Blue of Noon

"Blue of Noon" ( _fr. Le Bleu du Ciel) is a transgressive novella of erotic fiction written in 1935, and its French author, Georges Bataille was a desperate anti-fascist, as can be seen from the content of this particular work. Harry Matthews translated it into English in 1978. Dennis Hollier, among others, have noted that the novel is a modern adaptation of the story of Don Juan.

Plot summary

Henri Troppmann is living in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War of the mid-thirties, and its closing phases. He is torn between two different women. One of them, Lazare, is a Marxist Jew and political activist, who is preparing herself for prospective torture and martyrdom at the hand of General Francisco Franco's troops if she is captured. "Dirty" (or Dorothea) is an incontinent, unkempt alcoholic who repeatedly has sex with Troppmann.

The novel is introduced by a scene of extreme dereliction in a London hotel room, followed by the narrator's description of a dreamlike encounter with 'the Commendatore' (English: "the Commander"), who in the Don Juan myth is the father of one of Don Juan's victims, and whose statue returns at the end of the story to drag Don Juan down to hell for his sins. Troppmann has to choose between the abject Dirty and her associations of sex, disease, excrement and decay, and the politically engaged Lazare, and her ethical values of commitment, resistance and endurance. While looking at Lazare beneath a tree, Troppmann realises that he respects her for her social conscience, but also sees her as a rat, and chooses Dirty instead. The two copulate in a bone-strewn graveyard, and spy a group of Hitler Youth from Nazi Germany who appear to be visiting Spain. Troppmann and Dirty have a vision of the youths' fanaticism as prelude to their probable deaths on the future battlefields of World War II. However, both leave for Germany the next day.

Interpretation

The story of the libertine Don Juan and the protective father-figure of the Commendatore are transposed by Bataille into the world of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Bataille's own failed attempts to oppose fascism in France in the Contre-Attaque political group (which included Simone Weil, upon whom the character of Lazare is based), are dramatized in the life of the protagonist, Troppmann. Bataille's sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of militarism is reflected in the conclusion of the story: the language Bataille uses to describe Troppmann's overcoming of impotence in the graveyard is recalled in his description of the obscenity of the Nazi youths' gestures. In both cases, Bataille is describing a totalitarian world where sexuality is suffused with violence and the pathological fear of, as well as attraction to, loss of control. Dennis Hollier remarks in "Absent Without Leave" that, where in Mozart's opera, Don Juan opposes the Commendatore as a force of sexual license against repressive authority, in "Blue of Noon" the Commendatore himself, the regime of repression itself, absorbs sexual licentiousness and becomes obscene. Sexual desire becomes desire for death; Bataille's version of Don Juan "wants" to be dragged down to hell.

Bibliography

*Georges Bataille: "Le Bleu du Ciel": Roman: Paris: J.Pauvert: 1967.
*Georges Bataille: "Blue of Noon": London: Penguin: 2001: ISBN 978-0-14-118409-8