/lit/ - Literature

>>23281640
This. Excess is all, nigga!

>But one needs there either the naivete—the purity—of the Hindu, or the European's sickly taste for an exotic color.
>But I know little, at bottom about India . . . The few judgments which I abide by—more in antipathy than in receptivity—are linked to my ignorance. I have no hesitation about two points: the Hindus' books are, if not unwieldy, then uneven; these Hindus have friends in Europe whom I don't like.
>That an anaemic, taciturn particle of life, showing reluctance before the excesses of joy, lacking freedom, should attain—or should claim to have attained—the extreme limit, is an illusion. One attains the extreme limit in the fullness of means: it demands fulfilled beings, ignoring no audacity. My principle against ascesis is that the extreme limit is accessible through excess, not through want. Even the ascesis of those who succeed in it takes on in my eyes the sense of a sin, of an impotent poverty.
>I don't look at anyone from on high, but laughingly, like the child, at ascetics and pleasure-seekers
Anyone know if he was influenced by, or at least aware of Chesterton? The style is different, but the sentiment is almost identical.

I'm confused as to exactly what Bataille's position on Christianity was. He's called a deeply anti-Christian atheist by people here, but the academic introduction I have to his "Eroticism" book calls him "a fervent and devout Catholic." Which is true?

Can someone explain his actual stance on Catholicism to me? I've ordered a number of his books because the topics he wrote about interest me, but in preliminary reading, every academic seems to have a contradictory opinion of his relationship with Catholicism. Some call him a "Catholic (albeit sinful) philosopher" and some call him "an enemy of the Church."
What was he?

>>18408951
If you're not going to read his erotica then you might as well not bother. Bataille put much of himself into his erotica, and didn't care to be acknowledged concretely on his philosophical views.
If you only care to know of Bataille, and not read his actual work, then read Michel Surya's biography on him. It will let you learn of him without reading his erotica if you really must.
Most people read Story of the Eye first, and others read the biography and then his work. Really though, you can start wherever you please.