Georges Bataille et Henri Michaux: vers une phénoménologie de l’extase

Abstract

The Belgian-French poet and painter Henri Michaux wrote of Bataille’s Histoire de l’œil: “So unique and crucial are the pages you wrote about ecstasy (how important it is, ecstasy!), that after having experienced mescaline, I understand it deeply and am able to interpret it with a totally new approach.” In this article I examine the relevance of ecstatic experience both as an aesthetic category and as the key element in what can be called “a theory of poetic knowledge” in the works of Georges Bataille and Henri Michaux. I trace the roots of Michaux’s and Bataille’s ecstatic approach to art back to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and his notion of the “Dionysian”. In doing so, the influence of Nietzsche’s ideas on Bataille’s and Michaux’s concepts of ecstasy becomes apparent, as does the relationship to the sacred which their writings seek to establish from a materialist point of view.