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Roger Caillois' logic of participation in the 30s: From "Le

Grand Jeu" to the "College de sociologie"

Frank, Claudine Paulette, Ph.D.

Harvard University, 1991

Copyright ©1991 by Frank, Claudine Paulette. All rights reserved.

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presented by Claudine Paulette Frank

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Roger Caillois' Logic of Participation in the 30s:
From "Le Grand Jeu" to the "College de sociologie"

A thesis presented

by

Claudine Paulette Frank

to

The Department of Comparative Literature

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the subject of

Comparative Literature

Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts

October 1991
(5)1991 by Claudine Paulette Frank
All rights reserved.
Abstract

This thesis examines the early writings of Roger

Caillois, best known at present as George Bataille's

collaborator in the "College de Sociologie" (1937-39).

Viewed as an important prefiguration of French post-

structuralist thought, the ephemeral "College" drew upon

ideas evolving in the social sciences and on the periphery

of Surrealism throughout the 30s. Caillois is an

interesting figure in this regard, uniquely poised among the

Ecole Normale, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the

Surrealist movement, and Bataille. His 'totalizing1 and

•activist* theory at the time entails a subtle

interdisciplinary quest for dynamic 'systematization',

radically altered by the war, and still relatively

unexplored.

I study the evolution of Caillois' ideas in their

intertextual, biographical, and historical context. The

term 'logic of participation' conveys the dual and

interrelated focus of my approach: First, it connotes

Caillois' status as an intellectual and as theorist with

respect to the various groups or movements he frequented.

Secondly, it evokes his interest in an alternative logic

constituted by new modes of correspondences and related to

such concepts as 'mimicry' and the 'fantastic'. In essence,

this was an attempt to accomodate post-Enlightenment

'residuals' (such as the irrational and affective

imagination, •primitivism', and the sacred) within

•coherent' systems of representation. Although Caillois'

scope was always interdisciplinary, the residuals he

addressed each pertained to a particular sphere which may be

outlined in broad chronological order: psychology, then

biology, sociology, and finally, in a sense, metaphysics.

Through detailed analyses, which consider little-known

texts, dialogues and correspondences, I reconstruct

Caillois' ambitious and distinctive intellectual trajectory

in the 30s, informed by a series of controlling concepts

which demarcate the eight basic units of this thesis. In

doing so, I discuss his relation to Bachelard, Bataille,

Breton, Dali, Dumezil, Gilbert-Lecomte, Lacan, Levy-Bruhl,

Mauss, Monnerot, Paulhan, Petitjean, Rouveyre, and Tzara.

 Contents

Introduction 1

1.Psychasthenia
Le Grand Jeu 32
"La symphonie industrielle" 54

2.Ideogram
Breton's Milieu 71
La n^cessite d1esprit 83

3.Mimicry
Proces intellectuel de l'art 118
"Mimetisme et psychasthenie legendaire" 146
The Environs of Mimicry 161

4.Contre-Attaque 181

5.The Mythical Complex

"Le mythe et l'homme" 202
Noon-time Demons 231

6.Orthodoxy
Inquisitions 250
"Les taches immediates..." 267

7.Lucifer
The Birth of the Intellectual 292
L'aile froide 322

8.The College de sociologie

Sects 336
L'homme et le sacre 366

Conclusion 395

Bibliography 410
I would like to thank Laurent Jenny, Susan Rubin Suleiman,

Jean-Marie Apostolides, Per Nykrog, Michel Winock, and the

late Andre Chastel, for their encouragement and advice. My

gratitude also goes to Stephane Berrebi, Michfele Cyna, Jeff

Gross, Anthony Kemp, Patricia Simonsen, and, of course, my

parents, for their invaluable support.

"C'est un des apports essentiels du surr6alisme d1avoir
promu au rang de l1attention po&tique les 'etendues logigues
particulieres. Ml

Philippe Sollers, Loaicmes (1968)

 2

Introduction

In the heyday of French structuralism and post-

structuralism, the name of Roger Caillois, sociologist,

homme de lettres and poet (1913-1978), often termed an ex-

Surrealist, provoked little interest or critical attention.1

Maurice Blanchot described him as a significant but

neglected predecessor to Foucault: "Caillois lui-meme

n'etait pas toujours agree par les specialistes officiels.

II s1interessait a trop de choses. Conservateur, novateur,

toujours un peu a part, il n'entrait pas dans la societe de

ceux qui detiennent un savoir reconnu."2 of late, however,

Caillois is often cited by the rapidly mounting studies of

Georges Bataille since, together with Michel Leiris and

•'•The eulogistic essays published after 1978 offer

fragmentary views at best. Besides Roger Caillois "Cahiers
oour un temps" (Paris: Centre George Pompidou and Pandora,
1981), these include special issues of the Nouvelle Revue
Francaise 320 (1979) and Sud (1981). Two monographs devoted
to his work, Alain Bosquet's Roger Caillois (Paris: Seghers,
1971) and Dominique Auti6's Approches de Caillois (Toulouse:
Privat, 1981) are sketchy; so too, is the collection of
essays assembled in Roger Caillois "Cahiers de Chronos"
(Paris: La Difference, 1991). A welcome arrival is
Annamaria Laserra, Materia e immaginario: II nesso
analogico nell1 opera di Roger Caillois (Roma: Bulzoni,
1990) with which I became familiar after the completion of
my research.
2Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault tel que ie
11 imagine (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1986) 10.
 3

Jules Monnerot, they founded the now renowned College de

socloloaie. a short-lived effort (1937-1939) to recreate the

•sacred' in line with certain tenets of Durkheimian and

Maussian sociology, and thus to revitalize French society.

Without sufficiently stressing the political context of this

project, the rising forces across the Rhine, Levi-Strauss

evoked the interdisciplinary College de sociologie in his

famous post-war essay, "La sociologie fran?aise": "Cette

6troite collaboration entre la sociologie et toutes les

tendances ou courants de pensee ayant pour obj et 1'Homme et

1'etude de 1'Homme, est l'un des traits les plus

caracteristiques de l'ecole frangaise."3 Perhaps because he

did not attend the College. L6vi-Strauss incorrectly asserts

that the Surrealists, as such, participated in the group.

More to the point, Jean Jamin has remarked, the College was

launched partly in reaction against Breton; it was

polemically emmeshed in a movement through which many of

its members had passed or with whom, at least, they were

highly familiar.4 It arose from "the corpses of

3Claude Levi-Strauss, "La sociologie fran<?aise," La

sociologie au XXeme siecle. 2 vols., ed. Georges Gurvitch
and Wilbert E. Moore (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1947) 517.
4Jean Jamin, "Un sacre college ou les apprentis
sorciers de la sociologie," Cahiers internationaux de
sociologie n.s. 68 (Jan.-June 1980): 7. Situating Breton as
the ritually sacrificed father of the group, Jamin says
that Michel Leiris "souligna que le College de Sociologie
avait ete d'une certaine maniere forme en reaction contre le
surrealisme (tel en tout cas que l'incarnait et le
16gitimait Breton)"(7).
 4

surrealism, the Front Populaire and the 'death of history,'

the theme of Alexandre Kojeve1s charismatic 1932 lectures on

Hegel," relates David Coward in a TLS review of works

devoted to the movement and its intellectual environs.5

Indeed, the College de socioloqie is now considered an

important prefiguration of post-structuralist thought which

tends to fuse the sciences humaines with Surrealist concerns

revived after the post-war existential hegemony.

While Leiris remained aloof from the College. Monnerot

desisted before the project actually came into being.6

Caillois and Bataille were thus its two main organizers. In

a 1971 interview with Jean-Jose Marchand for the Archives du

XXeme siecle. Caillois declared: "II y avait vraiment entre

nous une espece de communion de pensee, un continuel

echange, plus qu'un echange, une quasi-osmose.1,7 Yet he has

elsewhere underscored essential differences with Bataille,

fifteen years older than he, explaining to Gilles Lapouge:

Entre Bataille et moi, il y avait une communion

d'esprit tres rare, une sorte d'osmose sur le fond
des choses, au point que la part de 1'un et de
1'autre etaient souvent indiscernables. Mais nous
nous s^parions quant a 1'usage a faire de ces

5David Coward, "The Apostles of Anguish," Times

Literary Supplement Aug. 4-10 1989: 857.
6See Jean-Michel Heimonet, Politiaues de l'ecriture
Bataille/Derrida (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1989): 83-88.
7RogerCaillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle. 7 reels (Paris: Soci6te Frangaise de Production,
1971): III. I will henceforth refer to this as the Archives
interview; roman numerals will indicate the individual reel.
 5

recherches. Et Bataille avait tendance a avancer

toujours du cot6 de la sphere mystique.8

Although the College would inevitably have ceased with the

war, it collapsed due to such inner conflicts. Caillois1

famous letter to Bataille in July 1939 complained that his

privileging of mysticism, drama, madness and death seemed

difficult to reconcile with "les principes dont nous

partions."9 In the 70s, Caillois underscored the fragile

nature of the College when he wrote that publishing its

statement of purpose and founding essays in the NRF of July

1938 was a form of bluff: "Pareille consecration publique et

collective de la vitalite du mouvement en dissimulait la

faiblesse, l'equivoque et les dissensions."10 The College

de sociologie really owes its existence, in some sense, to

Denis Hollier's anthology. First published in 1979, and

laden with densely detailed marginalia, this work gives

substance to a lecture-series that was sporadic and

eclectic, however stellar its speakers and attendance,

ranging from thirty to sixty members at a time.11

8Gilles Lapouge, "Entretien avec Roger Caillois,"

Ouinzaine litteraire 15-30 June 1970: 7.
9Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20
1939, #26, Georges Bataille: Lettres a Roger Caillois 4 aout
1935 - 4 fevrier 1959. ed. Jean-Pierre Le Bouler (Paris:
Folle Avoine, 1988) 110.
10Roger Caillois, Approches de 11imaginaire (Paris:
Gallimard, 1974) 58.

•^See Denis Hollier ed., The College of Sociology 1937-

39. trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1988).
 6

Despite Caillois' claims of an "osmotic" entente with

Bataille, current discussions of the College tend to

emphasize their discord, casting Caillois as a grim and

intransigeant foil to the future author of L'6xp6rience

interieure and L'erotisme. Michel Surya's biography of

Bataille, for example, repeats a quasi-canonical formula,

loosely derived from Hollier, differentiating between the

two men: "volonte de puissance du cote de Caillois, desir de

tragedie du cot6 de Bataille."12 Compounding the very real

confusions or ambiguities of the College, these studies tend

to neglect Caillois' contribution almost entirely.13 Thus,

for example, the tripartite focus of Jean-Michel Heimonet's

Politicrues de l'ecriture Bataille/Derrida on Bataille,

Monnerot and Caillois grants but few pages and little

research to this last. As Edouard Morot-Sir's introduction

explicitly states,

la preference de Heimonet va a Bataille,

authentique ecrivain tragique, qui refuse de
s*abandonner au mythe triomphant du fascisme, qui
ne se laisse pas seduire par les illusions d'une
fausse durete politique, mais qui cherche dans les
humiliations de 1'incarnation scriptuaire, la

12Michel Surya, Georges Bataille; la mort a l'oeuvre

(Paris: Siguier, 1987) 267.

13This is the case, for example, with Francis
Marmande's Georges Bataille politigue (Lyon: Presses
universitaires de Lyon, 1987) and Isabelle Rieusset,
"Fonction et signification du mythe dans le 'College de
sociologie,'" diss. Paris VII, 1983.
 7

raison d'etre d'une nouvelle ecriture.14

In a sense, the accepted contrast between Bataille and

Caillois echoes two different interpretations of the College

de sociologie and, really, of "modernism" in general. For

the sake of convenience, I will illustrate this common

dichotomy — between "modernism" viewed as a precursor of

"post-modernism" and a certain "post-structuralism"

(privileging discontinuity, rupture, and differance) or as a

'totalizing1 High Modernism (still emerging from the

Enlightenment) — by comparing the views of James Cliffprd

and Michel Carrouges. For an American audience, Clifford's

essay "Ethnographic Surrealism" is perhaps the most familiar

discussion and characterization of the College in the larger

avant-garde context of the 30s: Surrealism mingling with the

incipient sciences humaines in Bataille*s journal Documents

(1929-30), the later art-journal Minotaure, and the new

Musee de 1'homme. For Clifford, the device of "collage"

typifies the period's "basically ironic experience of

culture."15 He defines, on the one hand, an

"anthropological humanism" which

begins with the different and renders it (through

naming, classifying, describing, interpreting)

14Edouard Morot-Sir, introduction, Politioues de

1'Ecriture Bataille/Derrida. by Jean-Michel Heimonet (Paris:
Jean-Michel Place, 1989) 14.
15James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) 120. He writes:
"For every local custom or truth there was always an exotic
alternative, a possible juxtaposition or incongruity"(120).
 8

comprehensible. It familiarizes. A surrealist

practice, on the other hand, attacks the familiar,
provoking the irruption of otherness — the
unexpected.16

Current appraisals of the Bataille-Caillois tandem at

the College de socioloqie generally position the first along

the lines of Clifford's "ethnographic surrealism." We must

not forget in this respect, as Susan Suleiman reminds us,

that Bataille's rise to fame occurred just after his death

in 1962; acclaimed by Tel Quel. Derrida, Barthes, Foucault

etc., he became a "central reference" when "the potential

for a metaphoric equivalence between the violation of sexual

taboos and the violation of discursive norms that we

associate with the theory of textuality became fully

elaborated.1,17 Conveying the state of Bataille's reception

at present (his name now synonymous with "dechirure,"

"transgression," and "heterogeneity"), Coward evokes him as

one who "has helped to explode culture and deconstruct its

artefacts ... a guiding spirit of post-modernism."18

Caillois, on the other hand, is usually cited as the

totalizing thinker, eager to impose that scientific

"homogeneity" so noxious to Bataille. Referring to

Caillois' writing in the late 30s, for example, Heimonet

sadly remarks:

16Clifford 145.
17Susan Rubin Suleiman, Subversive Intent (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1990) 74.
18Coward 858.
 9

Appliquer a la Pogsie les principes rigoureux

d'une sociologie ou filtrer et temp6rer la
Revolution & travers un programme, relive d'un
seul geste . . . 1'Equivalent esthetique et
politique d'un veritable exorcisme, dans lequel se
dissout la magie convoitee.19

Yet, further attention to "ethnographic surrealism,"

prompted by Hollier's reconstruction of the College de

socioloaie. may revive those interpretations, perhaps most

typical of the post-war, which highlight Surrealism's quest

for epiphany and resolution, one outlined by Breton's famous

dictum concerning "un certain point de 1'esprit d'oti la vie

et la mort, le r6el et 1'imaginaire, le pass6 et le futur,

le communicable et 1'incommunicable, le haut et le bas

cessent d'etre pergus contradictoirement."20 The Catholic

critic Michel Carrouges — whose Andre Breton et les donnees

fondamentales du surrealisme (1950) was well-regarded by the

grand-master himself — queried about Surrealism in 1946:

"L'un de ses traits specifiques les plus importants n'est-il

pas d'avoir ete anime par la volont6 d|etre total, c'est-a-

diire de s'incorporer la totalite de 1'existence?"21

Carrouges carefully distinguishes the College from

Surrealism proper as a form of "sociologisme po6tique," yet

19Heimonet 68.
20Andr6 Breton, Manifestes du surrealisme (Paris:
Gallimard, 1985) 72. Jean-Michel Besnier's La politigue de
1'impossible (Paris: La Ddcouverte, 1988) specifically
adresses Bataille's 'totalizing' outlook.
21Michel
Carrouges, "La crise de la pensee d'avant-
garde," La vie intellectuelle 1 (1946): 133.
 10

both Documents and the College reflect an "ardente volont6

de totalisme."22 Jean Jamin also cites Bataille's quest in

"L'apprenti sorcier" (1938) for "la totalite" and "la

totalite de l'existence" represented by "le fait social,"

calling for a sociological strategy that would be

"totalitaire," incorporating both the observer and the

observed.23 In his reminiscences, Jean Piel, Bataille's

lifelong friend and collaborator at Critique, mentions the

totalizing scope of the latter*s ambitions for the Collecre

and suggests that such an outlook, "la hantise de comprendre

le monde" throughout the turbulent 30s, would eventually

inspire Critique.24
* * *

22Carrouges 137. He writes that Bataille rejects "avec

violence la distinction qui isole les mondes de la science,
de la fiction et de 1'action, car il y voit assez justement
une mutilation de la vie humaine"; Caillois, in his
opinion, "apporte une critique aigue de l1attitude des
surrealistes et des poetes en general, quand ils pretendent
trouver dans les extases de 1•illumination poetique des
moments d'une valeur particuliere, superieure a celle de
tous les autres moments de 1'existence"(137).
23Jamin 12.
24Jean Piel, La rencontre et la difference (Paris:
Fayard, 1982) 120. He thus cites from Bataille's "Le sens
moral de la sociologie" (Critique 1 [June 1946]): "Bataille
a montre que cette tentative lui avait ete essentiellement
inspiree par ce qu'il avait retenu de 'solide' dans la
doctrine de Durkheim, qui avait decouvert d'abord que 'la
societe est un tout different de la somme de ses parties',
puis que le sacre, dans le sens que lui donnaient les
religions primitives, est le lien, 'c'est-a-dire l'element
constitutif de tout ce qu'est la soci&te'"(164).
 11

Rather than engage the debate insofar as Bataille is

concerned, the present study will focus on Caillois, whose

autobiography, Le fleuve Alphee (1978), tends to confirm

Carrouges by remarking that one important and lingering

influence of Surrealism was a persistent faith in the

"caractere unitaire du monde."25 Yet, Caillois' essays in

the 30s do not merely seek to elaborate a scientific and

totalizing voluntarism or "volontd de puissance." Despite

his extreme youth between 1928 and 1939 (fifteen to twenty-

six years old), he participated in several avant-garde

groups and publications linked to Surrealism or its

environs; and his essays offer intriguing and ambitious

responses to the intellectual options of the time, responses

informed by the very concept of "osmosis" marking his

relation to Bataille. A crucial and recurring term for

Caillois, "osmosis" may well constitute, I would suggest, a

dominant metaphor of his systematization, of his lifelong

inquiry into the dynamics of theoretical systems emerging

from the difficult decade of the 30s. In essence, "osmosis"

involves the quest to reappropriate and reassimilate those

imaginative and affective residuals left behind, or left

out, as it were, by the Enlightenment and its attendant

rationalism, positivism, and utilitarianism.

The Archives interview elucidates this issue when

25Roger Caillois, Le fleuve Alphee (Paris: Gallimard,

1978) 163.
Caillois explains that, despite frequent accusations to the

contrary, he has never been a rationalist:

[J]e ne suis pas rationaliste et je ne crois pas a

la raison. Je crois que la raison, comme le bon
sens, c'est 1'ensemble des opinions reqsues et des
erreurs accreditees. . . . Ce & quoi je crois
c'est a la coherence. Je crois que 1*ensemble des
donnees dont on fait un systfeme doivent etre
toutes congruentes entre elles. C'est cela qui me
semble le labeur propre de 1'intelligence.26

He relates this to certain aspects of Bachelard's theory of

"surrationalisme" — presented in the short-lived journal,

Inquisitions, which the two sought to launch in 1936 (along

with Tzara, Aragon, and Monnerot). I will further discuss

Bachelard's ambitious program of dialectical thought,

originating less in Hegel than in the mathematician

Lobatchewsky, who tempered, "en assouplissant," Euclidean

geometry and the principle of contradiction, thereby

establishing "la liberte de la raison a l'egard d'elle-

meme."27 In Caillois' words,

la raison ne s'oppose pas a la deraison, ni meme

au mystere, mais elle essaie . . . de s'emparer du
mystere, par une sorte d'osmose si vous voulez.
II y a un echange qui aboutit a un equilibre
superieur. On absorbe le contenu du mvstere pour
assouplir la coherence et le svsteme d'ecruilibre
ainsi realise.20

What renders his image of osmosis all the more striking in

1971 is that it appeared quite vividly thirty-four years

26Caillois, Archives IV.

27Gaston Bachelard, "Le surrationnalisme," Inquisitions
1 June 1936: 3.
28Caillois, Archives IV [emphasis added].
 13

earlier in Caillois* essay "L*alternative (Naturphilosophie

ou Wissenschaftlehre)" (1937), written at the time of

Inquisitions, and which aligns systematization with the

scientific framework of Einstein, Planck, and Bohr. An

important passage describes the following conceptual

transformation:

. . 1•instauration effective par la physique

moderne de nouveaux cadres de pensee et la
substitution, par le principe d* extension
continue, d'une nouvelle logique, — une logique
de la generalisation, — ci la logique identitaire
fermee. II ne pouvait etre question dans ce
domaine de respect a priori du mysterieux, mais,
comme rien ne se perd, la reduction du mysterieux
a transforme le principe d1explication comme le
r£sidu irrationel les modalites rationnelles de
l'activite intellectuelle qui en rendait compte.
Car il tend touiours a s'etablir une sorte
d'eouilibre osmotioue entre la pensee et son
obstacle, tant il est necessaire que 11 explicruant
soit touiours au moins au niveau de 1'explicate.

Citing Le nouvel esprit scientifioue. Caillois* own essay in

Inquisitions. "Pour une orthodoxie militante" (1936), also

espoused this process of generalisation whereby one

scientific system supersedes and absorbs its antecedents

— "en les admettant comme cas particuliers d'une synthese

plus comprehensive" — and in a manner distinct from

Hegelian dialectics:

Je souligne . . . que Bolyai ou Lobatchewsky ne

nient pas Euclide, ni Einstein, Newton et qu'on ne
saurait passer par une conversion de
contradictoires des systernes des uns a ceux des

29Caillois, Approches 33 [emphasis added]. He

specifies that his use of the term 'rational' and
•irrational' derives from the neo-Kantian philosopher Emile
Meyerson.
 14

autres. II s'agit de generalisation. ce qui est

different du tout au tout.30
Besides this relation to Bachelard, it is tempting to

view Caillois' "equilibre osmotique" as the counterpart to

another materialist, or physical, paradigm of the

imagination: those "vases communicants" rendered immortal by

Breton in 1932, in a work Caillois would later call "un de

ses plus beaux livres."31 According to the mechanism of

communicating-chambers, a denser gas flows into the one with

lesser density to re-establish an equilibrium; such a

process increases the density of the invaded element. For

Les vases communicants. the world of dreams is that denser

matter which invades the more diffuse world of reality and

conscious thought. In contrast, osmosis tends to reverse

this process; it is an "equalization by dilution" whereby a

less saturated liquid (solvent) invades a more saturated

one, from which it is separated by a semi-permeable

membrane.32 In Caillois' use of osmosis as a metaphor of

"systematisation," the more saturated theoretical

superstructure subsumes its more 'solvent' base; unlike

Breton's model, then, the sphere of "la pensee" is more

substantive than that of its "obstacle" even though this

process tends to render it increasingly supple or diffuse.

30RogerCaillois, "Pour une orthodoxie militante,"

Inquisitions 1 June 1936: 10.
31Caillois, Archives III.
32Encvclopedia Brittanica "Osmosis," 1973 ed.
 15

The present study will further explore how such an

osmotic aproach may thus generally distinguishes itself from

the "convulsive" ideas of Breton and Bataille which involve

a more radical relation between the superstructure and the

repressed, the censored, or the base (thus Freud, Marx,

Kojeve...). Caillois1 early project partakes of that

moment between Bergson and Heidegger when French

philosophers, such as Poincar6, Brunschvicg, and Meyerson

sought to render neo-Kantianism more elastic, to accommodate

the 20th century without, as yet, the agonistic dimension of

dialectical thought. And yet, he was hardly a real

philosopher, as one of his most important teachers, Marcel

Mauss, pointed out.33 His early constructs, evolving at a

rapid pace in those years, do not exorcize magic to quite

the extent that Jean-Michel Heimonet has suggested in the

passage cited above. They challenge our sense of a

totalizing strategy through their requisite production of

residuals, of new elements and disciplines to be osmotically

subsumed (the unconscious, the primitive, the biological,

etc.). Indeed, it is this strangely frenzied rigor which

inspired Brasillach's comment "p^dantisme a la surrealiste"

in his review of Le mvthe et l'homme (1938) for La causerie

33Mauss wrote to him: "Au bref, je ne vous crois pas

philosophe, pas meme de metier. Croyez-moi, restez dans

votre sphere de mythologue.11 Marcel Mauss, letter to Roger
Caillois, 22 June 1938, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un
temps" (Paris: Centre George Pompidou and Pandora, 1981) 206.
 16

litt6raire de 1'Action francaise.34 Albeit in caricatural

form, the term highlights an important feature of the time.

Caillois is all the more uniquely positioned to

illustrate the intellectual effervescence of the 30s if we

consider Jean-Francois Sirinelli's study of the Ecole

Normale Superieure between the wars, an institution Caillois

entered in 1931, as an externe. Sirinelli explains that

"le surrealisme n'a jamais r^ellement attir6 les normaliens.

. . . Roger Caillois, qui fut le seul eleve de la rue d'Ulm

a avoir fait partie du groupe surrealiste, declarait en

1972: 'J'etais considere comme fou.11,35 This seems quite

plausible given Pierre Bertaux' evocation of the Normaliens

from the mid-twenties through the early thirties, well-

primed by an extraordinary generation of teachers in the

lvcees and classes preparatoires:

Une generation de machines intellectuelles turbo-

compressees, qui tournaient tres vite. Des
'maitres', nous n'en avions pas, et nous n'en
eprouvions pas le besoin: le milieu, le climat, la
temperature intellectuelle, cela suffisait. J'ai
fini par penser que 1'education 'laterale', celle
que se donne a elle-meme une classe d'age,
combinee avec la formation que chacun acquiert de
lui-meme par la lecture et l'ecriture, est la
seule qui compte.36

34Maurice Bardeche ed., Oeuvres completes de Robert

Brasillach (Paris: Club de l'honnete homme, 1964) 12: 180.
35Caillois
qtd. in Jean-Francois Sirinelli, G6n6ration
intellectuelle; Khctaneux et Normaliens dans 1'entre-deux-
guerres (Paris: Fayard, 1988) 524.
36Pierre Bertaux qtd. in Sirinelli 17. He includes a

brief roster of the illustrious youth in those classes

succeeding his own: "on rencontrait . . . un peu plus tard
 17

Like Bertaux and his classmates, Caillois shied away from

real "maitres" as well, maintaining the status of critical

interlocutor rather than disciple. And yet, the most

important of these relations rarely involved his peers,

although his friends and acquaintances at the time are too

numerous to mention here. For he was consistently adopted

as a colleague and acolyte by members of the older

generation: in roughly chronological order, these include

Roger Gilbert-Lecomte of Le Grand Jeu (an older 'brother');

Andr6 Breton; Gaston Bachelard; Georges Dum6zil; Jean

Paulhan — all these before Bataille. Perhaps they

perceived in this eager "turbo-compresseur" the promising

future of French intellectual life, one which would, in

effect, be shattered and then renewed in different terms by

the "brisure fatale"37 of the war.

* * *

This study will primarily focus on Caillois'

systematization, as developed in his early writings, roughly

1930-1937, which laid the groundwork for his participation

in the College, and which lack detailed critical discussion,

not to mention bibliographical and contextual

Robert Brasillach, Simone Weil, Roger Caillois, Georges

Pompidou. . .11(17).
37Carrouges 137.
 18

reconstruction. Although he never uses the term 'paradigm/1

I have structured Caillois' initial trajectory as a series

of 'osmotic' paradigms which would appear to inform distinct

phases of his thought — just as osmosis itself may be

viewed as a dominant, albeit mutating, paradigm throughout

his career. First, I will consider the paradigm of

"metaphysical psychasthenia" linked to Caillois' relation

with Le Grand Jeu (1928-32); the "ideogramme" evolved during

his affiliation with Breton (1932-34); after his break with

Surrealism, he explored the curious paradigm of "mimicry" in

1935; in 1936, he addressed the "mythical complex" and

"orthodoxy." Three paradigms structure his thought between

1937 and 1939: Lucifer (or the "mythical hero"), "sects,"

and the "sacred." Since his writing of this latter period

is somewhat better known, I will examine the two final

paradigms more briefly, seeking to identify their

interconnections and emergence from prior work — without

considering the dense context of the College in its

entirety. My conclusion, finally, remarks upon the radical

shift Caillois experienced during the war, in Buenos Aires.

The most important works to which I will refer are La

n^cessite d'esprit (written between 1932-1934 and partially

published at the time, this work was fully published in

1981); Le mvthe et 1'homme (1938); L'homme et le sacre

(1939); essays (1935-50) collected in Approches de

 19

11imaqinaire (1974)38; the Archives interview; and other

material available of late.39

Caillois1 project in the 30s is a swiftly evolving

"ph6nomenologie de 11 imagination"40 deeply attentive to its

time. From a preoccupation with the dissolution of the

self, linked to avant-garde aesthetics in the early 30s, he

moved towards an agressive, even virulent, ideological

posture by the latter half of the decade. Most recently, a

debate has arisen around the political nature of this

evolution, which Daniel Lindenberg's Les ann6es

souterraines 1937-1947 (1990) links to the emergence of a

reactionary and Germanophile "nouvelle droite."41 This

line of argument broadly echoes Zeev Sternhell's

influential Ni droite ni gauche, l'ideoloqie fasciste en

France (1983), which outlined various forms of unconscious

or unwitting fascism among French intellectuals. Sternhell

38Major essays of those periods which do not

specifically concern me here are anthologized in Cases d'un
echiouier (Paris: Gallimard, 1968); Approches de la poesie
(Paris: Gallimard, 1978); and Obiicmes. obiioues (Paris:
Gallimard, 1987).
39This includes the Caillois archives in the Fonds
Speciaux of the Bibliotheque Municipale de Vichy and the
Fonds Jacques Doucet in Paris; "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-
Roger Caillois 1934-1967," ed. Odile Felgine and Claude
Perez, Cahiers Jean Paulhan 6 (Paris: Gallimard, 1991);
L'Aile froide. a lyrical text Caillois wrote in 1938 (Paris:
Fata Morgana, 1989).
40Roger Caillois, Le mvthe et homme (Paris: Gallimard,
1972) 7.
41See Daniel Lindenberg, Les ann6es souterraines 1937-

1940 (Paris: La Decouverte, 1990) 77.

 20

does not mention Caillois; most relevant to his case is the

discussion of such Leftists as Emmanuel Mounier and his

Catholic review Esprit, whose attacks on parliamentary

democracy, on Marxism and bourgeois liberalism did little to

bolster France against the fascist threat.

I cannot fully contend with these difficult issues but

deem it appropriate to establish some broad guidelines at

this point. First of all, insofar as the attribution of the

term fascism is concerned, I will abide with Michel Winock's

"Fascisme a la frangaise ou fascisme introuvable?" which

faults Sternhell's purely intellectual approach to a

political phenomenon: ". . . aux origines du fascisme n'est

pas le verbe mais, comme dit Mussolini, '1'action'."42

Secondly, I concur with Alexandre Pajon's recent criticism

off Itindenberg's study which remarks upon the hasty

assimilation of the "non-conformistes" involved.43 Most

importantly, Pajon's overall conclusion as to the tenor of

42Michel Winock, "Fascisme a la fran^aise ou fascisme

introuvable?" Nationalisme. antisemitisme et fascisme en
" France (Paris: Seuil, 1990) 286. Winock denies the
existence of any coherent French fascist ideology and
points to many political groups, both on the Right and the
Left, ignored by Sternhell, which could be similarly accused
of undermining French political integrity at the time and
during the Vichy government(285).
43Pajon writes: "Le gofit pour la sociologie, la
ph6nomenologie, Corneille, la reference a la notion de
communaute (i.e. de 'Bund'), le spiritualisme, le refus de
l'histoire et un nihilisme profond auraient rapproche tous
les membres de ce courant" ("L'intr6pidit6 politique de
Roger Caillois avant-guerre," Roger Caillois "Cahiers de
Chronos" [Paris: La Difference, 1991] 375).
 21

Caillois' political writings and actions is one that my

research has borne out:

Dans une decennie marquee par 1*invective, par la

surenchere dans la violence, verbale dans les
chapelles litt^raires, physique dans la rue, Roger
Caillois n'est pas exceptionnel. Mais a aucun
moment il ne fit preuve d•antisemitisme et s'il
fut germanophile ce fut par conviction
internationaliste. Le nazisme, le fascisme furent
toujours condamn^s par lui.44

Of course, I would not presume to deny the danger, and

the political danger, of ideas and ideology. Even here,

though, my experience of Caillois has led me to consider him

a relative moderate, whose anti-democratic and anti-

parliamentary rhetoric by the late 30s never appealed to

genuine militarism or violence, despite what he himself

would describe, in the 70s, as "le ton pathetique et

outrecuidant" of those texts written at the time of the

College.45 in more strictly theoretical terms, I would like

to show through careful readings that Caillois* quest for

coherence usually involved cautious and thoughtful reactions

to the available theories of the time, as well as to the

evolving political crises. His osmotic systematization

sought to articulate, however ineffectually, a middle ground

between the rational and the irrational, between order and

mystery. This is difficult to grasp since his arguments are

often dispersed throughout different essays; their wide-

44Pajeon 387.
45Caillois, Approches 59.
 22

ranging and shifting scope, as well as their sketchy

articulation, complicate matters even further. In his

Archives interview, Caillois admits that the collection of

essays, Le rovthe et l'homme (1938), arguably his most

important work of the time, is "plutot un bric-a-brac qu'un

ouvrage vraiment structure.1,46 Moreover, despite the.ir

highly intertextual and dialogical tenor, his articles are

so guarded as to abstain from personal invective or explicit

polemics.

An important article by Laurent Jenny, "La felure et la

parenthese," confirms the interest of exploring Caillois'

categories during the 30s and illustrates, as well, the

challenges of such a project.47 Primarily attending to La

necessite d1esprit, written during Caillois' Surrealist

phase, Jenny highlights the continuities, despite seemingly

radical ruptures, in the overall project of his career,

namely "la mise en evidence de l'unite des formes sensibles

et intellectuelles. . . ."48 He identifies Caillois'

theoretical 11 syst^matisation" throughout the 30s with that

"logique de la surdetermination" proposed by La necessite

d'esprit; "Dans un univers fini, la surdetermination est une

n6cessit6 mathematique. . . ,"49 He suggests, and quite

46Caillois, Archives V.
47Laurent Jenny, "La felure et la parenthese," Temps de
la reflexion II 1981: 419-434.
48Jenny 420.
49Caillois qtd. in Jenny 426.
 23

accurately so, that the theory of the "ideogram11 developed

here becomes the "mythical complex" of Le mvthe et l'homme

a few years later, now translated into collective terms.

Elsewhere he writes, alluding to the tenets of the College,

"[c'est] par une analogie toute naturelle que l'interet pour

la surdetermination va conduire a proner la

sursocialisation.1,50

Although I quite agree, I would nonetheless suggest

that further aspects of Jenny's argument are excessively

influenced by Caillois* autobiography. His 1972 preface to

a re-edition of Le mvthe et 11 homme may well, on the one

hand, state the persistent relevance of research initiated

in his youth: "je ne puis que me rejouir d'une fidelite a

mon propos initial que je ne soupgonnais pas avoir ete a ce

point tyrannique."51 Yet, by the later 70s and Le fleuve

Alohee. Caillois seeks to stress another — almost

contradictory — continuity, linking the prose-poems of the

Pierres series, largely undertaken in this last decade of

his life, to a childhood state of pre-literacv unduly

prolonged by the effect of World War One. This delay in

schooling encouraged an unusually vivid relation with the

world of objects, but then also provoked, of course, his

insatiable desire for the written word, the world of

Parisian "turbo-compresseurs." By his closing years,

50Jenny 430.
51Caillois, Mvthe 5.
though, Caillois came to repudiate French intellectual life,

culminating with his election to the Acad6mie Francaise in

1970, as that which effectively repressed his lyricism or

contact with "1'univers." Through the image of a gigantic

"parenthese," which also becomes a bubble and cocoon, Le

fleuve Alphee dismisses or brackets his entire career (built

of opinions, technology and texts). In effect, he

distinguishes it from the pre-1iterate origin and the

lyrical conclusion of his existence — as something

inessential to this final epoche:

Dans cet ouvrage, je designe paradoxalement par le

mot de parenthese la presque totalite de ma vie,
celle qui a commence a partir du moment ou j'ai su
lire et qui comprend mes etudes, mes lectures, mes
recherches, mes preoccupations et la majeure
partie des livres que j'ai Merits. Un beau jour,
je me suis apergu que j'en etais a peu pres
completement detache.^

"La felure et la parenthese" evokes that internal

"felure" whereby Le fleuve Alphee expresses, among other

things, Caillois' dissonant relation to the parenthesis of

knowledge. Jenny writes:

[L]a pens6e d'une necessaire unite du reel se

trouve des son depart, felee, scindee au lieu du
moi, condamnant 1'esprit a un pli ou un repli, qui
pourrait bien etre la signature de son
appartenance au monde. Dans une etrange
contradiction, ici, de 1'esprit avec la pensee
moniste [que Caillois] developpe.53

He locates a certain origin of this "felure" in

52Caillois, Fleuve 9.
53Jenny 419.
 25

psvchasthenia. a psychiatric category of Pierre Janet quite

crucial to Caillois1 early writings, and which La necessity

d1 esprit describes as a form of intellectual disagregation.

This psychasthenic tendency, Jenny argues, is what

systematization and, more generally, the "parenthesis" will

strive to hold in check or complement in voluntarist

fashion.54 He further remarks this tension in Caillois'

rigidly strained style, a 'reaction formation,' and in his

revulsion from the objects to which he is constantly

drawn.55
The present study questions the idea that psychasthenia

is intrinsically opposed to systematization and suggests

that the latter's relation to voluntarism should be explored

in greater detail. Furthermore, I consider that the paired

imagery of "felure" and "parenthese" corresponds, in certain

respects, to another lexical couple favored by Caillois,

namely "fissure" and "coherence." Jenny points out that

"1'effort de systematisation" is generally privileged by

Caillois over the achievement of any absolute or static

system.56 Yet this does not sufficiently underscore, in my

opinion, Caillois' deliberate quest for residual forms of

54"I1n'est que de relire le Fleuve Alphee pour

s'apercevoir que la systematisation a toujours et6 chez
Caillois l'objet d'un culte purement volontariste," writes
Jenny(432).
55Jenny 421.
56Jenny 428.
 26

mystery from which osmotic systematization may proceed. Let

us note this definition of the 'fantastic' — "rupture dans

la coherence universelle"57 — in his writing after the war:

"Le prodige y devient une agression interdite, menasante,

qui brise la stability d'un monde dont les lois 6taient

jusqu'alors tenues pour rigoureuses et immuables."58

Although Caillois would only address the 'fantastic' (as an

artistic, literary, and natural phenomenon) in this later

stage of his career, he several times traced its origin in

his own work back to the 30s. Thus, for example, when

correlating the notion of fantastic fissure or rupture with

poetry in 1974, he explained:

. le monde etant fini, necessairement les

choses s'y r^pfetent, s'y recoupent, s'y
chevauchent. Et c'est cela qui permet la po6sie,
qui est la science des redondances, des pleonasmes
de l'univers, de ces points et moments surcharges,
done privilegies. . . . Mais il faut une justesse
etonnante, scandaleuse, pas une justesse qui va de
soi, qui est inutile. Ce en quoi je demeure
surrealiste.59

To better understand Caillois' pursuit of a certain

•justesse surrealiste,' I will examine what Jenny sketches

out in individual and, indeed, almost psychoanalytical terms

— but as a function of Caillois' early relation to his

57Roger Caillois, "De la feerie a la science-fiction,"

Preuves 118 (Dec. 1960): 19.
58Caillois, "Feerie" 19.
59Roger Caillois, "'Le dernier encyclopediste1: Roger
Caillois," interview with Hector Bianciotti, Nouvel
observateur 4 (Nov. 1974): 72.
 27

intellectual environment. Less influenced by the eventual

retreat of Le fleuve Alphde. in other words, my perspective

will be the sweep of his interdisciplinary embrace in the

30s and its shifting ground.

This focus inevitably implicates the social, if not

sociological, aspects of Caillois' 'osmotic' project. It

will lead us to explore his repeated endeavors to act as the

'theorist' of those intellectual milieus in which he

participated: a posture responsible, to a certain extent,

for what he would later term his "equivoque surrealiste"60

or else, as mentioned at the outset, the "equivoque" of the

College de socioloaie.61 Of course, this type of

theoretical ambition was hardly unusual for the time. If

L6vi-Strauss, to cite one example, was hoping to become in

1928 "le philosophe du parti socialiste,1,62 the Surrealists

sought to perform such a role for the Communist Party.

"Heritiers inconscients des Lumieres et d'une conception

messianique de 1'intellectuel," remarks Pascal Balmand,

"[ils] ont cru pouvoir, aux cotes puis au sein du Parti,

jouer le role d'une avant-garde de 1'avant-garde, le role de

60See Roger Caillois, "L'equivoque surrealiste,"

Approches de 1'imacrinaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1974).
6^Caillois, Approches 58.
62Claude Levi-Strauss, interview with Christine
Ockrent, Ou'avez vous fait de vos vingt ans?. Antenne 2,
Paris, May 21 1990.
 28

conscience de la revolution.1,63
As for Bataille, the College expressed his complex

ambition to become both ethnographer and sociologist of his

own society. Yet his stance radically differed from that of

Caillois, or from what Caillois would loosely call, evoking

his very relation with Bataille, an "osmose intellectuelle."

Without defining this last term, Annamaria Laserra's recent

"Bataille et Caillois: Osmosi i dissenzi" suggestively notes

about Bataille and his journal Acephale:

Osmotic is that movement which binds and beckons

him to the experience of 'acephality'
[headlessness]. The possibility of plunging one's
being into the •etre1 communiel,• one's existence
into the 'mouvement communiel' calls for the
infringement of individual boundaries, an osmosis
which is precluded unless one has designated
oneself for self-sacrifice.64

In effect, Laserra's "osmosis" contradicts the way in which

Caillois uses the term. By likening it to a form of

mimetic absorption or dissolution, she renders it almost

synonymous with that "participation" underlying Levy-Bruhl's

definition of "la mentalite primitive," a concept which

captivated Caillois, as it did most avant-garde minds of the

early 20th century, and which may, in some sense, be viewed

as the 30's counterpart to post-war "engagement." Jean

Cazeneuve has succinctly summarized Levy-Bruhl's views of

63Pascal Balmand, "Breton, Aragon, et les communistes

..." L'histoire 127 (Nov. 1989): 42.
64Annamaria Laserra, "Bataille et Caillois: osmosi e
dissenso," II politico e il sacro. ed. Jacqueline Risset
(Naples: Liguori, 1987) 135 [translation is mine].
 29

•primitive* man, informed by

un principe qui ne fait pas partie de la logique

de notre science rationnelle, & savoir le principe
de participation, en vertu duquel un etre peut
etre a la fois lui-meme et autre chose. Ainsi, le
primitif se croit non seulement un homme, mais
aussi un animal parce qu'il participe & l'espece
animale de son totem, et il peut etre a la fois Ih
ou il dort et 1& ou son reve le situe. II resulte
de ces caracteristiques de sa mentalite que le
primitif est peu apte a abstraire et a
g^neraliser.65

As we shall see, Caillois' 'osmotic participation' in

the various intellectual tribes and totems of his time

deviates from this principle of non-contradiction. For one

thing, he was taught by Marcel Mauss who believed, along

with Durkheim, that Levy-Bruhl was wrong: that primitive man

was rational and logical, his categories reflecting those of

the social structure.66 Although Caillois' quest for

scientific system would often lead him to argue in terms of

biology and coherence rather than society and rationalism

(which encouraged Mauss to accuse him of Heideggerian

'irrationalism'67), he was influenced by this Durkheimian

65JeanCazeneuve, "L6vy-Bruhl (Lucien)," Encyclopedia

universalis. 1968 ed.
66See Emile Durkheim, Formes elementaires de la vie
reliaieuse (Paris, 1912); Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss,
"De quelques formes primitives de la classification" [1903],
Essais de socioloqie (Paris: Minuit, 1969) 162-130.
67See Marcel Mauss, letter to Roger Caillois, June 22

1938, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" which laments

"un deraillement general, dont vous etes vous-meme victime
. . . cette esp&ce d'irrationnalisme absolu par lequel vous
terminez au nom du labyrinthe et de Paris, mythe moderne.
Mais je crois que vous l'etes tous en ce moment,
probablement sous 1'influence de Heidegger Bergsonien
 30

and Maussian correlation of modern and primitive logic.

Unlike many others, including Bataille, he thus generally

sought to derive from Levy-Bruhl's "imitation-participation"

and other models of mimetic magic, an 'alternative logic'

— rather than a non-logic — of the affective imagination,

one with ah objective validity for the modern mind. In a

general sense, this quest for a more logical 'logic of

participation' — an alternative logic based on new

correspondences and modes of coherence — would appear to

motivate his systematization in the 30s, accentuating the

magic of theoretical osmosis. This 'logic of participation'

serves to characterize, as well, Caillois* more strictly

biographical relation to his intellectual context: a form of

correspondence with the group or milieu which preserved his

difference and thus his ever rigorous stance of

'participant-theorist' (to refine upon the anthropological

concept of 'participant-observer'). It is noteworthy that

upon breaking with Breton in December 1934, Caillois would

claim the status of "une sorte de correspondant du

surrealisme," a term rife with suggestive implication.68

These early years of his "parenthese" witness Caillois'

most vivid "haine de la litterature," as he strives to

appropriate those imaginative phenomena currently explored

attarde dans 1'hitlerisme, legitimant l'hitlerisme entiche

d'irrationalisme. . ."(205).
68Caillois, Approches 38.
 31

by the aesthetic avant-garde; his writing is soon driven by

the desire to develop a systematic apprehension of

primitivism, the unconscious, the imagination, and the

natural realm together with the modern world.69 In effect,

poetry exists as another residual to be absorbed. Yet this

does not deny, as Caillois later claimed, that he desired

from the start to confirm "le caractere non seulement

possible et objectif, mais inevitable de la poesie."70

Indeed, this quest for objective foundation was precisely

what his systematization entailed. His evolving 'logic of

participation' was a 'logic of correspondences' which

produced the concept of "1'image juste" to counter

automatic writing during his Surrealist phase; thus, he

translated into interdisciplinary scientific terms the

tradition of Novalis, Poe, Baudelaire and Mallarme, where

magic and poetry converge and where, in the words of Hugo

Friedrich, "[la] metaphore accede a la dignite de la

•precision mathematique'. . . .1,71 We shall see that a

certain poetry osmotically invades Caillois' paradigmatic

imagination, its dynamic and attentive logic expressed in

essayistic feats of surreal pedantry throughout the decade.

69Caillois, Archives V.
70Caillois qtd. in Alain Bosquet, Roger Caillois
(Paris: Seghers, 1971) 65.
71HugoFriedrich, Structures de la poesie moderne.
trans. Michel-Francois Demet (Paris: Denoel, 1976) 48.
Chapter 1

Psychasthenia

Le Grand Jeu

Caillois' famous, and infamous, review of L6vi-

Strauss's Race et histoire in 1954, challenged that 'inverse

ethnocentrism• or privileging of primitive thought which he

attributed to structuralism and to those origins he

discerned for it in Surrealist ethnography.1 Contrary to

James Clifford's ideas about the latter's "basically ironic

experience of culture," Caillois did not ascribe any ironic

ambiguity to this turn from the West, driven by

la conviction passionnelle que la civilisation

dont on participe est hypocrite, corrompue et
repugnante, et qu'il faut chercher ailleurs,
n'importe ou, et pour plus de surete aux antipodes
geographiques ou culturelles, la purete et la
plenitude dont le besoin est ressenti.2

The tirade concludes with recollections about his own youth,

a lengthy passage worth citing in extenso: .

J'avais quatorze ou quinze ans lorsque Roger

1Roger Caillois, "Illusions ci rebours," Nouvelle revue

francaise 24 (Dec. 1954): 1010-1024; 25 (Jan. 1955): 58-70.
Levi-Strauss responded with "Diogene couche," Temps modernes
110 (1955): 1187-1220.
2Caillois, "Illusions," NRE 25 (Jan.1955): 67; those
inspired by Surrealist ethnography "ont hai mais ils n'ont
pas eu assez de detachment pour comparer"(68).
 33

Gilbert-Lecomte mettant entre mes mains les

premiers ouvrages de L6vy-Bruhl, m'expliqua que
toute la logique occidentale 6tait vou6e a la
st6rilite, puisqu'elle reposait sur le principe de
contradiction: A est A, qui ne saurait evidemment
rien engendrer, tandis que la logique de la
participation, telle que la connait la mentalite
primitive, permettait au contraire toutes les
esperances. Le raisonnement me parut peremptoire.
Je ne savais pas alors que la logique ne sert
nullement a inventer, qu'elle est au contraire une
sorte de garantie ou d'assurance que le raisonneur
prend contre la facilite du raisonnement. Je ne
me rendais pas compte que la logique de la
participation, precisement pour etre immensement
souple, n'est pas du tout une logique et qu'a
cause de cela la mentality primitive n'est a aucun
degre une pensee capable de rigueur. Mais
1'illusion de Gilbert-Lecomte est issue de la meme
tentation que ... la dialectique de Levi-
Strauss.3

It should be noted that, in 1954, Caillois1 outlook

expressed the radical transformation wrought by the war, and

his stay in Buenos Aires, where he attained a new

appreciation of Western civilization and of its

achievements. This interests me less, for the present

study, than the fact that Caillois, from a very early stage,

indeed the very years of his close exposure to Gilbert-

Lecomte, was already seeking to grasp or render more rigid

the 'immensely supple* absorption of participation, to

theorize, in short, an alternative logic of participation.

Until now, there has been no discussion whatsoever of

Caillois' relation to this ephemeral aroupuscule. led by

Roger Gilbert-Lecomte and Rene Daumal which inspired his

imagination in highly significant ways, imparting to him,

3Caillois, "Illusions," NEE 25 (Jan.1955): 68.

 34

according to Le fleuve Alphde. "l'idde contradictoire d'une

metaphysique v6cue.1,4 The reason I believe it so important

to reconstruct these years of Caillois' late adolescence,

despite the relative dearth of publications, is that the

influence on Caillois of Le Grand Jeu. a form of

metaphysical dadaism or morbid pataphvsicrue. cannot be

overestimated; much more than the Surrealist movement, in

certain respects, would Gilbert-Lecomte direct Caillois

towards the substance of his life-long research. Gerard de

Cortanze has succinctly remarked: "Le Grand Jeu se propose

d•atteindre •le point vide support de la vie et des formes,'

il s'oppose au Surrealisme qui veut lui 1faire le plein.'"5

Caillois' exposure to the High Romanticism, frenetic

intoxications, and explosive mysticism of these youths

plunged him into an extreme form of avant-garde experience-

- which he would continue to explore, albeit with an

increasing intellectual sophistication and detachment. Even

at the time, though, from roughly 1928 to 1932, Caillois

appears to have developed a theoretical "effort de

4Caillois, Fleuve 65. During their Parisian classes

preparatoires in the mid-2Os, Rene Daumal, Roger Gilbert-
Lecomte and Roger Vailland — all from Reims, like Caillois
— had been drawn into the Surrealist orbit. First calling
themselves the "Simplistes," they then expanded into Le
Grand Jeu which included "Pierre Minet, le peintre Sima,
Maurice Henry, Harfaux, Audard, Delons, Reneville," write
Alain and Odette Virmaux, faithful chroniclers of the period
(La constellation surrealiste [Lyons: Manufacture,1987] 74).

5Gerard de Cortanze, "L'irreductible hostilite de

Bataille au surr6alisme,11 Magazine littera ire 243 (June
1987): 35.
 35

systdmatisation" adequate to the strategies of Le Grand Jeu.

in the form of the paradigm I will call "metaphysical

psychasthenia." Having passed through such training, he

would be well equipped to handle Bataille five years later;

moreover, his exposure to this radical group would serve as

both inspiration and counter-example, I suspect, when

Caillois sought to envisage an activist social noyau for the

College de socioloaie.

The manifesto of Le Grand Jeu resounded with Dada's

destructive energies, declaring a "massacre d'espoirs" as

well as "1'eclatement et la dissolution de tout ce qui est

organise, etc."; yet both the group (and journal of the

same name published from 1928 through 1930) were profoundly

mystical, invoking via this process of dissolution, "une

Esperance sanglante et sans pitie: etre eternel par refus de

vouloir durer."6 It belonged to that shift, the general mood

between 1924 and the early 30s, when the post-war negation

of values had ceded to a new phase. This was Surrealism's

•p6riode raisonnante,' in the words of Maurice Nadeau, after

more intuitive origins, when they undertook a turbulent

rapprochement with the Communists.7 "Les tables tournantes

et les derviches sont a la mode. Spiritisme et hindouisme.

6Qtd.in Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du surrealisme

(Paris: Seuil, 1964) 107.
7See Pascal Balmand, "Breton, Aragon... Les
surrealistes et les communistes,11 L'histoire 127 (Nov.
1989): 34-44.
 36

Cela dura relativement peu, les terres promises se rdvelant

illusoires. Le Grand Jeu appartient a cette periode de

transition," would remark one commentator in 1936.8

Caillois had become acquainted with Gilbert-Lecomte,

several years his elder in high-school at Reims. Intensely

attuned to French writers despite his wholesale repudiation

of the West, the latter adopted Caillois as a promising

disciple and introduced him to a wide variety of mystical

and literary texts.9 From 1927 to 1929, and then for

several more years during his khictne at the Lycee Louis-le-

Grand in Paris (1930-1932), Caillois casually pursued his

association with the group. He has recalled that Levy-

Bruhlian 'participation' was a major counterpoint to the

Surrealist privileging of alchemy, or the magical

transformation of matter — a principle which never

compelled the more spiritual younger group.10 Besides

Rimbaud's "dereglement de tous les sens," especially as

8JeanGrenier, "L'age des orthodoxies" Nouvelle revue

francaise 271 (April 1936): 482.
9Gilbert-Lecomte made Caillois read Rimbaud,
Lautreamont, the Surrealists. He also delineated two paths
for poetry: the visionary strain of Rimbaud and the pursuit
of formal perfection, "le domaine propre a St.John-
Perse"(Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle. 7 reels [Paris: Societe Frangaise de Production,
1971]: I).
10Caillois, Archives II. Conversely, he recalls, the
Surrealists were not drawn to the Rosicrucian legacy which
inspired Le Grand Jeu: the dream (shared by Descartes) of a
third inner eye, the "glande pineale" affording an
unmediated apprehension of divinity (II).
 37

enacted through drugs, Gilbert-Lecomte and Daumal turned to

Indian philosophy, and derived the group's name from

Kipling's Kim (the "Great Game" referred to English

espionage in India, although the term was here transposed so

as to suggest "le Grand Jeu m6taphysique")1:L; more

importantly, they devoured the mystical treatises of Rend

Guenon.12 Their anti-dualist "monism," notes Viviane

Couillard, specifically espoused the Hindu principle of

Adwaita reconciling idealism and materialism.13 Refusing to

restrict this principle of incessant metamorphosis to the

primitive and the exotic imagination, they extended the

logic of participation to poetry and dreams. Equating Levy-

Bruhl's primitive and civilized mentalities, Le Grand Jeu

equated sophisticated lyricism with primitive thought and

could thus worship G6rard de Nerval, whose Aurdlia inspired

their collective dream-displacements. "lis avaient besoin

d'un blason, d'un totem, pour eux 5a a ete Nerval; pour les

surrealistes, c'etait Lautreamont," remarks Caillois.14

His mentor, Gilbert-Lecomte, sought to formulate a

1:LCaillois, Archives II.

12This influential purveyor of Oriental thought
converted to Islam and had published such works in the 30s
as L'homme et son devenir selon les Vedantas. Le roi du
monde. and L'erotisme de Dante.

13Viviane Couillard, "Le Grand Jeu. groupe, ruptures,"

Les annees trente: aroupes et ruptures. ed. Anne Roche and
Christian Tarting (Paris: CNRS, 1985) 243.
14Caillois Archives II.
 38

Utopian revolutionary project: "Le devenir de 1'esprit doit

r£aliser la synthase de la raison discursive et de 1'esprit

de participation primitif."15 This entailed a form of

negative mysticism:
. . . la conscience retrouve les lois de sa marche
ci 1'unite dans Involution des formes dont elle se
d£gage; telle est, pour les philosophes du Grand
Jeu. la base de la dialectique universelle—
dialectique aussi bien au sens heg61ien qu'au sens
ou Platon l'entend comme l'art de mener 1'esprit a
la realisation du "Bien."16

Members were wont to chant "Dieu est le non, non, non,"

recalls Caillois, situating this triad in relation to Hegel

and to the absolute defined as a set of negations — "on ne

peut definir l*absolu qu'en niant ses qualites, qu'en niant

ses determinations, puisque c'est 1'ensemble de toutes les

determinations, y compris celles qui se contredisent.1,17

Latter-day Kabbalists, Le Grand Jeu sought to reascend

through strategies of collective dedoublement to the site of

the Fall and frequently undertook group-dreams and

initiations which were ascetic and morbid in tenor.18 In

15Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, "Cinema, forme de l'esprit,"

Oeuvres completes 2 vols. ed. Marc Thivolet (Paris:

Gallimard, 1974) 1: 158.
16Gilbert-Lecomte,
"Rene Daumal," Oeuvres completes vol
1: 152; this was an entry for Antholoaie des philosophes
francais contemporains (Aron et Dandieu, Paris: Sagittaire,
1935).
17Caillois, Archives II.
18Marc Thivolet describes the early activities of the

group as follows: "Recreer la mort par des moyens

artificiels . . . retrouver dans les textes anciens — en
particulier ceux des mystiques — le compte rendu
 39

effect, they sought an explosive or 'negative' revelation

achieved through collective and absolute depersonalization.

Rather than pataphysical philosophy, though, Gilbert-

Lecomte's mystical tendencies were best expressed in his

personal and lyrical obsession with death, a drive so

pronounced that he would seek to outline his own skull in

front of the mirror.This latter-day "poete-maudit"

sought an equally vivid representation of the "neant" and

the "femme fatale" — a desperate blend, to a large extent,

of Hugo and Lautreamont, perhaps more than the afore­

mentioned Nerval. Citing such lines as "La succion du vide

bouche d'ombre des morts/ La pourriture noire aux eclairs de

phosphore/ Le vertige sans fond du neant qui d6vore," a

recent commentary describes the "monde-en-creux" of this

lyrical outpouring as that

volonte, tantot theatrale, tantot hagarde, de
vivre et d'ecrire contre tout, en esperant 'le
retour a Tout', une etrange et sauvage totalite
qui dechire les limites humaines en des mouvements
prometheens de deplacement et de decentrement
transcendentaux.20

In this hallucinatory voice, we may find certain themes

d1 experiences semblables, cr£er une asc&se afin que les

etats entrevus en un instant foudroyant devinssent habituels
. . ." ("Presence du Grand Jeu," Cahiers de 1'Herne 1968:
23).

19Thivolet notes that "depuis son enfance il avait joue

au jeu de la mort"(31).
20Andre Miguel, "Roger Gilbert-Lecomte et la revolution

par le 'monde-en-creux,'" Europe 698-699 (June-July 1987):

172.
 40

which would forever obsess Caillois — and assume their most

dramatic form, perhaps, during his Surrealist phase with the

terrifying ideoaramme of the praying-mantis, which shared

Gilbert-Lecomte•s morbidly mimetic propensities.

If Gilbert-Lecomte's group pursued a heretical 1retour

ci Tout,' Caillois was a heretic in their midst, resisting

many aspects of Le Grand Jeu. especially their group

experiments and drugs, even as he sought to grant their

negative mysticism a more individual and scientific form.

Those juvenile essays published by his high-school literary

journal, Libre critique. in the mid-twenties, already

reveal his trenchant mind, passionately attuned to Saint-

Just and Nietzsche. But Caillois' intellectual ambitions

were particularly motivated by Georges Bidault, his history

teacher at Reims, who developed an intense interest in this

star pupil, becoming his "directeur de conscience," and

instilling in him the virtues of intellectual rigor and

reserve.21 At the same time, Bidault's lively and

opinionated pedagogic mode forced the students to form a

staunch personal opinion. This method must have tempered

Caillois* faith in the principles of non-contradiction and

participation. He remembers quickly coming to regard

21RogerCaillois, Circonstancielles 1940-45 (Paris:

Gallimard, 1946) 114. This Catholic reformer, a fervent
enemy of the Action Francaise. was a leader of the Parti
Democrate Populaire later in the 30s; after serving in the
Resistance, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs under De
Gaulle; he would be exiled and then amnistied for his
involvement with the "O.A.S." and the defense of French Algeria.
 41

Gilbert-Lecomte as intellectually lazy; as for the group's

collective dream-displacements, "il suffit qu'ils aient fait

un r£ve h peu prfes analogue pour que les ressemblances

s'accusent et les differences s'effacent.1,22 once in Paris,

furthermore, Marcel Mauss's courses in the sociology of

religion at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes induced him

to question Le Grand Jeu's self-proclaimed "religious"

status as opposed to the "magical" Surrealists. For

Caillois, both rebellious avant-garde movements were magical

in outlook since "Esquisse d'une theorie generale de la

magie" distinguished religion from magic through the

purveyor's relation to society: normative and systematic in

the first case; individual and rebellious in the second.23

Caillois was also attentive to the contradictions he

detected lit those political incidents, linked to the

Surrealist orbit, which drew him closer to the group. Thus,

he was aware of the mock-trial at the 'bar of the rue du

Chateau* where the Surrealists rejected any collaboration

_ with the younger group, perhaps, as some have suggested,

because the latter would not have complied with the

22Caillois, Archives II.

23These are issues that will become increasingly
important to Caillois after 1935, and to which we will later
return; Mauss's Durkheimian sociology identified the common
collective underpinnings of both religion and magic.
 42

Communist Party.24 "Seul groupe d•inspiration m6taphysique

et cependant tent6 par le marxisme, il reste en marge de

I'agitation politique de ces ann£es trente," writes Viviane

Couillard.25 More importantly, though, it was clear that

the "phreres" would not submit their collective autonomy to

Breton's authority. Ostensibly gathering to discuss Trotsky

on March 11, 1929, the Surrealists focused on the alleged

failings of Le Grand Jeu; the most significant of which was

an article in Paris-Midi by Roger Vailland praising the

police-chief Chiappe.26 Caillois was apparently struck that

the attacks levelled against Vailland and sustained by

Communist members of Le Grand Jeu. concerned his

journalistic livelihood — an accusation contradicting Le

Grand Jeu's Hinduist belief that the ascetic was supposed to

nourish his family and fulfill his duty to humanity prior to

achieving personal salvation.27

24See Andre Breton and Louis Aragon, "A suivre,"

Varietes June 1 1929: ii-xxxii. Rpt. in Jose Pierre, Tracts
surrealistes. 2 vols. (Paris: Terrain vague, 1982) vol.1.
25Couillard245. See also her "Aux frontieres du
surrealisme: le Grand Jeu," Melusine 3 1982: 164-181; and
"Une revue (presque surrealiste des annees 28-30: Le Grand
Jeu." Melusine 4 1983: 31-42.
26See
Alain and Odette Virmaux, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
et le Grand Jeu (Paris: Belfond, 1981) 50-52; see also Jose
Pierre's commentary to the reproduced transcription of the
"trial" in his Tracts surrealistes vol.1: 422-423.
27CailloisArchives II. He seems to have shared the
attitude of the Surrealist Ribemont-Dessaignes, who defended
Vailland and stormed out of the meeting, writes Helena
Lewis, "on the grounds that it was necessary to earn a
living — a fact the Surrealists generally did not concede.
 43

Breton's Second manifeste. written in late 1929,

shortly thereafter, expressed a certain desire for

conciliation but Daumal's angry "Lettre ouverte k Andr6

Breton" responded that Le Grand Jeu sought to undertake

"l1etude de tous les proc6des de depersonnalisation, de

transposition de conscience, de voyance, de m^diumnite" as

opposed to the Surrealists' "science amusante.we may

never know Caillois' position during the so-called

"Reneville" crisis of 1932, linked to the Surrealist "Aragon

Affair." Reneville criticized "Front rouge," the famous

poem marking Aragon's shift to Communist militancy, as

materialism applied to poetry; he then refused to sign

Breton's petition launched to defend Aragon against the

threat of criminal charges.29 This crisis provoked the full

dissolution of Le Grand Jeu: Reneville's resignation and

. ." (The Politics of Surrealism [New York: Paragon, 1988] 79).

28Rene Daumal, letter to Andre Breton, Rene Daumal.
lettres a ses amis ed. Vera Daumal (Paris: Gallimard, 1958):
192.
29Reneville,
a literary critic, was also a conservative
member of Le Grand Jeu who worked at the Ministry of
Justice. Due to his professional status and his hostility
towards Aragon's poetry and politics, several members of Le
Grand Jeu demanded his resignation. See Virmaux, Gilbert-
Lecomte 59. Aragon's Front rouge provoked a complicated
series of events: his legal indictment; a Surrealist
manifesto, L'affaire Aragon. drafted in his defense;
Breton's explanation of this pamphlet in the subsequent
Misere de la poesie fL'affaire Aragon devant 1'opinion
publiouel: and then, ultimately, Aragon's total break with
the Surrealists. See Nadeau 140-148; and Lewis 97-118.
 44

that of his Communist opponents as well.30 As for Caillois,

he did sign the petition launched in Aragon's defense — "la

premiere petition surrealiste que j'ai signee"31 — and

became associated with Breton in the wake of these events.

At the time, Gilbert-Lecomte was ill and absent from Paris.

His virulent letter to Daumal confirms Caillois' importance

for Le Grand Jeu; "Reponds-moi immediatement car je veux

ecrire a Breton, Artaud, Caillois et quelques autres et ce

sera ma derniere tentative. Car si moi je vais crever je

n'aurai pas capitule. Toi, tu es foutu, poetel"32

* * *

Torn, or so one might surmise, between Bidault's

intellectual rigor and Gilbert-Lecomte•s principle of non­

contradiction, Caillois already seems to consider an

alternative form of logic. The sole extant letter from

Gilbert-Lecomte to his protege exclaimed in 1930:

Tu ne saurais croire combien me fait plaisir ton

desir de t'adresser a moi en. guise d'"anti-
prof esseur", si je puis dire. Sur ta
"fantastique" opposee a la "logique" un peu

30Daumal, evolving towards Gurdjieff and the outlook of

his later Mont-Analogue. eventually broke with Gilbert-

Lecomte in 1934; the latter was already ill from drug abuse
and would die in 1942.
31Caillois, Archives II.
32Gilbert-Lecomte, letter to Rene Daumal, undated
[1931], Correspondance. ed. Pierre Minet (Paris: Gallimard,
1971) 209.
 45

paradoxalement il y aura beaucoup a dire, — en

tout cas tu sais combien le fantastique est mon
"rayon litteraire" et comme j'ai toujours souhaite
que ton esprit prenne cette direction... 33

Gilbert-Lecomte even suggests a joint project, never

accomplished, but which may have inspired Caillois'

subsequent work La ndcessitd d1esprit: "Done, convenu que

nous allons batir ensemble une these formidable sur la [sic]

•fantastique' qui pourra te resservir pour le doctorat par

exemple???"34 As mentioned earlier, Caillois would define

the "fantastic" after the war as a "rupture dans la

coherence universelle. . . ."35 Here, he is primarily

referring to the literary fantastic, where automatons or

"revenants" transgress the boundary of death, that is to

say, of science. In the 50s, he would publish a theory of

the "fantastique naturel," predicated on bizarre

correspondances or "ressemblances irrecevables" such as the

skull design on the wings of the butterfly Acherontia

atropos.36 Here he traces the origin of the concept, within

his own work, to "La mante religieuse" written during his

33RogerGilbert-Lecomte, letter to Caillois, Jan. 30

1930, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 180.
34Gilbert-Lecomte, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 30
1930, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 180.
35RogerCaillois, "De la feerie a la science-fiction,"
Preuves 118 (Dec. 1960): 19. "II est 11Impossible, survenant
h l1improviste dans un monde d'ou 1'impossible est banni par
definition"(19).
36Roger Caillois, Cases d'un dchiauier (Paris:
Gallimard, 1970) 69.
 46

Surrealist phase in 1935, and incorporated in La n6cessit6

d1esprit. This early essay, so he explains, sought to

establish the existence in the universe of elements that

were "insolites-privil6gi6s, r&pondants objectifs a la fois

de 1*Amotion lyrique et de 1*image po6tique."37

As mentioned earlier, the Surrealist dimension of what

he would later call this "justesse etonnante, scandaleuse"

remains to be seen, especially since Breton's Premier

manifeste denied the specificity of the fantastic, reducing

it, in effect, to "le merveilleux.,l38 For now, I merely

wish to underscore that Caillois' project arises earlier,

from a desire, it would seem, to imbue Le Grand Jeu's

mystical participation in the 'point vide' with a certain

fantastic order or structure. Caillois' "'fantastique•

oppos6e ct la 'logique' un peu paradoxalement" suggests that

he was already aspiring to render Gilbert-Lecomte •s

participatory logic more logical or, at least, only

paradoxically opposed to logic.

More precisely, it is with "metaphysical psychasthenia"

that Caillois appropriates Le Grand Jeu in a gesture I

earlier termed 'osmotic,' namely, as a paradigmatic grasp of

their obsessions. In effect, he developed this syncretic

37Caillois, Cases 62.

38"Cequ'il y a d'admirable dans le fantastique,"
Breton declared, "c'est qu'il n'y a plus de fantastique: il
n'y plus que le reel" (Andre Breton, Manifestes du
surrealisme [Paris: Gallimard, 1985] 25).
 47

and rather pataphysical notion by applying current

psychiatry to the "metaphysique v6cue" of Le Grand Jeu.

absorbing such residual phenomena in a process of

systematization that expanded upon, while subverting, the

theories themselves. For information on this score, we must

consult La n£cessit6 d'esprit, a delirious interpretation of

interpretative delirium to be analysed in the following

chapter, since it was written during Caillois1 Surrealist

years. The work is of interest, at this point in our

discussion, because it proposes a detailed analysis and

review of the analyst's recent imaginative life (fantasies,

dreams, and so forth) — inspired, in this regard, by

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. This past implicates

Caillois1 acquaintance with Le Grand Jeu although the group

is never named as such, perhaps because the dramatic

"phreres" were still too close.

La necessite d'esprit records consistently somber moods

informed by an acute pessimism: "toute une sombre

metaphysique en decoulait, vague, instable, fatigante.1,39

And Caillois was most attentive to scientific expressions of

this malaise; physical theories such as atomism and the

Riemann-Christoffel formula which established, in rather

Jansenist fashion, "[le] discredit total de l'homme en en

faisant en quelque sorte un organisme disproportionne avec

la mesure reelle des choses."40 Even more essential to his

39Caillois, Necessite 138.

40Caillois, Necessite 60.
 48

thinking at this point, were the writings of the

psychologist Pierre Janet professor at the College de

France from 1902-1936, who dominated the pre-Freudian world

of French psychology:
Pendant ce temps, mes preoccupations m6taphysiques
au contact de ces dissolvantes imaginations qui ne
favorisaient que trop une totale apathie
aboutissaient & une veritable d6sagr6gation
intellectuelle dont je ne tardais pas a rapprocher
les caracteres de ceux de la psychasthenic que je
trouvais decrite dans 1'ouvrage de Pierre Janet,
Les N6vroses. dont je pris connaissance sur ces
entrefaites. II s'agit bientot pour moi d'une
vaste entreprise d1 experimentation et de
destruction. Je m'epuisais a observer le passage
de la veille au sommeil. . . . Je ne desirais rien
tant que rompre la solidarity de mon corps et de
ma pensee. Je voulais franchir la frontiere de ma
peau, habiter de 1*autre cote de ma peau, habiter
de l1 autre cot6 de mes sens; je m'exergais a me
voir ou j'etais d'un point quelconque de
1'espace.41
Through its similarity to the strategies of Le Grand Jeu.

