Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

manuscript of
W.C
. was burnt, but that was no loss, considering my present sadness: it was a shriek of horror (horror at myself, not for my debauchery, but for the philosopher’s head in which since then … how sad it is!). On the other hand, I am as happy as ever with the fulminating joy of
The Eye
: nothing can wipe it away. Such joy, bordering on naive folly, will forever remain beyond terror, for terror reveals its meaning.
    A drawing for
W.C
. showed an eye: the scaffold’s eye. Solitary, solar, bristling with lashes, it gazed from the lunette of a guillotine. The drawing was named
Eternal Recurrence
, and its horriblemachine was the cross-beam, gymnastic gallows, portico. Coming from the horizon, the road to eternity passed through it. A parodic verse, heard in a sketch at the
Concert Mayol
, supplied the caption:
God, how the corpse’s blood is sad
in the depth of sound.
    Story of the Eye
has another reminiscence of
W.C
., which appears on the title page, placing all that follows under the worst of signs. The name Lord Auch [pronounced
ōsh
] refers to a habit of a friend of mine; when vexed, instead of saying “aux chiottes!” [to the shithouse], he would shorten it to “aux ch’.”
Lord
is English for God (in the Scriptures): Lord Auch is God relieving himself. The story is too lively to dwell upon; every creature transfigured by such a place: God sinking into it rejuvenates the heavens.
    To be God, naked, solar, in the rainy night, on a field: red, divinely, manuring with the majesty of a tempest, the face grimacing, torn apart, being IMPOSSIBLE in tears: who knew, before me, what majesty is?
    The “eye of the conscience” and the “woods of justice” incarnate eternal recurrence, and is there any more desperate image for remorse?
    I gave the author of
W. C
. the pseudonym of Troppmann.
    I masturbated naked, at night, by my mother’s corpse. (A few people, reading
Coincidences
, wondered whether it did not have the fictional character of the tale itself. But, like this
Preface, Coincidences
has a literal exactness: many people in the village of R. could confirm the material; moreover, some of my friends did read
W.C
.)
    What upset me more was: seeing my father shit a great number of times. He would get out of his blind paralytic’s bed (my father being both blind and paralytic at once). It was very hard for him to get out of bed (I would help him) and settle on a chamber-pot, in his nightshirt and, usually, a cotton nightcap (he had a pointed greybeard, ill-kempt, a large eagle-nose, and immense hollow eyes staring into space). At times, the “lightning-sharp pains” would make him howl like a beast, sticking out his bent leg, which he futilely hugged in his arms.
    My father having conceived me when blind (absolutely blind), I cannot tear out my eyes like Oedipus.
    Like Oedipus, I solved the riddle: no one divined it more deeply than I.
    On November 6, 1915, in a bombarded town, a few miles from the German lines, my father died in abandonment.
    My mother and I had abandoned him during the German advance in August 1914.
    We had left him with the housekeeper.
    The Germans occupied the town, then evacuated it. We could now return: my mother, unable to bear the thought of it, went mad. Late that year, my mother recovered: she refused to let me go home to N. We received occasional letters from my father, he just barely ranted and raved. When we learned he was dying, my mother agreed to go with me. He died a few days before our arrival, asking for his children: we found a sealed coffin in the bedroom.
    When my father went mad (a year before the war) after a hallucinating night, my mother sent me to the post office to dispatch a telegram. I remember being struck with a horrible pride en route. Misery overwhelmed me, internal irony replied: “So much horror makes you predestined”: a few months earlier, one fine morning in December, I had informed my parents, who were beside themselves, that I would never