Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 12:31:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Orpheus <cw_duff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: Re: Bataille's mystical vomit.



	This is interesting. It reminds me of anotherquote of Eluard's.
	I don't know which poem it was from.  But Sartre quotes in an
essay he wrote. "There is another world, and it is right here." To me this
was always a good example of poetic immanence. In poetry it seems the
transcendence/immanence dichotomy is also "acted  out" in different
authors. Eliot is the poet driven to  transcendence, yet his most famous
poem  --   the Waste Land -- is the most down to earth (get it! down to
earth here in the mud and rack  and ruin nobeyond etc above etc) piece of
fragmentation written by an early modern poet -- who was a  sortof schizo
-- I mean here you have this man living with a woman who is going mad and
he is going  mad -- he wrote part of the poem in an assylum in Lausanne
--- he writes this pome which is wildy Dada in some ways -- yet he the
man, the banker the   budding   about to be famous  critic and most
influential critic of modern literature is the reactionary conservative
anglo-catholic -- He is the perfect sort of example of the line that runs
between or
the axis that gyrates between the schizophrenic-revolutionary pole and the
paranoid-reactionary pole of the unconscious. It's as if Eliot embodies
the conflict between preconscious and unconscious precisely. His poetry
cuts a"revolutionary" innovative path into and through cinematic
fragmentation etc etc. text collage,, yet his apprehension of these
matters is far distant -- he runs as far from his creation as any
reactionary would from such hot material.... how different from Artaud,
Tzara and ELuard.... the split in modern poetry is exact. One has the
poets of the left and the poets of the right.... and these categories mean
different things in different countries at different times to different
literary milieus... So  Eliot's poetry is schizo-"left" yet his critical
machines are only "left" to the extent that they serve his political
vision of the meaning of literature which is the meaning of his
politics.... in contrast to Andre Breton who is the surrealist who is
always left yet in his interactions with fellow artists and poets is known
as the "Pope of Surrealism" and is completly stuck in power relations with
three generations of poets and painters from around the world....and whose
poetry also creates a "revolutionary" cathexis which is still being
absorbed... he was the poet who never allowed himself to use even an
accidental rhyme... it is all very fascinating and illustrates the
manylevels of conflict contradiction and  differences each  one of us
lives if we live these things and think about them.... 
	Best wishes for the new Year.


	

On Thu, 31 Dec 1998, michelle phil lewis-king wrote:

> 
> 
> ..In 1933 the poet Paul Eluard described Bataille's writing (specifically a
> passage where Bataille says that 'man lives with his own death') as
> "mystical vomit"..
> 
> I've always found this an intriging formulation.
> 
> phil.
>