Cruelty, writes Nietzsche, is one of the oldest festive joys of mankind. Indeed, to practise cruelty - to refine it into an art form and a virtue - is the mark of human culture; a means by which we express our power over life and our divine indifference to suffering, be it that of animals, slaves, or those regarded as enemies of the state.
For it is not only beasts that are tortured and butchered, or sea-creatures that are turned into sashimi. And so as my companion's plate of ikizukuri was prepared and served with all the delicate knife-work that a Japanese chef is capable of, I thought once more of Fu Chou Li, who was executed in 1905 by being cut into a hundred pieces.
The public dismemberment of this poor wretch - guilty of murdering a prince - was something that obsessed Bataille, who kept a photograph of the event which played a decisive role in his thinking. For he saw in the picture not only great horror, but also a look on the victim's face of ecstatic joy that seemed to transcend his torment. And it was this that lent the picture an almost unbearable beauty and fascination:
"The young and seductive Chinese man ... I loved him with a love in which the sadistic instinct played no part: he communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not so as to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin."
- Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt, Albany State University Press, 1988, p. 120.
I understand, I think, where Bataille is coming from - and why he finds the anguished eroticism of human sacrifice and sadism so rich in meaning. But as I looked down at my friend's plate and saw the still-living but semi-sliced fish attempt to take one last gasp of air, I was glad I had chosen the noodles.
