partner. Throughout the book their relationship involves other people including a mentally ill sixteen year-old girl and a voyeuristic English émigré aristocrat. To say this book is risqué might actually be an understatement, but is the book really about fornication?

With a little help from French literary theorist Roland Barthes and his accompanying essay “The Metaphor of the Eye”, I quickly discovered that Story of the Eye is far more complex than I originally thought. However if you do read Georges Bataille’s introduction before the book like I did you will discover a few titbits that help decipher the surrealist nature of the novella. In this introduction Bataille talks about his love/hate relationship with his father, a man who went blind on account of neurosyphilis. He shares a memory he remembers clearly in his head of his father urinating and the vacant look in his milky eyes.

The reason this story is important to Story of the Eye is because the novella often references urination and eyes in the midst of the sexual acts. As Barthes explains in his essay, “Although Story of the Eye features a number of named characters with an account of their sex play, Bataille was by no means writing the story of Simone, Marcelle, or the narrator”. The act of sex is often accompanied with some form of violence. The eyes, milk, urine can all be seen as a reference to his memory of his father and any reference to testicles and eggs could be interpreted as metaphors to the creation of life.

While Roland Bathes goes into a far deeper analysis of the metaphors found in Story of the Eye, a slight understanding of the content changes this books topic from sexual perversions to an angry rant directed towards Bataille’s father. There are other reference found in the novella that connect to his life; for example the priest. Georges Bataille went into the seminary in the hopes of becoming a priest, however he had to drop out to find a job to support his mother, killing his dream. A topic I believe is discussed in more detail in his non-fiction book Eroticism.

I found myself being absorbed in Story of the Eye (which was translated by Joachim Neugroschel, Dovid Bergelson); although difficult to read, the symbolism really intrigued me. So much so that I had to order my own copy of the book in the hopes to re-read it soon. I read this as an ebook and I now own a physical copy which features the essays “The Pornographic Imagination” Susan Sontag and of course “The Metaphor of the Eye”. I am fascinated by the surreal erotic style of Bataille; I think he is an author I need to explore in greater details.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/literature/book-reviews/genre/erotica/story-of-the-... ( )
  knowledge_lost | Sep 6, 2015 |
Garish, but not pornographic; the essays that it comes with are useful resources that explain much of the significance of the text itself. ( )
  soylentgreen23 | Nov 8, 2014 |
This book is filthy, and not in the fun way. This is the most disturbing book I've ever read. It is as offensive as you can get, save for maybe incest, but even that wouldn't be too out of place in this book. It is 85 pages of fornication, masturbation, urinating, and something gross involving eggs and eyes. It's anything BUT erotic.

However, I couldn't put this book down, as much as I may have wanted to. It's the second half of the book that gets the most disturbing, but it also makes the most sense as to the point of this whole sad story. This book is something I cannot stop thinking about. I want to read it again, and maybe again after that.

I recommend this only to the brave and not to the faint of heart. The book is gross. If you can handle that, then read it.

Fun Fact: I checked this out from my school's library, and am now mortified I let this book be on my record. I don't recommend getting this from the library. I washed my hands after every single time I touched it. ( )
  danlai | Sep 1, 2014 |
I had a difficult time getting through this book. In fact, I read the first fifteen pages or so, put it aside out of disgust, and then finally went back and finished it in one sitting--partly out of determination, partly out of curiosity, and partly because quotes on the back of my edition (from Susan Sontag and Jean Paul Sartre) made me think that there just had to be something more to it if I kept going...

It is shocking that this was published in 1928, but I'm not sure how much of the "art" of this work comes simply from the outright shock value of the work. At many points, I was more disgusted by the text than anything, and while this might be noted as an early hallmark of erotic literature, I'd be hardpressed to call it anything more than pornographic since I didn't see any of the subtlety or sensuality of language that I'd generally associate with erotica. And, there was nothing normal here. The work revolved around fetishistic and violent actions and reactions.

Had I known exactly what I was getting into, I might have read the short essay titled "W.C." that appears at the back of my edition, written by Bataille in regard to the writing/history of the text itself. Perhaps, I might have had some slight more appreciation for the art of the novel had I read that first...but I'm not sure, honestly. This wasn't badly written, but the material wasn't what I expected or would have sought out.

