Those who are not bound by reason: thieves and kings.

Georges Bataille (via astranemus)

De la serie Things you need to know.

Perspective. 

Georges Bataille

Si mentía, me quedaba en el plano de la poesía, de una superación verbal del mundo. Si perseveraba en una denigración ciega del mundo, mi denigración era falsa (corno la superación). En cierto modo, mi conformidad con el mundo se profundizaba. Pero al no poder mentir a sabiendas, me volví loco (capaz de ignorar la verdad). O al no saber ya, para mí solo, representar la comedia de un delirio, me volví loco pero interiormente: viví la experiencia de la noche.

El cuestionarlo todo nacía de la exasperación de un deseo, ¡que no podía abocar al vacío!

El objeto de mi deseo era, en primer lugar, la ilusión y no pudo ser más que en segundo lugar el vacío de la desilusión.

La poesía revela un poder de lo desconocido. Pero lo desconocido no es más que un vacío insignificante, si no es el objeto de un deseo. La poesía es término medio, oculta lo conocido en lo desconocido: es lo desconocido ornado de los colores cegadores y de la apariencia de un sol.

Georges Bataille

El corazón es humano en tanto en cuanto se rebela (eso quiere decir: ser un hombre es «no inclinarse ante la ley»).

Un poeta no justifica —no acepta— por completo la naturaleza. La verdadera poesía se halla fuera de las leyes. Pero la poesía, por último, acepta la poesía.

¡Insertarme en lo que me rodea, explicarme o no ver en mi insondable noche sino una fábula para niños (tener una imagen o física o mitológica de mí mismo)! ¡No!...

Renunciaría al juego.

El delirio poético ocupa un lugar en la naturaleza. La justifica, acepta embellecerla. El rechazo pertenece a la conciencia clara, que valora cuanto le acontece.

La clara distinción de los diversos posibles, el don de llegar hasta el último confín, son resultado de la atención serena. El juego sin retorno de mí mismo, el ir más allá de todo lo dado exigen no sólo esa risa infinita, sino también esta meditación lenta (insensata, pero por exceso).

Georges Bataille

Sentía como un remordimiento la imposibilidad absoluta de anular mis afirmaciones.

Como si una intolerable opresión nos desazonara.

Deseo —que hace temblar— de que la fortuna que sobrevenga, en la incertidumbre de la noche, imperceptible, sea sin embargo aprovechada. Y por fuerte que fuera ese deseo, no podía sino observar el silencio.

Solo en la noche, me quedé leyendo, abrumado por ese sentimiento de impotencia.

Georges Bataille - El techo del templo

Sensación de un combate decisivo del que ya nada me apartaría ahora. Siento miedo al tener la certeza de que ya no evitaré el combate.

¿La respuesta no sería: «que olvide este asunto»?

Georges Bataille - La Discordia

Diez cien casas se derrumban cien y luego mil muertos en la ventana de la nube

Vientre abierto rostro alzado reflejo de extensos nubarrones imagen de cielo inmenso

Más arriba que lo alto del cielo oscuro más arriba en una loca hendidura una estela de luz es el halo de la muerte.

Hambre tengo de sangre Hambre de tierra ensangrentada Hambre de pescado hambre de rabia Hambre de basura hambre de río

Georges Bataille

Soñaba alcanzar la tristeza del mundo al borde sin esperanza de un extraño pantano soñaba con espesas aguas donde recobraría los caminos perdidos de tu beso profundo

sentí entre mis manos un animal inmundo escapado a la noche de una selva de espanto y supe que era el mal por el que tú morías lo que entre risas llamo la tristeza del mundo

una luz loca un fulgor de trueno una risa liberando tu larga desnudez un inmenso esplendor al fin me iluminaron

y vi tu dolor como una caridad irradiando en la noche la larga forma clara y el grito de tumba de tu infinitud.

Georges Bataille - El vacío (fragmento)

[…]

tu boca sellada a mi boca y tu lengua en mis dientes la inmensa muerte te acogerá caerá la inmensa noche

entonces habré hecho el vacío en tu cabeza abandonada tu ausencia esnifa desnuda como una pierna sin medias

esperando el desastre en que se extinguirá la luz seré yo suave en tu corazón corno el frío de la muerte.

Georges Bataille - La Aurora (fragmento)

[…]

Boñiga en la cabeza estallo odio el cielo quién soy yo para escupir las nubes amargo es ser inmenso mis ojos son gruesos cerdos mi corazón tinta negra mi sexo es un sol muerto

[…]

desnuda te reías a carcajadas gigantesca bajo el baldaquino me arrastro para dejar de existir

deseo morir por ti quisiera aniquilarme en tus caprichos enfermizos.

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on 'Wise Child.' I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast—remember when he was in that cast? Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again—all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and—I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense."

Franny was standing. She had taken her hand away from her face to hold the phone with two hands. "He told me, too," she said into the phone. "He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once." She released one hand from the phone and placed it, very briefly, on the crown of her head, then went back to holding the phone with both hands. "I didn't ever picture her on a porch, but with very—you know—very thick legs, very veiny. I had her in an awful wicker chair. She had cancer, too, though, and she had the radio going full-blast all day! Mine did, too!"

