Sacred Lovers: On Colette Peignot and Her Bad Romance With Georges Bataille

Colette Peignot (aka Laure) and Georges Bataille
 

No one has ever seemed to me as uncompromising and pure as she, 

or more decidedly sovereign, and yet everything in her was devoted to darkness. 

                                                                                                  - Georges Bataille

  

 

I. 

 

Colette Peignot was a French writer and poet, perhaps better known by the pseudonym Laure, who - thanks to ill-health, the death of her father in the First World War, and knowledge of the sexual abuse of her sister by a Catholic clergyman [1] - endured what might be described as a challenging childhood. 

 

Out of such circumstances, however, a rebellious and free-spirited young woman emerged and, during her early 20s, she began to frequent the company of communists and surrealists and enter into tumultuous love affairs with older men who had a taste for cruelty. 

 

Once, in 1927, after discovering she was pregnant and feeling exhausted following a flare up of her tuberculosis, Peignot shot herself in the chest; like Vincent Van Gogh. Unlike the unfortunate painter, however, she survived - the bullet having been deflected by a rib away from her heart - and went on to make a full recovery. 

 

The following year, she met the German poet, physician, and pervert Eduard Trautner - a central figure in the Expressionist and New Objectivist movements - and moved to Berlin to be with him. 

 

After a few months, however, the intensity of the relationship proved too great - Trautner would regularly beat her and obliged her to wear a dog collar - so Peignot fled Germany and sought refuge in the Soviet Union, living in Leningrad, Moscow and the Black Sea resort of Sochi, before retuning to Paris penniless and in poor health once more.   

 

Figuring that she was probably never going to be rich or in good health - and not wanting a boring and bourgeois existence - she decided to throw herself into a life of dissolution, spending the last of her inheritence and pushing experience to the limit: it was thus almost inevitable that she would, sooner or later, become involved with Georges Bataille and serve as a living embodiment of one of his fictional heroines [2].

 

 

II.

 

During the summer of 1935, Laure and Bataille moved in together, having first briefly encountered one another four years earlier and become lovers in the summer of 1934. Thus began their mad affair, which combined debauchery with high culture in the company of artistic and intellectual friends. 

 

He was undoubtedly attracted by her intensity and instability and the fact that she had such contempt "for anything devout or conformist" [3]. But he also sensed that they were extremely sympathisch. Not surprisingly, therefore, Laure soon found herself at the center of Bataille's secret society or post-Nietzschean religion - Acéphale - members of whom (almost exclusively male) met in the woods and discussed human sacrifice.    

 

In a fascinating passage, Michel Surya argues that what distinguished them as a couple is that their love had nothing romantic or transformative about it: 

 

"Nothing that puts love above everything and gives it meaning and salvation [...] no unity [...], nothing of the marvellous [...], no devotion of any kind. One might even go so far as to say that happiness was ruled out of Bataille's concerns with this love (happiness was too weak a concept ever to have interested him). On the contrary, he exacerbated both their wounds, even when they came at the highest cost. In fact this love resembles a twin descent into the depths; anguish is its key." [4]   

 

Surya concludes: 

 

"Colette Peignot's courage lay in responding to all this [...] the only one unafraid of what Bataille was blindly setting in motion. [...] The only difference was that everything in her led her to seek heaven, even in hell [...], while for him everything led him to make even heaven into a hell." [5].  

 

Given this crucial difference, things were never going to end well ... and Laure confessed to Bataille before her death in 1938, aged 35, that although she had loved him and thought him a kind of god, she hated their life together, which, to be fair, can't have been a barrel of laughs [6]. 

 

Ultimately, I suppose it might be asked whether Laure was destined to die young (having lived fast): 

 

"Could another way of life - less harsh and less debauched - have saved her? How much longer would she have lived had she been 'sensible'?" [7] 

 

Probably a bit longer: but not much; her tuberculosis was already far too advanced in 1935 for any treatment to save her. 

 

And besides, some only come into their lives posthumously ...     

 

 

III. 

 

After her death, two volumes of Peignot's work were published, hors commerce, under the name Laure, edited by Bataille and Michel Leiris: 

  

Le Sacré (1939), is an assemblage of poems and fragments exploring themes of mysticism, eroticism, and revolution. 

 

It was published only a few weeks after the author's death, against the wishes of her family, and distributed furtively to a selected (and limited) group of readers. It has been argued by one commentator that Bataille "effectively sanctifies Laure" [8] as the martyed figurehead of what Blanchot calls an unavowable community (i.e., one based on otherness and difference, rather than sameness and shared identity).   

 

Histoire d'une petite fille (1943), meanwhile, is a semi-autobiographical text dealing with the traumas of childhood and how the narrator rebels against her middle-class Cathlolic background, rejecting social and moral convention so as to shape life in accordance with her own dreams. 

 

As with the first book, the print run was extremely limited - just thirty-three copies of the fifty-five page book were produced - and copies were intended only for the personal use of the recipient [9].       

 

  

Notes

 

[1] When Colette confronted her mother with the facts about this abuse, she not only refused to believe them, but accused her younger daughter of having a perverted imagination. That seems terribly unjust, but, as Mark Polizzotti remarks: "She wasn't entirely wrong, for while the incident cemented Laure's hatred of organised religion and its manifold hypocrisies, it also made her believe in an unbreakable link between the holy and the erotic." 

