Blue of Noon: Difference between revisions

'''''Blue of Noon''''' ({{lang-langx|fr|Le Bleu du Ciel}}) is an [[Erotic literature|erotic]] [[novella]] by [[Georges Bataille]]. Although Bataille completed the work in 1935, it was not published until [[Jean-Jacques Pauvert]] did so in 1957. (Pauvert previously published the writings of the [[Marquis de Sade]].) Urizen Books published [[Harry Mathews]]' English-language translation in 1978. The book deals with both [[incest]] and [[necrophilia]].<ref name=kendall>{{cite book|last1=Kendall|first1=Stuart|title=Georges Bataille|date=2007|publisher=Reaktion Books|location=London|isbn=1861893272978-1861893277|page=206|edition=1. publ.|url=httphttps://books.google.co.ukcom/books?isbn=1861893272|accessdateaccess-date=27 August 2014}}</ref>

Henri Troppmann goes from his sick-bed in [[Paris]] to [[Barcelona]] duringbefore the [[Spanish Civil War]] in time to witness thea firstCatalan [[Generalgeneral Strikestrike]] of the Catalans against the Spanish. He is torn between three different women, all of whom arrive in the city at that time. One of them, Lazare, is a Marxist Jew and political activist, who is preparing herself for prospective torture and martyrdom at the hand of General [[Francisco Franco]]'s troops if she is captured. "Dirty" (or Dorothea) is an incontinent, unkempt alcoholic who repeatedly has sex with Troppmann. Xénie is a young woman who had previously nursed him to health during his violent fever in Paris.

The novel is introduced by a [[scene (drama)|scene]] of extreme degeneracy in a [[London]] hotel room, followed by the narrator's description of a dreamlike encounter with '"the [[Commander (order)|Commendatore]]'" (English: "the Commander"), who in the [[Don Juan]] myth is the father of one of Don Juan's victims, and whose statue returns at the end of the story to drag Don Juan down to hell for his sins. Troppmann has to choose between the abject Dirty and her associations of sex, disease, excrement and decay,; the politically engaged Lazare, and her ethical values of commitment, resistance and endurance,; and Xénie, who has outlived her usefulness. While looking at Lazare beneath a tree, Troppmann realises that he respects her for her social conscience, but also sees her as a rat, and chooses Dirty instead, whilst sending Xénie off with a friend, who is subsequently killed in the street. He travels with Dirty to TrevesTrier, the home-townhometown of [[Karl Marx]], where the two copulate in the mud on a cliff overlooking a candle-lit graveyard. They see a [[Hitler Youth]] group, lending Dirty a vision of the war to come and their probable deaths. Troppmann leaves her to return to Paris.

*[[Georges Bataille]]: ''Blue of Noon'': London: Penguin: 2001: {{ISBN |978-0-14-118409-8}}

[[Category:1935 French novels]]

[[Category:NovellasFrench novellas]]