Bataille Nietzsche Surrealism

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388

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk. 1989,3(4)

Georges Bataille s interpretation

o

Nietzsche: The question

o

violence in

Surrealist art

H

anse van Rensburg

Department History of Art, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002 Republic of South Africa

Received January

1989 ;

accepted April 989

In

this study the response to Nietzsche in the writings of Georges Bataillc

in

France in the

1930s as

well

as

some

aspects of

his

influence on the approach to Nietzsche

in

Surrealist art, is discussed. The question of the meaning

of violence

in Surrealism

is

examined. Some references to violence

by

Bataille, Andre Breton, and Salvador

Dali following the Surrealist crisis of 1929 are considered. The question of violence is considered in relation to

the resistance to

Fascism in

the French art world

in

the 1930s. Lastly the question of mythological violence is

considered in terms of Bataille's criticism of Marxism and his adoption of a Nietzschcan a-political stance in the

late 1930s.

Die reaksie op Friedrich Nietzsche in Georges Bataille se geskriftc in Frankryk in die 1930's, sowel as aspekte

van

sy invloed op die ontvangs van Nietzsche in Surrealistiesc kuns word ondcrsoek. Daar word gckonsentreer

op die vraag na die betekenis van geweld in Surrealisme. Verwysings na gewcld deur Bataille, Andre Breton en

Salvador Dali wat volg op die Surrealistiese krisis van 1929 word oorweeg. Die vraag na die aard van geweld

word ondersoek teen die agtergrond van die weerstand teen Fascisme

in

die Franse kunswcreld van die 1980's.

Laastens word die begrip

van

mitologiese geweld ondersoek

in die lig

van Bataille se kritiek teen Marxisme en

sy beklemtoning van Nietzsche se a-politiese standpunt.

ietzsche and Surrealism

The

term 'Surrealist' was used for the fist time by

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) in the introduction

to his play Les Mamelles de Tiresias in 1917. Apollinaire

explains the 'drame surrealiste' as the recognition of a

reality

constituted

by the higher creative powers

of

the

imagination, using

the French

preposition

'sur' (on,

upon,

towards) as a prefix.

As

a variation

of

the

French

translation of

'Ubermensch'

into 'Ie

surhomme',

1

Appollinaire's adoption of the term reflects his interest

in the work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900).

2

Consistent with the function

that

Nietzsche affords to the prefix 'tiber' (over),

3

Surreal

ism, in Apollinaire's postulation, is neither merely a

symbolical

or

a representative reality,

nor

is it an

imitation of reality. Surrealism, instead, is defined in

terms of reality as a creative sphere, 'a complete

universe with its creator. In other words nature itself and

not only the representation of a small fragment of what

surrounds

us

or

what

once

took

place.,4

Georges

Bataille

(1897-1962) still acknowledges the association

between

the term Surrealism and Nietzsche's 'Ubermensch' in an

essay with the title 'La vieille taupe et

Ie

pretixe Sur

dans les

mots Surhomme

et

Surrealiste'

in 1930.

5

Despite

the conspicious evidence of Nietzsche's

presence in Surrealism, the question of his influence

on

Surrealism remains a largely neglected field of study.

The French

cultural world in the

era

of Surrealism,

included such specialists of Nietzsche's work as

Antonin

Artaud (1896-1948),6 Andre Malraux (1901-1976),7

Georges

Ribemont

-Dessaignes (1884-1947),

8

Georges

Bataille, Francis Picabia (1879-1953),9

Andre

Masson

(1896-1987)10

and

Max

Ernst

(1891-1976).11 Various

other artists showed a

keen

interest in Nietzsche's work.

Of

interes t in this study , is

the

response to Nietzsche in

the

writings of

Georges

Bataille in particular, and the

role he played in formulating aspects of a French

approach to Nietzsche in

the

1930s. The work of Bataille

itself had recently become the subject of renewed studies

in various disciplines. This was partly stimulated by

the

acknowledgement of the significance of Bataille's

influence by the philosophers Michel

Foucault and

Jacques

Derrida.

Bataille's writings

on

Nietzsche in

the

1930s also anticipates the

return of

Nietzsche's

work to

a

central position in the

French

philosophical stage in

the

1960s. This influence is reflected in the studies on

Nietzsche by eminent philosophers such as Foucault,

Jacques

Derrida,

Gilles

Deleuze and Jean Granier.

The

French

revival of Nietzsche in the 1960s also includes

significant contributions by Pierre Klossowski

(born

1906) and Jean Wahl (1888-1974)12

both

of whom were

closely involved with Bataille

and

his interest in

Nietzsche in

the

1930s. The

work

of

Bataille,

too,

assumed a significant position

in

French thought since

the 1960s. In contemporary antihumanist literary

criticism

of Derrida,

or

Julia Kirsteva, Bataillian images

of violence have

become common

metaphors used

to

disarticulate the concept of the rational stable self, and

to establish an alternative concept of 'subjectivity in

flUX .13

It was particularly through Allan Stoekl's translations

of a variety of Bataille's writings, including his writings

on

Nietzsche in the 1930s,

that

key aspects of

Bataille's

thought had recently become accessible to the English

speaking world. 4 Stoekl's critical studies of Bataille

had

also contributed significantly

to

an appreciation of

Bataille in English academical circles.

15

In Art

History

the response

of

artists such as Ernst,16 Masson,17

and

Picasso

l8

to images from Bataille's writings was noticed

by various commentators. t is Rosalind Krauss, how-

ever, who has suggested in a recent essay that Bataille's

influence

on

Surrealist artists often

exceeded

that

of


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S.Afr.l.Cult.Art

Hist. 1989,3(4)

Andre

Breton (1896-1966) in the years immediately

following the so-called Surrealist crisis of 1929,

and

the

publication of the second

Manifeste du Surrealisme

in

1930.

19

The Surrealist crisis of 929: Violence

n

the literature on Surrealist art, a dominant role

is

generally afforded to

Andre

Breton,

who once described

Nietzsche as what I detest the mos t .

2

This may partly

explain the relative neglect

of

Nietzsche s influence

reflected in histories of the movement. Artists and

writers, interested in Nietzsche s work in the French

cultural world

of

the 1920s and 1930s, had often dissoci

ated themselves from the official circle of Surrealism

around

Breton, or

were

sooner or

later excommunicated

by Breton.

The

notable exception

is

Max

Ernst

who

pursued an interest in Nietzsche, retained a friendship

with Breton, as well as a carefully restrained participa

tion in the Surrealist circle.

t is only in reference to the

art

of Ernst that Breton has occasionally acknowledged

Nietzsche s importance to Surrealism.

21

But Bataille,

Malraux, Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) and

Picasso,

for instance, never belonged to the official circle of

Surrealism; Ribemont-Dessaignes,

Artaud

and Picabia

soon

abandoned the Surrealist circle, while Joseph

Delteil (1894--1978), Michel Leiris (born 1901),

Georges Limbour

(1902-1970), Andre Masson and

Salvador Dali (1904--1989) were all denied by

Breton

at

one

point

or

another. These artists all expressed an

interest in Nietzsche.

More

than mere coincidence, the dissociation between

the interest in Nietzsche

and

official Surrealism signifies

crucial questions in French cultural and ideological

thought

of

the era. As Bataille was to show, Nietzschean

thought,

and

the

adherence

to a Marxist course

proclaimed by Breton, remain essentially incompatible.

Furthermore, the problematic of the interest in

Nietzsche in the Surrealist era, is largely qualified by the

question of the nature of violence in French thought and

art, and its relation to the resistance to Fascism in France

in the 1930s. t

is

Georges

Bataille who was to pursue an

attempt

to differentiate between the nature

of

Nietzsche s Dionysian aesthetic

of

destruction

and

re

creation, and the

nature

of Fascist violence.