      See Polizzotti's review of Laure's Collected Writings, trans. Jeanine Herman (1995), titled 'Dirty's Story', in The London Review of Books, Vol. 18, No. 23 (November 1996): click here.    

 

[2] It is often claimed that Peignot was the inspiration for the character Dirty in Bataille's novel Le bleu du ciel (written when he was involved with her in 1935, but not published until 1957, with the first English translation following in 1978). 

      However, as Michel Surya points out, this is  doubtful as the character of Dirty was conceived long before Bataille met Colette Peignot; see p. 216 of the work cited below.  

 

[3] Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Krzystof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (Verso, 2002), p. 165. 

 

[4] Ibid., p. 201.  

 

[5] Ibid.

 

[6] Bataille later expressed his feelings about their relationship in the essay Le coupable (1944), describing Laure as a unique spirit inextricably linked to his own life and work; a woman who oscillated between extreme audacity and dreadful anguish, looking for love whilst courting death and disaster. 

 

[7]  Michel Surya, Georges Bataille ... p. 257. 

 

[8] See Milo Sweedler, 'From the sacred conspiracy to the unavowable community: Bataille, Blanchot and Laure's Le sacré', in French Studies, Volume 59, Number 3 (Liverpool University Press, July 2005), pp. 338-350.  

 

[9] Fortunately for us, a complete edition of Peignot's writings, ed. Marianne Berissi and Anne Roche, was published by Éditions les Cahiers in 2019: click here for details. English readers without knowledge of French, however, will have to make do with Laure: The Collected Writings, trans. Jeanine Herman (City Lights Publishers, 1991). 

 

 

Never Ever Say Hey Ho! Off We Go: Why I'm Sceptical of the Work Ethic

       

linkedin.com 

 

 

I've expressed my contempt for those professional network hippies and Silicon Valley fascists at LinkedIn before on Torpedo the Ark - click here - but their Open to Work feature launched in 2020 (which has only just come to my attention) really takes the biscuit ...

 

Designed to let recruiters and potential employers know that you are available for new job opportunities - the feature works by securing a green-coloured slave collar round your profile picture - they may as well have asked members to hold up a cardboard sign with the words willing to work scrawled on it!

 

The primary issue, then, is that the feature makes a job seeker appear desperate: even some career experts agree with this and suggest it may warn off some employers - those who prefer to discreetly headhunt talented candidates, for example - whilst leading others to make derisory salalry offers [1].     

 

But the deeper issue, for me at least, has to do with the philosophy behind such a feature; for it echoes, does it not, those terrible words written on the gates of Auschwitz: Arbeit macht frei ...

 

 

II.  

 

This infamous slogan originated from a popular 19th century novel by Lorenz Diefenbach, the title of which - Die Wahrheit macht frei (1873) - refers to the phrase used by Jesus: 'And the truth shall set you free' (John 8:32). However, the book reimagines this as 'work makes free' and that's what really struck a chord with the Nazis and other advocates of an ultra-strong work ethic. 

 

Following their coming to power in 1933, the Nazis first utilised it in programmes designed to combat mass unemployment in Germany. But it is now forever associated in the cultural imagination with the concentration camps and forced labour carried out in the most atrocious conditions imaginable; the only freedom being death.      

 

Interestingly, the Nazis seemed to have used the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz neither with the intention to mock the inmates nor provide them with false hope. It was employed, rather, in the sincere belief that endless labour and self-sacrifice does result in a form of spiritual freedom. 

 

In other words, it illustrates their idealism, not their cynicism; just as 'Open to Work' doubtless illustrates the good intentions of the good people at LinkedIn and is not an attempt to humiliate and make members look needy.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For a discussion of whether you should (or should not) use LinkedIn's 'Open to Work' feature, see Elizabeth Perarson's article in Forbes (Sept 2024): click here. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Bow Wow Wow, 'W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don't)', (EMI, 1981): click here for the extended 12" remix. This track, with lyrics written by Malcolm McLaren, is an amusing rejection of the work ethic. The sleeve, designed by Jamie Reid, also makes clear of how such an ethic can become malignant and fall into the black hole of fascism: 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Punk Jesus

Fig. 1: Jesus: Punk or Cunt?  

 

 

I.

 

We all know, thanks to the Ramones, that Jackie is a punk (and Judy is a runt), but Jesus ... can the Nazarene really be conceived as such? 

 

After all, Johnny Rotten campily affirms a cod-Nietzschean position vis-à-vis the Son of God in the opening line of the Sex Pistols' debut single: I am an anti-Christ [1]. 

 

And in case there should still be some doubt regarding this matter, the infamous Destroy shirt designed by McLaren and Westwood for Seditionaries, features (along with a swastika) an inverted crucifix [2] - could that be any more sacrilegious, as Chandler Bing might say.   

 

Despite this, however, there's recently been talk in certain punk circles around the need to enthuse the diverse global subculture that has emerged from what was once simply a sound and a look born of 430 King's Road with a form of Christian spirituality (or faith) [3] - and I for one don't like it! 

 

For as my friends in Cradle of Filth once succinctly put it, Jesus is a cunt [4].  

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, even Nietzsche recognised Christ as someone in revolt against social hierarchy, writing: 

 

"This holy anarchist who roused up the lowly, the outcasts and 'sinners' [...] to oppose the ruling order [...] was a political criminal, in so far as political criminals were possible in an absurdly unpolitical society." [5]

 

So perhaps the idea of a punk Jesus is not so absurd as it seems at first (whilst remaining profoundly problematic). 

