Notes on Georges Bataille's L'Expérience intérieure (Inner Experience)

This page consists of my notes on Georges Bataille's L'Expérience intérieure.

Bibliographic Notes

Although L'Expérience intérieure comprises Part I of Bataille's three-part La Somme athéologique, it was originally published as a single work in 1943 (while France was still under control of the collaborationist government). A decade would pass before Bataille grouped L'Expérience with Le Coupable (Guilty) and Sur Nietzsche (On Nietzsche) to form La Somme (1954). In this first edition of La Somme athéologique, Bataille added two short pieces to the end of L'Expérience intérieure: "Méthode de méditation" and "Post-scriptum 1953."

Standard Edition

• L'Expérience intérieur, Œuvres complètes. Vol. 5. Ed. Denis Hollier. Paris: Gallimard, 1973. 7-189, 421-55. Based on the 1954 edition.

Original Publication and Other Editions

• L'Expérience intérieure. [Paris]: Gallimard, 1943.
• L'Expérience intérieure. Éd. rev. et corr., suivie de Méthode de méditation et de Post-scriptum 1953. [Revised and corrected edition, with the addition of "Method of Meditation" and "Post-Scriptum 1953."] Published as Part I of La Somme athéologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).

English Translation

• Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988). Translation of the 1973 edition but without "Method of Meditation" and the "Post-Scriptum." Also, although Hollier's editorial notes are included, the individual notes are almost impossible to locate because (1) there is a mismatch between note-reference numbers and notes due to the fact that a note-reference system different from the French edition is used in the body while keeping the French system in the Notes section and (2) there are no page headers in the Notes section to help in the locating of specific notes (viz., "Notes to Pages 88-98"). To make this matter worse, the page numbers that accompany individual notes are not cross-referenced to the pages within the translation but refer, instead, to pages in the Œuvres complètes edition. In addition to these general problems, there are specific errors that further complicate the locating of notes (see note below on the Preface).
• "Method of Meditation" and "Post-Scriptum (1953)." In The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge. Edited by Stuart Kendall. Translated by Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall. 77-99, 206-09. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Translation of "Méthode de méditation" and "Post-scriptum 1953," Œuvres complètes, vol. 5 (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 192-228, 231-34. Excellent translation and editorial notes.

Secondary Literature

• Boldt, Leslie Anne. “Translator's Introduction.” In Inner Experience. ix-xxiv. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988.

Textual Notes

Title

The depth of the title is easily overlooked because modern usage of the word expérience has displaced its older, more active sense with a passive sense focused on the effect of an occurrence or event. However, several of Bataille's remarks on the concept of experience show that he had the older meaning in mind, as well the word's Latin antecedent. Moreover, I think L'Expérience intérieure may be read as Bataille's attempt to reinvest the thinking of "experience" with its older meaning.

As recently as the early eighteenth century, experience had the meaning, now obsolete, of "the action of putting to the test; trial; to make experience of: to make trial of" (OED). This meaning derives from the word's Latin antecedent, experientia, meaning "a trial, proof, experiment," from the verb experiri, meaning "to try, prove, put to the test" (Lewis & Short). For example, Bataille writes in his opening chapter, "L'expérience est la mise en question (à l'épreuve), dans fièvre et l'angoisse, de ce qu'un homme sait du fait d'être." ("Experience is the putting into question [to the test], in fever and anguish, one's comprehension of the circumstance of being." My translation; cf. Boldt's translation 4.) In addition to the Latin antecedent of expérience, Bataille may have had in mind the Latin roots ex- ("carried to a conclusive point") + peri- verb base meaning "to try" but also "to put in peril, to endanger, risk, jeopard[ize]" (Lewis & Short). Bataille's writings, of course, are characterized by this idea of extreme risk. We should take special note, though, of this definition of expérience from Chapter II: "J'appelle expérience un voyage au bout du possible de l'homme." ("I call experience a voyage to the limit of human possibility." My translation; cf. Boldt's translation 7.)

Epigraph: Night is also a sun.

The epigraph comes from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1892 edition), where it appears in Zarathustra's next-to-last speech, entitled "The Drunken Song" (according to Walter Kaufmann, "Nietzsche's great hymn to joy"). The paragraph reads:

You higher men, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? A drunkard? An interpreter of dreams? A midnight bell? A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect; midnight too is noon; pain too is a joy; curses too are a blessing; night too is a sun -- go away or you will learn: a sage too is a fool. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann [Penguin, 1978], 323.)

