George Brown
@batailleguy.bsky.social
Amateur writer and poet, literature nerd, continental philosophy and critical theory auto-didact.
All views expressed on this page are those of my own or the French Nietzscheans
All views expressed on this page are those of my own or the French Nietzscheans
"No one doubts that philosophy is often pointless, an unpleasant way of exploiting minor talents."
"...precisely this lack of real results is its greatness. Its entire value is in the absence of rest that it fosters."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
"...precisely this lack of real results is its greatness. Its entire value is in the absence of rest that it fosters."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
July 12, 2025 at 3:27 PM
"No one doubts that philosophy is often pointless, an unpleasant way of exploiting minor talents."
"...precisely this lack of real results is its greatness. Its entire value is in the absence of rest that it fosters."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
"...precisely this lack of real results is its greatness. Its entire value is in the absence of rest that it fosters."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
Almost gave up on this one because the opening stories were quite weak. Skipped to Grimscribe and I'm vibing a lot more - significant leap in writing quality
June 28, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Almost gave up on this one because the opening stories were quite weak. Skipped to Grimscribe and I'm vibing a lot more - significant leap in writing quality
"If in anguish I describe all that I have loved I would assume the furtive realities to which my love was linked were so many clouds behind which *what was there* was hidden. The images of ravishment betray. Fear is the measure of *what is there*."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
June 18, 2025 at 4:48 AM
"If in anguish I describe all that I have loved I would assume the furtive realities to which my love was linked were so many clouds behind which *what was there* was hidden. The images of ravishment betray. Fear is the measure of *what is there*."
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
- Georges Bataille, Guilty
Some bangin bookmail today
June 14, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Some bangin bookmail today
There needs to be greater cross-pollination between Philosophy Twitter and Lit Twitter because The Baphomet is peak Brodernism
May 9, 2025 at 6:38 PM
There needs to be greater cross-pollination between Philosophy Twitter and Lit Twitter because The Baphomet is peak Brodernism
"But for us, who have inherited the rest, who can only decide between preserving or losing it, how difficult it is to mediate the beginning and intervene for the conclusion of our personal history... how difficult is the freedom and discretion of something..."
- Attila
- Attila
April 11, 2025 at 7:10 PM
"But for us, who have inherited the rest, who can only decide between preserving or losing it, how difficult it is to mediate the beginning and intervene for the conclusion of our personal history... how difficult is the freedom and discretion of something..."
- Attila
- Attila
"He never lost Ariadne's thread, which was to have no goal and serve no cause: causes, he knew, clipped wings. But the absence of a cause, on the other hand, threw him into solitude: this is the sickness of the desert, a cry lost in great silence"
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
March 28, 2025 at 6:42 AM
"He never lost Ariadne's thread, which was to have no goal and serve no cause: causes, he knew, clipped wings. But the absence of a cause, on the other hand, threw him into solitude: this is the sickness of the desert, a cry lost in great silence"
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
"Why am I here, says the silence, what have I done, echoes the emptiness, why have I ruined myself in this willful manner, chuckles the money in the till, why have I been brought so low, wheedles the thoroughfare, to which the only answer was-"
March 2, 2025 at 7:24 PM
"Why am I here, says the silence, what have I done, echoes the emptiness, why have I ruined myself in this willful manner, chuckles the money in the till, why have I been brought so low, wheedles the thoroughfare, to which the only answer was-"
"I am in the shadow of what is in store for me, shaken to the bones by what I will be when the future has caught up with me"
- Helene Cixous, Tomb(e)
- Helene Cixous, Tomb(e)
February 22, 2025 at 5:20 PM
"I am in the shadow of what is in store for me, shaken to the bones by what I will be when the future has caught up with me"
- Helene Cixous, Tomb(e)
- Helene Cixous, Tomb(e)
"O love, there is a chance for peace.
Take it. We all die soon enough"
- Andromache to Hector, from Christopher Logue's War Music
Take it. We all die soon enough"
- Andromache to Hector, from Christopher Logue's War Music
January 27, 2025 at 5:26 AM
"O love, there is a chance for peace.
Take it. We all die soon enough"
- Andromache to Hector, from Christopher Logue's War Music
Take it. We all die soon enough"
- Andromache to Hector, from Christopher Logue's War Music
"did not the human event, however and wherever it happened, unhesitatingly disclose itself as a consequence of creaturely fear, from the twilight prison of which one could neither break out nor escape, as it was the anguish of a creature lost in a maze? "
- The Death of Virgil
- The Death of Virgil
January 13, 2025 at 3:41 PM
"did not the human event, however and wherever it happened, unhesitatingly disclose itself as a consequence of creaturely fear, from the twilight prison of which one could neither break out nor escape, as it was the anguish of a creature lost in a maze? "
- The Death of Virgil
- The Death of Virgil
"...reality was always to be symbolized only by reality-, image upon image, reality upon reality, not one of them actually real as long as it stood alone, yet each a single symbol of an inviolate, ultimate truth which was the sum of their totality."