Simply, too each their own, and there may well be much merit in this work...and I'm just not seeing it. But, that said, I certainly wouldn't recommend it, groundbreaking and noteworthy text or not. ( )
  whitewavedarling | Dec 27, 2013 |
The History: In Susan Sontag's essay, "The Pornographic Imagination," she discusses five novels, including The Story of the Eye. My essay series, The NSFW Files, will cover three, the first being Georges Bataille's 1928 shocker. Easily dismissed as juvenile and vulgar, a reader new to the capacious works of Georges Bataille should first have some historical, literary, and aesthetic background surrounding the novella. Written in 1928 by Georges Bataille under the pseudonym Lord Auch, the novel went through four versions (1928, 1940, 1941, and 1967). The City Lights edition I'm using for this review is based on the 1928 version.*

When it was written, France had endured the hardships and atrocities inflicted by the First World War. To put a perspective on how this effected the nature of French culture I will throw out some not-so-random numbers. 1.4 million. That is the number of French military casualties. During the Second World War, the United Stated had 418,000 total deaths, including military and civilian casualties. I mention this because during the Twenties, France becomes the hot-bed for the artistic avant-garde. Creating this infusion of literary and artistic radicalism involved a rejection of the old values that killed millions in the trenches, left survivors scarred and insane, toppled most European monarchies, and obliterated the techno-capitalist-progressivist optimism that fueled the Nineteenth Century.

Amidst this cultural change and aesthetic avant-garde is Georges Bataille. Novelist, poet, anthropologist, surrealist, pornographer, philosopher, and literary critic, Bataille is comparable to William T. Vollmann in terms of scope of knowledge and dwelling on the more salacious aspects of human existence. Story of the Eye is the tip of a massive, fascinating iceberg. (I will explain more of his philosophy and how it dovetails with Story of the Eye below.)

In addition to the creative maelstrom of the Twenties, Bataille's pornographic fiction is part of a larger French literary heritage. The United States has the historical baggage of being founded by the Puritans with their funny shaped hats, harsh Calvinism, and penchant for hanging Quakers. France is an entirely different animal. Apart from France's ferocious secularism following the 1789 Revolution, France also has two literary figures instrumental to understanding this novella: the Marquis de Sade and Alfred Jarry. Jarry wrote Ubu Roi in 1896 to the shock of polite French society. Sade, as Sontag wrote, "had never been forgotten. He was read enthusiastically by Flaubert, Baudelaire and most of the other geniuses of French literature of the late nineteenth century ... The quality and theoretical density of the French interest in Sade remains virtually incomprehensible to English and American literary intellectuals, for whom Sade is perhaps an exemplary figure in the history of psychopathology, both individual and social, but inconceivable as someone to be taken seriously as a "thinker." Sade's literary footprint looms large in Story of the Eye.

(I will be approaching this analysis from a literary perspective, avoiding the condescension implied by both the moralizing and pathologizing perspectives.)

The Book: Story of the Eye is broken into four parts. The first is "The Tale," concerning the carnal misadventures of an unnamed Narrator, his friend Simone, and a girl named Marcelle. The Narrator and Simone participate in a series of sexual situations. Marcelle also participates, is scandalized, institutionalized, and, shortly after the Narrator and Simone free her, she hangs herself. As fugitives, the Narrator and Simone flee to Spain. They meet a debauched English aristocrat named Sir Edmond and their carnal misadventures escalate in ferocity and intensity. In one scene, Simone reaches orgasm upon witnessing a bullfighter getting gored, the bull's horn going through the bullfighter's eye. The final scene in this novella involves the Narrator, Simone, and Sir Edmond sexually abusing a priest, eventually killing him. The reader understands the title of the novella because of things done with a plucked out eye. With Bataille, as with Sade, sex is inextricably linked with death. In French, the orgasm is called "la petite mort," translated as "the little death."