Violence is a distinctive quality of Surrealist art in the

1930s. The meaning of Surrealist violence can neither be

separated

from its revolutionary aims, nor from the

threat

represented

by the Fascist adoption of Nietzsche s

'Ubermensch' as a superman-image of

the

Aryan race.

On the other

hand,

violence, on a metaphorical level,

also signifies the creative process

of

destruction, re

evaluation, re-creation and the determination of an

alternative aesthetic in Surrealist art. Designated by

Nietzsche s Dionysus-figure, violence, cruelty, brutality,

sacrifice, sacrilege

or

hubris, perversion and subversion

are central questions in the Nietzsche-image in French

art in the Surrealist era.

Associated by Nietzsche with a pre-consciousness in

Die Geburt der Tragodie

(1872), the Dionysian refers to

389

deeper strata of consciousness, also called

'nature',

which are the source

of

all life, consciousness and

creativity. The Dionysian finds expression in the

Apollonian principuum individuationis

or

conscious

ness, which to Nietzsche is a necessary layer of illusion

over the substrata of nature. Creativity, for Nietzsche, is

the continual re-emergence

of

the Dionysian through

'Rausch',

ecstasy, frenzy

or

rapture,

forever re

arranging the structures

of

Apollonian thought. t is

worth noticing that Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), being

a central source for Surrealist ideas, was associated with

Nietzsche s views

of

the unconscious and the supra

individual in the Surrealist review Minotaure in 1933.

22

Nietzsche does not so much

denounce

Apollonian

thought, but attempts to re-affirm the exigency

of

Dionysian nature. He insists

on

the destructive and re

creative nature of the Dionysian-Apollo relation. t

requires that Apollonian thought is never to

be

codified

into 'truths', systems of logic, or the structures of

reason.

Consequently he opposes all cultural structures which

uphold the codification

of

Apollonian illusions, such as

science, or religious

and

political dogma. Furthermore,

Nietzsche asserts the multi-layered dimensions of reality

which can never

be

commensurated by any system

of

thought or rational augury. Considering the system

atizing of thought as debilitating to the excessive

opulence

of

reality, he affirms, instead, all possible

occurences of life :

'The word Dionysian means ... an ecstatic

affirmation of the total

character of

life as that

which remains the same, just as powerful, just as

blissful, through all change; the great pantheistic

sharing

of

joy and sorrow that sanctifies and

calls good even the most terrible and

questionable qualities

of

life; the eternal will to

procreation, to fruitfulness, to recurrence, the

feeling of the necessary unity of

creation

and

destruction. 23

Violence in Surrealism, as a response to Nietzschean

thought, was first formulated in terms

of

the

Dada

heritage of nihilism.24 George Ribemont-Dessaignes

whose interest

in

Nietzsche stems from the

Dada-period,

could initially see Dionysian violence as a simple

means

of revitalizing social structures. n an essay

In Praise

o

Violence

published in 1926, Ribemont-Dessaignes

writes a soliloquy of the virtues of violence as a process

of

destruction and re-creation:

Nothing is lost

sooner

than violence ...

War or

revolution is all right;

between

two

bombs

nothing keeps man from dreaming

of

his

armchair ... An

epoch

of violence has just ended

- we do not

mean

the war,

but

the

one

which

assailed all the moral defe nces. 25

However, three years later

Andre

Breton

had

clearly

formulated his aim

of

pursuing a Marxist revolution

through Surrealist transgression. This became clear

during the Surrealist crisis

of

1929, which came to a

head

with the meeting at the

Bar

du Chateau in March 1929.

The

crisis was largely due to

Breton's attempt

to have a


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390

document signed in which members of the Surrealist

group were required to subscribe to a unified commit

ment to the promotion of the Marxist cause. Rejecting

Breton's 'dogmatism', Ribemont-Dessaignes walked out

of the meeting and wrote in a letter to Breton:

J strongly opposed the style you have adopted,

... and the badly organized (or efficient, if one

adopts a commissariat de police viewpoint)

ambush concealed under the Trotsky pretext

,26

During the Surrealist meeting at the Bar

du

Chateau,

Bataille, who refused to participate, was severely criti

cized by Breton, a criticism

that is

partly repeated in the

Manifeste du Surrealisme.

27

Breton's second Manifeste

du Surrealisme was completed shortly after the meeting

at the Bar du Chateau and published in December 1929.

Violence

is

a central theme in the manifesto, and Breton

writes:

'Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a

tenet

of

total revolt,

...

it still expects nothing

safe from violence. The simplest Surrealist act

consists

of

dashing down

the street,

pistol in

hand,

and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull

the

trigger, into the crowd.,28

Breton was criticized from various sides for his views

of violence

after

the publication of the manifesto. A

pamphlet,

n Cadavre was published in 1930, by a group

outraged

by Breton's treatment of

them

since

the

meeting at the Bar

du Chateau.

n Cadavre included

critical contributions against Breton by Ribemont-

Dessaignes, Georges Limbour, Michel Leiris, Robert

Desnos and Georges

Bataille.

Late in 1929 or early in 1930 Bataille completed an

article as a response to Breton's attacks against him in

the second Manifeste du Surrealisme. In the article 'La

vieille taupe

et

Ie prefixe

sur

dans les mots

Surhomme

et

Surrealiste ', Bataille refers

to

Breton's

image of the violence of shooting into a crowd, and

writes:

That

such an image should present itself so

insistently to his view proves decisively the

importance in his pathology of castration

reflexes: such an extreme provocation seeks to

draw

immediate

and brutal

punishment

... when

bourgeois society refuses to take them seriously

and to

take up the

challenge they offer

...

the

Surrealists have found the destiny they were

seeking ... For

them

it was never a question of

really terrifying: The intrinsic

character

of the

bogeyman they play

is

sufficient, for they are

eager to play the role of juvenile victims,

despicable victims of a general incomprehension

and degradation. 29

Furthermore, Bataille criticizes

Breton

for

the

pres

ence of a metaphysical idealism in the Manifeste du

Surrealisme. This idealism, according to Bataille, finds

expression in Breton's view of violence.

Breton's

formu

lation of violence,

therefore,

implies a denial of what

Bataille calls

the

principle

of

sovereignty. Sovereignty,

Bataille's alternative term for Nietzsche's concept of

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk.

1989,3(4)

'Ubermenschlichkeit', is differentiated from idealism:

'Man

is his own law, if he strips himself bare in

front of himself. The mystic before God has the

aspect

of

a

subject. Who

strips himself bare in

front

of

himself has the aspect of a

sovereign. ,30

Bataille, who refused to attend the meeting at the

Bar

du

Chateau because there were 'too many fucking

idealists,3l in the Surrealist circle,

interpretes

Breton's

view of violence as particularly idealistic: 'Servile

idealism rests precisely in this will to poetic agitation,

...

a completely unhappy desire to turn to upper spiritual

regions.

d2

Bataille also identifies an emphasis on the idealistic

aspects of Nietzsche's thought in the Surrealist response

to his work

'At

the heart of Nietzsche's demands lies such

flagrant disgust for the senile idealism of the

establishment ... so spiteful towards the hypoc

risy and the moral shabbiness that presides

over

current

world exploitation -

that

it

is

imposs

ible to define his work as

one

of the ideological

forms of the dominant class ...

(but)

Nietzsche

was condemned by circumstances to imagine his

break

with conformist ideology as an Icarian

adventure ... the same double tendency

is

found

in contemporary Surrealism, ... which main

tains, of course, the predominance of higher

ethereal values clearly expressed by the addition

of the prefix

'sur',

the trap into which Nietzsche

had already fallen with

Surhomme .

m

This criticism reflects Bataille's earliest interpretation

of

Nietzsche. It typifies an image

of

Nietzsche

at

a time

when the emergence of Marxism as a predominant

ideology, superseded

the

Nietzscheanism of

the

Dada

circles.