Janet's category of "psychasthenia" allowed Caillois to

translate the latter into individual and scientific terms.

In a sense, the dedoublement inherent to psychasthenia

mirrored Caillois' theoretical appropriation of, or detached

participation in, 'le point vide' of Le Grand Jeu; here,

perhaps, we may discern his systematization, or logic of

participation, in its most subjective state.

Elisabeth Roudinesco notes about Breton: "Meme s'il ne

considere pas Janet comme un maitre ci penser, sa formation

doit beaucoup a cette sorte de janetisme diffus qui preside

41Caillois, Necessity 142.

 49

en France k 11 introduction du freudisme."42 Janet was still

a psychological vitalist and associationist, whose idea of

the interrelation between the conscious and the unconscious

mind was conceptually simpler than that of Freud, lacking in

dialectics and codes; Janet ignored Freud's theory of

repression and censorship, responsible for a symbolic and

symptomatic translation of the libido. or latent

unconscious. If, in 1913, he claimed precedence over Freud

in the discovery of the unconscious, this was simply because

he, too, had emerged from Charcot's clinic and thus deemed

"hysteria" a mental rather than a cerebral or physiological

illness. But this had little to do with hysterical mimicry

or psychosomatic expression. In Janet's opinion, hysterical

distraction merely meant the release of willed and conscious

control, allowing for the free expression of associative

thought-patterns latent to consciousness and hence sub­

conscious. In 1919, Breton and Soupault thus derived their

"automatic writing" from Janet's thesis L* automat isme

psvcholoaiaue (1889).43 Of course, they hardly subscribed

to his view that "cet automatisme, dans toutes ses

manifestations, depend de la faiblesse de synthese actuelle

qui est la faiblesse morale elle-meme, la misere

42ElisabethRoudinesco, Histoire de la psvchanalyse en

France 1925-1985 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1986) vol.2: 38.
43See Bernard-Paul Robert, Le surrealisme d£soccult£
(Ottawa: Editions de l'Universite d'Ottawa, 1975) 88-91.
 50

psychologique.44

With later works, such as Les nevroses (1909), Janet

defined a new pathological state, heir to fin-de-siecle

neurasthenia and forebear to Freud's obsessional neurosis.

La psychastenie [sic] est une forme de la

depression mentale caracteris6e par 1'abaissement
de la tension psychologique, par la diminution des
fonctions qui permettent d'agir sur la r6alite et
de percevoir le reel, par la substitution
d'operations inferieures et exager^es sous la
forme de doutes, d'agitations, d'angoisses et par
des idees obsedantes qui expriment les troubles
precedents et qui presentent, elles-memes, les
memes caracteres.45
Elsewhere, the work describes psychasthenia as "des

insuffisances de la volonte"; "cet etat meiancolique de la

souffrance"46; as "psvcholepsie" or "chute de l'energie

mentale"47. Les nevroses contrasts psychasthenia with

hysteria in terms loosely echoing the current-day

distinction between psychosis and neurosis.48 Like the

44Janet qtd. in Robert 88. Janet opposes "automatism"

to "genius": "Le genie, au contraire, est une puissance
capable de former des idees entierement nouvelles qu'aucune
science anterieure n'avait pu prevoir, c'est le dernier
degre de la puissance morale"(88). His hostility to the
Surrealist project is clearly expressed in his reference to
their "confessions d'obsedes et de douteurs," cited by
Breton in the preface to the Second manifeste.
45Pierre Janet, Les nevroses (Paris: Flammarion, 1909)
367.
4®Janet, Nevroses 284.
47Janet, Nevroses 288.
48They are also distinguised according to a rather
ambiguous schema of psychological "tension" and "force" that
does not withstand close inspection. See Claude M. Prevost,
La psvcho-philosophie de Pierre Janet (Paris: Payot, 1973) 233.
 51

first, hysteria lacks any conscious control, and hence, the

sub-conscious prevails: "les choses se passent comme si une

id£e, un systeme partiel de pens£es s'emancipait, devenait

ind6pendant et se developpait lui-meme pour son propre

compte."49 With psychasthenia, on the other hand, the

conscious will of the subject is still at work, in however

weak and melancholy a fashion. Psychasthenic obsessions

entail "une continuation active et non une durde

automatiaue. les idees durent non pas uniauement par elles-

mSmes. mais qr£ce £ la bonne volonte du suiet lui-meme. II

souffre de son obsession mais il v tient. . . ."50

Psychasthenia would function as a crucial category for

Caillois throughout the 30s in varying ways. During his

Surrealist phase, and especially in La n^cessite d'esprit,

he would try to theorize the structures of such obsessional

thought; by the late 30s, his writing on the self-mastery of

the Luciferian hero would seek to transmute this propensity

into a source of self-discipline and will. Yet at this

earlier date, he was most concerned with psychasthenic

"d^sagregation intellectuelle": a paradigm of willful self-

abandonment, of conscious or, I would suggest, 'masculine'

hysteria, which caught a mood of the time extending well

beyond Le Grand Jeu. and was widely influential in the early

30s. Rather poignantly, a letter from Jean Guehenno — then

49Janet, Nevroses 33.

50Janet, Nevroses 35 [emphasis added].
 52

director of Europe — to Caillois, in February 1931, thanks

him for a previous letter (now lost), explaining "je

connais, xnoi aussi, ces tentations dont vous me parlez.

Tentations a certaines abimes et & la barbarie. J'ai decide

de ne pas m'y abandonner. On fait l'oeuvre en soi comme on

peut."5^ In a more scholarly vein, Marcel Mauss remarked in

1924 upon the relevance of psychasthenia to Durkheimian

anomie and the social aspect of mental health:

Les idees que l'ecole de psychiatrie et de

neurologie fran?aise, apres M. Babinski et Janet,
a repandues sur la vigueur et la faiblesse, sur
l'asthenie et la sth£nie nerveuse et mentale
— nerveuse, si vous voulez — ont trouve un echo
chez nous. Cette annee meme, j•espere vous
apporter une preuve nouvelle a leur etude.52

And when Breton attacks Bataille in the Second manifeste of

1930 for his exclusive attention to "ce qu'il y a de plus

vil, de plus decourageant et plus corrompu,1,53 he diagnoses

"un signe classique de psychasthenic. A la verite, M.

Bataille est seulement tres fatigue. . . .1,54 Psychasthenia

51JeanGuehenno, letter to Roger Caillois, 22 Feb.

1931, C.G.22, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale,
Vichy. Guehenno pursues: "Mais parceque vous me parlez si
bien des choses que je refuse, je vous comprends, et je vous
prie de trouver ici l1expression de ma vraie sympathie."
52Marcel Mauss, "Rapports reels et pratiques de la
psychologie et de la sociologie," Sociologie et
anthropologic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1989) 292.
53Breton, Manifestes 132.
54Breton, Manifestes 135. By this date, through Marx,
Hegel and Freud (in particular), Breton tends to reject
Janet's non-dialectical "automatism" and, hence, Bataille's
"non-esprit" opposed to "la dure discipline de l1esprit a
 53

also figures in La transcendance de l'eqo where Sartre

challenges Husserl's transcendental subject through the

ego's "spontan6ite impersonnelle" which he links to the

psychasthenia of Les nevroses.55

If Sartre, in 1934, used Janet's psychasthenia to

explode Husserl's transcendental subject, Caillois' less

philosophical project, on the other hand, tended to explode

the construct of Janet. La necessite d'esprit recounts his

belief that the categories of current psychology were

mutually independant and "peu capables de pouvoir rendre

compte de la solidarity de tous les etats de conscience"

— a solidarity he wished to extend beyond the subjective

into an obiective state of things.56 This led him to render

Janet's paradigm more supple, and thereby to accomodate Le

grand Jeu with "une theorie generale de la realisation

psychasthenique" defined as a function of his own

psychasthenic experiments: "la sorte de d6personnalisation

par assimilation a I'espace qui se fait jour dans les lignes

citees ci-dessus etait consideree comme le processus

metaphysique par excellence.1,57

quoi nous entendons bel et bien tout soumettre. . ."(132).

55Sartre
writes: "cette spontaneity monstrueuse est a
l'origine de nombreuses psychasthenics. La conscience
s'effraie de sa propre spontaneity parce qu'elle la sent au
dela de la liberte. C'est ce qu'on peut voir clairement sur
un exemple de Janet" (La transcendance de l'eqo. ed. and
intro. Sylvie Le Bon [Paris: Vrin, 1965] 79).
56Caillois, Necessite 35.
57Caillois, Necessite 145.
 54

"La Symphonie industrielle"

Perhaps a symptom of his safe, theoretical distance

from Gilbert-Lecomte, Caillois did not write any verse,

although he was beginning to write and be published under

the lyrical aegis of Le Grand Jeu. Remarking, in La

n^cessitd d1esprit, that such early texts "ne marquent pas

encore une distinction nette des phantasmes metaphysiques et

6rotiques,"58 Caillois implies that metaphysical

psychasthenia was often invested with that liebestod which

rendered Gilbert-Lecomte's relation to 'le point vide'

rather more Romantic and Decadent than Surrealist. He also

recalls conceiving a somber Essai sur le concept de femme

fatale attuned to psychasthenia: "aussi bien dans ces

tentatives de metamorphose experimentale que dans les

reveries ou je m'imaginais a la merci d'une creature

surhumaine, le meme sentiment d'auto-annihilation apparait

preponderant."^9 And to this would be increasingly added

the influence of Freud's Bevond the Pleasure Principle. I

would note, though, that the "desagregation intellectuelle"

of Caillois* few extant early texts never fully assails the

status of the subject; and besides the spatial d^doublement

58Caillois, Necessite (139).

59Caillois, Necessity 145.
 55

of psychasthenia, he also defers, in temporal terms, any

mystical participation in the vertiginous Hn6ant" or

"bouches d'ombre" of Gilbert-Lecomte's visionary

imagination.

Apparently, Caillois wrote an article titled "Triade

poetique" (now lost) for the fourth, unpublished issue of

the journal Le Grand Jen. A letter from Daumal to Caillois

in May 1932 approves this absent essay, while complaining

that it is difficult to read: "[J]e ne veux pas dire que

vous devriez ecrire d'une fa$on plus facile & lire

— non, mais que peut-etre vous devriez etre difficile

davantaae expres."60 (He helpfully advises a blend of

Taoism and Mallarme.) Published by the Cahiers du Sud in

April 1933, "Le second epithalame; paroles du delire de la

fievre de Roger Caillois" conveys the tenets of Le Grand Jeu

in a highly controlled fashion, almost a pastiche of Eastern

mystical themes, invoking an Oriental "Deesse Inouie" to

translate her myth to the uninitiated. Distanced from true

confessional by the third-person objectification of his

title, the lyrical-I of this melancholy monologue

entertains his erotico-mystical obsession in a deliberate

fashion, his delirium adhering to literary convention and

syntax. Language may not accede to the goddess "au-dela de

60Rene Daumal, letter to Roger Caillois, May 1932,

C.D.ll, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
 56

la parole"61 — rather more Romantic than Surrealist. And

if a fragile madwoman seduced a sober Breton in Nadia

(1928), "Le second epithalame" restores the Romantic gender

of insanity; serene harbinger of death, the muse awaits a

savage and desolate love, the gift of a severed head, and

the lover's dissolution (or depersonalization) in her "grand

espace id^al."62 Yet, this morbid access to the divine is

an imminent rather than an immediate event.

Even more interesting is a recently discovered essay

from this period, Caillois' review of Joris Ivens' movie La

svmphonie industrielle. an essay which transposes

metaphysical psychasthenia into the arena of film and

proposes a radical indightment of industrial alienation. A

letter from Gilbert-Lecomte to Daumal in March 1932 mentions

an essay by Caillois on film: "il me frappe d'autant plus

qu'il represente — un peu pris par 1"autre extremite — mon

projet de "Cinema, forme de l'Esprit."63 It is unlikely

that Caillois1 review, published in February 1932, is the

one cited here since Gilbert-Lecomte considers ways of

getting it into print. Still, a glance at "Cinema, forme de

l'Esprit" is in order. Inveighing against the capitalist

control of the medium, Gilbert-Lecomte envisions a

61Roger Caillois, "Le second epithalame," Roger

Caillois "Cahier pour un temps" 155.
62Caillois "Second" 161.
;

63Gilbert-Lecomte, letter to Rene Daumal, March 24

1932, Correspondance 213.
 57

dialectical cinema corresponding to the "m6taphysique v6cue"

of Le Grand Jeu.64 Ideally, it might thus engender a

classless state informed by monist thought: "une autre

civilisation bas£e sur un systfeme different des

connaissances. . . ."65
Suggestive though it may be, however, the essay does

not explain how this new "forme de l'esprit" might

strategically achieve 'le point vide,' or induce the

collective "depersonnalisation absolue" of Le Grand Jeu.

Like much of the poet's theoretical writing, this essay is

densely incoherent, interweaving a wild web of categories

and allusions; and its prescriptions for a revolutionary

"cinepoeme" and "cinemagie" were dated and hardly original

when they were published in 1933.66 In fact, Gilbert-

Lecomte's piece echoes general Surrealist conceptions of

film, by which I mean that he presents it as a mode of

positive revelation, on the whole, a means of stirring and

provoking the viewer's unconscious. Privileged expression

of the hallucinatory imagination, the camera's eye, writes

64He
writes: "mediateur entre 1'esprit et la nature [le
cinema] peut exprimer en mouvement et sous formes sensibles
le devenir des formes de 1 • esprit" (Gilbert-Lecomte
"Cinema" 159).
65Gilbert-Lecomte, "Cinema" 158.
66Alain and Odette Virmaux remark of the entire issue
Cahiers Jaunes "Cinema 33" (1933) in which the article
eventually appeared, that "[bizarrement], les hommes du
Grand Jeu ne se trouvaient une derniere fois rassembl^s,
avec quelques amis, que pour constater presque unanimement
1 • ecroulement d'une ancienne esp6rance" (Gilbert-Lecomte 122).
 58

Gilbert-Lecomte, is "l'oeil du cauchemar, le regard du

sorcier, la clef des metamorphoses," and a vehicle for

toutes les visions trop lucides du d61ire; le

rideau qui devient fantome; le crocodile qui se
dessine dans la forme d'un arbre, devient reel,
mouvant, puis se r6sorbe dans les lignes du bois,
il reste 1*arbre; l'oeil du nuage, les visages de
ciel dans les branchages, la faune dechiree et
hurlante du vent.67

Rudolph E. Kuenzli has emphasized that Surrealist film

sought to create a relatively accessible space, or fictional

world, in order to induce, through disruptions, unconscious

transports in the relatively passive viewer.6® Thus, he has

stressed its initial equation with hallucination, citing

Jean Goudal's hope in the 20s that film become a primary

means for achieving the surreal: "The cinema

constitutes a conscious hallucination, and utilizes this

fusion of dream and consciousness which Surrealism would

like to see realized in the literary domain. . . ."69 a

theoretical exchange between Max Ernst and Breton is also

helpful to recall here. The first claimed that the blurred

•stain on the wall' described in da Vinci's Treatise on

Painting (to be fixedly observed by the artist) was the

67Gilbert-Lecomte, "Cinema" 161.

68Rudolf E. Kuenzli, "Introduction," Dada and
Surrealist Film, ed. Rudolf E. Kuenzli, (New York: Willis
Locker and Owens, 1987) 7.
69Kuenzli 7.
 59

touchstone of his own theory of frottage and collage.70

Recounting that certain "floor-boards upon which a thousand

scrubbings had deepened the grooves" operated as an optical

provocateur for hallucinatory images, Ernst relates this

strategy to Breton's statement in Le chateau dtoile;

Some day, man will be able to direct himself if,

like the artist, he will consent to reproduce,
without changing anything, that which an
appropriate screen can offer him in advance of his
acts. ... On this screen, everything which man
wants to know is written in phosphorescent
letters, in letters of desire.71

Breton's post-war Entretiens would subsequently mention the

lesson of da Vinci, revived by Max Ernst's "frottage" and

the double-images of Dali's "critical paranoia": "elle nous

a valu . . . Un chien andalou et L'Aqe d'or, que je continue

a tenir pour les deux films surr6alistes les plus accomplis.

• • •
ii 7 2

Caillois* essay on film which so delighted Gilbert-

Lecomte is still lost. However, in 1988, the anthropologist

Louis Dumont revealed that a review of Joris Ivens' movie

Svmphonie industrielle. appearing under his name in the

February 1932 issue of Critique independante. was actually

written by Caillois, his close friend at the time, and who

70Max Ernst, Max Ernst: Beyond Painting (New York:

Wittenborn, Schultz, 1948) 4. Ernst quotes da Vinci's claim:
"in such a daub one may certainly find bizarre inventions. .
."(4).
7•'•Breton qtd. in Ernst 11.
72Andre Breton, Entretiens (1952; Paris: Gallimard,
1969) 158.
 60

introduced him to members of Le Grand Jeu.73 The two of

them were very interested in film; Dumont, especially,

dreamed of becoming a movie-director. Together, they

composed a scenario (now lost), recalls Dumont: "juvenil,

court, pas trfes serieux, sur un texte de Rilke, La chanson

d'amour et de mort du cornette Christoph Rilke. l'histoire

d'une nuit d1amour. Nous 6tions attendris par l'histoire du

jeune porte-drapeau. C'6tait intermediaire entre le

romantisme et du 'Bataille.'1,74 As for Ivens1 movie,

Svmphonie industrielle. which they had discussed together,

the review was written by Caillois. Working as a printer's

proof-reader, Dumont had become friendly with various

editors, who allowed him to slip articles into their

journals,* publishing "La symphonie industrielle" under his

own name was, in this sense, primarily a matter of

convenience.75

La svmphonie industrielle was conceived when the Dutch

electric company, Phillips, unwisely commissioned Joris

Ivens (a Soviet sympathiser just returning from Moscow) to

73Louis Dumont, personal interview (June 1988), Paris.

Both youths were in their "classes preparatoires" — Dumont
studying mathematics at the Lycee Saint-Louis, and
Caillois in khagne at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand; acommon
philosophy teacher had taken it upon himself to introduce
the youths, whose friendship lasted until late 1932.
74Dumont, interview.
75Dumont,interview. He remarks: "Nous avions ete
d'accord pour le faire; c'6tait trop complique de dire que
ce n16tait pas moi."
 61

produce an in-house documentary and advertisement of their

radio-factory. Within the framework of this restrictive

genre, Ivens thereupon produced what he termed a "poeme

visuel et, k la limite un acte d'accusation.1,76 Thus, there

was an important ambiguity at the core of this Marxist

expose. which mimicked a Capitalist advertisement, or

Capitalist advertisement which imitated a Marxist

documentary. In 1932, Bunuel's Surrealist documentary Las

Urdes would offer a startling exposure to the sacrificial

magic pervading this primitive land (titled Terre sans pain

in French). That same year, Svmphonie industrielle. a

masked and muted version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, would

document the dehumanized doom of factory life — "la Terre

Promise, promise a tous, et singulierement aux spectateurs,"

as Caillois ironically remarks.77 Originally titled Philips

radio, this curious work was rejected by its sponsors but

then acclaimed by the Parisian audience, which renamed it

Svmphonie industrielle.78 The term "symphonie" evokes a

certain dadaist, non-narrative cinema pur, constructed with

visual rythms; the avant-garde's increasing interest in the

documentary ever since the 20s, had spawned a whole series

of urban "symphonies." Rene Clair was very struck by the

76JorisIvens and Robert Destanque. Joris Ivens ou la

memoire d'un regard (Poitiers: BFB, 1982) 114.
77Caillois, "La symphonie industrielle," Critique
ind6pendante Feb. 1932: 9.
78Ivens and Destanque 114.
 62

manner in which Ivens' workers were subjected to the

"cadence" of the factory.79

Through an interesting articulation of correspondances,

or what one might call a 'fantastic' logic of participation,

Caillois' review of Svmphonie industrielle seems more

faithful to the spirit of Le Grand Jeu than was Gilbert-

Lecomte's "Cinema, forme de 1'esprit." It suggests a

cautious enactment of the movement's negative mysticism, a

gesture towards 'le point vide' without either drugs or

collective dream-states, and one more seriously inclined

towards revolutionary concerns. His epigraph insists upon

Caillois' particular brand of Marxism that will later

motivate his relation to Bataille's "expenditure." It is a

quote from Otto Kaus's La vie de Dostolevski declaring:

"Celui qui a attendu de la derniere guerre la revelation de

la rage destructrice du capitalisme, celui-la n'en connait

point toute l'horreur... Le capitalisme fait des victimes

tous les jours."80 Caillois primarily focuses on the

oppressed workers, the viewers' "fantastic" doubles, who are

absolutely depersonalized within the factory: "inscrits si

severement dans la marche des machines, les machines les

prolongent si loin en avant, en arriere, en tous sens,

qu'ils s'y dissolvent. . . ."81 This alters their

79Ivens and Destanque 114.

80Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
81Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
 63

orientation and sense of self in a psychasthenic fashion:

"[ils] ne peuvent deviner que la sphfere ainsi form6e est

situable, et precisdment dans leur humanity. Comment

pourraient-ils mesurer?"82 This metonymic relation to the

machines which absorb and decapitate them is a mechanistic

variant of Le Grand Jeu1s explosive mysticism and a

prefiguration of the devoured and automatized male insect of

"La mante religieuse":

Le rythme des machines demeure, c'est la loi. La

meule efface en tournant la tete d'un homme. A la
place du geste d'un autre, le seul qui lui soit
permis et qu'il repete indefiniment. c'est-a-dire
qu'il est hors de sa port6e de savoir s'il y eut
un temps ou il ne faisait pas ce geste et meme
s'il l'a accompli une premiere fois, a la place de
ce geste se 16ve lentement une machine qui
l'6x6cute, et nul ne s'est aper?u aussitot de la
substitution.8 3

An important point is that the suffering workers, wearing

dark glasses, lack any vision and, certainly, revelation

from their absorption into the inorganic.84

This is not quite true of the viewer, who participates

in this process of participation, but at a critical remove.

The opening of Caillois' review also inscribes the latter in

the factory: "L'ascenseur: Nous glissons au long d'une paroi

82Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
83Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
84Caillois alludes to their pain but subsumes this
within their relation to the space: "La sueur, la fatigue,
la souffranee de ces hommes sont seulement des symptdmes
d'une transformation plus radicale qui se manifeste de fa<?on
immediate dans la deformation monstrueuse de leurs joues"
("Symphonie" 9).
 64

p&le, plane, exsangue. Un trouble nous avertit d'une

strange modification ci subir si nous voulons entrer."85 The

ensuing shift is an eery loss of bearings, the slow

invalidation of reason which echoes the spatial

disorientation of the workers. Like "Cinema, forme de

1'esprit," Caillois invites cinema to create new coordinates

of perception:
Les souffleurs d1ampoules s'imposent comme des
creatures situ6es dans un espace inconnu et gu'on
ne peut absolument pas comprendre, aucune unit6
commune entre elles et nous. Pour qu'une
correspondance s'6tablisse entre la ou nous sommes
et la oil elles se meuvent — on n'ose dire vivent
— il faudrait changer les coordonnees de
1'esprit.86
This hallucinatory transformation of the real stirs the

viewers' unconscious but does not resolve itself into new

imagery; and the viewers themselves are less than eager for

this conceptual transformation:

II faut bien le dire: ce n'est plus l'usine ou

sont fabriques des haut-parleurs, des lampes et
autres engins bien connus, ce que les sous-titres
nous empechent d'oublier tout a fait et n'arrivent
pas a faire croire aux spectateurs qui pourtant
s'y accrochent comme a la seule chose lisible dans
ce monde non-humain, dans ce monde ferme. Et
ceux-la memes qui etaient prets a renier la
machine pour leur satisfaction theorique
per<?oivent confusement la puerilite d'une telle
reprobation et ne sont pas eloignes de comprendre
que la partie se joue plus profond^ment.87

Clinging to the subtitles despite their doubts, the viewers

85Caillois, "Symphonic" 9.
8®Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
87Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
 65

do not perceive any "visions trop lucides du delire."

Unlike Breton's "letters of desire," or Ernst's qestalt

reading of a nebulous screen, the subtitles mentioned here

are but the last vestiges of reason. A final, external,

glimpse at the factory after the visit underscores the

difficulty of revelation if we consider that the relation

between viewer and screen is analogous to that between

worker and factory-wall — engendering, then, the analogy of

screen and wall. Caillois concludes the tour of the factory

as follows:

La fagade de l'usine maintenant apparait mais a

travers un jet de vapeur oti 1'on voit que c'est
Autre chose. Le mur impeccablement dessine de
cette usine moderne est une frontiere: pour le
franchir, il faut laisser beaucoup plus que toute
l'esperance, et ce qui en sortira, sera-ce ces
colis geometriques? Pas seulement: Ce qui en
sortira n'a pas recu de nom.88

This threshold of revelation ("Autre chose") is a prison for

the workers and it requires that the viewers abandon any

"esperance." Unlike the initial board, wall, or screen of da

Vinci, Ernst and the Surrealists, it is presented at the end

rather than the outset of this visual journey; the vacant

ground of hallucination, in other words, "impeccablement

dessine," constitutes in and of itself the final epiphany,

an unexpressed intimation of that "partie [qui] se joue plus

profondement.1189

88Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
89Caillois, "Symphonie" 9..
 66

Caillois further considers the unusual correspondance

between viewer and worker in terms of the "fantastic," of

which Symphonie Industrielle provides a novel example:

Les films fantastiques en general sont

documentaires dans la mesure exacte oil ils
appartiennent a l'humain, ainsi Nosferatu le
Vampire. Mais de celui-ci on ne peut dire qu'il
est documentaire ou fantastique, cela impliquerait
que l'on peut p6n6trer dans son monde comme un
explorateur dans la premiere planete venue.90

If the exact nature of the viewer's identification with the

worker thus defies expectation, so too does the film's

•reality,1 ensuring the demise of ready critical categories:

Sa realite n'est . . . ni dans l'esthetique (la

peine des hommes, nous l'avons dit, n'y est pas
trahie), ni dans un chant de gloire a la machine
(ce qui risquerait d'etre peu serieux), ni dans
une reprobation superficielle, ni dans une
demonstration du demoniaque, ni dans un pretexte a
des libertes de dilettante, qui ne seront jamais
la terrible Liberty humaine qu'il ne suffit pas
d'appeler a nous en riant sous cape. La realite
de ce film est par-dela 1'incomprehensibility que
sa r6v61ation impose. Alors seulement, parce qu'il
nous fait depasser d'un cran les litteratures-
hors-d'oeuvre-varies, il merite d'etre appele
film.91
Caillois' final comments, though, shift from negation

to the mode of positive assertion. It is through

participation that film may transcend the limitations of

literature — even if this participation involves a

fantastic correspondance and does not produce a direct

apprehension of transcendance: "Pour ceux qui, ne disposant

90Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
91Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
 67

pas du courage n&cessaire & regarder cette bande, trouvent

par surcroit notre discours obscur, voici une consequence

absolue de la realite de ce film, sous une forme precise."92

Le Grand Jeu's metaphysical project involved "la

transformation par 1'6n6rgie vitale de la puissance de

l'homme."93 Caillois' apocalyptic vision translates this

into the materialist terms of industrial 'revolution.' His

formulaic conclusion describes the explosive force achieved

by the participation of man and machine: "La machine est

vivante de la vie de l'homme et l'homme de la vie de la

machine. Ce n'est pas contre la Machine que se tournera la

necessaire fureur destructrice de l'homme."94 The spectator

is hardly immune since he participates in this

participation, if only through his relation to the

technology of the screen.

But as we have seen, there is neither simple

participation nor correspondance — "le propre de la pensee

des primitifs, mais aussi de toute pensee poetique"

according to Gilbert-Lecomte95 — to convey the ineffable.

Caillois' revolutionary future, a curious return of the

oppressed, implies that the participation of worker and

machine will engender a monstruous automaton ("ce qui en

92Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
93Caillois, Archives II.
94Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
95Gilbert-Lecomte, "Cinema" 163.
 68

sortira n'a pas re?u de nom"5) which might orient man's

vital energy towards a material, political, and also

metaphysical revolution. It is the expression, however

paradoxical, of that "terrible Liberte humaine qu'il ne

suffit pas d'appeler a nous en riant sous cape."96 The film

thus inspires in the viewer the vague, but painful fear of

the imminent awakening of a dangerous double. And this

revelation, en creux as it were, hinges on the alternative

logic of a fantastic correspondance which does not eliminate

the differences between man and machine, life and death, or

proletariat and bourgeois.

I would like to conclude this discussion by focusing on

this emblematic description of the factory: "Une machine,

des machines, la machine: un interieur complet et

parfaitement coherent, nulle fissure pour une introduction

etrangere."97 This metaphor of coherence suggests what I

would call Caillois' paradigmatic imagination; it also sets

forth a tension which will dominate his subsequent work, the

desire to 'liberate' the workers or, in more theoretical

terms, to infiltrate absolute coherence with those

"fissures" he associates with the 'fantastic.' This view of

the factory comprises a second tension as well: this realm

which lacks all "fissure" is precisely that which will

create a "fissure" in the coherent world of the spectator.

96Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
97Caillois, "Symphonie" 9.
 69

Can we already discern here a metaphorical glimpse of the

relation between "scandale" and "justesse," an expression of

the idea that coherence can only be transgressed and

transformed by another coherence? Indeed, the reviewer's

psychasthenic absorption, and that of the viewer, give rise

by the end to a new 'osmotic' coherence: that precise

formulation of "la consequence absolue de la realite de ce

film." Volontarist as this interpretative gesture may be,

it signals an imminent 'Retour a tout' for the

viewer/reviewer, in a social as well as a metaphysical

sense.
* * *

Various reasons have been put forth to explain

Caillois' dissociation from Le Grand Jeu. Alain and Odette

Virmaux contest Marguerite Yourcenar's "Discours de

reception" pronounced at the Academie Frangaise (when she

assumed Caillois' chair) with their assertion: "[II] n'est

pas exact que Caillois . . . se soit 'desolidarise' du Grand

Jeu. . . . [Le] Grand Jeu ayant simplement cesse d'exister a

la fin de 1932, les liens se sont distendus d'eux-memes."98

However, Caillois' recollections would tend to confirm the

views of Yourcenar: "J'etais absolument persuade . . . je

98Virmaux, Gilbert-Lecomte 78. See Marguerite

Yourcenar, "Discours de reception de Madame Marguerite
Yourcenar a 1'Academie frangaise et reponse de Monsieur Jean
d'Ormesson" (Paris: Gallimard, 1981).
 70

m'imaginais, comme ils le disaient d'ailleurs, que le

surrealisme c'etait de l'anti-litterature, c'etait la fin de

la litterature, et ?a j'en 6tais persuade et c'est ce que je

voulais."99 Probably both factors were important. Caillois'

disenchantment with Gilbert-Lecomte1s high Romantic literary

esoterica was undeniable; and yet, his initial contacts with

Breton confirm the latter*s undeniable influence. Chosen by

his class-mates at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand to represent

their literary tastes in an Enquete des qoflts litt^raires

sponsored by the newspaper, L1Intransigeant (early 1932)

Caillois sent off "un dithyrambe sur le romantisme . . . il

n'y avait pour moi que le romantisme le plus aigu, le plus

exacerb6 qui m'int^ressait": Hugo (and his turning-tables),

Balzac (because of Seraphita and La recherche de 11absolu),

and Nerval ("bien-entendu") — all this "dans la tradition

du Grand Jeu."100 As the pinnacle of contemporary

literature, he mentioned the Surrealist manifestoes and sent

off the article to Breton... who requested his visit "dans

les meilleurs delais."101

"caillois, Archives III.

100Caillois, Archives II. I have not been able to find
this publication.
101Caillois, Archives II.
Chapter 2

The Ideogram

Breton's Milieu

Caillois' essay of 1970, "L1 Equivoque surr6aliste,11

would highlight a certain "ambiguite, sinon un franc

malentendu, dans mon adhesion."1 Yet, his retrospective

allusions to Surrealism tend to reflect a post-war outlook

strongly colored by neo-classical poetics, that is, a marked

hostility towards modernist aesthetics in general. While

not entirely irrelevant to his tensions with Breton, this

"equivoque" assumed a rather different cast at the time,

when La necessity d1esprit expressed Caillois' aspirations

to become the theorist or philosopher of Surrealism.2

Let me quickly review the terms of these subsequent

reminiscences. First, Surrealism was not as anti-literary

•'•Roger Caillois, Approches de 11imaqinaire (Paris:

Gallimard, 1974) 11.
2His critical acuity with regard to Surrealism is noted
by Roger Shattuck's passing lament that "Roger Caillois, the
writer and critic best equipped to reassess the role of
dreams, games, psychic experiments, and the occult in
Surrealism, died in 1978 before he had collected and revised
his early writings on the subject" (The Innocent Eve [New
York: Washington Square Press, 1986] 55). Shattuck is most
likely referring to the manuscript of La necessite
d1esprit, published in 1981.
 72

as Caillois had hoped, since it was then tine, he felt, to

•liquidate1 literature in view of more methodical research:

"Le surrealisme — tout comme la psychanalyse et le marxisme

auxquels j'adherai avec un egal enthousiasme, je devrais

dire avec la meme juvenile boulimie — se trouvait tout

naturellement 1•instrument historique d'une telle

liquidation.1,3 More frequently, Caillois has evoked a

specific dispute about automatic writing. The Archives

interview recalls his initial passion for Surrealist games

exploring the mechanisms of the imagination, procedures

which he quickly came to consider deceptive parlor-games

since the participants merely mimicked the common language

of the group — a shortcoming, he remarks, that did not

escape Breton's attention.4 Caillois' eulogy for Breton in

the NRF (Apr. 1967) mentions a theory of the image juste

which he claims to have developed at the time to challenge

automat ism, "dont 1'unicrue vertu consiste a decouraaer la

3Caillois, Cases d'un echiouier (Paris: Gallimard,

1970) 212.
4Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle, 7 reels (Paris: Soci^te Fran?aise de Production,
1971): III. I will henceforth refer to this as the Archives
interview; roman numerals will indicate the individual
reel. He remarks: "Je me suis apergu tout de suite pour
l'ecriture automatique que <?a ne donnait que des poncifs
surrealistes . . . .[Ce] n'est pas du tout une revelation de
1•inconscient, c'est au contraire un asservissement de la
conscience et de tout ce qui fait le prix, pour moi, de
1'intelligence et de la reflexion, un asservissement aux
mecanismes les plus simples et ceux qui ont le moins
d'interet, d'ailleurs Breton s'en rendait compte
aussi"(III).
 73

moindre -justification.1,5 As described, here, in rather

elliptical terms, the image juste was a new correspondance:

"une connivence nouvelle dans le r^seau de 1•inextricable

univers."6 It was one that required a form of justification

by "1'esprit,11 either acknowledgement or else refutation

at the risk of "mauvaise foi."7 Although Caillois did

indeed oppose "justesse" to "l'arbitraire" in his work on

psychological associationism in the early 30s, we shall see

that this was a peculiar form of "justesse." His later

definition of the image juste as a rigorously anti-automatic

and conscious ploy far better conveys the Surrealist legacy

in his post-war outlook than it does his actual response to

the movement at the time. Collected in La necessite

d'esprit. Caillois' Surrealist writing does not reject

automatism at all but merely replaces ecriture automatigue

with pensee automatigue. although such automatism is

certainly not identical with Breton's usage of the concept.

Moreover, Caillois' early union with Surrealism hardly

reflects a firm anti-literary stance; just as La necessity

d'esprit displaces automatic writing by automatic thought,

so too it displaces "le lyrisme" by a variant of pensee

automatigue. namely pensee lvrigue.

To a certain extent, the terms of Caillois' Surrealist

5Caillois, Cases 218 [emphasis added].

6Caillois, Cases 218.
7Caillois, Cases 218.
 74

"Equivoque" converge with those generally proper to

Surrealism, whose distinguishing trait, according to

Blanchot, was to yoke together irreconcilable tendencies.

One concerned the status of literature: "Plus de

litt^rature, et pourtant un effort de recherche litteraire,

un souci d'alchimie figuree, une attention constante donnee

aux proced6s et aux images, & la critique et a la

technique."8 Then, there was the vexed issue of automatism,

of which Blanchot had this to say:

[L]e fait que Breton s'y soit toujours tenu avec

une perseverance infatigable, qu'il ait cherch£ a
la sauver de tous les naufrages et meme de ses
propres doutes . . . montre assez que cette
m6thode n'etait pas une invention factice et
qu'elle exprimait une des principales aspirations
de notre litterature.9

At no moment of Surrealism's history, perhaps, did these

ambiguities rise to the fore with greater urgency than in

the early 30s when Breton was seeking a redressement to

remedy Surrealism's convulsive internal situation and its

precarious external or historical posture. He would eagerly

respond to Caillois' letter in April 1932: ". . . le

surrealisme se passe avantageusement, vous le savez, de

toutes sortes d'appuis mais mes amis et moi ne concevons pas

d'aide plus precieuse que celle que vous offrez de nous

8Maurice Blanchot, "Quelques reflexions sur le

surrealisme," L'arche 8 (Aug. 1945): 99.
9Blanchot, "Reflexions" 95.
 75

apporter.1,10 The latter was joining the Surrealists shortly

after their p^riode raisonnante and during the initial phase

of their subsequent autonoroie from the Party, as Nadeau

labels the years 1930-1939 — although between 1930 and

1933, this autonomy was highly ambiguous. "Peu sensible k

1'ouvri6risme communiste, ignorant des r6alit6s

prol^tariennes, le surr6alisme demeure bel et bien 6cartel6,

coince entre le marteau du Parti et sa propre dynamique

interne" writes Pascal Balmand.11 Along with other new

recruits (Rene Char, Pierre Yoyotte, Salvador Dali, and

Jules Monnerot), Caillois thus witnessed the years of Le

Surrealisme Au Service De La Revolution, loosely framed by

Breton's Second manifeste and the Surrealists* formal

expulsion from the Communist Party in 1933. Since he

remained with Breton through the end of 1934, Caillois then

experienced the transition from SASDLR (1930-33) to the

apolitical, luxurious art-journal Minotaure (1933-39) which

10Andre Breton, letter to Roger Caillois, Apr. 14 1932,

Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 182.
i:LPascal Balmand, "Breton, Aragon... Les surrealistes

et les communistes," L'histoire 127 (Nov. 1989): 40.

Between Artaud's total Surrealist revolution and Naville's
communist revolution, writes Balmand, "les surrealistes
optent, avec Breton, pour la corde raide du non-choix, avec
tous les tiraillements et toutes les excommunications que
cela suppose11 (40). Despite the Surrealists' troubled
efforts to persist in the Communist struggle, Breton's
Entretiens notes that "1'experience surrealiste ne s'en
poursuit pas moins de mani&re totalement independante et on
peut meme dire qu'elle atteint & ce moment sa plus haute
periode, qu'elle ne s'est jamais encore accomplie avec cet
<§clat"(155).
 76

the Surrealists eventually came to control. If Ren6ville's

attack on "Front Rouge" had decisively destroyed Le Grand

Jeu. the "Aragon Affair" in early 1932 was a crisis, of

course, for the Surrealists as well. Breton's defense of

Aragon with "L'affaire Aragon" had denied, in effect, that

poetry should be considered an exact form of expression with

legal significance; and shortly thereafter, he would publish

Misfere de la poesie (L1affaire Araaon devant 1'opinion

publioue^ to justify what could be interpreted as literary

evasiveness. In great part, this betokened the Surrealists*

difficulties in reconciling Marx and Rimbaud, in enacting

the dialectical materialism charted by the Second manifeste

(1929) — which subsumed the problem of social action within

"un probleme plus general que le surrealisme s'est mis en

devoir de soulever et qui est celui de 1'expression humaine

sous toutes ses formes."12 Breton's letter to Caillois

remarks: "Vous avez peut-etre appris que la publication de

'Misere de la Poesie" avait eu, au sein meme du surrealisme,

d'assez graves consequences. II m'importerait grandement de

savoir comment quelqu'un qui se situe comme vous le faites

peut en juger.13 Our only hint, in this regard, is

Caillois' later comment that "L* affaire Aragon" was the

first Surrealist petition he signed, and that it did not

12Andr6Breton, Manifestes du surrealisme (Paris:

Gallimard, 1985) 101.
13Andre Breton, letter to Roger Caillois, Apr. 14 1932,
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 182.
 77

meet with his unqualified approval.14

Still, his efforts between 1932 and 1934 loosely comply

with Breton's intricate injunction in Misere de la po6sie to

distinguish between poetic and political or social

expression.15 Caillois' involvement with this latter and

complex aspect of Surrealism can be traced through a series

of manifestoes and meetings I will briefly review. After

"1/affaire Aragon," he signed an anti-colonialist tract, a

sequel to those leveled against the Exposition coloniale by

the Surrealists and the Communists in 1931 (and tentatively

attributed to May-June 1932).16 In June 1932, he signed

Breton's La mobilisation contre la guerre n'est pas la paix

attacking the Amsterdam-Pleyel peace conferences, to be held

in August.17 Evoking Stalin's fear that France — as a

14Caillois, Archives III. Yet his recollections are

excessively vague: "Qu'il ne fallait pas prendre la poesie a
la lettre. Qa nous l'admettions tous. Mais qu'un poeme
n'avait pas d'importance . . . nous n'etions pas du tout
disposes a 1'admettre"(III).
15Breton had criticized Aragon*s poem as a "poeme de

circonstance" focused on a "drame social" rather than a

"drame poetique" (Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du surrealisme
[Paris: Seuil, 1964] 144-145). See Misere de la po6sie.
1'"affaire Araaon" devant 1'opinion publicrue (Paris: Ed.
Surrealistes, 1932).
16See Jose Pierre ed., Tracts Surrealistes et
declarations collectives 1922-1969 2 vols (Paris: Terrain
vague, 1982) 2: 441-443.
17Gilbert-Lecomte would write to Daumal: "Quant a
Mobilisation je crois qu'il est bon que Caillois soit entre
en contact avec Breton. D'ailleurs s'il veut faire quelque
chose, ce n'est guere sur nous qu'il peut compter. Helas
pour 1'instant. . . . Je pr6fere Rolland c'est-a-dire la
rigueur morale et le sens d'Adam Kadmon a une soi-disant
 78

highly militarized and 'reactionary1 country — might embark

upon an anti-Bolshevik crusade, historians explain that the

Soviet leader strategically encouraged that very pacifism

defied by the Surrealists in the name of Communism.18 In

September 1932, Caillois would write to a provincial friend

named Gurnaud, excusing his absence from a "Compte-Rendu, ou

la brutality polici^re a 6t6 plus qu'accoutumee. Je vous

envoie ci-joint un tract a propos de ce Congres (il date du

d€but de juillet). . . .»19 in December 1932, the

Surrealists were allowed to join the Communist-led

Association des Artistes et Ecrivains Revolutionnaires

(A.E.A.R.) founded earlier that year. Here, Caillois drafted

a pamphlet (now lost) upon the burning of the Reichstag in

February 1933, a gesture which confirmed the prominent

intellectual status of this twenty-year old: "[C'est]

Breton, Vaillant-Couturier qui representait le Parti, et moi

. . . qui l'avions redige."20

rigueur seulement spirituelle. Ouf! Dis ga a Caillois de ma

part" (Correspondance. ed. Pierre Minet [Paris: Gallimard,
1971] 242).
18Jean-Charles Gateau and Georges Nivat present a
heightened version of this manifesto, drafted in July 1932,
and titled "Texte de Breton ecrit pour la Literaturnava
Gazeta a la demande de Romoff" ("Les surrealistes et
l'U.R.S.S.: histoire d'une declaration," Cahiers du XXeme
siecle 1975: 149-157). It remained unpublished given the
Surrealists* enthusiastic view of strife: "Nous ne sommes
pas de ces esprits religieux qui voient en la guerre une
catastrophe destinde a faire de I'humanite une mare de sang
et une ruine affreuse."
19Roger Caillois, letter to Gurnaud, Sept. 14 1932,
C.5, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
20Caillois, Archives II.
 79

The Surrealists were expelled from the A.E.A.R. by the

end of 1933, both for their anti-pacifism and, most

saliently, for Ferdinand Alqui£'s highly critical review (in

SASDLR of May 1933) of the Soviet movie Le chemin de la vie.

(A second, undated, letter from Caillois to Gurnaud mentions

plans to go see this film, "bien que les personnes en qui

j'ai le plus confiance s'accordent a dire qu'il est contre-

r&volutionnaire au premier chef."21) In the early years of

Minotaure. the Surrealists did not forswear their political

concerns, now a dual hostility towards Stalin and Hitler.

Together with Breton, Caillois rallied once again to the

Communist-led A.E.A.R. during the tumultuous days of

February 1934 marking the historic rise of the Front

Populaire in response to fascist riots on February 6.

Whisked away by a police-van from the counter-demonstrations

of February 12, he signed the Surrealist Appel a la lutte

four days later calling for "la formation urgente d'une

unite d'action etendue a toutes les organisations ouvrieres,

la creation d'un organisme 'capable d'en faire une realite

et une arme.'"22 With the other Surrealists, he then joined

the Comite de Vigilance des Intellectuels Anti-Fascistes

(C.I.V.A.) founded in March 1934 to align Communists and

non-Communists in the fight against fascism. Despite this

21Roger
Caillois, letter to Gurnaud, [undated], C.10,
Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
22Nadeau, Histoire 157.
 80

renewed collaboration, the Surrealist links with the

A.E.A.R. were fragile and decisively undermined by Breton's

manifesto in late 1934, La planete sans visa (the last

signed by Caillois), protesting Trotsky's expulsion from

France where he had sought political asylum.

Although Caillois' early adolescence was marked by

anti-militarism, the first sign of a profound and lasting

anti-nationalism,23 he quickly became favorable to

belligerence: first through the dadaist metaphysics of Le

Grand Jeu and, more explicitly now, through the Surrealist

project to reconcile Marx and Sade.24 In this respect, his

political outlook quite differed from that of his fellow

Kh&gneux and Normaliens whose links with the Communists, if

any, were not mediated by the Surrealists; Jean-Francois

Sirinelli insists upon Alain, whose influence from 1920

until 1935 crystallized around "la resistance aux pouvoirs

et, surtout, le pacifisme.,l25 It should be said, though,

that Caillois' relation to the affective violence of

politics was not simply a function of Surrealism, and he

evokes his "communisme d'entrainement" by Breton's group:

23caillois, Archives I.
24Caillois, Archives II.
25Jean-Frangois Sirinelli, G6n6ration intellectuelle;
Khcianeux et Normaliens dans 1'entre-deux-auerres (Paris:
Fayard, 1988) 429. By 1935, the urgency of historical
events had attenuated this "combat contre la guerre, dont
r^sonna 1'etablissement une quinzaine d'annees durant.
."(535).
 81

"J'ai jamais eu la bosse communiste, j'avais la bosse

sociologique. C'est tout & fait autre chose."26 This

comment in the Archives interview highlights the theoretical

nature of his approach, that is to say, his theoretical

participation in Surrealist politics: "Cela doit sembler

curieux maintenant, mais je ne faisais pas de distinction

entre mes 6tudes de sociologie religieuse que je suivais

chez Mauss et ma participation aux activites du groupe

surrealiste."27 And he did not just study with Marcel

Mauss. Chastel recalls that they would go to hear "G.

Dumezil ou Granet plutot qu'Alain qui faisait alors

fureur."28 Marcel Granet was applying Maussian sociology to

the cultural imagination of ancient China.29 Dumezil, who

would later consider Caillois his prize disciple, was

charting the violent themes of comparative Indo-European

mythology. These orientations presupposed a degree of

affective motivation in man, involving "prestige,"

"ivresse," or "le sacre," which could not be reduced to

rational or utilitarian norms. Athough neither Mauss nor

Dumezil were engaging in open attacks upon Marx, they were

nonetheless inciting their students to question Marxist

2®Caillois, Archives III.

27Caillois, Archives III.
28AndreChastel, "Loyautes de 1'intelligence," Roger
Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 31.
29See Marcel Granet, La civilisation chinoise (1929)

and La pensee chinoise (1934).

 82

sociology; in other words, profit was not of the essence,

but rather passions; "pas forc6ment religieuses — mais des

passions ostentatoires, par exemple, de d£penses... C'est

plus tard ce qui m'a rapproche de Bataille.1,30 If this

alternative psychology confirmed, to a certain extent, the

influence of psychoanalysis and Beyond the Pleasure

Principle, it also converged with the fascination exerted by

so-called pre-Hitlerian literature, such writers as Ernst

von Salomon and Ernst Junger: "Tous ces romans exacerbes, et

d'une cruaute totale, d'une frenesie de moeurs

incroyables.1131

3®Caillois, Archives III.

31Caillois, Archives IV. Referring to this pre-
hitlerian literature, he adds: "D'ailleurs, je les appelle
•pre-hitl^riennes' car aucun d'eux n'a et6 hitlerien, je
crois"(IV). He is making a curious, perhaps convenient,
error about Junger.
 83

La ndcessitd d'esprit

Caillois' analyses of the social imagination would

become increasingly sophisticated over the next few years

through his coursework at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes

Etudes and as a function of the evolving political

situation. From 1932-1934, however, his writing primarily

addressed the aesthetic and literary imagination. In a

project which generally corresponds to the Surrealist's

current "volonte d'objectification,"32 La necessite d'esprit

will seek to legitimize Surrealism's "objectivite absolue"33

through the theory of the ideoaramme. Breton's Premier

manifeste had outlined the hallowed formula of

associationist arbitraire in 1924 (revising Reverdy's

principle of conscious poetic justesse):

C'est du rapprochement en quelque sorte fortuit

des deux termes qu'a jailli une lumiere
particuliere, lumifcre de 1'image. . . . [I]l n'est
pas, a mon sens, au pouvoir de 1'homme de
concerter le rapprochement de deux realites si
distantes. Le principe d'association des idees,
tel qu'il nous apparait, s'y oppose.34

32Nadeau, Histoire 153.

33Roger Caillois, La n6cessit6 d'esprit (Paris:
Gallimard, 1981) 24.
34Breton, Manifestes 49.
 84

Six years later, though, the Second manifeste had replaced

the image of a spark with that of a deliberately wrought

short-circuit; and Breton complains — very much like

Caillois — that automatic texts are often "des morceaux de

bravoure" given the lack of introspection on the part of

their practitioners.35 Primarily inspired by Freud (rather

than by Janet, and others) at this point, Breton invokes

those famous "6tendues logiaues particulieres, tres

precisement celles ou jusqu'ici la faculte logique, exercde

en tout et pour tout dans le conscient, n'agit pas."3®

Despite his insistence upon "la vie passive de

1'intel1igence."3 7 he urges that the Surrealists' "auto-

observation" grant them a "conscience nouvelle" of Freudian

sublimation, whence a better grasp of "inspiration":

. . et, a partir du moment ou l'on cesse de

tenir celle-ci pour une chose sacree, que, tout a
la confiance qu»ils ont en son extraordinaire
vertu, ils ne songent qu'a faire tomber ses
derniers liens, voire — ce qu'on n'eut jamais
encore ose concevoir — a se la soumettre.38

La necessite d1esprit echoed such Surrealist ambitions

to make a more deliberate usage of the imagination, and in a

manner that refocused attention from automatic writing to

the mechanisms of reverie, dreams and hallucinations. Such

35Breton, Manifestes 107.

36Breton, Manifestes 107.
37Breton, Manifestes 111.
38Breton, Manifestes 110.
a turn to "objects" and visual automatism would prompt Jean

Wahl's query in 1934: "Mais ne sent-on pas ici un conflit au

sein du surr6alisme? Veut-il atteindre l'objet, un objet

irrationnel, ou est-il essentiellement oral, et faut-il

donner le pas au langage sur la vision comme le pense

parfois, si je le comprends bien, Andre Breton?"39 Indeed,

the Surrealist redressement witnessed the shift from

Breton's automatic writing to Dali's "critical paranoia," a

salvaging factor in the early phase of Surrealist

"autonomie," according to Nadeau. He remarks upon that

active reshaping of the world through desire which

distinguished Dali's predominantly visual delirium, or

"systematisation parfaite et coherente, l'obtention d'un

etat de toute-puissance."40 Laurent Jenny notes a

concomitant shift in the discussion of automatism, from

"poetry" to "lyricism":

And "lyricism" no longer refers either to a

subjective outpouring or to any specific literary
form. As early as 1929, Dali redefined it as "one
of man's most violent [aspirations]" which can be
approached only by "instinct" and "the most
irrational faculties of the mind." This renewed
acceptation of the word lyricism is made still
more precise by Roger Caillois, who, since 1933,
had been working on an essay on "mental
necessity."41

39Jean Wahl, Review of Minotaure 3/4, NRF 42 (March

1934): 565.
40Nadeau, Histoire 148.
41Laurent Jenny, "From Breton to Dali: The Adventures

of Automatism," October Winter 1989: (109).

 86

Caillois' essay sought to systematize or absorb

Surrealism within a vaster system, to show that the

movement's strategies ignored the laws of necessity and

were themselves 'unnecessary' since the phenomena they

tried to provoke were objective and already there,

expressing a deeper a priori: "la surd6termination

syst^matique de 1 'univers.1,42 Two Encruetes in 1933 signal

Caillois' particular orientation in this regard, one deeply

influenced by Parmenedean monism. His response to the

inquiry on "la connaissance irrationnelle de l'objet" of

SASDLR of May 1933 associates the crystal ball in question

("A quel systeme philosophique appartient-elle?") with

Parmenides? Breton and Dali choose Heraclitus while Gala,

Giacommetti, and Peret choose Hegel.43 Hegel's great

precursor, Heraclitus perceived the world as an agonistic

clash of elements while, according to Parmenides, the

multiple is contained in the one. That same year, the

famous questionnaire in Minotaure (3/4 1933) concerning

"Rencontres" presented Caillois' view of universal

overdetermination.44 Breton and Eluard formulate their

42Caillois, Necessite 153.

43ArthurHarfaux and Maurice Henry, "A propos de
1'experience portant sur la connaissance irrationnelle des
Objets," SASDLR 5-6 1933: 23-24.
44AndreBreton, and Paul Eluard, "'Pouvez-vous dire
quelle a ete la rencontre capitale de votre vie?'/ 'Jusqu'a
quel point cette rencontre vous a-t-elle donne, vous donne-
t-elle 1*impression du fortuit? du necessaire?' Enquete."
Minotaure 3/4 (1933): 101-107.
 87

inquiry in terms of le hasard obiectif: "la rencontre d'une

causalite externe et d'une finalite interne."45 But

Caillois denies this opposition and the very principle of

"rencontre," as well, to assert:

Les quelques recherches positives du surrealisme

sont autant de tentatives methodiques destinees a
deceler la trame des surdeterminations lyriques
dont la rigoureuse systematisation latente ne
permet pas de laisser aux pretendues rencontres la
couleur de miracle dont les pare la m6connaissance
de leur syntaxe. II n'est de rencontre qu'ci la
maniere m6canique et significative des
conjonctions d'astres.46

La necessite d'esprit develops its study of

psychological associationism, that is, of "surdeterminations

lyriques," by reworking psychasthenia with the Freudian

concept of overdetermination. Caillois' text shares the

introspective bent of The Interpretation of Dreams, engaging

in an equally obsessive intepretation of private obsession.

Laurent Jenny has remarked that the personal "tableau

psycho-mythologique" outlined in La necessite d'esprit

(melancholia, the femme fatale and the cruel female

sovereign) recalls Leiris' contemporaneous L'age d'homme.47

45Breton and Eluard, "Rencontre" 105.

46Breton and Eluard, "Rencontre" 105. Jean Wahl's
review of this issue notes of these responses: "les plus
philosophiques et qui se completent d'ailleurs sont celles
d'Alquie et de Parodi, d'Audiberti et de Caillois. . ."
(Rev. of Minotaure 3/4, 565).
47The two works, as Jenny remarks, however, will
ultimately give rise to "elaborations poetiques radicalement
opposees. D'un cot6 ce qui va devenir une autobiographie
infinie [Leiris], de l1autre une mythologie generale"
("Laurent Jenny, "La felure et la parenthese,11 Temps de la
 88

Attuned, as we have seen, to the morbid imagination of Le

Grand Jeu. Caillois' obsessions reveal little amour fou.

Writing to his friend Gurnaud, in September 1932, he posits

a grim reading-list: Janet, Les nevroses ("c'est assez

necessaire a lire"); Vach6, Lettres de guerre: Kierkegaard,

Traitd du ddsespoir: "toutes les semaines dans L'Intrepide

•L*Ombre Inaccessible1"; the only works of "litterature

moderne" are Eluard's La vie immediate and Breton's Le

revolver h cheveux blancs.48 He thereupon remarks:

J'allais 6crire: a ne pas lire... les livres de

Lawrence. Mais laissons-les b6neficier du doute
jusqu'a plus ample information. Seulement dfes
maintenant on peut refuser de consid6rer "L'Amant
de Lady Chatterley" comme une expression valable
de 1*amour encore que ce livre soit utile dans la
mesure — faible — ou il aide a faire enfin
comprendre que ladite expression valable est
necessairement pornographique. ... 49

Writing' in 1979 about Caillois and the College de

sociolocrie. Jean Duvignaud remarked that the group's effort

to infuse sociology and anthropology with an existential

content arose from the influence of psychoanalysis on Leiris

and Bataille:

reflexion II 1981: 425).

48Roger Caillois, letter to Gurnaud, Sept. 14, 1932,
C.5, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
49Roger Caillois, letter to Gurnaud, Sept. 14, 1932,
C.5, Fonds Speciaux, Biblioth&que Municipale, Vichy. Chastel
specifically recalled that Caillois wrote pornographic
poetry in the early 30s (interview). Other sources have
mentioned that he engaged in pornographic writing (together
with Paulhan) well after the war; clearly more secretive
than those of Bataille, these texts — many or few?
— remain entirely unknown.
 89

L'un et 1 • autre s1 engagent dans une sorte

d'ethnographie d•eux-memes, comme si le
d£chiffrement de leur etre les preparait au
d6chiffrement de l'univers. Voie dans laquelle
Caillois, pour sa part, ne s'est engage que dans
son dernier livre, Le fleuve Alphee.^"

Given the publication of La n6cessit6 d1esprit in 1981, this

view must be revised. Caillois1 initial interest in

psychasthenia involved its depersonalizing aspect, as we

have seen, but his Surrealist focus now attends to the

structured or determined nature of such obsessional thought.

A lyrical essay appended to the conclusion, and attributed

to an earlier phase, sets the stage for the project as a

whole, declaring the need to interpret, that is

systematically to absorb, those "precieux residus" in the

human imagination — "obsedantes exigences positives ou

negatives des multiples foyers d'effroi ou de d6sir"51

— which can reveal the determined workings of the death-

instinct, or the link of eros and thanatos.52 Radically

accentuating the dedoublement of the psychasthenic subject

to grasp the mechanism of his own ailment, he thus seeks to

improve upon what he calls the pitiful state of

psychological associationism:

50Jean Duvignaud, "Roger Caillois et 1'imaginaire,"

Cahiers internationaux de socioloaie 46 (Jan.-June 1979):
92.
51Caillois, N6cessit6 180.
52Caillois'essay, "DANGER DE VIE; De la necessity
lyrique-6rotique" rejects literary treatments of this
crucial topic in sentimentalized or exagerated terms.
 90

On a bien suppose qu'une representation en

appelait une autre en vertu de certaines lois,
mais les lois d6couvertes 6taient si vagues
qu'elles permettaient & n'importe quelle
representation d'induire h peu prfes n'importe
quelle autre, de sorte que l'on ne se trouvait pas
plus avance qu1auparavant pour la plus grande joie
des partisans de la liberty psychologique.53

To this end, Caillois coopts Freudian overdetermination

from its psychoanalytic context to achieve "une plus

parfaite systematisation de la conscience"54 or "la

coherence infinie de 1 • imagination affective.1,55 He thus

conflates overdetermination from The Interpretation of

Dreams. "The Dream of the Botanical Monograph," with the

obsessional automatism of Janet's psychasthenia, while

ignoring the repression or censorship crucial to the

Freudian mind. He seeks to absorb obsessional "foyers" or

the residual imagination into a theoretical superstructure

that projects beyond the subjective and collective into

objective or universal terms. Caillois aims, in effect, to

objectify the Surrealist "imaginaire" through a whimsical

and interdisciplinary neo-Kantianism, which locates a

universal imagination, one whose universality he confirms

through biological analogy. La necessite d*esprit hence

culminates, on one level, with a theory of ideogrammes

obiectifs: privileged objects which constitute, as we will

53Caillois, Necessite 33.

54Caillois, Necessite 99.
55Caillois, Necessite 153.•
 91

see, overdetermined modes of representation within the

natural world. The privileged example, here, is the

praying-mantis, an insect invested with a dense power of

fascination.56 The painter Andr6 Masson, self-proclaimed

rebel of Surrealism, would praise Caillois' amplified study

of "La mante religieuse" in Mesures (April 1937):

J'ai lu peu de choses, depuis longtemps qui m'ait

a ce point interess£. II faudra que je rassemble,
pour vous les montrer un jour, tous les dessins,
— les etudes — que j *ai faites depuis quelques
annees ayant pour theme l'insecte imperial (comme
je me suis toujours plu & l'appeler). Certains
coincident assez avec des passages de "La mante
religieuse" par exemple: "Identification d'une
mante avec un chardon"; "Apparition d'une mante
sur la plage de Tossa" (elle provoque une panique)
etc... Mais il faudrait comme vous l'avez fait, a
propos d'un insecte. atteindre a l'universel.^7
* * *

Caillois endowed his study of "1'6lament dynamique de

la vie mentale"58 with the following fearsome subtitle:

"Etude analytique des mecanismes de surdetermination dans la

pensee automatique et lyrique et du developpement des themes

affectifs dans la conscience individuelle." This gives

56We
will later discuss Caillois1 "La mante religieuse"
(Minotaure 5 [1934]: 23-26) which explains that id^oarammes
obiectifs reflect not merely neo-Kantian a priori forms of
perception and sensation but "r^alisent materiellement dans
le monde ext^rieur les virtualit6s lvrioues et passionnelles
de la conscience" (Necessity 26).
57Andre Masson, letter to Roger Caillois, Nov. 30 1937,

Andr6 Masson: Le rebelle du surrealisme. ed. Frangoise Will-

Levaillant (Paris: Hermann, 1976) 275 [emphasis added].

5®Caillois, Necessite 33.

 92

little hint of the work's pronounced dialogical motivation,

a contextual project which has never really been explored,

and is difficult to gauge for several reasons. First,

Caillois' posture of scientific detachment generally

refrains from explicit polemics. Then, the very

circumstances of the work's conception and publication

complicate chronological analysis the work was not published

as a whole until 1981, even though the manuscript was

completed by the end of 1934.59 This text incorporates

essays published at the time with minor revisions, new

frames or amplifications — and several other essays, dating

from Caillois' Surrealist phase as well. The following

discussion will respect the order of the work, addressing:

"Specifications de la poesie" (1933) (amplified in La

necessite d1esprit): Caillois' response to Breton's Vases

communicants and to Dali's "critical paranoia" (essays

unpublished at the time); a dialogue with Tzara in "Analyse

et commentaire d'un exemple d'association libre d'id6es"

(1934/1935); finally, the more philosophical and scientific

chapter, "Systematisation et determination," (1934) and the

59Caillois submitted the manuscript of La necessite

d'esprit to Jose Corti and G.L.M. (Guy Levis-Mano) in 1935,
after his break with Surrealism, but without success. A
letter from Tristan Tzara to Caillois, dated Dec. 4 1935,
remarks: "Vu Corti 1'autre jour qui m'a dit qu'il s'occupait
de votre livre. Chez L.M. pas de resultat" (Roger Caillois
"Cahiers pour un temps" 199). It is not known why Corti did
not publish the work.
 93

work's conclusion.60
Noting, at one point, Surrealism's evolution "vers des

ambitions de plus en plus scientifiques,"61 Caillois'

lengthy monograph begins as a commentary on literature to

conclude in philosophical and scientific terms while

attending throughout to the question of "lyricism," which

the preface positions as an attack upon poesie pure. Most

likely written in conclusion, this preface refers to the

work as a whole:

Peut-etre si on avait appele pensee lyrique et non

pas lyrisme tout court les mecanismes qui font
l'objet de cette etude, un nombre considerable de
grossieres et peu comprehensibles erreurs, au
premier rang desquelles il convient de placer la
conception exceptionnellement inintelligente de la
poesie pure, auraient-elles ete evitees.62

For his high-school journal, Libre critique. (1927-28),

Caillois had attacked Valery's intellectualist poetics: "la

60Here are the texts published at the time and

simultaneously reincorporated into the body of the work:
Response to Breton and Eluard, "'Pouvez-vous dire quelle a
ete la rencontre capitale de votre vie?' Enquete," Minotaure
3/4 (1933); "Specifications de la poesie," SASDLR 5 (May
1933); Response to "Sur la connaissance irrationelle de
l'objet: Boule de cristal, un morceau de velours rose; Sur
les possibilites irrationelles de penetration et
d'orientation dans un tableau; Sur les possibilites
irrationelles de vie a une date quelconque," SASDLR 6 (May
1933); "Systematisation et determination," Documents 34
(June 1934); "La mante religieuse," Minotaure 5 (1934);
"Analyse et commentaire d'un exemple d'association libre
d'idees," Recherches philosophioues 4 (1934-35).
61Caillois, Necessity 48.
62Caillois, Necessite 18. At this time, "pure poetry"
was chiefly associated with Vaiery and l'Abbe Bremond
(Poesie pure 1926).
 94

po£sie — malgr6 ce que dit monsieur Valery — ne se pense,

ni ne s'ecrit, elle se tait et se vit: elle-meme est silence

et vie."63 When Libre critique became La n6cessit6

d'esprit. Caillois1 literary agenda reversed the terms of

his prior critique, albeit still defining poetry against

Valery: as the expression of overdetermined thought rather

than as poetic language divorced from the content of

thought. And yet, if we disregard the premise of universal

overdetermination, Caillois1 very quest for structure, for

poetry as system, is not unrelated to Valery's definition of

poetry as a "jeu, mais solennel, mais regie, mais

significatif.1,64 So too, I might add, does the analytical

method of La n6cessit6 d'esprit recall the "experiences

enivrantes" of Monsieur Teste; l'"etre absorbe dans sa

variation, celui qui devient son systeme." Caillois would

actually discuss his ambivalent affinities with Val6ry in

the post-war period, when his aesthetic approach had come to

oppose that of the avant-garde.65

In the early 30s, however, this quest for the latent

systematization or condensation of Surrealist imagery

strikes the reader as an idiosyncratic form of Cubist

63RogerCaillois, "Paul Val6ry contre la poesie,"

Libre critique 23 (1927/28). Rpt. in Roger Caillois.
"Cahiers pour un temps" 153-154.
64Valery qtd. in Marcel Raymond, De Baudelaire au
surrealisme (Paris: Jos6 Corti, 1966) 158.
65In
1946, Caillois would publish an "Eloge de Paul
Val6ry" Cahiers du Sud 276-278 (1946): 299-306.
 95

poetics. The difference, here, is Caillois' scientific and

analytical ambition which seeks to set Surrealism back on

track via the affective semiotics of the iddoaramme. It is

specifically conceived to allow for the absorption of a

primarily visual pensee automatioue within a linguistic

superstructure. "Specifications de la poesie" distinguishes

it from Egyptian hieroglyphics (which merely reconcile the

visual and the verbal) by stressing its mental or affective

nature.66 The transcription of obsession, this paradigm is

predicated upon a tripartite linguistic schema — word, idea

("concept"), and object — reflecting the rather Bergsonian

distinction between "le caractere concret, singulier,

mouvant des realites de la conscience et 1'abstraction, la

g6n6ralite, la permanence du sens des mots."67 Andrd

Chastel has described Caillois as an anti-Bergsonian to the

extent that he denied the radical opposition between

"l'energie spirituelle" and "la science."68 Indeed, the

ideoaramme must bridge or absorb these three levels of word,

idea, and object, reducing them to a common

phenomenological ground which Caillois calls that of

aperception.69 Their differentiation involves not

66Caillois, Necessite 28.

67Caillois, Necessite 22.
68Andre Chastel, personal interview, March 1988,
Cambridge, Mass.
69Caillois, Necessite 28.
Saussurean arbitrariness but 11 inddpendance affective" in the

mind of any one individual, determined

par l'objet, c'est-&-dire par son potentiel de
representations ou d1 excitations collectives
(ainsi la psychanalyse et la Gestalt-theorie
r6vfelent dans des domaines diff6rents 1*existence
de symboles et de formes attractives de valeur
universelle) — par le sujet, c'est-a-dire par la
systematisation consciente et inconsciente de ses
souvenirs et tendances, d'un mot, par sa vie — et
enfin par leurs pr6c6dents rapports, c'est-a-dire
par le "ddcor" des occasions ou ils se sont deja
trouves en presence. . . .70

As for the iddoaramme's status as representation, the

movement's young new theoretician invokes a Hegelian twist

that deviates from the dialectics of the Second manifeste

when he claims that Surrealism should adopt

. comme maxime de ses experiences le tr&s

Evident aphorisme de Hegel: 'Rien n'est plus reel
que 1•apparence en tant qu'apparence.• C'est
aussi l'epigraphe de toute poesie, qui renonce a
beneficier de ses privileges artistiques pour se
presenter comme science.71

Hence, Caillois does not recuperate "1'imaginaire" within

the "r6el" in the way that Le revolver a cheveux blancs

declared "l1imaginaire c'est ce qui tend k devenir reel" and

the way that Breton's strategies translate representations

into surreal perceptions. Instead, Caillois seems to be

outlining an omnipresent and objective "surreality." As

ideoarammes. aperceptions already constitute surreal

representations and "le r6el" already constitutes

70Caillois, Necessity 25.

71Caillois, Ndcessitd 27.
 97

"1'imaginaire," although this has become 1'imagination

empirioue.72

The ideoaramme participates in an infinite series of

dynamic correspondances, "representations intellectuelles,

affectives ou motrices, qui en principe s'enchainent

indefiniment et aboutissent a toutes les autres sans

exception" — driven by their "determinisme propre."73 Like

overdetermined Freudian symbols, these accumulate a

considerable affective charge within the imagination of any

one individual. Unlike Freudian symbols, they also possess

an objective, or constant, meaning. Such "solidarity

d'origine empirique"74 promotes "their contagious quality, an

expansive and integrative capacity — one of fluid

"contamination.1,75 It is what renders them lyrical, writes

Caillois, "si l'on convient que c'est un tel imperatif

d'exaltation et non on ne sait quel caractere musical ou

esthetique qui doit definir la pens^e lyrique."76

72Caillois, N6cessit6 24.

73Caillois, Necessity 28.
74Caillois Necessity 28.
/

75Caillois, Necessity 31.

