Lautréamont and Sade (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Softcover

Maurice Blanchot

  • 3.76 out of 5 stars
    241 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780804750356: Lautréamont and Sade (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0804750351 ISBN 13: 9780804750356
Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In Lautréamont and Sade, originally published in 1949, Maurice Blanchot forcefully distinguishes his critical project from the major intellectual currents of his day, surrealism and existentialism. Today, Lautréamont and Sade, these unique figures in the histories of literature and thought, are as crucially relevant to theorists of language, reason, and cruelty as they were in post-war Paris. "Sade's Reason," in part a review of Pierre Klossowski's Sade, My Neighbor, was first published in Les Temps modernes. Blanchot offers Sade's reason, a corrosive rational unreasoning, apathetic before the cruelty of the passions, as a response to Sartre's Hegelian politics of commitment. "The Experience of Lautréamont," Blanchot's longest sustained essay, pursues the dark logic of Maldoror through the circular gravitation of its themes, the grinding of its images, its repetitive and transformative use of language, and the obsessive metamorphosis of its motifs. Blanchot's Lautréamont emerges through this search for experience in the relentless unfolding of language. This treatment of the experience of Lautréamont unmistakably alludes to Georges Bataille's "inner experience." Republishing the work in 1963, Blanchot prefaced it with an essay distinguishing his critical practice from that of Heidegger.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Stanford has published five other works by Maurice Blanchot: The Book to Come (2003), Faux Pas (2001), The Instant of My Death (Blanchot)/Demeure: Fiction and Testimony (Jacques Derrida) (2000), Friendship (1997), and The Work of Fire (1995).

From the Back Cover

In Lautréamont and Sade, originally published in 1949, Maurice Blanchot forcefully distinguishes his critical project from the major intellectual currents of his day, surrealism and existentialism. Today, Lautréamont and Sade, these unique figures in the histories of literature and thought, are as crucially relevant to theorists of language, reason, and cruelty as they were in post-war Paris.
“Sade’s Reason,” in part a review of Pierre Klossowski’s Sade, My Neighbor, was first published in Les Temps modernes. Blanchot offers Sade’s reason, a corrosive rational unreasoning, apathetic before the cruelty of the passions, as a response to Sartre’s Hegelian politics of commitment.
“The Experience of Lautréamont,” Blanchot’s longest sustained essay, pursues the dark logic of Maldoror through the circular gravitation of its themes, the grinding of its images, its repetitive and transformative use of language, and the obsessive metamorphosis of its motifs. Blanchot’s Lautréamont emerges through this search for experience in the relentless unfolding of language. This treatment of the experience of Lautréamont unmistakably alludes to Georges Bataille’s “inner experience.”
Republishing the work in 1963, Blanchot prefaced it with an essay distinguishing his critical practice from that of Heidegger.

From the Inside Flap

In Lautréamont and Sade, originally published in 1949, Maurice Blanchot forcefully distinguishes his critical project from the major intellectual currents of his day, surrealism and existentialism. Today, Lautréamont and Sade, these unique figures in the histories of literature and thought, are as crucially relevant to theorists of language, reason, and cruelty as they were in post-war Paris.
“Sade’s Reason,” in part a review of Pierre Klossowski’s Sade, My Neighbor, was first published in Les Temps modernes. Blanchot offers Sade’s reason, a corrosive rational unreasoning, apathetic before the cruelty of the passions, as a response to Sartre’s Hegelian politics of commitment.
“The Experience of Lautréamont,” Blanchot’s longest sustained essay, pursues the dark logic of Maldoror through the circular gravitation of its themes, the grinding of its images, its repetitive and transformative use of language, and the obsessive metamorphosis of its motifs. Blanchot’s Lautréamont emerges through this search for experience in the relentless unfolding of language. This treatment of the experience of Lautréamont unmistakably alludes to Georges Bataille’s “inner experience.”
Republishing the work in 1963, Blanchot prefaced it with an essay distinguishing his critical practice from that of Heidegger.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

LAUTRÉAMONT AND SADE

By Maurice Blanchot, Stuart Kendall, Michelle Kendall

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 1963 Les Éditions de Minuit
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5035-6

Contents

Preface: What is the Purpose of Criticism?.................................1
§ Sade's Reason............................................................7
§ The Experience of Lautréamont............................................43
Notes......................................................................165

