Bataille Nietzsche Surrealism

Reproduced by Sabinet Gateway under licence granted by the Publisher (dated 2009).

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Georges Bataille's interpretation of Nietzsche: The question of violence in Surrealist art H. Janse van Rensburg Department History of Art, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, Republic of South Africa Received January 1989 ; accepted April 1989

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. Nietzsche 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 Surrealism, 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 interest 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. 14 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. It is Rosalind Krauss, however, who has suggested in a recent essay that Bataille's influence on Surrealist artists often exceeded that of


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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 1929: Violence

In the literature on Surrealist art, a dominant role is generally afforded to Andre Breton, who once described Nietzsche as 'what I detest the most'. 20 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 dissociated 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 participation in the Surrealist circle. It 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. It is Georges Bataille who was to pursue an attempt to differentiate between the nature of Nietzsche's Dionysian aesthetic of destruction and recreation, 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, reevaluation, 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

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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 consciousness, 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 rearranging the structures of Apollonian thought. It 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 supraindividual 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 recreative nature of the Dionysian-Apollo relation. It 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 systematizing 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. In an essay In Praise of 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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document signed in which members of the Surrealist group were required to subscribe to a unified commitment 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 criticized 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, Un Cadavre was published in 1930, by a group outraged by Breton's treatment of them since the meeting at the Bar du Chateau. Un Cadavre included critical contributions against Breton by RibemontDessaignes, 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 presence of a metaphysical idealism in the Manifeste du Surrealisme. This idealism, according to Bataille, finds expression in Breton's view of violence. Breton's formulation of violence, therefore, implies a denial of what Bataille calls the principle of sovereignty. Sovereignty, Bataille's alternative term for Nietzsche's concept of

'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 hypocrisy and the moral shabbiness that presides over current world exploitation - that it is impossible 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 maintains, 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. 37 Shortly after his arrival in Paris in ]929, Dali attracted considerable attention with the exhibition of his painting Le 'feu Lugubre'. 38 In response, 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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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. 40 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 ... It 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 In 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. In 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 r have in mind here are, in particular, the materialist ideas of Georges Bataille, but also, ... all the old materialism which this gentleman 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

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establishment. This is particularly formulated in the journal Le Surrealisme au service de la 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 interpretation 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. In 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 paranoiaccritical method,48 Dali writes: 'Dali, the complete Surrealist, preaching an absolute absence of aesthetic or moral constraint, 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 interpretation 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 established, but not yet fully integrated and formulated. It 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 excommunicated 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 Le 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


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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 revolutionary 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 SaintSever' (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 sadism,54 sacrificial mutilation, the metaphorical meaning of parts of the human body and its forms in art, metamorphoses, 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 Bretoncircle. 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'. 55 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 in the early 19305 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 as 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 as '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 as 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 nonCommunist 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. 59 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


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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 contingent had already dissociated themselves from Contre Attaque. Breton accused Bataille of 'sur-fascisme' ,60 an allusion to Bataille's unpublished 'La "vieille taupe" et Ie prefixe "sur" dans les mots "Surhomme" et "Surrealiste'" of 1930. In later years, Bataille did not deny that there was a certain 'paradoxical fascist tendency' in Contre Attaque, and even in himself at the time. 61 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, subsequentIy, 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 mythological 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

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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, introduced the first issue of Acephale. The essay expounds the purpose of the Acephale-group, which were later re-capitulated 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 headless 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 introductory 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 Nietzscheinspired philological study, Dionysos: Mythos und 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. In his attack against Fascism in 'Nietzsche et les Fascistes', Bataille refers to Nietzsche's criticism of antiSemitism, in order to dissociate him from the Nazi interpretation of his work in Germany. Bataille criticizes Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche (he calls her Elizabeth


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 Nietzschearchives 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 It 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 interpretes 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 interpretation 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 inulterability 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

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk. 1989,3(4) 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 demanding 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). 70 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 metaphysical 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


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, conversely, 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 the 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 interpretation 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 Notes 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