76Caillois, Necessity 29. Such an imperative becomes
the ideoaramme's "autorite lvriaue." Caillois suggests that
a mind might be "douee d'assez de puissance, de
contamination, pour en amener d'autres aussi passionnyes
qu'elle a contracter presque instantanement a l'egard de
l'ideogramme qui l'intyresse la meme efficace capacity
hallucinatoire objectivante que celle dont elle est
possedee. . . ."(31).
 98

Those views of poetry expressed in "Specifications de

la podsie," and its amplification, seem an implicit response

to Tzara's "Situation de la podsie" published in SASDLR 4

(1931).77 Citing Lautrdamont•s famous dictum — "La poesie

doit etre faite par tous. Non par un" —, Tzara here

pursued his Dadaist project of achieving "la poesie activite

de 1'esprit" (alogical, gratuitous and linked to dreams)

rather than "la poesie moyen d*expression" (rational and

utilitarian).78 More explicitly than Breton's Misere de la

poesie. he distinguishes between poetry and politics: "La

Revolution sociale n'a pas besoin de la poesie, mais cette

derniere a bien besoin de la Revolution.1,79 In effect, the

Surrealists must await this imminent event which will

dialectically reconcile "podsie-activite de 1'esprit" and

"podsie-moyen d1expression" while, for now, they should

accentuate this very dichotomy: "II s'agit done,

aujourd'hui, d'objectiver le plus possible cette part de

moyen d'expression, pour mieux pouvoir degager la poesie-

activite de 1'esprit.1,80 The Antillean poet, Jules

Monnerot, Caillois' peer in the Surrealist ranks, forcefully

77This article is cited in several footnotes.

78Tzara,"Situation" 21. If Dada failed to dispel
logic and language through gratuitous poetic activity,
Surrealist efforts, he claims, are still tainted by
capitalist ideology and function as an evasive individualist
refuge (21).
79Tzara, "Situation" 23.
80Tzara, "Situation" 23.
 99

restated Tzara's argument in the very issue of SASDLR which

published "Specifications de la po6sie": "Le progr^s

dialectigue du surr^alisme doit consister & forcer la

distance qui s6pare le mot de la matiere meme de la

representation.1,81 "Specifications de la po6sie," on the

contrary, assails current "litt6rature" for precisely this

dissociation:

. . . un emploi h&tif et inconsid6r6 des mots, se

servant de ce qu'il y a en eux de plus
superficiel, de plus squelettique et de moins
saisissable, les prenant a leur minimum de
representations, tant impersonnelles que
personnelles, tant obscures que distinctes, ce qui
rend, sans prejudice du reste, son importance
scientifique & peu pres nulle.82

Indeed, Caillois' program entails the condensation of poetic

expression: "La poesie commence au moment oil l'on considere

le mot dans 1'infinite theorique de ses representations . .

."83 His essay implicitly challenges automatic writing

even though, as originally published, it favored this

strategy.84 Subsequent chapters of La necessite d'esprit

will quite forcefully reject automatic writing:

81Jules Monnerot, "A partir de quelques traits

particuliers a la mentalite civilisee," SASDLR 5-6 1933: 37.
82Caillois, Necessity 25.
83Caillois, Necessite 25.
84Caillois stated: "cette mediation du concept
irrationnel ou I'histoire complete de I'individu intervient
justifie surabondamment le role fondamental que dans la
poesie le surr£alisme assigna h 1'automatisme"
("Specifications de la po6sie," SASDLR 5 (May 1933): 31).
This sentence was excised, Caillois1 only major revision
when he incorporated the text into La necessity d'esprit.
 100

. . . une application du vocabulaire du langage au

fait de la pens6e, ce qui revient & supposer une
adequation parfaite de ces deux plans; or il n'est
personne, meme parmi les philosophes les plus
intellectualistes, qui soutienne cette conception
purement verbale de la pensee, conception dont les
efforts de la psychologie la plus 616mentairement
introspective ont depuis toujours fait justice en
attendant que la d^couverte de 1•inconscient la
rende definitivement insoutenable.85

I will shortly discuss how Caillois' theory of

automatic thought systematizes Tzara's argument, or

reconciles the two terms of the opposition "poesie-activite

de 1'esprit" and "poesie-moyen d'expression." First,

though, let us consider Caillois' synthetic dialogue with

Breton's Les vases communicants (1932), specifically, the

category of the "reve eveille." Breton's most important

treatise on dreams, this work conveys the heretical

political ardor of the Second manifeste and a heretical

usage of Freud. Breton accepts the distinction between

rational cognition and dreamwork while seeking a linkage of

the two in the "reve 6veill6," whereby the dream-world might

infuse the real, a gesture reversing the usual course of

things.86 Published four years after Nadia. Les vases

communicants presents urban romance in a new key. First,

Breton vainly awaits the apparition of the beloved, as he

previously did with some success, but the unpredictable

85Caillois, Ndcessite 47.

86Breton's most obvious deviation from Freud was to
discount psychoanalytic interpretation (the latent
content of dreams), focusing primarily on "l1image onirique"
(or the manifest content).
 101

determinism of such a "rencontre" due to hasard obiectif is

now inoperative. When he shifts into his "reve 6veill6," a

syncretic, hallucinatory state, the cityscape is once again

invested with the Surreal, and he engages in a series of

satisfying, if ephemeral, romantic encounters. At work is

the protective logic of dreams, evinced by the substitutive

ease, or displacements, of his erotic drive: Breton

encounters a chain of women, all replacements for an

unattainable or censored ideal.

Without directly stating his case, Caillois suggests

that the dialectical strategy of the "reve-eveille" is

'unnecessary' since the conscious ideoaramme. "une

representation particulierement surdeterminee," does not

differ, as such, from "1'image surdeterminee dans l'etat de

reve.'"87 Caillois illustrates this analogy by examining the

"multiplicity absorbee" of a single feminine image featured

in a brief dream, here deciphered as the condensation of

three women with whom he has entertained liaisons. Caillois

asserts that this erotic link with the three could have

easily produced the same condensation in his conscious

mind.88 I would note that if he accepts the Freudian view

of dreams as "wish-fulfillments" subject to "condensation,"

87Caillois, Necessite 34.

88He writes: "La pens6e de la veille aurait pu relier

l'une It 1'autre sans intermediaire, par une association

d'idges contraignante et autodeterminative a un rare degr6"
(Necessite 36).
 102

this entails no censorship at all; with strained clinical

detachment he notes of his dream: "j'dprouve avec une

singuliere precision esth£sique toutes les sensations d'un

long baiser."89

Caillois highlights Dali's "critical paranoia" as that

theory most closely related to his own ideas concerning

"1'extraordinaire puissance d1annexion et de svst&natisation

passionnelles des ideograromes lvrioues.90" The structure of

paranoid obsession, declared Dali in "L'angelus de Millet,"

. est non seulement celui dans lequel se

resument par excellence tous les facteurs
"systematiques associatifs" mais encore celui qui
incarne une plus 11 identique" illustration
"psychique-interpretative". La paranoia ne se
borne pas toujours a etre de "11 illustration";
elle constitue encore la veritable et unique
"illustration litterale" connue, c'est-a-dire
"1'illustration interpretative delirante"
-- "l'identite" se manifestant toujours a
posteriori comme facteur consequent de
"11 association interpretative".91

When a draft of this text came to Caillois' attention, it

almost seemed "une precieuse illustration de mes conceptions

qu'a tout le moins il contribue certainement a renforcer."92

Still, "critical paranoia" was not an "illustration

89Caillois, Necessite 34.

90Caillois, Ndcessite 68.
91Salvador Dali, "L'angelus de Millet" (1934), Histoire
du surrealisme suivie de documents surrealistes. Maurice
Nadeau (Paris: Seuil, 1964) 379.
92Caillois, Necessity 37. Since Caillois notes that he

subsequently responded to the "Rencontres" inquiry in

Minotaure. we may date this discovery of Dali's work to
early 1933.
 103

litt6rale" of La n6cessit6 d1esprit; the reverse might,

perhaps, be more to the point. Elizabeth Roudinesco has

succinctly summarized the Surrealist shift to paranoia from

a prior privileging of hysteria (and automatic writing as we

noted earlier) by describing Dali's 1930 ambition to

systematize "une methode coherente de connaissance et

d•interpretation creative de la r6alite. II regoit de Lacan

la caution scientifique qui manquait a sa demarche et

saluera avec enthousiasme la publication de la these de

celui-ci. . . ."93 "Critical paranoia" corresponds to the

"identification iterative de l'objet" or inherent conceptual

structuring of paranoid delirium that Lacan specifically

associates with artistic genius, comments Patrice Schmitt.94

Lacan, Dali, and Caillois were all obsessed with

obsession, a more masculine and self-conscious systematic

delirium which had usurped the role of feminine hysteria in

the Surrealist camp. Schmitt hints of Janet's influence

93Roudinesco126. Inspired, in part, by Dali's 1930

essay, "L'&ne pourri," Lacan's thesis De la psvchose
paranoiaoue dans ses rapports avec la personnalitd (1932)
was then cited by Dali's essay in Minotaure 1 (1933)
— "Nouvelles considerations sur le phenomene paranoxaque:
interpretation paranoiaque de 1'image obsedante 'L'angelus'
de Millet." This directly precedes, in the same issue, an
essay by Lacan which defines paranoia as "une syntaxe
originale, qui contribue a affirmer, par les liens de
comprehension qui lui sont propres, la communautd humaine"
("Le probleme du style et la conception psychiatrique des
formes paranoxaques de 1'existence," Minotaure 1 [June
1933]: 68-69).
94Lacan qtd. in Patrice Schmitt, "Dali et Lacan dans

leurs rapports a la psychose paranoxaque," Cahiers

Confrontation 4 (Fall 1980): 133.
 104

when he explains that Lacan's phenomenological view of

paranoia "substitute a la 'constitution paranoiaque' des

£l£ments psvchasthenioues. obsessionnels. un caractfere

sensitif."95 Critical paranoia may well have received such

scientific legitimation from Lacan, and Dali may well have

sought to render his delirium objective, that is, valid for

others.96 Yet, Lacan's "caution" was presumably

insufficient to sanction the scientific objectivity" of

Dali's subjective strategy, in Caillois' opinion. Seeking

entirely to supplant the world of the real, "critical

paranoia" is 'unnecessary,' suggests La necessite d'esprit,

since it disregards necessity and overdetermination. It

lacks, declares Caillois, "la rigueur meticuleuse de

determination automatique que je me proposals de deceler

sous l'arbitraire apparent de 1'antique association des

idees."97

Caillois' systematization of critical paranoia suggests

that ideogrammatic determinism is always, in some sense, a

95Schmitt130 [emphasis added]. Both Dali and, more

deliberately, Lacan were revising the standard view of
paranoia as a dual-phased sequence (misinterpretation or a
false premise followed by deductive and lucid delirium)
proposed by Serieux et Capgras in Les folies raisonnantes.
le delire d'interpretation (1909).
96Dali qtd. in Nadeau, Histoire 148.
97Caillois, Necessite 36. Here, he remarks upon this
"double manque evidemment compense pour la subjectivite de
Dali par 1'hyper-evidence de caractere paranoiaque qu'il
signale constamment avoir ressenti et dont il opposa avec
energie 1*experience a mes objections"(37).
 105

priori; the ideoaramme does not emerge a posteriori, "comme

facteur consequent de 1'association interpretative," as Dali

would have it. La necessity d1 esprit refines upon this

point through a distinction between pensee automatioue and

pensee lvriaue. which involves relative degrees of

intentionality. Pensee automatioue is triggered by the

subject's deliberate meditation upon a particular

ideoaramme: it is thus "analytic." Caillois evokes, for

example, the persistence of an initial ideoaramme in a

specific train of thought: "L1 image emblematique et

passionnelle du jeu des 6checs cimente cette etonnante

coherence.1,98 His study of "Les mecanismes de la pensee

automatique" was partially published in Recherches

philosophiaues (1934-1935) as "Analyse et commentaire d'un

exemple d'association libre d'idees,"99 and articulated,

once again, in relation to Tzara, whose "Situation de la

podsie" had couched its dialectical poetic project in the

Jungian dichotomy of pensee diriaee (intentional) and pensee

non-diriaee (unintentional). Tzara correlates the first

with Levy-Bruhl1 s category of the civilized mind and with

"po6sie moyen d'expression" — and the second with primitive

98Caillois, Necessite 68.

"Roger Caillois, "Analyse et commentaire d'un exemple

d'association libre d'idees, Recherches philosophiaues 4
(1934-35): 321-336.
 106

mentality and "po6sie activity de 1'esprit.1,100 (Monnerot

took up Tzara's argument two years later, focusing more

extensively on Levy-Bruhl, to condemn his patronizing views

of the primitive mentality, and to await poetry's post-

revolutionary shift from an "expression" of the world to

poetic "participation" therein.101) As usual, Caillois will

systematize these terms, explaining that pens6e automatioue

already combines both pens6e dirig^e and pensee non-diriaee

in a mode of "determinisme conjugue." The repeated

ideoqramroe may be attributed to pensee diriqee; yet this

explains neither the order of such ideogrammatic imagery nor

the "representations secondaires" interspersed throughout

the chain, a web intimating unintentional or non-directed

associative determinism.102

100Tzarathus envisions a post-revolutionary state: "un

etat poeticrue qui serait domine par le penser non-dirige
superpose a la structure de la civilisation et a ses
conquetes indestructibles" ("Essai sur la situation de la
po§sie," SASDLR 4 [1931]: 19). According to Jean-Luc
Steinmetz, "Tzara, l'un des premiers, s'aventure a citer
Jung et son oeuvre: Metamorphoses et svmboles de la libido
(ce texte est traduit en 1932, ainsi que Essai de
psvcholoaie analvtiaue) . . ." ("L'homme aux anes;
surrealisme, politique et psychanalyse dans les annees
trente," Groupes et ruptures. ed. Anne Roche [Paris: CNRS,
198]: 277).
101Jules Monnerot, "A partir de quelques traits
particuliers a la mentalite civilisee," SASDLR 5-6 1933:35-
37
102Cailloiswrites: "tout se passe comme s'il v avait
un determinisme qui propose et un determinisme qui dispose,
ce dernier n'etant autre que la puissance lyrique de
1'ideogramme, qui, en selectionnant parmi tous ceux qui sont
possibles le seul detour associatif qui soit capable
d'induire a nouveau une image emblematique et emotionnelle
 107

The iddoarammes of pens6e lvrioue also operate from the

start but their associations are 'latent1 and can only

become discernable after analysis; they are thus

"synthetic." By this, Caillois means that for the subject,

"aucun des termes unis n'est contenu dans 1'autre ou d6j& en

rapport avec lui du fait d'une ancienne association."103 If

pensee lvriaue. best expressed in delirium and dreams, is

relatively less intentional, this merely renders its

overdetermination all the more striking. "Les syntheses de

la pensee lyrique," unpublished at the time, analyses a

brief (and rare for the time) prose-poem of Caillois.

Unsurprisingly, Le poeme des navigateurs turns out to be

structured by the "theme determinant de la pratique

intellectuelle de la psychasth^nie."104 Poetry, for La

n£cessit6 d'esprit, is hence regimented by a manner of

automatic iustesse which transcends any individual

expression. Attending, then, to that collective poetry and

poetic communication, envisioned by Tzara and Surrealism in

general, Caillois simply points to ideogrammatic necessity

and, most saliently, to id^oarammes obiectifs:

. . . [Ces] ideogrammes constituent un terrain

commun qui n'appartient en propre & personne et ou
chacun peut se retrouver veritablement chez soi,

qui le contienne et 1'impose & la conscience, remplit trfes

exactement le role de 1'intention ou mieux la t5che dans la
pensee dirigde" (N6cessit6 56).
103Caillois, N6cessit6 72.
104Caillois, N6cessit6 81.
 108

[on peut] pour ainsi dire reconnaltre et assimiler

les syntheses de la pens£e lyrique, la
personnalite de l'auteur et celle du lecteur se
trouvant en ces carrefours, autant l'une que
1'autre, ci la merci de leur inmersonnelle
necessite.105

Breton did not particularly favor "Specifications de la

poesie," recalls Caillois, but he was "carrement hostile"

about "Systematisation et determination," partially

published in the Belgian journal Documents 34 (titled

"Intervention Surrealiste"): "II a trouv6 que c'etait une

attitude anti-lyrique qui etait inadmissible."106 Read out

of context, the essay seems more stridently anti-literary

than it does within La necessite d1esprit where, as a

concluding chapter, it raises the project to a higher level

of theoretical abstraction. Caillois remarks that the

lyrical imagination should systematize the realm of affect

and passion, performing

les memes services que rendent ailleurs la

g6om6trie et la dialectique, par exemple, dont le
triple caractere genetique, resorbant et
systematisant est manifeste. En somme. il ne
s'aait que de traduire le fait que la
comprehension se ramene touiours plus ou moins &
11 integration i ! ! .10V/

105Caillois, Necessite 97.

106Caillois, Archives III.
107Caillois, Necessite 124.
 109

Laurent Jenny has proposed that "cristallisation" might

well function as the "iddoaramme de 11 iddoaraimtie"108 citing

Caillois1 suggestion that the curious status of the latter,

entre la virtualit6 et la realite, leur existence

latente et en quelque sorte en solution est
analogue a ces dtats si instables etudies en
chimie sous le nom de phenomenes de sursaturation,
ou a une excitation minime, mais bien definie, se
condense et apparait, comme s'il surgissait de
rien, un precipite de 1'invisible substance
dissoute.109

Yet Jenny explicitly discounts the subsequent admonition

regarding the limits of such analogies.110 It may have to

do with Caillois' tendency to focus on animate rather than

inanimate nature in this work (although his writing after

the war would increasingly attend to the inorganic, and

ultimately, the mineral realm). I would suggest that

"cristallisation" is not entirely adequate, furthermore,

since it does not convey the "osmotic" tenor of Caillois •

ideoaramme. invested with a "puissance d'absorption"111 to

assimilate corresponding mental associations, and to absorb

or integrate obsessional residues. In effect, the

obsessional analyses of La necessite d'esprit constitute a

108Caillois, Necessite 423.

109Caillois, Necessite 129.
110Caillois thus adds that instead of pursuing this
comparison, "il est sans doute plus sage d'attirer
l1 attention sur la facilite avec laquelle de telles
analogies deviennent specieuses quand on leur demande plus
que les modestes et empiriques services d'6claircissement
reciproque qu'elles peuvent rendre" (Necessity 129).
111Caillois, Necessite 59.
 110

devouring system, structured by differing layers of osmotic

systematization.112 It is not surprising that the praying-

mantis should be the most emblematic id6oaramme of all.

William Pressly has recently cited the praying-mantis

as "a central iconographic preoccupation" of the

Surrealists113; and Rosalind Krauss's essay, "No More Play,"

comments about Caillois' essay that it "released a swarm of

praying-mantises onto the surfaces of surrealist

painting.1,114 Yet, one of the reasons he focused on this

insect, I would suggest, was precisely its current

importance in the Surrealist milieu as a "mythic/ biological

purveyor of death," to use Krauss's phrase.115 La necessite

d1 esprit also mentions the praying-mantis featured in verses

of Eluard, and in Breton's contribution to Ralentir travaux

(1930).116 Caillois also underscores Dali's "collusion

112In Proces intellectuel de l'art (1935) partially

written during his Surrealist phase, Caillois will allude to
"certains ddlires croissant d'eux-memes et sans emprunt, ne
s'alimentant que par une sorte d'autophaqie continue. .
(Approches de l'imaainaire [Paris: Gallimard, 1974] 49)
[emphasis added].
113William L. Pressly, "The Praying Mantis in
Surrealist Art," Art Bulletin 15.4 (Dec. 1973): 600.
114Rosalind Krauss, "No More Play," The Originality of

the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Mvths (Cambridge: MIT,

1985): 70.
115Krauss 72.
116Caillois writes about Breton: "Mante reliqieuse.
attrait normal pour le nom et les moeurs de cet insecte: il
le ressent depuis longtemps. Ainsi en 1924, il projetait de
fonder une maison d'edition avec comme marque distinctive ci
reproduire sur tous les ouvrages un dessin qu'il avait fait
 Ill

lyrique," citing

1'impressionnant et complet document que constitue

sur les rapports de l1amour et de l'homophagie son
dtude paranoiaque critique de L'Anq^lus de Millet,
[oti] il a 6t6 6galement force de faire intervenir
le redoutable insecte oui identifie en fait ces
deux sauvages d£sirs.11'

Yet the insect's significance for Breton, Eluard, and Dali

in 1934 primarily concerned its erotic behavior:

"convulsive" for Breton and Eluard, "cannibalistic" _ for

Dali. The very prominence of the "praying-mantis" rendered

it 'objective' in an immediate social sense and hence worthy

of Caillois' theoretical, or ideogrammatic, appropriation.

Declaring "la continuity de la nature et de la

conscience,"118 "La mante religieuse'" explores the insect's

status as a privileged object for the natural, collective

and individual imagination; it uses this ideoqramme objectif

to establish biology as the substratum of mythography and

psychoanalysis. La necessite d'esprit was here inspired, we

learn, by the 'decadent' August Strindberg, whose Inferno

(1898) claimed that the discernable skull on the wings of

the Acherontia Atropos butterfly (the Sphinx Tete-de-Mort)

was illustrated, or determined by, various morbid aspects of

specialement executer par Max Ernst, representant une mante

religieuse dans 1'attitude spectrale" (Necessity 170).

117Caillois, Necessity 112.

118Caillois, Necessity 111.
 112

the insect's biological identity.119 Cohering through

obsessional associationist logic, the myriad overdetermined

representations of this id6oqramme obi ect if. deliriously

outlined in "La mante religieuse," defy any clear

recounting. Suffice it to say that Caillois highlights the

insect's sexual behaviour — objective representation of the

castration-complex, or the psychoanalytic correlation of

eros and thanatos. But the insect's mimetic and automatic

aspects (interrelated) also enter into play. The praying-

mantis is anthropomorphic, evoking a female automaton

— again linking love and death. Moreover, it can mimic

life after decapitation through the persistence of nervous

reflexes. It can even mimic death. ultimately conveying a

level of overdetermined automatism which expresses the

workings of an 1 alternative logic1:

[I]l n'est guere de reactions qu'elle ne soit

aussi bien capable d'executer decapitee, c'est-a-
dire en 1'absence de tout centre de representation
et d'activite volontaire: elle peut ainsi, dans
ces conditions, marcher, retrouver son equilibre,
pratiquer l'autonomie d'un de ses membres menace,
prendre l1attitude spectrale, s'accoupler, pondre,
construire l'ooth&que, et, ce qui est proprement
affolant, tomber, en face d'un danger ou a la
suite d'une excitation peripherique, dans une
fausse immobility cadaverique : je m'exprime
expr&s de cette fagon indirecte tant le lanaaae.
me semble-t-il. a peine a sianifier. et la raison
a comprendre. que morte. la mante puisse simuler
la rnort.120

119Caillois, Necessite 37. He notes that Strindberg's

description of this insect probably derived from Edgar Allen
Poe.
120Caillois, Necessite 116.
 113

This iddoaramme 'illustrates' the theoretical obsessions of

La n6cessit6 d'esprit since the mantis' simulated death

after decapitation seems a biological representation of the

automatism and depersonalization linked to psychasthenia,

vehicle of the death-instinct, or a "dysir humain de

reintegration & 1'insensibility originelle.1,121 Caillois

remarks:
Ces metamorphoses florales a la faveur desquelles
l'insecte se d^sindividualise et retourne au regne
v6g6tal complfetent k la fois ses etonnantes
capacites d•automatisme et 1*attitude desinvolte
dont il semble user vis-a-vis de la mort,
propriytys qui, elles-memes, competent ce qui,
dans son nom de mante ou d'empuse, c'est-a-dire de
prophetesse ou de spectre-vampire, dans sa forme
ou, entre toutes, l'homme peut reconnaitre la
sienne, dans son attitude de prifere absente ou
d'amour en acte, dans ses coutumes nuptiales
enfin, peut compromettre la sensibility immediate
de tout individu.122
* * *

His autobiography, Le fleuve Alphde. elliptically

conflates Caillois' departure from both Le Grand Jeu and

Surrealism as a renunciation of the quest for revelation

from those "formules obscures" and "metaphores emphatiques"

of his illuminated readings.123 By December 1934, he had

conceived, "passant d'une extremity a 1'autre, 1'ambition

d'une etude quasi exp£rimentale, en tout cas rigoureuse, de

121Caillois, Necessite 117.

122Caillois, Necessity 118.
123Caillois, Necessity 64.
 114

1•imagination."124 The final lines of La n6cessite d'esprit

accordingly call an end to "aventureuses speculations" in

the name of "lucidite approximative" and "11apprentissage de

la patience mal payee du savant."125 The work thus closes

on a note of defeat which seems to reflect the difficult

relation between hypothesis and experiment in the human

sciences and, in particular, the difficulty of gauging

automatic iustesse. When Caillois reproduces his

intransigeant response to the "Rencontres" inquiry ' in La

necessity d'esprit, he is careful to emphasize its purely

hypothetical nature, awaiting empirical confirmation: "Je me

rendais bien compte que ces lignes n'avaient guere de valeur

que comme une extrapolation destinee a preparer dans tel

domaine 11 interpretation d'un certain nombre de phenomenes a

l'aide d'hypotheses verifiees dans un autre. . . ,"126 Yet

his sole experimental method is that of self-analysis; La

necessity d'esprit can hardly confirm its hypothesis except

124Caillois, N^cessite 65.

1 2 5 C a i i i o i s , Necessity 154.
126Caillois, Ndcessite 41. He then attacks speculative
systems derived through "anticipations dialectiques." Here,
he approvingly mentions the article by Bataille and Queneau,
"La critique des fondements de la dialectique hegelienne"
(La Critique sociale 5 [March 1932]), an article infused
with Kojeve's influential Marxist reading of Hegel, which
restricts the dialectical model to the march of human
consciousness, to an anthropology. Bataille and Queneau
hardly deny the primacy of dialectical thought, but Caillois
lauds their attacks on "1'usage syllogistique qui est fait
de ce qui ne devrait etre qu'un 6tat d'esprit: la pensee de
chaque antinomie par r6f§rence ci une synthese exhaustive"(42).
 115

in its own terms. The descriptions of the praying-mantis

illustrate Caillois1 obsession in subjective terms but

hardly prove the workings of universal overdetermination in

an empirical or objective sense. In conclusion, then, he

must leap to deductive summation. Having outlined the

overdetermined coherence of his obsessions, he proposes an

analogy between such psychasthenic tendencies and their

cognition in an absolute metaphysical sense:

. un etre ayant accede & la connaissance

totale de sa necessite d1esprit ne pourrait douter
qu'elle ne coincide avec celle de l'univers.
Faisant parfaitement corps avec l'une, il serait
du meme coup resorbe dans 1'autre. On apergoit
mal quelle exteriorite, quelle antinomie
subsisterait pour un tel etre. Et qui ne voit que
le salut est au-dela de la distinction ou nulle
part?127

In biographical terms, the incident of the "haricots

sauteurs" has, furthermoref cast Caillois' break with Breton

into a clash between the empirical and the mystical. After

Breton refused to dissect a few jumping-beans at Caillois'

request, the latter wrote a letter of resignation that very

night, the "Lettre a Andre Breton" which would subsequently

preface his monograph Proces intellectuel de l'art

(1935).128 Here, he criticizes Breton for privileging the

"jouissances" of poetry over the "satisfactions" of research

127Caillois, Necessity 154.

128FirSt published by the Cahiers du Sud in 1935, this

was reprinted in Approches de 11imaqinaire.
 116

while claiming to attend to both.129 Referring to the

modern scientific "merveilleux," the "Lettre" pursues:

Et quand je compare ce grand i eu avec 1'attitude

de Gerard de Nerval refusant d'entrer a Palmyre
pour ne pas se g&ter l'id^e qu'il s'en etait faite
ou avec la votre refusant d'ouvrir une graine
agitee par instants de sursauts pour ne pas y
d^couvrir un insecte ou un ver — car, disiez-
vous, le mystere aurait ete detruit — mon choix
est fait.170

In 1946, Gaetan Picon would remark that Caillois' rejection

of Surrealism at this point was "inevitable":

On pouvait attendre du Surrealisme une clarte

neuve et decisive qui fit reculer a l'infini les
frontieres de l'obscur. C'est ce que Caillois en
attendit. Mais 1'amour du merveilleux l'emporte
6videmment chez un Breton sur cette volonte de
devoilement, et l1encourage a proteger le mystere
bien plus qu'a le demasquer.131

Yet, Picon entirely misses the extent to which La necessite

d1 esprit. in its absorption of the psychasthenic

imagination and of the praying-mantis, has, in a way,

subverted scientific categories, rendering them more

mysterious through accomodating assouplissement. I would

also reconsider the incident of the "haricots sauteurs." If

the act of revealing an insect within a jumping-bean

129Caillois, Approches 35. This rupture occurred,

quite unusually, "sans eclat: sans injures ni
anathemes"/Cases 213). Andre Chastel recalls that since
Caillois "epatait Breton," the Surrealist leader endured
objections or arguments that he would not have from anyone
else (interview).
130Caillois, N6cessit6 37.
131Gaetan Picon, "Les essais de Roger Caillois,"
Fontaine 54 (Summer, 1946): 268.
 117

unmasks mystery, it must, in the very act of revelation,

instate a new and perhaps even greater residual mystery. We

need only recall Caillois' fascination with the praying-

mantis to think of the jumping worm as a wondrous

biological phenomenon in and of itself.

It is interesting that Caillois broke off La n6cessit6

d1 esprit. and his Surrealist affiliation, just at the moment

of absolute absorption or participation, which his

theoretician's stance generally sought to resist. Despite

his claims of universality and objectivity, Caillois'

theoretical correspondance with the prominent Surrealist

strategies of the day had absorbed him in the particular,

indeed, highly idiosyncratic nature of their aesthetic

method. In 1935, he would neither dismiss "1•imagination

empirique" nor turn to truly empirical research but rather

reconsider the 'matter* of Surrealism in light of a new

theoretical apparatus largely inspired by Bachelard's Le

nouvel esprit scientifioue (1934). As we shall see,

however, his writing will merely transpose ideogrammatic

iustesse into a more epistemological key, exploring the

obsessional dynamic of scientific inquiry itself.

 118

Chapter 3

Mimicry

Proces intellectuel de l'art

After December 1934, Caillois quickly aspired to "the

founding of a new and more rigorous group, it would seem,

since Jean Wahl wrote to him in February 1935: "[je] vois

certainement votre projet avec sympathie et aimerais

collaborer avec vous. Mais je ne cxois £ 2a rigueur

methodologique, actuellement, que dans des zones de

recherche bien determinees."1 Yet Caillois' ambition was

unrealized, as such, and he remained in a state of relative

independence throughout 1935 until October, when he briefly

became a co-founder of the anti-fascist group Contre-Attacrue

along with Bataille, Breton and many others.2 This was to

^•Jean Wahl, letter to Roger Caillois, February 22 1935,

Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 183. Since Wahl had just
moved into the Surrealist orbit by joining Minotaure. he was
reluctant to collaborate with one who had recently left the
ranks: "[S]i les reserves que je suis amene a faire ne vous
paraissent pas devoir vous empecher de m'avoir comme
collaborateur, je ne demanderais pas mieux que de
collaborer avec vous a condition qu'il n'y ait pas
d'hostilite contre le surrealisme"(184).
2This brief alliance, reflecting Caillois1 increasing
interest in social and political theory, will be discussed
in the following chapter.
 119

be a busy academic year, with work towards the aardaation

de grammaire (1936) and courses at the Ecole Pratique des

Hautes Etudes where he was preparing a memoire on the topic

of the noon-time demons, or the demons de midi (published as

a series of articles in the course of 1936 and 1937). These

pursuits and the need to restructure his intellectual

allegiances may have taken their toll on Caillois' vitality.

"[M]es nerfs [sont] de plus en plus instables, et

susceptibles de continuelles d^faillances (cela se voit,

parait-il, dans mon ecriture)," he would write to his friend

Gurnaud.3 He published only two major texts in 1935: Proces

intellectuel de l'art and "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

legendaire" (along with several reviews in the Cahiers du

Sud. and a brief discussion of Dali for the Belgian journal,

Documents 35).4 Extremely difficult, these two essays are

nonetheless well worth exploring for they express an

elaborate theoretical project emerging from the rift with

Surrealism, one whose contextual range includes Bachelard,

Bataille, and Lacan.

3Roger Caillois, letter to Gurnaud, 13 July 1935, C.4,

Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
4The Cahiers du Sud first published "Notices sur
l'impurete dans l'art" in May 1935; in October 1935, they
published Proces intellectuel de l'art as a monograph,
framing "Notices sur l'impurete dans l'art" with Caillois'
"Lettre a Andre Breton," his "Decision preliminaire sur la
m6taphysique" and a conclusion titled "Crise de la
litterature." "Mimetisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire" was
first published in Minotaure 7 1935, and then amplified for
Le mvthe et l'homme.
 120

Caillois' break with Breton still preserved his status,

as mentioned in the introduction, of "correspondant du

surrealisme.11 The "Lettre a Andre Breton" confirms the

common ground linking him to the movement:

[J]e ne me haterai jamais de condamner vos

efforts; au contraire je serai au besoin a vos
cotes dans toutes occasion ou mon point de vue
sera compatible avec celui du surr6alisme:
poldmique, politique ou meme travail technique sur
11 imagination si tant est, comme vous me
l'affirmiez hier, que ma pensee et mes demarches
dans ce domaine vous paraissent apres tout
viables, peut-etre utiles.^

Monnerot's La poesie moderne et le sacre questions Nadeau*s

omission of Proces intellectuel de l'art in his

authoritative history of Surrealism: "Breton avait 6crit

qu'il souhaitait que celui qui se separe du surrealisme

'mette ideologiquement celui-ci en cause'. C'est ce qu'a

fait M. Roger Caillois dans Proces intellectuel de l'art. . .

. Mutisme de M. Nadeau."6 One reason for this omission, I

would suggest, is the extreme complexity of these texts:

provoking some degree of confusion at the time, they have

not been effectively studied since. My reading will

highlight the evolution from La necessite d'esprit and its

paradigm of the ideoaramme to the paradigm of mimetisme or

mimicry presented in "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

1Agendaire." The dialogue with Surrealism in Proces

5Roger Caillois, Approches de 11imaqinaire (Paris:

Gallimard, 1974) 37.
6Jules Monnerot, La poesie moderne et le sacre (Paris:

Gallimard, 1945) 208.

 121

intellectuel de 11 art and "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

l£gendaire" is less a rupture than a shift of emphasis

concerning the relation between science and art — inspired,

in part, by Bachelard's Nouvel esprit scientifiaue (1934).

Here is the new theory Caillois applies to the Surrealist

imagination — just as he had used Janet and Freud

throughout La n6cessit6 d'esprit. Yet such a theoretical

reappraisal of Surrealism does not merely entail an

impatient shift from laxity to control, intuition to rigor,

and art to science, since the overall gesture of Caillois'

two essays, when read in conjunction, is to recuperate

science within a form of natural aesthetic.

Before addressing the full thrust of this argument, we

must first attend in some detail to Proces intellectuel de

11 art. prefaced by the "Lettre a Andre Breton," which

delineates an essential difference of methodology:

L'irrationnel : soit; mais j'y veut d'abord la

coherence (cette coherence au profit de laquelle
la logique a dti ceder sur toute la ligne dans les
sciences 6xactes), la surdetermination continue,
la construction du corail; combiner en un systeme
ce que jusqu'a present une raison incomplete
61imina avec systfeme.7

Caillois defines such "coherence" in terms of the most

recent scientific theories which Breton is too 'old' to

appreciate, those engendering "un merveilleux qui ne craint

pas la connaissance, qui au contraire s'en nourrit."8 Such

'caillois, Approches 36.

8Caillois, Approches 36.
 122

modern science essentially concerned advances in physics and

mathematics:

Ainsi, dans 1'atomistique moderne, c'est

1 • aventure dans le noir : la d6couverte 6blouie
des foug&res par des enfants elev6s dans des cubes
(le mot est d'un physicien). II ne s'agit pas la
du trouble ou de la louissance que procure une
belle image, mais d'un desarroi, desarroi devant
ce que je me plais & nommer la deroute des
Evidences. Car il ne subsiste rien des anciennes
intuitions et toute philosophie qui ne compose pas
avec cette nouvelle science du pourcruoi pas est
ridicule.9

Caillois1 "nouvelle science" directly echoes Bachelard's Le

nouvel esprit scientifiaue. a work that sought to

revolutionize neo-Kantian philosophy of science by

emphasizing the imaginative dimension of scientific inquiry,

the act of seeking truth "malgre 1'evidence."Bachelard

asserted: "nous montrerons qu'a l'ancienne philosophie du

comme si succede, en philosophie scientifique, la

philosophie du pourouoi pas."11 Aspiring to "une sorte de

nouveaute metaphysique essentielle,1,12 his "Introduction"

expressed a glowing idealism insofar as the new "esprit" was

concerned:

La science suscite un monde, non plus par une

impulsion magique, immanente k la r6alit6, mais
bien par une impulsion rationnelle, immanente &
1'esprit. Apres avoir forme, dans les premiers

9Caillois, Approches 36.

10Caillois, Approches 11.
11Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifiaue
(1934; Paris: PUF, 1984) 10.
12Bachelard, Nouvel 11.
 123

efforts de 1* esprit scientifique, une raison ci

1'image du monde, 11 activity spirituelle de la
science moderne s'attache k construire un monde a
1'image de la raison.13

Proces intellectuel de l'art specifically praises the

current philosophy of science, listing the names of

Bachelard, Meyerson, Reichenbach, Carnap, and Ph. Frank.14

But Bachelard was the one with whom Caillois pursued a

personal and intellectual involvement after meeting in

Prague during the summer of 1934.15 There, he encouraged

Bachelard's interest in literature and Surrealism — "Je lui

ai fait lire Lautreamont, Eluard, Breton. . . ."I6

Bachelard seems to have offered Caillois a new imaginative

orientation as well, towards "la nouvelle science du

pourcruoi pas."

Proces intellectuel de l'art argues that modern art has

appropriated scientific inquiry, applying aesthetic

13Bachelard, Nouvel 17.

14Caillois, Approches 49.
15Researchinghis work on the demons de midi. Caillois
worked as a guide for an international philosophy congress
Bachelard was attending.
16Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
sifecle. 7 reels (Paris: Socidt6 Frangaise de Production,
1971): III. Vincent Therrien, confirms Caillois' role in
initiating Bachelard to Surrealist poetry: "[S]urr6aliste
lui-meme jusqu'en 1936, R. Caillois parla alors beaucoup a
Bachelard d'Eluard, de Lautreamont, de Char, de Breton,
D'Aragon, etc. C'est lui encore qui . . . fit parvenir a
Bachelard Les Chants de Maldoror. accompagnes de quelques
ecrits d'Eluard et d'autres surrealistes" (La revolution de
Gaston Bachelard en critique littdraire [Paris: Klincksieck,
1970] 44).
 124

methodology to scientific investigation. (Thus, although

Caillois does not mention La n6cessit6 d1esprit, the lyrical

id^ogramme accomplished that "systematization" proper to

scientific analysis.) In 1935, he seeks to reverse this

osmotic trend by applying scientific methodology to the

matter of art, using Bachelard's anti-Cartesian epistemology

to grasp the Surrealist "imagination empirique." In this

osmotic process, though, Caillois seems to modify or even

distort Bachelard's theory much as he modified those of

Freud and Janet. Le nouvel esprit scientifioue had

suggested that the process of achieving 11[un] monde a

1'image de la raison" would reconcile the scientific

phenomenon and noumenon: "il ne s'agit done plus d'une

dialectique lointaine et oisive, mais d'un mouvement

alternatif qui, apres quelques rectifications des projets,

tend toujours a une realisation effective du noumene."17 On

the contrary, Caillois' New Science in 1935 involves a

derealization of the phenomenal world by specifically

bracketing that of the noumenal. Although his move to a

more 'scientific* posture might signal a greater theoretical

control, he is, in fact, eager to express the

epistemological vertigo of the modern scientist, a state

easily correlated with psychasthenia (and the imaginative

framework of Le Grand Jeu).

Caillois' paradigmatic shift from the introspection of

17Bachelard, Nouvel 16.

 125

La n6cessit6 d1esprit to a more epistemological perspective

is conveyed by "Decision pr61iminaire sur la metaphysique"

which follows the "Lettre k Andre Breton" and implicitly

elaborates upon the break expressed at the end of La

necessite d* esprit. This 'decision* constitutes an

epistemological move which is analogous, in very a broad

sense, to Heidegger's departure from Husserl. Neither

absolute nor transcendant knowledge may satisfy ~ our

"imperatif categorique de la connaissance"18: "on ne peut ni

de la terre d^celer le mouvement de la terre, ni de la

conscience le mouvement de la conscience, c'est-a-dire son

origine et sa fin, sa perfectibilite ou son irremissible

decadence."19 He defines the observer "comme origine des

coordonnees et qui est bien la seule qui lui importe,

puisqu'elle est la seule a tenir et a rendre compte de sa

compromission dans 1'univers."20 This decision then

•brackets' all metaphysical inquiry and absolute self-

consciousness: "la lucidite personnelle, ses voies se

ramifiant de determination en determination a l'infini

devant son progres, ne peut etre qu'approximative.1,21

Caillois illustrates such a 'vital' perspective with the

familiar paradigm of modern physics:

18Caillois, Approches 40.

19Caillois, Approches 39.
20Caillois, Approches 39 [emphasis added].
21Caillois, Approches 40.
 126

. la situation d'etres courbes infiniment

plats vivant a la surface d'une sphere gigantesque
: il ne peuvent que la concevoir comme finie, ce
qu'elle est pour des £tres a trois dimensions,
mais pour eux, tout se passe vitalement comme si
elle etait infinie.22

It is an image which will subtly inform "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic legendaire" as this explores the 'logic of

participation' of the New Science or indeed, of the New

Scientist.
In short, Proces intellectuel de l'art does not abandon

the metaphysical dimension of La necessity d1esprit but

merely brackets the philosophical problem of the noumenon as

that which has already been solved:

. . . le probleme metaphysique apparait resolu:

toutes les metaphysiques en effet, pour peu
qu'elles se soient d£veloppees avec quelque
rigueur ont abouti au seul systeme qui decidement
satisfasse 1'esprit: la doctrine de l'unit^
essentielle et de la multiplicity phenomenale.23

Le fleuve Alphee recalls that Caillois was here inspired,

once again, by Parmenidean monism.24 "Decision preliminaire

22Caillois, Approches 40. He does not use the term

"existential," referring rather to "le plan vital."
23Caillois, Approches 39.
24Caillois, Fleuve 65. In a review of Pierre-Maxime
Schuhl's influential Essai sur la formation de la pensee
greccaxe for the Cahiers du Sud of June 1935, he evokes this
Nietzschean and Maussian portrait of classical Greece,
immersed in a 'cloud of blood': "C'est dans cette atmosphere
que nait la grande philosophie grecque celle d'Anaximandre,
de Xenophane et d'Heraclite et, pour tout dire, celle
surtout du gigantesque Parmenide dont la doctrine apparait
de plus en plus comme un des poles de la philosophie de tous
les temps, ainsi que du cote epistemologique, le
reconnaissait hier encore Meyerson" (Rev. of Essai sur la
formation de la pensee arecoue. by Pierre Maxime Schuhl,
 127

suir la mdtaphysique" also relates pre-Socratic thought to

the current philosophy of science:

. . . la science moderne pr£cipite la realisation

de 1'antique precepte: on connait, autant qu'il
est permis, que la nature est partout la meme.
Les memes lois r£gissent le monde exterieur et le
monde interieur et aucune solution essentielle de
continuity n'apparait a des yeux avertis entre le
milieu et l'organisme qui y vit. Tout est milieu.
De meme, aucune mutation brusque n'est perceptible
entre la matifere et l'energie qui se revele
pesante comme elle, ni non plus, parallfelement,
entre le corps et 1*esprit qui poss^dent en commun
telle ou telle propriety.25

Whence the need to reestablish an epistemological difference

allowing for a vital rather than conceptual relation to the

structures of the milieu. Caillois invokes the 'concrete

complexity' of this epistemologically unanchored reality

where, nonetheless, "on peut etre stir de s1 v retrouver au

sens fort du terme."26 It is a strange form of self-

recognition, though, as "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

legendaire" will show.

Proces intellectuel de 11 art expands upon the

distinction between conceptual and vital cognition by

contrasting two modes of resemblance in a way that

implicates, as well, the relation between art and science.

Caillois briefly mentions "Le sentiment de

ressemblance"(1930) by the neo-Kantian philosopher Dominique

Cahiers du Sud 173 [June 1935]: 502).

25Caillois, Approches 40.
26Caillois, Approches 40.
 128

Parodi on the fundamental cognitive status of resemblance:

On peut encore, semble-t-il, aller plus loin et

montrer gu'il n'est aucun processus intellectuel
ou affectif qui ne soit fonde sur le ph6nomene de
ressemblance, dont il est regrettable que
1'incidence sur chacune des fonctions mentales
n'ait pour ainsi dire jamais encore 6t6 6tudi6e.27

In light of "Decision pr£liminaire sur la m6taphysique,11 he

defines two modes of cognitive ressemblance: one relative to

the self as center of its conceptual coordinate-system, and

one that mirrors the abstract structures informing the self,

its milieu and the universe. Proces intellectuel de l'art

condemns this latter mode of thought characterizing, in

Caillois1 opinion, both art and conventional (rather than

'New') science:

Pour parler tres grossierement, la science, telle

qu'elle se presente actuellement, peut passer pour
une etude du monde independamment de tout centre
de perspective et les techniques qui en derivent
pour des essais d'accommodements avec ce monde
ext£rieur (en fait et par definition): des
complaisances a son 6gard. Symetriquement, les
oeuvres d1 art representent des tentatives
semblables par rapport au monde de la conscience:
d'€gales complaisances.28

But there is another mode of ressemblance that, on the

contrary, expresses our vital engagement ("compromission")

in the world and actually endangers the self, refusing all

complacent contemplation ("complaisance"); certain

"obsessions de ressemblance" may thus constitute "un ferment

psychique particulierement actif et constant. . . ."29

27Caillois, Approches 45.

28Caillois, Approches 50.
29Caillois, Approches 45.
 129

Caillois develops this approach in "Mim6tisme et

psychasthenic legendaire" which, as I read it, presents the

New Science as a New Art. However, his paradigm of

"mimicry" already reflects a second stage of the argument.

Proces intellectuel de l'art must first subsume aesthetics

within a form of New Science.

* * *

Two epigraphs express Caillois1 rejection of beauty:

"'Voyez ces roses, ma femme les aurait trouv6es belles; pour

moi, c'est un amas de feuilles, de p6tales, d'£pines et de

tiges.1 X, schizophrene, 66 ans"30; and, later, "II n'y a

rien a attendre de la beaute."31 Aesthetic beauty is

useless for those exploring the imagination; and so too, is

science as yet:

Nous ne savons plus saluer la beaute qu'a nos

heures de faiblesse. A celles de tension, un
aliment plus nourrissant est indispensable, la
science sans doute, si nous ne subissions un
attrait indefectible pour les questions
passionnantes, et combien proches du seuil de la
conscience, de 1•imagination empirique, questions
dont elle entreprend peu ou mal 1'etude.3^

Caillois1 "Lettre a Andre Breton" and "Decision preliminaire

sur la metaphysique" both precede and frame this argument

presented in "Notice sur I'impuretd dans l'art" — itself

30Caillois, Approches 41.

31Caillois, Approches 46.
32Caillois, Approches 53.
 130

sub-divided into "Bases d'une condamnation de l'art pur" and

"Impurete et imagination" — and which does not address

Surrealism at all. In fact, we learn from Approches de

11imaainaire ("L'Equivoque surr^aliste") that Procfes

intellectuel de l'art was partially drafted during Caillois'

Surrealist phase; it was hence probably recast in accord

with the new prefatory essays and conclusion. Just as La

necessity d'esprit initially presents itself as an attack on

"la podsie pure," Caillois here attacks "l'art pur" to

challenge that dominant aesthetic trend, whether pure poetry

or abstract art, seeking to abolish the "subject," contents,

or figure of aesthetic representation. In a first stage, he

brackets metaphysical aesthetics much as he did metaphysical

cognition:

[P]eut-etre existe-t-il une 6nergie artistique

specifique, une essence de l'art. mais pour qui
s'en tient, meme a titre provisoire, au plan
phenomenal, seul accessible a 11 imagination, il
n'est possible d'apercevoir que des Elements
constitutifs de l'art.33

He defines these constitutive elements as "harmonique" and

"lyrique" — the first generally proper to music and the

second to literature — which broadly correspond to form and

content, or to the usual distinction between "pure" and

"impure" art.

The harmonic dimension mediates between "une structure

mathematique generale et un organisme sensitif.1,34 Neither

33Caillois, Approches 41.

34Caillois, Approches 44.
 131

indicible. ineffable, nor "pure," this may be readily

reduced to formulaic terms, such as vibrations or golden

rules: "c'est toujours un rapport numerique de la nature

invariable qui est per?u.1,35 Harmonic elements are not

useful for vital or self-conscious knowledge but involve

that first mode of resemblance defined above: "11 inutile

exaltation d'une condition structurelle d1 existence.,l36

Here, "obsessions de ressemblance" are reduced to their

least valuable form: "aux plus immediates, mais aussi aux

moins compromettantes d'entre elles; aux ressemblances de

forme et de rythme, id6alis6es par surcroit par le

nombre."37 This confirms man's natural inclination towards

repetition and laziness since it reflects the conservation-

instinct and the "principe d'economie.,l38 Not only does

Caillois attack harmonic or "pure" art for its economical

and seductive abstraction which does not compromise the

integrity of the perceiving subject,39 but he suggests that

35Caillois, Approches 43.

36Caillois,
Approches 45. He describes-.this exaltation
as 11 le
but in de la poursuite interessee de cette structure
mathematique de l'univers, rendue perceptible par
1'utilisation des mecanismes sensoriels batis eux-memes
selon le meme chiffre" (Approches 46).
37Caillois, Approches 45.
38Caillois, Approches 44.
3Reproducingsuch abstract structures in aesthetic
fashion is but 'Tunel flatterie a soi-meme par un proche
ddtour, attendu que ces recherches ne sauraient avoir qu'une
fin de complaisance. . ."(Approches 45).
 132

art's formal or "pure" dimension has already been solved in

the following fashion:

[U]ne meme proportion math£matique r£git la

morphologie de la plupart des organismes marins et
les perspectives d'un monument ou d'un tableau.
Une meme loi (la dissym6trie est la condition d'un
ph6nom6ne, la sym6trie de sa cessation) commande ci
la fois les modalit£s des reactions chimiques, la
formation des cristaux et le rythme d'un po6me ou
d'un morceau de musique. La science pure,
pourrait-on dire, a absorb^ avec facilite l'art
pur.40

However, if "pure science" has osmotically absorbed

"pure art," this is not yet true of art's lyrical dimension,

whose "impure" elements express the actual or virtual

contents of "la conscience."41 "Impure" art, as opposed to

"pure" art, is a mode of resemblance that implicates the

self: "1'individuality est engage par ces Phantasmes a une

profondeur beaucoup plus impressionnante qu'elle ne peut

l'etre par les sourires entendus de 1'harmonie."42

Literature's primary value at present, claims the following

section, "Impurete et imagination," is hence to provide the

basis for a "phenomenologie de 1'imagination."43 Caillois'

40Caillois, Approches 53.

41Caillois, Approches 46. The lyrical aspect is most

proper to the literary arts but Caillois quickly adduces the

monument's "destination" in architecture; the "timber" of
musical notes; the status of the human body in danse and
song, providing "un role 6motionnel et mvthicrue de grande
quality en tant que substrat de la sexualite et 6talon de
1'anthropomorphisme"(48).
42Caillois, Approches 47.
43Caillois, Approches 50.
 133

arguments about 1'imagination empiricrue do not lay claim to

the ideogrammatic network of La ndcessite d'esprit.44 Yet

he still defines "l'^lgment lyrique" in associationist

terms: "ce oui recoit de 11 imagination affective une

certaine capacite spontande d'expansion, de proliferation et

d1 annexion tendancieuses."45 Moreover, the fact that he has

bracketed the problem of the noumenon does not lead Caillois

to renounce the obiective nature of 11 imagination empirigue.

A footnote mentions his articles, "La mante religieuse" and

"Mim6tisme et psychasthenic ldgendaire,11 to confirm that

nature often objectifies human "constellations affectives

primordiales"...46

In elliptical fashion, "Impurete et imagination"

sketches the "moyens d'action divers et d'in6gale valeur" of

the "lyrical" element: these include sentimentality ("sorte

d*inflation a base de prejuges d'epoques et de lieux") or

else its symbolic expression in certain stylistic phenomena,

here termed "conventionnalisme spontane."47 Caillois also

mentions sentiments nostalgigues. such as exoticism; the

return to childhood; to the golden age; or to the womb (most

44Thus, Caillois refers to "11embryonnaire etat actuel

de la phenomenologie du reve, des maladies mentales, du
mythe et du fait lyrique. . ."(Approches 47).
45Caillois, Approches 44. He is citing from his own
article in Recherches philosophigues 4 (1934).
4®Caillois, Approches 46.
47Caillois, Approches 48.
 134

fashionable at present, in his opinion). Finally he notes

"la capacity d'identification au h6ros qui exerce surtout

ses ravages par le cinema, le theatre et le roman et sur

laquelle le dernier mot parait avoir ete dit par la

psychanalyse."48 But he does not pursue these intriguing

questions, seeking to alert us, rather, to literature's

literary or complacent mode of ressemblance:

[0]n ne saurait trop exag6rer le discredit oti la

litterature doit etre tenue pour peu qu'on
rgfl&chisse & la sordidit6 du but poursuivi par
l'6crivain: s^duire par la ressemblance
avantageuse du portrait retouche (en bien ou en
mal suivant les gouts de chacun).49

Also interesting, in this regard, are glancing comments on

Marxist and Sorelian views of art. Caillois questions the

latter's aspiration that art might be used, pragmatically,

as a mode of "provocation" and cites the argument in

Reflexions sur la violence that Marxists should conceive of

art "comme une realite qui fait naitre des idees et non

comme une application d'idees. . . ."50 Such a proposition,

as well as Marxist ones, erroneously position art as

"1•anticipation de la forme la plus haute de la

production."51 Caillois remarks:

1] . . . 1'heterogeneite des composantes de l'art

(astuce, inspiration, etc.) rend tres faible sa

48Caillois, Approches 48.

49Caillois, Approches 49.
50Caillois, Approches 49.
51Caillois, Approches 49.
 135

capacity d'utilisation comme document; 2] . . .

par sa nature de flatterie, l'art est moins propre
que tout autre chose & faire naitre des idees et
qu'il semble au contraire particuliferement apte a
assoupir au profit de quelque rumination
d'impressions et de souvenirs 1•imperatif de
connaissance de l1esprit.52

The conclusion of Procfes intellectuel de l'art argues

that properly to exploit art's lyrical dimension means

reversing the historical roles of art and science, an

osmotic shift prefigured in the "absorption" of "pure" art

by "pure" science. Indeed, he proposes that science now

attend to 1'imagination empirioue: "il n'y a pas de science

de l'impurete dans l'art, c'est-a-dire de science du contenu

imaginatif: ce 'sujet' qu'ici ou la on s'est tant applique a

faire oublier."53 "Crise de la litterature" describes art's

inevitable self-destruction in historical terms, due to "une

necessite interne."54 If the best young minds are turning

from literature to politics and philosophy, it claims, this

derives not only from the political, economic, and social

imperative of the moment:

Petit a petit, [l'art] en est venu a s'eriger en

m6thode privil6gi6e de connaissance et a cru
pouvoir par consequent s'engager sans precaution
ni garantie dans des aventures sinon
m£taphysiques, au moins de plus en plus
hasardeuses, qui l'ont conduit entre autres choses
a se poser a lui-meme la question de confiance et
a la resoudre par la negative. Tel apparait
schematiquement le progres des idees de Mallarme a

52Caillois, Approches 49.

53Caillois, Approches 53.
54Caillois, Approches 52.
 136

Dada, Rimbaud en dtant le raccourci.55

Applying aesthetic method to scientific inquiry undermined

the status of art. In order for poetry to survive, writes

Caillois, it became a mere exercice for Valery or else a

"technique d•exploration de 1•inconscient ("c'6tait la

position du surr^alisme au moment ou celui-ci tendait &

confondre le poeme et le texte automatique"56).

Caillois' osmotic agenda is implicitly linked to the

Naturphilosophie of German Romanticism when he applauds "le

desir de Mme. de Stael qui voulait qu'on donn&t pour guide k

la methode experimentale 'une philosophie plus etendue qui

embrasserait I'univers dans son ensemble et ne mdpriserait

pas le cote nocturne de la nature."'57 Urging that science

absorb art in such a way as to challenge, rather than

flatter, the imagination, Caillois actually invokes a form

of "terrorism" or "torture":

II n'en faut pas moins quitter, a la suite de

Rimbaud, toute attitude d'adoration en face du
desordre de son esprit. L'imagination de fait pas
d'aveux aussi facilement cme le premier coupable
venu. sous pretexte ou'elle est bourrelde de
remords. En tout cas, elle n'en fait pas a ceux

55Caillois, Approches 53.

56Caillois, Approches 53. His allusion to this
identification of automatism and poetry (typified, in a
sense, by La n6cessit6 d'esprit) as a phenomenon of the past
may be correlated with his attack, in the "Lettre & Andr6
Breton," on the Surrealists' current predilection for
biographical poetry. Presumably, he views Rosey's poem
about Breton — which he mentions — as the worst form of
literary "complaisance."
57Caillois, Approches 51.
 137

qui lui rendent un culte, mais h ceux qui

11 oppriment. II est done necessaire de la mettre
& la question. . . .1,58

The conclusion briefly lists a program of controlled

psychological research, confirming that Caillois* interest

in impure art essentially concerns the creation of an impure

science.59 However, "Mimdtisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire"

will suggest that he was not particularly inclined towards

scientific investigation and would rather engage in a

systematization of New Scientific epistemology.

* * *

Proces intellectuel de l'art was so obscure as to have

been granted a confused if not contradictory reception;

still, the wide range of responses confirm its relevance to

a year witnessing the heated debates about the role of art,

culture and politics at the famous Conares international des

ecrivains pour la defense de la culture held in June 1935.

58Caillois, Approches 54. Concerning such

"terrorism," he outlines the ambitions of a research group:
"II est des circonstances ou toute activite suspecte doit
immediatement attirer sur elle l'interdit et
1'excommunication majeure. Dans un temps de liberalisme
bourgeois, on ne peut compter ni sur le recours au bras
seculier, ni sur la sanction du pouvoir temporel"(Approches
52).
59This includes: stimulation of imaginative phenomena;
analysis of unconscious determinism; research into
"conventionnalisme spontan6"; study of subjective/objective
relations (1111 homogeneite profonde de 1'Umwelt et de
11 Innenwelt"); presentation of "experiences affectives
personnelles"; and epistemological inquiry based on current
scientific methodology (Approches 54).
 138

Although we do not definitely know whether Caillois attended

this event, a letter of July 13, 1935 to Gurnaud indicates

his involvement with such meetings and conveys the

theoretical ambition he brought to bear upon their concerns:

11Je m'interesse beaucoup a ces questions de logistique qui

me semblent essentielles, au point que derniferement, j'ai

reproche publiquement h Maublanc, th^oricien de l'A.E.A.R.

de ne pas la [sic] tenir compte."60 The message of Procfes

intellectuel de l'art. though, was not so clear-cut. A

review in Nouvelles litteraires of November 1935 described

"Notices sur l'impuret6 dans l'art" as a Surrealist

statement about the current "crise de la litterature":

Et c'est, du point de vue surreal iste, a une

nouvelle conception de la position et de la nature
de l'art envisage, dans son ensemble, que les
efforts doivent tendre pour realiser le
redressement necessaire. II y a dans cet ecrit
des observations justes, d'audacieuses
interpretations: on leur voudrait seulement un
caractere plus d6pouill6 et la mise en formules
simples des quinze ou vingt propositions
susceptibles d'apporter au sujet un enrichissement
par de radicales transformations.61

60RogerCaillois, letter to Gurnaud, 13 July 1935,

C.4, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliothfeque Municipale, Vichy. Since
this letter was written in the month following the famous
Conares international des ecrivains of June 1935, we might
also consider Boaretto's allusion (in her edition of the
Paulhan-Ponge correspondance) to "un tres beau discours de
Caillois, alors seulement Sge de vingt-deux ans" (Jean
Paulhan and Francis Ponae. Correspondance 1923-1968. ed.
Claire Boaretto, 2 vols. [Paris: Gallimard, 1986] 2: 191).
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any other trace
of Caillois' performance.
61Hector Talvart, "La semaine bibliographique,"
Nouvelles litteraires Nov. 2 1935: 9.
 139

Reviewing the entire monograph for the Cahiers du Sud.

Gaston Derycke applauded the demotion of metaphysics,

responsible for "un jeu de dupes":

L'art, la philosophie, la religion, l'^thique

(l'6thique surtout), sont des expressions plus ou
moins avou£es, plus ou moins conscientes, de ce
doute de 1*existence d'un Absolu quelconque.
Leurs produits sont de fausses fenetres. peintes
par l'homme sur le mur nu du R6el. . .

As for the status of art, Derycke is quite content to see it

abolished: "Ces elements impurs, pourquoi les affubler des

oripeaux de l'Art?"63 Yet Bachelard discerned in Procfes

intellectuel de l'art "tout ce que j'aime dans la vie

intellectuelle. . . ."64 And he viewed the work in a

distinctly metaphysical light, describing it to Caillois, in

November 1935, as "la base de la Critique de la Poesie pure

que vous ecrirez. . . .»65 Bachelard considers it a logical

sequel to La necessity d1esprit. whose title he

significantly distorts: "J'attends avec une reelle

impatience votre livre sur 'La necessite de 1'Esprit.' Cette

necessite est au fond de toutes mes meditations.1,66 Solely

62Gaston Derycke, "Art et metaphysique," Rev. of

Proces intellectuel de l'art. by Roger Caillois, Cahiers du
Sud Nov. 1935: 772.
63Derycke 773.
64Gaston Bachelard, letter to Roger Caillois, Nov. 2
1935, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 194.
65Gaston Bachelard, letter to Roger Caillois, Nov.2
1935, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 194.
66Bachelard, letter to Caillois, Nov. 2 1935, Roger
Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 194.
 140

capitalizing the word "esprit," he views Procfes intellectuel

de 11art as a form of neo-Kantian poetics fostered by

Surrealism:

. . . il faut profiter de cette liberation pour

arriver k une esthetique de l'abstrait. Je crois
que ce sera votre point de vue finalement puisque
vous allez vous pencher sur les forces
constructives de 1'esprit. Trouver les conditions
n£cessaires de l'essor spirituel libre, voila la
tciche moderne. L*imagination empirique laisserait
la pogsie k son impuret6. . . . Vous etes en voie
de d£passer cette imagination empirigue et vous en
avez le droit, car vous avez d6j& p6n6tr6 au fond
de cette imagination premiere dans une observation
extraordinairement precise.67

So did Aragon (now Communist and ex-Surrealist) quite

enjoy Procfes intellectuel de l'art. albeit in an alternate

and satirical way: "Cela est bizarre, je pensais en suivant

votre pens£e & celle de Swift, et plus particuli&rement &

ces • Conseils aux domestiques'. . . ."68 He identifies

quite revealingly with Caillois to suggest that his own

position relative to poetry has been misconstrued: "[M]oi

aussi, me voici devenu l'antipoete type, c'est-a-dire le

Malin."69 Aragon evokes, in this respect, his prior

67Bachelard, letter to Roger Caillois, Nov. 2 1935,

Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 194; referring to
Caillois1 "Analyse et commentaire d'un exemple
d'association libre d'id£es, he pursues: "Votre bel article
des Recherches Philosophiques m'a beaucoup frappe. Je dois
a la rentree en faire un sujet d*expose, un modele d1expose,
pour mes etudiants"(194).
68LouisAragon, letter to Roger Caillois, Oct. 23 1935
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 192.
69Louis Aragon, letter to Roger Caillois, Oct. 23 1935,
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 193. He is
specifically thinking of his address to the Congres des
 141

attempts to demystify Surrealism, to grasp the social basis

of inspiration. Slyly referring to Caillois' attacks on the

'exaltation of structure,1 this Marxist reader suggests that

the next stage of his thought should be less abstract: "[J]e

dirais que ce petit livre n'est que la superstructure de

votre pensee."7® Such criticism is far gentler than Georges

Sadoul's review for the Communist-dominated Commune. which

dismissed Caillois' "essai ambitieux de resoudre certains

problemes esthetiques; l'auteur n'ayant aucun soupgon de

1'existence des facteurs sociaux dans 1'art ne pouvait

qu'^chouer dans sa tentative."71 Yet in April 1936, the

Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre, formerly a member of

Philosophies, sent Caillois a copy of his new book La

conscience mvstifiee (reviewed in Commune as a promising

analysis of "la mystification de la conscience bourgeoise a

l'epoque actuelle, imperialiste"72) with a laudatory letter.

Presumably Caillois had noted a certain 'metaphysical

fallacy* since Lefebvre starts out:

Cher camarade, vous avez pleinement raison - L'"en

definitive" ne me satisfait pas plus que vous.
Valable en 1890, il sert aujourd'hui a couvrir les

ecrivains in June 1935 — "ou nos ignorantins veulent voir

le monstre antipoetique de la calomnie. . ."(193).
70Louis Aragon, letter to Roger Caillois, Oct. 23 1935,
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 193.
71Georges Sadoul, "Revue des revues," Commune 23 (July
1935): 1333.
72H. Chassagne, Rev. of La Conscience mvstifiee by N.

Gutermann and H. Lefebvre, Commune 32 (April 1936): 1005.

 142

paresses iddologiques. Mais la "Conscience

mystifide" veut seulement determiner les cadres
g£n£raux d'une analyse ideologique et meme
politique de notre temps. (Voyez comment la
politique hitldrienne informe la thfese de la
mystification!)73

Lefebvre closes by praising Caillois' writings on Surrealism

and on art (namely Proces intellectuel de l'art) as "une

excellente liberation, un bon 'point de rupture* qui [ouvre]

des perspectives.1174
Proces intellectuel de l'art received two other

comments that, together, highlight its ambiguous relation to

Surrealism. Jean Wahl, who persistently if discreetly

praised Caillois' Surrealist efforts, was far more dubious

about the "Lettre a Andre Breton," as noted earlier. Well-

disposed towards "la science du pourquoi pas," he preferred,

nevertheless, to keep the distinction between science and

literature intact, approving Breton's "parti de 1'intuition"

insofar as poetry was concerned; he could hardly deny the

virtues of analytical rigor but objected that "qui demonte

le jouet connait le jouet et qui demonte le poete ne connait

plus le poete."7^ Reviewing Proces intellectuel de l'art

for the NRF. Wahl then hailed Caillois as "un des jeunes

73Henri Lefebvre, letter to Roger Caillois, April 1936,

C.L.9, Fonds Spdciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
74Lefebvre, letter to Roger Caillois, April 1936,
C.L.9, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
75Jean Wahl, letter to Roger Caillois, 22 February
1935, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 183.
 143

esprits philosophigues les plus p£n£trants d'aujourd'hui,1,76

but only summarily acknowledged the merits of his anti-

intuitive stance and concluded with the following query:

Caillois cite en tdte de son £tude sur l'impuret6

de l'art ces paroles de "X, schizophrene, 66 ans":
"Voyez ces roses, ma femme les aurait trouv6es
belles; pour moi, c'est un amas de feuilles, de
p£tales, d'6pines et de tiges." II semble qu'il
prenne le parti du schizophrene (& moins que cette
citation ne montre chez lui une tendance a se
critiquer lui-meme, apr&s avoir critique les
autres.) Mais n'y a-t-il pas moyen — pour
reprendre des paroles connues — d'enchainer une
analyse a une extase? La rose n'est peut-etre pas
seulement un amas; elle est un compose, une
totalite. Et quand je la sens, je forme avec elle
une totalite nouvelle, bien que du point de vue de
Caillois, je ne sois moi aussi qu'un amas de
muscles, de nerfs, etc...77

This directly echoes Breton's attack on Bataille in the

Second manifeste of 1930 as an anti-idealist psychasthenic

subject, an ailment exemplified by "la constatation pour lui

renversante que "l'interieur d'une rose ne repond pas du

tout a sa beauts ext^rieure. crue si l'on arrache iuscru'au

dernier les petales de la corolle. il ne reste plus cm'une

to'uffe d1 aspect sordide. . . ."78 Like Breton who thus

vividly rejects Bataille's "base materialism,1179 Wahl does

76JeanWahl, Rev. of Proces intellectuel de l'art. by

Roger Caillois, Nouvelle revue francaise 268 (Jan. 1936): 122.
77Wahl, Rev. of Proces intellectuel de l'art 123.
78Andre Breton, Manifestes du surrealisme (Paris:
Gallimard, 1985) 135.
79See Georges Bataille, "Le bas materialisme et la
gnose" [1930], Oeuvres completes 10 vols., ed. Michel
Foucault (Paris: Gallimard, 1970) 1: 220-226.
 144

not fully appreciate Caillois' "amas de feuilles, de

p£tales, d*6pines et de tiges," a derealized materialism

whose implications are only drawn out in "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic 16gendaire.11

A rather neglected, but very interesting essay by the

Romanian Jewish critic, Benjamin Fondane also condemned

Caillois' "schizophrenia." Yet, Fondane's Faux traitd

d'esth^tique (1938) levelled Wahl's critique of Procfes

intellectuel de l'art against Breton as well — albeit

transmuting this charge into one of excessive idealism

rather than materialism. Fondane designates as

schizophrenic "un type humain qui a le degollt et la haine de

1'existence, qui la poursuit avec acharnement au nom d'une

pensee evidee de tout contenu sensible, appelee Esprit

— type intellectuel tellement r6pandu a notre epoque, qu'il

semble qu'elle l'ait invents."80 Claiming that Les vases

communicants reduced poetry to its "constitutive elements,"

he suggests: "C'est 1& aussi que — a son esprit defendant

— M. Breton consent & l'amfere verity qu'une rose n'est pas

belle, que le d6compte une fois fait des feuilles, des

petales, des epines et des tiges nous n'v trouverons rien de

plus."81 Although Fondane condemns both Breton and Caillois

80Benjamin Fondane Faux traitd d'esthdticme. ed.

Catherine Thieck (Paris: Plasma, 1980) 29.
slFondane, Faux 35; "Cedant a l'Esprit du Temps, a la
dialectique historique, a l'ethique qui nous est revenue
plus virulente que jamais par le detour de la pensee
revolutionnaire, la poesie de nos jours rompit avec son non-
 145

for their "exploitation rationnelle de 1'irrationnel."82 the

latter's approach is less tainted with hypocrisy: "ce sont

les 1nouveaux modes de pensge exiges par le developpement

des sciences physiques' gu'il exprime; le temps 'exige1, la

science 'veut', la pens£e 'ordonne' et M. Caillois — sans

tergiverser, sans hesiter, tete baissee, leur ob6it."83

Still, like Wahl, Pondane fails to consider that Caillois1

scientific tauromachia in 1935 involved an "aventure dans le

noir" evoked by "Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire," and

which translates "impure" science into a much more aesthetic

light.

savoir existentiel, ambitionna le titre de: connaissance,

pretendit au 'document• mental, se donna des airs
scientifiques et pondit le plus bizarre des oeufs que l'on
puisse imaginer: le miracle naturel. le mystere ro^canicrue.
1'inspiration automatiaue"f35).
82Fondane, Faux 35.
83Fondane, Faux 27.
 146

"Mimdtisme et psychasthenic l^gendaire"

Unlike readers of the time, I will connect the argument

of Procfes intellectuel de l'art with "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic 1Agendaire," published in Minotaure 7 (1935),

an essay which explores those "obsessions de ressemblance"

compromising the self as a conceptual locus. It elaborates

upon "La mante religieuse" in much the same way that Proces

intellectuel de l'art evolves from La necessite d1esprit:

both abandon a framework of absolute ideogrammatic

overdetermination or "lucidite lyrique" to reflect upon the

infinite approximations of "la lucidite personnelle." The

epigraph warns: "A force de jouer au fantome on le devient."