 

Or perhaps we might instead understand punk as merely another unfolding of the slave revolt in morality [6]; the marginalised, the disprivileged, and the talentless - driven by ressentiment - attempting to invert the value system of the music business and overthrow the pop elite: No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones ... [7] 

 

 

Fig. 2: Johnny Rotten: Anti-Christ / Photo by Barry Plummer (1976)   

Fig. 3: Destroy shirt by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (1977)  

  

Notes

 

[1] Sex Pistols, 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI Records, 1976). The track also features on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to play and watch the official video on YouTube. 

      As one critic writes, the opening line of this song has become one of the most famous in rock history: "As a simple declaration, these words possess an immediate shock value familiar in the themes of transgression and iconoclasm that helped define rock and roll." 

      See Benjamin Court, 'The Christ-like Antichrists: Messianism in Sex Pistols', in Popular Music and Society, Volume 38, Issue 4 (2015), pp. 416-431.

 

[2] The figure of Christ on the Cross was adapted by McLaren from Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16). 

 

[3] In November 2019, for example, Francis Stewart and Mike Dines of the Punk Scholars Network, organised a two-day in person and online symposium on the theme of 'Punk and the Sacred': click here for details. 

      The peer-reviewed academic journal Punk & Post-Punk (ed. Russ Bestley) has also published several articles on punk spirituality; see, for example, Ibrahim Abraham's 'Postsecular punk: Evangelical Christianity and the overlapping consensus of the underground', in Volume 4, Issue 1, of the above (Mar 2015), pp. 91-105, which argues that "the negotiated inclusion of religiously diverse social actors in punk scenes can inform ongoing debates about diversity and inclusion ..." Abraham also edited Christian Punk: Identity and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020).

      This attempt to give punk a religious gloss doesn't always involve a Christian makeover, however; there have also been attempts to blend punk with Buddhist and Hindu practices and beliefs, for example. If not exactly hostile, let's just say - as an anti-theist [click here] - I'm suspicious of this creeping religiosity; I don't want punk philosophy and art to be corrupted by theologenblut.

 

[4] This line was written on the back of the Vestal Masturbation T-shirt; a controversial item of Cradle of Filth band merchandise, originally printed and distributed in 1993 (the front of the shirt features an image of a masturbating, semi-naked nun). As with several of the early McLaren-Westwood shirt designs, it garnered much controversy and resulted in some fans being arrested for wearing it. 

 

[5] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), § 27, p. 150.

 

[6] See sections 10-12 of the first essay in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887).

      It's important to note that this slave revolt is not merely a politics of class war and revenge; it also, crucially, introduces into history the idea of a free-willing human subject (the modern individual) whose existence is conceived in moralistic terms (i.e., as good or evil). Thus, Nietzsche does not simply condemn the triumph of this revolt nor seek to reverse it: "Such an exercise, even if desirable, would be pointless because slave morality has become an essential part of what we are." 

      See Keith Ansell-Pearson, editor's introduction to On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. xv.

 

[7] Lyrics from '1977', by The Clash; B-side to 'White Riot', their debut single (CBS Records, 1977).  

 

 

On the Anointed and the Accursed

Fig. 1: Marko Rupnik: The Anointing at Bethany (date unknown) 

Fig. 2: Marti Blue in Dirty (dir. Annabel Lee and Tessa Hughes-Freeland, 1993)

 

'And there will be a time of crisis, of worlds hanging in the balance.

And in this time shall come the Anointed.'

  

Or the Accursed ...

  

 

I. 

 

If you know your Greek, then you know that the title Christ does not mean king or saviour, but, in fact, derives from the term Χριστός (Khristós), which means the Anointed One [1]. 

 

II. 

Anointment is a ceremonial blessing, both sweet and useful, in which sacred aromatic oil [2] is ritually poured over an individual's head and/or body in acknowledgement of their divine nature and in order to provide protection from dangerous spirits and demons (which were widely believed to cause disease) [3].

 

It's a Jewish practice that many other peoples adopted, including the Ancient Greeks, and the concept of a sweet-smelling Messiah is, of course, central to Christianity; a faith whose oily followers we might legitimately describe as unctuous.     

 

I'm not sure, but I would guess that the practice has its origins in prehistoric cultures; the fat and blood of sacrificial animals being smeared on the body as a powerful form of sympathetic magic. To believe that anointment with sacred oil imparted the Spirit of the Lord [4] is really not all that different from thinking that to rub oneself with lion's blood makes one strong and fierce in battle.   

 

Finally, it might be noted that Jesus was never officially anointed by a High Priest in accordance with the ceremony described in Exodus. He was, however, considered to have been anointed by the Holy Spirit during his baptism. And he also has his feet lovingly oiled by Mary of Bethany shortly before meeting his sticky end on the Cross [5].  

And speaking of sticky ends ... Not everyone in this life is lucky enough to be anointed: indeed, some individuals - let us call them the accursed [6] - have filth poured over them rather than fine oils.

III.

Without wishing to go into too much detail, punishments involving the covering or pelting of people with bodily waste matter, rotten food items, or other types of filth, have a long and disgusting history. 

 

Sometimes these punishments were designed to publicly shame or appease the anger of the mob; sometimes, however, they were meant not only to shame, but to result in the person's (often slow and agonising) death ... 

