Synopsis of The Blue of the Sky:
After the publication, in The Vertical Smile, of three titles by Georges Bataille, it is now the turn of another classic of erotic literature. Bataille wrote The Blue of the Sky in 1935, but, as he confesses in the preface, he ignored it for a long time. The war in Spain and the catastrophes that humanity had to endure for thirty years, he believed, emptied the work of content. It was not until 1957 when, thanks to the advice of some friends, the great French writer decided to deliver it to the public through JJ Pauvert, his editor in France.
Despite the luminosity of the title, this work is inspired by the transgression of a prudent morality, in a dangerous search: the learning of death, the "impossible" depth of that blue sky that attracts and repels us at the same time. London, Paris, Barcelona, draw a topography of perdition, a framework in which Troppman, through drunkenness, blank nights and strange celebrations, approaches that new form of purity, communion with death thanks to the discovery illuminator of the sordid.
It can be said that in The Blue of the Sky all of Bataille is present, all the themes that worried him throughout his life: ideologies, death, states of ecstasy, sex... It has now been thirteen years since we began to publish Georges Bataille. To date, there are six works that, in different collections, have seen the light: The True Bluebeard (Infimos 35), Eroticism (Marginales 61), History of the Eye, My Mother, Madame Edwarda followed by The Dead Man (The Smile vertical 10, 19 and 25) and The Tears of Eros (The 5 senses 12).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE BLUE OF THE SKY
Georges Bataille was born in Billon, France, in 1897 and died in Malmaison in 1962. A man who liked to work in the shadows, he nevertheless became one of the most innovative and important European thinkers of the interwar period. He founded several magazines, among which two that made history: Documents and Critique. He wrote essays such as La littérature et le mal, Eroticism (Marginales 61), L'expérience intérieure and La part maudite and, in the field of erotic narration, extraordinary texts, such as History of the eye, My mother followed by The dead man, Madame Edwarda and The Blue of the Sky (The Vertical Smile 10, 19, 25 and 44). For him, all creation is a process through which man surpasses himself by transgressing all taboos, particularly those related to eroticism and death.