It seems directed at Breton, prone to 'haunt' himself

without adverse effect in such works as Nadia. Beyond

Surrealism, though, "Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire"

also seems to challenge Bachelard or, rather, his

optimistic views, in Le nouvel esprit scientif icrue. of

"1' elargissement de 1'esprit scientifique" — the

epistemological adaptation to quantum physics, to the New

Science.84 For Bachelard, "[l]a comprehension a un axe

dynamique, c'est un elan spirituel, c'est un elan vital."85

84Bachelard, Nouvel 180.

85Bachelard, Nouvel 183.
 147

For Caillois, on the contrary, such scientific comprehension

is motored by "l'inertie de l'61an vital"86 or what he will

now characterize as "psvchasth6nie 16aendaire." The

following year, Walter Benjamin would publish his famous

"Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; but "Mimetisme

et psychasthenic 16gendaire" could well be sub-titled

"Science as Natural Reproduction."

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire" seizes upon

mimicry as a residual mystery to be 'absorbed.' This very

gesture of osmosis, however, modifies the spirit of the New

Science, assimilating it, in effect, to the residual

phenomenon at hand; both mimicry and psychasthenia are

revealed to be representational modes of cognition which

express the obsessional imagination and endanger the

integrity off the perceiving subject, or New Scientist.

Caillois* essay first focuses upon that mimicry whereby

certain animals (primarily such insects as butterflies)

display images or ocular patternings; more importantly,

mimicry also involves "homomorphie" whereby certain animals

(insects, octopuses, and fish) reflect their environment.

All prior scientific explanations of mimicry are here

rejected: "preadaptation" (the idea that insects might seek

corresponding settings); an "ornamental" drive; or the

notion of "hasard" proposed by the entomologist Cuenot. As

86Roger Caillois, "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

16gendaire," Minotaure 7 1935: 9.
 148

for Darwin, his utilitarian theories have been discredited,

we are told, by "Judd and Foucher" who found many mimetic

insects in the bellies of predators.87 In fact, Caillois

will propose an audacious evolutionary theory, a manner of

revised Lamarckianism:
. il aurait pu y avoir un jeu d'organes
cutanes permettant la simulation des imperfections
des feuilles, le m^canisme imitateur ayant disparu
le caract^re morphologique une fois acquis (c'est-
&-dire, dans le cas present, la ressemblance une
fois obtenue) selon la loi meme de Lamarck. Le
mimetisme morphologique pourrait etre alors, a
l'instar du mimdtisme chromatique, une veritable
photographie, mais de la forme et du relief, une
photographie sur le plan de l'objet et non sur
celui de 1'image, reproduction dans l'espace
tridimensionnel avec le plein et la profondeur :
photographie-sculpture ou mieux teleplastie si
1'on depouille le mot de tout contenu
m6tapsychiste.88

Mimicry. according to this freewheeling speculation, thus

constitutes a form of natural photography. The animal

evolved through a physiological mirroring of its milieu and

then, for some unknown reason, ceased to adapt in this way.

If the article, until now, has offered a confused wealth of

data under the guise of systematic argument, the claim of

rigor all but disappears in the spiraling complexity and

87A later version for Le rovthe et 11homme (Paris:

Gallimard, 1938) adds an attack against both providential
and Darwinian ("transformational") theories of mimicry by
asserting that natural selection, "facteur passif, est
incapable de produire par elle-meme un fait nouveau" (Mvthe
101). We will find similar attacks against Darwinian
evolution in the writings of Bachelard and Armand Petitjean
but from the perspective of a vitalist rather than
psychasthenic imagination.
88Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7.
 149

shifting frames of reference of the ensuing pages, a

movement initiated, it would seem, by Caillois' renewed

insistence that mimicry is far from utilitarian: it is a

luxury and even "un luxe dangereux.1,89 With luxurious

descriptive brio, he adduces a brilliant illustration of

such perils in the "miserable" case of the "Phyllie"

insects:

[EJlles se broutent entre elles, se prenant pour

de veritables feuilles, en sorte qu'on pourrait
croire a une sorte de masochisme collectif
aboutissant a l'homophagie mutuelle, la
simulation de la feuille 6tant une provocation au
cannibalisme dans cette maniere de festin
tot6mique.90

After this anthropomorphic glance at insect mimicry,

Caillois outlines analogous "virtualites psychologiques" in

the human imagination, first locating a human counterpart to

mimicry in "1'immense domaine de la magie mimetique selon

laquelle le semblable produit le semblable et sur quoi toute

pratique incantatoire est plus ou moins fondee."91 Broadly

linking primitive and civilized thought, he correlates this

with intellectual associationism — citing to this end

Tylor, Hubert and Mauss, and Frazer. He notes "la

correspondance heureusement mise en lumiere par ces auteurs

des principes de la magie et de ceux de 1'association des

idees. . . .,l92 The magical principle of objects united

89Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7 [emphasis added].

90Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7.
91Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7.
92Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7.
 150

through contact corresponds to intellectual association

through contiguity; and "1'attraction similium de la magie :

le semblable produit le semblable" corresponds to

intellectual association through "ressemblance.1,93 This

last is what most concerns him:

L'essentiel est qu'il reste chez le "primitif" une

tendance imperieuse k imiter jointe a la croyance
ci l'efficacit6 de cette imitation, tendance encore
assez puissante chez le "civilis6" puisqu'elle
demeure chez lui l'une des deux conditions du
cheminement de sa pensde livr6e a elle-meme, 6tant
mis a part, pour ne pas compliquer immod^rement le
probleme, la question generale de la ressemblance
qui est loin d'etre elucidee et qui joue un role
quelquefois decisif dans 1'affectivite et, sous le
nom de correspondance. dans 1'esthetique.94

Yet, what Caillois envisions beyond this process of

ressemblance. "tendance dont il devient difficile de

contester 1'universality,"95 is an apprehension of space.

In a curious and crucial move, he attributes mimicry's

"teleplastie" to magical thought: "La recherche du semblable

apparait comme un moyen, sinon comme un intermediaire. La

fin semble bien etre 1'assimilation au milieu."96

Conversely, he attributes a form of magical thought to

mimicry:

Le mimetisme serait . . . k definir correctement

comme une incantation fixee a son point culminant
et ayant pris le sorcier a son propre piege.

93Caillois, "Mimetisme" 7.
94Caillois, "Mim6tisme" 7.
95Caillois, "Mimetisme" 8.
96Caillois, "Mimetisme" 8.
 151

Qu'on ne dise pas que c'est folie d'attribuer la

magie aux insectes: 1'application nouvelle des
mots ne doit pas dissimuler la profonde simplicity
de la chose. Comment appeler autrement que magie
prestiaieuse et fascination les ph^nomenes qu'on a
unanimement classes pr6cis6ment sous le nom de
mimetisme. . . .97

At this point, Caillois addresses the "New science" and

its "aventure dans le noir" — analogous to such mimicry and

mimetic magic. La necessity d'esprit had conflated

psychasthenia with Freudian overdetermination; here,

Caillois combines Janet with the phenomenological

psychiatrist Minkowski, and his descriptions of

schizophrenia, to develop the paradigm of psychasthenic

legendaire, analogous to "ce que le mimetisme realise

morphologiquement dans certaines especes animales."98 As

Caillois defines it, the problem concerns the representation

of space by an observer located within that space, for

"representation" displaces the subject as the center of his

conceptual coordinate-system. It is possible, we might

recall from Proces intellectuel de l'art. to assume the

epistemological detachment necessary for "1'inutile

exaltation d'une condition structurelle d'existence."

However, when consciousness seeks both to inhabit and

represent its space or milieu, an irremediable

disorientation must ensue. An important passage explains:

[L]a perception de I'espace est sans nul doute un

97Caillois, "Mimetisme" 8.
98Caillois, "Mim6tisme" 9.
 152

phgnom&ne complexes l'espace est indissolublement

per?u et represents. . . . C'est avec l'espace
represents que le drame se precise car 1'etre
vivant, l'organisme, n'est plus l'origine de ses
coordonnSes, mais un point parmi d'autres, il est
d£poss£d£ de son privilege et, au sens fort de
l1 expression ne sait plus oft se mettre. On a dSjei
reconnu le propre de 1'attitude scientifique et,
de fait, il est remarquable que la science
contemporaine multiplie prScisSment les espaces
repr£sent£s: espaces de Finsler, de Fermat, hyper-
espace de Riemann-Christoffel, espaces abstraits,
generalises, ouverts, fermes, denses en soi,
clairsemes, etc... Le sentiment de la
personnalitS, en tant que sentiment de la
distinction de l'organisme dans le milieu, de la
liaison de la conscience et d'un point particulier
de l'espace ne tarde pas dans ces conditions a
etre gravement min6 ; on entre alors dans la
psychologie de la psychasthenic et plus
precisSment de la psychasthenic ldaendaire si l'on
consent a nommer ainsi le trouble des rapports
definis
_ .
ci-dessus de la *personnalite et de
QQ
l'espace.31*

Le nouvel esprit scientif ioue had optimistically

suggested that despite the inherent conceptual difficulties

of modern science, "un jour, on s'apergoit qu'on a compris.

A quelle lumiere reconnait-on d'abord la valeur de ces

syntheses subites? A une clarte indicible qui met en notre

raison securite et bonheur."10° Things are somewhat bleaker

for Caillois. He translates the scientific "aventure dans

le noir" not only into psychasthenia ("depersonnalisation

par assimilation a l'espace") but also into Minkowski's

"espace noir." that clinical state where the self perceives

"caillois, "Mimetisme" 8.
100Bachelard, Nouvel 182.
 153

itself as permeable to its surroundings.101 Insisting upon

the grave dangers of cognition identified with such psychic

disorders, Caillois echoes the terms of his youthful

experiments — under the aegis of Le Grand Jeu. I have

suggested — when he suggests that represented space does

not merely absorb but actually devours self-conscious

scientific subjects:

L'espace les poursuit, les cerne, les digere dans

une phagocytose g6ant. A la fin il les remplace.
Le corps alors se d^solidarise d'avec la pens6e,
11individu franchit la frontiere de sa peau et
habite de 1*autre cote de ses sens. II cherche a
se voir d'un point quelconque de l'espace. Lui-
meme se sent devenir de l'espace, de l'espace noir
oil l'on ne peut mettre de choses. II est
semblable, non pas semblable a quelque chose, mais
simplement semblable. Et il invente des espaces
dont il est 'la possession convulsive.'102

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire" thus strives to

theorize an interdisciplinary paradigm of derealizing

ressemblance or representation: "t616plastie" (in biological

terms), magical incantation (in anthropological terms), or

psychasthenic science (in psychological terms). As

Caillois' epigraph warned at the outset, this is a most

dangerous resemblance. "La vie recule d'un degre." he

writes, remarking that mimetic insects usually imitate

lower life-forms, such as leaves. Mimicry confirms, in his

101Cailloisnotes: "Les analyses de Minkowski sont ici

precieuses: 1'obscurity n'est pas la simple absence de
lumiere; il y a quelque chose de positif en elle"
("Mimetisme" 9).
102Caillois, "Mimetisme" 8.
 154

opinion, that besides a conservation-instinct propelling the

universe, there exists an "instinct d1 abandon qui le

polarise vers un mode d'existence reduite, qui a la limite

ne connaitrait plus ni conscience ni sensibility; 11inertie

de 1161an vital pour ainsi dire."103 This reflects a

"sollicitation de l'espace" underlying the various

processes described above,

sous l'effet de laquelle la vie parait perdre du

terrain, brouillant dans sa retraite la frontiere
de l'organisme et du milieu et reculant d1autant
les limites dans lesouelles. selon Pythagore, il
est Dermis de connaitre. comme on doit, erne la
nature est partout la meme.104

A footnote reads: "A la limite pour la science tout est

milieu,"105 confirming that the New Science is perhaps best

attuned to this requisite apprehension of the world via the

mimetic imagination. Yet "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

legendaire" is indeed related to aesthetics — if only

because it includes certain artistic examples of mimicry.

Caillois cites, for example, the concluding paragraphs of La

tentation de Saint-Antoine. where the three orders of nature

"merge: "le spectacle d'un mimetisme g6n6ral auquel l'ermite

succombe. . . .«1°6 Besides certain Czech paintings where

103Caillois, "Mimetisme" 9.
104Caillois, "Mimetisme" 9.
105Caillois, "Mimetisme" 10.
106Caillois, "Mimetisme" 9. He adds: "L1accent est
sans doute mis sur 1'aspect pantheiste et meme conqudrant de
cette descente aux enfers. mais celle-ci n'apparait pas
moins ici comme une forme du processus de la generalisation
 155

flowers and birds are indistinguishable, he also mentions

"les tableaux peints vers 1930 par Salvador Dali ou, quoi

gu'en dise 1'auteur, ces homines, dormeuses, chevaux, lions,

invisibles, sont moins le fait d'ambiguites ou de

plurivocit6s paranoiaques que d'assimilations mimetiques de

l'anim6 a 1'inanime.1,107 The most interesting aesthetic

implications of mimicry are presented, though, and very

discreetly so, in the essay's last footnote referring any

questions to P. Vignon's Introduction h la bioloaie

experimentale (1930). While rejecting the latter's idea

about 'beauty' in the insect world, Caillois writes:

L'auteur montre a chaque occasion que si le

mimetisme est un processus de defense, il depasse
largement sa fin: qu'il est "hypertelique." II
conclue done a une activity infra-consciente
(jusque la il est possible de le suivre)
travaillant a un but purement esthetique "pour le
d6cor": "cela est elegant, cela est beau." II est
a peine necessaire de discuter un tel
anthropomorphisme. Pour ma part, d'ailleurs. si
1'on veut reduire 1'instinct esthetique a une

de 1'espace aux depens de l'individu, a moins qu'on emploie

le vocabulaire psychanalytique et qu'on parle de
reintegration a 1'insensibilite originelle et a
11inconscience prenatale : querelle de langage"(9). "La
mante religieuse" had already discerned the most prominent
literary treatment of mimicry in Flaubert's mystical
conclusion; Frederic of L1 education sentimentale was
featured throughout La necessity d'esprit as psychasthenic
hero, par excellence.
107Caillois, "Mimetisme" (9). Caillois' brief essay on
Dali for Documents 35 — a response to Herbert Read on the
current conditioning of artistic language by the code of
Freudian symbolism — emphasizes the extent to which Dali's
painting is determined by more obscure and unconscious
factors than a deliberate usage of the Freudian dictionary.
See his "Determinations inconscientes en peinture,"
Documents 35 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1935): 5-6.
 156

tendance de metamorphose en obiet ou en espace. ie

ne m'v oppose pas. Mais est-ce bien cela que M.
Vignon d6sire?luu

This concession suggests that Caillois' mimicry allows for a

biological 'aesthetic instinct' — which would then inform

as well, mimetic magic and a psychasthenic New Science.

Refuting any simple appraisal of his break with Surrealism,

in other words, "Mim6tisme et psychasthenic ldgendaire"

would appear to suggest that his theoretical use of the New

Science translates this last into a New, albeit natural,

Art.

Of course, the essay appeared in the art-journal

Minotaure, an issue titled "Le cot6 nocturne de la nature,"

indicating the Surrealist' current interest in the natural

sciences. "Mim6tisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire" includes

photographs of mimetic insects stylistically similar to

those by Brassai and Man Ray, of butterflies and a strange

lizard, adorning this particular issue. Clearly, Caillois'

interest in mimicry was not at all alien to Surrealist

concerns, although I suspect that his essays did much to

foster this predilection. Favored by Breton, his prior

piece, "La mante religieuse," seems to have alerted the

Surrealists to the insect's mimetic capacities. (Frangoise

Will-Levaillant specifically suggests that it may have

reoriented Andr6 Masson from the sexual to the mimetic

108Caillois, "Mimetisme" 10 [emphasis added].

 157

features of the insect.109) However, it was only in 1935 or

1936, and thus after the publication of "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic legendaire," that Breton and his wife

Jacqueline would create the Surrealist object titled Le

petit mimeticme: a mantis mounted on a stump "with its wings

spread," notes Pressly, "so that it might easily be confused

with the stump's falling bark."110 He also cites Max

Ernst's La ioie de vivre (1935-36), where "the

characterization of the humanoid insects copulating in the

foreground is certainly derived from the mantis's sexual

habits and its mimetic capabilities.1,111 As for Breton's

famous allusions to mimicry in L'amour fou. these date from

1937.

Reviewing Minotaure 7 in November 1935, Andr6 Chastel

presented a helpful comparison between the essays of

Caillois and of Breton ("La nuit du tournesol").112 They

both augur, he writes, a future 'natural history' of the

spirit that will quite subvert the "grand dessein d'assagir

109FrangoiseWill-Levaillant ed., Andre Masson: le

rebelle du surrealisme (Paris: Hermann, 1976) 236.
110William L. Pressly, "The Praying Mantis in
Surrealist Art," Art Bulletin 15.4 (Dec. 1973): 611. Le
petit mimeticme was reproduced in Cahiers d'art 11 1936: 59.

liipressly 613; he mentions that Max Ernst's prior

depiction of the praying-mantis in the 1930 program for Dali
and Bunuel's Age d'or had stressed its "cruel passion,"
illustrating the pamphlet's equation of eros and thanatos"
(613).
112Andr6
Chastel, "Le cote nocturne de la nature," rev.
of Minotaure 7, Cahiers du Sud Nov. 1935: 807.
 158

l'homme qui s'allie souvent h un certain tour d'esprit anti-

mvstioue et le gofit, l'£tude des sciences naturelles."113

Yet if both Breton and Caillois are appropriating the

natural sciences in a revolutionary manner, their general

orientations are subtly opposed. Caillois, writes Chastel,

sous le pavilion de la science . . . introduit les

marchandises les plus ruineuses pour 1'esprit
rationaliste. Aux berges pures de l'etrange,
[Breton], en se prevalant de la rigueur dont il
tend a ne se departir jamais a son propre endroit,
veut se faire accorder les benefices de
11objectivit6.114

As formulated here, this dichotomy converges with the

argument set forth in Proces intellectuel de l'art which..

let us recall, evoked the modern, and most lately

Surrealist, application of aesthetic method to scientific

inquiry; Chastel suggests that Breton seeks to capture

natural phenomena within an objective aesthetic outlook.

In general, Surrealist photography and, even more so,

its focus on mimicry tends, in theoretical terms, to impose

aesthetic representation as an explanatory model upon

nature. According to Rosalind Krauss' "The Photographic

Conditions of Surrealism,11 this idea of "nature-as-

representation, nature-as-sign" was crucial to the movement:

"it is precisely this experience of reality as

representation that constitutes the notion of the Marvelous

113Chastel, Rev. of Minotaure 805; he refers to

Voltaire's "phlogistique," Goethe's "mineralogie," and
Gide's "botanique" (805).
114Chastel, Rev. of Minotaure 807.
 159

or of Convulsive Beauty — the key concepts of

surrealism."115 This is why Breton, in her opinion, was so

drawn to biological mimicry, as "an instance of the natural

production of signs, of one thing in nature contorting

itself into a representation of another."116 The

photographs of Brassai and Man Ray in Minotaure 7 present

their frozen and deftly-lit creatures in such a way as to

summon formal expression from nature itself. Framed by the

art-journal as a whole, these untitled images translate

biological design into semiotic intent. Of course, this

illumination, as Chastel suggests, is one whose 'rigor' and

'objectivity' was dubious at best.

Although the paradigm of the ideogramme in La necessite

d'esprit might accord itself with Breton's "cotd nocturne de

la nature," Caillois' subsequent "Mimetisme et psychasthenie

legendaire" reflects, rather, the stated ambitions of Proces

intellectuel de l'art. Both the text and photographs of his

Minotaure essay apply a scientific representational model to

the designs in nature. "Sous le pavilion de la science,"

Caillois' method entails an authoritative tone and

photographs framed with scientific captions. Unlike

Breton, he thus seeks to appropriate the natural imagination

— "le cot6 nocturne de la nature" — through the categories

115Rosalind Krauss, "The Photographic Conditions of

Surrealism," The Originality of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge:
MIT, 1985) 112.
116Krauss 112.
 160

of cognitive ressemblance or New Scientific representation.

However, as we have seen, the very gesture of finding

scientific cognition in nature conversely locates a natural

imagination within the procedures of science and scientific

photography itself. In this issue of Minotaure. then,

Breton and Caillois ultimately coincide, as Chastel's quote

suggests. The first was seeking to render his movement

increasingly scientific, here finding the correlative to

Surrealist representation in biology. Caillois, on the

other hand, was finding correspondances to scientific

representation in nature and hinting thereby that the New

Science, or his appropriation of the New Science, was surreal.

 The Environs of Mimicry

"Mimdtisme et psychasthenic legendaire" was not much

reviewed or discussed, although its resonance on the

periphery of Surrealism is well worth considering; thus,

Lacan's "Le stade du miroir," first presented the following

year, does (at least in its extant post-war version) briefly

mention Caillois' mimicry. To preface this discussion, I

will first attend to the specular imagery of Armand

Petitjean, Caillois" intimate friend at the Lycee Louis-le-

Grand, whose essay "Analyse spectrale du singe," was also

published in Minotaure 7 — "Le cote nocturne de la

nature.* Here, and in Imagination et realisation (1936),

Petitjean's ideas echo aspects of Caillois' approach with

the crucial difference that the former was an excited

proponent of "l'elan vital" whereas the latter, as we have

seen, dwelt on its "inertie." Petitjean, like Caillois,

would later contribute to the Cahiers du Sud and become a

protege of Jean Paulhan at the Nouvelle revue francaise. (A

letter from Paulhan to Caillois on August 18, 1938,

specifically mentions his desire "qu'il se format a la NRF

 162

une sorte de conseil: Sartre, Petitjean, et vous."117) A

precocious essayist, familiar with the literary and

philosophical tradition of both England and Germany,

Petitjean has been entirely forgotten, his name tainted due

to war-time collaboration as Drieu la Rochelle's right-hand

man at the NRF.118 In 1943, Jean Piel's war-time diary

records about Petitjean's Combats preliminaires (1941):

Voila bien otx mene cette frenesie de volonte nue,

sans conviction vraie qui lui assigne un but :
deformation de tant de pseudo-intellectuels
d•avant-guerre, en reaction contre le fatalisme
surrealiste, et chez lesquels de faux relents de
nietzschdisme 6taient r6veill6s par les echos
bruyants d1outre-Rhin. Vouloir pour vouloir sans
avoir de raison de vouloir. Dilettantisme pur,
lyrisme gymnastique.119

Reacting, indeed, against "le fatalisme surrealiste,11

117Jean Paulhan, letter to Roger Caillois, Aug. 18

1938, #62, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois,"
Cahiers Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre
Perez (Paris: Gallimard, 1991) 89.
118petitjean was a passionate admirer of Joyce, and a
translator of Swift. A partial bibliography of his works in
the 30s and 40s includes: Jovce and Mythology: mythology and
Joyce, trans. Maria McDonald Jolas (The Hague: 1935);
Imagination et realisation (Paris: Denoel and Steele, 1936);
Le moderne et son prochain (Paris: Gallimard, 1938);
Presentation de Swift (Paris: Gallimard, 1939); Buffon;
morceaux choisis et prefaces. ed. and intro. Armand
Petitjean (Paris: Gallimard, 1939); Combats preliminaires
(Paris: Gallimard, 1941); Mise a nu: essais (Paris: Vigneau,
1946).
119Jean Piel, La rencontre et la difference (Paris:
Fayard, 1982) 237. On July 20, 1941, Caillois would write to
Leon Pierre-Quint about his editorial decisions concerning
Lettres francaises: "Je n'ai pris ni le Peguv de Secretain,
qui est trop gros, ni le recueil de Petitjean [referring to
Combats preliminaires (1941)] dont je crains un peu
l'ideologie. ..." (Roger Caillois, letter to Leon Pierre-
Quint, 20 July 1941, NAF 18359, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).
 163

Imagination et realisation (1936) was not explicitly

political as yet: its subscription-request merely proposed a

dialectic of "Imagination" and "Realisation" to foster a

"courageuse sante humaine.1,120 In March 1937, Bachelard

declared this "metaphysique de 1'imagination" an apt

corollary to the nouvel esprit scientificrue; "c'est

vraiment, pour la premiere fois, une psychologie complete de

la tentation de penser."121 Describing Petitjean's style as

"unique dans les annales de la philosophie," Bachelard raves

about his dialectical "programmes de realisation psychique"

— "ce qu'il faudra appeler desormais 'les retournements

petitjeaniens'. . . ."122 jje referring to Petitjean's

Imagination, driven towards its Realisation through a

"volonte de conversion," an imperative to reconstitute the

self and the world in its own terms, through what he calls

"imitation": "Realisation c'est integration, insertion de

1'Imagination sur le plan de la realite. Elle procedera

done d'imitation en imitation. . . ."123 yet this

Realisation of the Imagination risks betraying them both;

120Jean Paulhan, review of Imagination et realisation,

by Armand Petitjean, Nouvelle revue francaise 270 (March

1936): 461.
12lGaston Bachelard, Rev. of Imagination et
realisation, by Armand Petitjean, Nouvelle revue francaise
Mar. 1937: 455.
122 achelard, Rev. of Imagination et realisation 456.
B

123Armand
Petitjean, Imagination et realisation (Paris:
Denoel and Steele, 1936) 124.
 164

however anchored in time, space, and motive, it is either

"sur- ou subrealite [qui] constitue en effet une d6rision de

cette r6alit6 et de son Imagination, et chez le seul

hysterique elle se confondrait avec sa conception. . . .1,124

Clinical definitions evolving from Charcot, through

Babinski, Janet, and Freud, present hysteria as a mimetic

expression of the self least harnessed to any will,

consciousness, or ego; so too, Petitjean views hysteria as

weak or 'feminine* "imitation" — and equates it with

Surrealism.125 To counter this "fictionnalisme" afflicting

the present, he prescribes a further "will to imitation"

that might harness the "conversion-process" between

Imagination and Realisation in dialectical fashion,

"11 integration a son tour de cette Imagination qui nous

integrait d'abord.1,126 in short, Imagination et realisation

proposes a more self-conscious and thus more 'masculine'

mimicry of our "cenesthesie spirituelle."

Caillois1 "Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire"

124Petitjean, Imagination 125 [emphasis added].

125Petitjean wrote: "De nos jours la metamorphose
devient croyance en la toute puissance du corps comme les
primitifs croyaient en celle de la pensee, infructueux essai
de se realiser ou de se dedoubler, tres profitable champ
d1exploitation du surrealisme, et cette indigence absolue
d1Imagination, cette incarnation & la seconde puissance qui
se nomme hysterie: hysterie de la matiere en 'magie' selon
Novalis ou le 'magische Realismus* de Franz Roh, hysterie
des mots ou des lettres en ecriture automatique ou encore du
collage en peinture, qui demeure toujours le fait de
Pygmalions prematures"(Imagination 83).
126Petitjean, Imagination 126.
 165

conflates mimicry — and thus hysteria — with

psychasthenia. By adducing mimicry, his current coinage,

psychasthenic leaendaire. would seem to synthesize the

binary opposition of Janet's fundamental categories, whose

crucial difference involved the status of consciousness:

hysteria stemming from the 'sub-conscious' and psychasthenia

from a 'conscious,' albeit neurotic, will. Caillois'

attribution of hysterical symptoms to psychasthenia

suggests, even more clearly than before, the syncretic

category of conscious hysteria. Although mimetisme et

psychasthenic leaendaire may be traced throughout the

natural realm, it would appear to be the exclusive domain of

a melancholy male sex — with das ewiae weiblichkeit

relegated to visions of the vagina dentata.^-2^ Caillois'

psychasthenic paradigm hence presents a 'masculine'

alternative to 'feminine' (or Surrealist) hysteria, although

it entirely lacks the volontarism of his friend's

•retournements petitjeaniens.'

Petitjean's delirious essay, "Analyse spectrale du

singe," transposes his dialectical model into "Le cote

nocturne de la nature," elaborating upon man's ability to

transcend simple "imitation"; it is precisely what

1270ne might object that his description of praying-

mantis mimicry in "La mante religieuse" applies to female as

well as male insects; however, Caillois focuses on the
behaviour of decapitated mantes, presumably those devoured
by the female.
 166

differentiates him from the rest of the natural kingdom.128

The essay first declares that our anthropocentric views of

the "singe" express our own "imitation" in the first-degree:

We assume, through projection, that the monkey is engaged in

a continual "singerie" of ourselves and thus we name him

"singe," implicitly situating him as our double. However,

monkeys do not imitate man. Animal psychologists, such as

Kohler, "tendent a faire transcender au singe . . . la

singerie avec la condition de singe: ses chimpanz^s ont des

eclairs de perception humaine, des tonnerres de langage."129

This should encourage man to consider himself a self­

consciously mimetic man rather than mimetic monkey.

Moreover, we are not the acme of evolution: "l'homme aurait

son developpement le plus retarde . . . et le crane de

l'homme ressemble davantage a celui du foetus du singe gu'a

celui du singe adulte."130 Such "infantilisation" is at the

source of our compensatory human Imagination:

[Puisque] le singe au miroir ne se reconnait pas,

que le faisant il se metamorphoserait aussitot en
homme, ce qui est proprement le geste de Narcisse,
et que 1•homme est un animal. capable de se
representer la mort l'infini et soi-meme, il nous
reste que l'homme est un singe-qui-rit.131

128This seems an earlier version, or variant, of his

chapters on "imitation" in Imagination et realisation,
specifically "L'imitation comme assomption" and
"L'imitation comme differentiation."
129Armand Petitjean, "Analyse spectrale du singe,"
Minotaure 7 1935: 49. He refers to Cf. Kohler,
L'intelligence chez les singes supdrieurs.

130petitjean, "Analyse" 59.

131petitjean, "Analyse" 59.

 167

Lacan's "Le stade du miroir" does not mention Petitjean

but it is likely that he read "Analyse spectrale du singe"

if only because he, too, published in Minotaure.132 What

seems most comparable is the comparison of man and monkey.

When "Le stade du miroir" explores the subject's "assomption

jubilatoire de son image sp6culaire,"133 Lacan also cites

Kohler's research:
[L]e petit homme & un fige ou il est pour un temps
court, mais encore pour un temps, d6passe en
intelligence instrumentale par le chimpanze,
reconnait pourtant dejci son image dans le miroir
comme telle. Reconnaissance signal6e par la
mimique illuminative du Aha-erlebnis. oil pour
Kohler s'exprime 1•aperception situationnelle,
temps essentiel de l'acte d'intelligence. Cet
acte, en effet, [est] loin de s'epuiser comme chez
le singe dans le controle une fois acquis de
l'inanite de 1"image. . . .134

Like Petitjean, Lacan cites "une veritable pr6maturat ion

specifioue de la naissance chez 1'homme," conditioning the

desire for self-mastery through his specular image, a

mirror-stage that situates "l1instance du moi . . . dans une

ligne de fiction.1,135 For Lacan, such a process is

132I would note here, tangentially, that the Cahiers du

Sud of April 1939 announced the creation of the Nouveaux
cahiers de la cruinzaine directed by Petitjean and Ulmann, a
journal ardently devoted to the "Revolution nationale" and
to the ideals of Peguy. Its first projected number was to
include an "Etude psychologique des sentiments familiaux
actuels, par le Dr. Lacan" (Cahiers du Sud Apr. 1939: 359).
133Jacques Lacan, "Le stade du miroir comme formateur
de la fonction du Je," Ecrits 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1966)
1: 90.
134Lacan, "Stade" 90.
135Lacan, "Stade" 91.
 168
1 jubilant•136 while Imagination et realisation asserts that

it is "fictive, forcee et d£sesp£r£e" and aspires, as we

have seen, to a vital dialectic of Imagination and

Realisation. Lacan suggests, on the other hand, that the

specular self "ne rejoindra qu•asymptotiquement le devenir

du sujet, quel que soit le succes des synthases dialectiques

par quoi il doit resoudre en tant que je sa discordance

d'avec sa propre reality."137 That the ie-ideal should

function as the basis for 'secondary identifications' does

not hinder an eventual "normalisation libidinale."138 And

yet, this dialectic is infused by negativity and the death-

instinct: "elle est grosse des correspondances qui unissent

le le a la statue ou I'homme se projette comme aux fantomes

qui le dominent, a 1'automate enfin ou dans un rapport

ambiga tend a s'achever le monde de sa fabrication.1,139

Instead of Petitjean's self-conscious Imagination, Lacan

derives a curious skepticism, or "fonction de

meconnaissance."I40 from man's unique "insuffisance

organique de . . . realite naturelle.,l141 The mirror-stage

confirms "une structure ontologique du monde humain qui

136Lacan, "Stade" 136.

137Lacan, "Stade" 91.
138Lacan, "Stade" 91.
139Lacan, "Stade" 91.
140Lacan, "Stade" 96.
14•'•Lacan, "Stade" 93.
 169

s1 insure dans nos reflexions sur la connaissance

paranoiaque."142

Caillois' Archives interview remarks: "En quittant le

surr^alisme, j'ai revu Jacques Lacan. A ce moment-la il

organisait des petites reunions chez lui ou l'on discutait

d'ailleurs surtout de probl^mes de logique. Et je crois que

c'est la que j'ai connu Bataille. . . ."143 Besides those

topics situated 'between mathematics and logic,' he recalls,

"il y avait aussi le probleme du miroir. . . ."144 This

leaves little doubt that "Le stade du miroir," "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic 16gendaire," and "Analyse spectrale du singe"

mirrored, however obliquely, the same intellectual milieu.

But Lacan's mirror, like Caillois' "teleplastie," was

attuned to "l'aventure dans le noir" — unlike Petitjean's

volontarist imaging. When Lacan reviewed Minkowski's Le

temps vecu for the Recherches philosophicrues of 1935-1936,

he remarked upon the following:

[L]a forme de 1'intuition, a notre avis, la plus

originale de ce livre, quoique a peine amorcee, a
son terme, [est] cells d'un autre espace que
l'espace geometrique, a savoir, oppose a 1'espace
clair, cadre de 1'objectivite, l'espace noir du
tatonnement, de 1'hallucination et de la
musique.I45

l42Lacan, "Stade" 90.

l43Caillois, Archives IV.

144caillois, Archives IV.

145Jacques Lacan, Rev. of E. Minkowski Le temps vdcu.

Recherches philosophicmes V (1935-1936): 431. Lacan
continues: "C'est a la 'nuit des sens, 1 c'est a la 'nuit
 170

More precisely, "Le stade du miroir" cites "Mimetisme et

psychasthenic legendaire" when it mentions "les faits de

mimetisme, congus comme d'identification het6romorphique . .

le probleme de la signification de l'espace pour

l'organisme vivant.1,146 Referring to "concepts

psychologiques" in this regard, here is the only one Lacan

presents: "Rappelons seulement les Eclairs qu'y fit luire la

pensee . . . d'un Roger Caillois, quand sous le nom de

psvchasth^nie legendaire. il subsumait le mimetisme

morphologique a une obsession de l'espace dans son effet

derealisant.1,147 The rhetoric of his following remark

implicitly points to a common grounding in Surrealism: "Nous

avons nous-meme montre dans la dialectique sociale qui

structure comme paranoiaque la connaissance humaine, la

raison qui la . . . determine dans ce 'peu de realite' qu'y

denonce 1'insatisfaction surrealiste.1,148

It would seem that Lacan*s trajectory with regard to

Surrealism is somewhat analogous to that of Caillois (even

though Lacan was never an "official" member of the

movement): Both shift from an aesthetic to a more

'scientific' perspective that is still significantly

obscure1 du mystique que nous croyons pouvoir dire sans abus

que nous voila portes"(431).
146Lacan, "Stade" 92. He elsewhere notes "la captation
spatiale que manifeste le stade du miroir. . ."(93).
147Lacan, "Stade" 92.
148Lacan, "Stade" 93.
 171

influenced by Surrealism. "Le stade du miroir" displaces

Lacan's Dali-esque paranoia from a Surrealist context, where

it is the privileged source of artistic genius, to instate

it as the deluded or "imaginary" foundation of normal

identity. Patrice Schmitt traces this theoretical

continuity:
Dans le miroir, le petit enfant voit une image,
dont il ignore que c'est la sienne, mais qui lui
permet d'anticiper sur 1'unite de son corps, de
mettre un terme (jamais acquis) aux fantasmes de
corps morcel£. De meme, dans l1image double
— visage ou etres humains composes de fragments
— le battement entre unit6 et morcellement est a
1'oeuvre, produisant une image speculaire qui
interpelle le spectateur a un niveau archaique.149

Both Lacan and Dali suggest that for the mind to absorb such

a Gestalt of itself entails a form of death. Schmitt

alludes to Dali's depiction of death in "La metamorphose de

Narcisse"(1936), explaining that in Lacan's stade du miroir

"la relation du sujet a son image speculaire est marquee du

sceau de la mort, car il s'identifie a un etre qui n'est pas

lui."150 Of course, Lacan's specular image involves an

initial fiction of the self's integrity, and one that

distinguishes man from all other natural beings — as it

does for Petitjean. Caillois' mimicry and legendary

psychasthenia, on the other hand, creates a concluding

image, and one of dissolution; moreover, this fiction links

149Patrice
Schmitt, "Dali et Lacan dans leurs rapports
a la psychose paranoiaque," Cahiers Confrontation 4 (Fall
1980): 133.
150Schmitt 133.
 172

man to the natural realm. Yet, despite such differences,

and despite their detachment from Surrealism, for Caillois

as well as Lacan, Breton's "peu de r6alite" clearly remained

at the obsessional and psychasthenic heart of the matter.

* * *

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire" also comprises

an anthropological dimension I have not yet addressed and

will do so now, in relation to Mauss and Bataille.

Caillois' attendance at Lacan's sessions brought him into

contact with Bataille, whose work he knew through Boris

Souvarine's La critique sociale. voice of the Cercle

communiste democratique. which was challenging Marxist

orthodoxy.151 "C'est la, par exemple," Caillois has

recalled, "que Bataille a publie 1'article qui m'a rapproche

de lui, qui m'a beaucoup interesse, sur le don, forme

primitive de l'echange, qui etait un commentaire du livre de

Mauss sur le pot-latch. . . ."152 He referring to

Bataille's seminal essay, "La notion de depense,1,153 which

blossomed into the post-war La part maudite (1949) and

151See Anne Roche ed., Boris Souvarine et la critique

sociale (Paris: La Decouverte, 1990).

152Qaillois, Archives IV.
153Georges
Bataille, "La notion de depense," Critique
sociale 7 (Jan. 1933): 7-15. Rpt. in Georges Bataille,
Oeuvres completes 10 vols., ed. Michel Foucault (Paris:
Gallimard, 1970) l: 302-320.
 173

claimed a certain origin in Mauss's "Essai sur le don"

(1923-1924). This famous text declared:

Ce sont nos soci£tes d'Occident qui ont, tr&s

r<§cextunent, fait de l'homme un "animal 6conomique".
Mais nous ne sommes pas encore tous des etres de
ce genre. Dans nos masses et dans nos elites, la
depense pure et irrationnelle est de pratique
courante; elle est encore caractdristique des
quelques fossiles de notre noblesse.154

Yet Mauss does not simply preach "la depense pure et

irrationnelle." Transposing Durkheim's metaphysical view of

society into more concrete terms, "L1 essai sur le don"

examines the 'total social fact1 of gift-giving among extant

primitive cultures to reveal how they all reflect an archaic

structure of "prestation totale," vestigially present in

modern life. Mauss details the collective and magical

beliefs informing such 'total' systems: the "luttes de

prestige" of potlatch or the circulation of mana or hau.

"L'invitation doit etre rendue, tout comme la 'politesse,'"

proclaim the "Conclusions de morale," translating

anthropological survey into explicit ethical prescription.

Bataille's "La notion de depense" reads "L'essai sur le

don" through psychoanalysis and a raging hostility towards

the bourgeoisie. He formulates his theory of "expenditure"

from the rather exceptional form of potlatch involving

unrequited gifts or sacrifices to the gods — which for

Mauss, though, constitute another form of exchange.

154Marcel Mauss, "Essai sur le don" [1923-24],

Socioloqie et anthropologic, ed. Georges Gurvitch (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1989) 271.
 174

Bataille, on the contrary, uses this example to posit a

"besoin de perte demesur£e"155 and "desir de d6truire"156

situated in the individual and collective unconscious.157

Jean-Michel Heimonet has accurately underscored Bataille1s

transgression of Mauss's "morale de l'humanisme rose,"

explaining:
[C]e que Bataille veut retenir du potlatch ce ne
sont pas les "trois obligations: donner,
recevoir, rendre" qui 1'apparentent au nexum
romain, mais son caractere de "rivalite
exasperee", la destruction somptuaire des vies et
des biens par laguelle il apparait 11 equivalent du
sacrifice. . . .158

Indeed, "La notion de depense" closes with a well-known

discussion of revolution, translating Marxist class-conflict

into the terms of repressed social "expenditure." Bataille

also presents an incipient theory of artistic "expenditure."

While theater and literature can express tragic "perte" in

symbolic fashion, only poetry can be truly 'sacrificial,1

condemning its practitioner to those "formes d'activite les

plus decevantes, a la misere, au desespoir, a la poursuite

d1ombres inconsistantes qui ne peuvent rien donner que le

155Bataille, "Notion" 311.

156Bataille, "Notion" 310.
157For psychoanalysis, "[le don] symbolise 1'excretion
qui elle-meme est liee a la mort conformement & la connexion
fondamentale de l'6rotisme et du sadisme" (Bataille,
"Notion" 310).
158Jean-Michel Heimonet, Le mal a l'oeuvre; Georges
Bataille et I'ecriture du sacrifice (Marseille: Parentheses,
1986) 31.
 175

vertige ou la rage."159

Caillois' mimicry, like "La notion de d6pense," seems

to appropriate the Maussian concept of non-utilitarian

"gift" in terms that disregard systems or structures of

social exchange. (The biological "luxe dangereux" of the

cannibalistic Phvllie feast seems to parody any social a

priori.) Caillois' "luxe," though, differs from Bataille's

"expenditure" insofar as it is anchored in biology rather

than psychoanalysis; and then, despite its aesthetic

implications, "Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire"

involves 'scientific' representations of the milieu rather

than violent self-sacrifice. It is especially interesting

to contrast this emphasis on science with Bataille's "La

structure psychologique du fascisme" (1933), where

•expenditure" evolves into the famous category of

"heterogeneity," that is to say, the excluded, rejected or

repressed:

[LJe monde heteroaene comprend 1'ensemble des

r6sultats de la depense improductive (les choses
sacrees forment elles-memes une partie de cet
ensemble). Ceci revient a dire : tout ce que la
societe homoaene rejette soit comrae dechet, soit
comme valeur superieure transcendante.160

A sweeping gesture (and a footnote uniting Levy-Bruhl,

Cassirer, and Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams)

contrasts the homogeneous reality of science and 'civilized'

159Bataille, "Notion" 307.

160GeorgesBataille, "La structure psychologique du
fascisme," Oeuvres completes 1: 346.
 176

thought to heterogeneous reality "en tant qu'elle se

retrouve dans la pensee mystique des primitifs et dans les

representations du reve : elle est identique k la structure

de 1'inconscient.

Given Caillois' correlation of biology, primitive

thought and modern science in "Mimetisme et psychasthenic

legendaire," this participatory logic implicitly challenges

Bataille's distinctions between the "homogeneous" and the

"heterogeneous.11 This leads us to consider Mauss's

"Esquisse d'une theorie generale de la magie." Although

Bataille is inspired by, even while distorting, Mauss's

"Essai sur le don," his allusion to Levy-Bruhl and "la

pensee mystique des primitifs" clearly dismisses Maussian

views of magic. L6vy-Bruhl's views of primitive

participation directly countered Durkheim and Mauss's

seminal "De quelques formes primitives de la classification"

(1903) which argued that primitive thought was rational,

mirroring the classifying principles of its social

structure. The affective dimension of social existence gave

rise to distinctions and logic (such as sacred versus

profane), that quickly lifted primitive man above and beyond

purely participatory cognition.162 "Esquisse d'une theorie

161Bataille, "Structure" 347.

162This asserts: "la hi^rarchie logique n'est qu'un

autre aspect de la hierarchie sociale et l1unite de la
connaissance n'est autre chose que 1'unite meme de la
collectivity, etendue a l'univers" (Emile Durkheim and
Marcel Mauss, "De quelques formes primitives de
 177

g£n£rale de la magie" (1902-1903) similarly stated that

magic was not irrational but conditioned by collective

belief, which inspired the magician's faith in his own

magic. Mauss argued that collective belief translates

magical thought (or associations between different

categories) into the terms of neo-Kantian logic by dint of

the magical copula, or "supplement," of mana. "Non

seulement, gr&ce & elle [mana], le reve magique est devenu

rationnel, mais encore, il se confond avec la r6alit6.1,163

Mauss thus rejects Tylor and Frazer's correlation of magical

thought with psychological associationism:

II serait absurde de supposer que, dans la magie,

la pensee s*6carte des lois de 1'association des
idees; ces idees qui y forment cercles s'appellent
et, surtout, ne sont pas contradictoires. Mais
les associations naturelles d'idees rendent
simplement possibles les iuaements maaiaues.
Ceux-ci sont tout autre chose qu'un defil6
d'images : ce sont de veritables preceptes
imperatifs, qui impliquent une croyance positive a
1'objectivite des enchainements d*idees qu'ils
constituent.164

Bataille's "La structure psychologique du fascisme"

loosely correlates the psychoanalytic experience of

classification" Essais de sociologie [Paris: Minuit, 1969]:

225). This also differs from the views of Frazer, for whom
primitive thought was rational but based upon false premises.
163Marcel Mauss, "Esquisse d'une th6orie generale de la
magie," Sociologie et anthropologic. ed. Georges Gurvitch
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989) 120.
Without mana. magical propositions are synthetic (a=-a) and
a priori (lacking empirical reality); given the presence of
mana. the proposition becomes analytic (a=a) and a
posteriori (with empirical reality).
164Mauss, "Esquisse" 118 [emphasis added].
 178

"heterogeneity" with the circulation of roana in a L6vy-

Bruhlian rather than Maussian sense; indeed, he generally

subverts the 'civilized* with the 'primitive.• Consider,

for example, the erotic logic of "L'anus solaire" in

Documents (1930):

Depuis que les phrases circulent dans les cerveaux

occup£s ci refldchir, il a et6 proc6d6 a une
identification totale, puisqu'ei l'aide d'un copule
chaque phrase relie une chose a 1*autre; et tout
serait visiblement lid si l'on d6couvrait d'un
seul regard dans sa totality la trace laissee par
un fil d'Ariane, conduisant la pensee dans son
propre labyrinthe.165

Bataille's parodic realization of the copula recasts neo-

Kantian logic as sexual participation: "Mais le copule des

termes n'est pas moins irritant que celui des corps. Et

quand je m'eerie: -JE SUIS LE SOLEIL, il en resulte une

erection integrale, car le verbe etre est le vehicule de la

fr6nesie amoureuse."166

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire" adheres more

carefully to "Esquisse d'une theorie generale de la magie,"

while offering a heretical reading all the same. Mauss's

sole and famous letter to Caillois (on June 22, 1938)

expressed mixed feelings about Le mvthe et 1'homme (1938)

which included revised versions of "La mante religieuse" and

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire." He praised the

first: "Votre histoire de la mante et de la ghoul est

165Georges Bataille "L'anus solaire," Oeuvres completes

1: 81.
166Bataille, "L'anus" 81.
 179

parfaitement interprets„ C'est de la bonne mythologie. . .

."167 still, he goes on to say:

Quant h votre biologie g6n6rale, elle appelle les

reserves les plus fortes. Si Rabaud est une
autorit6 peut-etre vieillie maintenant, Cu6not ne
l'a jamais 6t6 en dehors de France, et la
philosophie de la biologie n'a aucun rapport avec
la philosophie de la soci£te. . . .168

"Mimetisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire" cites Cuenot1s La

aenfese des especes animales (1911) to confirm the

'luxurious' nature of animal mimicry.169 But beyond this

biological rather than social basis, it is the 'alternative

logic' of "Mimetisme et psychasthenic ldgendaire," between

reason and participation, that confirms Caillois' deviation

from his professor. In correlating intellectualist

psychology with the laws of mimetic magic, and citing to

this end the combined authority of Tylor, Frazer and Mauss,

he specifically contradicts, it would seem, "Esquisse d'une

theorie generale de la magie." The associationist motor

informing the dangerous resemblances of mimicry, mimetic

magic, and psychasthenic science precludes the collective

"supplement" or copula of mana.

In April 1935, Caillois reviewed L6vy-Bruhl's La

167Marcel Mauss, letter to Roger Caillois, June 22

1938, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 54.
168Mauss,
letter to Roger Caillois, June 22 1938, Roger
Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 54.
169Caillois writes: "II semble done qu'on doive
conclure avec Cuenot que c'est lei un 'epiphenomene' dont
'1'utility defensive parait nulle'" (Mvthe 103).
 180

mvtholoqie primitive, le monde mvthioue des australiens et

des papous for the Cahiers du Sud. respectfully citing the

latter's "logique de la participation," "[le] totemisme,"

and "les theses bien connues de l'auteur sur 1'imitation-

participation."170 Caillois also seems to accept certain

distinctions established by Levy-Bruhl between the primitive

and the civilized mind: "au lieu de remonter une serie

causale de determinations physiques, [la mentalite

primitive] fait immediatement appel a une surnature.1,171 He

further acknowledges that the primitive imagination is

generally suppressed by modern man. However, unlike Levy-

Bruhl, "Mimetisme et psychasthenic legendaire" clearly

equated certain aspects of modern science with primitive

magic; and Caillois' review complains that Levy-Bruhl's

analyses of myth lack a "theory" of its "mechanism" and

"function"172 — terms signalling his filiation, however

heretical, to Marcel Mauss. Later that year, he would

withdraw from the anti-fascist group Contre-Attacme founded

with Bataille and Breton, implying, as we shall see, that

their grasp of the 'alternative logic' of the mythical

imagination was as yet insufficient to warrant its pragmatic

political use or Realisation, one might say, in the present.

170Roger Caillois, Rev. of La mvtholoaie primitive, le

monde mvthioue des australiens et des papous. by Lucien
Levy-Bruhl, Cahiers du Sud 171 (April 1935): 332-333 passim.
171Caillois, Rev. of Mvtholoqie primitive 334.
172Caillois, Rev. of Mvtholoaie primitive 334.
 181

Chapter 4

Contre-Attaque

New evidence has recently come to light regarding

Caillois' seminal role as a theorist for the anti-fascist

group, Contre-Attacme. formed with Bataille and Breton in

September and October 1935. Increasingly attentive to

sociology, myth and politics, he drafted Contre-Attaque1s

original manifesto but then refused to sign the revised

version, made public on October 7. Aside from its intrinsic

historical interest, this episode reflects significantly

upon Caillois' 'participation' in the 30s — as a kind of

counter-example. Indeed, withdrawing from Contre-Attaque

before it was officially launched, he refused to

systematize this particular political project, or grace it

with an apt paradigm. Passed under silence by both the

Archives interview and Le fleuve Alphee. Caillois' relation

to Contre-Attaoue thus remains to be construed from extant

correspondances. On September 26, Bataille would complain

to him: "Depuis deux mois que vous avez congu un grand

projet vous passez votre temps ci vous promener et a vous

declarer epuise de fatigue."1 Aside from the fact that

^•Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Sept. 26

1935, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois. ed. Jean-
Pierre Le Bouler (Paris: Folle Avoine, 1988) 44. An undated
 182

Caillois was preparing for the aar&yation de grammaire and

for his Hautes Etudes m6moire on the demons de midi. this

fatigue may have expressed, as well, his deep reservations

about Contre-Attaoue. My discussion will hence attend to

what may be learned of his perspective rather than

considering the full implications of this complex movement

as it actually came to exist for several months.

"Utopie militante," in the words of Francis Marmande,2

Contre-Attaoue held numerous meetings, both public and

private, between September 1935 and May 1936. The group

produced several manifestoes and brief publications,

although the initial manifesto was especially prominent

since Breton included it in Position politique du

surrealisme (November 1935).3 One of the movement's major

chronicler, Henri Dubief, describes this 'ultra-leftist1

union of revolutionary intellectuals as "[une] rivale

manquee de l'A.E.A.R., dont elle n'eut jamais ni 1'audience,

letter Caillois sent to his friend, Gurnaud (I would tend to

attribute this to late 1935) mentions his 11 inertie de plus
en plus prononcee. Je sors le moins possible. Je finirai
sans doute par etre une sorte de paralytique volontaire, a
moins que mon immobilite ne soit celle de l'araignee. L'un
n'est pas plus remarquable que 1'autre" (C.8, Fonds
Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy).
2FrancisMarmande, Georges Bataille politique (Lyon:
Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1985) 65.
3,,Contre-Attaque; Union de lutte des intellectuels
revolutionnaires," Position politique du surrealisme (1935;
Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1971) 169-177.
 183

ni les moyens d'action.1,4 Michel Surya • s biography of

Bataille recounts that Contre-Attaaue comprised the

Surrealist "vieille garde" (Breton, Eluard, and P6ret) and

"ceux qui parmi les anciens souvariniens, suivirent Bataille

lors de la dissolution du Cercle communiste democratique.115

Explicitly voicing a revolutionary aim, the group differed

from other such movements, Surya suggests, in its promotion

of violence.6 Contre-Attaaue1s attitude to fascism was

unique as well, inspired by Bataille's "La structure

psychologique du fascisme," and the notions of

"heterogeneity" and "expenditure" evoked above.7 Dubief

suggests that while Bataille had little doubt as to

fascism's 'perversity,1

[il] constatait sa superiority, dans le courant

4Henri Dubief, "Temoignage sur Contre-Attaque,"

Textures 6 (Jan. 1970): 52; see also Robert Stuart Short,
"Contre-Attaque," Entretiens sur le surrealisme. ed.
Ferdinand Alquie (Paris: Mouton, 1968); and Jean Piel, La
rencontre et la difference (Paris: Fayard, 1982).

^Michel Surya, Georges Bataille; la mort a l'oeuvre

(Paris: Seguier, 1987) 224.
6Surya evokes a common ground of anti-nationalism;
anti-capitalism; anti-reformism; anti-democratism; and anti-
parlamentarism (225); on the other hand, "[cj'est sous le
seul signe de Sade, Fourier, et Nietzsche que Bataille place
la revolution promise par Contre-Attaque. . ."(227).
7See"Le probleme de l'6tat," Critique sociale 9 (Sept.
1933); "La structure psychologique du fascisme," Critique
sociale 10 and 11 (Nov. 1933 and Mar. 1934); also a review
of La condition humaine. Critique sociale 10 (Mar. 1934).
In his article, "Bataille et Caillois: divergences et
complicites," Jean-Pierre Le Bouler also mentions
Bataille's Fascisme en France "livre ebauche en 1934"
(Magazine litteraire 243 [June 1987]: 17).
 184

politique et historique, sur un mouvement ouvrier

ddvoy6 et sur une democratic liberale corrompue.
II s'agissait done moins de se ddfendre en
retraite contre le fascisme, que de le surmonter
par la mobilisation des masses populaires
d61ivrees de 1'encadrement des organisations
ouvriferes scleroses.8

Contre-Attaaue1 s initial manifesto thus declared that

mankind's universal interest required those weapons wrought

by fascism,
qui a su utiliser 1'aspiration fondamentale des
hommes a 1'exaltation affective et au fanatisme .
. . infiniment plus grave et plus brisante . . .
que celle des nationalistes asservis a la
conservation sociale et aux int^rets egoistes des
patries.®

A convoluted chain of events — among them Jean Dautry's

coining of "surfascisme" in awkard hommage to the

Surrealists — led to the latter's defection by May 1936,

condemning Bataille and his cohorts as fascists.10 In the

opinion of Klossowski, the project was doomed from the start

by the ideological distance between Bataille and Breton,

even though they had originally envisioned the same goal:

... la contemplation et 11 action

8Dubief 57. He contrasts this with the attitude of the

Surrealists: "obsedes par leurs differends avec les

intellectuels communistes, [ils] se maintenaient vis-a-vis
du fascisme dans une situation de defense qui etit fait de
Contre-Attaque un prototype rate de ce que fut plus tard le
Comite de Vigilance apres sa rupture avec le P.C. . . ."
(Dubief 57).
9"1Contre-Attaque• Union de lutte des intellectuels
revolutionnaires," Histoire du surrealisme: suivie de
documents surrealistes. by Maurice Nadeau (Paris: Seuil,
1964) 437.
10See Dubief 57; and Surya 228-229.
 185

— r£volutionnaire parce que contemplative

— contemplative parce que r6volutionnaire. Chez
Breton 11 experience contemplative se veut
justifi£e socialement done rationnellement en
s•identifiant avec 1'action insurrectionnelle du
dehors — pour Bataille la contemplation est
insurrection par elle-meme.11

Dubief also notes that the tensions between the two men were

very real but his discussion highlights group dynamics.

Breton was on the defensive since Contre-Attague1s ideas

were those of Bataille; given Breton's greater renown at

the time, on the other hand, Bataille was in a relatively

inferior posture himself. "Pour retablir l'6quilibre, il lui

eut fallu un appui en dehors de son groupe, que, ayant

ecarte Caillois, il ne trouva pas," writes Dubief.12

A survey of the letters from Bataille to Caillois

reveals the latter*s important role in the early days of

this affair. In August, Caillois' 'project* apparently

awakens Bataille from a state of "inertie assez desesp6ree"

since the political situation calls for an urgent response

— "il ne peut plus etre question de plaisanter et rien

n'est possible qu*a la condition de se lancer a corps perdu

dans la bagarre. . . ."13 on September 26, lamenting

Caillois* "fatigue," Bataille then criticizes his reluctance

11Pierre Klossowski, "De 'Contre-Attaque' a

'Acephale'," Change (Paris: Seuil, 1971): 105.
12Dubief 56.
13Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, August 4
1935, #1, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois 4 aofit
1935 • 4 fevrier 1959. ed. Jean-Pierre Le Bouler (Paris:
Folle Avoine, 1988) 41.
 186

to join forces, once again, with the Surrealists: "D'autant

plus qu'en d6pit de votre attitude guelgue peu inconseguente

il n'en reste pas moins que vous avez eu 1'initiative du

projet."14 We learn from a letter to Jean Paulhan on

October 16 that Caillois wrote the original draft of

Contre-Attacrue1 s manifesto. Caillois sent him Procfes

intellectuel de l'art. requesting that it be reviewed in the

NRF. but he also sent along "un texte qui s'efforce de

determiner la repartition des donnees affectives dans les

differents mouvements politiques contemporains. . . ."15

On October 28, Paulhan responded favorably to Proces

intellectuel de l'art but was less impressed by the

political essay, "peut-etre parce gu'il s'y agit plutot

d'6carter que de d6couvrir. mais je tScherai de le faire

passer dans la N.R.F.1,16 Caillois wrote back, two days

later:

Pour 1'article, si je vous l'ai soumis, c'est

surtout a titre de document, encore que j'aie omis
de vous le signaler. II a en effet servi de base

14Bataille, letter to Caillois, Sept 26 1935, #3,

Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 44.
15Roger Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Oct. 16 1935,
#2, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers
Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez
(Paris: Gallimard, 1991) 29. Caillois entered into contact
with Paulhan shortly after his break with Surrealism,
through the mediation of Armand Petitjean; but this relation
was confirmed during the fiasco of Contre-Attague.
16Jean Paulhan, letter to Roger Caillois, October 28
1935, #3, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 30
[emphasis added]. However, the essay was never published as
such.
 187

et devait servir de manifeste a une Union

d'Intellectuels R^volutionnaires dont j'avais
form6 le projet et que j'ai prefer^ de quitter a
sa realisation, notamment parce qu'en chemin
l'entreprise avait trop d6vi6, prenant des allures
de narti politique avec programme precis etc...
et c£dant d'autant sur les questions id£ologiques
d£licates, que je voulais, quant k moi, voir poser
nettement. Vous verrez vous-meme la difference
dans la circulaire que cette Union doit publier
ces jours-ci et que signent entre autres Bataille
et Breton.17

On October 7th, the very date of the manifesto's

publication, Bataille wrote to Caillois, explaining that

while both he and Breton had approved the original document,

changes had been imposed by Maurice Heine in view of the

principle, "ne pas dire mais faire."18 Bataille then

attacks Caillois' refusal to sign the new draft and to adopt

the requisite "intransigeance fondamentale," exclaiming that

his attitude was inappropriate:

[Elle] n'a rien de celle d'un "soldat de l'armde

des Jesuites." Vous ne savez pas obeir a la
necessite d'une cause. Vous invoquez quant a
cette necessity des principes superieurs qui
revelent simplement une aptitude a reagir sur le
plan de 1'expression litteraire, non sur celui de

17Roger Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, October 30

1935, # 4, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 30.
Caillois adds: "C'est devant cette situation que j'ai songe
a publier mon texte dans la N.R.F., me reservant au besoin
de le faire preceder d'une dizaine de lignes explicatives (a
peu pres ce qui precede), mais me rendant fort bien compte
qu'il n'avait pas normalement place dans cette revue, sinon
peut-etre justement comme contribution au 'movement des
idees'. Mais vous etes meilleur juge que moi"(30).
18Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, 7 Oct.

1935, #6, Georges Bataille: lettres £ Roger Caillois 49.

 188

la r6alit6.19

A letter from Bataille, two days later, records a tremendous

crisis between the two men but also proposes a dual agenda

to incorporate their respective views: "Car ce que vous

envisagez sans une agitation politique ext6rieure n'aurait

pas la force."20 Still, Caillois did not pursue Bataille's

offer to assume the theoretical role of Contre-Attacrue's

"commission sociologique."21 On October 29, in a last-ditch

attempt to sway Caillois, Bataille invited an open

discussion along with Dali, "qui fait des objections

analogues aux votres. . . ."22 The artist expressed

sympathy with Contre-Attaoue as an "experimental" rather

than "active" or "militant" effort, one which should

undertake the requisite research to remedy the ideological

19Bataille,
letter to Roger Caillois, 7 Oct. 1935, #6,
Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 49.
20Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, 9 Oct.
1935, #7, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois 51.
Bataille writes: "... jusqu'aujourd'hui je n'avais jamais
trouve moyen d'etre dans un etat fanatique: j'aspirais a
cela mais devant moi, il n'y avait que le vide"(51).
21Bataille writes: "Pour 1'organisation, je ne pense

pas qu'une repartition d'apres les denominations suivantes

soit impossible: organisation interieure, org. militaire,
org. internationale, commission sociologique, commission
economique; peut-etre aussi commission de lutte contre la
guerre. Je vous dirai ce que je crois possible de faire
sous le nom de commission sociologique mais il faut bien
entendu que vous y reflechissiez aussi de votre cote d'ici
demain. . . ."(Bataille, letter to Caillois, 9 Oct. 1935,
#7, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois 51).
22Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Oct. 29
1935, #8, Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 54.
 189

deficiencies of the Left.23 So too, Caillois rejected the

activism of Contre-Attacrue to favor further study of the

socio-political imagination affective. We find hints of

this opinion in Caillois* review of Lord Raglan's Le tabou

de 11 inceste for the Cahiers du Sud of November 1935,

probably written during these very events. Raglan's analyses

illuminate the most chaotic regions of the human mind, "en

r6v61ant la coherence organique de leurs manifestations

disperses.,l24 These "aspirations fondamentales" have great

political relevance — "meme aujourd'hui, toute entreprise

qui ne serait pas exactement fondee sur elles ne pourrait

esperer que des reussites d'ordre meprisable.1,25 However,

Caillois concludes on a highly cautionary note:

C'est pourquoi il faut sur ces questions toute la

lumifere: non pour r6duire, mais pour discerner, au
besoin pour exalter. Pour qu'une action soit
autre chose que de l'agitation, il faut qu'elle
sache ne frapper qu'aux points sensibles. Aussi y
a-t-il un parti enorme a tirer — peut-etre. il
est vrai. a lonaue echeance — d1ouvrages comme
celui de Lord Raglan.^5

Caillois1 reluctance to throw himself "a corps perdu

dans la bagarre" did not merely signal a retrenchment in

theory rather than praxis; rather, it involved his refusal

to become a sociological theorist for Contre-Attacrue. He

23Dali qtd Le Bouler ed., Georges Bataille 54.

24Roger Caillois, Rev. of Le tabou de 1'inceste. by
Lord Raglan, Cahiers du Sud Nov. 1935: 778.
25Caillois, Rev. of Le tabou de 11inceste 778.
26Caillois, Rev. of Le tabou de 1'inceste. 778.
 190

may have feared that the movement's 'theory' was somehow

dangerous in and of itself. Several letters elucidate this

question, difficult to gauge until now since Caillois'

political writings of 1935 were never published.27 On

October 26, Wahl wrote to him that he preferred the "pages

politiques" to Procfes intellectuel de l'art (unlike

Paulhan).28 "Je n'ai pas vu en lisant les pages sur les

attitudes politiques, ce qui m'aurait fait faire un

rapprochement entre vous et Malraux," wrote Wahl.29 Yet he

encouraged Caillois to show the essay to Malraux himself,

explaining that despite his own recommendations, Paulhan

would probably not publish it in the NRF.30 Wahl did

suggest, however, that should Caillois rewrite the essay

27Besides the essay sent to Paulhan, these apparently

included an "article sur le Congres de la Culture" [of June
1935]" mentioned by Bataille (letter to Roger Caillois, Oct.
5 1935, #5, Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 48);
and a review (lost) of Breton's Position politique du
surrealisme (Roger Caillois to Jean Paulhan, Dec. 28 1935,
#7, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 32).
28Jean Wahl, letter to Roger Caillois, 26 Oct.
[presumably 1935], C.W.7, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque
Municipale, Vichy. Although the year is left unspecified,
we may date this letter to 1935, given Wahl's allusions to
Proces intellectuel de l'art. Wahl also preferred the
"pages politiques" to what Caillois had last published in
the Recherches philosophiaues (of which he was an editor);
he was presumably thinking of "Analyse et commentaire d'une
association libre d'idees" (Recherches philosophiaues 4
1934/45).
29Wahl, letter to Roger Caillois, 26 Oct. [presumably
1935], C.W.7, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
30Wahl, letter to Roger Caillois, 26 Oct. [presumably
1935], C.W.7, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
 191

"dans un style plus vif, moins doctrinaire — (je ne trouve

pas le mot, et quant & moi, ne d6sapprouve pas ce style)

— plus voltairien peut-dtre, Paulhan serait content de [le]

donner."31 Requesting another study for his Recherches

philosophiaues. Wahl also declares: "je suis persuade que

vous etes un de ceux a qui nous devons nous adresser — et

il n'y en a pas beaucoup en qui j'ai confiance autant qu'en

vous.1,32

I will shortly suggest that Caillois' Chinese allegory,

"L'ordre et l'empire," published in Europe (June 1936),

constitutes a Voltairean re-writing of his vanished "pages

politiques." For now, however, I would stress Caillois1

implicit identification with the author of La condition

humaine (1933) and Le temps du mepris (1935); this focus may

have oriented him in the midst of what Klossowski calls

Contre-Attaaue's ideological swamp.33 The Archives

interview recounts how Caillois was impressed by Malraux at

a large meeting of the C.I.V.A. that dates, I surmise, to

31Wahl, letter to Caillois, 26 Oct. [presumably 1935],

C.W.7. Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.

32Wahl, letter to Caillois, 26 Oct. [presumably 1935],
C.W.7, Fonds Sp6ciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy. This
invitation led, most likely, to the publication of Caillois'
"Le Mythe et l'homme" in Recherches philosophiaues 5 (1935-
36).
33Contre-Attaaue was "heteroclite" above all, recalled
Klossowski: "Vers cette 6poque, aux purs anarchisants et aux
trotskysants viennent se meler des socialistes et des
syndicalistes, qui forment alors comme une sorte de 'marais'
entre Breton et Bataille et vont contribuer a la confusion
et a 1'Equivoque. . ."(104).
 192

November 1934.34 Here, Aragon spoke in favor of Socialist

Realism, explaining that Stakhanovism had superseded "le

merveilleux.11 Caillois recounted:

. alors 1& j'ai lanc6 un regard 6gar6 a
Malraux, qui m'a dit ei voix basse, "Vous ne saviez
pas? [Aragon] n'est pas intelligent." Et puis
Malraux a parl6 & son tour dans le sens contraire
6videmment. II a oppose le romantisme
r6volutionnaire au r6alisme socialiste.35

Jean Lacouture's biography of Malraux recounts of his

impromptu speech: "A propos des rapports entre marxisme et

litterature sovietique, il assure que 1 pretendre qu'un art

puisse etre 1'application d'une doctrine ne correspond

jamais h la r6alit6... Entre eux, il y a des homines

vivants!'"36

Malraux's preface to Le temps du m£pris in 1935 was the

pivotal text, comments Lacouture, "qui fait passer

1'artiste, en bloc, dans l'arene du combat."37 Having thus

condemned Hitler's prisons, his unswerving hostility to

34Founded in March 1934, the C.I.V.A. persevered

throughout the next several years; however, we may date
Caillois' reminiscence by his tentative allusion, here, to
Malraux's return from Russia and the Thaelmann/Dimitrov
trials. "Deux mois apres son retour, le 23 novembre 1934,"
writes Jean Lacouture, "6tait organisee k la Mutualite, a
Paris, une reunion dite de 'compte rendu' des assises de
Moscou" (Malraux une vie dans le siecle [Paris: Seuil, 1973]
159).
35Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jos6 Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXfeme
sifecle. 7 reels (Paris: Soci6t6 Frangaise de Production,
1971): III.
36Lacouture 159.
37Lacouture 163.
 193

fascism would lead the writer to Spain in 1936. Caillois,

on the other hand, would confirm the dissolution of the

journal Inquisitions in mid-1936 by refusing to engage it in

the fight against Franco. Yet, in this very journal,

Caillois would also refer to the "preface indpuisable" of Le

temps du m6pris.38 His affinity with Malraux in late 1935

may have involved the latter's political response to

fascism, less ambiguously emmeshed in what it purported to

oppose, one might suggest, than was the call to violence of

Contre-Attaoue. In a fascinating letter to his friend

Gurnaud, Caillois discusses the possibility of fascism in

France. (Although this could have been written at any time

between 1935 and 1939, date of his last correspondance with

Gurnaud, I would attribute it to late 1935.) "[J]e ne pense

pas que mon opinion sur ce sujet ait grande valeur," he

declares,

car je suis tr6s mal informe, et il me semble

impossible de l'etre bien. Tres vraisemblablement
s'installe une sorte de fascisme larve et honteux
qui a peu de chance de devenir agressif a moins
que le proletariat mal dirige ne lui en fournisse
un pretexte. En tout cas, la situation n'est
absolument pas comparable a celle de l'Allemagne
avant l'arrivee au pouvoir d'Adolf Hitler et, a
mon avis, il ne faut pas compter sur des aventures
du meme genre ici en ce moment, je dis: en ce
moment, car on est tellement hypnotise de part et
d1 autre par elles que l'on peut tres bien finir
par en provoquer de semblables. Mais il n'y a, a
ma connaissance, ni noyau ouvrier fasciste ni
Hp6ril rouge" s£rieux en France, et ce sont lei

38Roger Caillois, Rev. of Sanctuaire. Tandis erne

i 1 aaonise. Lumifere d1 Aoflt.11 by William Faulkner.
Incmisitions 1 (June 1936): 56.
 194

deux conditions tr&s dgfavorables & 11instauration

d'un fascisme syst£matique et violent.39

Whether or not these lines stemmed from Caillois' turbulent

days with Contre-Attaoue. they provide ample insight,

nevertheless, into his discord with Bataille. Breton may

have felt that Bataille's "contemplation" was too irrational

for the purposes of systematic "action," but Caillois was

all too concerned with the affective dynamics of

resemblance, little doubting its insurrectional force — one

that would be conjured up again by the Collfege de

socioloqie. Malraux's concluding speech to the Conares

international des 6crivains pour la defense de la culture

in June 1935, "L'oeuvre d'art," would foreshadow his musee

imaqinaire of the fifties, presenting a universal humanist

appeal in terms of art: "Toute oeuvre d'art se cree pour

satisfaire un besoin, mais un besoin assez passionne pour

lui donner naissance."40 Although Caillois had rejected

art qua art in late 1935, he was apparently drawn to

Malraux's revolutionary romanticism, which stressed the

role of emotion and affect, unlike the Marxists; and at the

same time, Malraux's Marxism maintained a more radical

distance from fascism than did Contre-Attaque. It is

difficult to imagine, furthermore, that Caillois1 ever

39RogerCaillois, letter to Gurnaud, undated [late

1935], C.8, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
40Andrd Malraux, "L'oeuvre d'art," Commune 23 (July
1935): 1265.
 195

psychasthenic chord was left unmoved by Malraux's insistence

upon the "fond fraternel de la mort."41

* * *

A Voltairean revision, perhaps, of Caillois' lost

manifesto for Contre-Attaoue. "L'ordre et l1empire" was

published in the May 1936 issue of Europe, although it was

written several months earlier.42 Despite Caillois*

hostility to "la litt^rature," the essay is a political

fable with all the trappings of an 18th century conte

philosophioue. a chinoiserie inspired by Marcel Granet's

Danses et leaendes de la chine ancienne (1926) as a footnote

points out.43 It allegorically surveys the affective

dimension or social phenomenology of two different political

systems in a manner that might well correspond to Paulhan's

complaint about the "pages politiques" — "il s'agit plutot

d'6carter que de d6couvrir." Caillois evokes the failings

41Malraux 1266.
42Caillois wrote to Paulhan on December 28, 1935,
reminding him that Groethuysen was considering an essay of
his that discussed Chinese emperors; Caillois requested a
rapid decision from the editor of the NRF since he was
otherwise planning to have it illustrated and then published
in the subsequent issue of Minotaure: although "L'ordre et
1'empire" was not published in the NRF. it appeared in
Europe rather than Minotaure for reasons impossible to ascertain.
43L6vi-Strauss mentions Marcel Granet: "dont les livres
sont une Emanation directe de l'6cole Durkheimienne . . .
[et] jettent un jour £blouissant sur la structure sociale de
la Chine archaique" ("Sociologie fran^aise," Socioloqie du
XXeme siecle. ed. Georges Gurvitch [Paris: PUF, 1947] 517).
 196

of two Chinese dynasties l,Tch6ou" and "Ts'inn," prolonged

tyrannies with different strategies of political control—

Order and Empire — which I read as allegorical depictions,

respectively, of Marxist and fascist states.