George Grosz

(1893-1959) for

instance,

had

expressed a similar criticism of Nietzsche in 1925.

34

Furthermore BatailIe's criticism

is

aimed at the arrival

of

Salvador Dali in Breton's Surrealist circle, and Dali's

popular image

of

idealistic Nietzscheanism - what

Bataille terms the 'bogeyman' syndrome in the Surrealist

circle.

Salvador Dali is an immediate sensation

after

his

arrival in Paris and his entering of

the

Surrealist

group

shortly after

the

Bar

du

Chateau

meeting

of

March

1929.

Dali, who called himself 'the Nietzsche of the

irrational',35 indicated

that

he was associated with

Nietzsche right away

after

his arrival in Paris in this 'truly

Nietzschean' period of his life.

36

Although Bataille

does not refer to

Dali in the essay 'La

vieille taupe et

Ie

pretixe Sur dans les mots

Surhomme' et Surrealiste''',

his private notes of this

period identify Dali as a source of some aspects of his

criticism of Surrealism.

7

Shortly after his arrival in Paris

in ]929, Dali attracted considerable

attention

with the

exhibition of his painting Le feu Lugubre .

8

In re

sponse, Bataille

adopted

an incomplete essay

on the

inferiority complex into a criticism of

Dali's

painting.

Echoing his criticism of the idealistic interpretation

of

Nietzsche in

the

Surrealist circle, Bataille's essay 'Le

Jeu Lugubre is explicitly directed against Dali's 'servile


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S.Afr.l.Cult.Art Hist. 1989.3(4)

nobility, this idiotic idealism

that

leaves us under

the

spell of a few comical prison bosses'.

39

Idealism in

contrast to 'sovereignty', according

to

Bataille, has an

imprisoning effect on the mind - a metaphor that he

constantly uses in his private notes on the controversy

with

Breton

in 1929.

4

Idealism, therefore, implies an

alternative aspect of violence. This, according to

Bataille, can be identified in the intellectual despair of

the laceration

of

form in Dali's painting, the 'sudden

cataclysms, great popular manifestations of madness,

riots, enormous revolutionary slaughter ... idiotic

idealism.

41

Bataille denies any dimension of creative violence in

Dali's painting, and claims:

'Intellectual despair results in neither weakness

nor

dreams, but

in violence ... t is only a

matter

of knowing how to give vent to one's rage;

whether one only want to wander like madmen

around

prisons, or whether

one

want

to

overturn

them

... This is said without any critical

intention, for it

is

evident that violence, even

when one

is

besides oneself with it,

is

most often

of sufficient brutal hilarity to exceed questions

about

people. My only desire ... is

to

squeal like

a pig before his canvases.

42

In his essay 'Le bas materialisme et la gnose' of 1930,

Bataille proposes the concept of the

preponderance

of

matter, as a denial of idealism, of 'an abstract

God

(or

simply the idea), and abstract matter; the chief guard

and the prison walls'.

43

n order to motivate an

alternative foundation for the dismemberment of form in

Surrealist art,44 Bataille turns in this essay to Gnostic

sects and Gnostic art objects with its primitive

rearrangements of

human

form. Bataille's insistence of

the preponderance of matter in Gnostic art, also echoes

Nietzsche's view of Dionysian art as a physiology of art.

In the essay 'Le

Jeu lugubre ',

Bataille criticizes

Dali's expression of idealistic violence in particular

painting. n the essay 'Le bas materialisme et la gnose',

violence is given significant new direction in terms of

Surrealist

art,

by linking it with mythological thought.

Dali responds in his essay The Stinking Ass' in 1932:

'(Materialism) adapts itself so readily to the

violence of images, which materialist thought

idiotically confuses with the violence of reality

...

What have in mind here are, in particular,

the materialist ideas of Georges Bataille, but

also, ... all the old materialism which this gentle

man

dodderingly claims to

rejuvenate

when he

bolsters it up with modern psychology.'45

The differences around the question

of

violence,

apparently, remain unresolved in the years immediately

following the Surrealist crisis of 1929, but

it was Bataille

who was to pursue the question of the meaning

of

violence. Breton's references to violence in the second

Manifeste du Surealisme in

one

sense, look back at the

unrestrained pleas for revolutionary violence in the

Futurist manifestoes of the previous decade.

Yet Breton

clearly defines violence in terms of a Marxist revolution,

with the expressed aim of agitating a proposed bourgeois

391

establishment. This

is

particularly formulated in the

journal Le Surrealisme au service de l revolution

founded by Breton as the new official mouthpiece

of

the

Surrealist circle after the meeting at the

Bar du

Chateau

in 1929.

Dali's revolutionary aims at the time

are

less certain,

at least as far

as

his interest in Nietzsche's concept of

Dionysian violence is concerned. Dali did not support

Breton's Marxism, and his interest in Nietzsche

is

clearly

at variance with that

of

Bataille. Bataille's identification

of an idealistic approach to Nietzsche by

Dali,

is of some

interest in terms of the objection to the Fascist inter

pretation of the philosopher's work. In his lectures

on

Nietzsche after 1936, Martin Heidegger was

to

formulate

a similar criticism against the idealistic interpretation of

Nietzsche in Germany, claiming

later that

it was his

personal contestation of the Nazi

interpretation

of

Nietzsche.

46

Dali was accused of being a Fascist by Breton in 1934.

In February of that year,

Breton

called for a Surrealist

meeting to cross-examine Dali on allegations of his

Fascist sympathies, and of being an enemy of the

proletariate.

n

his own defence, Dali explained at the

meeting that The Nietzschean Dionysos

accompanied

me everywhere like a patient governess and soon I could

not help noticing that he was wearing a swastika

armband,.47

Claiming that the use

of

swastikas in his paintings was

a-political and merely an expression of his paranoiac

critical method,48 Dali writes:

'Dali, the complete Surrealist, preaching an

absolute absence

of

aesthetic or moral con

straint, actuated by Nietzsche's will to power ,

asserted that every experiment could be carried

to its extreme limits ... But Breton said No to

Dali.,49

What Bataille terms

the

violence of idealism

of

'comical prison bosses,50 in Dali's approach

to

Nietzsche

corresponds partly to aspects of the Fascist inter

pretation of Nietzsche that Bataille was to oppose in his

writings after 1933.

51

However, at the time

of

the

Surrealist crisis Bataille was still

adhering to

the

revolutionary aim of Marxist ideology, and his criticism

of Nietzsche in the essay, 'La vieille

taupe

et Ie prefixe

Sur dans les mots

Surhomme et Surrealiste''',

is

to

a

considerable extent a Marxist objection.

In

the early

1930s Bataille's interest in Nietzsche was well estab

lished, but not yet fully integrated and formulated. t

is

only through his growing disenchantment with Marxism

and the growing threat of Fascism

that

Bataille was to

formulate an approach to Nietzsche in terms

of

political

questions, and the question

of

violence.

After

the

Surrealist crisis, figures such as

Delteil,

Leiris, Limbour

and

Andre Masson, who were ex

communicated from the Surrealist circle, formed a

group

around

Georges Bataille. Bataille founded the journal

Documents in 1929, in which he published the criticism of

Dali's e jeu Lugubre

as

well as the article on

gnosticism and the physiology

of

matter. In returning

Bataille's criticism in 1932,52 Dali, however, failed to


5/11

392

realize that Bataille had given the theme of violence an

important new direction in terms of Surrealist art.

