Losing Rational Selves in The Dead Man and Story of the Eye

2.2. Losing Rational Selves in The Dead Man and Story of the Eye

The Dead Man is considered to be the most obscene among Bataille’s novels.

The female heroine Marie, encountering death on a stormy night, was determined to let loose all her prohibited desires, especially her sexual desire. When her lover Edouard collapsed and perished, Marie was engulfed by a feeling of emptiness. In addition, a prolonged seizure overtook her. She felt as if she were an angel ready to go to heaven. Suddenly, she imagined her bare breast rising in a church and this feeling overwhelmed her. Standing next to the dead man, she was desperate. As Edouard was dying, he solicited Marie to take off her clothes, but she failed to do it in time.

When Edouard fell back dead an emptiness opened inside her, a prolonged shudder went though her, and bore her upward like an angel.

Her bare breasts were rising in a church seen in a dream where the feeling of the irreparable was draining her. Standing by the dead man, gone, transported, overcome in a slow ecstasy, smitten. She knew herself to be

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desperate, but she was throwing her despair to the winds. As he was dying Edouard had beseeched her to take off her clothes. (DM 168) Marie was trying to unleash all her prohibited desires when she was threatened by the impending death. She thought to herself that “[t]ime had just set at nothing the laws to which fear subjects us” (DM 169). She removed her dress and hung it over one arm.

Compelled by uncontrollable urges, she ran out in a stormy night, getting drenched from the downpour. She ran to a wood, urinating. Afterwards, she got up and

wandered into an inn. Lacking the strength to face her craze for licentiousness, she vacillated in front of the door. She paused to hear the drunken signing of people coming from within. She felt herself shivering violently, but from the trembling she derived intense pleasure (DM 170).

Marie was extremely worried about that the patrons within the inn would see her naked when she came in. She leaned against the wall, overhearing the songs.

Meanwhile, she opened her coat and slid her fingers into her crevice. She was excited, but she was desperate due to her helplessness.

The moment Marie entered the inn, she asked for alcohol. The mistress behind the bar put a small glass on the counter and filled it. However, that was not what Marie had wanted. She wanted a bottle and some big glasses. When she was drinking, a farm-hand shyly asked if she came to have some fun. She sat herself next to the boy,

“pressing her leg against his and taking his hand, placed it between her thighs”

(DM 172). The boy moaned when he touched her crack. Shortly afterwards, Marie took off her coat. At the same time, a sturdy man who was drinking at the farther end of the room started walking toward her. With his arms waving in the air, the drunken man shouted to grab women who were naked in the inn. The mistress held him by his nose and twisted it sharply. It was so painful that he screamed. Marie walked to the drunken man and unbuttoned his fly. The penis Marie exposed was not firm enough,

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which made all the visitors burst out laughing. There was a striking contrast between the farmhand and the drunken man. The farmhand was wearing dirty boots because he had just finished his work. He belonged to the working-class who deemed sexuality as a form of expenditure. For him, sexuality was a taboo. As a consequence, he felt extremely excited when he touched Marie’s crevice. In other words, he would

experience the convulsive eroticism like Marie. On the contrary, the drunken man was familiar with the female owner of inn and was presented as an oversexed man who was free of the restrictions of taboos. Therefore, he failed to derive pleasure induced by anxiety of seeing a naked woman in the tavern. For Marie, drinking not only facilitated the release of her desires, and it also helped her endure the anxiety which she sought.

“I’ll snatch you,” the mistress darted at him. And she caught hold of his nose and tweaked it. He let out a yell.

“No,” said Marie, “here’s where you get a better hold.”

She went up to the drunk and unbuttoned his fly: the cock she brought to light slumped uncertainly.

The sight of it produced laughter all around.

Just like that, bold as you please Marie knocked off another glass.

(DM 173) After Marie made fun of the drunken man, a handsome peasant asked her to dance an obscene wiggle. Marie indulged in their dancing. All of a sudden, she passed out and the peasant lost his hold upon her. Her slender body landed on the floor with a thud.