 

One thinks, for example, of the ancient Persian method of execution known as scaphism [7], in which the naked victim would be trapped between two boats, with only his head, hands and feet sticking out. 

They would then be force fed with excessive quantities of milk and honey, causing them to vomit and soil themselves and thus left festering in their own puke and excrement, attracting the attention of voracious flies and other egg-laying insects. 

 

Maggot infestations and bacterial infection would eventually lead to sepsis and death, but the whole ghastly process could take many days. 

Readers who know their Bible will not be surprised to learn that the idea of being metaphorically shit upon - or turned into a piece of fly-covered meat - in order to demonstrate one's accursed state and vileness in the eyes of Man and God alike, can also be found in the Good Book. 

 

The prophet Nahum, for example, makes perfectly clear what God will do to anyone who dares to break his Law, including those women branded as witches and harlots: 'I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazingstock' (3:6), saith the LORD. 

 

 

IV.

 

Of course, there are some today who couldn't care less about the threats of a dead deity; indeed, there are some who have even transformed their own abjection and accursed status into an erotic pleasure ...

 

For these perverts - coprophiles and urophiles - being covered in (or interacting with) bodily waste materials is better than being anointed with the even the holiest of holy oils.  

 

Mysophiles with an abnormal attraction to filth and salirophiles who love to despoil or dirty the object of their affection, may horrify those like D. H. Lawrence who think such kinky individuals degraded and unable to differentiate between the flow of sex on the one hand and the flow of excrement on the other [8], but, for writers like Georges Bataille, transgressive paraphilias play a vital role in a Nietzschean revaluation of values and in his fiction he delights in presenting readers with characters such as Dirty; an incontinent foul-smelling alcoholic who engages in debauched sexual acts with her lover Troppmann [9], and the teen terror Simone, who loves sitting in saucers of milk, being urinated on, smearing herself with mud whilst masturbating in the rain, and inserting globular objects (soft-boiled eggs and eyeballs ripped from their sockets) into her anus or vagina [10].           

 

I'm not sure I'd like to date either girl, but perhaps Bataille is right to suggest that divine ecstasy and extreme horror are identical and that this is ultimately what the anointed and the accursed both discover.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] And if you know your Hebrew, then you also know that this Greek term is a direct translation of מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ), which again refers to the Anointed One and is transliterated into English as messiah. 

      Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will at this point be keen to remind us all that the character played by Andrew J. Ferchland in the series was also known as the Anointed One - and the epigraph at the top of this post is in fact a reference to this character and not to Jesus. 

      See the season 1 episode of Buffy entitled 'Never Kill a Boy on the First Date' (dir. David Semel, 1997).

[2] The oil used in a ceremonial anointment is called chrism, from the Greek χρῖσμα (khrîsma), and is commonly a mix of olive oil and balsam oil. These days, different traditions of Christian faith use different ingredients in the mix - not always following the biblical formula (discussed in note 4 below). and monarchs have sometimes.  

 

[3] Anointing was also understood to literally seal in goodness and, during the medieval and early-modern period, the practice of oiling the dead was thought to provide posthumous protection from vampires and ghouls who might otherwise feast on one's corpse. 

 

[4] See chapter 30 of the Book of Exodus, verses 22-25: click here. 

      Apparently, God not only gave Moses specific instructions for the preparation of anointing oil, he even provided a list of ingredients to be used; essentially expensive spices blended and mixed with olive oil. The resulting mixture was to be reserved exclusively for religious purposes and the recipe was not to be duplicated for personal or everyday use under any circumstances (breaking this commandment would result in a severe punishment). 

      The oil symbolised the presence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit and its purpose was to sanctify (or set apart) people and objects, highlighting the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

 

[5] See John 12:1-8: click here. 

 

[6] The term accursed may not be a precise antonym for anointed, but it's the best I could think of and I believe it has a theological resonance as well as a more general meaning. 

      Arguably, I suppose, the accursed might also be thought of as a class of the damned. But the accursed, unlike the damned, are more loathsome and detestable than they are evil and whilst they may be marked for destruction by God, they are not necessarily heading for eternal punishment in the depths of Hell - although it's not always clear cut: see Matthew 25:41, for example, where Jesus is depicted as telling those who find themselves unfortunate enough to be standing on his left hand side at the Final Judgement: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels'.     

 

[7] Plutarch discusses scaphism in his Life of Artaxerxes, detailing the execution of a Persian soldier named Mithridates. His account originates from a source considered unreliable, however (which is not to say the practice didn't take place). See section 16 of the above work: click here.  

 

[8] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 242, where he writes 

       "The sex functions and the excrementary functions in the human body work so close together, yet they are, so to speak, utterly different in direction. Sex is a creative flow, the excrementary flow is towards  dissolution [...] In the really healthy human being the distinction between the two is instant [...]

      But in the degraded human being the deep instincts have gone dead and the two flows become identical. [...] Then sex is dirt and dirt is sex, and sexual excitement becomes a playing with dirt [...]" 

[9] See Bataille's novel Le blue de ciel (1957), trans. by Harry Mathews as Blue of Noon (Penguin Books 2001). 

      Dirty - or Dorothea to give the character her Christian name - personifies Bataille's philosophy of base materialism. Her utter degeneracy - moral and social - is contrasted with the ideals of purity and goodness that characterise both bourgeois and fascist society. 