The first, or Marxist, regime is an absolute rational

order, which seeks to achieve stability, uniformity, the

cessation of time and the end of history. In Approches de

1'imaainaire. Caillois explains that after his break with

Surrealism, he maintained a purely rhetorical relation to

Freud while the scission with Marx was slower and more

subtle:

. . . un des chapitres du Mvthe et 1'Homme traite

deja avec plus que de la desinvolture les theories
"grossieres" qui pretendent ramener 1'evolution
des soci6tes h des causes d'ordre economique ou
utilitaire,. relevant de l'interet ou du regime de
la propriety et de la production, et non de
quelque exaltation ou ivresse, issue d'un instinct
aveugle et imperieux, comme on voit dans les
societes animales.44

The second is an allegory of the fascist state irrationally

focused on its leader, who hopes to harness mythical time,

or eternal becoming, by proclaiming an "ordre nouveau" and

instating himself as "le Premier Empereur.1,45

We might recall Caillois' comment to Paulhan about his

political essay — "un texte qui s'efforce de determiner la

repartition des donnees affectives dans les differents

44Roger Caillois, Approches de 1'imaqinaire (Paris:

Gallimard, 1974) 57.
45Roger Caillois, Le mvthe et 1'homme (Paris:
Gallimard, 1938) 126.
 197

mouvements politiques contemporains. . . ." Rather than

utilitarian interests, the evolution of the dynasties in

"L'ordre et l1empire" reflects their affective relation to

time: whether the inertia favored by the Marxist regime or

the passion and paroxystic vertigo of the fascist empire.

(And again, Caillois finds a biological referent for this

"cruel imp6ratif d'exaltation" in "la formica sanguinea."

which lets its entire colony be devoured by the very

parasites it finds tasty...46) Even more importantly, the

oppressed populations did not revolt "au nom de la justice,

de la raison ou, plus directement, de [leurs] interets."47

The two dynasties eventually collapse; but the reasons for

this confirm Caillois" argument. The fascist regime

collapses with the death of its 'emperor,' who dies just as

he is to acquire the potion of immortality. Despite its

suffering, though, the entire population fully identified

with this "drame intime," participating in the emperor's

passionate quest for immortality and, so too, in his

power.48 The Marxist state, on the contrary, represses the

essential values of "la vie affective" in the name of

skepticism, rationalism and social utilitarianism.49 Yet a

46Caillois, Mvthe 132.

47Caillois, Mvthe 132.
48Caillois, Mvthe 132.
49Caillois,Mvthe 133. It is interesting that
Caillois' critique of Marxism in the post-war will alter
this argument: outlining the participatory aspect of the
 198

challenge arises within the aesthetic aristocracy. (Marquis

P'ing listens to a dangerous melody, without heeding the

black storks which quickly flock to the veranda ...) This

"vieil esprit de rebellion contre l'ordre et les Dieux"

conveys in individual, anti-social, terms what was once a

source of social cohesion expressed in festival and myth:

"ce droit a la culpability et a la vie dionysiaque qu'il est

& la gloire du Romantisme d'avoir exig§ du plus en plus

express6ment."50 It will eventually undermine the entire

regime.51 And it is a clear allegory of the discord between

the aesthetic (Surrealist) avant-garde and the Party in the

early 30s.

In the terms of my reading, this allegorical conte

philosophiaue appears to distinguish between a pre-

Enlightenment (participatory) state and a post-Enlightenment

(rational) one. Given its irrational, participatory and

paroxystic tendencies, the fascist state seems relegated to

the pre-Enlightenment; the Marxist state, on the contrary,

reflects the Enlightenment quest for reason, social

utilitarianism and absolute order or inertia. Such a

distinction is unusual for Caillois, thus far, since he

Communist Party (Description du marxisme [Paris: Gallimard,

1950]). This religious sociology of Communism echoed Jules
Monnerot's Socioloqie du communisme and prefigured Raymond
Aron's L1opium des intellectuels.
50Caillois, Mvthe 133.
51Caillois, Mvthe 126.
 199

primitive and scientific imagination. This shift towards a

pre- and post-Enlightenment dichotomy reflects his

increasing interest in the socio-political imagination and

current efforts, such as those of Contre-Attaque. to

transpose 'primitive' affective strategies into the present-

day. In line with Paulhan's claim that Caillois' "pages

politiques" tend rather to "ecarter" than "decouvrir," the

political allegory of "L'ordre et 1'empire" endorses neither

the pre- nor the post-Enlightenment, that is to say in this

case, neither fascism nor Marxism, but points to their

relative strengths and weaknesses as forms of collective

order.

With its raw immediacy and participatory 'primitivism,'

Contre-Attacme sought to recuperate the affective energy and

violence of the fascist movement, rendering it a weapon for

the universal proletariat. In a manner of implied

systematization or generalization, on the other hand,

"L'ordre et 1'empire" outlines the complementary nature of

these two contradictory social constructs, fascism and

Marxism, which each possesses exactly what the other lacks;

Caillois thus intimates a fantastic correspondance, or

'logic of participation' between the two. He seems to set

forth his particular appropriation of fascist social energy

which would integrate it more cautiously within the

framework of the Enlightenment and rational Marxist

utopianism. In short, his essay indirectly envisions a more

 200

rigorously crafted grasp of the social imagination which

might reconcile paroxysm and inertia, collective and

individual motivation, participatory passion and analytical

reason. Towards the conclusion, Caillois mentions the post-

Enlightenment displacement of the affective imagination from

the social to the individual sphere. Referring to these

repressed aspects of social existence, he then suggests:

Rejet£es par la critique et 1'esprit de systeme,

ces valeurs n'ont pas perdu la legon et peuvent
aujourd'hui attaquer l'adversaire avec ses propres
armes. Conscientes d'elles-memes, elles ont, en
effet, systematise leur conception du monde avec
une coherence qui ne le cfede en rien a 1'autre
— au contraire — et qui, partant des faits, n'a
jamais a en craindre de dementi.52

In this negative dialectic, which appears ironically to

reverse the Hegelian realization of the Idea, affective

"values" are acquiring the theoretical self-consciousness

proper- to science and lucidity while "reason" is losing its

osmotic grip — a mere "apprenti sorcier qui se voit de plus

en plus deborde par les objets de son incantation.1,53 It is

unclear exactly what Caillois is describing in these lines

'which suggest both a danger and remedy at the same time;

they appear to evoke both the modern traits of the Nazi

movement and perhaps, as well, Caillois' original ambitions

with regard to Contre-Attacrue. In any event, this lucid

appropriation of the collective imagination would become the

52Caillois, Mvthe 134.

53Caillois, Mvthe 134.
 201

primary focus of his writing and research until the end of

the decade.
 202

Chapter 5

The Mythical Complex

"Le mythe et l'homme"

Caillois would refine his concerns about the

historicity of the social imagination over the next few

years, and in a particular relation to his studies at the

Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes with Mauss and Dumezil.

His preface to Le mvthe et 1'homme. written in June 1937,

explains that the collection of essays as a whole proceeds

from "observation" to "decision" as a function of its

historical focus:

C'est qu'a mesure que l'objet de 1'etude se

rapproche des realites contemporaines et participe
davantage a la substance des problemes qui s'y
d6battent, les formules de conclusion se trouvent,
du fait meme, chaque fois plus engagees dans le
domaine des responsabilit6s: elles ne portent plus
sur le definitif et l'acheve, sur le pass6. Elles
rattrappent le temps, pour ainsi dire, et mettent
en lumiere des evolutions qui n'ont pas encore vu
leur fin, si bien que sans changer de nature,
elles apparaissent non plus indicatives, mais
imperatives.1

Yet such a trend hardly convey the author's personal

evolution since the initial ("indicative") essay, "Fonction

du mythe" and the concluding ("imperative") essay, "Pour une

•'•Roger Caillois, Le mvthe et l'homme (Paris: Gallimard,

1938) 11.
 203

fonction unitaire de 1'esprit," were both written in late

1935 — first published as "Le mythe et l'homme" and "Pour

une orthodoxie militante," respectively. In short,

Caillois' paradigm of the mythical "complex" (relevant to

primitivism) emerged alongside that of a "militant

orthodoxy" (relevant to modernity). Both are systematizing

superstructures, and both mark a return to the condensation

and overdetermination of La necessite d1esprit, albeit on a

more collective than individual scale. Before addressing

his injunctions for the present, though, let us examine

Caillois' theory of myth, first presented in "Le mythe et

l'homme" and illustrated by his memoire for Hautes Etudes on

the demons de midi.

First published in Recherches philosophioues. "Le mythe

et l'homme" was flanked by articles of Dumezil and Levy-

Bruhl2 and may be read as an osmotic theoretical

appropriation of Caillois' teachers, Mauss and Dumezil,

towards whom he displays a bold critical detachment. His

essay infuses Dumezil's comparative mythological framework

with Mauss's affective and organic functionalism or 'total

social fact.' "Au fond, corps, Sme, societe, tout ici se

mele," Mauss wrote in 1924, praising the studies of

"instinct" as a collective factor, and also that psychology

"acheminee vers une sorte de biologie mentale, une sorte de

2Thesearticles constituted a sub-section, "Le mythe et

l'histoire," within an issue of Recherches philosophicrues 5
(1935-36) titled "Meditations sur le temps."
 204

vraie psycho-physiologie. . . .1,3 The implicit design of

"Le mythe et l'homme" to synthesize Mauss with Dum6zil was

appropriate because the two favored each other's efforts.4

Ijnd then, Dum6zil was rigorous while Mauss was not (Caillois

has described his classes as sheer "association des

id6es"5). Furthermore, Mauss never produced a theory of

myth which in any way equalled his ideas about magic; "De

quelques formes primitives de la classification" (1903)

simply describes myth as a form of primitive classification

reflecting totemist categories, which are motivated,

themselves, by the social-structure:

Chaque mythologie est, au fond, une

3Marcel Mauss, "Rapports reels et pratiques de la

psychologie et de la sociologie" [1924], Socioloaie et
anthropologic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1989) 296; "Ce ne sont plus des faits speciaux de telle ou
telle partie de la mentalite, ce sont les faits d'un ordre
tres complexe, le plus complexe imaginable qui nous
interessent. C'est ce que je propose d'appeler des
phenomenes de totalite ou prend part non seulement le
groupe, mais encore, par lui, toutes les personnalites, tous
les individus dans leur integrite morale, sociale, mentale,
et, surtout, corporelle ou materielle"(303).
4Mauss applauded Dumezil's Festin de 11 immortalite
(1925); Dumezil's "Temps et mythes," published with "Le
mythe et l'homme," focused on myth's relation to the social
time, i.e. religious and ritualistic, charted by Hubert and
Mauss * s La representation du temps dans la religion et la
magie.
5Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle. 7 reels (Paris: Society Frangaise de Production,
1971): III; he describes Mauss as "un homme vraiment
extraordinaire presque genant & cause de son manque absolu
de talent. . . . Mais il avait du genie. Chaque phrase
stimulait la pensee de quelqu'un. II etait incapable de
faire un cours suivi."
 205

classification, mais qui emprunte ses principes &

des croyances religieuses, et non pas a des
notions scientifiques. Les pantheons bien
organises se partagent la nature, tout comme
ailleurs les clans se partagent l'univers.6

Dum6zil's approach to cultural mythology was especially

well-suited to Caillois* training for the acirdqation de

gramma ire (1936). Indeed, it would inspire him to

transpose his ideogrammatic theory, briefly abandoned after

the break with Surrealism, from the terrain of aesthetics

and the individual imagination empirique into that of the

social or collective imagination. Caillois wrote an article

in 1969 about Dumezil which conveyed his appreciation of the

osmotic systems wrought by this cultural mythologist: "[la]

souplesse, jointe a 1'erudition, aboutit alors a un

vertigineux exercice de classification ouverte, de taxinomie

conquerante, toujours en difficulty, jamais en defaut.

Toute aberration est prejugee reductible.1,7 Dumezil

definitively confirmed Caillois in a particular intellectual

vein, "dans le gofit que j'avais de cette stabilite

incertaine. Le premier, lui surtout. il m'a donne l'idee

6Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, "De quelques formes

primitives de classification" [1903] Essais de sociologie
(Paris: Minuit, 1969): 221. Ivan Strenski notes the
surprising fact that Durkheim's Formes elementaires de la
vie religieuse. published nine years later, disregards the
issue of myth (Four Theories of Mvth in Twentieth-Centurv
History [Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1987] 138).
7Roger Caillois, Rencontres (Paris: Gallimard, 1978)
205; the essay originally appeared in Le Monde January 4
1969.
 206

d'une coherence de 11imaainaire. . . .1,8 However varied

Dum6zil's concept of an Indo-European •system,' his cultural

archaeology always related mythology to other forms of

cultural expression. "L'incarnation de la mythologie dans

le rite et dans les institutions, c'est ci lui que je le

dois," has remarked Caillois.9

Glancing ahead, I would also briefly note that

Dumezil's influence on Caillois established an important

bond with Michel Foucault, whose inaugural address at the

College de France declared: "c'est [Dumezil] qui m'a appris

comment decrire les transformations d'un discours et ses

rapports & 1'institution. . . ."10 in 1966, Foucault would

write to Caillois, currently editor of Les mots et les

choses at Gallimard, and diplomatically proclaim him a

"lecteur ideal":

[J]'ai toujours eu 1'impression — mais peut-

etre est-ce-vanit6 de ma part — qu'il y avait

8Caillois, Rencontres 205 [emphasis added]. Dumezil

recalled for Didier Eribon how he began with the concept of
"cycle" and then moved to "system," having been told that
"system" implied will and calculation; his subsequent shift
to "structure" "a eu comme consequence inattendue pour moi,
un peu plus tard, d'etre promu au titre immerite de
precurseur, voire de premier theoricien du structuralisme"
(Entretiens avec Didier Eribon [Paris: Gallimard, 1987]
118).
9Caillois, Archives III. The single footnote citing
Dumezil in "Fonction du mythe" invokes him as "un de ceux
qui ont le plus fait pour rapprocher les mythes et les
rites, et pour les interpreter conjointement a leur lumifere
r^ciproque. . ."(Caillois, Mvthe 28).
10Foucault qtd. in Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault.
(Paris: Flammarion, 1989) 98.
 207

quelque chose de proche dans ce que nous faisions:

je veux dire que tres souvent j'aimerais approcher
de ce que vous faites si merveilleusement. Est-ce
une commune "ascendance" dum^zilienne?11

According to Chastel, Dumezil deemed Caillois a

'genius' who was revolutionizing cultural mythology.12 He

himself had first sought to resurrect the field of

Comparative Mythology through an etymological analysis of

divinities, later opting for correspondances between "les

types et les modes d'action des personnages portant ces

noms. . . ,"13 When Caillois began his apprenticeship in

1933, Dumezil was exploring Ouranos-Varuna (1934) and

F1amen-Brahman (1935) in this fashion. Then, in 1978, he

experienced that "breakthrough" which would prompt his post­

war fame and consecration at the College de France:

La coupure est venue le jour ou, regardant une

fois de plus un groupe de faits indiens et un
groupe de faits romains sur lesquels je pataugeais
depuis des annees, j'ai degage pour la premiere
fois cette structure des trois fonctions, qui
depuis lors ne m'a plus laisse de repit.14

1:LMichel Foucault, letter to Roger Caillois, May 25

1966, Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 228. Didier Eribon's
recent biography of Foucault mentions Caillois* prior
efforts as a member of the comite de lecture at Gallimard to
favor the publication of Foucault's Folie et deraison in
1960 (Foucault 130). There is also evidence that Caillois
sought, unsuccessfully, to compete with Foucault for a chair
at the College de France.
12 Andre Chastel, personal interview, March 1988,
Cambridge Mass.
13Dum6zil, Entretiens 28.
14Dumezil, Entretiens 65.
 208

A 1950 essay by Etiemble, vitriolic man-of-letters, well-

acquainted with Caillois in the 30s, pinpointed for Les

temps modernes the seductive aspect of Dumezil1s 'coherent'

socio-cultural systems for those who were impatient with

Surrealism. Evoking Duir.6zil's rigorous schema of triadic

order linking divinities and social function in Indo-

European thought, to which we will subsequently return,

Etiemble wrote:
Alors, nous avons compris: Ramnes, Tities,
Luceres, autant dire: brahmanes, kshatriya,
vai?ya, les trois blocs de l'ordre vedique, ou
encore, si j'ai bien compris: Mitra-Varuna = Odin
= Jupiter-Fides = Romulus-Numa = Brahmanes =
Flamines = Ramnes. . . . Ce qui me parait plus
beau infiniment que la rencontre sur une table
d'operation d'un parapluie et d'une ou deux
machines a coudre.1®

The revelation of the three "functions" occurred in a

seminar reworking the Flamen-Brahman during the academic

year, 1937-38, which Caillois may have attended.16 Whether

or not he assisted in the elaboration of this new conceptual

framework, he was certainly eager to criticize his professor

with surprising speed, as he did quite publicly in the

Cahiers du Sud of June 1935. His review of Dumezil's

15ReneEtiemble, "Einstein, Dumezil," Hygiene des

lettres (Paris: Gallimard, 1958) 243.
16The "three functions" expressed the triadic
parallelism Dumezil discerned in 1937-38 between the arva
casts of Indian mythology — "pretres, guerriers et la masse
des producteurs organises dans des clans" — and the
hierarchical relation of "la plus vieille th6ologie romaine"
— Jupiter god of the sacred, Mars god of war, Quirinus god
of the populace organized into "curies" (Dumezil, Entretiens
66).
 209

Ouranos-Varuna insists upon the psychological basis of the

mythological imagination:

Tout en se defendant de faire ce que j'appellerai

volontiers de la mythologie interne, c'est a dire
tout en se refusant ci 1'analyse psychologique du
mythe, M. Dumezil une fois de plus 6tablit . . .
des articulations de motifs qui renvoient au xnoins
a la psychologie.17

Caillois emphasizes that Dumezil's earlier work, Festin

d1immortality (1924), had sketched out "un lien constant

entre deux th&mes que la pens£e logique serait bien

impuissante a joindre par ses propres forces mais que la

mythologie revele en interdependance etroite et des mieux

fondees. . . ."18 ^he link, here, was forged between the

artificial femme fatale. in the manner of Pandora, and that

magic brew granting immortality. In the case of Ouranos-

Varuna. the Greek divinity Ouranos (god of the sky and son

of Gaia, goddess of the earth) was correlated with the Vedic

divinity Varuna. Both gods lose their virility at the hands

of a rebellious family-member; this last is then killed

while the social-order and the sovereign's fecundity is

restored. Caillois remarks that sexuality and politics are

hence similarly conjoined in both cases:

11 arriere-plan est le rapport de la

souverainete et de la castration. Ici encore, ce
rapport, pour emploi [sic] un langage kantien est
synthetique et a priori, ce qui revient & dire que
la mythologie parait pouvoir fournir des voies

17Roger Caillois, Rev. of Ouranos-Varuna. by Georges

Dum6zil, Cahiers du Sud 173 (June 1935): 499.

18Caillois, Rev. of Ouranos-Varuna 499.
 210

d1 investigation & la psychologie (car on ne niera

pas que le mythe n'a de r£alit£ que par la
puissance de coercition qu'il peut, dans des
circonstances donndes, exercer sur 1'affectivitd
humaine).19

A few months earlier, Caillois' discussion of L6vy-

Bruhl1s La mvtholoaie primitive, le monde mvthiaue des

australiens et des papous. had noted the lack of any

mythological 'theory1 — "essai suivi de rendre compte de la

fonction du mythe"20 — while suggesting that "le mecanisme

qui a permis de penser le mythe en [fait] apercevoir du meme

coup la fonction.21 Caillois' project is more forcefully

stated in a review of Krappe's Mytholoaie universelle for

the NRF of April 1936, a work which inspires him to

transcend mere thematic analogy, in search of mythological

structure:

. . . une sorte d'identite sous-jacente d'ordre

architectonique plutot qu'imaginatif. On congoit
en meme temps qu'il faudrait une intelligence
d'une force peu commune pour dominer un tel sujet
et oser ecrire, de ce point de vue de la
structure, une mythologie universelle
s'attachant seulement a tracer le cadre d'une
construction synthetique comme Newton et
Mendeleiev ont fait en d'autres domaines. II faut
d ' a i l l e u r s l'avouer: l'espoir d'une telle
realisation est encore chim^rique dans l'6tat
actuel de 1'information.22

19Caillois, Rev. of Ouranos-Varuna 500.

20Roger Caillois, Rev. of La mvtholoaie primitive, le
monde mvthiaue des australiens et des papous. by Lucien
Levy-Bruhl, Cahiers du Sud 171 (April 1935): 332.
21Caillois, Rev. of La mvtholoaie primitive 332.
22Roger Caillois, Rev. of Mvtholoaie universelle. by

Alexandre Haggerty Krappe, Cahiers du Sud April 1935: 331.

 211
* * *

"Le mythe et I'homme" charts the participatory logic of

mythical thought — what Caillois elsewhere cites as "un

enchainement coherent, mais d'une coherence specifiquement

mythologique"23 — in a manner challenging the adequacy of

Levy-Bruhl's "pensee prelogique" as an explanation since it

does not justify "1'anteriority que ce terme implique. . .

."24 Caillois' paradigm of the universal mythical

"complex" is, in effect, a social ideoaramme — occuring

1'extreme pointe de la superstructure de la societe et de

l'activite de 1'esprit. . . ."25 Like the ideoaramme. it

an overdetermined and dynamic representation; unlike the

ideoaramme. though, the participatory logic of myth is not

motivated by psychasthenia. Its dominant affective source

is heroic transgression, or Dionysian "droit a la

culpabilite"; and here, we can see Caillois' increasing

proximity to Bataille, and to the common influence of Mauss.

Structured by "situations dramatiques" that realize or

enact certain "cristal1isations de virtualites

psychologiques,1,26 myth's "function" is to allow men to

23RogerCaillois, "Les demons du midi." Revue de

lhistoire des religions 116 (Sept.-Dec. 1937): 186.
24Caillois, Mvthe 27.
25Caillois, Mvthe 16.
26Caillois, Mvthe 25.
 212

transcend social prohibitions or taboos. Mythical "heroes11

express and resolve, through an "issue heureuse ou

malheureuse," such universal tensions between the individual

and the collective.27 Significantly, censorship is overcome

but not abolished by the mythical hero: "Humain, il serait

coupable, et, mythique il ne cesse pas de l'etre: il reste

souille de son acte, et la purification, si elle est

n£cessaire, n'est jamais complete.1,28

Noting that hubris and nemesis constitute the

"constellation" of mythological psychology, Caillois links

mythical thought to tragedy.29 "Le mythe et l'homme,"

though, highlights the birth of "festival" rather than

tragedy since it is only the first which unites ritual and

myth: "c'est un exces permis par leauel l'individu se trouve
dramatise et devient ainsi le heros. le rite realise le

mythe et permet de le vivre."30 The ritual experience of

such participation entails the act, "1'identification

27Caillois, Mvthe 25.

28Caillois,Mvthe 25. Crucial to "Le mythe et l'homme"
is Rudolf Kassner's Les 616ments de la grandeur humaine
(1931) — Kassner also inspired Petitjean. As Caillois
summarized this work in a footnote, "l'idee essentielle est
que la grandeur doit se definir comme possedant un pouvoir
de transmutation en matiere ethique. Quand elle affecte la
culpabilite, celle-ci demeure culpabilite, mais apparait
sup6rieure au principe en vertu de quoi elle est
culpabilite. De ce point de vue (qui n'est d'ailleurs pas
celui de Kassner) la grandeur est certainement la finalite
du mythe"(26).
29Caillois, Mvthe 25.
30Caillois, Mvthe 27.
 213

r£elle, la satisfaction de fait."31 Myth dissociated from

ritual loses "le meilleur de sa puissance d'exaltation: sa

capacity d'etre v6cu. II n'est plus d£ja que litt6rature"

— or tragedy.32 Recalling the seductive resemblances of

art assailed by Procfes intellectuel de l'art. the narration

or aesthetic representation of myth merely offers "une

identification virtuelle au h£ros . . . une satisfaction

id6ale."33 Such idealized identification "flatte plutot

qu'elle ne purifier la katharsis aristotelicienne est une

notion nettement trop optimiste."34 It is important that

festival and 'literary' myth are both participatory and

mimetic representations; and both are endowed, furthermore,

with a compensatory function: For the individual, the

transgressive mythical hero is always an "image ideale de

compensation qui colore de grandeur son &me humili^e."35

31Caillois, Mvthe 26.

32Caillois, Mvthe 26.
33Caillois, Mvthe 25.
34Caillois, Mvthe 26.
35Caillois, Mvthe 24. In this respect, Caillois' ideas
about the affective source of myth differ from Dum6zil's
"Temps et mythes" where its "compensatory" function emerges
only when myth has become dissociated from ritual or belief,
in the guise of literature or fantasy. Sounding rather
Freudian, Dumezil writes: "le conte n'est pas, comme le
mythe, oriente vers 1'action: le recitant et l'auditeur du
conte ne veulent pas intervenir mystiquement (participation,
commemoration evocatrice, preparation...) dans la vie du
monde; ils cherchent au contraire, ils godtent des
satisfactions imaginatives qui les dddommagent de la
mediocrite de leur puissance; ils jouent, et ils jouent
librement. . ."(Recherches philosophioues 5 [1935-36]: 249).
 214

The distinction is not located, then, between act and

representation but between literal and imagined experience.

The comparative dimension of Caillois' mythical complex

recalls the systematic network of his id6ograrome. although

it is ambiguously termed a dual 'dialectic1 of 'external'

and 'internal' constraints. The first are natural,

historical, geographical, sociological, physiological, as

well as psychological: "On peut meme determiner les lois de

la pens£e mythique et dessiner ainsi les necessity

psychologiques de sa structure," writes Caillois, referring

the reader to Cassirer and to Levy-Bruhl.36 However, these

determinations neglect what he calls myth's "necessity

interne": "une dialectique specifique d'auto-proliferation

et d'auto-cristallisation qui est a soi-meme son propre

ressort et sa propre syntaxe."37 The interaction of

internal and external constraints is what engenders the

mythical complex:

Le mythe est le resultat de la convergence de ces

d e u x c o u r a n t s d e determinations, l e lieu
geometrique de leur limitation mutuelle et de
1'6preuve de leurs forces; il est fait de
1'information, par une n£cessite interne, des
exigences et des donnees ext6rieures, lesquelles
tantot proposent, tantot imposent, et tantot
disposent. . . .3®

Despite his allusion to dialectics, Caillois' model seems

36Caillois, Mythe 19.

37Caillois, Mvthe 20.
38Caillois, Mvthe 20.
 215

informed, instead, by dynamic correspondances. Indeed, he

terms "dialectique d1 interference" that process whereby one

mythical "situation" corresponds to others: for example, "le

theme de la Giftmadchen se trouve lie k celui de la boisson

d'immortality et le complexe de Polycrate & celui

d'Oedipe."39 He also calls "dialectique d•aggravation

affective de la donnee"40 the cristallisation of myth within

a particular culture:
la plurivocit6 de la projection mythique d'un
conflit permet une multiplicity de resonances qui,
en le rendant troublant simultan6ment sur divers
points, fait de lui ce qu'il apparait etre
d'abord: une puissance d1investissement de la
sensibilite.41

Caillois decries the limits of psychoanalysis but

declares, nonetheless:

en definissant les processus de transfert, de

concentration et de surddtermination, elle a jete
les bases d'une logique valable de 1•imagination
affective, il reste surtout que par la notion de
complexe, elle a mis en lumiere une realite
psychologique profonde qui, dans le cas special de
1'explication des mythes, pourrait avoir a jouer
un role fondamental.42

It would seem that Caillois is now applying

"overdetermination" to Janet's "complexes" which, in the

39Caillois, Mvthe 30.

40Caillois, Mvthe 30.
41Caillois, Mvthe 28; he illustrates this idea with
Plutarch's remark: "le mythe que je viens de te narrer est
1'image d'une certaine verite qui r6flechit une meme pensde
dans des milieux differents"(28).
42Caillois, Mvthe 21.
 216

words of Roger Mucchielli, are "representations chargees

6motionnellement et non conscientes, sortes d'1 emotions

figdes' susceptibles d'un ddveloppement indgpendant du Moi

conscient. . . ."43 "Le mythe et l'homme" is also perhaps

•inspired by the ideas of Alfred Adler, for whom, according

to Mucchielli, "[t]ous les •complexes' sont rattaches &

1'inf6riorit6 et aux m6canismes compensatoires.1,44 In

cultural terms, Caillois challenges Freud's psychoanalytic

anthropology, that is to say, the universal Oedipal complex

described in Totem and Taboo: his review of Raglan's Le

tabou de 1'inceste for the Cahiers du Sud of November 1935

surveyed the latter's treatment of various theories,

exclaiming:
En particulier, Freud est loin de sortir grandi de
l'epreuve, au point qu'on peut considdrer que la
critique de Lord Raglan completant celle, deja si
liquidatrice, de Malinowski permet de tenir pour
nulles et non avenues la totality des hypotheses
exprimees dans Totem et Tabou.45

"Le mythe et l'homme" appears to endorse certain aspects of

Malinowski's cultural relativism which sought, as Merleau-

43Roger Mucchielli, Les complexes (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France,1976) 10.
44Mucchielli 23. T h i s correlation is purely
hypothetical since Adler's work on this topic, such as Le
sens de la vie (1933), was only translated into French in
the 50s.
45Roger Caillois, Rev. of Le tabou de 1'inceste. by
Lord Raglan, Cahiers du Sud Nov. 1935: 778. "Le mythe et
l'homme" mentions this work: "Freud ne fait que reprendre
une definition classique quand il dcrit: 'Une fete est un
exces permis, voire ordonn£, une violation solennelle d'une
prohibition. . .'"(26).
 217

Ponty described it to his students, "une nouvelle

orientation psychanalytique qui consisterait ei rechercher

les complexes propres a chaque soci6t6 au lieu des seules

formations oedipiennes.46 For Caillois, Oedipus is but one

of several myths crucial to Greek culture.47

Still, this is merely a feature of his universal model

where a common source fosters numerous "situations" and

"heroes." These two categories are independant so as to

constitute intersecting axes in proto-structuralist

fashion: "une sorte de concentration verticale et une sorte

de concentration horizontale. . . .1,48 And Caillois points

to a common inner ground which remains to be revealed: "on

ne peut concevoir qu'un lien qui se revfele constant &

travers differentes civilisations, soit le resultat de leur

structure [that of the civilizations] sur 1•imagination

individuelle.1,49 Caillois' discussion of myth's 'inner

necessity' recalls Mauss's injunctions concerning the study

46MauriceMerleau-Ponty, Merleau-Pontv a la Sorbonne

resumd de cours 1949-1952 (Paris: Cynara, 1988) 126.
Rather than Malinowski's pragmatic functionalism, however,
Caillois' review favors explanations of the incest-taboo
based on totemistic theories of primitive magic, in the
manner of Frazer and Durkheim (Caillois, Rev. of Le tabou
778).
47Caillois also lists "celle d'Herakles aux pieds
d'Omphale, de Polycrate jetant son anneau a la mer pour
conjurer les dangers de l'exc^s de bonheur, d'Abraham, de
Jephte et d*Agamemnon, rois sacrifiant leur descendance, de
Pandore, femme artificielle et Giftmadchen. . ."(Mvthe 25).
48Caillois, Mvthe 24.
49Caillois, Mvthe 24.
 218

of "psycho-physiologic" or "une biologie mentale." To grasp

the •ultimate function' of myth, "il semble bien qu'il

faille . . . au-del& de la psychanalyse meme, s'adresser &

la biologie en interpretant au besoin le sens de ses donn£es

par leurs repercussions dans le psychisme humain, telles que

la psychologie les pr£sente."50 Although myth may express

the transgression of social taboos, Caillois denies that "la

n6cessite de l'aftabulation vient de la 'censure.'"51

Claiming that images are not any less dangerous than ideas,

he wonders why mythical "situations" do not simply adopt "le

langage psychologique qui est le leur, au lieu d'emprunter

le decor -- doit-on dire 1'hypocrisie? -- de

1'aftabulation."52

As usual, Caillois' integration of biological and

social phenomena defies Mauss's anthropological focus. He

turns to Bergson as a theoretical source, invoking Les deux

sources de la morale et de la religion (1932) to

characterize a form of mythical imagination in nature.

This late work defines "la fonction fabulatrice" as an

instinctual compensation by "l'61an vital" to remedy the

50Caillois, Mvthe 21.

51Caillois, Mythe 28.
52Caillois, Mvthe 27. Thus, despite his current
allusion to social censorship, the representation of the
mythical complex, like that of the id^oaramme. is not itself
prompted by any censorship between the conscious and
unconscious mind; yet Caillois' current distinction between
'image' and 'ideas' does denote a shift from the
associationist model of La n6cessit6 d'esprit.
 219

•dissolving' work of human intelligence; this argument is

formulated, in part, against L6vy-Bruhl (by stressing the

imagination of modern man) and against Durkheim (stressing

the imagination of the individual mind).53 Les deux sources

de la morale et de la religion also locates a "fonction

fabulatrice" in nature, which induces Caillois boldly to

correlate myth and biology:

Comparant les modules les plus achev^s des deux

evolutions divergentes du regne animal, evolutions
aboutissant respectivement a l'homme et aux
insectes, il ne devra pas paraitre perilleux de
chercher des correspondances entre les uns et les
autres et plus specialement entre le comportement
des uns et la mvtholoqie des autres. s'il est
v r a i , c o m m e l e veut M. Bergson, que la
representation mythique (image quasi
hallucinatoire) soit destin6e a provoquer, en
1'absence de 1'instinct, le comportement que la
presence de celui-ci aurait declench6.54

The revised version of "La mante religieuse," a year later,

would compare insect and man with a similarly Bergsonian

tenet: "Ici une conduite. la. une mvtholoqie."55 Yet, it is

important to emphasize that Caillois subverts Bergson in the

very process of adducing him to this theoretical construct.

Given the profoundly Maussian and anti-utilitarian outlook

of its affective motivation, or "droit a la culpabilite,"

"Le mythe et l'homme" explicitly rejects the positive or

53See Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et

de la religion (Paris: Alcan, 1932) 110.
54Caillois, Mvthe 23.
55See Roger Caillois, "La mante religieuse." Mesures
Aug. 1937: 89-119. Rpt. in Le mvthe et l'homme.
 220

Darwinian aspect of Bergson's 61an vital;

Pour faire appel au t£moignage d'un homme a qui

l'on ne refusera pas quelque connaissance precise
(philologigue) de la mythologie, on se souviendra
que 11 orcriastische Selbsvernichtunq de Nietzsche
suppose toute une gamme d'exigences dirig£es en un
sens tres exactement inverse. On est loin . . .
du trop celebre instinct de conservation.56

Ivan Strenski's recent Four Theories of Myth in the

Twentieth Century casts Caillois between 1934 and 1939 as an

"ecletic irrationalist on the side of Nietzsche, Sorel and

Stalin."57 Besides that of Mauss, Le mvthe et 11homme also

shows the influence, claims Strenski, of Caillois' "new­

found 'teachers', Bergson, Nietzsche and Georges Sorel,

[and] is in some ways typical of those years of

irrationalist frenzy."58 Unfortunately, Strenski is guilty

of a serious mistranslation in the course of illustrating

his idea that Caillois links Bergson's elan vital with

Sorelian pragmatism. In citing, as follows, "Myth is . . .

in all cases a power of salvation and preservation . . .

[having] a pragmatic value of protection or defence,'1,59

Strenski seriously misreads Caillois' attack on positivist

utilitarianism:
II s'en faut que 1*instinct soit dans tous les cas
une puissance de salut et de preservation, qu'il
ait toujours une valeur pragmatique de protection

56Caillois, Mvthe 23.

57Strenski 182.
58Strenski 182.
59Strenski 182.
 221

ou de defense. La mythologie est au-delci (ou en

de?a, comme on voudra) de la force qui pousse
l'4tre a pers6v6rer dans son etre, au-dela de
l1instinct de conservation.60

As in "L'ordre et 1'empire,11 Caillois again refers to the

formica sanquinea to posit "des instincts nuisibles &

l'individu et meme h l'esp&ce. . . ."61

* * *

It is nonetheless quite certain that Caillois was

fascinated by Sorel, the political theorist whose Reflexions

sur la violence had voiced the well-known dictum:

Les hommes qui participent aux grands mouvements

sociaux se representent leur action prochaine sous
forme d'images de bataille assurant le triomphe de
leur cause. Je [propose] de nommer mythes ces
constructions dont la connaissance offre tant
d'importance pour l'historien: la greve generale
des syndicalistes et la revolution catastrophique
de Karac sont des mythes.62
"Dans la perspective d'un marxisme h6terodoxe,11 writes

Georges Gusdorf, Sorel became "le theoricien du mythe

social."63 Caillois' Archives interview underscores the

60Caillois, Mvthe 22. Caillois specifically challenges

the utilitarian or Darwinian aspect of I'elan vital when he
writes: "Les mythes ne sont nullement des garde-fous
installes aux tournants dangereux en vue de prolonger
1'existence de l'individu ou de 1'espece"(23). Strenski
translates: "Myths act as 'guard-rails' installed on
dangerous curves, devised to prolong the existence of the
individual or species. . ."(186).
61Caillois, Mvthe 23.
62Georges Sorel qtd. in Georges Gusdorf, Mvthe et
metaphvsiaue (Paris: Flammarion, 1953) 272.
63Gusdorf 272.
 222

importance of Mvthe de la arfeve a6n6rale and Reflexions sur

la violence.64 and he actually reviewed Sorel's Propos for

the NRF in April 1936:

. . . il t6moigne d'un tel souci de subordination

de l'esth£tique h l'ethique dans un xnonde ou le
plaisant est roi et l'imperatif humilie que la
voix publique ne parait plus exag£rer, quand elle
se souvient uniformement de Sorel en entendant les
noms de Lenine, de Mussolini et d'Hitler.65

This "formule de conclusion" is quite ambiguous.66 Georges

Gusdorf, among others, would confirm Caillois' analogy

seventeen years later: "Sorel le doctrinaire devait etre

l'un des inspirateurs de Lenine et de Mussolini. Et le

national-socialisme de Hitler chercher a imposer sa

conception propre du 'mythe du xxeme siecle'."67 As for

Caillois' ethical prescription, it suggests that "la voix

publique" views Sorel as the sole means of effectively

participating in the highly-charged political arena of the

present-day.

A brief contrast with the Sorelian tendencies of the

64Caillois, Archives IV.

65Roger Caillois, Rev. of Propos de Georges Sorel ed.
Jean Variot, Nouvelle revue francaise April 1936: 602.
66So too, is the general legacy of Sorelian thought in

the French political context. Michel Winock concludes: ". .

. Sorel a distribue a tous vents : les fascistes italiens,
les fascistes frangais (les vrais et les faux) se sont
reclames de ses idees; les partisans du socialisme ouvrier,
opposes au socialisme etatique, au socialisme 'des
intellectuels' et au socialisme parlementaire, peuvent
toujours y prendre des legons ("Nationalisme. anti-semitisme
et fascisme en France [Paris: Seuil, 1990] 334).
67Gusdorf 273.
 223

sociologist Jules Monnerot, Caillois' peer and close

acquaintance, is interesting at this point.68 By the late

30s, this highly troubling figure had come to espouse

ideological views which, more than those common to most of

his milieu, involved a pragmatic fascist use of

irrationalism, predicated in essence, on a simple

transvaluation of Levy-Bruhl's participation.69 In a

collection of essays published in 1974, Monnerot declared

Sorel the linch-pin of his political ideology or

"mythistoire" which remained quite constant throughout his

life. In particular, he praises Sorel's recuperation of

myth from Vico, "en lib6rant ce dernier du d6faut qu'il a en

commun avec Levy-Bruhl (et tant d'autres) : les illusions du

primitivisme."70 Deeply inspired by Bergson, writes

Monnerot, Sorel engenders the crucial equation of "homme

68Close to Caillois throughout their Surrealist period,

Monnerot also participated in the short-lived journal,

Inquisitions (1936), and was a co-founder of College de
socioloaie but withdrew before it started.
69For the best discussion of Monnerot, see Heimonet
Politioues de l'ecriture (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1989).
Although he wrote an excellent sociological analysis of
Surrealism, La poesie moderne et le sacre. and was one of
the first, in France, to attack the religious sociology of
the communist party, with Socioloaie du communisme.
Monnerot*s current intellectual status has been irremediably
tainted by his temporary allegiance in the late 80s with Le
Pen and Le Front National.
70Jules Monnerot, Inquisitions (Paris: Jos4 Corti,
1974) 18.
 224

primitif" with the modern "homme affectif.1,71 For L6vy-

Bruhl, this identity would have been an aberration

— "pour un Sorel c'est une revelation : Sorel p6n6tre notre

mentality primitive, et cela permettra 1'Elucidation des

mythes bolchevistes et fascistes. Eventuellement aussi

1'application. . . ."72

If Procfes intellectuel de l'art had questioned Sorel's

theory that art might engender actions or ideas, "Le Mythe

et 1'homme" views the mythological imperative, unlike

Monnerot, as neither positive nor pragmatic. The mythical

complex does not convey unmediated affect or participation

but is regimented by its own logic or coherence; and most

importantly, it cannot be simply transposed into the

present, as both Sorel and Monnerot contend.73 'Indicative'

rather than 'imperative,' then, "Le mythe et 1'homme" closes

with a glance at the present. Citing "une veritable

hvpertrophie de cette fonction de fete ou de rite"

displaying mythological tendencies, Caillois points to

Nazism and the Ku-Klux-Klan.74 Here, the "rites de punition

7•'•Monnerot
writes: "Sorel n'imite pas Bergson. Bergson
inspire Sorel. Je dirais que c'est un veritable cas
d'infusion de pensee" (Inquisitions 30).
72Monnerot, Inquisitions 18.
73Monnerot
criticizes the tradition of both Durkheim
and Levy-Bruhl for treating myth in 'scientific' fashion as
a past and closed phenomena: "[ils] ne s1int^ressent
1scientifiquement' qu'aux mythes sans avenir, et disent, ou

insinuent, qu'il ne saurait etre scientifique de s'occuper

des mythes qui en ont un"(Inquisitions 21).
74Caillois, Mvthe 26 [emphasis added].
 225

sont nettement destines h donner aux membres 'cette ivresse

brfeve qu'un homme inf£rieur ne peut dissimuler quand il se

sent pour quelques instants detenteur de puissance et

cr6ateur de peur.",75 One must read "Le mythe et 1'homme"

with "L'ordre et 1'empire" in order to grasp how these

examples reflect that "droit k la culpability" repressed by

the Enlightenment. Through ritualistic hypertrophy. Hitler

and the Klan seek to 'socialize' an individualized

collective unconscious that is rapidly acquiring "le droit"

and "la force" as well as the coherence and theoretical

lucidity proper to modern thought.

Caillois points to the imminent political power of such

"virtualites instinctives ou psychologiques [qui] n'ont pas

peri"76 as both threat and solution at the same time — much

as he seems to position the influence of Sorel, and much as

Contre-Attaoue positioned fascist violence. Elaborating

upon "L'ordre et 1'empire," it would seem, "Le mythe et

1'homme" thus insists that the participatory logic of

mythical thought, relegated to an alienated and asocial

state after the Enlightenment, must be cautiously

socialized prior to any pragmatic, political use. Further

research should allow for its proper recuperation from

dreamers, criminals, and madmen:

75Caillois,
Mvthe 26; he is quoting from John Moffatt
Mecklin, le Ku-Klux-Klan (French trans. Paris, 1934).
76Caillois, Mvthe 31.
 226

Des mythes humiligs au mythes triomphants, la

route est peut-etre plus courte gu'on ne
1'imagine. II suffirait de leur socialisation.
Au moment oil l'on voit la politique parler si
aisdment d'experience vdcue et de conception du
monde, mettre a la peine et k l'honneur les
violences affectives fondamentales, recourir enfin
aux symboles et aux rites, qui la pretendra
impossible?77
* * *

As a footnote to "Le mythe et l'homme," it is

interesting to consider that in the post-war, both Caillois

and Levi-Strauss would consider themselves to be Mauss's

legitimate heirs. In the late 40s, Caillois unsuccessfully

challenged Levi-Strauss for Mauss's chair at the Ecole

Pratique des Hautes Etudes, backed by Dumezil.78 In 1955,

Tristes tropioues declared that L6vi-Strauss was now

"probablement plus fidele que tout autre a la tradition

durkheimienne.1,79 This echoed his appropriation of the

Maussian legacy in the famous "Introduction a l'oeuvre de

Marcel Mauss" (1950), which Georges Gurvitch calls "une

interpretation tres personnelle.,l80 Mauss is depicted here

77Caillois, Mvthe 32 [emphasis added].

78Chastel interview. Caillois was later offered a chair
in the 6eme section (Literary Sociology) of Hautes Etudes by
its director, Lucien Febvre, in June 1948; by this time,
however, he had already obtained a position at 1'UNESCO.
79Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes tropioues (Paris: Plon,
1955) 63.
80Georges Gurvitch, "Avertissement," Socioloqie et
anthropoloaie. by Marcel Mauss, (Paris: PUF, 1950) viii.
David Pace notes that Levi-Strauss admitted that "as a
 227

as Hoses poised on the hallowed threshold of structuralism:

destined to incorporate "les plus r6cents d£veloppements des

sciences sociales, qui permettent de former l'espoir de leur

mathematisation progressive.1,81 In that same year, Caillois

wrote an essay on Mauss which presented him as the sole

response to the query: "Chacun sent aujourd'hui la n6cessite

d'un nouvel humanisme. Mais a qui faire appel pour le

batir?"82 In his opinion, Mauss illuminates "certaines

aspirations f ondamentales de l'etre humain, obscures,

tenaces, inextinguibles et comme recurrentes sous

differentes formes aux divers niveaux de la civilisation.1,83

This article makes it clear that Caillois1 current appraisal

of Mauss involves a rejection of Marx, Freud, and implicitly

at this point, of structuralism as well:

[Mauss] detestait d'un meme coeur la profondeur et

les hypotheses, les causes lointaines et absolues,
comme le sexe ou l'6conomie, par lesquelles il
n'est que trop facile de tout expliquer
indifferemment, et les conjectures legeres qu'il
est toujours facile d'avancer et qu'il est presque
impossible de verifier. . . . II cherchait a
etablir des verites incontestables et claires,
parfaitement apparentgs. II a su innover avec

latecomer to ethnology, he had barely known Mauss and had

never assisted in his course" (Claude Levi-Strauss: The
Bearer of Ashes [Boston: ARK, 1986] 150).
81Claude L6vi-Strauss, "Introduction a l'oeuvre de
Marcel Mauss," Socioloaie et anthropologic, by Marcel Mauss
(Paris: PUF, 1950) xxxvi.
82Roger
Caillois, Rencontres (Paris: Gallimard, 1978)
27. This essay was not published at the time, for reasons
unknown.
83Caillois, Rencontres 26.
 228

imprudence et fonder avec solidity.84

L^vi-Strauss's "Introduction" identifies the

permutations of Maussian potlatch as a form of proto-

structuralism and translates the 'total social fact1 into a

structuralist model, reinterpreting mana through

psychoanalysis and structural linguistics: "Mauss croit

encore possible d'elaborer une th^orie sociologique du

symbolisme, alors qu'il faut 6videmment chercher une

origine symbolique de la soci6t6."85 In Structure de la

pensee mvtholoaiaue and La pensee sauvaae. Levi-Strauss

denies L6vy-Bruhl's distinction between primitive and

civilized thought — as does Mauss — but without citing

"classification" or "rationalism" linked, in Durkheimian

fashion, to the social structure of the collective. Seeking

the symbolic priauundit.ions for the 'total social fact1,

Levi-Strauss must therefore challenge Mauss's view of

potlatch ("donner, recevoir, rendre"86) as the simple

circulation of sympathetic magic or of mana (the famous

•supplement' or copula which rationalizes magical thought).

In short, L6vi-Strauss rejects "la logique classique"87 to

propose instead "la logique des relations" or "[la] logique

de l'echange." In an important summation of the "floating

84Caillois, Rencontres 27.

85Levi-Strauss, "Introduction" xxii.
86L6vi-Strauss, "Introduction" xxxvii.
87Caillois, "Introduction" xl.
 229

signifier" which mana has become in the context of his

structuralist system, Levi-Strauss writes:

. . . le mana n'est que la reflexion subjective de

l1exigence d'une totalite non persue. L'echange
n'est pas un edifice complexe, construit h partir
des obligations de donner, de recevoir et de
rendre, a l'aide d'un ciment affectif et mystique.
C'est une synthese iiamediatement donnee a, et par,
la pens£e symbolique qui, dans l'echange comme
dans toute autre forme de communication, surmonte
la contradiction qui lui est inherente
d'apercevoir les choses comme les 616ments du
dialogue, simultanement sous le rapport de soi et
d'autrui, et destinees par nature a passer de l'un
h 1'autre. Qu'elles soient de 11 un ou de 1'autre
represente une situation derivee par rapport au
caractere relationnel initial.88

Levi-Strauss1s structuralist distinction between 'primitive'

and 'modern' "logique de l'6change" involves, then, the

famous distinction between bricolage and engineering. For

the scientific engineer, new conceptual tools and research

establish new syntheses; for the bricoleur. mana (or other

forms of belief) reconcile all unknowns into its particular

synthesis.89 In 1955, Levi-Strauss would hence define myth

as the expression and resolution of those binary

88Levi-Strauss,"Introduction" xlvi. He claims, in so

doing, to pursue Mauss' own project with mana; to attain
"une sorte de 'quatrieme dimension' de 1*esprit, un plan sur
lequel se confondraient les notions de 'categorie
inconsciente' et de 'categorie de la pensee collective'"
(xxx).
89,,Dechire entre ces deux systemes de references, celui

du signifiant et celui du signifi6, l'homme demande a la

pensee magique de lui fournir un nouveau systeme de
reference, au sein duquel des donn£es jusqu'alors
contradictoires puissent s'integrer" (Claude Levi-Strauss,
Anthropologic structurale [Paris: Plon, 1958] 202-203).
 230

oppositions which reflect the conflicts and contradictions

inherent to arbitrary systems informing the social

structure.

In 1936, Caillois was hardly the "humanist1 he had

become by 1950; indeed, the 'logic of participation'

structuring his mythical complex is not unrelated to Levi-

Strauss's later 'logic of exchange.' Both present

alternatives to classical logic as a model for essential

continuities between primitive and modern thought,

alternatives which do away with the social basis of the

Maussian "supplement." The biological ground Caillois

constantly seeks is just as heretical to Maussian thought as

are Levi-Strauss's efforts to transpose "L'essai sur le don"

into the asocial terms of psychoanalysis and structural

linguistics. If myth, for L6vi-Strauss, reconciles

abstract conceptual systems, Caillois' mythical 'function,'

on the other hand, resolves Nietzschean selbstvernichtunq

and the social order; as I have suggested above, the

Dumezilian coherence of "Le mythe et l'homme" integrates the

very dimension of Maussian theory which Levi-Strauss would

subsequently evacuate, namely, affect.

 231

Noon-time Demons

Just ' as "La mante religieuse" and "Mim6tisme et

psychasthenic legendaire" illustrated La n6cessit6 d'esprit

and Proces intellectuel de l'art. respectively, so too

Caillois1 memoire for the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

on the "complexe de midi" appears to 'illustrate' "Le mythe

et l'homme" and is, in fact, cited there as an example of

myth's overdetermined coherence:

. . . la stratification est tr&s nette: abandon de

1'action et de la volont6 sous la chaleur de midi,
sommeil des sens et de la conscience, agression
6rotique des succubes, passivity generalis6e et
ennui de la vie (acedia), cependant que les
fantomes ont soif du sang des vivants au moment ou
la diminution de 1'ombre les leur livre, a l'heure
des spectres guand l'astre au zenith recouvre la
nature de la marde haute de la mort.90

Caillois' study of solar mythology highlights its status as

"1'image de l'heure" or, more specifically, as its "image

juste."91 The hour of noon creates "aperceptions

affectives"92 which express and intensify a fundamental

90Caillois, Mythe 29.

91Roger Caillois, "Le complexe de midi," Minotaure 9
(1936) 10.
92Roger Caillois, "Les spectres de midi dans la
demonologie slave: Les faits,11 Revue des etudes slaves 16
1936: 25.
 232

death-instinct or, again, a psychasthenic imperative; this

is, then, quite literally, a mythological ideogranune.

although Caillois does not use the term. He voices a

lyrical admiration for this mythic "lucidite" which

crystallizes

les memes tendances humaines en leur offrant une

image d'elles-memes et de leur realisation dans le
lourd et brulant sommeil de la nature,
justification, illustration et exaltation dans
cette plus haute position de l'astre de la
lumiere, de 1'exigence incoercible d'une plenitude
qui suppose toutes les demissions.93
An important element of Dumezil's research in the 30s

concerned those winter ceremonies ushering in a cyclical

social renewal — from Festin d1immortalite (1921), through

Le probleme des centaures (1924), to Mythes et dieux des

qermains (written in 1936 and published in 1939). By 1937

and 1938, Caillois himself would turn to the revolutionary

"Le vent d'hiver." Between 1934 and 1936, however, his

ethnographic investigation into the Indo-European solar

imagination examined the participatory logic of a terrain

Dumezil had not addressed. His research was initiated as

early as 1934 (during the Prague summer when Caillois met

Bachelard). Perhaps for this reason, among others,

Nietzschean "culpabilite sacree" is not privileged as yet;

melancholy psychasthenia, albeit now linked to the sexual

glare of midi rather than to l'espace noir. is still

93Roger Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de

l'histoire des religions 116 (Sept.-Dec. 1937): 172.
 233

Caillois' prime affective motor. Immediately relevant to

the solar myths inspiring Bataille and others members of

the avant-garde at the time, this scholarly iti6moire seems to

challenge, and even to contest from the lofty perspective of

the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes the current

appropriation of such burning topics.

Dumezil directed this mdmoire. although he has

remarked to Didier Eribon that he always refused any such

official responsabilities:

Roger Caillois, par exemple, a compost [une thfese]

remarquable, sur les demons de midi. J'en parlais
constamment avec lui et je I'aidais dans la mesure
de mes moyens, mais ce n'est pas sous ma direction
qu'il l'a presente aux censeurs designes par la
section.94

Composed between late 1935 and mid-1936, this research on

Slavic demonology, on Greco-Roman culture, and the medieval

monk's malady of "acedia" was later published in the Revue

des etudes slaves and the Revue de l'histoire des

religions.95 Caillois then succinctly summarized the

memoire as a whole in "Le complexe de Midi" for Minotaure 9

94Dumezil,Entretiens 103. Dumezil explains: "Je lui

ai dit qu'il valait mieux pour lui qu'il se couvre de la
'direction' de Jean Marx, dont il suivait aussi les
conferences: Marx avait la haute main sur les Relations
culturelles et pouvait lui etre utile — et il le fut
— dans les debuts de sa carriere"(103).
95Roger Caillois, "Les spectres de midi dans la
d6monologie slave: les faits," Revue des etudes slaves 16
1936: 18-37; "Les spectres de midi dans la demonologie
slave: interpretation des faits," Revue des etudes slaves
17 (1937): 81-92; "Les demons de midi" Revue de l'histoire
des religions 115 (Mar.-June 1937): 142-173; 116 (July-Aug.
1937): 54-83; 116 (Sept.-Dec. 1937): 143-186.
 234

(Oct. 1936). Solar mythology is still thriving in the

Slavic domain, he reports, since demons in the guise of

femmes fatales assault slumbering men and innocent children

at noon, thus revealing the hour's physiological role.96 He

shifts from ethnography to scholarship to survey Greco-Roman

mythology, where noon was the religious hour par

excellence. These solar deities have vanished, however, and

their multiple attributes and functions render such solar

status difficult to specify; although Caillois mentions

various male Greek gods active at this hour (Pluto, Pan), he

primarily points to sirens and nymphs. Succumbing to their

charm is termed "nympholepsie," a form of sacred delirium.

(Tiresias thus suffered from "nympholepsie chronique.Il97)

Besides the role of heat-stroke, Caillois also cites the

meteorological "aperception" or "image" of the noon-time

sun, which three mimetic principles render the hour of death

for the ancient Greeks: Midi marks an heure de passage, the

transition between the "divinites ouraniennes et

chthoniennes"98; then, the mimetic identification of soul

96Caillois, "Les spectres de midi," Revue des etudes

slaves 17 (1937): 91.

97Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de l'histoire
des religions 116 (July-Aug. 1937): 72.
98Roger Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de
l'histoire des religions 115 (Mar.-June 1937): 149; "Au
point de vue cosmographique, midi est une heure decisive,
marquant le point culminant de 1'ascension du soleil. Les
deux moities du jour revetent de ce fait une signification
religieuse differente, correspondant l'une a la montde,
1'autre a la descente du soleil sur 1*horizon, ce qui, en
 235

and shadow renders the instant of the latter's

disappearance highly dangerous; this implicates the return

of the 'dead1 who do not cast any shadow.

Christianity brought about the mythological demise of

midi. banishing the demons de midi. since light was invested

With the principle of good and darkness that of evil. Yet

Caillois notes the persistent role of the hour in the

medieval monk's malady of acedia, which his essay of

Minotaure defines as "•hypotention psychologique' manifeste,

avec des curiosites d^risoires jointes a la dispersion

intellectuelle sous toutes ses formes"99; Caillois here

cites an article titled, "De quelques documents medievaux

r61atifs a des etats psychastheniques."10° Such mythology

"en quelque sorte, a l'6tat naissant"101 confirms the

"necessity interne" of myth, which transcends historical

discontinuities to express a latent "foyer de

determinations": "Entre la voix des Sirenes et les

tentations de 1'acedia, il n'est de difference que dans

magie mimetique ou sympathique, prend immediatement une

importance primordiale"(149). Caillois also points to
similar phenomena in the Slavic and Aztec worlds, among
others.

"caillois, "Complexe" 10.

100Caillois
cites P. Alphand6ry, "De quelques documents
medievaux relatifs a des £tats psychastheniques," Journal de
psvcholoqie 1929: 768-787.
101Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de l'histoire

des religions 116 (Sept.-Dec. 1937): 171.

 236

1'affabulation, soutenue ici par l'animisme et la

representation de l'&me ail£e, 1& par le moralisme

chr6tien.1,102 Revealing once again the ideogrammatic nature

of the solar complex, Caillois explains that in the West,

the 6th verse of Psalm 91 — "Thou shalt not be afraid . . .

for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the

destruction that wasteth at noonday" — provided "une

expression enigmatique qu'il a fallu meubler et qu'il etait

loisible ci chacun de meubler comme il I'entendait."103

* * *

Caillois1 essays on the demons de midi may posit the

evanescence of noon; and yet, like the theme of the praying-

mantis, it was a highly topical theme which he avoided

engaging, as usual, in polemical fashion.104 Two primary

points of comparison I wish to discuss are the writings of

102Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de l'histoire

des religions 116 (Sept.- Dec.,1937): 172.

103Caillois, "Les demons de midi," Revue de l'histoire
des religions 116 (Sept.- Dec.,1937): 171.
104One of Caillois' articles lists recent works
inspired by the hour of noon but none are immediately
relevant; it includes such authors as Bourget, Schelling,
Leconte de Lisle, Nietzsche, Jensen (Gradiva), Venceslas
Berent (Les Pierres vivantes depicting "les ravages de
1'Acedia, la tristesse coupable des cenobites du desert"),
and the use of noon in detective novels ("Les demons de
midi," Revue de l'histoire des religions 115 [March-June
1937] passim!.
 237

Andr£ Chastel and Bataille.105 The first wrote in his

reminiscences:
Mythe pour mythe son travail [de Caillois] sur le
ddmon de midi et paniques du jour brillant
survenait au moment ou je tentais de cerner la
fable de la Reine du midi et ses enigmes.
L'acedia, le tourment du "spirituel", cheminait
dans les replis de "mim6tisme et psychast6nie
1Agendaire"; j'en faisais la clef psychologique
des "Tentations de saint Antoine". . . .106

Chastel's "Tentation de saint Antoine ou le songe du

m£lancolique" (for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts of 1936)

analyzed the iconographic evolution of St. Anthony in

medieval art, culminating with Jerome Bosch.107 His

argument differs somewhat from that of Caillois since the

appeal of the image of noon stems from a historically local,

rather than universal and 'necessary,' system of

correspondances: It is the coincidence of a binary religious

schema (life/death of the Devil) with the binary structure

of Anthony's Saturnine melancholy which engenders his

iconographic 'power.' Caillois' memoire seems extravagant

105The "Enquete" on irrational objects in SASDLR of

1933 already situated Caillois' midi in a Surrealist
context: "Sur les possibility irrationnelles de p6n6tration
et d'orientation dans un tableau de Giorgio de Chirico;
L'dniome d'une iournde" queried, among other things, "Quelle
heure est-il?" While Tzara answered "Soleil de minuit" and
Breton, "Onze heures du soir," Caillois, Eluard and Maurice
Henry answered "midi."
106Andre Chastel, "Loyautds de 1'intelligence," Roger
Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps (Paris: Centre Georges
Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 30.
107Andr6 Chastel, "Tentation de saint Antoine ou le
songe du melancolique," Fables. Formes. Figures (Paris:
Flammarion, 1965) 137-148.
 238

when compared with such erudite scholarship; however, it is

the soul of sobriety and theoretical rigor if we consider

Bataille's solar imagery throughout the 30s, which would

eventually find expression in the post-war Part maudite.

Described in this famous work as the basis of a cosmic

potlatch. the sun informs the process of "expenditure" that

conditions every aspect of life on earth. "La source et

1'essence de notre richesse," writes Bataille, "sont donnees

dans le rayonnement du soleil qui dispense l'6nergie — la

richesse — sans contrepartie. Le soleil donne sans jamais

recevoir. . . ."108

The historical tenor of Caillois' essays on comparative

mythology, and also "Le mythe et l'homme," might well be

read as an "indicative" response to Bataille's "imperative"

usage of myth in Contre-Attaoue. one which soon evolved into

the community of Acephale. In April 1936, even prior to the

demise of Contre-Attaoue. Bataille, along with Andre Masson

and Klossowski, began to establish the "conjuration sacree"

of Acephale. comprising both a journal and a secret

society. Here is Bataille's well-known autobiographical

sketch of this moment:

Contre-Attaaue dissous, Bataille se decida

immediatement a former avec ceux de ses amis qui y
avaient particip6, parmi lesquels Georges
Ambrosino, Pierre Klossowski, Patrick Waldberg,
une "societe secrete" qui tournerait le dos a la
politique et n'envisagerait plus qu'une fin

108George Bataille, La part maudite. intro. Jean Piel,

(Paris: Minuit, 1967) 66.
 239

reliaieuse (mais antichr^tienne, essentiellement

nietzsch£enne). Cette socidt6 se forma. Son
intention se traduisit en partie dans la revue
Ac6phale. qui eut quatre num§ros de 1936 k 1939.
Le College de Socioloqie. fond£ en mars 1936, fut
en quelque sorte 1•activity ext6rieure de cette
"soci6t6 secrete". . . .109

Adopting a more Nietzschean approach to the fight against

fascism, this "acephalic" (headless) Dionysian group was

bound by the communal "tragedy" of sacrifice, that is, the

death of God.110 Yet Bataille's solar mythology first

emerged in those early essays of Documents expressing his

revision of dialectical materialism, as in the crucial "Le

bas materialisme et la gnose"(1930).111

"L'anus solaire" describes the 'base materialism' of

noon, man's most elevated and ideal conception, by evoking

the sun's "violence lumineuse, verge ignoble."112 "Soleil

pourri" (1930) further articulates the sun's 'base' dualism.

Its idealized status is abstract, impossible to observe, yet

if one stares hard,

109Georges Bataille, Oeuvres completes 10 vols., ed.

Michel Foucault (Paris: Gallimard, 1970) 7: 461.
110Surya writes of Bataille: "[En] 1933-34, sa critique

du fascisme n'est que peu, sinon du tout, nietzscheenne. En

1937, e'est, paradoxalement au moyen de Nietzsche qu'il
continue cette critique. Certes il met en jeu, aprds
Nietzsche et a l'instar de Nietzsche, des forces et des
violences, mais en aucune maniere elles ne peuvent etre
celles qui 16gitiment la servitude" (Georges Bataille la
mort a 1'oeuvre [Paris: Seguier, 1987] 245).
111See Georges Bataille, "Le bas materialisme et la
gnose" in Oeuvres completes 1: 220-226.
112Georges Bataille, "L'anus solaire," Oeuvres
Completes 1: 86.
 240

cela suppose une certaine folie et la notion

change de sens parce que, dans la lumifere, ce
n'est plus la production qui apparait, mais le
d£chet, c'est-4-dire la combustion, assez bien
exprim£e, psychologiquement, par l'horreur qui se
d£gage d'une lampe & arc en incandescence.
Pratiquement le soleil fixe s'identifie &
1'Ejaculation mentale, h 1'6cume aux 16vres et h
la crise d'£pilepsie.113

Conflating elevation and fall, the myth of Icarus best

illustrates this solar duality, but Bataille mentions others

as well. His earlier "L'am6rique disparue" (1928) had

lovingly detailed the Aztec taste for death manifest in

solar sacrifice. "Soleil pourri" dwells on the sacrificial

myths of Mithra and Prometheus, which identify the sun with

the executioner — and the observer with the sacrificial

victim (Mithraic bull or Promethean liver). This is related

to self-sacrifice: "On peut ajouter que le soleil a encore

ete exprime mythologiquement par un homme s'egorgeant lui-

meme et enfin par un etre anthropomorphe depourvu de

tete."114 "La mutilation sacrificielle et 1'oreille coupee

de Van Gogh" (1930) commutes such solar mythology into

present-day terms since self-mutilation, as Bataille sees

it, constitutes the sole modern avatar of sacrifice.

In this essay which implies a broad correlation between

Icarus, Prometheus1 liver, and Van Gogh's ear, among others,

Bataille describes modern sacrifice as an individual

113Georges Bataille, "Soleil pourri," Oeuvres completes

1: 231.
114Bataille, "Soleil" 231.
 241

phenomenon: "la rupture de 1'homog£n£it£ personnelle, la

projection hors de soi d'une partie de soi-m£me. . . .1,115

Van Gogh's relation to the sun reflects the sacred

"heterogeneity" of expulsion:

Les rapports entre ce peintre (s'identifiant

successivement & de fragiles chandelles, k des
tournesols tantot frais et tantot fl^tris) et un
id6al dont le soleil est la forme la plus
fulgurante apparaitraient ainsi analogues & ceux
que les hommes entretenaient autrefois avec les
dieux, du moins tant que ceux-ci les frappaient
encore de stupeur; la mutilation interviendrait
normalement dans ces rapports ainsi qu'un
sacrifice: elle repr6senterait 1*intention de
ressembler parfaitement a un terme ideal
caracterise assez generalement, dans la
mythologie, comme dieu solaire, par le d6chirement
et 11arrachement de ses propres parties.116

Significantly, to correlate self-mutilation and

sacrifice in this fashion, Bataille must challenge Hubert

and Hauss who stressed the mediated nature of the

sacrificial event in "Essai sur le sacrifice," Annee

socioloaiaue (1897-8). As he presents their views,

sacrifice is a process of communication and exchange between

the sacred and the profane via the mediation of a victim

destroyed during the ceremony; this shields the participants

from true 'participation* in the sacred. Bataille resents

this protection or barrier with which only sacrificed gods

115Georges Bataille, "La Mutilation sacrificielle et

l'oreille coupee de Van Gogh," Oeuvres Completes 1: 266.
Bataille defines this as "cette partie d6mente du domaine
sacrificiel, la seule qui nous soit restee immediatement
accessible en tant qu'elle appartient a notre propre
psychologie pathologique. . ."(264).
116Bataille, "Mutilation" 262.
 242

may dispense, and he argues that self-mutilation corresponds

to such divine self-sacrifice.117 His later essay,

Sacrifices (December 1936), replaces mad self-mutilation

with death. In terms akin to Lacan's stade du miroir. he

asserts that the self suffers from an "improbability

constitutive" and is but a "projection convulsive" — "c'est

en tant qu1illusion qu'il rdpond h 1'exigence extreme de la

vie."118 If Lacan's "Le stade du miroir" encourages this

very strategy of imitatio. Bataille seeks revelation — but

not from Petitjean's vitalist Imagination. He finds it,

rather, in the moment of death which reveals the

transcendant negativity of the self, torn between

"1'exigence, en m§me temps la d6faillance sans bornes de la

vie imperative, consequence de la seduction pure et de la

forme heroique du moi. .. .1,119 At the moment of death,

man may achieve "la subversion dechirante du dieu qui

meurt."120 In Acephale. this unmediated self-sacrifice

117He writes: "'le dieu qui se sacrifie se donne sans

retour, 6crivent Hubert et Mauss. C'est que, cette fois,

tout interm6diaire a disparu. Le dieu qui est en meme temps
le sacrifiant ne fait qu'un avec la victime et parfois meme
avec le sacrificateur. Tous les Elements divers qui entrent
dans les sacrifices ordinaires rentrent ici les uns dans les
autres et se confondent. Seulement une telle confusion
n'est possible que pour les &tres mythiques, imaginaires,
ideaux'. Hubert et Mauss negligent ici les exemples de
•sacrifice du dieu' qu'ils auraient pu emprunter a
1'automutilation et par lesquels seuls le sacrifice perd son
caractere de simagrde" ("Mutilation" 268).
118Georges Bataille, "Sacrifices," Oeuvres Completes 1:
91.
119Bataille, "Sacrifices" 91.
120Bataille, "Sacrifices" 92.
 243

assumes a collective dimension: "A l'unit6 c6sarienne que

fonde un chef, s'oppose la communaut£ sans chef li6e par

1'image obsedante d'une tragedie."121 it is the tragedy of

death, sole "616ment emotionnel qui donne une valeur

obsedante & 1'existence commune. . . ."122

Caillois did not participate in Bataille's secret

society and would eventually reject, as we shall see, his

ambitions to stage a human sacrifice. Even prior to this

discord, though, the "mythical complex" opposed careful

correspondences to participatory effusion. Bataille's

Dionysian myth is Nietzschean tragedy; Caillois' more

historical approach defines it as festival which may not be

readily reenacted in the present. Then, the ritually

incarnate transgression of "Le mythe et l'homme" concerns

communal participation in "droit a la culpabilite" rather

than divine self-sacrifice. As for the "image juste" of

noon, this clearly challenges ecstatic solar experience; and

Caillois' sexual "plenitude qui suppose toutes les

demissions" involves no self-mutilation or identification

with sacrificed gods.

