THE STORY OF THE EYE
ANGELIQUE, Pierre [i.e. Georges BATAILLE]; Audiart [i.e. Austryn WAINHOUSE] (translator).Trans.] A Tale of Satisfied Desire. Paris: The Olympia Press. 1953.
8vo. White card wraps with integrated mustard yellow dustwrapper, printed with text and decorative borders in black and white; pp. [xi], 12-105, [vii]; a very good indeed copy, slightly rubbed and creased at edges, particularly so along the spine; internally very clean, with a couple of small marks to gutters.
First English language translation, translated by Audiart (pseud. of Austryn Wainhouse), known for his translations of the Marquis de Sade into English.
First published as L'Histore de l'Oeil (‘The Story of the Eye’) clandestinely published by Bataille in 1928 under the pseudonym 'Lord Auch', A Tale of Satisfied Desire was the author’s first novel. The retrospective story of a young man looking back on his sexual exploits, it is told through a series of vignettes featuring suicides, orgies, deaths and one of the earliest depictions of omorashi in Western Literature. The original pseudonym translates literally, as Lord "to the shithouse", ‘auch’ an abbreviation of ‘aux chiottes’, slang for telling somebody off by sending him to the toilet. In a postscript, the author reveals that the character of Marcelle was inspired by his own mother: “To complete this survey of the high summits of my personal obscenity, I must add a final connection I made in regard to Marcelle”,he writes. “It was one of the most disconcerting, and I did not arrive at it until the very end. It is impossible for me to say positively that Marcelle is basically identical with my mother.”, For this 1953 edition, the title was changed by Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press, keen to obscure any connection between this book and the heavily prosecuted original work.
“My kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, but also anything I may conceive in its course, that is to say, the vast starry universe, which merely serves as a backdrop.”
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