      Interestingly, the character was modeled on Bataille's real-life lover at the time, Colette Peignot, a revolutionary Communist (known by the pseudonym Laure) whose (short and tragic) life was lived to (and at) the limit. 

 

[10] See Bataille's novel Histoire de l'oeill (1928), trans. by Joachim Neugroschal as Story of the Eye (Penguin Books, 1982). 

 

On Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (Another Post in Response to Simon Solomon)

Image: Marian S. Carson Collection 

at the Library of Congress

 

 

I. 

A common form of corporal punishment for boys and junior officers in the British navy was being bent over the breech of a cannon in order to be caned or whipped on their exposed buttocks. This practice - painful, but not disabling - was euphemistically known as kissing (or marrying) the gunner's daughter and Adam Ant once wrote a song alluding to it [1].

 

II. 

I thought of this when Simon Solomon recently admonished me for providing an 'unsourced reference taken from the heavily doctored Will to Power and as such non-canonical' [2]. 

It wasn't so much that I felt I was about to receive a light beating, but I did feel I was being tied to Nietzsche's canon - i.e., those works which were written and published by him in his lifetime [3] - and forced to pledge love and loyalty only to his authorised books.

And I have to confess that, just like Captain Renault, I was shocked - shocked I tells ya! - to be reprimanded by Herr Solomon of all people; an independent scholar whose reading of Hölderlin in terms of schizopoetics and things that go bump in the night [4] is unorthodox to say the least. 

Indeed, some - including those of a more Swalesian mindset - might even describe it as heterodox, i.e., a work that not only deviates from older, more conventional readings, but wilfully perverts them. By his own confession, Solomon's passionate appreciation (and translation) of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin involved fucking the latter up the arse in order to produce some kind of monstrous offspring [5].      

 

So, for Simon to invoke the canon and insist that I play by the academic rules and show my obedience to (and conformity with) the law that governs what is and is not an acceptable text, is, I think, a bit rich.  

III. 

Having said that, I accept that there are seminal texts - i.e., works which are highly influential and possibly lay the foundation for future study - but I'd not even call these texts canonical (and what is seminal work for me - such as Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), is merely a white stain on the history of French literature for others).  

 

Ultimately, to invoke the canon and wish to uphold it, is to give support to those texts which, as Barthes would say, come from culture and do not break with it; texts which are linked to "a comfortable practice of reading" [6]; texts which have authority and have achieved the status of timeless classics; texts which are meant to contain eternal truths.

As a white European heterosexual male, I'm not obsessed with deconstructing, decolonising, expanding, or queering the canon; I simply don't wish to be strapped to it and thrashed by those who think I should show a little more respect to the Political Father.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Adam Ant, 'Marrying the Gunner's Daughter', from the album Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (Blueblack Hussar Records, 2013). Not one of his best songs, but click here if you fancy giving it a listen.  

 

[2] See Solomon's comment dated 27 November 2025 and posted at 17:14:00 on Torpedo the Ark in response to a post titled 'On (Not) Taking a Stand' - click here. And see note 3 below for why Solomon is right to be wary of material extracted from The Will to Power.  

 

[3] Ecce Homo can also be included as part of Nietzsche's canon; for whilst it was published posthumously in 1908, he had completed writing it in 1888. 

      However, the book of notes assembled from Nietzsche's Nachlaß (i.e., literary remains) by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche working in editorial collaboration with his friend Peter Gast and titled Der Wille zur Macht (1901) is an entirely different kettle of fish and references to this work should be treated with a certain amount of caution. 

      His sister's claims that this was the magnum opus Nietzsche had hoped and planned to write can certainly be dismissed and some Nietzsche scholars have gone as far as to describe it as essentially a philosophical forgery. Nevertheless, the significantly expanded second edition containing 1,067 sections (1906) has been translated into English - most famously by Anthony M. Ludovici in 1910 for the edition of Nietzsche's works edited by Oscar Levy and by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale in 1968 - and the book remains one often consulted by readers of Nietzsche (albeit a non-canonical text as Solomon says).

      Readers who would like to know more about the publication history of Nietzsche's work might like to see William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (University of Chicago Press, 1996). 

 

[4] See Solomon's 2020 book Hölderlin's Poltergeists: A Drama for Voices, published under the Irish spelling of his name as Síomón Solomon (Peter Lang, 2020). I have written extensively on this book on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

[5] In the book cited above, Solomon writes enthusiastically of what he describes as Deleuze's bum banditry, a reference to the way in which the latter liked to approach certain other thinkers from behind and below. See Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 6.  

[6] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 14.

      Like Barthes, I prefer texts that discomfort and impose a state of loss; texts which unsettle "the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories" and bring to a crisis our relation with language itself (texts a bit like Nietzsche's, in fact - including his non-canonical writings).   

 

 

On (Not) Taking a Stand: Placing Alexander Hamilton's Aphorism Under Erasure

 

I. 

 

Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.

 

This line, often attributed to Alexander Hamilton - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the protagonist of Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit musical [1] - is precisely the sort of simplistic cliché posited as an undeniably wise truth that I despise. 

 

Not only does it discourage critical thinking and debate, but it equates those who lack conviction and, like me, prefer to remain transpositional, with being credulous and gullible.

 

 

II. 

 

The kind of men [2] who take a stand, are often the same kind of men who have a point to prove and a case to rest. 

