Tag Archives: Georges Bataille

Maurice Blanchot’s ‘The Experience of Lautréamont’

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

My slumbers—if I slumber—are not sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought…. The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. —Lord Byron, Manfred Maurice Blanchot’s book Lautréamont and Sade (“Sade’s Reason” followed by the much longer essay, “The Experience … Continue reading →

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TWENTY-SEVEN: A COMMON ROOT (pages 87-90)

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

Williams told Thirlwall that in poem XXV he was “studying a presentation of the language as it actually is used” and suggest he compare it to the 1930 poem, “April”. Both of these poems remind me of Kenneth Fearing—poem XXV … Continue reading →

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TWENTY-FIVE: EXCURSUS: THE CAVE OF LES TROIS FRERES

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Mark Kerstetter

Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux or The Birth of Art published by Skira in 1955 is the first art book devoted to the Lascaux caves, and it is surely one of the most beautiful art books ever published, in every sense. I … Continue reading →

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René Daumal and the Impossible

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Mark Kerstetter

I am reading René Daumal again. I discovered him as a young man and he has stayed with me, a constant companion. Since most people, places, and things come and go, one should note when something has lasted. I have … Continue reading →

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Signaling Through Flames

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Mark Kerstetter

I’ve been reading the new Atlas edition of the internal papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale with lectures to the College of Sociology. The lectures and the articles from the Acéphale journal have been published before. The internal papers … Continue reading →

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Georges Bataille: Improvisation Within a Field of Contradictions

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Mark Kerstetter

…. two movements…. One’s in harmony with nature; the other questions it. We can’t do away with either. [109 Guilty by Georges Bataille]* “We do not have the right to wish for a single state. We have to desire to … Continue reading →

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If There Were a Heaven, It Would Stink with Life

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Mark Kerstetter

maledicta Paradisus in qua tantum cacatur! —William of Auvergne Blanchot wrote that Nietzsche was the first to teach us that, “if you begin to think, then you can hope for no rest.” [The Writing of the Disaster, p 123] And … Continue reading →

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Read, Pig!

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Mark Kerstetter

Once I saw the title, Think, Pig! I had to have Jean-Michel Rabaté’s book, published last year by Fordham University Press.

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Acéphale

Posted on January 19, 2017 by Mark Kerstetter

  Masson saw skulls spilled in Champagne, tried to box the damage in canvas. In a new year pomegranates are lucky, they say. If one is offered with bowed head take it—take four, like Persephone. Antioxidant or IED is not … Continue reading →

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The Beauty of the Book

Posted on December 6, 2016 by Mark Kerstetter

The universe (which others call the Library)…. —Borges I take a profoundly Borgesian pleasure in the book.

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