Rather than stressing the ideological aims of revolution

ary violence, Bataille transposes the theme

of violence to

a metaphorical level

of

primitivism and myth, thus

introducing into the theme of violence the question

of

creativity and the meaning of creative violence. This

pursuit

is

continued in

other

essays in

Documents

and

the

journal published a variety of well-illustrated articles

on

archaeology, anthropology, studies

of

primitive

objects, ritual sacrifice,

and

primitive art. With

contributions by authors such as Bataille, Limbour,

Robert Desnos (1900-1945), aud Michel Leiris who was

a professional anthropologist, Documents played a

leading role in the revival of primitivism

and

mythological themes,

and

also became an

important

visual source for Surrealist art in the 1930s.

Bataille s own contribution

to Documents

included the

essays Oeil , Le gros orteil ,

L

Apocalypse

de

Saint

Sever (1929), and Soleil

pourri

(1930) which were all

particularly

important

as sources for visual art in the

1930s,

and

were responded to by artists such as Alberto

Giacometti,

Andre

Masson

and

Pablo

PicassoY

Bataille

also published essays

on

the Marquis de Sade and sa

dism,54 sacrificial mutilation, the metaphorical meaning

of parts of the human body and its forms in art, meta

morphoses, deviations from nature; primitive art, and a

variety

of

aspects of primitive cultures.

The

journal

closely reflects Bataille s interest in Nietzsche s concept

of Dionysian violence as an expression of primitivism,

and

in his various essays Bataille lays a metaphorical

foundation for his

later

theoretical work

on

Nietzsche.

The journal Minotaure a luxurious variant

on

the

lines laid down by Documents appeared for the first time

in June 1933.

In Minotaure

the groups

of Breton

were

moving in closer collaboration than ever before, and

Minotaure published essays by Bataille, Desnos, Leiris,

Limbour, Masson, as well as members of the Breton

circle.

The

title

of

Dali and Luis Bunuel s film

L Age

d Or

(1929) was initially considered for the journal, but

it

was Bataille and Masson who persuaded others to

accept the title

Minotaure.

Masson writes: Not only

in

its title was

Minotaure endebted

to Bataille for it was

infused with his spirit, especially in its beginning .

Minotaure continued to explore the theme of primitive

violence established by

Documents

and Albert Skira,

co-editor

of

the journal, writes in the introduction of the

first issue in 1933, that the title Minotaure was chosen

because of the aggresive

and

Dionysiac character of

the

myth,.56 Thus

Minotaure

through the efforts

of

Bataille,

established what was to become a central myth

in

Surrealist art, a myth essentially related to Nietzsche s

aesthetics of destruction and re-creation.

Bataille and Communism n the early 193 5

From

late 1931 to early 1934 Bataille was involved in an

anti-Stalinist Marxist review,

La Critique Sociale

edited

by Boris Souvarine.

Other

participants

on

the editorial

board were Leiris, the philosopher Pierre Klossowski,

translator

of

some of Nietzsche s work into French and

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk.

1989,3(4)

also

brother of

the artist Balthus (Klossowski de Rola,

born 1908); as well s the political photographer Dora

Maar.

Participation in La Critique Sociale represents the high

point of Bataille s Marxist involvement, and in the

journal he defines the notion

of

violence repeatedly in

revolutionary terms as an expression of class struggle.

In

the essay

La

notion

de depense

(January

1933) Bataille

sees revolution as the liberation

of

the need of the

lower classes to

expend the

ruling classes in an

orgiastic social revolution. In

an

essay entitled

La

structure psychologique du fascisme

(November

1933),

Bataille explores the problematic

of

fascism as a ruling

class sustained by the idealism

of

authority

s an

unconditional principle situated above any utilitarian

judgement .

He

considers conditions of violence such as

excess, delirium, madness,57 as a means of breaking the

laws

of

the ideal of authority and commensurability

of

Fascism. Bataille s approach to violence in these essays

is

related to the anthropological writings

of

Marcel

Mauss,58 but there also appears some echoes of his

interest in Nietzsche s Dionysian pnmlhvlsm in

Bataille s opposition to Fascism, and the essays look

forward to Bataille s Nietzsche et les fascistes of 1937.

Although Bataille still supports revolutionary aspects

of

Marxism, the essay La structure psychologique du

fascisme , as well as an essay La critique des

fondements

de la dialectique hegelienne (March 1932), already

depart from the

orthodox

Marxist dialectic, and lays a

foundation for his subsequent distinction between

Nietzsche and Fascism

on

the

one hand, and

Nietzsche

and

Communism

on

the

other

hand.

Politically

the

early 1930s are characterized by the

emergence

of

a threat

of

Fascism,

represented

in

the

ideologies of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.

During

an

international congress against Fascism in Paris in 1933,

the French Communist Party became manifest s the

dominant force in the French anti-Fascist movement.

The government of the French Radical Party fell from

power early in 1934, and a long period of political crisises

and uncertainty ensued. Strikes, violence,

and

clashes

between French Fascists and Communists

broke

out in

February 1934.

The

French

Front

Populaire, and

alliance of

the

Communist Party

and

the non

Communist Socialist

Party,

eventually assumed control

in the elections of March 1936. A new government was

formed in

June

1936.

The

close ties

between

Surrealism

and

the Communist

Party were

ruptured

when Breton

and

Paul Eluard

(1895-1952) were expelled from the Party in 1933.

However, when violence

broke out in

Paris in 1934,

Breton still called for a unified Communistic stance in

opposition

to

Fascism. A document

to

this effect, Appel

ala lutte was signed by members of the Surrealist group

in February 1934.

9

The signatories included Surrealist

members such as

Breton,

Eluard

and

Ferdinand Leger

(1881-1955), as well as non-members such as Malraux,

Leiris, and Dora Maar.

Bataille founded the group

Contre

Attaque late in

1935, a

group

which included, of all people, Andre


6/11

S.Afr.J.Cult.Art Hist. 1989,3(4)

Breton. Bataille used a hall in the Rue des

Grands

Augustins for meetings of the

Contre Attaque.

The hall

was later made available to Picasso for the painting

of

Guernica.

Bataille read a speech 'Front Populaire dans la rue' at

the first meeting of Contre Attaque in 1935, calling for

the

support

of

the

Communists against Fascism. He

emphasized force, agitation, and violence against

Fascism

to

such an extent that it implied the exclusion of

political and doctrinal debates. By the time

the

speech

was published in

the

only issue of Cahiers de Contre

Attaque

in May 1936, Breton and the Surrealist contin

gent had already dissociated themselves from Contre

Attaque. Breton accused Bataille of 'sur-fascisme' 60 an

allusion to Bataille's unpublished 'La vieille taupe et

e

prefixe

sur

dans les mots Surhomme

et

Surrealiste'

of 1930.

n

later years, Bataille did not deny that

there

was a certain 'paradoxical fascist tendency' in

Contre

Attaque,

and even in himself at the time.

6

Although Bataille still supported the Front Populaire

early in 1936, he suddenly abandoned Communism after

the Front Populaire had come into power in the elections

of March 1936. Disillusioned by a mass who has no

interest in political theory, he also rejected, subsequent

Iy, any hope

in subversive violence with a revolutionary

aim. Instead Bataille turned to the notion

of

the role

of

marginal groups in a revolutionary society, originally

advocated in his essays on Gnosticism, madmen,

knights, and sects

of

heterodox Christian mystics

published in Documents. Instigated by the collapse of

Contre

Attaque, Bataille rejected a Marxist ideology

altogether, and pursued in its place an a-political stance

based on the examination of the meaning

of

mythologi

cal structures of thought in Nietzsche's philosophy. The

question of violence was henceforth to be emphasized in

terms of the meaning of creativity in a given community.

