A book a day: Georges Bataille: Madame Edwarda

Original language: French

Original title: Madame Edwarda

Translation: Salvador Elizondo

Year of publication: 1937

Valuation: Rarito, curious

Look, in general I like strange books, they attract me, and in this blog there are some examples, things that have been written to break molds, to look for unexplored paths. Well, I can affirm that this Madame Edwarda It could enter the top 10 of the strangest texts I have ever read.

My copy is rare, the physical book, bought from a used seller (I clarify that it is not the one in the image). Mexican edition from 1977, it has seventy-one pages, of which thirty-seven are occupied by a prologue by Salvador Elizondo, always involved in these movements, and a preface by Bataille himself addressed to Pierre Angélique, the pseudonym he used to avoid controversy. in the first editions. That is to say, there are only thirty-four pages left for the story, none of which will be even half full. As if that were not enough, my small volume includes a bookplate in the handwriting of the painter Vicente Roscubas, although it lacks, as it were, the various engravings that none other than René Magritte created for this text.

Also strange is the author, Georges Bataille, whose philosophy Elizondo says that a reasoned exposition is impossible, which is somewhat reassuring, although the Mexican writer makes an effort to contribute some ideas. Bataille is one of those guys from the beginning of the 20th century who touched on the most sensitive issues, or rather, eviscerated them without cutting corners even a bit: mysticism, sex and death were in the same batch, and it even seems that he wanted to found a kind of sect in which they intended to offer human sacrifices. The truth is that these three fields, although to a somewhat more civilized extent, we also see them related in some other authors, from the Marquis de Sade to much more modern people but, given the panorama, I do not think it is a question of trying to go deeper. along that path.

With this background, the text itself of Madame Edwarda It is also not far behind in terms of rarity. With those thirty-few pages we could talk about a short story, but it is more of an outline, which the narrator himself doubts if it will have continuity. The madame who provides the title runs a brothel and the narrator is her client, who chooses her from the available offer. The guy seems a little out of place at first, although it is evident that he frequently visits similar establishments. After some rather shady explicit sex scenes, he identifies Edward with God, it is not known whether moved by ecstasy or some type of mortification, but in any case it seems quite in line with some of the erotic-mystical ideas that the author professes.

If I go on a little longer, I would end up playing the entire content, because there isn’t much else, apart from a somewhat longer and also high-voltage final scene about which, if we don’t have anything better to do, we could speculate for a while. Naturally, it is not a normal narrative, but a succession of flashes, some of which, not many, may sound like surrealism, half-formulated ideas about pleasure and pain, and images that are sometimes suggestive, sometimes brutal, in which that the temperature is always maintained at the boiling level.

I don’t know if this is a game or the plastic representation of Mr. Bataille’s peculiar philosophy, and I have a doubt, which I hope Oriol can clarify for me, if this can be considered bizarre in a literary sense. It’s strange, it’s different, it can make you laugh or make you cringe, it’s a few minutes of immersion in the world of this author, who can perfectly be described as sordid, but for whom you can also find some more readings. But be careful, let’s look at the initial warning, something that could be poetry, a threat or a joke:

‘If you are afraid of everything, read this book, but, first of all, listen to me: if you laugh, it is because you are afraid. It seems to you that a book is an inert thing. It is possible. And yet, as often happens, you don’t know how to read? Should you fear…? Are you alone? are you cold? Do you know to what extent man is ‘yourself’? moron? and naked?’

Hours could be spent thinking, debating and writing many things about what Bataille hides behind the little nonsense of this little book, there are probably those who have done it. For my part, I will limit myself to stating that it exists and that it is also good to occasionally take a look at things that are out of the ordinary.

Oh, and I just found out that back in the 80s there was a Japanese group that performed under this name, Madame Edwarda, like after-punk or something similar, quite along the lines.