The mistress got down on her knees, carefully raised her head and wiped her saliva dropping from her mouth. Marie came to herself in a moment and asked for some bandy. The farm-hands, girls and mistress of the inn surrounded her and waited for what she was going to say. She uttered a word, “dawn.” The dawn conveyed the

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impending death, which made Marie unleash all of her prohibited desires. No one was able to make sense of the word because they were not conscious of imminent death.

Meanwhile, the mistress asked a young man named Pierrot to suck Marie. They put her on a chair and rested her legs on Pierrot’s shoulders. He knelt down, sticking his tongue amidst Marie’s pubic hair. His sucking made Marie morbid yet illuminated.

She seemed happy, flashing a smile without opening her eyes. She felt herself alight.

“An unavailing desire kept her under strain: she would have liked to relieve herself.

She imagined what a fright that would cause the others. She no longer felt sundered from Edouard” (DM 178). She experienced the extreme pleasure of dying in orgasm.

“Her cunt and her ass exposed: the smell of moist ass and moist cunt were setting her inwardly free and Pierrot’s tongue, which was wetting her, gave her the impression of the chill of death” (DM 178). Suddenly, Marie jostled the mistress away. Her hair was in disarray. No one could make sense of her sudden spasm and sudden return to a normal state. This was due to extreme pleasure. The visitors in the inn were oversexed people who often casually indulged in sexual desires. As a consequence, they would never experience the intense pleasure induced by anxiety. Due to the lack of the experience in the extreme pleasure, they would mistake it for madness. Conversely, Marie was a dignified woman who was governed by taboos. When Edouard

beseeched her to remove all her clothes, she did not do it in time because of her hesitation. When she was about to enter the inn, she wavered between remaining dignified and letting loose. Due to her tension, she experienced the most extreme form of pleasure which bore resemblance to madness. Bataille argues:

A rush of blood upsets the balance on which life is based. A madness suddenly takes possession of a person. That madness is well known to us but we can easily picture the surprise of anyone who did not know about it and who by some device witnessed unseen the passionate lovemaking

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of some woman who had struck him as particularly distinguished. He would think she was sick, just as mad dogs are sick. Just as if some mad bitch had usurped the personality of the dignified hostess of a little while back. Sickness is not putting it strongly enough, though; for the time being the personality is dead. For the time being its death gives the bitch full scope, and she takes advantage of the silence, of the absence of the dead woman. (DS 106)

As Pierrot continued to suck her, the visitors’ shrieks and the crashing of broken bottles caused “a froglike jerking of Marie’s thighs” (DM 180). Marie was enraptured and her eyes remained vacant. All of a sudden, she screamed and uttered the word

“Edouard” when the dwarf-sized Count walked in. The Count greeted Marie solemnly and turned to ask Pierrot to help him out of his coat. The Count asked for some bottles.

Marie told him that she had drunk so much that she pissed on her chair. “Drink till you shit, dear child,” the Count replied. Marie told him that she was going to die at dawn. However, the Count was indifferent to her words and calmly gazed at her.

Marie told the mistress that the Count was disguised as a devil. She was so terrified that she caught the mistress’ hand and bit it. The mistress felt pain and pulled her hand back. Instead of hitting Marie, the mistress caressed her as she kissed her shoulder.

The Count asked for more bottles. He told Maire, “alcohol doesn’t do much for me”

(DM 183). He asked Pierrot to hold his penis in his hand. He told Pierrot that “he did not dare to ask Marie to do it” (183). The Count did not dare to ask Marie to frig him because he was afraid that Marie might bite his penis. Marie was scared of the Count because “from impassiveness he did indeed resemble something of stone” (DM 184).

“I’m scared,” said Marie. “You look like a tombstone.”

He made no reply. Pierrot took hold of his member.