Bataille s writings on Nietzsche after 1936

Shortly after the Spanish civil war broke out in April

1936, Bataille visited

Andre

Masson in Tossa in Spain

where the latter was living

at

the time. In Spain Bataille

and Masson planned an organization and a

journal

that

was

to

be dedicated to Nietzsche, as well as to the

opposition of the Fascist interpretation of Nietzsche

elsewhere in Europe. The name Acephale, based on a

mythological race of headless people without a leader,

was adopted as a metaphorical indication of Bataille's

new political direction. As a result

of

the risk of Fascism

encountered in Contre Attaque, the Acephale-group

was resolved not to become involved with political

power

or

any official political party.

Acephale was a private and secret sect which was

closed to the public, although the journal was intended

for public distribution.

At

the

same time Bataille started

another

project

known as the College de Sociologie, a

series

of

public lectures on studies

of

such human

tendencies as

the

Acephale-group hoped

to

spark

through ritual activities. Participants in Acephale

393

included Bataille, Masson, Klossowski, Jean

Wahl,

Georges Ambrosino and Jules Monnerot. The College

de Sociologie was centered around Bataille, Callois and

Leiris.

The

first issue of

A

Cf?phale dedicated to the idea

of

the

'sacred conspiracy', was published in June 1936.

An

essay on Nietzsche, entitled 'La conjuration sacree',

written in Spain by

both

Bataille and Masson, intro

duced the first issue of Acephale. The essay

expounds

the

purpose of the Acephale-group, which were later re-ca

pitulated by Masson as the aim to 'unmask the religious

behind

the

political'. 62 Masson also designed

the

cover

for the first issue of Acephale, a depiction

of

the head-

less Acephalic being, based on Masson's drawing

of

Dionysos of 1933.

63

The

second issue of Acephale dedicated to Nietzsche

and the pre-classical Greek philosopher Heraclitus,

appeared

in

January

1937. Bataille published an intro

ductory essay on Nietzsche, and translated a section

from Nietzsche's lectures on Heraclitus in the

'Philosophie im tragischen

Zeitalter

der Griechen' for

this issue. Bataille also published his important essay

'Nietzsche et les fascistes', and Pierre Klossowski

published an essay 'Creation du Monde' about

cosmological aspects

of

Nietzsche's thought. Max

Raphael's essay 'A propos du fronton de Corfou', which

attributes the revival of pre-classical

Greek architecture

to Nietzsche's influence, was reprinted in this issue. This

study had already

appeared

in the first issue

of

Minotaure

in

June

1933.

The third and fourth numbers

of Acephale appeared

as

a single issue in July 1937.

The

issue

is

dedicated

to

Nietsche's figure of Dionysus, and the Nietzsche

inspired philological study, Dionysos: Mythos un Cultus

which was published by Walter Otto in Frankfurt in

1933. Jules Monnerot appealed for the substitution of

scientific truth with

the

mythical truths of Nietzsche's

Dionysus in an article entitled 'Dionysos

philosophe'.

Bataille offered a review

of

Karl

Jasper's

Nietzsche:

Einfuhrung in das Verstiindnis seines Ph ilosophierens,

published in Berlin in 1936. Bataille also published an

important article, 'Chronique nietzscheen' on the

Dionysian mysteries. Masson included four drawings of

Dionysus from his

Sacrifices

of 1933, in this edition

of

Acephale.

An article on Nietzsche,

the

symbolism of the obelisk

and the myth of the labyrinth by Bataille, was published

with the title 'L'Obelisque' in the journal Mesures in

April 1938.

The

last issue

of Acephale

did not

appear

until July 1939. Bataille published

the

essays 'La folie de

Nietzsche' and 'La pratique de la joie devant la mort' in

this issue. In the latter essay the question of violence and

the meaning of creative violence was directly linked to

the threatening world war. The war broke out a month

later, in August 1939.

n

his attack against Fascism in 'Nietzsche

et

les

Fascistes', Bataille refers to Nietzsche's criticism of anti

Semitism, in order

to

dissociate him from the Nazi

interpretation of his work in Germany. Bataille criticizes

Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche (he calls her Elizabeth


7/11

394

Judas-Forster) for 'selling' her brother's work to the

Nazis because

of her

own anti-Semitical feelings.

Bataille shows that during Hitler's visit to the Nietzsche

archives

in

1933, Frau Forster-Nietzsche had presented

him with anti-Semi tical texts by her late husband

Bernard Forster, pretending that the texts were written

by Nietzsche.

Bataille also analises

the

propogandical use

of

Nietzsche's work by Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg,

Mussolini,

Alfred

Baumler in his 'Nietzsche, der

Philosoph und Politiker'

of

1931, and Emmanuel

Levinas

in

his 'Quelques reflexions sur la philosophie de

l'hitlerisme', published

in

Paris in 1934. Bataille

criticizes the various interpretations

of

Nietzsche for the

idealism of a proposed 'higher' reality, and concludes:

'Fascism and Nietzscheanism are mutually

exclusive,

and

are even violently mutually

exclusive, as soon as each of them is considered

in its totality ... Insofar

as Fascism values a

philosophical source, it

is

attached

to

Hegel

and

not to Nietzsche.,64

In his essay

'La

critique des fondements de la

dialectique hegelienne' of 1932, Bataille

had

still

attempted to reconcile the Hegelian dialectic with

Nietzsche's notion

of

Dionysus. His disillusionment with

Marxism, however, also implies a change of attitude

towards Hegel, and

in

'L'obelisque'

of 1938, Bataille

claims: 'Nietzsche is to Hegel what a bird breaking its

shell is

to

a bird contently absorbing the substance

within,.65 t became necessary for Batialle to confront

any dialectical

movement,

no

matter

how transgressive,

with a Nietzschean intervention. Showing that both

Marxism

and

Fascism find a philosophical foundation in

a Hegelian dialectic, Bataille, instead, turns towards

Nietzsche's non-dialectic materialism, which he inter

pretes as essentially a-political: 'This Dionysian truth',

he claims, 'cannot be an object of propaganda'.66

Consequently Bataille opposes the Fascist use

of

Nietzsche's work for

the

purpose of violence and war

propaganda, and claims

that

Nietzsche's metaphores

of

war are essentially in conflict with the literal interpre

tation

of Nietzsche by the Fascists:

'War, to the extend that it

is

the desire to ensure

the

permanence

of

a nation, ...

is

the

demand

for inulterability, the authority

of

devine right .. .

opposing the exuberant power of time .. .

National and Military life are present in the

world to try to deny death by reducing it to a

component of glory without dread. 67

Fascism, consequently, represents to Bataille the

suppressive forces

of

commensurability

and

inulterabil

ity and is signalling, therefore, a time of cultural decay:

'When

communal passion

is

not great enough

to constitute

human

strengths, it becomes

necessary to use constraint and to develop the

alliances, contracts,

and

falsifications that are

called politics. 68

Art,

according to Bataille, constitutes a significant

aspect of the incommensurable heterogeneous 'excess'

that

he requires for a vital community, and is, in


particular, threatened by Fascism. Describing his era as

a time of a crisis of conventions, art, according

to

Bataille, has the additional aim

of

transgressive violence

against the constraining forces of the military ideal

of

commensurability. Violence, however,

is

now clearly

defined in terms

of

mythological 'excess'. Quoting partly

from Nietzsche's Die Geburt der Tragodie

69

Bataille

writes:

'Military sovereignty, tying existence to the past,

is followed or accompanied by

the

birth of free

and liberating sacred figures and myths,

renewing life and making it

'that

which frolics in

the future' ... The Nietzschean audacity de

manding for the figures it creates a

power

that

bows before nothing - that tends to break down

old sovereignty's edifices of moral prohibition

- must not

be

confused with what it fights ...

The very first sentences of Nietzsche's message

come from realms of dream

and

intoxication .

The

entire message

is

expressed by

one

name:

DIONYSUS ... (in other words,

the

destructive

exuberance

of

life).