 

And they are often the same kind of men who like to stand to attention (feet together, arms by side, spine straight, shoulders back, chin up, eyes front), which is certainly one way to discipline the body, but not my way [3]. 

 

For the kind of men who are willing to discipline the body in this manner and who insist on standing for something are also the same kind of men willing to march and to die and to kill for their ideological principles, moral values, core beliefs, etc. 

 

For in taking a stand, they find themselves with a position to defend; and in finding themselves with a position to defend they all too quickly declare it legitimate to do so by any means necessary [4]. 

 

Personally, I don't like such men: men who stand for something. I prefer men who, like rebellious angels, have the courage to fall - in love, for example (or into sin) - even at the risk of seeming foolish, or weak and indecisive, or lacking manly virtue.

        

 

Notes

 

[1] Hamilton: An American Musical (2015) is a biographical musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Lin-Manuel Miranda (based on the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow). From its (off-Broadway) opening, Hamilton received near-universal acclaim and it has since won multiple awards and continued to be box office gold. 

      A West End production opened at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London on 21 December, 2017, and picked up seven Olivier Awards in 2018, including Best New Musical. 

      I have not seen it: and do not want to see it. I suspect, if someone were to drag me along, I would either leave at the interval (and, when getting home, immediately have to watch Heat on DVD), or I'd fall asleep quicker than Larry David in the season 9 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'The Shucker' (dir. Jeff Schaffer, 2017): click here. 

 

[2] I find it necessary to genderise the discussion at this point, for, as will become clear, it seems to me that this issue of taking a stand etc. is one tied to a certain model of masculinity (one seen as as virtuous and virile in the Victoran era, but which is now viewed as toxic).

 

[3] Being upright and able to stand to attention was a core component of the Victorian ideal of (heterosexual) masculinity. Symbolising strength and self-control, an erect posture was a physical manifestation of a man's character and moral standing. Men who slouched were weaklings unlikely to succeed in society; those who were prone to lying around and being idle or licentious were viewed as unmanly degenerates (homosexuals, drug addicts, dandies, or bohemian artists). 

 

[4] This supposedly radical phrase is thought to be an English translation either of a line written by Sartre in his 1948 play Les mains sales - en usant de tous les moyens - or of phrase spoken by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 address to the Positive Action Conference in Accra, Ghana; par n'importe quel moyen. 

      It is most famously assocated with Malcolm X, however, who used it repeatedly during a rally in NYC, in June 1964 (i.e., a few months before his assassination in February 1965): We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. The argument of course, is twofold: firstly, that you you have to fight fire with fire (and meet violence with violence); secondly, that the ends justify the means. 

 

 

This post grew out of remarks made by and to Simon Solomon following a post dated 21 November 2025: click here. 

 

 

Euphoria Contra Ecstasy

Killing Joke: Euphoria (2015)  

Screenshot from the official video

And then the clouds break / A ray of sunlight, gloria!  

As if a promise / Some strange kind of euphoria [1]

 

 

I. 

 

When I was young, one of the key words in my vocabulary was the Ancient Greek term ἔκστασις (ékstasis), which refers to a psycho-spiritual sense of release; the ecstatic individual is one who has found a way to literally step outside of their own self and become part of something greater (some might characterise this as the nowness of the moment; some might speak of God).  

 

Ecstasy, therefore, is an altered - some would insist higher - state of consciousness and many who have experienced it speak of an intensely pleasurable experience, whether resulting from sexual activity, drug use, or religious devotion [2]. The desire for a temporary loss of self and loss of control is, it seems, rooted in a fundamental human instinct - one which Freud memorably termed der Todestrieb [3].     

 

And it's at this point I'd like to say something about another Ancient Greek term - εὐφορία - or, as we write it in English, euphoria  ...

 

 

II.  

  

It's because I think Freud is right to identify a death drive and because I believe the wilful desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in this drive (and is thus, from a Nietzschean perspective, décadent), that I now avoid speaking of ékstasis and favour euphoria, which, I would argue, is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

In other words, euphoria is a sense of physical wellbeing that encourages us to stay true to the earth, whilst ecstasy, involving as it does an element of transcendence and a stepping out of reality, is a dangerous first step on the path to heaven; euphoria is tied to Dionysian joy [4], but ecstasy terminates in the kind of religious rapture [5] longed for by Christians and other afterworldsmen [6].  

 

 

III. 

By way of providing an example, let us turn to two contrasting scenes in D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow (1915) ...  

 

In the first of these, we witness the heavily pregnant Anna Brangwen dancing naked in her bedroom and this, I would say, is a scene of euphoria; one that celebrates the fertile female body in all its gravid beauty:

 

"Big with child as she was, she danced there in the bedroom by herself, lifting her hands and her body to the Unseen [...]

      [...] She danced in secret, and her soul rose in bliss [7] [...] she took off her clothes and danced in the pride of her bigness [8].   

 

In the second scene, which comes in the following chapter (VII), we are told how her husband, Will, is driven to the point of ecstasy by Lincoln Cathedral:

 

"When he saw the cathedral in the distance [...] his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven, it was the Spirit hovering like a dove [...] He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth opened with a strange, ecstatic grin." [9]    

 

It's not that Will is an objectophile - though he clearly has certain tendencies in that direction - his real desire is to escape mortal existence and become one with the Infinite in timeless ecstasy. No wonder Anna "resented his transports and ecstasies" [10] and longs to leave the cathedral and be back under the open sky.

