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Biography

Birth to the Age of 10

Born : Puy-de Dme, 1897

In retrospect it is clear that one of the keys to understanding his character lies with his father, Joseph-Aristide:

a blind syphilitic who, not long after Bataille's birth in 1897, completely lost the use of his limbs.Cette folie dont on

l'accuse et que, d'une certaine manire, il endosse, Bataille la ctoie ds son plus jeune ge. A sa naissance, le 10

septembre 1897 Billom, village du Puy-de-Dme, son pre est syphilitique et aveugle. Celui-ci perdra bientt l'usage

de ses jambes, puis la raison.

Bataille's avowal in a later interview that his childhood produced a "turmoil that lasted for life [and that] still

causes me to tremble" poignantly refers to this situation. Par cet ascendant malade, aveugle et fou, Bataille restera toutesa vie marqu. Le marqueront certaines images particulirement insoutenables qui feront retour, de faon parfois

obsessionnelle, dans les textes qu'il crira plus tard, Histoire de l'oeil notamment. Plus gnralement, du sinistre

spectacle que son pre impotent lui infligea, Bataille gardera une fascination pour toutes les images violentes, celles qui

laissent sans voix.

Between the two, roles were often reversed: the child was often required to care for his invalid fathera

practice that left a permanent and disturbing imprint on the impressionable youth. The young Bataille was intimately

involved in assisting his father with all manner of abhorrent bodily functions. As the author of The Story of the Eye

reminisces: "He had huge, ever-gaping eyes that flanked an eagle nose, and those huge eyes went almost entirely blank

when he pissed, with a completely stupefying expression of abandon and aberration." Later in life, Bataille raised

allegations of pedophilia, even "rape," commenting: "This memory seemed to me the most terrible of all." Surya

observes that, understandably, the young Bataille came to view his father as more an animal than a man.

Age of 10 to 20

1911

In 1911, the terminal, tertiary phase of the disease set in: Young Georges and his mother were frequently

awakened in the middle of the night by Joseph-Aristide's preternatural shrieks and howls. Can there by any doubt that

the inimitable amalgam of love and revulsion that this situation engendered goes far toward explaining the trademark

mixture of Eros and dread that are the defining preoccupations of Bataille qua littrateur? The young Bataille would

have been around the age of 14.

1914

With the onset of the Great War the cathedral city of Rheims lay directly in harm's way. In 1914 the advancing

German army subjected this gothic architectural marvel to a merciless artillery barrage, leaving both city and church inruins. Fortunately, the ambulant population had been instructed to evacuate in advance of the massive German assault.

Bataille and his mother were among the evacuees. But because of his condition it proved impossible to remove

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Batailles father, who, tragically, was left behind to die. Surya glosses these developments as follows: "Abandoned to

his fate by his own family, a man who was doubly excluded from the outside world, his feet bound and his eyes staring

into space, with no one to help him but a housekeeper, was left alone to confront the terror of his own end in a city that,

as if in sympathy, was mutilated in its turn."

Entre-temps la guerre est venue. 1914 est, plus d'un titre, une anne charnire dans la vie de Bataille. C'est

cette anne-l - est-ce pour conjurer cette folie qu'il sait menaante ? - qu'il rompt avec l' irrligiosit familiale en seconvertissant au catholicisme en la cathdrale de Reims, o les siens sont venus s'installer peu aprs sa naissance.

trangement, c'est de cette mme anne qu'il date sa dcouverte que son affaire en ce monde tait d'crire, en

particulier d'laborer une philosophie paradoxale - laquelle entreprendra notamment de subvertir le catholicisme

auquel il vient alors de se convertir. C'est enfin cette mme anne que, fuyant les bombardements de l'aviation

allemande, il quitte Reims pour Riom-s-Montagne, en Auvergne, en la seule compagnie de sa mre et de son frre : le

pre impotent reste seul Reims, abandonn au bruit et la fureur de la guerre. Celui-ci mourra un an plus tard, dans le

plus extrme dnuement. Des annes plus tard, Bataille reviendra sur cet abandon, dans un ouvrage dont le titre dit

assez le sentiment qui fut le sien : Le Coupable.

Mother and son were overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. Predictably, Bataille's recollections are suffused with

self-reproach: "I abandoned my father, alone, blind, paralytic, mad, screaming and twitching with pain, transfixed in a

worn-out armchair."