For impassiveness he did indeed resemble something of stone.

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“Go away,” said Marie, “or I’ll piss on you if you don’t . . .”

She climbed onto the table and squatted.

“You’ll see me delighted if you do,” the monster rejoined. There was no play to his neck: only his chin moved when he spoke.

Maire pissed.

Vigorously Pierrot wanked the Count who received the urine full in the face. (DM 184 )

Suddenly, Marie went mad and got her teeth into the Count’s cock. The Count howled like an injured animal. Pierrot hauled her away and Marie demanded to be “fucked”

by him. They laid her on the table. Pierrot spread her arms, and the others held her legs. She struggled like a pig which fought for its life. The erotic scene was presented in a cruel ritual of sacrifice.

“Stick her, Pierrot,” the mistress said.

They bustled around the victim.

Hemmed in by these preparations, Marie let her head subside. The others stretched her out flat, spread her legs apart. She was breathing rapidly, her breathing was noisy.

In its slow unfolding the scene recalled the slaughtering of a pig or the laying to rest of a god. (DM 188)

Pierre took off his pants and the Count asked him to remove everything else. Pierrot was like a “bull” and the Count helped the “pizzle” enter. It is clear that the position of master and slave was reversed. The Count was degraded from master

to slave as he helped his new master Pierrot fuck Marie. Through the orgy,

Pierrot’s frenzy made him forget his position as a slave. The owner and all the visitors were so enraptured by the frenzied erotic scene that their class consciousness was eliminated. Pierrot forgot his position as a slave. Marie was like a victim jerking

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violently and struggling as “The others watched, dry-mouthed, astounded by this frenzy” (DM 188). Pierrot and Marie were extremely excited and “His back straining like a bow fully bent and the breathless boy let out a yell” (DM 188). To this,“Marie answered his shot with the spasm of one dying” (DM 188). It is noteworthy that the erotic scene was presented as a ritual of sacrifice in which Marie was the victim. For Bataille, sacrifice and erotic convulsion share an important feature. People are not controlled by their reason. They lose their consciousness and even become obsessed with death. They derive pleasure from not being controlled by their constructed identity. Bataille asserts:

The inversion is meaningful if we now consider the similarity between the act of love and the sacrifice. Both reveal flesh. Sacrifice replaces the ordered life of the animal with a blind convulsion of its organs. So also with the erotic convulsion; it gives free rein to extravagant organs whose blind activity goes on beyond the considered will of the lovers. Their considered will is followed by the animal activity of these swollen organs.

They are animated by a violence outside the control of reason, swollen to bursting point and suddenly the heart rejoices to yield to the breaking of the storm. The urges of the flesh pass all bounds in the absence of

controlling will. Flesh is the extravagance within us set up against the law of decency. (DS 92)

For Bataille, the orgy not only facilitates people to forget their given identity but also leads to fusion with others. He asserts:

From another standpoint the suspension of taboos sets free the exuberant surge of life and favours the unbounded orgiastic fusion of those

individuals. This fusion could in no way be limited to that attendant on the plethora of the genital organs. It is a religious effusion first and

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foremost; it is essentially the disorder of lost beings who oppose no further resistance to the frantic proliferation of life. That enormous unleashing of natural forces seems to be divine, so high does it raise man above the condition to which he has condemned himself of his own accord. Wild cries, wild violence of gesture, wild dances, wild emotions as well, all in the grip of immeasurably convulsive turbulence. The perdition ahead would demand this flight into the regions where all individuality is shed, where the stable elements of human activity disappear and there is no firm foothold anywhere to be found.

(DS 113-14; emphasize mine) It is noteworthy that the orgy also poses a challenge to class-consciousness because it involves “a vertiginous loss of consciousness” (DS 113). Although the orgy is a way to fuse with others, it may blur the class consciousness. It would undermine the hierarchies established between people.