CHAPTER 1

§ Sade's Reason


In 1797, La Nouvelle Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu suivie del'Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur was published in Holland. This monumentalwork—nearly four thousand pages long, which its authorwrote in several drafts, augmenting its length ever more, almostendlessly—immediately horrified the world. If there is a Hell inlibraries, it is for such a book. One can say that no other literatureof any other time has seen as scandalous a book appear, that noother book so profoundly wounded the sensibilities and convictionsof men. Who in this day and age would dare compete withSade's licentiousness? Yes, it can be claimed that here we have themost scandalous work ever written. Is this not enough to warrantits close examination and our preoccupation with it? We have theopportunity to know a work that no other writer, during anyother era, has ever dared to venture beyond. We have, therefore, insome way, within our grasp, and in the so very relative world ofliterature, a veritable absolute, and yet, incomprehensibly, have wenot sought to interrogate and examine it? We do not even dreamto question it, to ask it why it is so unsurpassable, to ask what isin it that makes it so excessive and eternally too much for man totake? An extraordinary negligence. But perhaps the scandal is sopure simply because of this negligence? When we take intoaccount all the precautions history has taken to make Sade aprodigious enigma, when we contemplate his twenty-seven yearsin prison, his confined and restricted existence, when sequestrationaffects not only a man's life, but his afterlife—to such anextent that cloaking his work in secrecy seems to condemn himtoo, even while still living, to an eternal prison—we come to wonderif the censors and the judges who claim to lock Sade up, arenot actually in Sade's service, and are not fulfilling the burningdesires of his libertinage, Sade, who has always longed for solitudein the depths of the earth, for the mystery of a subterranean andreclusive existence. Ten times over, Sade formulated the idea thatman's greatest excesses called for secrecy and the obscurity of theabyss, the inviolable solitude of a jail cell. Now, strangely enough,it is the guardians of morality who, in condemning him to theseclusion found within prison walls, have made themselves accomplicesto intense immorality. It is his mother-in-law, the puritanicalMadame de Montreuil, who, by turning his very life into aprison, makes it a masterpiece of debauchery and infamy.Similarly, if after so many years Justine et Juliette continues to bethe most scandalous of books one can read— though reading it isnearly impossible—it is because the author and the editors, withthe help of universal Morality, have taken every measure to ensurethat this book remains a secret, a perfectly unreadable work, asunreadable for its length, its composition, and its ruminations asfor the force of its descriptions, the indecency of his savagery,which cannot but hurl it to Hell. A scandalous, virtually untouchablebook that no one can render public. But the book also illustratesthat there is no scandal where there is no respect, and thatwhere the scandal is extraordinary, the respect is extreme. Who ismore respected than Sade? How many of us, even today, deeplybelieve that just holding this accursed book in our hands for amoment or two would make Rousseau's disdainful allegationcome true: that any young girl who reads even one page of thisbook will be lost? Such respect is certainly a treasure for a literatureand a civilization. Moreover, to all his present and future editorsand commentators, can we not stop ourselves from discreetlyuttering this avowal: in Sade, at least, respect the scandal.

Fortunately, Sade defends himself quite well. Not only his work,but also his thought remains impenetrable—and this is despite thefact that theoretical developments abound therein, and that herepeats them with disconcerting patience, and that his reasoningis crystal clear and sufficiently logical. A taste and even a passionfor systems animates him. He explains, he affirms, he proves; hereturns a hundred times to the same problem (and a hundredtimes is an understatement), he examines it from all angles, heexplores every objection, he responds to them, he even uncoversothers, and responds to them in turn. And since what he is sayingis generally rather simple, since his language is copious, thoughspecific and consistent, one might think there should be nothingeasier than understanding Sade's ideology which, in him, is inseparablefrom the passions. And yet, what is the basis of Sade'sthought? What exactly has he said? Where is the order of this system,where does it begin, where does it end? Is there anythingmore than a shadow of a system in the approach of this thoughtthat is so obsessed with reason? And why do so many very wellcoordinated principles not succeed in forming the solid whole thatthey should and that they in fact seem to construct? This tooremains unclear. This is Sade's primary and main peculiarity: that,at every moment, his theoretical ideas release the irrational forcesthat are bound up with them. These forces at once animate andfrustrate his ideas, doing so with such impetus that his ideas resistthese forces, and then yield to them, seeking to master this impetus,which effectively they do, but only while simultaneouslyreleasing other obscure forces, which will lead, twist, and pervertthem anew. The result is that everything said is clear, but seems atthe mercy of something unsaid, which a bit later is revealed and isagain incorporated by the logic, but, in its turn, it obeys the movementof a still hidden force. In the end, everything is brought tolight, everything comes to be said, but this everything is also againburied within the obscurity of unreflective thought and unformulatablemoments.