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

buildings with Louise Lane in his arms, had been superseded by the more correct translation 'Overman' in recent translations of Nietzsche's work. 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. GEORGES BATAILLE, 'La "vieille taupe" et Ie pretixe "Sur" dans les mots "Surhomme" et "Surrealiste'" (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 "Surrealist"', pp. 32-45. 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. 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. See R. DELAUNAY. 'Projet de Couverture', Litterature, Vol. 3(18), Paris, March 1921, pp. 1-7. See my essay H. lANSE VAN RENSBURG, 'Picabia and Nietzsche', S.Afr.J.Cult.Art Hist., Vol. 1(4), December 1987. See my essay H. lANSE VAN RENSBURG, 'One night on Montserrat: Religious ecstasy in the art of Andre Masson', to be published. Sec my essay H. lANSE VAN RENSBURG, 'Max Ernst, the hundred headless woman and the eternal return', to be published. Sec A.D. SCHRIFT, Nietzsche and the question of Interpretation: Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, Pluralism, (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985). See C. DEAN, 'Law and sacrifice: Bataille, Lacan, and the critique of the subject", Re-Presentations, 13, Winter 1986. 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). 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. W. SPIES, Max Ernst, Collagen: Inventor und Widersprach (K6In, 1975). D. A. BIRMINGHAM, 'Masson's "Pasiphae": Eros and the unity of the cosmos', Art Bulletin, Vol. 69(2), lune 1987.


396 18. R. KAUFMANN, 'Picasso's crucifixion of 1930', Burlington Magazine, Vol. 111(798), September 1969; L. GASMAN, Mystery, Magic and Love in Picasso, 19251938 (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. V AN 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, 11 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 "Surrealist"', 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 in Gefahr, (Berlin 1925), English translation quoted in H. JANSE V AN 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, 19271939 (Minneapolis, 1985), The Lugubrious Game', p. 28. 40. GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes, (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, 19271939, (Minneapolis, 1985), Thc Lugubrious Game', p.28. 42. GEORGES BATAILLE, 'Le "Jeu lugubre''', Documents, 8, December 1929, English translation published in G. BAT AILLE, Visions of Excess; Selected Writings, 19271939, (Minneapolis, 1985) , The Lugubrious Game', pp. 24 & 28. Dali refused reproduction rights of his painting for the publication of the essay. 43. GEORGES BAT AILLE, 'Le bas materialisme et la gnose', Documents, 2(1), 1930. English translation in G. BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 19271939, (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, 19271939, (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.


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-critical 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 BAT AILLE, '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. LASCAUL T, 'Eine Scheherazade des Klebrigen zu 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 the AvantGarde 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', Art 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. 14245. 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

59.

60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

Nietzsche's influence is later acknowledged in G. BATAILLE, 'Chronique nietzscheen', Acephale no. 3-4, July 1937. 'Appel a la lutte', 10th February 1934, see M. NADEAU, L'Histoire du surrealisme et documents surrealistes, (Paris, 1964), pp. 381-386. GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes, (Paris, 1970), Vol. 1, notes, pp. 640-641. GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes, (Paris, 1970), Vol. 7, 'Notice autobiographique' (1958), p. 461. A. MASSON, 'Some notes on the unusual Georges Bataille', Art and Literature, Vol. 3, Spring and Winter 1964, p. 107. See the discussion in my article H. JANSE V AN 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. GEORGES BAT AILLE, 'Nietzsche et les fascistes', Acephale, 2, January 1937, English translation in GEORGES BAT AILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings. 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'Nietzsche and the Fascists', pp. 185-186. 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. GEORGES BAT AILLE, 'Chronique nietzseheen', A cephale , 3-4, July 1937, English translation in GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'Nietzsche an Chronicle', p. 210. GEORGES BATAILLE, 'Propositions', Acephale, 2, January 1937, English translation in GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927/939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'Propositions', p. 200. 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. See F. NIETZSCHE, The Birth of Tragedy, (Translated by F. Golffing, New York, 1964) paraf. 1, pp. 22-24. GEORGES BAT AILLE, 'Chronique nietzseheen', Acephale, 3-4, July 1937, English translation in GEORGES BAT AILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, (Minneapolis, 1985), 'Nietzschean Chronicle', p. 206, emphasis by Bataille. GEORGES BATAILLE, 'L'Apprenti sorcier', Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 298, July 1938, English translation in G. BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 19271939, (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.


398 72. GEORGES BATAILLE, Oeuvres completes (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),

S.-Afr.Tydskr.Kult.-Kunsgesk. 1989,3(4) 15 April 1938, English translation in GEORGES BATAILLE, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 19271939, (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.

Bataille Nietzsche Surrealism

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