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

Zooey broke off. He stared over at Franny's prostrate, face-down position on the

couch, and heard, probably for the first time, the only partly stifled sounds of anguish coming from her. In an instant, he turned pale—pale with anxiety for Franny's condition, and pale, presumably, because failure had suddenly filled the room with its invariably sickening smell. The color of his pallor, however, was a curiously basic white —unmixed, that is, with the greens and yellows of guilt or abject contrition. It was very like the standard bloodlessness in the face of a small boy who loves animals to distraction, all animals, and who has just seen his favorite, bunny-loving sister's expression as she opened the box containing his birthday present to her—a freshly caught young cobra, with a red ribbon tied in an awkward bow around its neck.

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

"It's exactly like this damned ulcer I picked up. Do you know why I have it? Or at least nine-tenths of the reason I have it? Because when I'm not thinking properly, I let my feelings about television and everything else get personal. I do exactly the same thing you do, and I'm old enough to know better."

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

"It was the worst of all in class, though," she said with decision. "That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head—and I could not get it out—that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping—and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge—when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway—is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly." Nervously, and without any real need whatever, Franny pushed back her hair with one hand. "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned! Do you want to hear something funny? Do you want to hear something really funny? In almost four years of college—and this is the absolute truth —in almost four years of college, the only time I can remember ever even hearing the expression 'wise man' being used was in my freshman year, in Political Science! And you know how it was used? It was used in reference to some nice old poopy elder statesman who'd made a fortune in the stock market and then gone to Washington to be an adviser to President Roosevelt. Honestly, now! Four years of college, almost! I'm not saying that happens to everybody, but I just get so upset when I think about it I could die." She broke off, and apparently became re-dedicated to serving Bloomberg's interests. Her lips now had very little more color in them than her face. They were also, very faintly, chapped.

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

He gave the snowman a shake. "It probably wasn't anything you couldn't watch while you were cutting your toenails, but at least you didn't feel like slinking home from the studio after rehearsals. It was fresh enough, at least, and it was his own, it wasn't part of a hackneyed trend in scripts. I wish to hell he'd go home and fill up again. I wish to hell every-body'd go home. I'm sick to death of being the heavy in everybody's life. God, you should see Hess and LeSage when they're talking about a new show. Or a new anything. They're as happy as pigs till I show up. I feel like those dismal bastards Seymour's beloved Chuang-tzu warned everybody against. 'Beware when the socalled sagely men come limping into sight.'" He sat still, watching the snowflakes swirl. "I could happily lie down and die sometimes," he said.

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

"You told me that bit last night. I don't want any unfresh reminiscences this morning, buddy," Zooey said, and resumed looking out of the window. "In the first place, you're way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself. We both are. I do the same goddam thing about television—I'm aware of that. But it's wrong. It's us. I keep telling you that. Why are you so damned dense about it?"

"I'm not so damned dense about it, but you keep—"

"It's us," Zooey repeated, overriding her. "We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the Tattooed Lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed, too." More than a trifle grimly, he brought his cigar to his mouth and dragged on it, but it had gone out. "On top of everything else," he said immediately, "we've got 'Wise Child' complexes. We've never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us. We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. At least I do. The minute I'm in a room with somebody who has the usual number of ears, I either turn into a goddam seer or a human hatpin. The Prince of Bores. Last night, for instance. Down at the San Remo. I kept praying that Hess wouldn't tell me the plot of his new script. I knew damn well he had one. I knew damn well I wasn't going to get out of the place without a new script to take home. But I kept praying he'd spare me from an oral preview. He's not stupid. He knows it's impossible for me to keep my mouth shut." Zooey suddenly, sharply, turned around, without taking his foot off the window seat, and picked up, snatched up, a match folder that was on his mother's writing table. He turned back to  the window and the view of the school roof and put his cigar into his mouth again—but at once took it out. "Damn him, anyway," he said. "He's so stupid it breaks your heart. He's like everybody else in television. And Hollywood. And Broadway. He thinks everything sentimental is tender, everything brutal is a slice of realism, and everything that runs into physical violence is a legitimate climax to something that isn't even—"

"Did you tell him that?"

"Certainly I told him that! I just got through telling you I can't keep my mouth shut. Certainly I told him that! I left him sitting there wishing he was dead. Or one of us was dead— I hope to hell it was me. Anyway, it was a true San Remo exit." Zooey took down his foot from the window seat. He turned around, looking both tense and agitated, and pulled out the straight chair at his mother's writing table and sat down.

J. D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey

Franny gazed thoughtfully at his white broadcloth back. Her lips, however, were still silently forming words. "Why do you go, then?" she asked. "If you feel that way."

"Why do I go?" Zooey said, without looking around. "I go mostly because I'm tired as hell of getting up furious in the morning and going to bed furious at night. I go because I sit in judgment on every poor, ulcerous bastard I know. Which in itself doesn't bother me too much. At least, I judge straight from the colon when I judge, and I know that I'll pay like hell for any judgment I mete out, sooner or later, one way or another. That doesn't bother me so much. But there's something—Jesus God—there's something I do to people's morale downtown that I can't stand to watch much longer. I can tell you exactly what I do. I make everybody feel that he doesn't really want to do any good work but that he just wants to get work done that will be thought good by everyone he knows—the critics, the sponsors, the public, even his children's schoolteacher. That's what I do. That's the worst I do." He frowned in the direction of the school roof; then, with his fingertips, pressed some perspiration away from his forehead. He turned, abruptly, toward Franny when he heard her say something. "What?" he said. "I can't hear you."

"Nothing. I said 'Oh, God.'"