 

And no wonder she turns to the gargolyes, which save her "from being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps on into the Infinite" [11] and help her to bring Will back down to earth with a bump.  

 

In brief: Anna's Dionysian euphoria triumphs over Will's Christian ecstasy ...

 

He still loves Lincoln Cathedral, but, after Anna has effectively disillusioned him by mocking his desire to consummate his love, even Will recognises there is life outside the church; that there are birds singing in the garden; flowers growing in the fields. 

 

And these things induce a sense of joy and wellbeing that was free and careless and "at once so sumptuous and so fresh, that he was glad he was away from his shadowy cathedral" [12]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

And on a cold and grey November morn, when all the autumn leaves have fallen and "I can hear the magpies laugh" [13], all it takes is a momentary break in the clouds and a ray of sunlight and I too feel strangely euphoric ...     

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the Killing Joke single 'Euphoria', released from the album Pylon (Spinefarm Records / Universal Music Group, 2015): click here to play. The melodic character and almost choral quality of this track reminds me of the songs on Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (E.G. Records / Virgin Records, 1986), which is certainly one of my favourite Killing Joke albums.  

      

[2] I'm not suggesting these are the only ways to induce ecstasy; other methods might include physical activities such as yoga, dancing, or working out at the gym. Others find quiet meditation in which they concentrate on their breathing does the trick.

 

[3] Freud defines the death drive as the will possessed by organic life forms to return to an inanimate state. It is the opposing (although complementary) force to the life instinct, Eros, which drives self-preservation and reproduction. Both drives belong to the same libidinal economy. See his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). 

      Here, I will argue that whilst the desire to experience ecstasy is rooted in the death drive, euphoria is an expression of man's most vital self.   

 

[4] For Nietzsche, the story of Dionysus is form of thanksgiving and an affirmation of life; the promise that it will be eternally reborn (this in stark contrast to the figure of the Crucified, who counts as an objection to life and a curse upon it). 

 

[5] Rapture is derived from the Latin term raptus, meaning to seize and carry off; one is literally swept up with ecstasy and transported to another (better and more perfect) world. This is why certain evangelical Christians in the United States use this term as their great eschatological watchword. 

      For these religious fanatics, the Rapture is an end-times event when all Christian believers (including the resurrected dead) will rise in the clouds, to meet the Lord their God. Although this is a relatively recent theological development - first arising in the 1830s - the origin of the term can be traced back to the Bible which uses the Greek word ἁρπάζω (harpazo); see 1 Thessalonians, 4:13-18, where a gathering of the elect in Heaven is described after the Second Coming of Christ.     

 

[6] This term - Hinterweltler in the original German - is a coinage of Nietzsche's and refers to those lunatics who focus their hopes and values on a transcendental realm that one enters at death, thereby devaluing earthly life. 

     For Zarathustra, it was suffering and impotence which created the idea of an afterworld and whilst it may seem attractive to many, it is, he says, a humiliation to believe in such heavenly nonsense. He teaches men to listen rather to the voice of the healthy body and stay true to the earth. 

      See the section entitled 'Of the Afterworldsmen', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 58-61. 

 

[7] Although the term bliss was later appropriated by those who like to imagine the spiritual delights of heaven, it was originally an Old English word (with a Proto-Germanic root) simply meaning joy in the mundane sense. 

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 169-170. I discuss this scene - much loved by maiesiophiles everywhere - in the post 'On Dirty Dancing and the Virtue of Female Narcissism 2: The Case of Anna Brangwen' (30 July 2017) - click here - and again in a post titled 'Maiesiophilia' (8 Dec 2022): click here.   

       

[9] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 186.  

 

[10] Ibid., p. 188. 

 

[11] Ibid., p. 189. I discuss this scene at greater length in the post titled 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargoyle on the Great Fire of Notre-Dame de Paris' (16 April 2019): click here.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow ... p. 191.  

 

[13] Killing Joke, 'Euphoria' (2015), as cited in note 1 above.  

 

Behold the Sausage (Or Incipit Parodia): A Foolish Response to Simon Solomon

The Three Jokers (SA/2025)

 

'I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy ... 

I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon ... Perhaps I am a buffoon ...' [1]

 

  

I. 

 

According to Simon Solomon, Nietzsche's final book, Ecce Homo (1908) [2], is an embarrassing catastrophe resulting from his tragic inability to reconcile free-spirited sincerity with his desire to consummate nihilism. As a consequence, says Solomon, he falls into the abyss and we are left with a work which is "rightly regarded as the catastrophic car-crash of his philosophical career" [3]. 

 

This last line makes one think of Ballard's famous 1973 novel and imagine Nietzsche as the nightmare angel of the philosophical highway, looking to develop not so much a new and perverse sexuality, but a Dionysian philosophy [4]. 

 

Only, of course, Ecce Homo is not a car crash and nor should it be read as a cautionary tale of psychopathology. And Nietzsche doesn't fall into the abyss so much as voluntarily leap into the absurd, becoming the clown or comedian he always wanted to be. 

 

In this respect, Nietzsche is more like Arthur Fleck than he is Robert Vaughan and whilst the subtitle of Ecce Homo is apt and memorable - Wie man wird, was man ist - it could also have been: I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it's a fucking comedy [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, whilst Nietzsche is more Fleck than Vaughan, he is also far more of a silly sausage than the mentally ill clown played by Joaquin Phoenix. And by that I mean he has more in common with Hans Wurst [6] than Joker ...  

