From Literature and Evil

1. Bataille opens up quite straightforwardly/right to the essence by drawing

Bronte and the Evil. 'she fathomed the very depths of Evil'.
2. Then Bataille informs us briefly of Bronte's biography. In her personal life, we
can observe her striking durability and reservation in face of her lung disease.
She insisted not to see a doctor.
3. Tension here: Emily Bronte as a girl without any experience of passionate love,
'she had an anguished knowledge of passion. 'She linked love not only with
clarity, but also with. Violence and death'. Bataille then argues 'death seems
to be the truth of love, just as love is the truth of death'.
Eroticism is the approval of life up until death
 Bataille believes that death comes aside with sexuality. There are twofold
aspects on death to him. One that the new prolongs and replaces the
disappeared one, also in that the life of the being who reproduces himself is at
stake. 'To reproduce oneself is to disappear', this is aspect1. Also, 'he who
was, by reproducing himself, ceases to be what he was --- because he doubles
himself.'
 Didn’t really understand this part !
Childhood, Reason and Evil
 Bataille compared vice (the significant expression of Evil) with the anguish of
the purest love.
 The love of Catherine and Heathcliff is passionate. 'Wuthering Heights does in
fact raise the question of Evil with regard to passion, as if Evil were the most
powerful means of exposing passion'. Love between them is Evil with regard
to passion. (?)
 Bataille then argues that Emily Bronte's book perfected in forms of sadistic
vice, and Evil.
 Then he begins to talk about Catherine and Heathcliff's love beginning from
their childhoods.
 'The two children spent their time racing wildly on the heath. They abandoned
themselves, untrammelled by any restraint or convention other than a taboo
on games of sensuality. But in their innocence, they placed their indestructible
love for one another on another level, and indeed perhaps this love can be
reduced to the refusal to give up an infantile freedom which had not been
amended by the laws of society or of conventional politeness'. --> This is to say
that, their childish love was so passionate because they lived an otherworldly
life. Thus Bataille argued that their love was 'reduced to' this enclosed life,
free of laws and social conventions.
 'But society contrasts the free play of innocence with reason, reason based on
the calculations of interest. Society is governed by its will to survive. It could
not survive if these childish instincts, which bound the children in a feeling of
complicity, were allowed to triumph.’ This is to say that the society will finally
outweigh. 'Social constraint would have required the young savages to give
up their innocent sovereignty; it would have required them to comply with
 those reasonable adult conventions which are advantageous to the
community.
 'But even if children have the power to forget the world of adults for a time,
they are nevertheless doomed to live in this world. Catastrophe ensues.' -->
Their love wouldn't last.
 Edgar Linton is 'in profound agreement with the well-established world of
reason, thus he benefits from it'.
 Bataille talks about Heathcliff as the will of 'the rejection of its rationality',
'arbitrary element born of the violence and puerile instincts of the past'.
Heathcliff has been a pure character, who solely represents the elements of
violence against reason. He enjoys breaking social conventions and laws.
 Jacques Blondel compares Wuthering Heights with Sade
 'The mere invention of a character so totally devoted to Evil by a moral and
inexperienced girl would be paradox.'
 By contrast, Catherine Earnshaw as a moral character, loves Heathcliff even if
she knew there was devil within him. She even says 'I am Heathcliff.'
 Therefore from this point, 'Evil is not only the dream of the wicked: it is to
some extent the dream of Good. ' There is Evil in the Good as well ?
 Wuthering Heights has a certain affinity with Greek tragedy. The subject of
the novel is the tragic violation of the law. The tragic author agreed with the
law, the transgression of which he described, but he based all emotional
impact on communicating the sympathy which he felt for the transgressor.
 In Wuthering Heights, as in Greek tragedy, the law is simply essentially human
domain, made for man. The forbidden domain is the tragic domain or the
sacred domain. 'Humanity, admittedly, banished it, but only in order to
magnify it, and the ban beautifies that which it prevents access. It
subordinated access to atonement --- to death.' 这一段可以看出 bataille 对于
transgression 的态度。transgression 之所以迷人，是因为人类社会的条条
框框。神秘性 （prevents access)
 'The lesson of Wuthering Heights, of Greek tragedy and, ultimately, of all
religions, is that there is an instinctive tendency towards divine intoxication
which the rational world of calculation cannot bear.'
 'Good is based on common interest which entails consideration of the future.'
 From this quote, we can argue that the recurring names can be seen a rejection
of the future, thus the opposite of Good. (see the article: Queer Temporalities:
Resisting Family, Reproduction and Lineage in Emily Brontë's Wuthering
Heights.)