Several reviews Caillois published in the course of

1936 seem to criticize Bataille in this fashion. His

review of Maurice Davie's La guerre dans les soci6t6s

121Georges Bataille, "Chronique nietzsch6enne," Oeuvres

completes 1: 489.
122Bataille, "Chronique" 489.
 244

primitives (NRF Aug. 1936) appears to take issue with

Bataille's appropriation of potlatch in terms of "besoin de

perte d6mesur6e" or a "d6sir de d6truire." Caillois here

disputes with a certain Simson, who maintained that the

Zaparo indians reveal "'un gotlt voluptueux et prononce pour

la destruction de la vie'. 'Ces gens, dit-il, sont toujours

prets a tuer indifferemment les animaux et les etres humains

et trouvent du charme a une telle occupation.•"123 Highly

skeptical of this "instinct de f6rocit6, qui n'est pas

toujours si nettement attests,1,124 Caillois asserts that

sociology may not use it as the basis for a theory of war.

In line with Mauss's "Essai sur le don," he argues that

peaceful behavior such as arbitration often derives from

agonistic instincts, "semblables a ceux qui, dans le domaine

economique, se traduisent par les luttes de prestige du

potlatch."12S in other words, Caillois contests the

"heterogeneity" or "expenditure" informing Bataille's solar

mythology and the sacrificial tenets of Acephale.

Caillois' review of Krappe's Mvtholoaie universelle

may be read as a commentary upon Bataille's genealogy of

self-sacrifice from the Promethean myth. The essay on Van

123Roger Caillois, Rev. of La guerre dans les societ^s

primitives, by Maurice Davie, Nouvelle revue francaise Aug.

1936: 386.
124Caillois, Rev. of La guerre dans les soci6t6s
primitives 386.
125Caillois, Rev. of La guerre dans les societ6s
primitives 386.
 245

Gogh had claimed: "si l'on accepte 11 interpretation qui

identifie l'aigle pourvoyeur, 1'aetos Prometheus des Grecs,

au dieu qui a void le feu a la roue du soleil, le supplice

du foie presente un thfeme conforme aux diverses ldgendes de

'sacrifice du dieu.'"126 Caillois, on the other hand,

refuses to privilege the devouring vulture and its solar

connection to Prometheus:

. . . c'est une legdrete de considerer le mythe de

Promethee meme partiellement, comme le
developpement d'un motif iconologigue (d'ailleurs
hypothetique) de l'agonisant d6vore par des
oiseaux de proie. On ne sait pourquoi, dit M.
Krappe, l'aigle s1acharne sur le foie du
malheureux. Dans son interpretation, en effet, ce
detail parait inintelligible, mais on peut penser
a un rapprochement avec Tityos dont le foie devor6
par un vautour recroit avec la lune, selon Hygin
{Fab. 55) : on est alors en presence d'une
influence de svmpathie lunaire des plus
communes.

And then, Caillois' review of Frazer's Le bouc emissaire in

November 1936 seems to question Bataille's view of le dieu-

qui-meurt as the fundamental sacrificial act. The

discussion first applauds Frazer's work: "une fois prouv6

qu'il y a continuity entre le theme de la transmission des

maux et celui du rachat des p£ch£s par le Dieu sacrifie, il

126Bataille, "Mutilation" 268. Thus, Bataille evokes,

"L'aigle-dieu qui se confond dans 1'imagination antique avec
le soleil, l'aigle qui seul peut contempler en le fixant des
yeux le 'soleil dans toute sa gloire.'. . . Tout l'exces de
richesse qu'il emprunte au delire mythique se borne h
l'incroyable vomissement du foie, sans cesse devore et sans
cesse vomi par le ventre ouvert du dieu"(269).
127Roger
Caillois, Rev. of Mvtholoqie universelle 329
[emphasis added].
 246

faut admettre que le problfeme du Bouc £missaire est h la

base meme de la pens£e religieuse.Il128 Yet he questions

Frazer's collapse of the distinction between the sacrificed

god and the sacrificial victim both here, and implicitly, in

general:

On touche ici h une veritable th£orie du sacrifice

que l'auteur 61argit soudain a propos de la mise
a mort du Dieu au M6xique: meurtre ceremonial de
Quetzalcoatl en f6vrier, de la D£esse du Sel en
juin, de femmes £corch£es en l'honneur du Dieu du
feu et dont la peau est ensuite revetue par les
hommes qui personnifient le Dieu, etc. Le malheur
est que depuis, on a precisement invoqu6 contre la
th&se de Frazer ces memes rites m6xicains, ou l'on
"divinise" petit a petit la victime par des
operations de magie mimetique. On considere ainsi
que le sacrifice au Dieu a pr£c£d£ le sacrifice du
Dieu.129

* * *

Despite its seeming historical relation to primitive,

rather than modern, society and, hence, its "indicative"

tenor, Caillois' research did participate, one could

speculate, in the political concerns of 1936 specifically

those of the Front Populaire. Thus, for example, his work

seems to address Blum's 40 hour-week and two-week paid-

128Roger Caillois, Rev. of Le bouc emissaire by James

George Frazer, Cahiers du Sud Nov. 1936: 850. Yet he deeply
objects to Frazer's condemnation of the "tragic error" of
the scapegoat phenomenon: "Ce qui doit attirer l'6tude et
fixer la reflexion . . . c'est que, toute barbare qu'on la
juge, toute revoltante qu'elle paraisse a une intelligence
confiante en l'autonomie de la personne morale, elle puisse
encore constituer un ldvier d1action d'une efficacit6
assuree"(848).
129Caillois, Rev. of Le bouc emissaire 850.
 247

vacation (during the summer), bolstering such a policy with

instinctual rather than strictly economic incentives. Such

a motivation is all the more plausible when we consider the

version of his m6moire which Caillois published in

Minotaure. bringing the demons de midi up to the present-

day. This issue announced to its readers:

En presence d'une actuality de jour en jour plus

devorante et tout compte tenu des formes de notre
p6riodicite nous croyons pouvoir dire que, fiddle
a son titre meme, Minotaure s'est propose
d'absorber et de depasser en ce qu'elle a de
toujours dpisodique, cette actuality. Nous nous
reclamons de cette opinion qu'on ne peut faire
oeuvre d'art ni meme en derniere analyse, oeuvre
utile en s'attachant a n'exprimer que le contenu
manifeste d'une £poque et que ce qui importe par
dessus tout est 1'expression de son CONTENU
LATENT.130

Caillois' "Complexe de midi" complies with this injunction

since it unveils a permanent if latent factor of the time:

the forgotten hour of midi. If Christianity dispelled pagan

myths, the invention of clocks has rendered midnight the

prime temporal marker; indeed, its twelve strokes have

articifially replaced noon for the modern imagination:

Auparavant, minuit n'avait pas d'existence propre

dans le cour de la nuit comme midi en avait une
dans celui du jour. . . . Aussi n'y a-t-il jamais
eu de demons specifiques de minuit. . . . [M]inuit
n'a pas d'existence individualisee ni rien dans
son conditionnement physique qui en fasse un
instant objectivement dangereux ou meme
remarquable. II ne deviendra, quand les horloges
& sonnerie lui donneront quelque individuality,
qu'une heure d'apparition ou les spectres, sans
distinction de nature, se manifesteront comme en
vertu d'une convention pr£alable, mais qui n'en

130Anonymous, preface, Minotaure 9 (Oct. 15, 1936).

 248

possgdera pas d'attitr€s. Ainsi minuit recoit les

spectres, il ne les envoie pas.XJ1

Caillois' "formule de conclusion" recalls Mauss's "Morales

de conclusion" to "L'essai sur le don," almost suggesting

that "Le complexe de midi" be retitled "Essai sur la

paresse." His teacher's study of primitive (Neolithic)

gift-systems specifically addressed the decadence or

evanescence of such patterns in the Western historical

tradition, noting that perhaps, "en 6tudiant ces cot6s

obscurs de la vie sociale, arrivera-t-on k dclairer un peu

la route que doivent prendre nos nations, leur morale en

meme temps que leur economic."132 So too, Caillois closes

his essay with a morale — indeed, with a moraliste. La

Rochefoucauld — when he explains of midi: "ses prestiges

sont assures de la complicity fidele du coeur humain, car

•il faut dire que la paresse est comme une beatitude de

l'ame qui la console de toutes ses pertes et lui tient lieu

de tous ses biens. 11,133 Attending to the primordial if

latent status of midi. "Le complexe de midi" seems to imply,

should then allow the Front Populaire to harness important

131Caillois, "Complexe" 9.
132Mauss, "Essai sur le don," Socioloqie et
anthropologic (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1989) 273. In "Place de la sociologie appliqude ou
politique" (1927), the committed Socialist wrote: "Le
principal but sera atteint le jour ou, separee d'elle, mais
inspiree d'elle, une politique positive pourra venir en
application d'une sociologie complete et concrete. . ."
CEssais de socioloqie 79).
133Caillois, "Complexe"10.
 249

affective latent structures. However, Caillois developed

his real thoughts about the present in his "imperative"

essay for Inquisitions. "Pour une orthodoxie militante."

 250

Chapter 6

Orthodoxy

Inquisitions

Conceived more or less contemporaneously with "Le mythe

et 1'homme,""Pour une fonction unitaire de l1esprit" is the

closing essay of Le mvthe et 1'homme and, as such, according

to Caillois' prefatory scheme, it concerns the present

rather than the past; its "formule de conclusion,11 in other

words, is 'imperative.1 Positioned as a "formule de

conclusion" to the collection of essays, as a whole, this

was first titled "Pour une orthodoxie militante" and

appeared in the sole issue, June 1936, of the journal

Inquisitions. Very shortly after his secession from

Contre-Attaoue. in October 1935, Caillois — along with

Tzara, Monnerot, Aragon and others — founded this short­

lived but significant journal and research group. Here, he

assumed the prominent theoretical role he had denied Contre-

Attaoue. drafting the journal's "bulletin de souscription"

which described the project to consider only the most

actual events and to "syst§matiser en une doctrine unique et

coherente les audaces les mieux fondees de la superstructure

 251

intellectuelle de l'epoque."1 It was in this context that

Caillois developed the paradigm of "militant orthodoxy," an

'imperative' counterpart to the 'indicative' paradigm of the

'mythical complex.' "J'appelle Orthodoxie." he announced to

fellow-members:
une connaissance qui engage 1'affectivite en meme
temps que 1'intelligence, une connaissance
consciente du fait qu'elle constitue une doctrine
et peut determiner 1'action; assez sftre d'elle-
meme par surcroit, et de sa valeur sur tous les
plans, pour etre liee indissolublement au desir de
s'imposer. L'orthodoxie, c'est la connaissance
agressive, la connaissance qui se depense et qui
conquiert. II est Evident qu'& ce point de vue,
la liberty de pens£e et d'opinion n'est plus une
valeur.2

Militant orthodoxy is an absolute ideological

superstructure which absorbs the totality of social

existence and is, as such, totalitarian. What one must keep

in mind, however, is that this is a dynamic rather than a

static orthodoxy; Caillois conceives it as an ever-

expanding system which adapts and expands as it osmotically

absorbs its base in a social logic of participation.

Moreover, Caillois presents it as a project, rather than

doctrine: "Les taches imm^diates de la pensee moderne,"

declared the essay's subtitle.

Jean Wahl wrote in the NRF of August 1936 that

Inquisitions and Acephale had appeared at the same time,

1[Roger Caillois], "Bulletin," Inquisitions 1 (June

1936).
2Roger Caillois, "Pour une orthodoxie militante,"
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 66.
 252

with the following difference:.

Caillois cherche la rigueur, Bataille fait appel

au coeur, k 1'enthousiasme, a l'extase, a la
terre, au feu, aux entrailles. . . . Souhaitons de
voir se continuer ces deux revues, qui divergent &
partir d'un point commun (surrealisme, freudisme,
Rimbaud, Nietzsche) et qui livrent leurs combats,
chacune de son cot6, avec une louable ciprete.3

Rather than comparing Inquisitions to Acephale. however, I

will consider the journal's emergence in December 1935 when

Caillois and Tzara met in the latter's apartment, to

organize "une revue qui prendrait la succession du

Surrealisme, ou qui essaierait de faire concurrence au

Surr6alisme, qui 6tait en pleine d^bandade & ce moment-l&,

puisqu'il n'y avait ni Dali ni Eluard."4 On December 4,

Tzara wrote to his collaborator of successful discussions

with Aragon: "II est, en effet, de plus en plus question de

la creation d'une revue."5 Citing an imminent meeting with

Monnerot and Aragon, he insists: "Votre presence serait

indispensable, car ce projet qui est tres serieux demande

une mise en execution rapide."6 The next day, Caillois

3Jean Wahl, Rev. of Inquisitions and Acephale. Nouvelle

revue franqaise 275 (Aug.1936): 403.
4Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jos6 Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle. 7 reels (Paris: Societe Frangaise de Production,
1971): IV.
5Tristan Tzara, letter to Roger Caillois, Dec. 4 1935,
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 199.
6Tzara, letter to Roger Caillois, Dec. 4 1935, Roger
Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" 199.
 253

responds that he is trying to involve Pierre Robin,

Bachelard and Dum6zil. He makes the interesting remark that

Dumdzil refused to draft a manifesto "sur la mythologie,

mais pour 11dtude d'un probl&me particulier (pour une revue

par exemple), je pense gu'il ne demanderait pas mieux. Mais

son horreur des 'iddes g£n£rales' lui interdit le genre

manifeste."7 One may only speculate as to the manifesto on

mythology which Caillois requested of Dum6zil, especially

since the latter did not contribute to the ephemeral

journal; presumably, this text would have challenged the use

of myth by Contre-Attaaue and Aceohale. and perhaps, as

well, Surrealism's status as "mode de creation d'un mythe

collectif," announced in the preface to Breton's Position

politique du surrealisme (1935).

Dumezil may have refrained from a generalized defense

of the particular, but Inquisitions: oraane de recherche de

la Phenomenoloqie humaine did not follow suit. Wahl's

review applauds the journal's effort to profess orthodoxy in

a non-doctrinaire fashion: "Vaillante revue, ou malgre

l'orthodoxie marxiste d'un des directeurs, la volonte de

rigueur et d'orthodoxie des autres, et des collaborateurs,

ne se laisse subordonner a aucune doctrine."8 Inquisitions'

tenuous orientation, in this regard, mirrored that of the

7Tristan
Tzara, letter to Roger Caillois, Dec. 5 1935,
TZR.C. 660, Fonds Jacques Doucet, Paris.
8Wahl, Rev. of Inquisitions and Acdphale 402.
 254

nation as a whole since it sought to function as a

•theorist' for the Front Pouulaire. (In contrast, Contre-

Attaoue's founding manifesto had rejected Blum's agenda in

no uncertain terms.9) At Inquisitions' initial meeting on

January 8, 1936, Tzara insists: "II est urgent qu'un nouveau

courant d'id£es puisse s'6tablir, dont la force

entrainante, de nature affective, soit le caractere

essentiel.1,10 He proceeds to define the task of the

journal as that of developing a theoretical superstructure

predicated on the social sciences, a form of generalization,

which would function, in a way, as an intellectual branch of

the Front Populaire. a correlative to the latter's

generalization or transcendance of sectarian politics.

Since the 'exact' sciences far surpass the 'human'

sciences, he declares, Inquisitions must apply that

•cohesion* and 'universalization' wrought by mathematical

sciences to its study of human phenomenology. It will thus

properly position man in the scheme of things and embrace

the 'totality* of interdisciplinary intellectual life "qui

9This text was reproduced in Breton's Position

politique du surrealisme: "Nous disons actuellement que le
programme du Front populaire, dont les dirigeants, dans le
cadre des institutions bourgeoises, accederont
vraisemblablement au pouvoir, est voue a la faillite. La
constitution d'un gouvernement du peuple, d'une direction de
salut public, exige une intraitable dictature du peuple
arme" (Andr6 Breton, Position politique du surrealisme.
[Paris: Pauvert, 1971] 171).
10Tristan Tzara, "Compte-rendu," Inquisitions 1 (June

1936): 65.
 255

exprime l'gpoque r6volutionnaire actuelle.1,11 Yet, Tzara

restricts this horizon of intellectual speculation to the

political concerns of the day: "le plan que veut et doit

cr6er le Front Populaire tel qu'il l'a d£j& cree sur le

terrain de la pratique politique."12 Aligning Inquisitions

with this political project, he restricts it to that world

"qui nous d6finit socialement" (thus curtailing

ethnographic forays). Moreover, the members must abstain

from political strategy.

En donnant une adhesion de principe a la seule

politique qui nous parait juste et viable sous
1'aspect historique des n6cessit6s presentes, nous
nous abstiendrons de nous occuper des questions de
tactique, les intellectuels que nous sonmtes ne
pouvant se mouvoir librement que dans la sphere
specifique de la superstructure ou ils sont
situes.13
Surveying journals supportive of the Front Populaire.

Pascal Ory and Sirinelli mention Vendredi. whose importance

in political history, "ne tint pas a ce qu'il associa son

combat a celui du Front populaire, mais a ce que son destin

editorial fut exactement parallele a I'histoire du Front."14

1:LTristan, "Compte-rendu" 65. He aims thus to position

"l'homme a sa place naturelle, ou de l'y remettre pour que

ces activites le servent et ne le rejettent plus dans sa
solitude tragique, meme par ce qui, moment anement,
echapperait encore a sa comprehension"(65).
12Tzara, "Compte-rendu" 65.
13Tzara, "Compte-rendu" 65.
1 4 Pascal Ory and Jean-Francois Sirinelli, Les
intellectuels en France, de 1'Affaire Drevfus a nos jours
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1986) 103.
 256

They make but a brief mention of Inquisitions, cited along

with Acephale and the College de sociologie as bastions for

those "esprits inclassables, quoique tous frott£s de

surrealisme qui . . . prennent une critique de longue

haleine des valeurs commun6ment admises par la soci£t£

'moderne'.1,15 Yet, Henri B£har has confirmed the specific

importance of Incmisitions as one of the few attempts by the

Front populaire theoretically to delineate its cultural

politics: "[I]l offrait un lieu commun de reflexion a ceux

qui ne se satisfaisaient pas de la disparition du

Surrdalisme au service de la revolution, de l'6chec de

Contre-Attacnie et voulaient 61argir le debat ouvert par

Commune. la revue de 1'A.E.A.R."16 Incmisitions was

sponsored by the communist Editions Sociales

Internationales, which also published Commune and now

Europe. as well? at least half its contributors, though,

were linked, or had been linked, in some way with

Surrealism. "Si Caillois et Tzara ont quitte le groupe

[surrealiste], respectivement en decembre 1934 et mars

1935," writes Behar, "si Georges Sadoul et Pierre Unik sont

definitivement du cote d'Aragon, il est clair que les autres

150ry and Sirinelli 107.

16HenriBehar, "Inquisitions: le surrationalisme, la
po£sie et 1'actuality," Des anndes trente: aroupes et
ruptures. ed. Anne Roche and Christian Tarting (Paris:
CNRS, 1985) 225.
 257

. sont des amis d1Andr6 Breton."17 This slightly

overstates the Surrealist connection, in my opinion, since

several among those he lists as Breton's friends, for

example Monnerot, had broken with the group. In any event,

Sadoul's "Revue des revues" for Commune of June 1936

celebrated this recent co-optation of Surrealist energy (a

movement which had reached a dead-end, its concerns mired in

evasive aesthetic preciosity) with Communism, such that its

efforts "lient tout naturellement le po^tique et le

social."18 Sadoul's subsequent review of the journal's

first issue further lauds the variety and scope of the

contributors, bound by their research rather than by any

single doctrine: "tout en 6tant bien entendu que cette

recherche commune s'exerce dans les cadres du Front

Populaire. . . ."!9

17Behar, "Inquisitions" 225. Behar lists "Claude Cahen

[sic], Nico Calamaris, qui prendra le pseudonyme de Nicolas
Calas, Zdenko Reich, Jules Monnerot, Etienne Lero. . . .
Quant aux autres qui gravitent autour de la NRF ou des
Cahiers du Sud (Jean Audard, Rene Bertele, Raymond Charmet,
Andre Chastel, Etiemble...) tout indique qu'ils sont deja
avertis du debat d'id6es suscit6 par le surrealisme"(225).
18Georges Sadoul, "Revue des Revues," Commune June
1936: 1274. Sadoul's enthusiasm may be partly explained by
his own participation in the discussion-groups of Incniisitions.
19Georges Sadoul, "Revue des revues," Commune July
1936: 1391. In June 1936, Maurice Saillet, a former
affiliate of the Cahiers du Sud. approvingly wrote to
Caillois of Inquisitions' plans, as he undersood them, to
'reinforce' Europe with a course parallel to Hermes and
Minotaure: "the "quasi-orthodoxes" will thus have a new
alternative to "la deception surrealiste." Saillet likes
this "terrain neuf qui n'est pas Hermes (ou Roland de
Reneville) qui n'est pas le Minotaure (ou le roi Breton) qui
 258

Inquisitions was first and foremost a study group that

met every two weeks from January 8 until March 3, 1936 for

formal discussions. Its first issue included a lively

mixture of essays by Bachelard, Caillois, Monnerot, Spitz

and Tzara, together with Crevel's fragmentary Le roroan

cassg; the notes, reviews, and discussions indicated the

participation of Aragon, Chastel, Etiemble and others. Its

table of contents featured four sections: first, theoretical

articles or lectures presented to the group; secondly,

"Documents phenomenologiques sur la vie imaginative

contemporaine" (solely comprising Crevel's piece); a vast

review-section; and finally, transcripts of the

discussions.20 Despite such energetic efforts, Inquisitions

was nonetheless doomed from the start.

There were three major points of conflict. Caillois

sought to call the journal Inquisition, while the rest

objected to this singular parti oris. Etiemble recalls that

Caillois had adopted Savonarola's mask, "celui du procureur

qui avait instruit, qui continuerait a instruire le Procfes

est proprement votre et oil le Paysan de Paris reveillera le

tumulte de ses vingt ans avec des armes muries, assurees par
1'abnegation militante..." (Maurice Saillet, letter to Roger
Caillois, June 21 1936, C.S.l, Fonds Sp^ciaux, Bibliotheque
Municipale, Vichy).
20The only talks published were those of Caillois,
Tzara ("Le po&te dans la soci£t€"), and Jacques Spitz ("La
theorie de la connaissance et la physique quantique"); in
addition, Etiemble addressed "Le mouvement de la 'Nouvelle
Vie1 en Chine and Jean Audard sought to reconcile
"Psychanalyse et materialisme dialectique."
 259

intellectuel de l'art; aigu, asc£tique, intense."21

Etiemble had to save the day as follows: "Si fanatique alors

que je fusse moi aussi de la Justice, de la Revolution, je

bataillai pour que l's du pluriel transformed en savant

investigateur le bourreau Torquemada.1,22 A rather more

sober perspective on these deliberations may be gleaned from

Bachelard's letter to Caillois on January 26, 1936: ". . .

'Bulletin bimensuel d'etudes philosophiques1 est decidement

mauvais. 11 y a deja tant de bulletins! Vous n'avez pas

trop d'interet non plus h l'6pithfete philosophique. Je

donnerais sans hesiter un titre plus vif."23 If Caillois,

poised between Inquisition and Bulletin bimensuel d'etudes

philosophiques. eventually subscribed to the majority

opinion of Inquisitions. Aragon made a public show of

dissent in the journal's first issue. His brief piece

"Entre nous" explains that the journal's instigators support

its unprogrammed, "polymorphous" nature, and conceive of an

intellectual unity which might be forged in the heat of

action, conflict and history. Still, he concludes:

Le prospectus qui annongait le premier num£ro

exprimait la volonte d'aboutir a une orthodoxie

21Rene
Etiemble, "Les deux masques de Roger Caillois"
Nouvelle revue francaise 320 (1979): 137.
22Etiemble, "Deux" 137.
23Gaston
Bachelard, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 27
1936, C.B.4, Fonds Speciaux, Biblioth^que Municipale,
Vichy; remarking that "Inquisitions" is not a bad choice,
Bachelard also suggests "Action philosophique," "Examen
permanent," "Doute."
 260

dans la conception de tous les ph6nom6nes humains

: il va sans dire que, pour mon compte, mon si6ge
est fait, et que de cette experience ne peut etre
valable, k mes yeux, que ce qui peut s'inscrire
dans le cadre du marxisme.24

Bdhar thus attributes the journal's premature demise to

its eclecticism and detachment from the Party.25 He cites,

in this respect, Caillois' recollections in Approches de

11imaainaire;

La scission 6tait inevitable, et elle ne tarda

pas, entre les deux dirigeants membres du Parti
communiste (Aragon et Tzara) et les deux autres
qui, inddpendamment de toute attitude politique,
ne souhaitaient pas introduire les questions
relevant de ce domaine dans un organe consacrd,
comme le soulignait son sous-titre, a 11etude de
la "ph6nomenologie humaine.26

Etiemble ironically notes: "Aragon sacqua Inquisitions. a

cause pr6cis6ment de cet s du pluriel."27 Caillois has

specifically mentioned the Spanish Civil War as the pivotal

issue:

Nous etions tous d'accord, bien entendu, sur la

cause republicaine mais nous ne pensions pas que
dans une revue qui s'occupait de questions de
recherches de sciences humaines (on ne les
appelait pas encore comme ga mais c'est bien cela
que nous avions dans la tete) il fallait faire une
part a l'actualite, et surtout a une actuality

24Louis Aragon, "Entre nous," Inquisitions 1 (June

1936): 42.
25Behar, "Inquisitions" 231.
26Roger Caillois, Approches de 11imaqinaire (Paris:
Gallimard, 1974) 58.
27Etiemble, "Deux" 137.
 261

pol6mique.28

* * *

In order to situate "Pour une orthodoxie militante,"

let us consider, then, the fragile 'orthodoxy' of

Inquisitions, a movement that sought to "prolonger, gauchir

le surrealisme.1,29 Behar describes Inquisitions' common

effort to found "une nouvelle apprehension de l'univers

englobant tous les phenomfenes, rationnels ou non, k partir

d'une morale exigeante et joyeuse."30 He is primarily

thinking of Bachelard's piece, "Le surrationalisme,"

commissioned by Caillois as the journal's preface and

manifesto, presumably after Dumdzil turned down this very

honor. "Surrationalisme. vous voyez, un mot qui etait

directement caique sur surrealisme. mais qui s'opposait a

lui," Caillois has later remarked, "dans la mesure qu'il

mettait 1'accent sur un systeme logique. Un systeme

logique, bien entendu, trds fluide et tr6s ouvert."31

28Caillois,Archives IV. Caillois wrote to Paulhan on

August 10, 1937, recalling that he had preferred to end
Inquisitions rather than allow for this intrusion of
politics: "J'ai . . . pref6re, comme vous savez, faire
cesser Inquisitions a l'y laisser entrer" (#26,
"Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers Jean
Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez [Paris:
Gallimard, 1991] 52).
29Caillois, Archives IV.
30B6har, "Inquisitions" 228.
31Caillois, Archives IV.
 262

Pursuing Le nouvel esprit scientifiaue. Bachelard

attacks rationalism entrenched in axioms, memory and

tradition. His essay outlines a rather more spiritual than

rational endeavor, condemning any "systfeme m£taphysique clos

sur lui-meme.1132 He declares:

Une revolution psychique vient sflrement de se

produire en ce si&cle; la raison humaine vient
d'etre desancr£e, le voyage spirituel est commence
et la connaissance a quitte les rives du reel
imm6diat. N'y a-t-il pas alors anachronisme &
cultiver le gotlt du port, de la certitude, du
syst6me?33

As mentioned in the introduction, "surrationalisme" was a

dialectical process grounded in the logical

"assouplissements" wrought by the 19th century

mathematician, Lobatchewsky rather than in the agonistic

model of Hegelian dialectics. This new 'spiritual' conquest

has been pre-empted by the "sous-realisme acharne" of

formalists and logicians; Bachelard seeks to restore

psychological content to these new forms, "les remplir

psychologiquement . . . les remettre en mouvement et en

vie."34 It would seem that "surrationalisme" hence

presents greater risks for the subject than did Le nouvel

esprit scientifiaue; "Si dans une experience. on ne ioue pas

sa raison. cette experience ne vaut pas la peine d'etre

32Gaston Bachelard, "Le surrationalisme," Inquisitions

1 (June 1936): 6.
33Bachelard, "Surrationalisme" 6.
34Bachelard, "Surrationalisme" 3.
 263

v6cue."35 Bachelard specifically locates this project in

relation to Surrealism:

il faut rendre £ la raison humaine sa fonction de

turbulence et d'aaressivit^. On contribuera ainsi
& fonder un surrationalisme qui multipliera les
occasions de penser. Quand ce surrationalisme
aura trouvd sa doctrine, il pourra etre mis en
rapport avec le surrealisme, car la sensibility et
la raison seront rendues, l'une et 1'autre,
ensemble, k leur fluidity.3®

Bachelard also defines this duality in terms of the real

versus the aesthetic, seeking an open rationalism

"susceptible d'organiser surrationnellement le r6el comme le

reve experimental de Tristan Tzara organise

surrealistiquement la liberty po6tique.,l37

While Bachelard transposes Surrealism into

Surrationalism, Tzara transmutes his "reve experimental"

into idiosyncratic anthropological terms; his essay for

Inquisitions still concerns "pens6e non-dirig6e" but is now

titled "Le poete dans la soci6t6." The ex-Surrealist

presents "lycanthropie" as that 'turbulent state,* a mode of

affective and non-directed thought which, in his opinion,

"originally characterized the status of the poet.38 Positing

a more subtle relation between socio-economic base and

literary superstructure than that of 'hurried Marxists,1 as

35Bachelard, "Surrationalisme" 5.
36Bachelard, "Surrationalisme" 1.
37Bachelard, "Surrationalisme" 2.
3 8 Tristan Tzara, "Le poete dans la soci6te,"
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 74.
 264

he claims, Tzara's luuercalia involves "*un mouvement

affectif violent qui tend & prendre la forme sociale de clan

ou de culte; il est lie & la representation d'un monde

different du monde ambiant ou h une realisation des ddsirs

projet6s sur un avenir hypothetique.•1,39 In the group-

discussion, he sketches a brief historical argument to

explain the political nature of the modern poet: "La

revolte du po&te se produit toujours contre le milieu

ambiant, [mais] 1'assimilation de ce milieu avec la societe

est en effet un ph6nom6ne moderne."40

Tzara thus suggests that the poet is now the vehicle

for some form of social revolution, although he carefully

distinguishes this from the ideas of both Stephen Spender

and the Surrealists (as he presents them):

La revolution n'est pas pour moi une eruption

brusque, comparable aux forces dechainees de la
nature, mais un travail lent et minutieux, base
sur la lutte des classes et les rapports sociaux.
Son caractere politique l'emporte sur celui de la
revolte individuelle.1,41

He thus implies that the research-group of Inquisitions,

collectively exploring precisely such turbulent poetic

states, might constitute this revolutionary lupercalia. I

would note that Jules Monnerot echoes Tzara's general

approach, as he already has in the past, viewing poetry as a

39Tzara qtd. in Behar, "Inquisitions" 228.

40Tzara, "Compte-rendu" Inquisitions 74.
41Tzara, "Compte-rendu" Inquisitions 73.
 265

requisite mode of affective social expression; again, he

inverts L4vy-Bruhl1s evaluation of the category of primitive

•participation' to stress t£e social importance of

unmediated, participatory affect. However, his essay here,

"La poesie comme genre et comme fonction," entirely rejects

Tzara's faith in the revolutionary poet:

Sans doute, le pofete devrait-etre celui qui

objective avec science et fren£sie la grande
famine affective, populaire et moderne. Peut-il
le faire, comme autrefois, en tant qu'auteur de
pofemes, en tant qu'auteur? J'incline a en
douter.42

Monnerot would now privilege his training as a sociologist

and would briefly become one of the co-founders of the

Collfeae de socioloaie the following. So too, in his lecture

to Inquisitions, and in the group discussions, Caillois will

contest Tzara's political view of the poet, assailing his

anthropological categories, and privileging the role to the

phenomenological social scientist. Unlike Monnerot,

however, Caillois' ideas do not merely admonish

sociological 'participation.' As we have seen in our

discussion of myth, such a view induced in Monnerot the

distinct propensity for a Sorelian and fascist appropriation

of the affective imagination. Albeit totalitarian in its

extreme implications, Caillois' militant orthodoxy, on the

other hand, was above all a dynamic quest for coherence, a

logic of participation, a middle ground Letween affect and reason.

42Jules Monnerot, "La poesie comme genre et comme

fonction," Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 20.
PLEASE NOTE:

Page(s) not included with original material

and unavailable from author or university.
Filmed as received. 1

UMI
 267

"Les tSches immediates..."

B6har ascribes to Inquisitions three guiding concepts

overall:
. . . le surrationalisme comme doctrine unique de
"la superstructure intellectuelle de 1'epoque"; la
po£sie comme fonction de d£passement des
contradictions; 1'actuality comme moyen de poser,
agressivement au besoin, les veritables problemes
et les hypotheses les plus neuves.43

Yet "Pour une orthodoxie militante," I would suggest,

relies neither on Surrationalism nor poetry to transcend

contradictions but seeks, rather, to 'systematize' them both

in this modern or actual counterpart to the participatory

logic of myth. Caillois discusses 'systematization' in his

opening paragraphs, which seek to translate what he calls

the bewildering diversity and metamorphosis of modern

thought into a source of strength: "II faut vaincre

l'adversaire avec ses propres armes, par une coherence plus

rigoureuse et une syst^matisation plus serr6e, par une

construction qui l'implique et l'explique au lieu qu'elle

soit reduite et decomposee par lui."44

"Pour une orthodoxie militante" scans the nocturnal

43Behar, "Inquisitions" 226.

44Roger Caillois, "Pour une orthodoxie militante,"
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 10.
 268

side of nature and the human imagination, "ces myst&res si

dtrangement limitrophes ei sa conscience claire."45 And

again, like Proces intellectuel de l'art. scientific

relativism best perpetuates, in Caillois' opinion, Rimbaud's

d6realement de tous les sens. His "bulletin de

souscription" claims that through science and 'para-

science,' Inquisitions will contend with the current

intellectual crisis which parallels the current social and

economic one. He cites, in this respect, Bachelard's theory

of 'generalization' crucial to the NES and to

Surrationalism: "Ce proced6 de la generalisation par lequel

la geometrie de Riemann a resorbd celle d'Euclide et la

physique relativiste celle de Newton en les admettant comme

cas particuliers d'une synthese plus comprehensive, indique

la voie veritable."46 It is a process whereby knowledge

appropriates mystery, and 'system' the rational; indeed,

• systematization' always prevails, its prestigious

supremacy described as follows: "cru'elle rende compte de

tout sans que rien n'en rende compte.

As mentioned at the outset, Caillois has mentioned,

some thirty-five years later, that "surrationalisme" seemed

a superstructure which corresponded to his own pursuit of

45Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 8.
46Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 10.
47Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 11.
 269

"coherence."48 Thus, he admired Bachelard's 'open

rationalism' for its sacrifice of "la logique pour une

syst6matique."49 Unlike Bachelard, however, Caillois was

not a 'rationalist.• (Bachelard wrote to Caillois in March

1936, complaining that "surrationalisme" had been misspelled

in the galleys, with two n's instead of one: "On pourrait

vous plaisanter et vous dire que le surrationalisme n'est

pas un rationalisme comme les autres!"50) Furthermore,

unlike both "surrationalisme" and Breton's unorthodox

'system' in Position politique du surrealisme. Caillois'

'systematization' was neither Marxist nor even

dialectical.51 In one of the group-discussions, he

complained that the thesis/antithesis/synthesis schema was

usually used "comme de mots magiques qu'il suffit

48Caillois, Archives IV; he adds that all of his

subsequent work: "c'etait toujours dans cette perspective-l&
d'obtenir une coherence plus grande, qui se sert et qui met
en rapport beaucoup plus d* Elements et des elements
justement ceux qui a l'origine semblaient aberrants et
impossibles & assimiler."
49Caillois, Archives IV.
50Gaston Bachelard, letter to Roger Caillois, March 19

1936, C.B.6, Fonds Sp6ciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale,

Vichy.
51Breton's Position politique du surr^alisme had
distinguished Surrealism from Stalinist orthodoxy: "Un
systeme n'est vivant que tant qu'il ne se donne pas pour
infaillible, pour d^finitif, mais qu'il fait au contraire
grand cas de ce que les £v£nements successifs paraissent lui
opposer de plus contradictoire, soit pour surmonter cette
contradiction, soit pour se refondre et tenter de se
reconstruire moins precaire a partir d'elle si elle est
insurmontable" ("Preface," Position [1935; Paris: J.-J.
Pauvert, 1971] 7).
 270

d'appliguer h un probl&me pour que celui-ci se trouve

imm6diatement resolu."52

"Pour une orthodoxie militante" was more hostile to

Surrealism than was Caillois' "Lettre a Andr6 Breton," now

attacking the movement as a static system — rather than a

"syst6matisation" — which does not 'liberate the spirit'

but rather reduces it through "des activit6s h demi-

esthetiques qui, & la longue, prennent un caract6re maniaque

et purement rituel."53 Caillois illuminates both the

continuity and evolution of his ideas in this regard by

evoking his break with Breton and citing a new point of

reference as well:
. . . les necessity modernes exigent qu'on ne se
contente plus de ces illuminations. que,
rench6rissant ci peine sur Fichte, je d6crivais
comme dispersees, instables, mal garanties, de
nulle valeur sans un acte de foi prealable et
plaisantes seulement par le credit qu'on veut bien
y ajouter.54

Here, a footnote mentions his forthcoming article on Fichte:

"L'alternative (Naturphilosophie ou Wissenschaftlehre)"

which would eventually appear in the Cahiers du Sud of May-

June 1937. (While Ac6phale was celebrating Nietzsche, the

Cahiers du Sud were commemorating German Romanticism, also

partly as a gesture against French nationalist

52Caillois, "Compte-rendu," Inquisitions 1 (June 1936):

68.
53Breton, Position 7.
54Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 10.
 271

Germanophobia.)

"L'alternative" seems a revision of "Decision

pr£liminaire sur la m6taphysique" — and might preface in an

anologous fashion "Pour une orthodoxie militante."

Caillois' "Decision" renounced metaphysics to focus instead

on scientific, or phenomenological, studies of 1'imagination

empiriaue: his later essay renounces "les formes

d1intuition sensibles et intelligibles" in the interest of a

more scientific (and osmotic) "syst6matisation.1,55 Truth is

meaningless unless it is integrated, as truth, into a prior

•system' "crui la reclamait.1,56 Caillois' intent is to

discuss modern science in light of the 19th century debate

between Naturphilosophie (Schlegel, Schelling, Novalis) and

Fichte's theory of science or Wissenschaftlehre — "une

situation analogue paraissant se dessiner aujourd'hui, il

serait fScheux qu'on renouvelSt une erreur, ftit-elle

honorable.1,57 Proces intellectuel de l'art. as we might

recall, had situated the New Science as a mode of impure

art, pursuing the German Romantic inclinations of Mme. de

Stael; "L•alternative," on the other hand, has nothing but

55Roger Caillois, "L'alternative (Naturphilosophie ou

Wissenschaftlehre)," Cahiers du Sud May-June 1937: 14. He
is more rigidly anti-intuitive than in Proces intellectuel
de 1'art. dismissing the "rational" as "l'6tat des formes de
1'intuition intellectuelle vis-i-vis du contenu de
1•experience. . ."(10).
56Caillois, "L1alternative" 30.
57Caillois, "L'alternative" 25.
 272

harsh words for Naturphilosophie. In effect, those

"renoncexnents ndcessaires.1,58 the renunciation of intuition,

sought by wissenschaftlehre seem to involve the very

amalgam of science and aesthetics that had captivated

Caillois' imagination the previous year and inspired

"Mim§tisme et psychasthenic 16gendaire." Some thirty-five

years later, he would evoke 11L'alternative" and the

virulence of his attack on the German Romantics, to confess

that he had always been torn between naturphilosophie and

wissenschaftlehre. "et sans m'en rendre compte, j'ai essays

de les conjuguer."59

In 1936, though, "L'alternative" establishes a

1correspondance' with Fichte and it voices certain tenets of

his Grundzuae des qeaenwartiaen Zeitalters a work whereby

Fichte rejected prior attitudes in much the same way, it

would seem, as Caillois here disclaims his own. Attacking

the early Romantic usage of natural sciences to establish

aesthetic relations and expressions, Fichte most criticizes,

in the words of Caillois, their effort to transmute "le

plomb vil des connaissances scientifiques au moyen de

1'intuition poetique.1,60 "L'alternative" thus distinguishes

science from mysticism:

La science postule une parfaite et continue

58Caiilois, "L'alternative" 33.

59Roger Caillois, Interview, Matulu April 1971: 6.
60Caillois, "L'alternative" 26.
 273

"p6n6trabi1ite11 et pr6tend a 11 intelligibility

jusqu'aux limites extremes de 1'intelligible,
limites que son effort tend pr6cis6ment a touj.ours
reculer. La mysticitd au contraire veut atteindre
par intuition 11inintelligible en soi . . . et ne
tente jamais de le r^duire h 11 intelligible (de
nene que 11 attitude propre du poete est
1'adoration extdrieure du merveilleux, en tant que
merveilleux, avec tendance a le maintenir tel
envers et contre tout).61

What I would like to emphasize is the attack on

intuition which has become Caillois' new mode of

epistemological "complaisance"; and this principle will

inform his writing throughout the next few years.

Intelligibility is available only to the scientist, armed

with self-consciousness, or theoretical 'lucidity1; the

visionary merely enjoys the rewards of his individual

•sensibility,' determined by factors of which he is unaware

such as health, temperament, education, and status.62 "Le

resultat immediat de la nature retourne a la nature sans

qu'il ait ete gagne grand chose au circuit," complains

Caillois. 6 3 Self-consciously detached from the

"complaisances" of his sensibility, on the other hand, the

thoughts of the scientist obey 'impersonal'

determinations.64

For Proces intellectuel de l'art. "complaisance"

61Caillois, "L'alternative" 29.

62Caillois, "L*alternative" 30.
63Caillois, "L'alternative" 30.
64Caillois, "L'alternative" 30.
 274

involved that process of repetition or 'flattery' allowing

the subject, whether artistic or scientific, to evade

'vital' (phenomenological) knowledge. For "L'alternative,"

however, the crime of "complaisance" means adopting this

'vital' perspective without proper methodological self-

consciousness. Caillois notes the requisite influence of

modern science upon philosophy while fearing that

"po6ticisation des concepts" which beclouds epistemology.65

A passage which might well be applied to "Mimdtisme et

psychasthenic legendaire" worries about philosophy's

•contamination' by the picturesque aspect of alpha particles

and the seduction of spinn;

On exploite par des expressions imbeciles telles

que liberty de 1'Electron la situation 6tonnante
mise en lumifere par la relation d'incertitude
d'Heisenberg. II n'est pas jusqu'a 1'extension de
l'espace d'Hilbert jusqu'aux yeux de 11observateur
inclus qui ne puisse faire les frais de
desagreables tours de passe-passe, car des qu'il
est un terrain ou 1 1 on perd pied, les
professionnels du vertige s'y donnent aussitot
rendez-vous comme moustiques sur marais.66

An interesting complement to this protective view of

65Caillois,"L'alternative" 33; he specifically cites

Bohr, Reichenbach, Ph.Frank and remarks, in an interesting
aside, that Reichenbach's defense of true "connaissance
theorique" is thus directed not only against "le litteraire"
but against Heideggerians as well (33).
66Caillois, "L1alternative" 32. Caillois challenged in
related terms Jacques Spitz' talk for Inquisitions ("Sur la
th6orie quantique et le problfeme de la connaissance"); in
the discussions, he denied that Heisenberg's indeterminacy
principle eliminated the existence of determinism in nature
on an infra-atomic scale: "on peut fournir en faveur de
cette existence des arguments directs de grand poids"(71).
 275

modern science is a very brief piece Caillois wrote for

Inquisitions. "Note sur 1'activity scientifique d'Auguste

Strindberg aux environs de 1895." Either excised from the

first issue or awaiting the second one, this piece urged

the transformation of science:

Une des raisons d'etre de l'activit6
d1 Inquisitions est que la science emporte
1'adhesion de 1'esprit par sa methode, mais non
par son point de vue trop restrictif. Le debat
sur les limites de la science est enti^rement a
reprendre. La methode scientifique doit pouvoir
servir des preoccupations singuli&rement plus
vivantes que celles qu'elle satisfait
ordinairement.67

Caillois here encourages the most 'adventurous,' albeit

rigorous, scientific spirit, citing at length from

Strindberg's "Essai de mysticisme rationnel" in that chapter

of the Inferno devoted to the famous Acherontia Atropos

butterfly. In contrast to La necessite d'esprit, though,

Caillois loudly decries Strindberg's delirious paranoia and

lack of experimental controls; but he lauds the attempt to

systematize what is usually excluded from rational schemes.

Strindberg is thus an 'example' rather than a 'model,' that

is to say, his 'inspiration' is an urgent and requisite

•suggestion* for science. In particular, Caillois praises

Strindberg's prefatory statement: "Ce livre est celui du

67Roger Caillois, "Note sur 1'activity scientifique

d'Auguste Strindberg aux environs de 1895," TZR. 756, Fond
Jacques Doucet, Paris.
 276

grand d£sordre et de la coherence infinie."68

* * *

In sharp contrast to Caillois' paradigm of mimicry, the

self-conscious scientist of "L'alternative" no longer

reflects his milieu in a psychasthenic or disoriented

fashion; this mimetic strategy now befalls the system or

•theory' itself which 'expends itself' and thus 'conquers.'

"Pour une orthodoxie militante" describes a systematic

superstructure now socialized through a form of

participatory logic with its social base, which it both

masters and constrains in the very process of reflection:

Pour qu'une connaissance vaille d'etre promue

orthodoxie. il ne lui suffit pas d'etre a l'abri
de toute critique de m6thode; il faut encore que,
loin d'etre indifferante a la sensibility humaine,
elle lui apparaisse directement revetue d'une
attraction imperative et s'avere immediatement
capable de la mobiliser.

Caillois thus opposes militant orthodoxy to ordinary

scientific knowledge, "en ce que, par definition, tout

resultat de [1'orthodoxie militante] se situant egalement

sur le plan de la valeur, exerce du fait meme une emprise

sur 1'affectivit6. D'ou le c6t6 aaressif de toute

orthodoxie.1,70 The rhetoric of "Pour une orthodoxie

68Caillois, "Note sur 1'activity scientifique d'Auguste

Strindberg" 757.
69Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 13.
70Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 13.
 277

militante" bears the clear narks of an attraction to

totalitarian political control. Caillois declares war on

"la complaisance gen£rale": Militant orthodoxy should ensure

to each "la certitude de son destin" while providing "un

imperatif moral pour tous les conflits et la solution

technique de toutes les difficult£s.1,71 The system's

•total* dimension may be 'generalized' to all human

activity: "une orthodoxie n'est pas autre chose que la

presomption de l'entreprise unitaire ideale. celle qui se

propose pour tciche de mettre en oeuvre la total ite de

1'etre. . . ."72 yet his recklessness in this regard is

somewhat attenuated by the fact that militant orthodoxy

remains entirely 'impersonal'; it is not the vehicle of any

individual leader, group or power lobby? rather than an

immediate political agenda, it is a distant vista of "la

plus improbable esperance."73 More realistic is Caillois'

injunction to pursue research towards such an ideal doctrine

or system, "dont 1*exactitude se situe aussi bien sur le

plan de la verite philosophique que sur celui des

satisfactions affectives. . . .1,74

Caillois' most specific pronouncements at the time may

be found in paragraph-length reviews he contributed to

71Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 14.

72Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 13.
73Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 13.
74Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 14.
 278

Inquisitions. Montherlant's Service inutile is very

uneven, he writes, but provides the following:

. un certain nombre de principes 6thiques

fondamentaux propres & entrer dans le code de
l'honneur d'une aristocratie morale: 1'importance
attribuee au mepris, & la politesse et a la
sobriety (mais aussi & l'abus), des maximes comme
•j'aime la citronnade, je n'ai pas besoin que la
citronnade m'aime1 . . . tout cela prend une
valeur de mots d'ordre, extremement sains et
ratifiables. . . ,75

Such a moral aristocracy, only hinted at here, reflects the

influence of Nietzsche's "pensee toujours plus actuelle. . .

.••76 Caillois1 reviews succinctly praise Bianquis' new

translation of La volonte de puissance and Thierry

Maulnier's Nietzsche. He is careful to deny any critical

or philosophical merit to this latter effort by "un des

jeunes theoriciens de l1extreme droite."77 Instead, he

focuses upon Maulnier's claim: "II faut rendre le gotit du

sang ci la philosophie. II faut rendre aux syst&mes

metaphysiques leur cruaute: leur pouvoir de vie et de

mort."78 In this quest they converge — "Les divergences

viennent d'ailleurs.1,79

75Roger
Caillois, Rev. of Service inutile, by H.de
Montherlant, Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 56.
7 6 Roger Caillois, Rev. of Nietzsche. by Thierry
Maulnier; La volonte de puissance. trans. Bianquis,
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 55.
77Caillois, Rev. of Nietzsche 55.
78Caillois, Rev. of Nietzsche 55.
79Caillois, Rev. of Nietzsche 55.
 279

"Pour une orthodoxie militante" does not truly develop

the socio-political dimension, or even the cruelty, as it

were, of militant orthodoxy. What Caillois really proposes

is the modern, "imperative," equivalent to myth in literary

form. In the discussion of his talk, he is quick to

explain that he is not conflating science and literature;

his real topic is neither one per se but rather that ideal

"activite unitaire" which must at once satisfy, exalt,

accentuate and illuminate, as he puts it, both the

intelligence and sensibility of man: "la connaissance

servant la passion, mais l'apprenant [la passion] a

raisonner."80 Nonetheless, it would seem that literature

may provide the primary counterpart to myth in the present.

Similarly to myth, art must be 'dramaturgical* and imbued

with a collective finality: "Une oeuvre d'art doit se

rattacher k une conception du monde, l'illustrer et

1'approfondir. Proselytisme d'abord. Je ne peux accorder

de valeur a l'art que s'il est 1'image dramatique d'une

ideologie.1,81 Although this recalls Marxist views of art,

it is important to note how Caillois' dramaturgical

aesthetic aims to incite the very affective imagination it

is reflecting, in a logic of participation similar to that

of the mythical complex, the "image juste" of the demons de

midi. Albeit propaganda, "1'image dramatique" is a dynamic

80Caillois, "Compte-rendu" 67.

81Caillois, "Compte-rendu" 67.
 280

and multi-layered process. Citing the efficacy of

pornography, Caillois remarks: "On peut consid6rer a la

rigueur la litterature comme une technique appropriee a

l'obtention de certaines emotions dans l'homme — et agir en

consequence.1,82 The political and historical circumstances

are pressing: Goebbels' recent speech on the role of the

theater reveals the Nazi appropriation of such strategies.

Caillois* brief literary reviews cite the increased need to

distinguish between novels which merely observe and

reproduce and those 'illustrating' an ethical perspective.

Thus, Faulkner's excessive concern for technique creates a

certain ambiguity: "dramatiaue sans etre pour cela

exemplaire.1,83 Caillois most favors Malraux, deeming "breve

et inepuisable" the anti-Fascist preface to Le temps du

m£pris. as mentioned earlier.

Andre Chastel was the only one who truly challenged

"Pour une orthodoxie militante" in the group discussion,

claiming that certain functions of the mind could not be

integrated into a homogeneous construction.84 Since

82Caillois, "Compte-rendu" 66.

83Roger Caillois, Rev. of Sanctuaire. Tandis que
i'agonise. Lumifere d'Aoflt." by William Faulkner.
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 56.
84Chastel develops this point in a brief essay, "Le

sphinx et la chimere," (about C. Day Lewis, Auden, Stephen

Spender, and Eliot): "l'unit6 int6grale de l'homme ne
s'obtient qu'au prix d'une hypoth&se metaphysique"
("Compte-rendu" 58). Caillois responds by positing the
continuity in human functions from perception to theoretical
intelligence: "II est done permis de penser qu'ci cetta
 281

Bachelard did not participate, we do not know his view of

Caillois' distinction between systematic and rational

thought. Certainly, if "Mim6tisme et psychasthenic

16gendaire" implicitly criticized Bachelard's lack of

phenomenological vertigo, as I have suggested, the roles are

now reversed insofar as "surrationalisme" suggests a

movement towards visionary and 'turbulent reason' while

Caillois opts for anti-intuitive 'lucidity.' It is

interesting that when Bachelard's Lautreamont (1939)

enthusiastically presents Caillois as "le recordman de la

descente dans la realite vivante," he refers to "La mante

religieuse" and not "Pour une orthodoxie militante.1,85

Quite incongruous with the attack on Naturphilosophie in

"L'alternative" is Bachelard's appropriation of Caillois (in

tandem with Petitjean) to explore "la poesie biologique.1,86

* * *

organisation unitaire peut correspondre une activite

egalement unitaire" ("Compte-rendu" 67).
85Gaston Bachelard, Lautreamont (Paris: Jose Corti,
1939) 144.
86Bachelard, Lautreamont 144. He writes: "Caillois
nous fait descendre . . . jusqu'au centre meme du tourbillon
qui dynamise 1'evolution biologique. En approchant de ce
pole, on comprend que l'etre vivant a un appetit de formes
au moins aussi grand qu'un appetit de matiere. II faut que
l'etre vivant, quel qu'il soit, solidarise des formes
diverses, vive une transformation, accepte des
metamorphoses, 6tale une causalite formelle reellement
agissante, fortement dynamique"(144).
 282

Significant praise for "Pour une orthodoxie militante,"

however, was expressed by one of Caillois' most 'literary'

admirers. In January 1936, Jean Paulhan described this

essay and that of Bachelard as "puissants et justes" while

Tzara was a "cretin" as usual.87 Eagerly awaiting the next

issue of Inquisitions. Paulhan aligned his own Les fleurs de

Tarbes. ou la terreur dans les lettres with this

intellectual nexus in late June 1936, urging Caillois to

read its first installment which apparently engaged their

common project: the reform or revolution of "la pensee"

while avoiding the "faux-fuyant" or facile solutions of

humanism and Surrealism.88 To better understand this

intellectual 'correspondence,' it is important to recall

that Paulhan was hardly an austere neo-classical homme-de-

lettres. Trained as a linguist, he taught at the Ecoles des

Langues Orientales, and published two studies of proverbs,

also linking this research to Surrealism in the 20s and

87Jean Paulhan, letter to Roger Caillois, June 21 1936,

#9, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers
Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez
(Paris: Gallimard, 1991) 35.
88Jean Paulhan, letter Roger Caillois, June 28 1936,
#10, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 35. Les
Fleurs de Tarbes first appeared in the July-October 1936
issues of the NRF before being published by Gallimard in
1941 with major revisions. Jeannine Kohn-Etiemble
specifically mentions the essays of Caillois and Bachelard
when she writes: "Voici done quelle 6tait, des 1936, la
demarche ou Paulhan reconnaissait celle qu'il tentait de
suivre dans Les Fleurs. . . . [La] vie trop brfeve de la
revue Inquisitions ne lui [a] pas permis d'exposer, comme il
souhaitait alors, son propre point de vue" (226 lettres
inedites de Jean Paulhan [Paris: Klincksieck, 1975] 36).
 283

30s.89 If his ethnographic experience was crucial to

Paulhan's critique of modernism, suggests Michel Beaujour,90

Les fleurs de Tarbes comprises "une sorte de dialogue

implicite avec les surr£alistes. . . ."91 Much like

Caillois, Paulhan sought to bring a more rigorous and

•scientific' focus to bear on the Surrealist imagination.

Caillois' eulogy for Paulhan, "Touches pour un portrait

sincere," presents his thought as a mode of 'open

rationalism* which seems similar to the dual-dialectics of

Surrationalism:

La logique chez lui ne consistait pas tant a

d6couvrir la faille d'un raisonnement qu'une
aptitude a en modifier, sinon a en inverser les
donnees. II ne cherchait pas a montrer que le
probleme etait mal pose, mais plutot qu'on pouvait
le poser autrement et que, pour bien en saisir le
sens, il convenait d'en admettre et d'en
consid^rer simultanement des enonces sym6triques
et contraires.92

In effect, Les fleurs de Tarbes analyzes 'orthodoxy* in

a literary sense and was deeply inspired by Bachelard's

nouvel esprit scientificme. Paulhan wrote to Jouhandeau in

89See Thomas Ferenczi, "Jean Paulhan et la linguistique

moderne," Nouvelle revue francaise 197 (Mai 1969): 800-813.

90Michel Beajour mentions Paulhan's idea that the
dominant literary ideology was a relative phenomenon: "une
derisoire deviation des que 1'on songe a 1'opposer aux
longues durees de l'histoire. . ." ("Jean Paulhan et la
Terreur," Jean Paulhan le souterrain. ed. Jacques Bersani
[Paris: Gallimard, 1976] 129).
91Beaujour 141.
92Roger Caillois, "Touches pour un portrait sincere,"

Nouvelle revue francaise 197 (Mai 1969): 737.

 284

late June 1936 that Les fleurs sought to enact in the world

of letters "la meme revolution de 1*esprit qu'a pu faire

Lobatchevsky en mathematiques, Riemann en geometrie.1,93

Paulhan locates his argument in the dual-nature of the

cliche or "lieu-commun": at times an obstacle to the

transparent transmission of "la pensee," it is also a

potential site for the communion of souls, and both guises

are 'literary.' This shifting status is a subtle

phenomenological issue, he argues, provoking this experience

in the reader throughout the text. It is useful, for our

purposes, to consult the original version of Les fleurs

since its final sections — "Ou 1'experience tourne en rond"

and "Changer la raison" — were later eliminated, although

they signal Paulhan*s debt to Bachelard.94

Paulhan first defines la Terreur as the attack,

intensified since Romanticism, upon the use of rhetoric and

cliches. Next, he reverses the Terror's assumptions,

showing the dangerous "power of words" to be an illusion or

myth. It is the very lack of literary technique or

subservience to rhetorical norms that renders cliches opaque

and writers paltry "verbalistes." In July 1936 he wrote to

93Jean Paulhan, letter to Marcel Jouhandeau, June 29

1936, #313, Jean Paulhan; choix de lettres 1917-1936, ed.
Dominique Aury and Jean-Claude Zylberstein (Paris:
Gallimard, 1986) 385.
94It is interesting that Paulhan's original letter
about Inquisitions requests quite enthusiastically that
Caillois review Le nouvel esprit scientifioue for the NRF.
 285

Etiemble, relating his Fleurs to the most "banal" form of

psychological observation: "Si vous avez mal h la gorge,

vous vous repr^sentez votre gorge. . . Et si vous

comprenez mal ce qu'on vous a dit, vous pesez un peu mieux

les mots."95 He next declares such a metaphorical malady to

be the dominant feature of the Terror itself, uniquely

concerned to defeat, escape or reinvent language, indeed

"plus soucieuse de langage que n'ont jamais et6 les

rh£toriques. . . ."96 Then, he portrays the Terror trapped

in its delusions about language, a 'neurosis' which must be

treated at the source rather than symptom so as to allow for

a new Rhetorioue:

L'art que j'imagine avouerait tout naivement la

preoccupation que la Terreur gardait secrete:
c'est que l'on parle, et l'on 6crit, pour se faire
entendre, et se persuader l'un 1*autre. II
ajouterait qu'il n'est point d'obstacle a cette
persuasion plus genant qu'un . . . souci du
langage comme tel.97

In a final reversal, Paulhan correlates the duality of

Rhetoric and Terror with the duality of the cliche: When the

first becomes the second, it disrupts "l*entente commune" or

provokes a perception of "difference." Neither accepting

defeat with the 'humanists,' nor opting for joyful

95Jean
Paulhan, letter to Rene Etiemble, July 7 1936,
#315, Jean Paulhan: choix de lettres 1917-1936 387.
96Jean Paulhan, "Les fleurs de Tarbes," Nouvelle revue

francaise Aug. 1936: 351.

97Jean
Paulhan, "Les fleurs de Tarbes," Nouvelle revue
francaise Sept. 1936: 502.
 286

resignation "comme en extase a l'absurde" with the 'mystics'

(read Surrealists), Paulhan points to the New Science as an

expansion of rationalism which might accommodate such

metamorphoses of the lieu-commun and, more generally, of

language itself:

II faut songer ici aux savants qui se refusent &

d6sirer dogmatiquement les notions de base; aux
physiciens, prenant avec Einstein pour point de
depart (comme nous un lanaaqe-pens6e), un espace-
temps: aux microphysiciens partant d'un mouvement-
fjgure aux geometres, d'un monde non-euclidien
— tous substituant ainsi dans leurs calculs a la
clarte en soi une clarte operatoire.98

As a form of 'orthodoxy,' Paulhan's "rhetorique

commune" is closer to the metaphysical and poetic bent of

Bachelard's "surrationalisme" than it is to Caillois'

militant orthodoxy." Yet the social or collective scope of

Paulhan's argument in Les fleurs de Tarbes likens it to

Caillois' effort to chart a phenomenology of the social

imagination.100 Paulhan was nonetheless much more skeptical

than Caillois about the possibility of forging "une fonction

unitaire de 1'esprit," a systematization, broadly aligned

98Jean Paulhan, "Les Fleurs de Tarbes," Nouvelle revue

francaise Oct. 1936: 693.

"Paulhan's final pages in 1936 relocate Bachelard's

New Science in terms of prior theological models: "Je ne
connais pas de definition du tcio. de Dieu ou de l'absolu,
qui n'ait pour essence l'identite de deux termes, non moins
contradictoires que ne sont pensee et langage, espace et
temps, mouvement et figure" (Jean Paulhan, "Les fleurs de
Tarbes," Nouvelle revue francaise Oct. 1936: 694).
100See Paulhan's talk on proverbs and sacred language

at the College de socioloaie.

 287

through the context of Inquisitions, with the non-sectarian

project of the Front Populaire. Despite his sympathy for

Blum, and though he apparently planned to publish in

Inquisitions. Paulhan distrusted the Front Populaire's

transcendance of partisanship. He wrote to Jouhandeau in

February 1936:

Je crois aussi, au fond qu'un parti sans science

(je veux dire sans foi precise) est porte plus
qu'un autre a la traitrise. Le "front populaire"
trahit plus ais6ment que ne ferait un communiste
seul (ou plutot le communiste en tant qu'il se
sent "front populaire" est plus port6 & trahir
qu'il ne 1•6tait auparavant). Ainsi du
rdactionnaire, dfes qu'il devient "front national".
Le front remplace la pens6e.101

Paulhan presumably feared that the Front Populaire sought

to impose a communal rhetoric dissociated from communal

belief — which could only engender the Terror, and a truly

political one.102
* * *

Of course, Caillois' militant orthodoxy had little or

no relation to the political project of the Front Populaire.

It merely transformed, while pursuing, the scientific

101JeanPaulhan, letter to Marcel Jouhandeau, Feb. 28

1936, #295, Jean Paulhan; choix de lettres 1917-1936 366.
102Frederic Grover writes: "[Paulhan] pensait que tout

le monde devrait etre noble et que la Revolution Frangaise,

au lieu d'abolir la noblesse, aurait dti anoblir tout le
monde" ("Jean Paulhan et la politique," Jean Paulhan le
souterrain 207). See Alain Clerval "Un democrate, Jean
Paulhan," on Paulhan's ideas about the dissociation of
political and literary action, Nouvelle revue francaise 197
(May 1969): 931-937.
 288

project of Proc6s intellectuel de l'art; and, as an

important passage of the Archives interview suggests, it

would also set the stage for the College de sociologies

. . . dans mon esprit, le mot orthodoxie rejoint

un peu le mot Inquisitions. c1 est-ci-dire que je
pensais que si une doctrine se ddveloppe d'une
fagon rigoureuse, elle peut avoir, meme elle doit
avoir, 1*ambition de s'imposer dans les faits.
C'6tait completement chimerique, bien entendu.
Mais c'etait vraiment ce que j'ai pense, et ce que
j'ai continue de penser a certains 6gards. "Pour
une orthodoxie militante" est le texte qui a
provoque plus tard, pas beaucoup plus tard
d'ailleurs, la constitution du Collfeqe de
Sociologie. qui dtait fondamentalement activiste
comme nous disions alors. C'est-a-dire que nous
souhaitions une pensee qui se marque dans le reel
et qui declenche dans le reel des cascades de
ph6nomenes — dont le sacre serait le principal,
dont la contagion du sacr6 serait le phenomene le
plus important.103

Inquisitions did not yet address the 'sacred' although it

implicitly evoked religion, nonetheless, through its very

title. Caillois has said that his choice of the term evoked

"un moyen-Sge terrifiant"; and beyond 'orthodoxy,'

'militancy' itself had a religious resonance: "on pouvait

penser a un acte de militant politique, mais je pensais aux

trois etapes de l'eglise: l'eglise humiliee, l'eglise

militante, et l'6glise triomphante."104 How, then, does

this relate to science? Before leaving Inquisitions. I will

briefly return to Caillois' most salient debate in the

discussion, which involved Tzara and the revolutionary

103Caillois, Archives IV.

104Caillois, Archives IV.
 289

status of the poet versus that of the scientist.

As mentioned above, the latter had urged the

'socialization1 of the Romantic poet's individualist revolt

which was the first historical moment when such lupercalia

became directed against society. Tzara's view presupposed

the identity of Romantic and modern poet in this regard;

Monnerot suggested that the modern poet has been divested of

any revolutionary affective function; Caillois, on the other

hand, claimed that this function has been displaced onto the

modern scientist. Of course, "Pour une orthodoxie

militante" does cite the exemplary "force d•attraction" of

the great "maudits" but Caillois explains that their

ethical values ("de violence certes, mais aussi de fid61it6

et d'honneur") were rebellious due to their circumstance,

"par la force <Ses choses, se heurtant a 1'oppression

insupportable de determinations qui ne les valaient pas."1®5

Hence, the moral and intellectual postures of

Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Lautr6amont have been betrayed by

their literary heirs, who perpetuate a rebellious tradition

in an anarchic era:

C'est seulement occuper une situation confortable

qui continue a beneficier d'un prestige acquis aux
temps heroiques par des hommes qui renieraient
aujourd'hui pour leur routine et leur complaisance
ceux qui se pretendent le plus volontiers leurs
successeurs et a qui tous, le premier par toute
son oeuvre critique, le second par la Saison en
enfer. le dernier par la Preface aux poesies,
semblent avoir pris soin de donner par avance un

105Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 12.

 290

dclatant dementi.106

Caillois makes short shrift of Tzara's anthropological

scheme, explaining that the poet and scientist are

indistinguishable in primitive societies, both participating

in the fundamentally anti-social groups of the

lupercalia.107 He agrees with Tzara that the poet

subsequently became an alienated (Romantic) individualist

and the scientist a defender of the social order; yet the

roles have now been reversed: "Le monde oil nous vivons ne

represente plus un ordre, mais un d6sordre, et le savant,

homme de 1'ordre, se dirige contre la societe; il prend une

attitude r6volutionnaire qui est redevenue ce qu'elle a

primitivement.1,108 According to Mauss's "Esquisse d'une

theorie generale de la magie," the magician (early avatar of

both poet and scientist) was rebellious towards the

normative social order that cohered through religion. Given

the disorder of modern society in 1936, however, Caillois'

l°6Caillois, "Orthodoxie" 12. —

107Caillois, "Compte-rendu," 73.
108Caillois, "Compte-rendu" 73. This discussion also
reveals evolution of his own ideas since La ndcessite
d1 esprit which had responded to Tzara's Surrealist
dialectic of directed and non-directed thought by describing
that synthesis innate to the ideoaramme lvrioue. Caillois
now states, on the contrary: "II nous faut choisir entre la
pensde dirigee et non dirigee. Nous avons conscience d'une
pensee dominatrice qui nous importe plus. Des forces
disciplinees font la force de la pens£e. La pensee non
dirigee correspond k une nostalgie vague, a des instincts de
paresse, estimables, d'ailleurs. Un objet de conquete,
voila comment la pensee doit envisager le monde actuel.
Comment choisissez-vous?"(72).
 291

systematic science assumes the normative and cohesive role

previously found in religion — but at the same time,

preserves the anti-social status of the magician.

 292

Chapter 7

Lucifer

The Birth of the Intellectual

The Collfege de socioloaie gradually came into being

with the demise of the Front Populaire. Besides Caillois*

remark that his essay in Inquisitions. "Pour une orthodoxie

militante" was seminal in this regard, Jules Monnerot has

also claimed responsibility for the original idea, although

he withdrew before the actual constitution of the College,

denouncing its frivolous and literary orientation as one

that precluded efficacious political action.1 And then,

Bataille's autobiographical sketch, cited earlier, declares

that he considered founding such a group in March 1936,

although its first reunion occurred a year later at the Caf6

1Jean-Michel Heimonet quotes Monnerot1s initial

conception of the group as he would later recall it: "une
sorte de 'fondation', au sens anglo-saxon, solidement
charpent^e, organisee et financee, beaucoup plus efficace
que les groupes ephemeres, 'dissidences dans une dissidence'
auxquels avait d6j& particip6 Bataille"; in contrast to its
Anglo-Saxon counterparts, though, Monnerot envisioned a
form of active socio-phenomenology: "D6crire la politique in
the making de maniere v^ridique et avec pertinence, c'est
deja intervenir" (Politiques de l'ecriture [Paris: Jean-
Michel Place, 1989] 84).
 293

of the Grand V6four by the Palais Royal.2 The initial

notice appeared in the July 1937 issue of Acdphale; the

formal lecture-series was launched in November; in July

1938, Jean Paulhan published a revised manifesto of the

College in the NRF along with revised versions of those

three essays read at the Grand V6four: Caillois' "Le Vent

d'hiver," Bataille's "L'Apprenti sorcier," and Leiris' "Le

Sacr£ dans la vie quotidienne."