The reader's uneasiness when faced with this thought which isonly clarified by a further additional thought which, at thatmoment, cannot itself be clarified, is often very intense. The reader'suneasiness increases even more because Sade's declared principles,which we might call his basic philosophy, appear to be simplicityitself. This philosophy is one of self-interest, then of completeegoism. Each of us must do what pleases us, each of us hasno other law but our own pleasure. This morality is founded onthe primary fact of absolute solitude. Sade said it and repeated itin all its forms: nature creates us alone, there is no connectionwhatsoever linking one man to another. Consequently, the onlyrule of conduct is that I favor all things that give me pleasure,without consideration of the consequences that this choice mighthold for the other. Their greatest pain always counts less than mypleasure. What does it really matter, if the price I must pay foreven my slightest joy is an outrageous assortment of hideouscrimes, since this joy delights me, it is in me, yet the effects of mycrimes do not touch me in the least, they are outside me.

These principles are clearly stated. We find them developed in amillion ways throughout twenty volumes. Sade never tires. Whathe most enjoys is holding these principles up against the ideas ofhis contemporaries, their theories that all men are created equalbefore nature and before the law. Thus he proposes some reasoningalong these lines: Given that all beings are equal in the eyes ofNature, this fact allows me the right not to sacrifice myself to preserveothers, whose ruin is indispensable to my happiness. Or betteryet, he drafts a sort of Declaration of the Rights of Eroticism,with this maxim as its fundamental principle, applicable as muchfor women as for men: Give yourself over to all those who desireyou, take all those you desire. "What evil do I do, what crime doI commit when, greeting a beautiful creature, I say: 'Give me thepart of your body that can satisfy me now, and if you like, pleasureyourself with the part of my body that might be pleasing toyours?" Such propositions appear irrefutable to Sade. For pages onend he invokes the equality of individuals, the reciprocity ofrights, without perceiving that his reasoning, far from beingstrengthened by these propositions, is transformed into completenonsense. "Never can an act of possession be exercised on a freehuman being," he writes. But what conclusions does he draw fromthis? Not that it is forbidden to commit a violent act againstanother human being and to enjoy hurting them, inflicting themwith pain against their will, but rather that no one has the right touse an exclusive relationship, one of "possession," as an excuse torefuse themselves to him. The equality of beings is the right tomake equal use of all beings; freedom is the power to subject eachperson to his own will and wishes.

In seeing similar formulations one after another, we begin tothink that there is a discrepancy in Sade's thought, something missing,a madness. We sense a profoundly deranged thought, bizarrelysuspended over the void. But, suddenly, logic assumes control, ourobjections vanish and the system gradually takes shape. Justine,who, we know, represents worldly virtue, and who is tenacious,humble, always oppressed and unhappy, yet who is never convincedof the world's wrongs, declares suddenly in a very reasonablefashion: Your principles suppose power; if my happiness consists innever taking into account the interests of others, in occasionallyhurting them, will not one day arrive when the interests of othersconsist in hurting me; on what grounds will I be able to protest? "Isthe individual who isolates himself able to struggle against all ofhumanity?" This, we understand, is a classic objection. The Sadeanman both implicitly and explicitly responds in numerous ways thatgradually lead to the heart of his universe. Yes, he says at first, myright is that of power. And, in fact, Sadean humanity is essentiallycomposed of a small number of all-powerful men, who had the willto raise themselves above laws and place themselves outside prejudice,who feel naturally worthy because of the deviations naturecreated in them, and who seek satisfaction in every way possible.These extraordinary men generally belong to a privileged class:they are dukes, kings, even the pope himself is descended fromnobility; they take advantage of their status, their fortune, theimpunity that their situation assures them. They owe to their birththe privileges of inequality, which they are happy to perfectthrough implacable despotism. They are the most powerfulbecause they are part of a powerful social class. "I call the People,"says one of them, "that vile and deplorable social class that makesits living only through pain and sweat; all who breathe must joinforces against this abject social class."