January 12, 2025 at 4:37 AM
"...reality was always to be symbolized only by reality-, image upon image, reality upon reality, not one of them actually real as long as it stood alone, yet each a single symbol of an inviolate, ultimate truth which was the sum of their totality."
Someone needs to put these three writers in conversation with one another
January 10, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Someone needs to put these three writers in conversation with one another
On Baudelaire: "At a time when literature attributed the pain of living almost exclusively to the misfortunes of unrequited love or the jealousies inherent in adultery, he had paid no attention to those infantile maladies but had probed wounds that are less easily healed,
January 5, 2025 at 5:39 AM
On Baudelaire: "At a time when literature attributed the pain of living almost exclusively to the misfortunes of unrequited love or the jealousies inherent in adultery, he had paid no attention to those infantile maladies but had probed wounds that are less easily healed,
Gerard Manley Hopkins
January 2, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Gerard Manley Hopkins
"I cannot describe the pain that invades a man once he has begun to speak." - Blanchot, Death Sentence
Perhaps my favorite paragraph in all of Blanchot
Perhaps my favorite paragraph in all of Blanchot
December 21, 2024 at 8:54 PM
"I cannot describe the pain that invades a man once he has begun to speak." - Blanchot, Death Sentence
Perhaps my favorite paragraph in all of Blanchot
Perhaps my favorite paragraph in all of Blanchot
One of my biggest pet peeves in literature is calling Ulysses a purely intellectual exercise. If you're not tearing up multiple times from the back half of Circe to the end of the novel then you're not understanding Ulysses.
December 21, 2024 at 3:27 PM
One of my biggest pet peeves in literature is calling Ulysses a purely intellectual exercise. If you're not tearing up multiple times from the back half of Circe to the end of the novel then you're not understanding Ulysses.
"And if one had written just those two lines in a life, though living like a rat in a sewer, would the misery not be worth it? not ever?"
- William Gass, The Tunnel
- William Gass, The Tunnel
October 28, 2024 at 3:43 AM
"And if one had written just those two lines in a life, though living like a rat in a sewer, would the misery not be worth it? not ever?"
- William Gass, The Tunnel
- William Gass, The Tunnel
"And it seems to me that
anyone who sleeps, sleeps heroically, trusts unreasonably that something will come again, out of nothing."
-Keith Waldrop, Lullaby in January
anyone who sleeps, sleeps heroically, trusts unreasonably that something will come again, out of nothing."
-Keith Waldrop, Lullaby in January
July 25, 2024 at 11:07 PM
"And it seems to me that
anyone who sleeps, sleeps heroically, trusts unreasonably that something will come again, out of nothing."
-Keith Waldrop, Lullaby in January
anyone who sleeps, sleeps heroically, trusts unreasonably that something will come again, out of nothing."
-Keith Waldrop, Lullaby in January
"but you are not Arthur Rimbaud."
After days of discarded drafts and unoriginal sentences, some tough love from Pierre.
After days of discarded drafts and unoriginal sentences, some tough love from Pierre.
July 13, 2024 at 3:31 PM
"but you are not Arthur Rimbaud."
After days of discarded drafts and unoriginal sentences, some tough love from Pierre.
After days of discarded drafts and unoriginal sentences, some tough love from Pierre.
"... I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever."
- Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
July 10, 2024 at 5:08 PM
"... I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever."
- Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
"Time is the desire that time not exist."
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
"Waiting begins when there is nothing more to wait for, not even the end of waiting."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
"Waiting begins when there is nothing more to wait for, not even the end of waiting."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
July 7, 2024 at 4:20 AM
"Time is the desire that time not exist."
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
"Waiting begins when there is nothing more to wait for, not even the end of waiting."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
- Bataille, On Nietzsche
"Waiting begins when there is nothing more to wait for, not even the end of waiting."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
"This is no more a preface to a book than, say, the poems that stand out in it, or the enumeration of all the furors of soul-sickness.
This too is only an icicle stuck in my throat."
- Antonin Artaud, Umbilical Limbo
This too is only an icicle stuck in my throat."
- Antonin Artaud, Umbilical Limbo
July 5, 2024 at 2:13 AM
"This is no more a preface to a book than, say, the poems that stand out in it, or the enumeration of all the furors of soul-sickness.
This too is only an icicle stuck in my throat."
- Antonin Artaud, Umbilical Limbo
This too is only an icicle stuck in my throat."
- Antonin Artaud, Umbilical Limbo
"It is always the ancient world that wants to be here again without speaking."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
June 27, 2024 at 2:32 PM
"It is always the ancient world that wants to be here again without speaking."
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
-Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion