‘Story of the Eye’ by Georges Bataille

During my brief stint as a student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne - a student of languages no less - I had the opportunity of taking a non-language module on Surrealism, the cultural movement that began in the early 1920s and went on to produce some of the twentieth century’s most intriguing and still-discussed works of art and literature. In the few lectures that focused more on the latter, in between discussing the poetry of Paul Éluard and the somewhat dilettante-ish tendencies of André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, the name Georges Bataille also came up quite often. This Surrealism elective was one of the few things that I truly enjoyed about my time at university and, for reasons beyond my conscious control, it has gone on to inform not just my taste in visual art but my reading and writing habits too. And, seeing as I have already chewed my way through volumes of Apollinaire (Guillaume) and Rimbaud (Arthur), I thought it was time to look into a writer mentioned in one of the more prose-oriented lectures. Alors…

Fortunately, because Georges Bataille was merely associated with the Surrealist movement and not among Breton’s core group of bitch boys such as Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, a detailed discussion of the movement is not necessary here. As the short biographical note at the head of this Penguin edition explains, Bataille was involved more ‘on the fringes’ of the movement. Furthermore, his review Documents published many of the leading Surrealist writers, to give you an idea of his level of involvement with Surrealism and its ideology. A more appropriate term with which to describe Bataille’s work, and indeed the most popular, is literature of transgression, of which his first novel Story of the Eye is a terrific example. Published in 1928 under the pseudonym Lord Auch, Story of the Eye chronicles the sexually explicit exploits of a small group of adolescents, male and female, all told through the eyes (or eye) of an anonymous protagonist. Now this might sound every bit as interesting as the confessions section of your average lads’ mag, the affectless way in which Bataille details such acts is really rather extraordinary.

At just seventy-something pages long, not including the various essays and appendices tacked on at the end of this Penguin Modern Classics edition, Story of the Eye is a mere slip of a book. Yet in its scope and ability to shock more than eighty years on it is by no means skimpy. For a work of such brevity it took me a surprisingly long time to get through, possibly because I kept flicking back and forth, re-reading big chunks, just trying to savour every gory, sexually frustrated detail. Whether you will get much out of reading Story of the Eye on a more personal level is unlikely, however there is no denying its power and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see just how far the written word’s boundaries can be pushed. And, no, E. L. James is nowhere near said boundaries. You have been warned. Enjoy.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in November 2012.