DOUBLE POKE IN THE EYE
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The Poetic Fallacy of Animality
(G.Bataille)
(G.Bataille)
I think that the point where language starts to break down as a useful tool for communication is the same edge where poetry and art occur. (B. Nauman)
Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart
Dia:Beacon
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'There was no landscape in a world where the eyes that opened did not apprehend what they looked at, where indeed, in our terms, the eyes did not see. And if, now, in my mind's confusion, stupidly contemplating that absence of vison, I begin to say: " There was no vision, there was nothing- nothing but empty intoxication limited by terror, suffering, and death, which gave it a kind of thickness..."I am only abusing a poetic capacity, substituting a vogue fulgaration for the nothing of ignorance. I know:the mind cannot dispense with a fulgaration of words that makes a fascinating halo for it: that is its richness, its glory, and sign of sovereignty. But this poetry it is only a way by which a man goes from a world full of meaning to the final dislocation of meanings, of all meaning, which soon proves to be unavoidable. There is only one difference between the absurdity of things envisaged without man's gaze and that of things among which the animal is present; it is that the former absurdity immediatly suggets to us the apparent reduction of the exact sciences, whereas the latter hands us over the sticky temptation of poetry, for, not being simply a thing, the animal is not closed and inscrutable to us. The animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me. In a sense, I know this depth: its my own. It is also that which is fartest removed from me, that which deserves the name depth, which means precisely that which is unfathomable to me. But this too is poetry..."
Theory of Religion -Georges Bataille
'There was no landscape in a world where the eyes that opened did not apprehend what they looked at, where indeed, in our terms, the eyes did not see. And if, now, in my mind's confusion, stupidly contemplating that absence of vison, I begin to say: " There was no vision, there was nothing- nothing but empty intoxication limited by terror, suffering, and death, which gave it a kind of thickness..."I am only abusing a poetic capacity, substituting a vogue fulgaration for the nothing of ignorance. I know:the mind cannot dispense with a fulgaration of words that makes a fascinating halo for it: that is its richness, its glory, and sign of sovereignty. But this poetry it is only a way by which a man goes from a world full of meaning to the final dislocation of meanings, of all meaning, which soon proves to be unavoidable. There is only one difference between the absurdity of things envisaged without man's gaze and that of things among which the animal is present; it is that the former absurdity immediatly suggets to us the apparent reduction of the exact sciences, whereas the latter hands us over the sticky temptation of poetry, for, not being simply a thing, the animal is not closed and inscrutable to us. The animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me. In a sense, I know this depth: its my own. It is also that which is fartest removed from me, that which deserves the name depth, which means precisely that which is unfathomable to me. But this too is poetry..."
Theory of Religion -Georges Bataille
