166
by kokorodoko
I downloaded a few scans of the Acéphale journal to practice French (Acéphale was a secret society housing Georges Bataille among others).
On the first page we have this:
Ce que nous avons entrepris ne doit être confondu avec rien d'autre, ne peut pas être limité à l'expression d'une pensée et encore moins à ce qui est justement considéré comme art.
(That which we have undertaken should not be confused with anything else, cannot be limited to the expression of a thought, still less to that which is rightly considered art.)
Il est nécessaire de produire et de manger : beaucoup de choses sont nécessaires qui ne sont encore rien et il en est également ainsi de l'agitation politique.
(It is necessary to produce and to eat - many things are necessary which are yet nothing, and so it is too with political agitation.)
Qui songe avant d'avoir lutté jusqu'au bout à laisser la place à des hommes qu'il est impossible de regarder sans éprouver le besoin de les détruire?
Mais si rien ne pouvait être trouvé au delà de l'activité politique, l'avidité humaine ne rencontrerait que le vide.
(Who dreams, before having fought to the end, of giving way to men whom it is impossible to look at without feeling the need to destroy them?
But if nothing could be found beyond political activity, human greed would meet only emptiness.)
NOUS SOMMES FAROUCHEMENT RELIGIEUX et, dans la mesure où notre existence est la condamnation de tout ce qui est reconnu aujourd'hui, une exigence intérieure veut que nous soyons également impérieux.
(WE ARE FEROCIOUSLY RELIGIOUS - and, in so far as our existence is the condemnation of all that is recognized today, an inner demand calls us to be equally imperious.)
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I was first thinking that wow, these boys really love words. However pondering this some more, there actually is a consistency to it.
The project (whatever it is) is to stand on its own, it is not simply art - that would be a kind of limitation to it, would be finding for it a place within the existing, a slot for it to be comfortably fitted, not matter how daring it might be; not simply expressing a thought - because if it is expressing something, then the expressed thing becomes the primary and the means of expression retreat into the background, become instrumental. In other words, it is to find something which there is no other way to find, and which thing itself perhaps is not really known. If it were meant to express something, the thing to be expressed would be already known.
This project may arise in some way from the same impetus as political activity and agitation - a sickness with the existing, an urge to destroy it - no one would dream of giving up in the face of all this before having fought to end against it! BUT political activity is oriented around need, is oriented toward fulfilling basic need; and is also always about expressing clearly. (One of my own criticisms of Marxism/socialism is the strong tendency to focus on Maslowian need, which also has potentially unpleasant implications for how a society on such grounds is imagined to function.)
Thus, l'avidité humain ("human greed", I'm interpreting this as "thirst" - for something more, something beyond) would not find anything there with which to be satisfied. The addition of "human" suggesting it's a kind of tendency, something ever present and recurring - human always reaches beyond its needs, is dissatisfied with satisfaction. The main theme of Bataille's The Accursed Share is a rejection of the "economical" part of economics in favour of the excessive, lavish, luxurious - in other words the unnecessary and (from the standpoint of classical economics) irrational.
Still, I wonder if anyone other than a Frenchman could get away with writing like this. It is indeed something like this that gives French writing a special singing quality and a kind of fiery urgency - very apt for manifestos and such.
Of course, this kind of expressiveness is, I hazard to guess, a firm part of French self-image, which likely feeds into my own reception and interpretation of this text, but also would place it closer at hand for a French speaker to unapologetically express themselves like this.
born to give