My purpose is less to dwell on the paternity of the

College than to consider how Caillois1 perception of the

social context had changed between 1936 and 1937, and how

this affected the paradigm of militant orthodoxy. The

discussions of Inguisitions suggested that he rejected the

tradition of 19th century literary revolt (proposed, in

particular, by Tzara) by arguing that modern society

embodied a state of disorder rather than oppressive order.

In 1936, then, Caillois focused on the figure of that

individual scientist who might undertake the slow and

hypothetical construction of an ever-evolving ideological

superstructure to master the challenge of social disorder;

inspired by a quest for system and by the self-conscious

detachment proper to Fichte's wissenschaftlehre. he would

2Caillois
confirms this year of preparation: "parceque
cela a ete assez long de prendre la decision de fonder ce
College de Sociologie et de lui donner un contenu" (Roger
Caillois, interview with Jean-Jose Marchand, videotape,
dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme siecle. 7
reels (Paris: Society Frangaise de Production, 1971): IV).
 294

assume the revolutionary function of the 19th century

"maudit." By 1937, however, the crisis of social disorder

had been replaced by that of a social vacuum, or socio­

political chaos calling for the recreation, rather than the

mere reorganization, of society and the social phenomenon.

"L'agressivite comme valeur," published in L1Ordre

nouveau of June 1937, thus described the following threat:

"un monde effrite, redoutable h la fagon d'une eponge et non

d'un mur."3 The systematic grasp of militant orthodoxy,

that is to say, its very militancy, is jeopardized by such

absorption:
Certes, il faut considerer que les idees naissent
dans un monde doue d'une receptivity dangereuse,
d'une capacite d'absorption proprement demesuree,
en sorte qu'elles n'ont pas a compter avec une
opposition tranchee qui les obligerait elles-memes
a plus de nettete et les forcerait a choisir sans
ambages entre la demission et la rupture, mais
avec un trop liberal accueil qui les assimile plus
sfirement qu'une contrainte a ce qu'il etait dans
leur raison d'etre de combattre.^

Caillois' participation in the College arose from his belief

that collective action was required to counter this absence

or vacancy of society itself. Motivated by.the tradition of

Durkheimian sociology, and by their recent exposure to the

concept of aemeinschaft addressed by German sociology,5 the

3Roger Caillois, "L'agressivite comme valeur," Ordre

nouveau June 1937: 57.
4Caillois, "L'agressivite" 57.
5See, for example, Raymond Charmet, Rev. of La
socioloaie allemande contemporaine. by Raymond Aron.
Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 52-54. Charmet evokes: "la
 295

members of the College, each in his own way, was seduced by

the ambition to recreate the sacred through social communion

and, conversely, social community through the sacred.

Caillois1 virulent first text for the College. "Le vent

d'hiver," proposed a dense and disciplined virile sect,

constituted by modern-day "disciples des grands

individualistes du siecle pass£. . . .1,6 The current

transvaluation of anarchic and sacrilegious 19th century

individualism (here, primarily identified with Nietzsche and

Stirner) could be found in certain individuals whose

detachment and self-control were proper to Caillois1

scientist of 1936; in 1937, these individualists have fully

realized that they must unite to be strong.7

The following chapter will address Caillois' ideas

concerning the requisite nature of the sect, but I will

consider, for now, how he continues to dwell at great

lengths, throughout 1937 and 1938, on the figure of the

heroic individualist — the Luciferian hero — despite his

social and collective concerns. Lucifer is an activist

distinction faite par Tonnies entre la soci6t6 et la

communaute: Gesellschaft und Gemeinschaft. la premiere oil
regne le contrat, la society anonyme, la concurrence, etant
consideree comme fort inferieure a la seconde qui est
personnelle, affective et spontanee. On aperqioit toute
l1importance que ces idees, formulees en 1887, ont prises
dans 1'esprit allemand contemporain"(53).
6RogerCaillois, "Le vent d'hiver," Le college de
sociologie. ed. Denis Hollier (Paris: Gallimard, 1979) 77.
7Caillois, "Vent" 77.
 296

intellectual whose activism should not be equated with the

post-war concept of engagement, or immediate political

action, but involves, instead, that detached and mimetic

ideological relation to the world I have loosely defined as

Caillois• logic of participation. "La naissance de

Lucifer," published in Verves 1 (Dec. 1937), was

illustrated by a Gerome painting titled "Eminence

grise"(1874) and a caption, from the Dictionnaire Larousse;

"L'6minence grise, le P. Joseph, descend l'escalier de

l'hotel de Richelieu. II lit son br§viaire et passe sans

daigner lever sur eux les yeux, cot6 des courtisans qui le

saluent profondement; tableau fin et spirituel.1,8 Who is

the contemporary counterpart to the 17th century "eminence

grise"? "Pour une orthodoxie militante" had called for the

phenomenologicaL social scientist who might systematize the

affective imagination. In 1938, Caillois' "Paris, mythe

moderne," first published in the NRF and, then, in Le mvthe

et 1'homme. equates the modern Luciferian with the literary

sociologist, whose mode of analysis does not reflect

individual aesthetic judgement but, rather, the collective

dynamics of the mythical imagination. Closely emmeshed with

social power, he has "une conception tres particuliere de la

litt6rature . . . lucide pour une part et peut-etre

8Roger Caillois, "La naissance de Lucifer," Verves 1

(Dec. 1937): 32.
 297

machiavelique, lucifdrienne en un mot. . . .1,9 Brasillach's

review of lie mythe et l'homme for La Causerie littdraire de

1'Action francaise would declare the work "plein d'une

intelligence un peu diabolique.1,10

"La naissance de Lucifer," though, focuses neither on

the 17th century, nor the present, but locates this birth in

the post-Enlightenment. Indeed, Caillois' study of Lucifer

refines upon his conception of Romanticism to better locate

within it a source for his current aspirations. This

particular evolution is marked by the rise of Lucifer, put

of and against a Romantic Satan. "J'ai toujours ete

lucif^rien et je le suis toujours," Caillois would recount

to Jean-Jose Marchand in 1971, citing "La naissance de

Lucifer" as one of his favorite essays: "Lucifer pour moi

comme son nom 1'indique est le demon ou 1'ange de la

lucidite. Et j'ai toujours fait une grande distinction

entre satanique et luciferien.Of course, demonism was

9Roger Caillois, "Paris, mythe moderne," Le mvthe et

1'homroe (Paris: Gallimard,1938): 152; "Exemple concret de la
conduite a tenir et precedent. au sens judiciaire du terme,
dans le domaine fort etendu alors de la culpability sacree.
[le mythe] se trouve, du fait meme, revetu, aux yeux du
groupe, d'autorite et de force coercitive"(151).
10Maurice Bardeche, Oeuvres completes de Robert
Brasillach 14 vols. (Paris: Club de l'honnete homme, 1964)
12: 182. Like most reviewers of the time, Brasillach did not
quite know what to make of Le mvthe et l'homme: "On ne peut
accompagner M. Roger Caillois dans ses analyses du mythe
dans la society, ou il prend ses exemples dans la Chine
ancienne et dans la Grece primitive. II serait trop long de
discuter avec lui. . . "(182).

^Caillois, Archives V.
 298

in the air. The title of Bataille's talk, "L'apprenti

sorcier," and, as Hollier mentions, of Sartre's projected

title of "Lucifer"12 signalled the current revolutionary

Romantic mystique. I suspect Caillois' own version in this

respect originated in 1928, when he painted a literary

portrait of Saint-Just for his high-school journal; here,

the young revolutionary was a Romantic angel of death, both

victim and executioner.13 In the NRF of October 1937,

Caillois would return to Saint-Just in his commentary upon

the fall of the Front Populaire: Saint-Just, he claims, was

the first to assert "qu'on ne r6gne pas innocemment. faisant

tomber par cette maxime la tete d'un roi. . . ."I4 This

essay then described Blum's innate inability to assume such

tragic power and, perhaps more importantly, his lack of

self-awareness in this regard: "Chaque ligne de ses ouvrages

signifie qu'il aime mieux subir la tyrannie que l'exercer.

C'est chez lui comme la constante dictee de sa conscience. .

12Denis Hollier notes that "in July 1938 [Sartre] began

composing the novel that would appear seven years later
under the title Les Chemins de la Liberty. In 1938 it was
called Lucifer . . ." (The College of Sociology 1937-39.
trans. Betsy Wing [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1988] 401).
13Roger Caillois, "Saint-Just, 1'accusateur," Libre
critique 5 (1927/28); "Saint-Just. Thermidor," Libre
critique 7 (1927/28). (Rpt. in Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour
un temps" [Centre Georges Pompidou, 1981]: 148-51.)
14Roger Caillois, Rev. of Nouvelles conversation de
Goethe avec Eckermann; L'Exercice du pouvoir; Du Mariaqe. by
Leon Blum; En lisant M. L6on Blum, by Marcel Thiebaut,
Nouvelle revue francaise Oct. 1937: 674.
 299

. ."iS By 1937, it would seem Caillois had reshaped the

rather Satanic Romantic sensibility of Saint-Just into the

post-Romantic lucidity of Lucifer.

With "La naissance de Lucifer," Caillois detailed more

carefully than before the return of the mythical and

affective imagination repressed by the Enlightenment. In

1936, both "Fonction du mythe" and "L'ordre et 1'empire" had

described the re-emergence of individual, and rather

Nietzschean motivations such as — "droit h la culpabilite"

— previously contained by festival. In 1937, Caillois*

genealogy of Lucifer identified a moment of transition from

Romantic alienation to post-Romantic will to power where he

specifically located the rise, or coming-into-consciousness

of this imaginative energy. "La naissance de Lucifer"

highlights the residual status of the writer or artist,

dispossessed of his social identity by the French

revolution:

Ainsi naquit ce type si inconcevable auparavant de

11intellectuel. poursuivant sans doute
1'achevement d'une oeuvre d6sinteress6e, mais ne
d£daignant pas de prdter l'oreille aux bruits du
forum, ressentant sur lui-meme les injustices du
monde et en demandant compte au nom de l1 esprit a
un responsable ideal.16

Rehearsing the usual definitions of Romanticism (the

disillusioned ambitions of a generation inspired by the

Revolution and the Napoleonic wars), Caillois explains that

15Caillois, Rev. of L'exercice du pourvoir 675.

16Caillois, "Naissance" 32.
 300

the disoriented writer, socially adrift, became the vehicle

of radical individualism:

II usurpe les fonctions du pretre, du philosophe

et du 16gislateur, il tente d'usurper celles de
l'homme d'action et du politique. L'individu pris
comme r£f£rence absolue et instance supreme, c'est
1& le point de depart et le ressort moteur du
satanisme. ... 17
Satanic mythology conveys man's divine projection of his

rebellious desires. Unlike many views of Romanticism, then,

Caillois' definition of Satanism harbors no real ambiguity

or ambivalence but involves, instead, an incongruous

juxtaposition or duality: "la figure d'un ange du mal anime

des meilleurs sentiments. . . .1,18 A lengthy and important

passage describes that form of Satanism, or affective

revolt, which is Lucifer's requisite antecedent:

Le satanisme apparait avant tout comme une revolte

instinctive et genereuse, mais irreflechie contre
1'existence du mal et des pouvoirs 6tablis.
Insurrection de la sensibility, il consid&re
1'intelligence avec suspicion et voit dans la
discipline qu'elle suppose d'insupportables
chaines. Tout apprentissage lui parait servitude
et tout effort suivi, 1'alienation d'une liberte.
Orgueilleux et miserable, Satan, refugie dans le
cote nocturne de la nature, ne peut guere qu'y
£tendre ses ailes dechiquet^es de chauve-souris
chass6e par la clarte.19

Lucifer arises as a form of self-conscious Satanic

overcoming: "On n'eut pas cru peut-etre que la passion fdt

plus r^doutable methodique qu'emportee.20 Caillois'

17Caillois, "Naissance" 32.

18Caillois, "Naissance" 32.
19Caillois, "Naissance" 32.
20Caillois, "Naissance" 32.
 301

Promethean Satan is marked by Nietzschean self-mastery and

deductive logic:

La seule decision de ne pas p£rir lui a fait

prendre celle de vaincre et de faire perir.
Pouss£ par la passion ei ses buts lointains, il
fixe des objectifs de la journ6e d'un clair regard
gu'il prend soin que rien ne trouble. Patient et
precis comme un g^ometre, avare de ses coups comme
un joueur d'£checs, il entrevoit et denombre les
divers movens qui lui permettront de les
atteindre.2*
Primarily defined as a "naissance," Caillois' Lucifer

seems poised, then, as a dialectical moment in the march of

the human spirit. It is likely that Kojeve had some

influence in this regard, even though Caillois did not

attend the famous seminars on Hegel and did not espouse

Kojive's theory of historical closure in the figure of

Stalin.22 Still, he was clearly impressed by Kojeve's

intellectual rigor which may have performed the same role

for him in the late 30s as that of George Bidault in the

late 20s, confirming Caillois1 critical detachment from Le

Grand Jeu; so too, Kojfeve's objections alerted him to flaws

in the project of the College. Caillois thus recalls that

21Caillois, "Naissance" 32.

22Caillois evokes Kojfeve's talk on "Les conceptions
h6geliennes" to the College: "Vous vous souvenez que Hegel
parle de l'homme a cheval, qui marque la cloture de
l'Histoire et de la philosophie. Pour Hegel, cet homme
etait Napoleon. Eh bien! Kojeve nous a appris ce jour-la
que Hegel avait vu juste mais qu'il s'6tait tromp6 d'un
siecle: l'homme de la fin de l'histoire, ce n'6tait pas
Napoleon mais Staline" (qtd. in Hollier, Le college 165);
also see Dominique Auffret, Alexandre Koi eve (Paris:
Grasset, 1990) 225-264.
 302

the Russian 6migr6 criticized the plural nature of the

title Volontds as a contradiction in terms — "Le malheur

est que Kojevnikov a fait des reflexions analogues sur le

College de Sociologie qui ont bien failli me determiner

egalement & ne pas le fonder."23 He has also described

Kojeve explaining to Bataille:

. . . [qu'un] tel thaumaturge n'aurait pas plus de
chance d'etre k son tour transports par le sacr4
qu'il aurait sciemment d6clench6, qu'un
prestidigitateur n'en avait de se persuader de
1'existence de la magie en s'emerveillant de ses
propres tours de passe-passe. J'en 6tais
convaincu.24

And yet, in a contrasting vein, Caillois has mentioned that

Kojeve voiced objections about the possibility that the

College might recreate the sacred in a modern secular

society — "a juste titre a mon avis mais je ne m'en rendais

pas compte. . . ,"25 Above and beyond the simple confusion

of retrospection, I would tend to attribute this ambiguity

to the fact that Caillois, unlike Kojeve, did not

fundamentally deny that the College might actually recreate

the sacred, even though he agreed with Kojeve that any

attempt to recreate this through the reenactment of the

"apprenti sorcier," that is via the recourse to magic or

anachronistic 'primitive' strategies, would be inevitably

23Caillois, Archives IV. Volontes was journal founded

by Pelorson and Queneau in 1938.

24Roger Caillois, Approches de 11imaginaire (Paris:
Gallimard, 1974) 59.
25Caillois, Archives IV.
 303

unauthentic.

Fundamental to Caillois' project in the late 30s was

the idea that lucidity and self-consciousness could be

reconciled with the reemergence of the affective and

irrational imagination. And fundamental to this was the

LUciferian hero, whose extreme self-consciousness was the

source of his dynamic strength. Unlike Bataille, Caillois

did not subscribe to Kojive's Marxist and anthropological

reading of Hegel, which located an agonistic fight to the

death between master and slave as the essential feature,

and initial stage, of the dialectical quest for recognition

as subject.26 The mastery of the Luciferian emerges through

his own self-recognition, a mimetic gesture of self-

analysis, or systematization of his individual 'syntax,'

which fcransvaluatofis the prior outcome of La necessity

d1 esprit (1934)r

. un etre ayant accede a la connaissance

totale de sa necessity d'esprit ne pourrait douter
qu'elle ne coincide avec celle de l'univers.
Faisant parfaitement corps avec l'une, il serait
du meme coup r£sorbe dans 1'autre. On aper?oit
mal quelle exteriorite, quelle antinomie
subsisterait pour un tel etre. Et qui ne voit que
le salut est au-dela de la distinction ou nulle
part?27

With the paradigm of Lucifer, Caillois suggests that self-

analysis may achieve a higher level of individuation and

power. Despite his virile Nietzschean rhetoric, however,

26See Auffret.
27Caillois, N6cessit6 154.
 304

this Luciferian intellectual is not a sheer expression of

lucid volontarism since his mastery involves self-

transcendance and a certain abnegation of the will.

Caillois replaces the distinction between master and slave

by that of "producer" and "consumer": "la qualit6 des etres

se mesure essentiellement h la somme de ce gu'ils

abandonnent pour la simple possibility d'etre davantage

leurs maitres.1,28 Such self-mastery and self-

systematization, as we shall see, allows for a particular

form of ideological production, linked to the social order

and the sacred. This producer/consumer dichotomy reflects a

static opposition and negativity that is more Nietzschean

than Hegelian or Kojevian, Alexandre Pajon has also noted:

"[il] y avait quelque chose de saint-simonien dans cette

repartition des t&ches."29

* * *

What renders Caillois' Lucifer all the more interesting

is that he projects his "naissance" into a variety of

historical and social contexts. His essays of 1937 and 1938

illustrate the turn from Satanism to Luciferianism in the

realms of primitive anthropology and prehistory, in relation

to Loyola and Corneille, and as a feature of the present as

28Roger Caillois, "L'aridite," Mesures Apr. 1938: 10.

29Alexandre Pajon, "L*intr6pidit6 politique de Roger
Caillois avant-guerre," Roger Caillois "Cahiers de Chronos"
[Paris: La Difference, 1991] 384.
 305

well. Turning first to the most archaic, let us note how

his anthropological discussion entails a new notion of logic

and of the shaman: Translating wissenschaftlehre. it would

seem, into ahistorical, anthropological terms, Caillois re­

evaluates the primitive mind to situate within it a form of

analytical effort. His review of L6vy-Bruhl's L1experience

mvstiaue et les symboles chez les primitifs. for the NRF of

August 1938, thus defines logic as a self-conscious mastery

of the sensibility and of the affective imagination proper

to both modern and primitive man: "En r6alit6, il n'y a pas

de mentality logique: c'est une limite jamais atteinte, une

sorte d'ideal auquel le philosophe tente de se conformer

quand il raisonne et dont sa sensibilite, ses emotions

l'ecartent a tout moment."30 This intellectual effort, or

process of logical overcoming, is similarly undertaken by

the two figures Caillois equates as 'philosophers' — "[le]

chef indigene et 1'administrateur colonial qui cherche a lui

faire entendre raison."31

His important preface to Le mvthe et 11homme (June

1937) similarly attributes to the shaman a mastery over his

sensibility, coupled with a radically individual will to

power. In effect, he is defining a primitive Luciferian.

This essay revises Maussian sociological views, in "Esquisse

30Roger Caillois, Rev. of L1 experience mvstiaue et les

svmboles chez les Primitifs by Levy-Bruhl, Nouvelle revue
francaise Aug. 1938: 322.
31Caillois, Rev. of L1experience mvstiaue 323.
 306

d'une theorie g6n6rale de la magie," of the magician as a

rebellious individual whose behaviour, albeit infused with

collective belief and superstition, is "d6sordonn6,

facultatif, criminel.,l32 Mauss contrasts such individual

motivation with that of religion and its purveyor:

"syst6matique, ordonn6, and obiigatoire.1,33 For Caillois,

though, the shaman is neither unsystematic nor anarchic; and

he refers, in this respect, to Prazer's ideas about the

shaman's individual attitude or pontifical will to power:

[On] rangera, avec la magie toute attitude de

conquete, avec la mystique, toute tentative
d'effusion. En cette derniere, predomine la
sensibilite. Une certaine passivite la
caracterise : a 1*extreme, on la dira d'essence
th6opathique. Au contraire, la magie est lide a
1*intelligence et a la volontd de puissance.
C'est un essai d1extension du champ de conscience
pour y integrer le monde suprasensible. Cet
aspect h la fois agressif et scientifique la fait
qualifier de theurgique.34

The status of the shaman in an anti-social and yet

systematic function suggests a form of hybrid between magic

and religion as Mauss defined them; and this was being

explored, at the time, by Andre Lewitzky who presented his

ideas to the College de socioloaie.35 A student of Mauss,

32Caillois, Mvthe 11.

33Caillois, Mvthe 11.
34Caillois, Mvthe 9.
35Caillois'review of L6vy-Bruhl alludes to this: "les
quelques privileges qui ont entendu les exposes d'A.
Lewitsky savent comme moi 1'extraordinaire int6ret du
probldme. . . ."(Rev. of L1experience mystique 324).
 307

Lewitzky focused on the status of the shaman in a

'headless' or leaderless community: his peculiar situation

as sole mediator between man and the gods meant that he was

"surtout un magicien, mais un magicien remplissant une

fonction consacr£e par la soci£te, c'est-&-dire aussi une

sorte de pretre."36 Caillois would later remark to Gilles

Lapouge in 1970 about these talks on shamanism:

La question me passionnait parceque dans le schema
qui 6tait le mien (celui de Mauss), il y avait
antinomie complete entre la magie et la religion.
La magie est un acte theurgique qui force les
puissances naturelles a s'incliner alors que la
religion est essentiellement soumission a Dieu.
Je me sentais alors tres luciferien, je tenais
Lucifer pour le r6volt6 efficace. Ainsi le
chamanisme m'importait cororoe svnthese entre les
puissances reliqieuses et le domaine des choses
infernales. De son cote, Bataille 6tait a peu
pres dans les memes dispositions. Mais la
difference etait que Bataille voulait reellement
devenir chaman.37

"Jeux d'ombres sur l'hellade" then transposed Lucifer's

birth to the world of ancient Greece, albeit one imbued with

Nietzschen violence and Maussian ethnography. Published in

Le mvthe et 11homme. this essay describes a process of

historical self-consciousness or overcoming whereby

Classical or Apollian order ("mesure, raison, sagesse,

harmonie") arise in the form of the Parthenon from the

palace of Knossos — "conquises pied a pied sur les valeurs

36Andre Lewitzky, "Le chamanisme," Le college de

socioloaie 445.
37Gilles Lapouge, Entretien avec Roger Caillois,
Ouinzaine litteraire June 16-30 (1970): 7.
 308

barbares et non regues en cadeau d'on ne salt quelle

g€n£reuse grace.38 Caillois lingers at length on the dense

coherence of the Knossos labyrinth, whose social

organization is motored by the magical, Mithraic cult, a

form of pre-religious and sacrificial Satanism. "Jeux

d1ombres sur l'hellade" highlights the strict

correspondances of this collective universe which is devoid,

nonetheless, of any intellectual arrangement: "c'est

precisement dans un monde magique qu'aucun detail de la vie

materielle n'est indifferent, toute modification risquant de

ddchainer quelque catastrophe lointaine et d6mesur6e. . .

.m39 The serenity of Apollo hvperdexios. or that of

Theseus, the demi-god, presents an intellectual mastery and

systematization of this collective sensibility. The

Parthenon presupposes the labyrinth. "Jeux d'ombre sur

l'hellade" is an architectural allegory of Caillois* claim,

as he recollects it, that "1'apollonisme, c'est d'abord une

victoire, mais ga suppose des monstres, ?a ne les 61imine

pas."40 In this regard, it seems a distinct challenge to

Bataille, whose writing in the 30s, from Documents through

the years of the College, was suffused with Mithraic

38Caillois, Mvthe 147.

39Caillois,
Mvthe 145; among the elements of order he
cites are the carefully mediated sacrificial cycle of Minos,
every nine years, as well as an absolute ceremonial
aesthetics: "1'extreme £l£gance de l'art au service des plus
nocturnes reactions vitales"(142).
40Caillois, Archives IV.
 309

imagery.41 In the Archives interview, Caillois recalls that

"Jeux d'ombres sur I'Hellade" specifically opposed Apollo to

Bataille's Dionysos, a crucial figure for Acephale. whose

third issue sought to recuperate Nietzsche from his fascist,

Apollonian, appropriation. Caillois' Luciferian Apollo was,

in this sense, a deliberate revision of Nietzsche:

Nietzsche c'est Dionysos, chez Nietzsche il y a

opposition entre Apollon et Dionysos. Mais moi.
j'6tais plus mythologue et je ne faisais pas
tenement de distinction entre les deux divinit6s.
Je vois bien que Dionysos est celui qui fait
mettre en pieces Orphee par les bacchantes, mais
Apollon c'est celui qui fait Scorcher vif
Spartias, c'est pas tellement mieux. Et chez
Apollon, le dieu hyperborien, il y a tout un cote
6galement tres sinistre et tr6s sombre.42

When read with "Jeux d'ombres sur I'Hellade,' which it

directly follows in Le mvthe et 11homme. "Paris, mythe

moderne" appears to transpose Knossos into the early 19th

century cityscape.43 The essay describes a post-

Revolutionary and Romantic Paris, as it is gradually

reinvested with that collective, mythical dimension

suppressed by bourgeois rationalism. Such contamination

4llt is especially interesting to consider "Jeux

d'ombres sur l'hellade" in relation to the explosive "jeu"
of "composition" and "decomposition" around the sacrificial
bull described by Bataille in "Labyrinthe," subtitled, "Le
caractere composite des etres et 11 impossibility de fixer
1'existence dans un ipse quelconque" (Recherches
philosophicrues [1935-36]).
42Caillois, Archives IV.
43"Paris, mythe moderne," Nouvelle revue francaise May

1937: 682-699. Rpt. in Le mvthe et 1'homme (Paris:

Gallimard, 1938).
 310

involves "[une] promotion du d6cor urbain h la quality

epique, plus exactement cette exaltation subite, dans le

sens du fantastique. . . .1,44 Paris hence assumes a dualist

density, analogous to the magical correspondances of Crete.

Caillois specifically cites, in literary historical terms,

Balzac's fascination with the primitive Indian beliefs

evokes in the landscapes of Fenimore Cooper:

II faut tenir pour acquis que cette metamorphose
de la Cite tient & la transposition dans son
decor, de la savane et de la foret de Fenimore
Cooper, ou toute branche cass6e signifie une
inquietude ou un espoir, ou tout tronc dissimule
le fusil d'un ennemi ou l'arc d'un invisible et
silencieux vengeur.45

Again, this antecedent to the master is critically

important. Just as Knossos summoned Apollo, so too Paris

awaits its master: "Rapidement, la structure mythique se

deveLappe s a la Cite innombrable s1 oppose le H£ros

legendaire destine a la conquerir.1,46 "Paris, mythe

moderne" thus highlights 1849 as a fundamental turning-point

"passage de 1'agitation b. l'action," best exemplified in

the figure of Balzac's Vautrin:

C'est proprement ce complexe que j'appelle

1'esprit luciferien. II correspond au moment ou
la revolte se mue en volonte de puissance et sans
rien perdre de son caract&re passionne et
subversif, attribue ci 1'intelligence, ci la vision
cynique et lucide de la realit6, un role de
premier plan pour la realisation de ses

44Caillois, Mythe 153.

45Caillois, Mvthe 154.
46Caillois, Mvthe 154.
 311

desseins.47

Vautrin's passage from agitation to action, from alienated

Romantic revolt to rebellious mastery hinges upon his

intellectual, Luciferian interpretation of the Parisian

milieu. In effect, the rise of Lucifer entails a

systematization of the Enlightenment's affective residual

— or what Caillois calls Romantic — values: "Cette

revision tend a en eliminer les parties faibles, a en

systematiser au contraire les cotes agressifs et

entreprenants.» 48

Significantly, Caillois' literary sociology equates

criminal character and literary creator: "le forcat

intraitable sur qui se referme touiours le baane" (Rimbaud)

and Baudelaire's aristocratic dandy. The novels of Balzac

and Baudelaire's "traduction l^qendaire de la vie

exterieure" incorporates into 'real life' those

"postulations" expressed by the Romantics in evasive

aesthetic terms, through "une litterature de refuge et

d'evasion."49 This mythical element renders it imperative,

exemplary, and collective, in a manner akin to the mythical

complex:

Expression d'une meme societe, ce qui s'ecrit, a

quelque niveau qu'on 1'examine, laisse voir une
coherence insoupgonnee, par suite d'une capacity

47Caillois, Mvthe 165.

48Caillois, Mvthe 168.
49Caillois, Mvthe 169.
 312

de persuasion, de pression et d'asservissement,

qui fait enfin de la litt6rature quelque chose de
s6rieux.50

Given its historical proximity to the present, "Paris, mythe

moderne" is more "imperative," of course, than "Jeux

d'ombres sur l'hellade," and most readers have interpreted

it as an injunction for the present. Marcel Mauss* famous

letter to Caillois in 1938 thus makes it the brunt of his

most vehement attack: "Mais ce que je crois un ddraillement

general, dont vous etes vous-meme victime, c'est cette

esp&ce d'irrationnalisme absolu par lequel vous terminez au

nom du labyrinthe et de Paris, mythe moderne."51 I would

note, though, that the Parisian labyrinth is highly

coherent and that its masters — Vautrin, Balzac and

Baudelaire — hardly embody absolute irrationalism. Beyond

that, their Luciferian rise within the cityscape is not

adeguate to the present since the social vacancy of 1937

differs from the fantastic and polarized Paris of 1849.

When Caillois does, then, portray the rise of the

modern Luciferian, he suggests that the latter's 'birth'

must be defined in rigorously individual terms. His review

of Vaclav Cerny's Essai sur le titanisme dans la poesie

romanticrue occidentale entre 1815 et 1850 for the NRF

[date] remarks upon the turn that Cerny defined (or

50Caillois, Mvthe 169.

51Marcel Mauss, letter to Roger Caillois, 22 June 1938,
Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps" (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou et Pandora, 1981) 205.
 313

insufficiently defined in Caillois' opinion) from Romantic

alienation to lyrical Titanism: "II faudra bientot saluer

avec effroi ou enthousiasme la naissance d'un nouveau

titanisme, singulierement plus vorace, plus actif, plus

realiste, situant bien les problemes sur le plan qu'il

faut."52 But the clearest protocol for the modern

Luciferian appeared in "L'aridite" (April 1938), which

Caillois described to Paulhan in September 1937 as an essay

on "la morale de 11 intelligence."53 This would announce:

"En soi, le desir de liberte, quand il n'est autre chose

pour un individu que la revendication d'agir dans les

details a sa guise et a l'abri des sanctions, n'est guere

capable de fonder ou meme d'entretenir."54 But where are

the sanctions at present? A social milieu devoid of norms

or structure, presents neither magical monsters, nor

"culpability sacree" to systematize and overcome. Caillois'

"morale de 1* intelligence" in September 1937 is one of

interiorized resistance: "Des qu'on s'est apergu que la

jouissance asservit, la liberte ne consiste plus a la

conquerir, mais a en triompher.1,55 And Lucifer's self-

52Roger Caillois, Rev. of Essai sur le titanisme dans

la poesie romantioue occidentale entre 1815 et 1850. by

Vaclav Cerny, Nouvelle revue francaise Nov. 1937: 849.
53Roger
Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Sept. 1 1937,
# 28, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers
Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez
(Paris: Gallimard, 1991) 54.
54Caillois, "L'aridite" 11.
55Caillois, "L1aridity" 11.
 314

mastery is just as epistemological as it is ascetic:

. . . on s'int£resse moins h ce qu'on connait qu'&

la fa?on dont on connait et 1'effort de
connaissance ne tarde pas a prendre ce dernier
point pour unique objet. L'aridity est alors
atteinte, 11 investigation n1 a plus d'autre champ
que sa propre svntaxe.

Such a model of willed internal censorship completely

skirts the unconscious apparatus of Freudian psychoanalysis

(much as Caillois had already done in La n6cessit6

d1esprit). Indeed, his deepest inspiration for the modern

Luciferian came from Loyola and Corneille. If "La naissance

de Lucifer" charts its genealogy from "1•inflexible, energie

des heros de Corneille,Caillois' "Resurrection de

Corneille" in the NRF of October 1938, evokes the "querelle

de Corneille" in the following Luciferian terms:

. d'un cote Balzac qui defend [la gloire

Cornellienne] contre l'humilite chretienne, de
1'autre Pascal, Nicole et jusqu'a Bossuet qui
condamne Corneille pour exalter en elle 'la plus
subtile et la plus dangereuse des
concupiscences', l'orgueil demoniaque. le
sentiment de la supreme independance intime.5®

And through Corneille, Caillois was pointing to Loyola. "Le

complexe de midi" in Minotaure (1936) had closed with a

quotation from La Rochefoucauld outlining the eternal verity

56Caillois, "L'aridit6" 9 [emphasis added].

57Caillois, "Naissance" 32.
58RogerCaillois, "Resurrection de Corneille," Nouvelle
revue francaise Oct. 1938: 662.
 315

of "la paresse."59 Two years later, though, Caillois had

forsworn Jansenism for the Jesuits, hailing the Loyolan

tenor of Corneille's "Lettre sur la liberte":

Corneille re?sut des J6suites, dont il suivit

1'enseignement, jusqu'ci la lettre de sa th6orie de
la liberty, de l"6nergie, de la subordination k la
volont6 des instincts et des sentiments pour
1'accomplissement contre tout obstacle d'une fin
d^liberement choisie.60

Caillois1 Corneillean inclinations positioned him in an

interesting dialogical stance with respect to members of the

French Right. "Resurrection de Corneille" reviews

Brasillach's Corneille. both praising its concerns for "la

fonction sociale de l'oeuvre" and criticizing it in such

social terms. Brasillach underscores Rodrigue's "haine de

jeune fasciste pour les vieillards, qui corrige bizarrement

en lui le sentiment de la solidarity familiale."61 Yet

Caillois then argues that the latter is a precondition to

the first, which he also reevaluates: "Le theatre de

Corneille est en partie une affirmation, contre les valeurs

montantes, de la vieille morale du clan, de la gens mais

renovee et dirigee vers un autre destin."62 He agrees with

Brasillach that the Corneillean hero is the creator of an

"ordre vivant"; deftly transmuting the fascist into the

59Roger Caillois, "Le complexe de midi," Minotaure 9

(1936): 10.
60Caillois, "Resurrection" 657.
61Caillois, "Resurrection" 661.
62Caillois, "Resurrection" 661.
 316

communist youth, however, Caillois adds that such a hero

possesses "les traits du jeune militant aux yeux clairs des

films sovi6tiques."63 Referring, moreover, to the

historical context of the Fronde, he writes:

M. Brasillach remarque bien que Corneille est k

cette revolution avort6e ce qu'est d'Annunzio h la
Marche sur Rome, mais il neglige le principal: les
sursauts de la morale aristocratique, 'celtique',
de 11 honneur et de la generosity devant la
coalition jans^niste et bourgeoise.64

In other words, Caillois suggests that Brasillach neglects

the marked aristocratic sensibility which is somehow

reaccentuated by the very desire to suppress it; such a

process is distantly analogous to rise of Romanticism in the

wake of the Enlightenment. Corneille's theater would then

constitute a theatrical systematization, one might say, of

this collective affect.

Still, this very heroism distinguishes Caillois from

the aristocratic demeanor of a Montherlant. In August

1938, he wrote to Paulhan that the author of Service

inutile possessed "la morale la plus saine du temps."65 A

year later, reviewing Ecminoxe de septembre. though, he

63Caillois, "Resurrection" 661.

64Caillois, "Resurrection" 662. On July 21 1938, he
would write to Paulhan: "L'exemple de Malraux (et de
l'Espagne) recouvre assez bien celui de Corneille et de la
Fronde. C'est d'ailleurs un sujet pour le College de
Sociologie" (#58, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger
Caillois," 86).
65Roger
Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Aug. 22 1938,
#63, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 91.
 317

condemned the "fantaisie," "espifeglerie," "libertinage," and

"disponibilitd,"66 of its aristocratic insouciance:

. . . si je ne suis pas gen£ par le gofrt que M. de

Montherlant dit avoir pour la guerre, il me
ddplait qu'il le fasse passer en le mettant au
compte de 1•esprit de contradiction, d1une sorte
de coquetterie de grand seigneur de 1'esprit, et
plus encore, qu'il le pr^sente comme une manifere
de devoir qui lui serait commande, pour le bien de
la patrie, par la dangereuse insistance des autres
& vanter la paix: je n'ai pas d1 indulgence pour
cette fa$on de provoquer d'un mot et d'apaiser de
1*autre, pour cet art de griffer d'une main et de
caresser de l1autre... 67

* * *

Even more acutely drawn, perhaps, than the traits of

the modern Luciferian intellectual is that composite

portrait of the modern Satanist — against which and through

whom Caillois defines himself at present. Although he never

quite articulates such an agenda, his writing throughout the

late 30s implicitly targets as a current "insurrection de la

sensibilite" certain elements from his past or present

entourage, or from his own intellectual evolution: Le Grand

Jeu, Surrealism, and Bataille. A review of Louis Lewin's

Les paradis artificiels for the Cahiers du Sud in January

1937 thus voices a Luciferian attack upon the usage of

drugs:

66RogerCaillois, Rev. of L'^ouinoxe de septembre by H.

de Montherlant, Nouvelle revue francaise Jan. 1939: 151.
67Caillois, Rev. of L'dauinoxe 152.
 318

Chaque delire, chaque prestige est un monde ferm6,

inconcevable et inaccessible aux autres et
incapable lui-m&ne et de les atteindre et de les
concevoir. La conscience, au contraire, ne
connait aucun obstacle de cet ordre : assez souple
pour suivre les folies dans leurs aberrations
particuliferes, assez conquerante pour en tirer
chaque fois profit et pousser plus loin son
empire.68

If this strategy seems best exemplified by his early patron,

Roger Gilbert-Lecomta and Le Grand Jeu. we find an assault

upon Surrealism, with its reverie, automatic writing and

imaginative laissez faire in Caillois' NRF review in

September 1937 of Duchamp's L1opposition et les cases

coniucruees sont reconcilides. Hardly the liberator of the

imagination that Surrealism declared him to be, Duchamp's

"aventures de 1•intelligence" are dominated by "1'esprit du

systeme."69 Caillois thus envisions a Luciferian "homme de

la recherche" — 'sovereign1 and 'tyrannical' — as opposed

to the "reveur":

L'imagination ne lui fait pas d£faut, mais il aime

mieux l'asservir que s'y soumettre, dans la pensee
que la domination est pr6ferable a la jouissance
ou par experience que la jouissance la plus aigiie
reside dans l'exercice meme de la domination.70

68Roger Caillois, Rev. of Les paradis artificiels. by

Louis Lewin, Cahiers du Sud (Jan. 1937): 57.

69Roger Caillois, Rev. of Les 6checs artistiaues. by
Andre Cheron; L'opposition et les cases coniuauees sont
reconciliees. by Marcel Duchamp et Halberstadt," Nouvelle
revue francaise. Sept. 1937: 512. Caillois writes: "il ne
reste dans les problemes etudies par Duchamp que le
developpement de series logiques adaptees des la mise en
branle a une reussite lointaine ineluctable"(512).
70Caillois, Rev. of Les echecs 513.
 319

As for Caillois' work in the immediate aftermath of his

Surrealist affiliations, Satan's residence in "le cot6

nocturne de la nature" echoes the formula of his 1935

naturphilosophie. now repudiated according to the tenets of

wissenschaftlehre.

Most importantly of all, I suspect, Caillois' use of

the term Satanism tends to target Bataille: the sovereign

Luciferian somehow poised against sovereign negativity. Let

us briefly compare in this respect "L'aridite" with

Bataille's "Van Gogh Prometh6e," an essay published earlier

in Verves 1 (Dec 1937) (and thus along with "La naissance de

Lucifer"). "Van Gogh Promethee" elaborates upon that

Promethean identity, both solar and self-sacrificial, which

Bataille consistently attributes to Van Gogh in the later

30s. Caillois' "L'aridite" explicitly rejects the sacrifice

or expenditure of self — "la croyance demesurement

optimiste qu'il suffit de s'abandonner pour conqu^rir le

ciel"71 Bataille's essay, though, describes how the artist,

having severed his ear, achieves "le terrible 'point

d'ebullition,'1,72 an act of auto-mutilation, or vestigial

experience of sacrifice that occurs on a grander and more

cosmic scale than before:

. . . ce n'est pas seulement une oreille sanglante

71Caillois, "L'aridity" 10.

72GeorgesBataille, "Van Gogh Prom6th6e," Oeuvres
completes 10 vols., ed. Michel Foucault (Paris: Gallimard,
1970) 1: 498.
 320

que Van Gogh d£tacha de sa propre tete pour la

porter h cette "liaison" — image trouble,
grossi&rement enfantine, de ce monde que nous
sommes, face aux autres — beaucoup plus qu'une
oreille, Van Gogh qui, d&s 1882 pensait qu'il
valait mieux etre Prom6th6e que Jupiter, n'a rien
moins arrache de lui-meme qu'un SOLEIL.

Bataille contrasts the relative security and stability of

the earth (and "maison") with the distant and cataclysmic

expenditure of the sun, usually viewed at a safe distance,

and as part of the decor. Van Gogh disrupts and reverses

this relation, as he translates himself, and his home, into

the decor of the sun:

Van Gogh commenga a donner au soleil un sens qu'il

n'avait pas eu jusque la. II ne le fit pas entrer
dans ses toiles comme une partie d'un decor, mais
comme le sorcier dont la danse souleve lentement
la foule et l'emporte dans son mouvement. C'est a
ce moment que toute sa peinture acheva d'etre
ravonnement. explosion, flamme. et lui-meme perdu
extatiquement devant un foyer de lumifere
ravonnant. exolosant. en flammes. Quand cette
danse solaire commen^a, tout a coup, la nature
elle-meme s'6branla, les plantes s1embrasferent et
la terre ondula comme une mer rapide ou 6clata: il
ne subsista rien de la stabilite qui constitue
1*assise des choses.73

If' the Promethean Van Gogh transmutes the domestic

terrestrial landscape into an explosive and solar self-

sacrifice, the Luciferian of "L'aridite" always masters his

milieu or decor, a lunar rather than solar landscape:

"etendues steriles et denudees des deserts de sable ou de

glace."74 This mastery even entails its own "vertige de la

73Bataille, "Van Gogh" 498.

74Caillois, "L*aridity" 7.
 321

rigueur," or vertigo of detachment: "C'est bientot 1'unique

alcool capable d'enivrer puissammeiit que ce vide ardent cr66

par 1'intelligence sous ses propres pas."75 Such "ivresse"

implicitly counters Bataille's Satanic (or Romantic) "point

d'Ebullition" — "ce qui lie la sauvage destin^e humaine au

ravonnement. a l1 explosion. la flamme et par la seulement

k la puissance."76 The lunar, analytical "ivresse" of the

modern Luciferian, seeks to contain and overcome, it would

seem, the power and violence of Bataille's solar, Mithraic,

participation.

75Caillois, "L'aridity" 7.
76Bataille, "Van Gogh" 500.
 322

L'aile froide

If Caillois was so concerned with the status of the

individual Luciferian, this may also have had to do with his

own coming-into-being as a writer who could systematize his

syntax in rather more literary than scientific ways, even

though his rejection of literature and aesthetics, initiated

during his Surrealist phase, had appeared, by these years,

to have reached its high-point.77 Indeed, such a parti pris

was firmly conveyed by his historical distinction between

post-Romantic "maudits" and the modern 'sociological'

Luciferian. Still, we might note Caillois' letter to

Paulhan of November 1935, describing the strategy of

literary bluff used in "Le vent d'hiver" to 'convert' his

readers:

. . . n'ayant pas la force, je devais jouer sur le

mimetisme. Alors, moi qui ddteste les phrases,
j'ai essaye d'en faire, dans la pensee gu'il se
trouverait peut-etre des gens qui seraient gagnes
par 1'atmosphere et feraient nombre, rendant cette

77Consider, for example, his attack on poetry in

response to an "Enquete sur la poesie indispensable" for the
Cahiers G.L.M. in October 1938: "Parmi les t&ches urgentes
que l'epoque reclame de 1*esprit, j'apergois en effet dans
les toutes premieres celle de rendre la poesie a sa juste et
mediocre fonction, celle de confiner a son petit domaine
cette activite qui envahit les grands avec tant de
pr6somption (Roger Caillois, ''Reponse a 1'enquete sur la
poesie indispensable," Cahiers G.L.M. Oct. 1938: 56).
 323

atmosphere effective.78

Caillois apparently regrets this mimetic strategy of

rhetoric and writing instead of a more legitimate

alternative, insisting to Paulhan: "Vous savez, je ne suis

pas ecrivain, il m'int6resse seulement d*avoir une

action."79 Noting Breton's similar claims, Paulhan replied

that such a denial was ineffectual; Caillois1 declared

ambitions of writing for effect did not deny but rather

confirmed his status as a writer.80

Caillois* intellectual relation with Paulhan became

increasingly intimate in the late 30s — for example, on the

editorial board of the journal Mesures. which originally

sought to pursue the project of Inquisitions — and it is

likely that such influence encouraged him to acknowledge the

literary dimension of his essayistic activity. The Archives

interview notes that such essays as "L'aridite" reveal "au

moins du point de vue du style une espece de virage. . . .

C*est vraiment le moment ou je m'apersois que j'avais bien

tort de vouloir mettre fin & la litterature et que j'etais

sur le point de passer la tete sous le joug."81 Doomed to

78Roger
Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Nov. 5 1937,
#33, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 60.
79Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Nov. 5 1937, #33,

"Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 60.

80Jean
Paulhan, letter to Roger Caillois, [end 1937-
early 1938] #35, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger
Caillois" 67.
81Caillois, Archives V.
 324

teach grammar at the Lyc£e de Beauvais, this aardge de

qrammaire had indeed become a writer emboldened with

Luciferian "ind6pendance," as he would declare in Volont6s

of December 1938. "En toute s6v6rit€" assailed a journalist

who had criticized the current teaching of grammar in

schools. Ascribing to this uninformed critic the lack of

any "conscience professionnelle," Caillois adds somewhat

unexpectedly:

Plus encore, je mets en doute qu'il soit

convenable d'6crire pour gagner sa vie. II faut,
me semble-t-il, que 1*existence de l'ecrivain soit
assuree d'autre part pour qu'il puisse lui etre
accord^ quelque confiance, en toute s6verit6.
Aussi, pour ma part, ne renoncerai-je pas a mon
m6tier, qui est justement d'enseigner la
grammaire, dans la crainte de me voir entrain^,
presse par le besoin, a m'exprimer 16gerement ou
sans avoir le moindre droit a le faire. Car pour
1'independance, Dieu merci, je ne suis que trop
sfir de moi.82
Yet Caillois' Luciferian self-restraint would prevent

him from publishing a poignant lyrical essay, L'aile froide.

highly admired by Paulhan, and due to appear in the NRF.

This recit was withdrawn by its rather prudish and bashful

author, and published posthumously, in 1989.83 The most

likely reason is that L'aile froide explored Lucifer's

sexual relations with women in quite explicit terms, despite

the framework of Corneillian paradigms and a language

82Roger Caillois, "En toute s6verite," Volontes 12

(Dec. 1938): 49.
83Roger Caillois, L'aile froide (Paris: Fata Morgana,
1989).
 325

redolent of the moraliste literary tradition. In his review

of October 1937, Caillois remarked that Blum's Du mariaqe

sought to eliminate all drama from the relations between the

sexes, citing the work's "extreme gotit du confort

sentimental, un certain besoin de distances entre l'homme et

la femme et comme une secrete peur panique des ravages de la

passion, qui fait penser que l'auteur dans sa jeunesse ne

fut que trop d6vast6 par eux."84 Of course, Caillois well

understood the ravages of passion, the sexual terror of the

femme fatale amd the praying-mantis. Yet in 1937, he would

not seek to contend with this through 'sentimental'

distance. His epigraph to "L'aridite" (from Valery)

— "Repas de ma puissance, intelligible orgie" — intimates

that a masculine intelligence will do all the devouring at

present:

La loi de severity gouverne aussi bien les

affaires de 1'amour et de 1'ambition que celles de
1'intelligence. . . . [C'est] le consentement
intime qu'il importe de forcer ou de seduire. Le
gouvernement des sentiments et des pensees
signifie plus en effet que celui des actes, qu'ils
determinent ou inflechissent ou depassent.85

In his discussion of Duchamp, Caillois had similarly

remarked that if the Luciferian "researchers" were to commit

a rape (presenting this as an extreme deductive argument),

this would be motivated neither by instinct nor pleasure

"mais pour en faire ressentir a la victime, malgre elle, et

84Caillois, Rev. of L'exercice du pouvoir 675.

85Caillois, "L1aridity" 11.
 326

sdduits par cette strange cruaut£ d'imposer la voluptd

meme.1,86

Denis Hollier cites these remarks as evidence of

Caillois1 "sadisme rose."87 Without contesting such

psychoanalytic motivations, I would nevertheless suggest

that other texts might shed perspective on this question.

In particular, his review of the Marquis de Wavrin's Moeurs

et coutumes des indiens sauvaaes de I'americme du sud for

the Cahiers du Sud in 1937 describes 'primitive* sexuality

and passes implicit judgement upon it as follows:

Le fait que, tres generalement, la femme dans le

coit doit rester absolument passive et ne pas
chercher a participer au spasme eclaire notamment
de la fa?on la plus significative tout un aspect
du comportement tant economique que psychologique
des hommes et des femmes dans leurs rapports
mutuels. Cette inegalite dans le traitement
physique complique en effet singuliferement ceux-ci
(independamment de toute determination sociale)
et c'est ainsi qu'a propos des Melanesiens etudies
par M. Malinowski, M. Mauss a fait remarquer que
"les services de toute sorte, rendus a la femme
par le mari sont consideres comme un salaire-don
pour le service rendu par la femme lorsqu'elle
prete ce que le Koran appelle encore le 'champ1."
Comme on le voit. on est loin de 11 association
contractee en vue d'une iouissance reciprocrue.
au'imaainait un Stirner. ! !.8a

However sadist, I would say, Caillois' romantic ideal is

primarily anchored in Corneille, whose amour d'estime set

86Caillois, Rev. of Les echecs 513.

87Denis Hollier, "Mimesis and Castration 1937," October

31 (1984): 8.
88Roger Caillois, Rev. of Moeurs et coutumes des
indiens sauvaaes de l'am6riaue du sud. by the Marquis de
Wavrin, Cahiers du Sud Aug. 1937: 445 [emphasis added].
 327

the stage for Stirner's contracted association.

Reviewing Silence ("Un roman cornelien") by Andr6

Rouveyre for the NRF in March 1938, Caillois declares it a

timely relief from the sway of Racine on French sensibility

— "la fatality d'une passion qui triomphe de toutes les

resistances et excuse tous les desordres."®9 Reversing

chronology, one might suggest that for Caillois, Racine is a

Romantic and Corneille already post-Romantic:

Lli existe (le cas est presque unique) pour ces

choses de l'amour une syntaxe diff6rente. ... II
faut aimer quelqu'un pour les merites que la
raison distingue en lui, 1'aimer seulement dans la
mesure oil la volont6 le commande et en conservant
toujours la liberte d'agir comme si l'on n'aimait

Here again, he cites from Corneille's "Lettre sur la

liberte": "Nous ne sommes point redevables a celui de qui

nous recevons un bienfait par contrainte, et on ne nous

donne point ce qu'on ne saurait nous refuser."91 Such a

89Roger
Caillois, Rev. of Silence, by Andre Rouveyre,
Nouvelle revue francaise March 1938: 477; "Touchant l'amour
eri effet, la tradition litteraire en France comme la
sensibilite generale du public, est uniformement racinienne.
. ."(477).
90Caillois, Rev. of Silence 478. See also Caillois1
edition of Le Cid for the student-series of Hachette in
1938. The Archives interview claims that his ideas in this
regard prefigured the important thesis of Octave Nadal, Le
sentiment de l'amour dans l'oeuvre de Pierre Corneille
(Paris: Gallimard, 1946) which reinterpreted the Corneillian
conflict of "passion" and "duty": "Corneille a su d6gager et
illustrer une th6orie de l'amour h6roique en harmonie avec
sa conception de la vie et de l'h^roisme. L'originalit6 de
1'analyse de la passion a partir du Cid tient a cette
decouverte; l'honneur et l'amour n'entrent plus en conflit:
ils conspirent ensemble"(269).
91Caillois, Rev. of Silence 479.
 328

passage departs from the tenets of Mauss's "Essai sur le

don" as well as the afore-mentioned commentary on Malinowski

which implicates the sexual life of 'primitive' men and

women in a dissymetrical process of exchange; insofar as

love is concerned, Caillois suggests, this social exchange-

system is inadequate since it disregards the requisite and

free acceptance of the individual subject.

As a contemporary transmission of this Corneillian

paradigm, through the prism of Sade, Rouveyre's novels

depict a "s6che et ardente dialectique de 1'Education

sentimentale.1,92 This love ethic draws out such Corneillian

premises to their ultimate consequences — "a 1'extreme

cruaut6 notamment."93 It requires a hero sufficiently

enamoured to desire, above all, "que son amante conquiere

1'independance et le gouvernement de soi — pour desirer la

voir fiere plutot qu'humili6e.1,94 By the conclusion, "elle

comprend le sens du rigoureux dressage que son amant lui a

impose, et devenue creature de proie semblable a lui, le

remercie de 1'avoir forcee a la gu6rison severe."95

I have cited this review at such length because L'aile

froide subtly questions the resolution of this extreme and

even cruel "apprentissage" in an interesting narrative

92Caillois, Rev. of Silence 481.

93Caillois, Rev. of Silence 480.
94Caillois, Rev. of Silence 480.
95Caillois, Rev. of Silence 481.
 329

conflation of sociology and literature. Indeed, the work

seems a commentary of sorts upon Rouveyre's "seche et

ardente dialectique de 11 education sentimentale" which

questions its very ellision of sentiment and sexual affect.

This aspect of 'love* is precisely what renders the rather

Luciferian protagonist (albeit unnamed as such) of Caillois'

lyrical essay incapable of achieving the formulaic

resolution of Rouveyre's sadist amour d'estime. As a rather

Weberian moraliste. the narrator presents the deductive

evolution of a 'type,' who inhabits the glacier "l'Aile

Froide," landscape of "L'aridite": 11 Au point extreme ou se

fondent les sens et la volonte, il est ainsi une lucidite,

une ivresse qui balaie d'un souffle scrupules et

incertitudes.1,96 Yet such lucidity does not fully extend

into the realm of his own sexuality. Caillois paints the

tortuous quandary of his hero, torn between the power

relations of sexuality and the free will required by amour

d'estime. unable to realize Stirner's contract given his

"soif insatiable de domination"97 and that "accord fonde sur

l'inegalite des droits qui reglait ses relations avec les

femmes."98 Caillois' narrator endeavors to provide Lucifer

96Roger Caillois, L'aile 12.

97Caillois, L'aile 20.
98Caillois,L'aile 24. It is difficult not to read
this as barely veiled confession; especially since Caillois
already transposed his first-person associations (in La
necessite d'esprit) to third-person form for their
publication in 1934: "Analyse et commentaire d'un exemple
 330

with that higher self-consciousness he seemingly lacks in

this realm, his Achilles' heel, or point of fatality rather

than lucid free will.

The masculine counterpart to Caillois' praying-mantis

of 1934 is a hero imbued with a demonic fascination, "[une]

cruelle clarte qui emanait de lui et qui paralysait ses

victimes."99 He does nothing to seduce, due to his

aristocratic hauteur and also because his prey drifts into

his 'orbit' through a mode of automatic "annexions."100 A

Nietzschean self-mastery prevents him from being truly

seduced or enslaved by his lovers, while he enjoys their

submission:

II les en etit peut-etre mepris6es sans la

tendresse qu'il leur portait, et qui etait grande
(il ne s'etait pas rendu si inhumain que ses
sentiments fussent tout a fait sans action sur ses
jugements, mais il le savait et l'acceptait par
coquetterie), ni surtout sans la sourde certitude
que, donnant la leur mesure entiere, elles
trouvaient dans leur abdication genereuse le
parfait accomplissement de leur nature dependante
et atteignaient d'emblee une grandeur qui avait
son echelle propre et qu'il devait reconnaitre bon
gr6, mal gre.10-1-

As this might suggest, all is not resolved in the glacial

realm. If his lovers struggle to divine his every whim, the

master comes to regret his power and, in a striking

d'association libre d'id^es," Recherches philosophicrues 4

(1934-35): 321-336.

"caillois, L'aile 18.

100Caillois, L'aile 16.
101Caillois, L'aile 20.
 331

passage, criticizes their very efforts quite literally to

absorb themselves in him:

. . . et vous restez vous-meme par la resistance
que votre nature oppose a votre volont6 ou
l'inertie et l'6paisseur de la chair aux efforts
de vos muscles. R£jouissez-vous de ne pas
r6ussir. Quel serait mon bonheur, si vous ne me
laissiez rien a souhaiter?102

The narrator explains that the women could never guess

Lucifer's real desire: "au fond, c'6tait qu'elles devinssent

semblables a lui."103 Indeed, the dynamics of amour

d'estime cannot exist between 'despotic' producer and

'malleable' consumer — forever frozen in their respective

roles.

In a convoluted passage, the narrator describes

Lucifer's troubled awareness of this "contradiction intime":

II les aimait pour ces faiblesses qu'il leur

reprochait et dont il travaillait ci les
debarrasser. Et sans ces faiblesses, elles ne
pouvaient 1'aimer comme il l'exigeait. II se
d6sesperait ainsi de ne pouvoir obtenir une
fermete dont il eiit 6te le premier a souffrir,
tant il trouvait plaisir a faire naitre a son
profit chez les etres fiers et libres la docility
des esclaves. C'etait sa fatality de perseverer
dans cette entreprise funeste a son interet le
plus clair et dont chaque progr&s retardait le
succes definitif, en flattant une ambition
incapable de se borner.104

The narrator's intricate syntax leaves the reader undecided

as to whether Lucifer's fatality resides in his persistent

102Caillois, L'aile 28.

103Caillois, L'aile 21.
104Caillois, L'aile 21.
 332

enslavement of his mistresses or rather in his liberating

pedagogy; I suspect that his frustrated project is the

latter, namely Rouveyre's cruel apprentissage. Whatever

the case may be, he is clearly engaged in both at the same

time and their aims are not as readily resolved as the

conflict of love and duty in Corneille. "II faudrait, tant

ma convoitise est gloutonne," Caillois' protagonist

announces to his lovers at the conclusion, "que vous

cessiez, a la lettre, d'exister. Mais n'est-il pas plus

complet, plus enivrant qu'une victoire achev6e, ce triomphe

supreme de vous contraindre h desirer vainement et toujours

votre defaite?"-'-®® Yet the reader is aware that this query

and "triomphe supreme" is flawed since without freedom, the

slave's desire is not true desire.

Both L'aile froide and the subsequent gesture of its

suppression suggest that, in 1938, Caillois deemed a

Stirnerian contract of mutual 'jouissance' and its literary

expression to be beyond his Luciferian control. In any

event, he had transposed his fear cf the vagina dentata onto

the excessive absorption of a dissolute society. For this

reason, I would read L'aile froide against Bataille's

founding essay for the College. "L'apprenti sorcier," which

evoked the secret communion of lovers as another vestigial

instance of the sacred, and hence of anti-fascist social

cohesion. Searching, as usual, for contemporary versions

105Caillois, L'aile 29.

 333

of the sacred, Bataille's essay identified masculine

sexuality (rather than auto-mutilation) as a rare 'total*

experience of "la simplicity sauvage"106: "Ce qu'un etre

possede au fond de lui-meme de perdu, de tragique, la

'merveille aveuglante1 ne peut plus etre rencontr6e que sur

un lit.1'107 Although the imagery is here less violent than

the essays on Van Gogh, such an experience, imbued with

death and negativity, broadly cohered with Bataille's views

of self-sacrifice as the explosive source of sacred energy.

In its skeptical rejection of Luciferian romance,

L'aile froide seems to pursue or complement "Le vent

d'hiver" which depicted, against Bataille's vision, a virile

Luciferian community, achieved through elective

correspondance with equals- L'aile froide — whose title

obliquely echoes and counterpoints, perhaps, Bataille's

solar eagle — would seem further to confirm the unlikely

nature of the community arising from Lucifer's erotic

unions. Rather than an ecstatic and total experience, the

embryonic basis of community, his sexual harem, as it might

well be called, is fraught with the constant but impossible

tension of Lucifer's desire to translate automatic

'annexions * between producer and consumer into the mutual

recognition of producers: "il souffrait avec difficulty que

106Georges Bataille, "L'apprenti sorcier," Le collfege

de socioloaie 47.
107Bataille, "L'apprenti" 48.
 334

leur nature dtit etre 1'inverse de la sienne pour qu'une

entente durable s'6tablit entre eux. . . ."108 In 1937, he

has simply inversed the terms of the praying-mantis,

positioning the male, at present, as the dominant force; and

such gender relations are ineluctable and static. "Tout se

r6duit au pouvoir et a la possession, et IS. sont en rigueur

des relations cruelles, irr6versibles et implacables,1,109

declared "L'aridite." Lucifer's unstated problem is that

the rigid dynamics of sexuality preclude the very mastery of

the master, enslaving him, as it were, in the "fatalite de

domination."

The solution Caillois will propose clearly shuns the

sexual self-abandonment of "L'apprenti sorcier," whose

participants experience "une volonte d'etre avide et

puissante"110 and, through the workings of chance, "la

creation de correspondances encore informes.h111 His

primary paradigm for the College de sociologie involves the

abandonment of self to the higher corporate being of the

sect: that social milieu required to create and to serve as

the vehicle of militant orthodoxy. Such "ivresse," as we

shall see, merely translates individual Luciferian lucidity

and self-mastery onto a higher level. The mutual

108Caillois, L'aile 23.

109Caillois, L'aile 12.
110Bataille, "L'apprenti" 51.
1:L1Bataille, "L'apprenti" 52.
 335

recognition of equals (producers) involves a new logic of

participation, or systematization, whereby the members

achieve an extreme form of self-transcendance.

 336

Chapter 8

The College de sociologie

Sects

Despite his frequent absences, first for reasons of

health, and then, due to his departure for Buenos Aires in

June 1939, Caillois performed the role of the public

theoretician for the Collfege. drafting their manifestoes

with the ambition that he might forge a common ground, a

logic of participation, out of their individual differences.

In the winter of 1937 and the spring of 1938, only Bataille

and Caillois spoke at the College. (Michel Leiris gave an

important talk on "Le sacr£ dans la vie quotidienne" but

retreated thereafter; and Kojeve gave a talk on "Les

conceptions hegeliennes.11) The second series of talks, from

1938 to 1939, on the other hand, included a vast array of

speakers. Michel Surya mentions: "Pierre Klossowski (qui

parlera de Sade), Guastalla, Lewitzky, Hans Mayer, peut-etre

selon Denis Hollier, Duthuit, Paulhan, Wahl et Landsberg,

peut-etre aussi selon Pierre Prevost, Denis de Rougemont. .

. .h1 In the audience, he notes the presence, among others,

•^Michel Surya, Georges Bataille la mort a l'oeuvre

(Paris: Garamont, 1987) 271.
 337

of Benda, Drieu la Rochelle, Dandieu and Aron, Benjamin,

Landsberg, Adorno and Horkheimer.2

The first two manifestoes drafted by Caillois contained

the same basic idea: that the College would reconcile

individual and social motivation through a form of

systematization, identifying "les points de coincidence

entre les tendances obs£dantes fondamentales de la

psychologie individuelle et les structures directrices qui

president h 11 organisation sociale et commandent ses

revolutions.113 In the first version, Caillois stressed what

he called the contagious and activist nature of

representations to be explored, imbued with the active and

current presence of the sacred, and which would inevitably

implicate the researchers in a moral community.4 A year

later, he launched a broader attack upon individualism, as a

literary revolt that did not acknowledge advances in the

human sciences and ignored the important affective aspects

of the relation between the individual and the social.

Here, he also voiced the ambition that "la communaute ainsi

formee deborde de son plan initial, glisse de la volonte de

2Surya, Georges Bataille 271.

3Roger Caillois, "Pour un college de sociologie,11 Le

college de sociologie. ed. Denis Hollier (Paris: Gallimard,

1979) 34.
4He
recalls: "Je r^digeai a cette occasion une sorte
d1expose des motifs, approuv6 par Georges Bataille et par
Michel Leiris" (Approches de l'imaginaire [Paris: Gallimard,
1974] 58).
 338

connaissance & la volonte de puissance, devienne le noyau

d'une plus vaste conjuration, — le calcul d61ib6r£ que ce

corps trouve une ame."5 Caillois' correspondance with

Paulhan reveals that he also drafted the statement of the

Collfeae in November 1938 condemning the Munich accords

— "Declaration du College de Sociologie sur la Crise

internationale" — before having it approved and signed by

the other members.6 This loudly condemned the lack of

general and pronounced French reaction to the possibility of

war:
. . . 1'absence g6n6rale de reaction vive devant
la guerre [est] un signe de d6virilisation de
l'homme. [Le College de sociologie] n'h^site pas
h en voir la cause dans le rel&chement des liens
actuels de la societe, dans leur quasi-
inexistence, en raison du developpement de
11 individualisme bourgeois.7

Even more pointedly, then, did this confirm the

potential activism of the College, whose social energy would

compensate for the absent bonds of current society. In

October 1938, Caillois described to Paulhan his scale of

relative social cohesion or "embrigadement": "les

communistes . . . se trouvent plus decides que les radicaux,

5Caillois, "Pour un College" 35.

6Roger
Caillois wrote to Paulhan: "Voici en attendant
la declaration du College de So. Je l'ai fait approuver
hier soir par Bataille et Leiris et taper ce matin" (letter
to Jean Paulhan, Oct. 8 1938, #69, "Correspondance Jean
Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile
Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez [Paris: Gallimard, 1991] 97).
7"Declaration du College de Sociologie sur la crise

internationale," Le college de sociologie 103.

 339

les militaires que les civils, etc..."8 And a footnote to

his essay, "La hi6rarchie des dtres," declared in

Volontaires 5 (Apr. 1939) that the model of the Communist

Party was present to mind:

II faut que de cette vetuste et parmi ces

decombres se leve une force neuve. II est
loisible au communisme d'etre cette force
d'avenir. II porte en lui assez d'espoirs pour
revendiquer en outre la notion d'ordre. II
suffirait meme qu'a I'interieur de ses forces, une
minority decidee en adopte et en maintienne
l'id£al. Point n'est m&me besoin de publicity: il
est entre le secret et la notion d'ordre une
singuliere et naturelle connexion.9

As this very quote might again suggest, Caillois was too

concerned with non-utilitarian social affect, with

"culpabilite sacree," fully to espouse the Party's rational

utopianism — even though this would not induce him to

participate, as we shall see, in Bataille's projected

sacrificial community of Acephale.

I would suggest that there was an evolution in

Caillois' theoretical focus between 1937 and 1939, from the

idea of sects to that of the sacred, even though the two

were intertwined from the start. His work in 1938 and 1939

8Caillois wrote to Paulhan on October 18 1938: "Je

pense personnellement que ces reactions varient avec le
degr6 d'embrigadement (de socialisation par consequent) des
individus : les communistes ainsi se trouvent plus decides
que les radicaux, les militaires que les civils, etc..."
(letter to Jean Paulhan, #71, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-
Roger Caillois" 98).
9Roger Caillois, "La hidrarchie des etres,"
Volontaires 5 (Apr. 1939): 317-326. Rpt. in La communion
des forts (Mexico: Quetzal, 1943) 136.
 340

primarily concerned L'homme et le sacr6. a lengthy

anthropological study which pursued the concept of militant

orthodoxy when it declared:

. . . chacun de ceux qui rfeglent leur conduite sur

1'adhesion de leur etre entier & quelque principe,
tendent a reconstituer autour de lui une sorte de
milieu sacr£, qui suscite des Amotions violentes
die nature spgcifique, capables de prendre un
aspect religieux caract6ris6, extase, fanatisme ou
mysticisme, et qui, sur le plan social, donnent
naissance de fa£on plus ou moins nette a des
dogmes et a des rites, & une mythologie et a un
culte.10

Caillois1 last three talks at the Collfeae directly implicate

this study: "Le pouvoir" (Feb 19 1938 — Bataille spoke

and Caillois1 text is lost); "Sociologie du bourreau,"

(February 21 1939); and "La fete" (May 2 1939). Like the

introductory "Le vent driver," on the other hand, his first

three talks at the College apparently addressed the

principle of social cohesion and sects which embodied this

orthodoxy. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of material

regarding these texts which were either lost or never fully

drafted: "La sociologie sacr6e et les rapports entre

•societe', 'organisme', •etreMI (November 20 1937

— Caillois* text is lost); "Les societes animales" (Dec.18

1937 — text lost); "Confr6ries, ordres, soci6t6s secretes,

£glises" (March 19 1938 — Bataille spoke in his place and

Caillois' text is lost). But Bataille would remark upon "le

domaine que Caillois s'etait reserve, & savoir le domaine

10Roger Caillois, L'homme et le sacre (Paris:

Gallimard, 1950) 172.
 341

des societ6s secretes, ou si l'on veut des communaut6s

£lectives. . . . ^n(j caillois would later highlight this

himself in "L1esprit des sectes," written during the war in

Buenos Aires, which evoked the recent College:

On 6tait passionn£ par la decision des hommes qui

de temps en temps, au cours de l'histoire,
semblent vouloir donner des lois fermes & la
soci£t£ sans discipline qui ne sut pas contenter
leur d£sir de rigueur. On suivait avec sympathie
les demarches de ceux qui, s'6cartant d'elle avec
degotit, allaient vivre ailleurs sous des
institutions plus rudes.12

Speaking instead of Caillois on "Confr^ries, ordres,

societes secretes, 6glises," Bataille cited the current

importance of such groups for both the fascists and the

Communist party; and he mentioned the common desire since

the end of Dada to provide, through secret societies, "une

sorte de r6alit6 agissante aux aspirations qui se sont

definies en partie sous le nom de surrealisme. . . .13 More

specifically, he defined it as a constant "fonction de

rajeunissement de la soci6t6 vieillie.1,14

•^George Bataille, "Le pouvoir," Le college de

sociologie 254.
12Roger Caillois, Ensavo sobre el esplritu de las
sectas (Mexico: Colegio de Mexico, 1945). Rpt. in Instincts
et societe (Paris: Gonthier, 1964) 66. Here, he listed:
"soci6tes d'hommes des populations primitives, communaut6s
initiatiques, confreries sacerdotales, sectes heretiques ou
orgiaques, ordres monastiques ou militaires, organisations
terroristes, associations politiques secretes de 1*Extreme-
Orient ou des periodes troubles du monde europeen"(66).
13Georges Bataille, "Confr6ries, ordres, soci£t£s
secretes, 6glises," Le college de sociologie 284.
14Bataille, "Confr6ries" 283.
 342

Although Caillois concurred on this point, his ideas

concerning the sect or secret community were quite

different. Until 1937, as we have seen, most of Caillois'

paradigms involved an absorbing system or osmotic

superstructure. After the fall of the Front Populaire.

however, the social vacuum called not for the absorption of

residuals but for the very creation of the system itself,

arising from the interiorized systematization of the

individual Luciferian. The political sociologist, Pareto,

whose work was influential in the rise of fascist ideology

and was widely read by Bataille, Caillois, and others in

their milieu, had argued that society should be revitalized

from below, by the integration of vital and dynamic

residuals constituted by the lower classes, or the

proletariat.15 Caillois' idea of that masculine sect which

might 'save' France, as it were, also involved the action of

a residual group. Reversing Pareto in a sense, however,

this residual group was an absolute elite whose power or

dynamic role did not derive from unbridled vitalism; on the

15MichaelCurtis explains in The Great Political

Theories (2 vols. [New York: Avon, 1981]) that "Pareto's
treatment of an elitist ruling class in The Mind and Society
(1916) was based on psychological analysis of human behavior
into the basic human impulses, 'the residues,• the unvarying
instincts, and 'the derivatives,' or rationalizations of
behavior"(2: 320). Pareto would argue: "The governing class
is restored not only in numbers, but — and that is the more
important thing — in quality, by families rising from the
lower classes and bringing with them the vigour and the
proportions of residues necessary for keeping themselves in
power. It is also restored, by the loss of its more
degenerate members" (Pareto qtd. in Curtis 326).
 343

contrary, the Luciferian collective was to achieve its

mastery through the creation of an intellectual system or

order, a higer level of Luciferian self-consciousness.