7

The Dionysian aesthetic of destruction and recreation

is

identified by Bataille as a most vital attempt to break

out of the constraints of commensurability. Following

Nietzsche's Dionysus, Bataille saw it as an essential aim

of ACI?phale to

regenerate

heroic and orgiastic rituals,

the rebirth of 'living' myths and the touching off in

society of the primitive communal drives leading to

sacrifice. Violence, then, is identified as the re-creative

violence of a Dionysian aesthetic.

Myth,

as Bataille

states in

'L'apprenti

Sorcier'

is

the

way

open

to man

after the failure of science and politics, to reach the

lower 'chthonic and essential' drives: 'Myth ...

is

the

frenzy of every dance: it takes existence to its boiling

point : it communicates to it the tragic

emotion

that

makes its sacred intimacy accessible. m

As an exclusive sect, the Acephale-group participated

in rites such as meetings in a 'sacred' place near a tree

struck

by

lightning, a point

of

intersection between lower

'chthonian forces' and 'falling higher forces'. 72 These

rituals, which anticipates in a

sense the Happenings

of

the 1960s, led to conflict when

there

was the possibility

of

a human sacrifice to be

performed.

The

speculations

were brought to an

end

by the objections

of

particularly

Roger Callois,73 and the anthropologist Michel Leiris

who accused Bataille of misinterpreting ancient rituals.

Although Bataille and Andre Masson called themselves

'ferociously religious' 74 ACI?phale celebrates

the

most

primitive roots of religiosity

rather

than any

meta-

physical conception

of

religion.

75

In publications, Bataille

continued

an

approach to

myth that was already familiar in his writings for

Documents in the early 1930s. In Acephale, however,

Bataille proposes Dionysus as acephalic man and as

Nietzsche himself, as a basic orientation towards myth.

Pursueing the metaphorical structures already prevalent

in his publications

in

Documents Acephale explores

aspects of the myth of Dionysus in particular, such as the

image of the Minotaur, the labyrinth, Ariadne, ecstatic


8/11

S.Afr.l.Cult.Art

Hist. 1989,3(4)

love, ecstatic violence, sacrifice, metamorphosis,

dismemberment,

etc.

However,

recourse

to

myth

in

Bataille's

writings

cannot be separated from the political

background

against

which

he wrote.

Bataille's Acephalic

being remains

an

alternative for

what he sees

as the

'monocephalic'

or

single-headed nature

of a

Fascist

community.

Acephale represents a

headless,

or,

con

versely,

a

policephalic

or

many

headed

community.

76

It

is in the plurality of the

many-layered

or

un-unified

community that Bataille finds prospects for the

accomodation of the 'excess' of myth and the

Dionysian

spheres

of

existence.

Bataille's

explorations

of Nietzsche's

Dionysus, and

the

violence

of

the Dionysian aesthetic of destruction

and re-creation,

reflects an essential

influence on, and

interaction

with, central aspects

of French

art

in the

1930s. What Breton in the 1930s still disparagingly refers

to

as

the

'my

he

nietzscheen', 77

becomes

a

dominant

theme in the art of the Surrealist era, and it

is

not

until

1942 that Breton

acknowledges

the

need for

a

Surrealist

myth, and the

relevance

of Nietzsche

to

Surrealist art, in

the

American journal View.

78

Bataille's writings

is a

relevant continuation of the

Surrealist interest

in Freud

and the unconscious

in the 1920s,

and Bataille plays

a

dominant role

in the development of

the interest

in

Mythology in French art in the 1930s.

The

theme

of

violence

in

Surrealist art,

expressed in

revolutionary terms

in the Surrealist

circle

in the 1920s,

is

pursued and integrated into a more comprehensive

conception in

Bataille's writings, uniting an aesthetic

and the

political

problematic of the era. Bataille is not

necessarily an

initiating influence

in

the Surrealist

interest

in the

works of Nietzsche.

79

Bataille's inter

pretation of Nietzsche evolves from a literary and artistic

response

to

Nietzschean metaphors

in

the

1920s,

for

instance

in the art of

Max

Ernst and Andre

Masson.

It is

in Bataille's writings, however, that the Surrealist

interest

in

Nietzsche

is

eventually the most

efficaciously

formulated.

References and otes

1.

See the discussion by 1.M. NASH, The nature

of

Cubism;

A study

of

conflicting explanations - Postscript: The

Nietzsche

of

Cubism', Art

History

Vol. 3(4), December

1980, p. 442.

2.

For

Apollinaire's interest

in

Nietzsche, see

C. GRAY, Cubist Aesthetic Theories (Baltimore, 1953),

pp. 35-69. Also see

my

essay, H.

lANSE

VAN

RENSBURG, 'Picabia and Nietzsche', S Afr l Cult Art

Hist. Vol. 1(4), December 1987, pp. 362-363.

3. It should be noted that the term 'Ubermensch' was first

translated into English as 'Superman'

in

the first complete

translation

of

Nietzsche's works into English, edited

by

Oscar Levy and published in

1911

(re-edition New York,

1964). This mis-translation, which reflects the

consciousnesses

of

an era rather than any dimensions of

Nietzsche's thought, was for instance also adopted by

Bernard Shaw

in

his play

Man and Superman

early

in

the

century. This term, finally discredited by the

supercelestial comic-strip hero Superman, jumping over

395

buildings with Louise Lane in his arms, had been

superseded by the more correct translation

'Overman'

in

recent translations

of

Nietzsche's work.

4.

G.

APOLLINAIRE,

Oeuvres completes de Guillaume

Apollinaire (Paris. 1965-1966), Vol. 1.

'L'Enchanteur

pourrisant, suivi des les mamelles de Tircsias de Couleurs

du Temps', pp. 609--611. English quotation from

1

GUICHARNAUD,

Modern French Theatre

(London,

1975), p. 280.

5. GEORGES

BATAILLE, 'La

vieille taupe et Ie pretixe

Sur dans les mots Surhomme et Surrealist e' (1930).

English translation in GEORGES BAT

AILLE, Visions

of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, (Minneapolis,

1985), The

Old

Mole and the prefix Sur in

the

words

Surhomme (Ubermensch) and Surrea list ', pp. 32-45.

6.

Artaud's

concept

of

'Le Theatre

et

la peste'

is

significantly

influenced

by

Nietzsche's Dionysian principle. See A.

O.

VIRMAUX, Artaud: Unbilan critique

(Paris, 1979),

pp. 220 225.

7. D.

BOAK, Andre Malraux

(London, 1968), pp.

180

214, argues that

the

most central aspects

of

Malraux's

theoretical work were decisively influenced by Nietzsche.

8. See R. DELAUNAY.

'Projet

de Couverture',

Litterature

Vol. 3(18), Paris, March 1921, pp. 1-7.

9. See

my

essay H.

lANSE VAN RENSBURG,

'Picabia

and Nietzsche',

S.Afr.J.Cult.Art Hist.

Vol. 1(4),

December 1987.

10. See

my

essay H.

lANSE

VAN

RENSBURG, 'One

night

on Montserrat: Religious ecstasy in the art

of Andre

Masson', to be published.

11. Sec my essay H

lANSE

VAN RENSBURG, 'Max Ernst,

the hundred headless woman and

the

eternal return',

to

be

published.

12. Sec

A.D.

SCHRIFT,

Nietzsche and the question of

Interpretation: Hermeneutics Deconstruction Pluralism

(Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985).

13. See

C.

DEAN, 'Law and sacrifice: Bataille, Lacan, and

the critique of the subject ,

Re-Presentations

13, Winter

1986.

14. Allan Stoekl translated Bataille's Visions of Excess:

Selected Writings

1927-1939 (Minneapolis, 1985);

Story

of

the Eye

(London, 1979);

Blue

of

Noon

(London, 1978).