 

A popular comic character in Germany with a complex, multifaceted personality, Hans Wurst often featured in rural carnival celebrations during the 16th and 17th centuries. His humour was often coarse - lots of sexual innuendo and scatalogical references - and it certainly wasn't popular with everyone. Indeed, in the 1730s there were attempts to banish Hans from the German stage in order to improve the quality of comedy writing and protect public morality.  

 

This was initially met with resistance, however, German theatre gradually moved away from popular, improvised performances to the modern bourgeois artform we know today. And Hans Wurst morphed into the far more respectable stock character of the Harlequin; or, if he did appear, it was in puppet form as a German equivalent of Mr Punch.  

 

By the close of the 18th century, Emperor Joseph II had banned all buffoonery and burlesque and instructed theatre producers to concentrate on staging shows suitable for all to enjoy. However, Wurst's name lived on and he retained his place in the cultural imagination.     

 

 

III. 

 

So what has all this to do with Nietzsche? 

 

Well, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst than as any kind of guru or holy figure: see the line quoted at the top of this post. 

 

Christine Battersby writes: 

 

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [7]

 

In sum: for Nietzsche, playfulness - not sincerity or systematicity - is the essential precondition of greatness. And so whilst other philosophers sing in praise of wisdom or mature reason, he sings in praise of childlike innocence and pure folly. 

 

But he also sings in praise of human baseness: for in adopting the persona of Hans Wurst in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche is "aligning himself not only with a mode of the ridiculous that is cut off from the sublime, but also with that which is morally repellent" [8].  

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126. 

 

[2] Although written in 1888, Ecce Homo was not published until eight years after Nietzsche's death in 1908. The subtitle of the work reveals its autobiographical aspect: How One Becomes What One Is.  

      As well as assessing his own life and contribution to philosophy, Nietzsche attempts to give us a new image of the philosopher; one who mocks the ascetic ideal that has hitherto dominated philosophy (i.e., a set of values that are a fundamental denial of life and which teach that meaning is to be found not in joy, but in suffering).

 

[3] See the comments left by Solomon on the posts 'Waxing Philosophical on Insincerity' (9 July 2018) - click here - and 'Haddaway, Man! An Open Letter to Peter Wolfendale' (22 November 2025): click here. 

      I fear that Solomon has a rather old-fashioned view of Ecce Homo; one that buys into the idea that it is the product "of a mind no longer master of its fantasies" and that it should be regarded as a work of insanity. The line quoted is from the Introduction to R. J. Hollingdale's translation (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 7. 

      Far from being the car crash he says it is, I see it as Nietzsche's most fun book and, as Hollingdale concedes, despite its "obvious failings and shortcomings", when "considered purely as an essay in the art of writing, it is among the most beautiful books in German" (ibid., p. 8). 

      See my post of 15 October 2013: 'Ecce Homo: How One Becomes as Queer as One Is' - click here. And see also my essay of this title (also known as Carry On Nietzsche) in Visions of Excess and Other Essays (Blind Cupid Press, 2009), pp. 255-280.   

 

[4] I'm referring here to J. G. Ballard's Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973).  

 

[5] This is a line spoken by the protagonist of the film Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019), Arthur Fleck, played (brilliantly) by Joquin Phoenix. Click here to watch the scene in which this line is delivered.

 

[6] The name Hans Wurst literally translates into English as John (or Jack, if you prefer the diminutive) Sausage. 

 

[7] Christine Battersby, '"Behold the Buffoon": Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', Tate Papers, No. 13 (Spring, 2010): click here.

      As Battersby reminds us, Schopenhauer was interested in how the ridiculous [lächerlich] relates to the sublime and claims that the genuinely humorous is not in conflict with the latter, but is complementary, and that the most serious people often laugh easily. 

      However, Schopenhauer draws a sharp distinction between true humour and that which is merey komisch - such as the bawdy rubbish given us by Hans Wurst and which amuses only the lower classes who lack the ability to appreciate the sublime with any intensity. Nietzsche, however, sides with the ordinary people who know, like D. H. Lawrence, that a little bawdiness keeps life sane and wholesome; see his poem 'What's sane and what isn't', in The Poems Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 1614. 

[8] Christine Battersby, as cited above. 

      In other words, whilst Schopenhauer ties the humorous to the sublime, Nietzsche ties the comic to the monstrous and criminal and to the fact that man has physical needs and limitations (this is evidenced by other references to Hans Wurst in Nietzsche's late notebooks). 

      Essentially, this is the Nietzsche embraced by Bataille in his idiosyncratic reading of the latter. Obviously the French author was influenced by other thinkers, but, as he once confessed: "A peu d'exceptions près, ma compagnie sur terre est celle de Nietzsche ..." See 'On Nietzsche', (Continuum, 2004), p. 3, where the line is translated by Bruce Boone as: "Except for a few exceptions, my company on earth is mostly Nietzsche ..."         

 

 

For a related post to this one - 'Don't You Know Jesus Christ Is a Sausage?' (18 April, 2020) - which also references this essay by Battersby - please click here.

 

Musical bonus: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Ecce homo', taken from the album Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles (Mercury Records / Universal Music Group, 1981): click here.  

      I'm not sure what Nietzsche would have made of this track, but I like to think the title if nothing else would make him smile.