The second part, called "Coincidences," is Bataille's biographical and psychological explanation for "The Tale." In this essay, he gives a kind of psychological exorcism, explaining his eccentric and torturous childhood. His father, a syphlitic, slowly disintegrated, mentally and physically during Bataille's childhood. His mother also attempted suicide. During the First World War, his family had to abandon his father in their home during the German advance. Like a bonus featurette on a DVD, Bataille pulls back the curtain and explains the transpositions and substitutions he made to his personal history. Taken alone, "The Tale" would be an amusing shocker and probably fade into literary obscurity. "Coincidences" transforms this shocker into literary art. The artistic merit is gained from how Bataille uses pornography. (By comparison, look at how the steampunk genre uses history.) The last two parts include "W.C.", a short essay about an abandoned work similar to Story of the Eye, and "Outline of a sequel," which follows Simone and the Narrator fifteen years after the novella, with Simone dying in a scene of sublime torture. (Again the sex and death motif.)

The Verdict: Yes, Story of the Eye is pornographic and yes, it is an example of literary genius. "The Tale" has cardboard characters, inexhaustible sexual acrobatics, and is festooned with four-letter words. But ... it is a monument of psychological confession and the power of transgressive literature. Besides influencing the Surrealists, Bataille's work can be seen as an early version of bizarro fiction.

*For more on City Lights and their legal battles, check out my review of Mania! by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover.

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2013/05/the_nsfw_files_story_of_the_ey.html

OR

http://driftlessareareview.com/2013/05/03/the-nsfw-files-the-story-of-the-eye-by... ( )
  kswolff | May 3, 2013 |
Books Read in the Past:

I can't evaluate this book's literary merits, or its meaning and place in its historical context. It was required reading for a semiotics course; I thought it was okay; I'm still not entirely sure what I was supposed to learn about deconstructionist theory from reading it. From my present vantage, I suspect we read it more because it aroused the instructor than that it was the best example of the concepts to be illustrated. ( )
  OshoOsho | Mar 30, 2013 |
Welp.

Not really a fan of transgressive fiction, but this one gets points for creativity. I had no idea that those body parts could be used in those ways.

Don't read while eating. ( )
  HadriantheBlind | Mar 30, 2013 |
Both sexy and horrifying all at the same time. This was one of those that I read on the subway hoping that no one was looking over my shoulder. It's pretty graphic. You know those old books of erotica that were super shocking when they came out but are tame by today's standards? This isn't one of them. It's still shocking and perverse.

I don't think I'll ever be able to look at eggs the same way again. ( )
  agirlnamedfury | Mar 30, 2013 |
Honestly, you might want to strike me from your contacts list after I say this but I thought this book was ridiculous. It is essentially a collection of increasingly twisted and violent sexual exploits of two teenage lovers narrated with restrained enthusiasm by the male of the pair. They piss and cum with abandon all over each other and most of the pages of the book as they engage in exhibitionism and violent sex. Their overwhelming sexual aggression drives a pious girl they have fetishized to madness and suicide, gains them the support of an older pervert that likes to watch them fuck shit up and masturbate from a discreet distance and ultimately concludes in a brilliantly fucked up scene with a priest. It's not pretty...

It is literally a collection of the most horrifying and disgusting sexual scenarios the author could imagine. It's the Aristocrats played straight. And that's why rather than being emotionally beat like I was after reading [Story of O] I found this amusing and ridiculous. This isn't about believable characters exacting their terrible fantasies on hapless bystanders. This is the porn equivalent of a child banging two dolls together to simulate a bloodthirsty battle. It's enthusiastic, and satisfying to the child, but one thing it will never be mistaken for is the real thing.

Now, you could certainly get upset about what fantasies these represent, and that's valid, but unlike [Story of O] I think the sexual appeal here is less about the actions of the characters and more about the appeal of dreaming up the extreme and shocking. Bastaille would have grown up with all the Victorian sexual oppression we're told about, and frankly, this book is strike back. Is it so odd that in a culture that demonized sex the embrace of sexuality could result in a kink that conflates sex and other socially maligned activities?

Also there is some surrealistic/Freudian thing with the fetishization of eggs and eyeballs. It made me imagine what it would be like if this story was filmed with the style and technology of Un Chien Andalou. I really think that would be the way to go if you were to adapt it to screen. ( )
  fundevogel | Oct 5, 2012 |
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