But there is no doubt about it, even though these Sovereigns ofdebauchery often consolidate within themselves and to their ownadvantage the full range of inequality among the classes, this isonly the expression of a historical circumstance that Sade is nottaking into account in his value judgments. He is fully aware that,during the historical moment of his writing, power is a social category,that it is inscribed within the organization of society as itexisted before and after the revolution, but he also believes power(like solitude) to be not only a state, but a choice and a conquest:a man is powerful when he knows how to become so with hisenergy. In reality, his heroes are recruited from two oppositemilieux: the highest and the lowest, from the most privileged classand from the most disadvantaged class, from among the world'sgreat individuals and from the cesspool of society's dregs. Both setsof individuals find, at the point of departure, something extremepromoting them; the extreme of misery is as powerful a stimulusas the exaltation of fortune. When one is a Dubois or a Durand,one rises up against the laws of the land because one is sorestrained and too far below the laws to be able to conform tothem without perishing. And when one is a Saint-Fond or theDuke de Blangis, one is too far above the law to be able to submitto it without demeaning oneself. This is why, in Sade's works, thejustification for crime is an expression of contradictory principles:for some, inequality is a fact of nature; certain men are necessarilyslaves and victims, they have no rights, they are nothing, againstthem everything is permissible. Consequently, there are the crazedeulogies to tyranny, the political constitutions intended to makethe revenge of the weak and the enrichment of the poor foreverimpossible. "Let it be clearly understood," says Verneuil, "that it isamong Nature's intentions that there necessarily be a class of individualswho by their birth and inherent weakness shall remainessentially subject to the other class."—"The laws are not madefor the people ... The basic precept of any wise government is tomake certain that the people shall not encroach upon the authorityof the masters." And Saint-Fond: "The people shall be kept ina state of slavery that will make it quite impossible for them everto attempt to dominate the wealthy or debase their properties andpossessions." Or again: "All that goes under the name of crimes oflibertinage shall never be punished, save in the slave casts."

Here we are, it seems, in the presence of the most insane theoryof the most absolute despotism. Nevertheless, the perspectivebrusquely changes. What does Dubois say? "Nature caused us all tobe equals born; if fate is pleased to intervene and upset the primaryscheme of things, it is up to us to correct its caprices and, throughour own skill, to repair the usurpations of the strongest ... So longas our good faith and patience serve only to double the weight ofour chains, our crimes will be as virtues, and we would be foolsindeed to abstain from them when they can lessen the yoke wherewiththeir cruelty bears us down." And she adds: for the poor,crime alone opens up doors in life; villainy is their compensationfor injustice, just as theft is the revenge of the dispossessed.Therefore, this has been clearly delineated: equality, inequality,freedom to oppress, rebellion against the oppressor are only completelyprovisional arguments through which the Sadean man'sright to power is affirmed, given the difference in social strata.Besides, soon the distinction made between those who need tocommit crimes to live and those who take pleasure in living onlywhen committing crimes, dissolves. Mme. Dubois becomes abaroness. Mme. Durand, the worst kind of poisoner, rises aboveeven princesses on the social ladder, the very princesses that Juliettedoes not hesitate to sacrifice to her. Counts become gang leaders,crooks (as in Faxelange), or even innkeepers to better rob and killsimpletons. (Though most of the victims of libertinage are foundin the aristocracy, since they must be of noble birth. As the Marquisde Bressac declares with marvelous contempt to the countess, hismother: "Your days are mine, and mine are sacred.")

Now, what is happening? Some men have become powerful.Some were so by birth, but they also demonstrate that theydeserve this power by the way they accrue it and enjoy it. Othershave become powerful after having had recourse to criminalbehavior, and the sign of their success is that they use this powerto acquire freedom to commit every crime. Such is the world:some have ascended to the highest ranks of society—and aroundthem, ad infinitum, is a nameless dust, a countless number ofindividuals who have neither rights nor power. Look at whatbecomes the rule of absolute egoism. I do what pleases me, saysSade's hero, I know only my pleasure and, to guarantee that I getit, I torture and kill. You threaten me with a similar fate the day Ihappen to meet someone whose pleasure is found in torturing andkilling me. But I have acquired this power precisely to rise abovethis threat. When Sade offers us answers along these lines, we feellike we are completely slipping toward a side of his thought that isheld together only by the dark forces hidden within it. What isthis power that fears neither chance nor law, that disdainfullyexposes itself to the terrible risks of a rule thus conceived—I willhurt you as much as I like, hurt me as much as you are able—onthe pretext that this rule will always turn in its favor? Now, notethat for the principles to dissolve, only one exception is needed: ifonly once the Powerful finds misfortune in the pursuit of hispleasure alone, if just once while exerting his tyranny he becomesa victim, he will be lost, the law of pleasure will appear to be ascam, and men, instead of wanting triumph through excess willbegin again to live mediocre lives fearing the least evil.


(Continues...)
Excerpted from LAUTRÉAMONT AND SADE by Maurice Blanchot, Stuart Kendall, Michelle Kendall. Copyright © 1963 Les Éditions de Minuit. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Stanford University Press
Publication date
2004
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0804750351
ISBN 13 
9780804750356
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
198
Rating
  • 3.76 out of 5 stars
    241 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780804742337: Lautreamont and Sade

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0804742332 ISBN 13:  9780804742337
Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2004
Hardcover