15. A. STOEKL, 'The Death of Acephale and the will to

change: Nietzsche in the texts

of

Bataille',

Glyphs

Baltimore, Vol. 6, 1979; A.

STOEKL, Politics Writing

Mutilation; The Cases of Bataille Blanchot Roussel

Leiris and Ponge (Minneapolis, 1985).

Other

significant

English commentaries on Bataille are M.

RICHMAN,

Reading Georges Bataille; Beyond the Gift (Baltimore,

1982) and

C. DEAN,

'Law and sacrifice: Bataille, Lacan,

and the critique

of

the subject , Representations 13

Winter 1986. The latter essay considers violence in

Bataille's writings as a critique

of

a Cartesian concept

of

subjectivity. against the background

of

the French

Psychoanalytic movement in the 1930s.

16. W. SPIES, Max Ernst Collagen: Inventor und

Widersprach

(K6In, 1975).

17. D. A.

BIRMINGHAM,

'Masson's Pasiphae : Eros and

the unity

of

the cosmos',

Art Bulletin

Vol. 69(2),

lune

1987.


9/11

396

18. R.

KAUFMANN,

'Picasso's crucifixion of 1930',

Burlington Magazine

Vol. 111(798), September 1969; L.

GASMAN, Mystery Magic and Love

n

Picasso 1925-

1938 (Michigan, 1983).

19. R.

KRAUSS, 'Corpus Delicti', published

in R.

KRAUSS

J. LIVINGSTON,

L Amour fou: Photography and

Surrealism

(New York, 1985).

20.

ANDRE

BRETON,

quoted

by

C.

LANCHNER, 'Andre

Masson: Origins and development', published in W.

RUBIN

c.

LANCHNER, Andre Masson

(New York,

1976) p. 86.

21. See

my

essay H.

JANSE

V

AN RENSBURG,

'Max Ernst,

the hundred headless woman and the eternal

return',

to be published.

22. J.

FRO

IS-WITTMANN,

'L'Art

Moderne et

Ie

principe

du Plaisir',

Minotaure

Vol. 1(1), June 1933, pp. 68-69.

23. F.

NIETZSCHE, The Will to Power

(Translated by W.

Kaufmann, New York, 1968), paragraph 1050, p. 539.

24. See my article H. J. VAN

RENSBURG,

'Picabia and

Nietzsche',

S.Afr.1.Cult.Art Hist.

Vol. 1(4), December

1987.

25. G.

RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, 'In

Praise

ofViolencc',

The Little Review

(London) , Vol. 11-12, Spring and

Summer 1926, p. 40.

26. G.

RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES,

Letter to A. Breton,

12

March 1929, after the Surrealist meeting at

Bar

du

Chateau, March 1929.

Quoted in

M.

NADEAU, The

History

of

Surrealism

(London, 1968), p. 158, note

5.

27. For a general review

of

the conflict between Breton and

Bataille, see M.

NADEAU, The History of Surrealism

(London, 1968), pp.

160 172.

28. A.

BRETON,

Manifest du Surrealisme La Revolution

surrealiste

December 1929. English translation by

R.

Seaver and

H.R.

Lane

in

A.

BRETON, Manifestoes

of

Surrealism

(Ann

Arbor, 1969).

29.

GEORGES

BATAILLE,

'La vieille taupe et

Ie

pretixe

Sur dans les mots Surhomme et Surrealiste '. The

article was accepted for publication

by

the journal

Bifur

in

1930, but

Bifur

was c10scd down before Bataillc's article

could appear

in

print. However, the responses of amongst

others Breton and Dali suggest that copies of the article

were available for them. (See note 57.) The article was

published for the first time

in

Tel Quel

in 1968.

An English

translation

is

published

in GEORGES BATAILLE,

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939.

(Minneapolis, 1985),

The Old

Mole and the prefix

Sur in

the words Surbomme (Ubermensch) and

Surrealist ', pp. 39-40.

30.

GEORGES

BATAILLE, quoted by

A. MASSON,

'Some notes on the unusual Georges Bataille',

Art and

Literature

Vol. 3, Autumn and Winter 1964, pp.

108-109.

31.

GEORGES BATAILLE,

letter to

Andre

Breton, March

1929, quoted

by

M.

NADEAU, The History

of

Surrealism

(London, 1968), p.

156.

32.

GEORGES BATAILLE, 'La

vieille taupe et

Ie

pretixe

Sur dans les mots Surhomme et Surrealiste''', English

translation published in

GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions

of Excess: Selected Writings

1927-1939, (Minneapolis,

1985),

'The Old

Mole and the prefix Sur in the words

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk. 1989.3(4)

Surhomme (Ubermensch) and Surreali st ', p. 41.

33.

GEORGES BATAILLE, 'La

vieille

taupe

et Ie pretixe

Sur dans les mots Surhomme et Surrealiste

' ',

English

translation published in GEORGES

BATAILLE, Visions

of

Excess: Selected Writings

1927-1939, (Minneapolis,

1985), 'The

Old

Mole and the prefix

Sur in

the words

Surhomme (Ubermensch) and Surrealist ', pp. 33-36.

34. G.

GROSZ,

in

G. GROSZ

W.

HERZFELDE,

Die

Kunst ist

n

Gefahr

(Berlin 1925), English translation

quoted

in

H.

JANSE

VAN

RENSBURG,

'Picabia

and

Nietzsche',

S.Afr.J.Cult.Art

Hist, Vol. 1(4),

December

1987, p. 364.

35.

SALVADOR DALI, Diary ofa Genius

(London, 1966),

p.23.

36. SALVADOR

DALI, Diary

of

a Genius

(London, 1966),

p.22.

37.

GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes

(Paris,

1970), Vol. II 'Dossier dc

la

polemique avec

Andre

Brcton', p. 421.

38.

SALVADOR DALI,

leu

Lugubre

1929, exhibited at the

Galerie Goemans, November 1929.

39.

GEORGES BATAILLE,

'Le

Jeu lugubre' ,

Documents

8, December 1929, English translation published in

G.

BAT

AILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-

1939 (Minneapolis, 1985),

The

Lugubrious

Game',

p. 28.

40.


(Paris,

1970), Vol. II 'Dossier de

la

polemique avec Andre

Breton',

pp. 421-422.

The

double

entendre

also refers to

a confrontation that Dali had with thc Spanish prison

system before his arrival

in

Paris. Thc occurence, which

became part

of

Dali's reputation

in

Paris,

is

related

in

SALVADOR DALI,

Diary

ofa

Genius

(London,

1966),

first section.

41.

GEORGES

BATAILLE,

'Le

Jeu

lugubre ',

Documents

8, December 1929, English translation published in

G.

BAT

AILLE, Visions of Excess Selected Writings 1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985),

Thc

Lugubrious

Game',

p.28.

42.

GEORGE S BATAILLE, 'Le Jeu

lugubre''',

Documents

8, December 1929, English translation published

in

G.

BATAILLE, Visions of Excess; Selected Writings 1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985) ,

The

Lugubrious

Game',

pp.

24

28. Dali refused reproduction rights

of

his painting

for the publication of the essay.

43.

GEORGES

BATAILLE,

'Le bas materialisme et

la

gnose',

Documents

2(1), 1930. English translation in

G.

BATAILLE, Visions

of

Excess: Selected Writings 1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985). 'Base Materialism and

Gnosticism', p, 45.

44.

GEORGES BATAILLE, 'Le

bas materialisme et la

gnose',

Documents

2(1),1930. English translation

in G.

BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'Base Materialism and

Gnosticism', pp. 49-52.

45.

SALVADOR DALI, 'The

Stinking Ass',

This Quarter

5(1), September 1932, also published in L.R.

LIPPARD,

Surrealists on Art

(Ncw Jersey, 1970), p. 98.