In the orgy the celebration progresses with the overwhelming force that usually brushes all bonds aside. . . . but the orgy turns everything upside-down. It is not by chance that the social order used to be turned topsy-turvy during the Saturnalia, the master serving the salve, the slave lolling on the master’s bed. . . . This is the direction given to eroticism by the orgy no matter what disorder was involved, making it transcend animal sexuality. (DS 112)

The Count was a European nobleman whose rank corresponded to that of an English Earl. The Count asked Pierrot to serve him because he thought he was the master and Pierrot was his slave. He even ordered Pirrot to take off his coat and wank him. He told him that he did not want Marie to do that. Pirrot told the Count that Marie did not have the monstrosity like him. For Pirrot, Marie’s sexuality aimed to fuse with others

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while the Count’s sexuality aimed to declare itself as master and control others. The Count wanted to prove that he was the calm master, superior to frenzied salves by the words like “Alcohol doesn’t do much for me” (DM 183). As the story shows, “In his throes the dwarf was racked by little shudders” (DM 184), and “From impassiveness he did indeed resemble something of stone” (DM 184). It is widely agreed that sexuality is a form of violence. Anyone who could conquer it would be deemed superior. That explains why sexual scandal is repeatedly brought out of the shadows preceding the elections. Any candidate who has a sexual scandal is not qualified since he is not calm enough to be a leader. He dared not ask Marie to wank him because Marie’s sexuality was a form of violence which might hurt him or cause him lose his class consciousness. It is noteworthy that when Pirrot indulged in his sex with Marie, he did not recognize the Count as his master. Before long, Marie was back to normal and her senses were restored. She heard birds signing and childhood memories flashed into her mind.

She felt cold, gripped by an icy happiness, suspended in an unintelligible emptiness. Even though she sought, gently, to raise her head, and though she sank back from exhaustion upon the ground, she remained faithful to the light, to the foliage, to the birds thronging the wood. For a brief

instant childhood timidities arose in her memory. (DM 189)

Marie returned to a state of child because all the prohibitions had been lifted by her sexual desires. When she was sober, the Count wanted to turn her into his slave. Marie got up and vomited when she gazed at the Count. Then she shat upon the vomit.

In this sense, the Count represented reason which failed to control Marie who belonged to irrationality.

The Count was aroused.

His cock was long and ruddy.

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His naked body and that cock had a devilish deformity. His face, bracketed between those angular and too high shoulders, was pale and mocking.

“He desired Marie and confined his thoughts to this desire” (DM 194).

When the Count entered the room trying to conquer Marie, he was shocked at Marie’s ugliness caused by drunkenness and fatigue. He sensed that death was taking over the room. His erection failed. The Count, a member of the upper-class society, aimed to preserve his class consciousness. To maintain his class consciousness, he should avoid violent sex which might cause him to lose his consciousness. When he first met Marie, he was aware that Maire’s sexuality was a form of violence. He refused to have any sexual contact with Marie because her uncontrolled violence might put him in danger.

For him, Marie’s return to normal meant the disappearance of violence. Afterwards, his erection failed when he saw Marie drained due to her excessive sexuality. For the Count, sexuality was like death which could not be controlled by reason.

Since the Count wanted to maintain his consciousness, he would never experience the frenzy eroticism. At the end of the story, the Count felt he was possessed by Marie because he was the salve of sexuality and death forever; that is, sexuality and death are his eternal masters.

In Story of the Eye, child-like sexuality is compared to adult sexuality. The child-like sexuality was based on biological quests. On the contrary, the adult sexuality was essentially a psychological quest which is based on prohibition and transgression. In Bataille’s remarks, “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death . . . but only men turned their sexuality into erotic activity.

In Story of the Eye, child-like sexuality is compared to adult sexuality. The child-like sexuality was based on biological quests. On the contrary, the adult sexuality was essentially a psychological quest which is based on prohibition and transgression. In Bataille’s remarks, “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death . . . but only men turned their sexuality into erotic activity.