Avant-Propos [Preface]

1. The English translation has omitted a note reference number, compounding a pagination error in the Œuvres complètes. All of the errors in the English translation appear on xxxiii; and the first two result in incorrect note references. Here are the correct references:

• note 2 (top of xxxiii) = French note 1 for p. 10 (found on p. 172 of Boldt's translation)
• note reference 3 is omitted from the translation and should be added at the end of "I don't believe so") = French note 2 for p. 11 (found on p. 174 of Boldt's translation)
• note reference 3 should be renumbered to 4 = French note 3 (p. 174 of Boldt's translation)
• note reference 4 should be renumbered to 5 = French note 4 (p. 174 of Boldt's translation)

2. It's significant that Bataille should begin his Preface not with his words but those of Nietzsche, a figure who, I think, Bataille casts in the role of Dante's Virgil.

3. Passage from Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: Ecce Homo is the book in which Nietzsche, writing only weeks before the onset of his insanity, offers an apologia of his writings. It is curious that Bataille identifies the source of the passage as Ecce Homo because Nietzsche makes clear that he is quoting himself, from "one of the last sections of the fifth book of my gaya scienza" (Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann, 298).

4. "The only parts of this book written with necessity -- in accord with my life -- are the second, The Torment, and the last" (xxxi).

What is this "necessity"? Near the end of the Preface, Bataille describes it as the realization that a systematic account of the world (i.e., "ontologie") conflicts with the human need to grapple with "énigmas." Based on this presupposition about human nature, Bataille reasons that, to be most human, one must grapple with an unsolvable enigma, even though this results in a sense of overwhelming impotence. Bataille thus introduces two basic assumptions regarding human nature: (1) humans desire to grapple with enigma and (2) this desire positions humans in a condition of constant subservience. He will refine his conception of this condition of subservience when he characterizes it in terms of "supplication."

Première Partie: Ébauche d'une Introduction a l'expérience intérieure [Part One: Sketch of an Introduction to Inner Experience]

I. Critique de la servitude dogmatique (et du mysticisme). [Critique of dogmatic servitude (and of mysticism)]

II. L'Expérience seule autorité, seul valeur. [Experience, sole authority, sole value]

III. Principes d'une méthode et d'une communauté. [Principles of a method and a community]

Deuxième Partie: Le Supplice [Part Two: The Torment]

1. Some knowledge of the French title and its Latin source will illuminate a key word in this section of L'Expérience intérieure, a section which, according to Bataille, is the vital heart of the book. Although readers of the English translation will likely note Bataille's remarks on supplication, they may not recognize, because of the English title of Part Two, the centrality of this idea in Bataille's thinking of "inner experience." The French noun le supplice refers to forms of torture and the state of being tortured (though not the act of inflicting torture, usually conveyed through the verb torturer). This meaning is found in the common religious phrase "le supplice de la Croix" ("the Crucifixion"), as well as phrases like "supplice de Tantale" ("torment of Tantalus"). The Latin source of this word is the verb supplicare, which the Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary defines, "to kneel down or humble one's self, to pray or beg humbly, to beseech, implore, supplicate." What is notable about this Latin word is that it refers not to the act of torture or the act of being tortured but to a specific kind of communicative act (a complex communicative act in that it involves both the medium of speech [e.g., to beg] and the medium of the body [e.g., to kneel down]). Also, this kind of communicative act entails a relationship defined in terms of power. That is, the supplicant always addresses a figure who has power to inflict or attenuate physical and mental suffering; the very condition of the supplicatory act is this relation of power (a relation echoed in Bataille's interest in Hegel's master-slave dialectic).

Troisième Partie: Antécédents du supplice (ou la comédie) [Part Three: Antecedents to the Torment (or the Comedy)]

Je veux porter ma personne au pinacle. [I want to carry my person to the pinnacle]

La mort est un sens une imposure. [Death is in a sense an imposture]

L bleu du ciel. [The blue of noon]

Le labyrinthe (ou la composition des êtres). [The labyrinth (or the constitution of beings)]

La "commnication". ["Communication"]

Quatrième Partie: Post-scriptum au supplice (ou la nouvelle théologie mystique) [Part Four: Post-Scriptum to the Torment (or the New Mystical Theology]

I. Dieu.

II. Descartes.

III. Hegel.

IV. L'extase.

V. La fortune.

VI. Nietzsche.

Cinquième Partie: Manibus Date Lilia Plenis [Part Five: Manibus Date Lilia Plenis]

The title comes originally from Book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid and can be translated "give lilies with full hands" (6.883). However, Bataille may have had in mind Dante's use of this line in Book 30 of the Purgatorio, where it appears to be part of a tribute to Virgil just before the Roman poet and Dante's guide through the underworld disappears from Dante's side (30.21). This possibility suggests that Bataille, in this final section, is staging a similar farewell to his guide through "the torment," Nietzsche.

Gloria in excelsis mihi.

Dieu. [God]

Last update: 29-Mar-06

Unless noted otherwise, the work on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Some pages on this site contain material from my classes taught in The Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University.

The contents of this page do not reflect an official position of Middle Tennessee State University. The sole responsibility for these contents lies with the author, James Comas (jcomas@mtsu.edu).

This document is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and uses CSS 2.1.