46.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER,

'Spiegelgesprach mit Martin

Heidegger',

Der Spiegel

Vol. 23, 1976, p. 204.

Heidegger's lectures on Nietzschc were published as M.


10/11

S.Afr.J.Cult.Art

Hist. 1989,3(4)

HEIDEGGER, Nietzsche, 4 volumes, Berlin, 1961).

37.

SALVADOR DALI,

Diary ofa Genius, (London, 1966),

p.25.

48. Dali formulates paranoiac-cr itical activity as the

spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon

the interpretive-critical association of delirious

phenomena .

SALVADOR DALI,

La Conqui3te de

L irrationel, lecture in Brussels, June 1934. English

translation published in SALVADOR DALI, The Secret

life

of

Salvador Dali, (London, 1968), p. 418. The method

is partly based on Nietzsche s concept of Dionysian

Rausch .

49.

SALVADOR

DALI,

Diary

of

a Genius, (London, 1966),

p.30.

50. See discussion note

38

above.

51. See

in

particular GEORGES

BATAILLE,

La structure

psychologique du fascisme , La Critique sociale, 10

November 1933; and Nietzsche et les fascistes ,

Aeephale, 2, January 1937; English translations in

GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions of Excess; Selected

Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), The

psychological structure of Fascism and Nietzsche and the

Fascists , pp. 137-161, and pp. 182-198.

52. See note 44 above. Despite his criticism of Bataille, Dali

acclaims Nietzsche as the source of his own interest in

myth

and

legend. See G.

LASCAULT,

Eine

Scheherazade des Klebrigen z den Texten von Salvador

Dali , published in I.F.

WALTER,

Salvador Dali:

Retrospektive 1920-1980, (Munchen, 1980).

53. For Giacometti s response to Bataille s images of

primitivism, see R.

KRAUS,

The Originality

of

he Avant

Garde and other Modernist Myths, (London, 1986), pp.

76-85. Masson s response to Bataille

is

discussed

in

my

essay

H.

JANSE VAN RENSBURG, One night on

Montserrat: Religious ecstasy in the art of Andre

Masson , to be published. Picasso s response to Bataille is

discussed in H. JANSE

VAN RENSBURG,

Picasso s

Vollard Suite and a Dionysian view of art , to be

published, and H JANSE VAN RENSBURG, Picasso s

Ariadne,

light in the Surrealist labyrinth ,

to

be published.

54. The interpretation of

the

work of Sade is a further point of

controversy between Bataille and Breton in 1929-1930.

Once again a smear

of

faeces painted

in

on the pants of a

figure in Dali s The Lugubrious Game is part of the

controversy.

55. ANDRE MASSON, Some notes

on

the unusual Georges

Bataille , rt and Literature, Vol. 3, Autumn and Winter

1964, p. 111.

56. A.

SKIRA,

Introduction, Minotaure, 1 June 1933. Freely

translated.

57. GEORGES

BATAILLE, La

structure psychologique du

fascisme , La Critique Sociale, 10, November 1933,

English translation in GEORGES

BATAILLE,

Visions

of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis,

1985), The Psychological structure of Fascism , pp. 142-

45.

58. See M. MAUSS, Essai sur Ie don, form archaique de

I cchange , Annee sociologique, 1925. Mauss

is

acknowledged in GEORGES BATAILLE, La notion de

depense , La Critique Sociale, no. 7, January 1933, p. 15.

397

Nietzsche s influence is later acknowledged in G.

BATAILLE,

Chronique nietzscheen , Acephale no.

3-4,

July 1937.

59.

Appel

a la lutte , 10th February 1934, see M.

NADEAU, L Histoire du surrealisme et documents

surrealistes, (Paris, 1964), pp. 381-386.

60. GEORGES

BATAILLE,

Oeuvres completes, (Paris,

1970), Vol.

1,

notes, pp. 640-641.

61. GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes, (Paris,

1970), Vol. 7, Notice autobiographique (1958), p. 461.

62. A. MASSON, Some notes on the unusual Georges

Bataille , rt and Literature, Vol. 3, Spring

and Winter

1964,

p.

107.

63. See the discussion in my article H JANSE VAN

RENSBURG, One night on Montserrat: Religious

ecstasy in the art of Andre Masson , to be published.

The

drawing

Dionysos

of 1933 appears in A. MASSON,

Sacrifices

(Paris, 1936) with an introduction entitled

Sacrifices , by Bataille.

64. GEORGES BATAILLE, Nietzsche et les fascistes ,

Acephale, 2, January 1937, English translation in

GEORGES

BATAILLE,

Visions of Excess: Selected

Writings. 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), Nietzsche

and the Fascists , pp. 185-186.

65. GEORGES BATAILLE, L obelisque , Mesures, 4(2),

15 April 1938, English translation in GEORGES

BATAILLE,

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-

/939, (Minneapolis, 1985),

The

Obelisk ,

p.

219.

66. GEORGES BAT AILLE, Chronique nietzseheen ,

A cephale

, 3-4, July 1937, English translation in

GEORGES

BATAILLE,


Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), Nietzsche an

Chronicle , p. 210.

67.

GEORGES BATAILLE,

Propositions , Acephale, 2

January 1937, English translation in

GEORGES

BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-

/939, (Minneapolis, 1985), Proposi tions , p. 200.

68. GEORGES

BATAILLE,

Chronique nietzscheen ,

Acephale,

3-4, July 1937, English translation in

GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected

Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis , 1985), Nietzschean

Chronicle , p. 203.

69. See F. NIETZSCHE,

The Birth

of

Tragedy,

(Translated

by F. Golffing, New York, 1964) paraf. 1, pp. 22-24.

70.

GEORGES BATAILLE,

Chronique nietzseheen ,

Acephale,

3-4,

July 1937, English translation

in

GEORGES BAT

AILLE,


Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), Nietz schean

Chronicle , p. 206, emphasis by Bataille.

71. GEORGES BATAILLE, L Apprenti sorcier , Nouvelle

Revue Francaise, 298, July 1938, English translation in

G.

BATAILLE,

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), The Sorcerer s

Apprentice ,

p. 232. This

is

Bataille s only article

to appear in

Nouvelle

Revue Francaise

before the war, which was the leading

intellectual review at the time. Bataille s article appeared

along with Michel Leiris Le Sacre dans la vie

quotidienne , and Roger Callois

Le

Vent d hiver ,

signaling to the public the activities of the College de

Sociologie.


11/11

398

72.


(Paris,

1970), Vol. II, 'Instructions pour la recontre en foret',

pp. 277-278.

73. R. CALLOIS,

'The

College de Sociologie : Paradox

of

an active Sociology',

Sub-stance,

Vol. 11 12, 1975, pp.

61-64.

74. M. LEIRIS, letter to Georges Bataille, 1939, published in

GEORGES BATAILLE,

Oeuvres completes, (Paris,

1970), Vol. II, pp. 454-455.

75. See my article

H lANSE VAN RENSBURG, 'One

night

on Montserrat: Religious Ecstasy in the art of Andre

Masson', to be published.

76.

GEORGES

BATAILLE,

'L'obelisque',

Mesures, 4 2),


15

April 1938, English translation in GEORGES

BATAILLE, Visions

o

Excess: Selected Writings,

1927-

1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'The Obelisk', pp. 219-220.

77 ANDRE BRETON,

quoted

by

W.

CHADWICK, Myth

in Surrealist Painting,

(Michigan, 1980), p. 2.

78. ANDRE BRETON,

'The

Legendary Life of Max Ernst,

preceded by a brief discussion on the need for a new

Myth',

View,

Vol. 2(1), May 1942.

79

More detailed explorations of the response to Nietzsche in

Surrealist art, and Bataille's interaction with and

influence on Surrealist art, will be presented in

forthcoming articles.

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