L'abbé C

Georges Bataille

M. Boyars, 1983 - Literature - 158 pages

Told in a series of first-person accounts, L"'Abbe C" is a startling narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed L'Abbe'. When the sexually wild Eponine intrudes upon their suffocating relationship, anguish, delirium, and death ensue. Other works by Georges Bataille published by Marion Boyars include "Blue of Noon" and "My Mother Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man.

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This is the story of twin brothers, Robert, a pius priest, and Charles, a depraved libertine, who despite their character differences remain close. Both are attracted to a "loose" woman, Eponine, with ...

Contents

• PART: 9
• The Editors Preface: 11
• PART TWO The Narrative Written by Charles C: 31

About the author

Georges Bataille was a French poet, novelist, and philosopher. He was born in Billon, Puy-de-Dome, in central France on September 10, 1897. His father was already blind and paralyzed from syphilis when Bataille was born. In 1915, Bataille's father died, his mind destroyed by his illness. The death marked his son for life. While working at the Bibliotheque National in Paris during the 1920s, Bataille underwent psychoanalysis and became involved with some of the intellectuals in the Surrealist movement, from whom he learned the concept of incongruous imagery in art. In 1946 he founded the journal Critique, which published the early work of some of his contemporaries in French intellectual life, including Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Bataille believed that in the darkest moments of human existence-in orgiastic sex and terrible death-lay ultimate reality. By observing them and even by experiencing them, actually in sex and vicariously in death, he felt that one could come as close as possible to fully experiencing life in all its dimensions. Bataille's works include The Naked Beast at Heaven's Gate (1956), A Tale of Satisfied Desire (1953), Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (1962), and The Birth of Art: Prehistoric Painting (1955). Bataille died in Paris on July 8, 1962.

Bibliographic information

• Title: L'abbé C; Volume 1 of L'Abbe CL
• Author: Georges Bataille
• Translated by: Philip A. Facey
• Publisher: M. Boyars, 1983
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 25, 2008
• ISBN: 0714527092, 9780714527093
• Length: 158 pages