5 Poems: Georges Bataille
Translated by Mark Daniel Cohen
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Published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, December 2008. Copyright © 2008 Mark Daniel Cohen and The Nietzsche Circle. All essays, interviews, and reviews are shared copyright between author(s) and The Nietzsche Circle. All rights reserved. Please contact editors for any concerns or for usage rights.
Poems
“le neant n'est que moi-meme...”
“Je revais de toucher...”
I’d dream to touch the sadness of the world
the bog of unenchant upon the eaves
I’d dream the waters’ grave from I’d retrieve
the lonely channels of your mouth’s inter
I’ve felt to hand corruption’s caudal fur
the night of harrow wood it had elide
and saw this were the sinister you died
I limn it laughing sadness of the world
lucific crack in mad a thunder scree
your limit licking laugh long nudity
immense in splendor last illumine me
I saw your sad as if a charity
in radiant in night long morphic sheen
and tears the tomb of your infinity.
—Georges Bataille (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)
“De la bouse dans la tete...”
For sake the dung among the head
I detonate I execrate the sky
the clouds expectorate
it’s bitter to immensity
my eyes are pigs
my heart is ink
my balls become dead suns
the fallen stars gone fathomless grown grave
I weep my language leaks
it imports no immensity’s a round
and rolled and bound in sound
I passion death petition it
in Holy Father’s butchery.
—Georges Bataille (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)
“Immensite criminelle...”
Criminal immensity
break vase of immensity
ruin without boundaries
immensity that down and whelms me
I am fleece
the universe is felon
madness alar my insanity
talons to immensity
immensity to talons me
I am alone
about the blind will read these lines
in that of interminable tunnels
I down in deep immensity immensity
devolves to she
she’s blacker than demise
the sun is black
the beauty of to be is bottom hollows of a cry
definitive of night
this that loves in light
the shudder sheet of which she’s glazed
is desire of the night
—Georges Bataille (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)
“le neant n'est que moi-meme...”
the nothingness is Selfsame me
the universe is tomb to me
the sun is solely death
my eyes blind lightning
hearts the sky
there thunderstorms ignites
in me
at the bottom of abysm
immensity of universe is death
—Georges Bataille (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)
“je mens...”
I lie
the universe is tacked
to my dement mendacities
immensity
and I
dement mendacities from one the next
the truth dies
I cry
that way truth lies
my confectionery head
that draws the cup of fever
is the suicide of truth
—Georges Bataille (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)
© Mark Daniel Cohen—Nietzsche Circle, 2008
(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, December 2008)