Caillois' initial pronouncement to the College, "Le

vent d'hiver," describes the creation of an elective elite,

an anti-fascist group whose answer to fascism lay in the

elective nature of this union, transcending all

geographical, social, and biological definition — even

though it was predicated on the distinction between producer

and consumer, that is to say, a determined meritocracy. "Le

vent d'hiver" urges anarchic individualists to join together

in a Luciferian community, turning from desecration and

sacrilege to the reconstitution of the sacred through a

Nietzschean chivalric order. It paints a panorama of the

social renewal and purification to be wrought by this youth

group which, alone, may withstand the bitter change of

season, bringing with it vital social transformation. This

shift from the summer focus of the demons de midi to the

social festivities of winter clearly illustrates the harsher

tenor of the time, and the requisite shift in strategy from

militant orthodoxy to the recreation of the social milieu

itself. Translating primitive pagan rites of social renewal

into modern Luciferian terms, "Le vent d'hiver" paints an

eery portrait of an agressive Nietzschean aristocracy:

"Qu'ils se comptent et se reconnaissent dans l'air rar6fi6,

que l'hiver les quitte unis, compacts, au coude ci coude,

 344

avec la conscience de leur force, et le nouveau printemps

consacrera leur destin."16 Caillois highlights their

Luciferian detachment:

1'ironie souveraine de se reaarder vivre au moment

de la tragedie. ce detachement supreme des forts,
signal^ par Stirner, qui leur donne la mesure
d'eux-memes et les assure de la non-valeur de tous
ceux qui ne seraient pas capables d'une pareille
616gance.17

Yet, socialization raises this to an even higher order.

Referring to their individual reactions (their likes and

dislikes, interpersonal attraction and repulsion), he

writes:
Approfondies et syst6matis6es, regard£es comme
1'expression d'une r£alite fondamentale, nul doute
que [ces reactions] ne parviennent a donner a
l'individu le plus jaloux de son ind£pendance une
conscience de groupe extremement forte, comportant
au besoin une totale alienation de lui-meme.18

The essay outlines the creation of an ethic, primarily

inspired by the principle of "1'honnetete." ("II ne faut pas

douter qu'elle soit un instinct exprimant l'imp6ratif

d'unite et de totalite de l'etre. . . .19) From this

aristocratic ideal, Caillois derives three correlative

virtues — "mepris," "1'amour du pouvoir," and "courtoisie"

— again stressing the role of the collective:

16Roger Caillois, "Le vent d'hiver," Le college de

socioloqie 54.
17Caillois, "Vent" 49.
18Caillois, "Vent" 47.
19Caillois, "Vent" 92.
 345

Leur transposition & l'£chelle sociale . . . leur

a communique, en les reveiant & eux-memes, ce
surcroit de decision et de force qui mesure la
superiority de la conscience claire sur un obscur
pressentiment, confus et t&tonnant.20

"Le vent d'hiver" also underscores its belligerent aims:

. . . ces considerations inclinent a reconnaitre

comme particulierement armee pour la lutte, une
association militante et fermee tenant de l'ordre
monastique actif pour l'etat d'esprit, de la
formation paramilitaire pour la discipline, de la
society secrete, au besoin, pour les modes
d'existence et d'action.21

Still, unlike Lucifer and the Luciferian conspiracies of

19th century post-Romanticism, Caillois' collective neither

seeks to master nor to destroy its milieu but must actually

create one:

. . . un veritable milieu, au sens organique du

mot, un ilot de densite forte, capable par
consequent de s'aglomerer les corps flottants
6pars dans une societe diluee, et de conferer
ainsi a ses cellules actives un role reellement
positif au lieu de 1'agitation sterile et desaxee
ou elles se complaisaient auparavant.22

Particularly interesting about this social order is how

the members replace their prior identities, as it were, with

newly assumed, freely chosen determinations. A footnote to

"Les vertus dionysiaques," published in Acephale. alongside

the initial statement of the College, thus explains:

les confreries existent comme structure

forte dans un milieu social lache. Elles se
forment en substituant aux determinations de fait

20Caillois, "Vent" 95.

21Caillois, "Vent" 89.
22Caillois, "Vent" 95.
 346

(naissance, etc.) sur quoi repose la cohesion de

ce milieu, le libre choix consacr6 par une sorte
d1initiation et d'agrggation solennelle au groupe,
et tendent k consid£rer cette parente acquise
comme equivalente a la parente du sang (d'ou la
constance de 1•appellation de frere entre les
adeptes), ce qui rend le lien ainsi cr66 plus fort
gu'aucun autre et lui assure la pr6f6rence en cas
de conflit.23

Although Caillois consistently returns to the theme of

Jesuitical order or discipline, he is not proposing a new

mode of hypocrisy for the members of his Luciferian sect;

their mimetic transformation within the group engenders no

ulterior motive but should create, instead, a conscious

self-suppression exceeding the analytical self-mastery of

the individual Luciferian. Caillois thus defines the post-

Luciferian loss of self through the logic of participation

in the sect; both self-conscious and calculated, it seems a

modern counterpart to the loss of self inherent to the

primitive experience of participation, in ecstasy and

festival. Here is a contemporary and lucid re-enactment of

those winter ceremonies of social renewal performed by

masked masculine groups, prominently studied by Dumezil in

the 30s, and in works such as Le probleme des centaures and

Mvthes et dieux des aermains whose influence on Caillois

will be discussed further on.

This modern conspiracy involved, then, a revolutionary

creation of order. The relation between the group's

23Roger Caillois, "Les vertus dionysiaques,11 Acephale

3-4 (July 1937): 26.
 347

structure and its ideological substance was perhaps most

cogently and disturbingly expressed in HL'agressivit6 comme

valeur" (June 1937), an essay vaunting the successful and

agressive rise of the Jesuits and the Ku-Klux-Klan:

. . . lie a l'extreme densite, a la forme unitaire

de leur structure, comme si, pour creer 1'ordre,
il fallait d'abord etre un ordre. au sens concret
du mot guand il d£signe une organisation
monastique ou militaire, comme si, par consequent,
l'ordre et la sant£ se propageaient, gagnaient,
comme la pourriture et la decomposition, de proche
en proche, par contagion.24

It is truly absurd to think of the Ku Klux Klan as a group

which, as Caillois would have it, represents the elective,

or freely chosen structure which might radically oppose not

only the dissolution of modern democracies but also the

racially and geographically determined oemeinschaft of

fascism.25 It is even stranger or more absurd to argue, as

Caillois does here, that an idea is the source of

aggression: "La racine profonde, irreductible, de

1'agressivite reside dans 1'ambition d'expansion illimit^e

inherente a toute idee clairement reconnue par

11 intelligence et douee en meme temps d'efficacit6 motrice

sur l'affectivite."26 Primarily assailing the practice of

24Roger Caillois, "L'agressivitd comme valeur," Ordre

nouveau June 1937: 58.
25Note that Caillois* previous allusion to the Ku-Klux-
Klan in the essay, "Le mythe et l'homme," (1936) merely
referred to the hypertrophy of festival behaviour in these
contemporary resurgences of affective collectivities; there,
he correlated the Ku-Klux-Klan with Nazism.
26Caillois, "L'agressivit^" 56.
 348

turbulent or untrammeled violence, "L'agressivit^ comme

valeur" implies that aggressiveness is only aggressive when

translated through the self-consciousness of a group into

"valeur" or "value." Yet this engenders a conceptual

vacancy since such "valeur" or idea expresses nothing but

social cohesion itself. It is precisely this absence of

ideological content, I suspect, which will prompt Caillois'

further reflection on the substance of orthodoxy with

L'homme et le sacre.
* * *

If Caillois' essays on Lucifer had a certain historical

distance, his discussions of the Luciferian collective were

"imperative" injunctions for the present. This agenda of a

masculine gemeinschaft with all the trappings of a bund is

undeniably repugnant to the modern sensibility in its

elitist, anti-democratic, and totalitarian tenor, not to

mention its glorification of masculine heroism. And yet, it

merits more than a quick dismissal from a contemporary

perspective. One might say that Caillois* theory of sects

enjoins one to do what it itself does to Hitlerism: namely,

to imitate the Bund but in a different, freely chosen way.

In effect, members of his sect were to imitate each other

but in a different way: according to a deliberately chosen

logic of participation. Beyond that, let us not forget that

Caillois' arguments in favor of self-mastery and order were

 349

poised not only against Hitler and French anomie but,

perhaps more immediately, against the turbulent ideas of

Bataille.

Then and in later years, Caillois would reject the

attribution of fascist or Right-wing inclinations.27 On

August 5, 1938, Paulhan wrote to him: "Autres reactions

(6trangement r6gulieres) au Collfege de Sociologie: "Mais

pourquoi la nrf devient-elle fasciste?" (Je crois que c'est

le ton du Vent d'hiverl."28 Caillois immediately replied:

Je suis un peu ennuy6 par cette histoire de

fascisme. Cela n'a tellement aucun rapport et on
a tellement de quoi etre sur, qu'une discussion de
ce mot est n£cessairement sans int£ret; (hors de
la p^riode £lectorale). A Pontigny [illisible]
avait dit que me propos etaient absolument
identiques a ceux qu'il avait entendus en Italie
dans la periode prefasciste. Mais il vient de
m'ecrireOQune lettre ou il c
parait revenir sur cette
opinion."'3

His clearest statement about Hitler may be found in

correspondance with Paulhan a year later, describing

Caillois* efforts to draft declaration analogous to the

statement of the College on the Munich accords:

270n the attacks upon Caillois1 "reactionary avant-

gardism" see Denis Hollier "Mimesis and Castration 1937"
(October 31 [1984]: 3-4) who mentions: Mabin, J.E. [Walter
Benjamin] in Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschunq 7 (1938);
Pierre Robin in Commune Sept. 1938; and Pierre Missac in
Cahiers du Sud May 1939.
28JeanPaulhan, letter to Roger Caillois, Aug. 5 1938,
# 59, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois," Cahiers
Jean Paulhan 6, ed. Odile Felgine and Claude-Pierre Perez
(Paris: Gallimard, 1991) 97.
29Roger Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, [mid-August
1938], # 61, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 88.
 350

. . . [une] condamnation de Hitler d'un point de

vue strictement socioloaicfue. abstraction faite de
toute r6f6rence morale, sentixnentale ou
patriotique: un pur et simple diagnostic;
consid£rer que le systeme hitlerien est un abc£s
dont il faut que 1'Europe gugrisse. Je me propose
de faire signer cela par des ecrivains . . . .30

In Nov. 11, 1939, he further described this essay to Paulhan

— "Naturaleza del hitlerismo" was published in SUR but not

as a manifesto — stating that fascist sociology based on

biological, national or ethnic determinism was precisely

what his paradigm of an elective community sought to

contest:

. . . le racisme ne laisse pas le choix d'etre

avec lui. L'hitl6risme est un id£al qui ne permet
pas qu'on y adhere. II faut la gr&ce, et celle-ci
n'est pas la recompense de la vertu, mais une
donnee de la naissance. La est le seul parti-pris
de mon texte : le choix contre la donnee,
1'affinity Elective contre la pression, le m6rite
contre 11 irremediable. C'est le point de vue du
College de Sociologie, celui de Bataille comme le
mien. C'est aussi, j'imagine, celui de Nietzsche
(regardez les pages 'Nous autres, sans patrie...1)
et en tout cas celui d'lgnace.31

30Roger
Caillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, September 16
1939, #89, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 119.
He adds: "J'espere [que Bataille] comprendra que s'il veut
qu'elle ait une port£e immediate, il faudra passer sous
silence toute espece de revendication paroxystique"(120).
31RogerCaillois, letter to Jean Paulhan, Nov. 11 1939,
#92, "Correspondance Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 124.
Bataille wrote to him on Nov. 13 1939 : "Votre texte m'a
etonn6. Je vois mal 4 quoi il se rattache. Vous rendez­
vous compte a quel point nous sommes loin — meme si nous
faisons la plus grande part k l'optimisme — de pouvoir
parler de pathologie des societes? Pour moi, c'est
inconcevable. II faudrait tout au moins mettre en avant
quelque principe positif — une volont6, un attrait.
Sinon, cela devient tres lourd" (#27, "Correspondance Jean
Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 120).
 351

Moreover, Caillois' writing on sects increasingly divorces

the Luciferian collective from power and aggression to favor

more strictly spiritual and representational terms — even

as the declarations of the Collfege voice a more deliberate

"volont6 de puissance." Exemplified in the shift from "Le

Vent d'hiver" to "Sociologie du clerc," this betokens

Caillois' gradual evolution, as I have suggested, towards a

greater consideration of the sacred itself. Thus, "La

Hierarchie des etres" more pointedly outlines the sect's

ideological perspective. This hierarchy of the 'elective'

elect challenges the biological (racist) and nationalist

election of fascism and the absent community of democracy.

It is:

[un] ordre compost d'homines resolus et

lucides que rdunissent leurs affinit6s et la
volonte commune de subjuguer au moins
officieusement leurs semblables peu doues pour se
conduire seuls, une association de forte density,
superposant son architecture propre aux diverses
structures dejci existantes et travaillant ci
decomposer les unes, a domestiquer les autres.32

The authoritarian tone of such an injunction is somewhat

tempered, though, by one of Caillois' concluding remarks:

"Tout pouvoir qui n'est pas spirituel et pur finit dans le

sang. II n'est d'autorite stable que celle qui ne contraint

que par l'exemple et ne s'appuie que sur l'estime et

1'admiration.1,33 This is interesting to compare with his

32Caillois, "Hierarchie" 130.

33Caillois, "Hierarchie" 135.
 352

statement in the article concerning Blum, two years earlier,

that the world of power is necessarily that of tragedy, that

is to say, of bloodshed.

Caillois' final essay on this topic in the 30s,

"Sociologie du clerc" for the NRF of August, 1939 describes

the sect in even more spiritual terms. (This has prompted

Alexandre Pajon to remark: "La communaut6 de R. Caillois

est-elle tres gloignee d'une republique des sages, des purs,

des desint6resses? Et que reprocher alors a l'auteur sinon

sa naivete, sa jeunesse?"34) Benda's renowned La trahison

des clercs (1928) had assailed the lapse of an intellectual

'clergy' from the realm of ideas and ideals into that of

group interests and party politics. Turning Benda's

argument on its head, "Sociologie du clerc" defines the

political world, or order, as an abstract and immutable

system; only society's spiritual leaders or 'clergy' may

establish an order that is historically and sociologically

relative. Caillois currently prescribes a Luciferian sect,

composed of members who must be alienated from secular

society but also from themselves. This very process of

collective self-overcoming, as it were, enables them to pass

judgement upon the world in terms of values which they have

'produced':

. . . valeurs aussi peu abstraites et eternelles

34Alexandre Pajon, "L'intr^pidite politique de Roger

Caillois avant-guerre," Roger Caillois "Cahiers de Chronos".
ed. Jean-Clarence Lambert (Paris: La Difference, 1991) 386.
 353

que possible, mais non moins iddales, non moins

exaltantes, et, pour tout dire, valeurs
historiques, sujettes au devenir et ct la mort,
r6pondant aux n£cessit£s de l'heure et du milieu
et pgrissant par leur victoire meme.35

Their order derives from the clergy's process of self-

mastery and self-recognition, a "rencontre" which is

elective and yet, by virtue of that very fact, a miracle:

lis n'approuvent ni ne censurent du dehors, mais

propagent, etendent, font triompher par
rayonnement et exemple la foi qui produisit le
miracle initial en les associant k leur d£but
indivisiblement. . . . [L]eur destin n'est pas de
retenir les mots dont s'61oignent les choses,
mais, au corps h corps avec la r6alit6, de
preparer sa transformation en ordonnant le monde
selon leur desir en prolongeant au-dehors l'ordre
qu'ils ont fait triompher en eux-memes.36

One might compare this final passage with Caillois'

statement six years earlier, in his response to the

Minotaure inquiry on "rencontres," that lyrical

overdetermination "ne permet pas de laisser aux pretendues

rencontres la couleur de miracle dont les pare la

meconnaissance de leur syntaxe. II n'est de rencontre qu'a

la maniere xnecanique et significative des conjonctions

d'astres." Caillois' relation to miracles has undergone a

transformation by the time of the College de socioloaie. It

is the very knowledge of those determinations structuring

the syntax of that individual imagination which allows the

clergy to master them through existential recognition and

35Roger Caillois, "Sociologie du clerc," Approches 68.

36Caillois, "Sociologie du clerc" 69.
 354

overcoming, a procedure of election which allows for the

production of relative social values, that is to say,

militant orthodoxy, or the sacred.

* * *

Caillois1 evolving paradigm of the sect offers an

interesting perspective on the mystique of the secret

society at the time, one that "L1 esprit des sectes"

describes in the 40s as the predictable complement to

democracies: "tout se passe comme si beaucoup de bons

esprits ressentaient aujourd1hui tres particulierement et au

moment oil les moeurs comme les institutions paraissent en

detourner, la seduction des soci£tes secretes."37 I noted

elsewhere that Caillois1 Archives interview cites the

influence of what he calls "la litt^rature pr6-

hitlerienne"; and, so too, "L'esprit des sectes" evokes

those corps francs and Saintes Vehmes that Hitler drew upon:

Tout porte k croire qu'il se d6barassa ensuite de

ces elements trop refractaires, mais leur sombre
mysticisme preside a ses debuts. II est sur cette
premifere frenesie d'61oquents temoignages dont Les
Reprouves d'Ernst von Salomon demeure sans doute
le plus direct et le plus instructif.38

Caillois specifically mentions, as well, a predilection for

Alphonse de Chateaubriant1s La qerbe des forces, that

Germanophile and militaristic paen to the formation of the

37Caillois, "L1esprit" 63.

38Caillois, "L*esprit" 64.
 355

Hitlerien elite, modelled on ancient chivalric orders:

"1'entreprise enflamma plus d'une imagination."39

The mythological dimension of the secret society for

Caillois is deeply linked with Dum£zil, about whom a debate

has been discreetly raging since 1985, when Carlo Ginzburg

attacked his work Mvthes et dieux des aermains (1939).40 It

is not my purpose fully to engage this issue, although I

will note that Dumezil concludes his rather detached and

analytic study of the belligerent social imagination proper

to the Nordic realms by remarking, as follows, upon its

current resurgence:

Le troisieme Reich n'a pas eu a creer ses mythes

fondamentaux: peut-etre au contraire est-ce la
mythologie germanique, ressuscitee au XIXe sifecle,
qui a donne sa forme, son esprit, ses institutions
a une Allemagne que des malheurs sans precedent
rendaient merveilleusement malleable : peut-etre
est-ce parce qu'il avait d'abord souffert dans des
tranch^es que hantait le fantome de Siegfried
qu'Adolf Hitler a pu concevoir, forger, pratiquer
une Souverainete telle qu'aucun chef germain n'en
a connue depuis le regne fabuleux d'Odhinn.41

Clearly a great Wagnerian, and a great Germanophile, Dumezil

seems blithely unaware of the coming holocaust, perhaps

because this work, published in 1939, was actually written

39Caillois, "L'esprit" 64.

40Carlo Ginzburg, "Mythologie germanique et nazisme.
Sur un livre ancien de G. Dumezil", A.E.S.C. July-Aug. 1985:
695-715.
41Georges Dumezil, Mvthes et dieux des qermains (Paris:
Ernest Leroux, 1939) 156.
 356

in 1936.42 Still, it could be said that his very blindness

was an expression, in part, of his even deeper cultural

pessimism insofar as France was concerned. He would thus

recall in 1986:
II m'est tr6s vite apparu, d6s 1924, que l'Europe
allait h la catastrophe. Les p£ripeties de la
politique interieure perdaient toute importance.
L'Europe allait sauter. C'6tait Evident ci
regarder la carte issue du Traite de Versailles. .
. . Ce sentiment que toutes les politiques alors
essayees convergaient vers le malheur a 6te une
des raisons de mon eloignement de la France.
J'appelle cela volontiers le complexe de X£nophon.
Tout ce qui se passait en France me semblait vain
eu egard k ce qui mtlrissait par-del^ nos
frontieres. J'ai attendu la catastrophe.43

A letter Dum^zil wrote to Caillois in May 1940 was not quite

so enthused as Mvthes et dieux des aermains about current

events, lamenting

. . . cette sociologie acceleree, cette mythologie

en action, mi-hommes mi-insectes. . . . Je me
recommande a vos soins, dans une direction
analogue, si le jeu actuel finit mal et si
1'Europe n'est plus respirable. . . . Votre
"Sacre" a eu du succes - et a enchante mes
derniers jours de Li&ge. ... II sort de moi ces
jours-ci un "Mitra-Varuna" ou j'ai mis au point un

42Dumezil reconts that the work was initially finished,

in fact, by 1936-37: "Paresseusement, j'en trainais le
manuscrit que Paul-Louis Couchoud, qui langait une
collection aux Presses universitaires de France, me
r^clamait, gentiment mais constamment. Je l*avertis a la
fin de 1938 qu'il fallait remettre le livre en chantier
— selon les trois fonctions. Mais je devais faire vite.
J'essayai de garder le plus possible la redaction primitive,
ce qui a quelque peu desequilibre 1'ensemble. . ."
(Entretiens avec Didier Eribon [Paris: Gallimard, 1987] 67).
43,,Lemessager des dieux, un entretien avec Georges
Dumezil," Magazine litteraire 229 (April 1986): 21.
 357

des deux cours de l'an dernier: pr6histoire.44

Besides Dumezil's profound intellectual intimacy with

Caillois, he quite specifically influenced the latter*s

ideas about sects and secret societies. Too ill to perform

his scheduled talk at the Collfeae on "Confreries, ordres,

societes secretes, eglises," Caillois sent fragmentary notes

on the topic to Bataille:

Sans doute les trouverez-vous trop sommaires et
sch6matiques. Mais je les crois, tout compte
fait, riches et facilement d^veloppables. Je suis
de plus en plus frapp§ de 1'importance de ce point
de vue, de la facility qu'il donne pour classer
toute espece de choses. La construction doit a
[peu] pres tout a Dumezil : je n'ai fait
qu'abstraire et g6n6raliser (meme pas grouper).
II importe de le dire et de renvoyer aux ouvrages
de D. (les Centaures et Brahman-Flamen surtout) et
h son cours de cette ann^e.4b
But this intellectual indebtedness to Dumezil is rather

complicated. Caillois' sketchy notes are of little help;

and then, Bataille entirely transposed the talk into his own

idiosyncratic terms. Furthermore, the two works of Dumezil,

cited here, are quite different from each other.

Le probleme des centaures (1929) broadly surveyed those

masculine groups or corporations — in the Indo-Iranian,

Slavic, Central European, Greek and Roman traditions—

whose wild winter ceremonies, often masked and often

44Georges Dumezil, letter to Roger Caillois, May 21

1940, C.D.41, Fonds Speciaux, Bibliotheque Municipale, Vichy.
45Roger Caillois, letter to Georges Bataille, Feb.3
1938, #17, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois. by
Georges Bataille, ed. Jean-Pierre Le Bouler (Paris: Folle
Avoine, 1989) 80.
 358

extremely violent, served as the symbolic catalyst for

social renewal. Dum£zil has since repudiated this work

because it was written prior to his discovery of the triadic

function in 1937.46 Indeed, it correlates different

manifestations of the Centaur myth without establishing any

clear distinctions between the different groups of men.

Flamen-Brahman (1935) was also written prior to his

breakthrough; and yet, it already expressed this in part.

Dum6zil's major ideas actually emerged from this work, which

isolated what he would later call the Sovereign function.

(He subsequently distinguished this from the Warrior

function and the Economic or Reproductive function; he then

discerned within the Sovereign Function two complementary

functions: Magical and Juridical.)

Flamen-Brahman examined the analogies between the

Indian brahman caste and the Roman corporation of the flamen

which both served as sacred doubles or simulacra of the

Sovereign power. Thus, the brahman was the religious

counterpart to his ksatrica:

On peut ainsi entrevoir, des ces temps anciens,

une vraie "corporation de brahmanes", d6j&
internationale et errante, ayant le monopole
— actif et passif — des horreurs sacrees. Cette
situation 6tait pleine de promesses : victime et
bourreau dans les plus solennels des sacrifices,
richement nourri chez les rois . . . proclame par
les rois digne de plus d'6gards qu'eux-memes,

46Dum6zil's triadic structure, briefly noted in our

discussion of "Le mythe et l'homme," correlated Indian and
Classical divinities in terms of three broad functions:
Sovereignty, War, and Economy.
 359

£tant vraiment les sacratus et sacrans par

excellence, 1'intermgdiaire le plus apte entre le
profane et les Forces. ... 47

The brahman derives his sanctity from a vestigial,

prehistoric status as sacrificial victim.48 The flamen. on

the other hand, is a "victime qui n'est jamais immolde. . .

.49 This procures him a broadly analogous relation to his

rex; "Entre le rex et le flamen. entre le chef politique et

religieux et cette 'victime vivante constamment par^e', les

rapports ont ete de tous temps si importants que la

r6publique n'en a pas efface le souvenir.1,50

The difference between Dumezil"s two works corresponds,

in a way, to the shift from "Le Vent d'hiver" to "Sociologie

du clerc." Indeed, the first of Caillois1 essays seems to

echo that agressive, masculine expression described in Le

probleme des centaures; the sacrificial and sacred aspect of

the classes described by Flamen-Brahman then appears in

"Sociologie du clerc." I would also note that "Le Vent

d'hiver" seems redolent of Mvthes et dieux des germains. a

work with which Caillois was familiar prior to its

publication. However, "Le Vent d'hiver," presented in a

47Georges Dumezil, Flamen-Brahman (Paris: Librairie

Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1935) 37.
48"De son ancienne quality de 'victime par
excellence,'" writes Dumezil, "il a gard6 une familiarite
particuliere avec les m6canismes les plus secrets de
1'operation" (Flamen 39).
49Dumezil, Flamen 44.
50Dumezil, Flamen 50.
 360

context that directly opposed German fascism, did not, as

such, voice the sympathy for the Third Reich which pervades

the conclusion of Dumezil's study. Still, the ambiguous

status of Caillois' neo-chivalric order (as in

"L • agressivit£ cone valeur") positioned between

belligerence and the creation of order, or an ideal, recalls

an ambiguity in Mvthes et dieux des aermains between the

Sovereign function (linked to social order) and the Warrior

function (linked to untrammeled or unbound violence).51

Although this work was the first one to distinguish between

the three functions, Dumezil argues throughout that the

Sovereign function in prehistoric German society was

difficult to dissociate from the Warrior function:

[II y a une] confusion prehistorique, et qui

semble bien inextricable, de ce qui, chez les
Germains devait correspondre aux "societes a
masques" du type indien des Gandharva "peuple de
Varuna" [Sovereign function] et de ce qui devait
correspondre aux "societes a armes" du type indien
des Marut. compagnons d'Indra [Warrior function]:
les beserkir d'Odhinn. dans la fable scandinave.
sont d£i a 1'un et 11 autre. ^ ! .b2

A scholar in the field has recently explained that Dumezil

was thus revealing, at an early stage, the flexibility of

his triadic system when he recognized the "gauchissement

guerrier" of Sovereignty in the German context: "Et il en

proposa cette explication seduisante: 'Dans l'ideologie et

51Inparticular, see Denis Hollier's discussion of this

issue in "January 21st," Stanford French Review 12 (Spring
1988): 31-48.
52Dum6zil, Mvthes 154 [emphasis added].
 361

dans la pratique des Germains, la guerre a tout envahi, tout

colors.1,53

The warriors of "Le vent d'hiver," masked by their

newly assumed identities, certainly convey the confusion

thus described by Dumezil: "meutes d'hommes-fauves et

troupes de guerriers-champions . . . fondues en un type de

societe magico-militaire sp6cifiquement germanique.,l54 But

I would note that Caillois evacuates the warrior mystique of

violence and frenzy portrayed by Dumezil in both Le probleme

des centaures and Mvthes et dieux des germains; in its

place, he accentuates the dura virtus Dumezil attributes to

the rise of Viking self-discipline.55 Even here, "Le Vent

d'hiver" seems to modify Dumezil1s scheme, imbuing it with a

new affective dimension, I would say, much as Caillois did

in the study of the demons de midi. There, as we have seen,

he infused a comparative mythological framework derived from

Dumezil with that affective psychological motivation, "droit

a la culpability," which was related to the categories of

Maussian sociology. "Le vent d'hiver" seems to engage in an

53Frangois-Xavier Dillmann asserts:". . . Georges

Dumezil a tres justement mis 1'accent sur les liens qui
unissaient a Odhinn ces guerriers extatiques, ces "soci6tes
d'hommes" qui annongaient la Chasse sauvage de l'epoque
medievale" ("Les dieux germaniques," Magazine litteraire 229
[April 1986]: 46).
54Dumezil, Mvthes 155.
55"Ala mystique de la fr^nesie," writes Dumezil,
"s'est substitute une morale de la force, mais de la force
r£glee, qui tend vers une sorte de chevalerie" (Mvthes 90).
 362

analogous 1remotivation• of Mvthes et dieux des qermains.

eliminating the factor of national, ethnic, or historical

identity. Its hibernal theme clearly mirrors those winter

festivals crucial to Dumdzil1s cultural mythology. But, it

also derives quite specifically from Mauss's "Variations

saisonni&res dans les soci£t£s eskimos."56 Like Dum6zil,

Mauss here explored the cycle of social renewal, while

insisting upon the affective dimension of the communal or

social density proper to the winter season; much more than

Dumezil's study of the militaristic German imagination, "Le

vent d'hiver" similarly focuses on the affective, psycho­

social motivation at the source of an entirely new and

original gemeinschaft.

Only when Caillois sought more clearly to define his

spiritual order, with such essays as "Sociologie du clerc,"

or else, with L'homme et le sacrd. did the categories of

Flamen-Brahman come into play. If 11 Le vent d'hiver"

conveyed the ambiguity of the Sovereign and the Warrior

functions proper to Mvthes et dieux des qermains,

"Sociologie du clerc" had quite specifically eliminated both

belligerence and militarism from its agenda; in its place,

56Marcel Mauss: "Variations saisonnieres dans les

societes eskimos" [1904-1905], Sociologie et anthropoloaie.
ed. Georges Gurvitch (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
Prance, 1989): 389-477. Mauss states: "A une communaut6
reelle d'id£es et d'int6rets dans 1'agglomeration dense de
l'hiver, ci une forte unit6 mentale religieuse et morale,
s'opposent un isolement, une poussi&re sociale, une extreme
pauvrete morale et religieuse dans 1'6parpillement de
l'6t6"(470).
 363

though, we find the ambiguity of spiritual and secular

authority which is present in Flamen-Brahman. During the

war, Caillois recalled that his high-school teacher, Georges

Bidault, was outraged by "Sociologie du clerc": "Quand il

me la rendit: 'Tu auoaue. filil s'exclama-t-il. C'est du

pur Maurras, votre article. Vous filez un mauvais coton,

cher ami.1"57 Twenty-five years later, Caillois would

implicitly respond to this accusation by discussing the

intent of his essay:

. . . elle dtait inspir£e . . . surtout par

l'Inde, le brahman en face du ksatri?a. Et le
clerc 6tait celui qui s'engage, qui ne prend
jamais les armes, qui n'a pas le droit au moindre
acte de violence, mais qui en face du pouvoir
seculier est d§tenteur de I'autorite spirituelle.
Par consequent, le seul moyen qu'il a c'est de
payer de sa personne. . . . [CJ'est le vassal dans
les habitudes japonaises qui s'ouvre le ventre
pour montrer au seigneur qu'il a tort. C'est cela
que j'avais en vue... et je ne crois pas que ce
soit ni Comtiste, ni Maurrassien.58

This last remark, recounted with a chuckle, underscores the

intensely anthropological — rather than nationalist and

political — tenor of Caillois' essay, clearly inspired by

the ideas of Flamen-Brahman. where the clergy is defined by

a contractual form of self-sacrifice. Still, Caillois"

recollection of Bidault's remark did note of "Sociologie du

clerc," in 1946: "J'y soutenais des propositions a vrai dire

temeraires, que j'ai rectifides depuis, sur les rapports du

57Roger Caillois, "Hommage h Georges Bidault,"

Cironstancielles (Paris: Gallimard, 1946) 116.
58Caillois, Archives V.
 364

pouvoir spirituel et du bras s6culier."59

I would say, though, that it is this very ambiguity

which enabled Caillois to behave as the confirmed pacifist

and recent resident of California, Aldous Huxley, did not.

Reviewing Ends and Means in September 1939, Caillois

explained that, much like Benda, Huxley overlooked the

importance of Jesuit discipline, the 'clergy's'

subordination to a corporate body. Sending a copy of this

review, as well as "Sociologie du clerc," to Huxley (from

Buenos Aires where he found himself at the outbreak of the

war), Caillois then requested his signature on an anti-

Hitler manifesto he had just drafted; as mentioned earlier,

this was the text of "Naturaleza del hitlerismo" discussed

with Paulhan: "pur et simple diagnostic; considerer que le

systfeme hitl§rien est un abcfes dont il faut que 1'Europe

gu^risse."60 Confined to a strictly 'spiritual' sphere,

however, Huxley refused to sign, explaining that his own

disagreement with Benda was somewhat different:

For me, a clerc is one engaged in the attempt to

"change the focus of consciousness" — to
transcend the personal and strictly human point of
view for a new one, founded on direct experience
(analogous to the non-rational, immediate
experience of sense perception) of the reality
about which all founders of religion, all the

59Caillois, "Hommage" 116.

60Caillois' letter to Paulhan about the manifesto
mentioned that he was sending it to friends of Victoria
Ocampo: Huxley ("1'accord . . . est & peu pres assure")
Waldo Frank and Tagore (Sept. 16 1939, #89, "Correspondance
Jean Paulhan-Roger Caillois" 120).
 365

mystics of East and West, have been talking for

the past 3000 years. To talk of professors or
artists as clercs seems to me absurd: it is also
absurd to talk about the political role of the
clercs — because the moment a mystic touches
politics he is utterly destroyed. . . . With
regard to signing a declaration about Hitler — I
regret that I cannot do this, as I do not feel
that politics (except such politics as are
dictated by the need to "make the world safe for
mystical experience") are my affair.61

61Aldous Huxley, letter to Roger Caillois, October 3

1939, C.H.20, Fonds Sp£ciaux, Biblioth&que Municipale,
Vichy.
 366

L'homme et le sacr6

Many of the articles Caillois published in late 1938

and 1939, as well as his few talks at the Collfeqe. are

related to L'homme et le sacre. a work whose title as first

announced on the back cover of Mvthes et dieux des aermains

was simply Le sacre. In effect, this was an osmotic, or

theoretical, absorption of the greatest post-Enlightenment

residual of all: "Sous sa forme 616mentaire, le sacre

repr§sente . . . avant tout une energie dangereuse,

incomprehensible, malaisdment maniable, eminemment

e f f i c a c e . Like his work on the demons de midi. Caillois'

massive study was an expression of his affiliation with the

Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes; and like this earlier

work, it may be read as an attempt to respond, in both

systematic and erudite terms, to the ideas of Bataille. In

the introduction, I cited Caillois' recollections about the

College and his 'osmosis' with Bataille:

. . . il y avait une communion d'esprit tres rare,

une sorte d'osmose sur le fond des choses, au
point que la part de l'un et de 1'autre etaient
souvent indiscernables. Mais nous nous separions
quant a 1'usage ci faire de ces recherches. Et
Bataille avait toujours tendance a avancer

62Roger Caillois, L'homme et le sacr6 (Paris:

Gallimard, 1950) 21.
 367

toujours du cdt6 de la sphere mystique.63

If Caillois' use of the image of osmosis is often freighted

with the idea of systematization, this aspect of his

relation to Bataille is confirmed by his important

revelation to Jean-Jos6 Marchand:

Bataille distinguait le sacr£ gauche et le sacr£

droit. . . . Alors j'ai essay6 de systematiser
cela et de montrer comment en periode normale, qui
n'est pas la fete, c'est le sacr£ de respect qui
compte . . . Au contraire, soit dans la guerre,
mais surtout dans la fete, il y a transgression,
parce que ce qui 6tait respects devient objet de
viol. . . .64
Caillois' project thus to systematize Bataille with L1homme

et le sacre. which I will further explore, was perhaps

inspired by Bataille's own attempts to appropriate him, when

speaking in his place in early 1938: on "Le pouvoir" (Feb

19, 1938) and then on "Confreries, ordres, societes

secretes, eglises," (March 19, 1938). Bernard Henri-Levy

has recently mentioned such 'ventriloquism' as "une

illustration ultime de cette 'collectivisation de la pensee'

dont les surrealistes, depuis dix ans, se faisaient

obligation. Rever chacun pour 1'autre, recommandait Breton.

Parler chacun pour 1'autre, propose a present Bataille."65

63GillesLapouge, "Entretien avec Roger Caillois,"

Ouinzaine litteraire 15-30 (June 1970): 7.
64Roger Caillois, interview with Jean-Jos6 Marchand,
videotape, dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme
siecle, 7 reels (Paris: Society Frangaise de Production,
1971): IV.
65Bernard Henri-Levy, Les aventures de la liberte
(Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991) 189.
 368

He is probably right insofar as Bataille is concerned; such

unmediated participation, however, was not generally in

Caillois1 style.

His theoretical response to Bataille was also colored

by his resistance to Bataille's group Acephale and its plans

for a human sacrifice. Caillois later recalled, with

varying emphases, how he objected to this event which

Bataille was trying to orchestrate:

[C]'est justement k cause de la tension qui s'est

r£velee entre Bataille et moi dans Le Collfege de
socioloqie certainement, devant mon refus
opini&tre, obstine, de ne pas vouloir accepter ce
qui donnait prise a la vie de Bataille, ce a quoi
il tenait le plus, ga l'a peut-etre oblige a
fonder quelque chose d'apart, de plus secret, ou
cette fois-gi il n'y avait personne qui ne le
contredisait et l'obligeait a plus de prudence.66

Positioning himself outside the inner sanctum of

Bataille's group, Caillois elsewhere recounts:

il me paraissait vain de songer que

l'horreur d'un forfait partag6 piit operer dans
l'cime de miraculeuses transformations et rendre a
elle seule indomptable le courage et eternel le
serment de quelques hommes qui entendraient
soudain s'opposer ci tous les autres. II est ici
besoin d'une force qu'aucun rite monstrueux ne
peut dispenser. II faut la tirer de soi toute
entiere.67

66Caillois, Archives IV.

67Roger Caillois, "L'esprit des sectes," Instincts et

socidte (Paris: Gonthier, 1964) 67. He added, "[d]ans

1'exaltation du moment, rien moins qu'un sacrifice humain ne
sembla capable de lier les Energies aussi profonddment qu'il
etait necessaire pour mener a bien une tache immense et
d'ailleurs sans objet d£fini. . ."(67). Caillois'
revelation in this regard was prompted by Patrick Waldberg's
initial discussion of the sacrifice in Patrick Waldberg;
Robert Lebel; and Georges Duthuit, "Vers un nouveau mythe?
 369

This does not sound merely like retrospective exoneration to

the extent that it echoes the terms of Caillois1 Luciferian

self-mastery. I would also note his interesting remark to

Gilles Lapouge that he was particularly disturbed by

Bataille's plan to obtain signed documents from the victim

exonerating the executioner, ahead of time: "Je repensai a

1*objection de Koj^ve et devins encore plus reticent.1,68

Kojfcve's objection, briefly recalled, was that the sacred

could not be revived in a secular society; and that the

magician was the one who could not possibly believe in his

own magic. Caillois thus implies that the members1 modern

lucidity would interfere with the act's social authenticity,

that the execution, however horrendous an act, was being

arranged so as to minimize its criminal dimension and

circumvent the law. In effect, Bataille's maneuver directly

contravened what Caillois was proposing as the recreation of

internal order compensating for the lack of modern social

control. Although his participation in the group ceased in

June 1939, after his departure for Buenos Aires as the guest

of Victoria Ocampo, Caillois' correspondance with Bataille

Premonitions et defiances," WV 4 (Feb. 1944): 41-49.

68In Approches de 1'imacrinaire. Caillois recalls:
"[Bataille] avait d6ja la victime et obtenu d'elle (ou il se
faisait fort de l'obtenir) un certificat destine a la
justice et innocentant davance le meurtrier. Une telle
cautdle, certes fort utile, s'accomodait mal avec
1*explosion sauvage du sacr£ qui devait revigorer une
societe sans ferveur. Je repensai & l'objection de
Kojevnikov et devins encore plus reticent" ([Paris:
Gallimard, 1974] 59).
 370

in that year reveals the extent of their tensions.

Bataille's famous and, in some sense, final letter to

Caillois concerning the College (on July 20 1939) recounts

his admission of such discord to the group on July 4, 1939,

that is to say, his public declaration: "La part faite par

moi au mysticisme, au drame, a la folie, h la mort [parait k

Caillois] difficilement conciliable avec les principes dont

nous partons. . . .1,69

Before analysing Caillois* theoretical response to

Bataille, then, let us consider in summary form the basic

tenets of the latter1s lectures to the College — especially

his two-part talk, "Attraction et repulsion" (Jan. 22 1938;

February 5 1938). Here, Bataille develops his crucial ideas

about the dynamics of the Left and the Right sacred which

create the profoundly ambiguous "noyau" of genuine social

experience: "la charge energetique condensee au centre de la

repulsion et de 1*attraction sociale . . . necessaire pour

conferer a un roi le caract&re dynamique a la fois attirant

et redoutable qui lui est propre."70 Progressively derived

from the theory of base materialism and heterogeneity,

Bataille's Left sacred was the motor, or magnetic source, as

it were, of human society: "Le noyau social est en effet

69Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20

1939, #26, Georges Bataille? lettres k Roger Caillois 4 aodt
1935-4 fevrier 1959. by Georges Bataille, ed. Jean-Pierre Le
Bouler (Paris: Folle Avoine, 1988) 110.
70GeorgesBataille, "Attraction et repulsion II," Le
college de sociologie 220.
 371

tabou c'est-^-dire intouchable et et innommable; il

participe dfes l'abord k la nature des cadavres, du sang

menstruel ou des pariahs."71 Men are drawn together by what

thus repels and horrifies them; however, social existence is

that phenomenon which transmutes the Left into the Right

sacred, repulsion into attraction, depression into vigor,

and death into life; it is a process akin, suggests

Bataille, to psychoanalytic sublimation.72 His second talk

dwells upon the duality, the simultaneous ambivalence of

repulsion and attraction, proper to the social nucleus. The

expenditure, or transgression of the Left sacred reinforces

the Right sacred that censored it in the first place:

Cette depense prete ensuite son 6nergie au
dynamisme du pouvoir faste et droit qui prohibe le
crime, qui prohibe le principe meme de la depense,
qui maintient l'integrite de 1'ensemble social et
en fin de compte nie son origine criminelle.73

Rather than the act of expenditure, though, Bataille

isolates the transmutation of Left into Right sacred as the

primary phenomenon of social formations, declaring:

. . . il est un fait que les objects sacr£s, de

meme que les personnages politiques, ne sont
regulierement jamais transmues que de gauche a
droite. L'objet meme des operations religieuses

71Bataille, "Attraction et repulsion I" 194.

72Bataille claims that "1* ensemble de la nature
humaine dans chaque groupe agglomer6 autour de chaque noyau
sacre, a acquis dans une large mesure en participant a
1'activity de ce noyau la faculty de transformer le gauche
en droit, la d6tresse en force" ("Attraction et repulsion I"
205).
73Bataille, "Attraction et repulsion II" 229.
 372

consiste dans cette transmutation essentielle,

ouvertement lisible et perceptible en bien des
points du riche domaine des religions non
chr6tiennes et encore trfes sensible dans le
christianisme oil la personne divine est
1•Emanation d'un corps supplici£, frapp6
d'infamie.74
Bataille's talk on "Le pouvoir" (Feb. 19 1938) pursues

this theme, proposing that the current political crisis

stems from a historical process of unilateral transmutation

from Left to Right Sacred — which now demands the

revivification of the Left. Modern totalitarian states,

what he calls "power," draw upon military and sacred force

(echoing, perhaps, the two-pronged sovereigny of Mitra-

Varuna). According, then, to his historical model which

reflects a broad process of deterioration, such power has

isolated itself from the virulent social nucleus and

progressively lost its requisite sacred energy:

. . . le pouvoir se constitue au-dessus de cette

agitation, l'utilise a son profit et, dans la
mesure oil il lui semble qu'elle ne lui est plus
utile, s'efforce de la paralyser dressant en face
de la menace du crime la menace de la hache du
bourreau.75

" Modern "powers" lack that sacred crime, essentially the

killing of the king, required to refuel the Left sacred,

either in the form of tragedy (where the community

identifies with the regicide) or in its subsequent Christian

form (where the community identifies with the victim — the

74Bataille, "Attraction et repulsion II" 227.

75Georges Bataille, "Le pouvoir," Le collfeae de
socioloqie 252.
 373

Jew's carnival king). Current fascist states thus

substitute "immediate violence" for "criminal violence":

. . 1 • instrument de la mise & mort des sujets . . . est

oppose ostensiblement a 1'image du roi supplicie."76

If Bataille calls at this point for the recreation of a

tragic community, he does so at even greater length in

"Confreries, ordres, societes secretes, dglises," which

purported to amplify upon Caillois' sketchy notes. Yet

Bataille simply presents his own ideas about the 'total'

experience of existential communities, as he calls them,

which closely echoes the secret world of the lovers in

"L'apprenti sorcier":

. . . la vertu profonde du principe meme de la

"society secrete" consiste prdcis^ment en ceci
qu'il constitue la seule negation radicale et
op^rante, la seule negation qui ne consiste pas
seulement en phrases, de ce principe de la
necessite au nom duquel 1'ensemble des hommes
actuels collabore au g&chis de 1'existence.77

Most striking about this talk is the extent to which

Bataille attributes to Caillois his own ideas about violent

"expenditure" and "heterogeneity," about the tragic world of

the Bacchae: "Je rappellerai pour terminer que Caillois dit

de la 'soci^td secrete': qu'elle est lide a un sacr6

76Bataille, "Pouvoir" 251; this is linked to "la

constitution d'une force nouvelle de type militaire qu'elle
associe a tout ce qui subsiste de forces sacrees, en
particulier de forces sacrees directement associees au
pouvoir comme la patrie" (253).
77Georges Bataille, "Confreries, ordres, societes
secretes, eglises," Le college de socioloqie 288.
 374

consistant dans la violation jaillissante des regies de vie,

k un sacrd qui ddpense, qui se ddpense."78 Or further on:

"Caillois dit encore qu'une des fins de la 'soci6t6 secrete

est l'extase collective et la mort paroxystique."79 On

these grounds, Bataille concludes: "en definitive 1*empire

appartiendra & ceux dont la vie sera jaillissante ci un degr£

tel qu'ils aimeront la mort. Je n'ignore pas tout ce que

ceci a de malsonnant."80 In betraying, or transgressing,

Caillois' thought, as well as the boundaries of sociological

discourse, Bataille was also quite literally presenting

himself to the Collfeae. one might suggest, as a mildly

'offensive' version of that "insurmountable horror" wrought

by the Left sacred.

* * *

As a whole, L'homme et le sacr6 elaborates a vast

series of correspondances, indeed rather fantastic

correspondances, between Left and Right sacred which will

replace Bataille*s description of sacred ambiguity derived

from the simultaneous activity of opposed energetic charges.

Caillois1 preface declared: "ne pouvant aborder 1'etude de

1'inepuisable morpholoaie du sacre, j'ai du tenter d'en

78Bataille, "Confreries" 289.

79Bataille, "Confreries" 289.
80Bataille, "Confreries" 289.
 375

ecrire la svntaxe.1,81 Described at times as a dialectic,

this particular form of logic is not truly dialectical;

still, its process of generalization achieves a higher

resolution through the abstraction of opposites since it

reduces the opposition of Left and Right sacred to a

specific and constant form of alternation around a single

axis. Defined uniquely in relation to each other, the Left

and Right sacred are both the same and different in a logic

of participation, a sacred binary opposition, which

expresses "la connivence essentielle de ce qui exalte et de

ce qui ruine."82 Caillois will systematize the ideas of

Bataille, as it were, by generalizing the dichotomy between

Left and Right sacred into a system of correspondances, what

he calls "la logique propre du sacre,"83 whose ultimate

explanatory system is the play of cosmic, inorganic forces

rather than any origin in human crime.

Caillois1 initial discussion of the ambiguity of the

sacred presents its task as the reconciliation of two views:

Robertson Smith's claim that pure and impure (Left and Right

sacred) were originally identical; and a competing theory

that they were entirely distinct. Of course, it could be

said that Bataille also reconciled these two opposing views:

While positing the distinction between Left and Right

81Caillois, L'homme 11.

82Caillois, L1homme 70.
83Caillois, L'homme 43.
 376

sacred, he also claimed that they were simultaneously

perceptible within the sacred social nucleus, united, as it

were, by their social enactment. In contrast, Caillois

proposes that their very enactment or incarnation is

precisely what dissociates the two terms of the sacred.

Toute force, a l'6tat latent, provoque a la fois

le desir et la crainte, suscite chez le fidele la
peur qu'elle vienne a sa defaite, l'espoir qu'elle
vienne a son secours. Mais chaque fois qu'elle se
manifeste, c'est dans un seul sens, comme source
de benediction ou comme foyer de maledictions.
Virtuelle, elle est ambigue; en passant a l'acte,
elle devient univoque.84

In an important, if rather difficult, passage, Caillois thus

defines what he calls the essential movement of the

dialectic of the sacred:

Toute force qui l'incarne tend a se dissocier: son

ambiguity premiere se r6sout en Elements
antagonistes et complementaires auxquels on
rapporte respectivement les sentiments du respect
et d'aversion, de d6sir et d'effroi qu'inspirait
sa nature foncierement equivoque. Mais a peine
ces poles sont-ils nes de la distension de celle-
ci, qu'ils provoquent chacun de son cote, en tant
precisement qu»ils possedent le caractere du
sacre, ces memes reactions ambivalentes qui les
avaient fait isoler l'un de 1'autre.85

When incarnated or embodied in primitive societies, the

sacred always manifests itself in terms of relative

oppositions which fully structure man's world, or his ordo

re rum: these include such oppositions as left/right;

up/down; center/periphery? health/illness, and so forth.

84Roger Caillois, "L'ambiguite du sacre," Mesures Apr.

1939: 36.
85Caillois, L'homme 42.
 377

Quick readings of L1homme et le sacr6 may miss a

crucial aspect of Caillois' overall system, one that reduces

the relative binary opposition between Left and Right sacred

to the more fundamental distinction of Sacred and Profane.

Yet this difference between Sacred and Profane also

involves, I would note, a form of relative, rather than

absolute negation:

[P]ar rapport au sacre, le profane n'est empreint

que de caract&res negatifs : il semble en
comparaison aussi pauvre et depourvu d'existence
que le n6ant en face de l'etre. Mais selon
l'heureuse expression de R.Hertz, c'est un n6ant
actif qui avilit, degrade, ruine la plenitude &
l'egard de laquelle il se definit. II convient
done que des cloisons etanches assurent un
isolement parfait du sacre et du profane : tout
contact est fatal a l'un comme a l1autre.86

Caillois' subtle move is to suggest that such negativity

engenders the opposition of the Left and Right sacred.

According to this 'dialectic,' "chacun des deux termes, en

s'opposant a 1'autre [range] automatiquement aux cotes de ce

dernier cette sorte de neant actif que constitue le

profane."87 L'homme et le sacre thus replaces the terms

Left and Right sacred with the binary opposition — "sacre

de respect" and "sacr6 de transgression" — two incarnate

and alternating expressions of a unique sacred axis or

orthodoxy. This alternation is one that fundamentally

informs and reflects the ordo rerum of primitive life. The

86Caillois, L'homme 20.

87Caillois, L1homme 73.
 378

"sacr6 de respect" defines a collective respect for taboos

and other social interdictions. Caillois describes how

certain tribes are thus divided into binary "phratries":

Tout ce qui appartient & une phratrie est sacre et

r6serv6 pour ses membres, profane et libre pour
les membres de 1'autre, remarquait deja R.Hertz. .
La distinction du sacr£ et du profane
reproduit, caique celle des groupes sociaux.88

It is a structure which also holds for the assymmetrical,

hierarchical relation between king and subject: "un ordre du

monde irreversible, lineaire, faisant contraste avec l1ordre

circulaire, ^quilibrd, des soci^tes a phratries.1,89 The

"sacr6 de transgression," then, violates this order,

transgressing all rules and entirely disrupting the status

quo. Here is the tenor of Caillois' talk at the College on

the topic of festivals, which harbor a more creative social

function than they did in Le mvthe et 1'homme: "Vient le

moment oil une refonte est necessaire. II faut qu'un acte

positif assure a 1'ordre une stabilite nouvelle. On a besoin

qu'un simulacre de creation remette a neuf la nature et la

societe. C'est a quoi pourvoit la fete."90 Caillois

clearly describes the death and violence occuring in the

course of these regenerative simulacra which usually call

for the reign and then, the regicide, of the Carnival king:

Certaines donn^es font conjecturer que le faux roi

88Caillois, L'homme 91.

89Caillois, L1homme 118.
90Caillois, L'homme 119.
 379

avait plus anciennement un destin tragique :

toutes les debauches, tous les exc&s lui gtaient
permis, mais on le mettait a mort sur l'autel du
dieu-souverain, Saturne, qu'il avait incarn£
pendant trente jours. Le roi du Chaos dtant
mort, tout rentrait dans l'ordre et le
gouvernement regulier diricreait a nouveau un
univers organist, un cosmos.^

This historical and erudite outlook implicitly challenges

Bataille's views about the current relevance of regicide as

an act which might be emulated by a deliberate sacrifice.

Before discussing Caillois1 injunctions for the present,

though, we must further attend to his definition of the

sacred.

As proposed in the last chapter, Caillois may have

undertaken his study of the sacred to further and better

define the contents of that ideological superstructure or

orthodoxy created and sustained by the sect or secret

society. Indeed, L'homme et le sacre does, in its final

pages, come to discern a substance of the sacred, although

this substance is nothing but its very status as cosmic

system or structure. In a gesture of metaphysical

generalization, as it were, Caillois thus alludes to a

transcendant order even as he denies metaphysical or

religious belief. And in this respect, he was more

heretical than Bataille towards Durkheimian sociology. Of

course, the latter's emphasis on the participatory and

explosive status of the religious experience tends to

91Caillois, L1homme 156.

 380

challenge the Durkheimian (and the Maussian) theory that

religion expresses and confirms the proto-rational

distinctions of primitive social structure.92 Again, as

usual, L'homme et le sacr6 adheres to the Maussian outlook

in this respect. However, Caillois' sacred structure lays

claim to an origin which transcends those of primitive

social divisions or hierarchies, while Bataille's definition

of 11 Le sacr6" clearly stated its communal and sociological

basis:

Le christianisme a substantialis6 le sacr6, mais

la nature du sacre, dans laquelle est reconnue
aujourd'hui 1'existence brulante de la religion,
est peut-etre ce qui se produit de plus
insaissable entre les hommes, le sacre n'etant
qu'un moment privil6gi6 d'unitd communielle,
moment de communication convulsive de ce qui
ordinairement est etouffe.93

Several times Caillois uses the Bergsonian term, "une

veritable donn^e immediate de la conscience,1,94 to remark

upon the irreducible nature of the classifications outlined

in his study. Thus, for example, he declares about the

distinction of sacred and profane: "On tenterait en vain de

92SeeEmile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, "De quelques

formes primitives de classification" [1903], Essais de
socioloqie (Paris: Minuit, 1969): 162-230. See also Emile
Durkheim, Formes 616mentaires de la vie reliaieuse (1912):
"If religion has given birth to all that is essential in
society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of
religion"(The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans.
Joseph Ward Swain [New York: Free Press, 1965] 466).
93GeorgesBataille, "Le sacre," Cahiers d1 art 1939.
Rpt. in Oeuvres completes 10 vols., ed. Michel Foucault
(Paris: Gallimard, 1970) 1: 562.
94Caillois, L'homme 18.
 381

r£duire leur opposition h quelque autre. . . ."95

Elsewhere, he cites

le caractfere irr£ductible de la nature intime de

la puissance. On se heurte ici a une donnge non
moins immediate, premiere, infranchissable, que
l1opposition des sexes, a 1'image de laquelle
parait instituee la division rdversible du sacr6
et du profane dans les societes k phratries.96

But this gender distinction is only a provisional one in

some sense. Caillois' subsequent statement leaves open the

possibility of a higher level of theoretical abstraction or

generalization:

Ce n'est pas a dire, il va de soi, que la polarite

sexuelle ou la relation de commandant ci executant
qui definit le pouvoir, ne puisse en aucun cas
recevoir d*explication, mais celle qui en rendrait
compte devrait relever d'une conception generale
du monde et depasser de beaucoup le cadre d'un
probl^me special.97

A final chapter, "Le sacre, condition de la vie et porte de

la mort" specifically refrains from metaphysical conjecture

but asserts, nonetheless:

Au moins peut-on indiquer a quel point

1•antagonisme du sacre et du profane s'identifie
au jeu cosmique qui, pour en former un devenir ou
une histoire, pour donner la vie ci 1'existence,
compose la stabilite et la variation, l'inertie et
le mouvement, la pesanteur et l'elan, la matiere
et l'energie.98

Here, Caillois moves well beyond the framework of biological

95Caillois, L'homme 18.

96Caillois, L'homme 111.
97Caillois, L'homme 111.
98Caillois, L'homme 175.
 382

analogy to address those inorganic and cosmic phenomena

which will reappear in his essays of the 60s and 70s,

meditations upon such dynamic universal principles as

dissymmetry, entropy and mineral design. At this later

date, though, they no longer constitute the systematic

substance of the sacred. According to L'homme et le sacr6.

a work which can be seen as a culmination of Caillois1

ambitions for systematic theory in the 30s, the logic of the

sacred is that fantastic congruence, or mimetic relation,

binding the two elements of a binary opposition which

regiments the physical cosmos — in what I would define as a

universal logic of participation.

As an agenda for action in the present (1939), L'homme

et le sacr6 lacks the agressive tenor of Caillois1 essays of

1937 and 1938. This vast panorama merely discerns the

relative disappearance of the social realm of the sacred

relative to that of the profane, and the concomitant lapse

in the role of festival. Caillois1 preface to the edition

of 1949 recounts his initial idea that vacations might

substitute for this function (perhaps suggested by his work

on "Le complexe de midi"). But this idea was soon

superseded by the view of war as the sole modern counterpart

to festival: vacations merely confirmed the isolation and

anomie of modern society (a shift that may have hinted of

his disillusionment with the policies of the Front

Populaire). L'homme et le sacre in 1939 traced the status

 383

of war to the rise of nation states:

[L]'antique alternance de la frairie et du labeur,

de l'extase et de la maitrise de soi, qui faisait
renaitre periodiquement l'ordre du chaos, la
richesse de la prodigality, la stability du
dechainement, s'est trouvee remplacde par une
alternance d'un tout autre ordre, mais qui seule
presente dans le monde moderne un volume et des
caracteres correspondants: celle de la paix et de
la guerre, celle de la prosperity et de la
destruction des r£sultats de la prosperity, celle
de la tranquillity r^glee et de la violence
obiigatoire.*9

Yet it would be overstating the case to say that

L'homme et le sacry actually enjoined war in this first

edition, or even glorified it as an imminent social

solution. Rather Caillois presents war as an ineluctable,

cyclical fait accompli; in 1939, it was hardly unreasonable

thus to brace for and confront the imminent crisis. In

contrast, the appendix to the second edition (1949) does

develop a dramatic and glorified evocation of war,

presenting it more extensively as a function of the

repressed dimension of collective experience, the

disappearance of festival: a literal enactment of the

journey through chaos towards the recreation of a new order.

Citing the ecstatic pre-war texts of Ernst von Salomon and

Ernst Jiinger — which, as I have noted several times,

greatly stirred him and his cohorts at the College

— Caillois writes of war:

Elle offre satisfaction aux instincts que refoule

la civilisation et qui prennent sous son patronage

"caillois, L'homme 162.

 384

une 6clatante revanche: celle qui consiste h

s'aneantir soi-meme et k tout detruire autour de
soi. S'abandonner 4 sa propre perte et pouvoir
abimer ce qui a forme et nom. . . .100

I would suggest that these disturbingly exalted pages,

written after the catastrophe of World War Two, primarily

convey war's regenerative function in Caillois' own

experience, one that inspired in him a reappraisal and

rediscovery of what he would call "civilization." Besides

the very fact of the war, it is certain that Caillois' war­

time experiences in Buenos Aires — the discovery of

Patagonia, and la pampa. areas devoid of human habitation;

his exposure to Victoria Ocampo's persistent efforts to

create the Europhile, cosmopolitan cultural nexus of her

journal, SUR — all these, among others, would motivate in

him a profound "ndo-classicisme engage."101 Viewed in this

sense, Caillois* discussion of war in this post-war appendix

conveys, above all, his private conversion with regard to

the ordo rerum of Europe and, especially, of France.

* * *

Caillois had not deliberately planned to abstract

himself from the fighting when he left for Buenos Aires on

June 21 1939, as the guest (and young lover) of Victoria

100Caillois, L1horome 233.

101Aime Patri, Rev. of Babel, by Roger Caillois, Paru

47 (Oct. 1948): 54-56.

 385

Ocampo, who hoped that he night give her Argentinian coterie

a taste of the Collfeae. Still, he decided to remain there

after the outbreak of the war and served the French cause as

well as he could through his journal Lettres francaises from

1941-1944.102 (There is little chance that he could have

actually enlisted, in any event, since the French military

services in Buenos Aires "reformed" him for excessive

physical frailty.) The College closed shortly thereafter

due to the war, as well. But I would like to conclude

underscoring those conflicts between Caillois and Bataille

which had reached a head by this point.

Until their final explosion, it is interesting that

Caillois' resistance to Bataille was never voiced in

polemical and explicit fashion. L'homme et le sacr6 does

not directly challenge Bataille's sacrificial project any

more than Caillois' paradigm of the sect specifically

attacks Bataille's tragic community. Caillois' talk to the

College in February 1939, "La sociologie du bourreau"

suggests a Luciferian substitute for the act itself, and

thus conveys the Machiavellian detachment, or participatory

logic of the sociologist. This lecture details the

vestigial fascination of the public executioner, a

phenomenon recently expressed by the massive public response

102See Odile Felgine, "Lettres frangaises: le virage

americain," Roger Caillois "Cahiers de Chronos". ed. Jean-

Clarence Lambert (Paris: La Difference, 1991): 314-327.
 386

to the recent death of a French executioner.103 Most

striking about his discussion is how Caillois situates the

theme of the execution not as a convulsive moment of

communal experience but as the most intense and extreme

moment of social order, focused by the dramatic encounter of

executioner and sovereign. As in "Sociologie du clerc,"

Caillois draws upon Dumezil's complementarity between

sovereign and brahman to describe the relation between

sovereign and executioner: "L'un, portant le sceptre et la

couronne, attire sur sa personne tous les honneurs dUs au

pouvoir supreme, 1*autre supporte le poids des peches

qu'entraine n^cessairement l'exercice de l'autorit6, pour

juste et moderee qu'elle soit."104 Again, as in "Sociologie

du clerc," there is a certain miracle or sanctity to this

"rencontre,H most acutely illustrated by the relation

between female sovereign and executioner:

[L]a rencontre de la reine et du bourreau sur les

gibets de l'histoire ou dans les bals masques,
confere, en la transportant sur le terrain
passionel, la signification la plus accessible et
la plus directement emouvante aux instants ou les
forces opposees de la society se mesurent, se
croisent et, comme les astres, entrent en
conjonction pour s'eloigner immediatement et
retourner occuper leur place a distance

103Caillois declared: "il n'y a pas de societe assez

totalement conquise par les puissances de 1•abstraction pour

que le mythe et les realit£s qui lui donnent naissance
perdent en elle tout droit et tout pouvoir" ("Sociologia del
verdugo," Sur May 1939: 17-38. Rpt. in Instincts et
soci6t6 [Paris: Gonthier, 1964] 37).
104Caillois, "Sociologie du bourreau" 37.
 387

respectueuse les unes des autres.105

"Sociologie du clerc" described the fantastic logic of

participation uniting the members of a spiritual sect;

"Sociologie du bourreau" highlights a similar structure

underlying the relation between literal executioner

— rather than spiritual brahman — and sovereign. Yet, in

both cases, Caillois depicts a fantastic correspondance

which mimics, in rather fantastic fashion, the fantastic

order of the universe.

When the rupture occurred, it is interesting that one

of Bataille's accusations concerned precisely this reserved

or gradual nature of Caillois1 response. Again, I will

primarily rely upon that famous last letter, dating from

July 20 1939, where Bataille responds to a letter from

Caillois (now lost) presumably stating his discord, and

criticizing, in particular, "L'apprenti sorcier." Bataille

declares:

Ma pire reserve porte sur la frenesie avec

laquelle vous tenez a vous dire "intellectuel".
Vous n'ignorez pas que je tiens a la totalite et
vous avez laisse passer sans protestation, en son
temps, tout ce que j'ai dit la-dessus dans la
N.R.F.["L'Apprenti sorcier"]. Vous parlez
aujourd'hui du mysticisme de mon article. Vous
voulez dire par lei qu'il vous irrite. En tous cas
vous reconnaitrez qu'il serait de ma part
inconsequent de voir dans le College de Sociologie
des intentions qui excluent la possibility de
penser ce qui a ete exprime dans cet article. Je
veux bien me reconnaitre intellectuel mais je ne
veux pas ajouter des phrases qui laissent croire
qu'un intellectuel qui se limiterait

105Caillois, "Sociologie du bourreau" 36.

 388

volontairement puisse encore etre "droit" et

"honnete."106

Bataille's surprise at Caillois' discretion also entails an

attack upon that ideal of individual "reserve" which reached

its most extreme form, one might say, in "Sociologie du

clerc":
Au sujet de votre insistance sur la necessity
d'etre reserve, votre message est d'une telle
imprecision et donne si peu 11 impression d1 une
m6thode pratique qu'il m'est tr&s difficile d'en
parler. Je suppose que vous regrettez d1avoir
6crit le Vent d'hiver.*"7

Bataille finds, furthermore, that L'homme et le sacre is

itself too restrained: "Je suis tr&s d'accord dans

1*ensemble avec vos conclusions sur le Sacr6. II me parait

seulement possible d'aller au dela et je souhaite que nous

tent ions une explication a ce sujet dans le cadre du

•concile' mais seulement & quelques-uns.1,108 It is clear

from his last talk at the College on "la joie devant la

mort" that Bataille was still nourishing a desire for the

communal rekindling of the sacred. Only in the following

few years, during the war itself, would this motivation take

an entirely introspective and private turn with L1 experience

intdrieure (1943).

106Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20

1939, #26, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois 111.

l°7Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20

1939, #26, Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 111.

l°8Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20

1939, #26, Georges Bataille; lettres h Roger Caillois 115.
 389

Perhaps the most complicated disagreement between

Bataille and Caillois, though, concerned the issue of power.

Hollier writes that Caillois might well have demurred from

the entire project from the start had he grasped its true

scope:

De son cdt6 Caillois d£veloppait d£ja, h propos du

pouvoir, des hantises qui s'accordent
difficilement avec ce que Bataille d£crit au meme
moment sous le nom de souverainet6, qui est
n£gativit£ sans emploi. Si, comme Bataille le
dira, il faut choisir entre pouvoir et trag6die,
il est vraisemblable que leurs choix se seraient
opposes : volonte de puissance du cot6 de
Caillois, desir de tragedie du cote de
Bataille.109
Such a dichotomy — later reflected in the difference

between Bataille's idea of a tragic existential community

and Caillois' evolving paradigm of an elective community

— seems echoed in Bataille's letter when he writes:

Vous voulez que le College de Socioloaie

revendique a longue 6cheance le pouvoir spirituel.
II me semble qu'une organisation ignorante du
d^veloppement que le "cours des choses" lui
donnera ne peut pas poss6der cette pretention.
Cette organisation ne peut pretendre que poser la
question du pouvoir spirituel. Elle ne possede
evidemment aucune reponse au dela de 1'affirmation
qu'un pouvoir spirituel est n£cessaire. Je pense
meme que nous divergerions d6s qu'il s'agirait de
la direction ou ce pouvoir devrait etre cherche.
Peut-etre croyez-vous possible l'autorite de ceux
qui possederaient la connaissance et en
ddfiniraient 1'orthodoxie. Je ne m'exclu(s) pas
entierement de cet espoir.110

However, it is important that despite his objections to

109Denis Hollier, Le college de sociologie 16.

110Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, July 20
1939, #26, Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 112.
 390

Caillois' desire for "spiritual power," Bataille was

extremely angered by the former's reluctance to pronounce

himself in political terms. Indeed, Caillois consistently

denied the truly political dimension of his ideas. Already,

his article on Blum for the NRF in October 1937 denied any

expertise in the political reasons for this demise:

Je n'analyserai pas les causes apparentes,
profondes ou cachees, de la chute du Ministfere
Blum. Je les ignore et ne dispose, au surplus,
d1aucun moyen de les apprecier. C'est deja trop
que, ne les connaissant pas, je doive presque
m'excuser de ne pas faire comme si elles n'avaient
pas de secret pour moi.111

Then, his essay, "La hierarchie des etres" pointedly

disclaimed any political expertise as well. A lengthy

footnote to the opening paragraph declared:

Ce texte se presente comme un examen objectif et

tout theorique de conceptions politiques. Seuls
les principes m'ont retenu, leur force ou leur
faiblesse intrinseques, leurs rapports mutuels.
Pour le reste, je dois confesser ma totale
incompetence a l'endroit des probl&mes tactiques
de la realite politique. Aussi ne faut-il rien
interpreter dans cet article comme manifestant a
un degr6 quelconque une intention pol6mique. Je
l'ai ecrit avec le souci d'6claircir une question
qu • obscurcissent de multiples et dangereuses
confusions.112

li:LRoger Caillois, Rev. of Nouvelles conversation de

Goethe avec Eckermann: L'exercice du pouvoir: Du Mariaae. by
Lefin Blum; En lisant M. L6on Blum, by Marcel Thiebaut,
Nouvelle revue francaise Oct. 1937: 674.
112Caillois, "Hierarchie" 123. He pursues: "A la fin,
je ne fais que proposer la conclusion qui me parait
decouler necessairement de mon argumentation. Libre a
chacun de trouver cette derniere convaincante ou non. Quant
aux consequences pratiques que comporte eventuellement la
solution envisagee, ce sont les hommes d'intrigues, non les
hommes de principes qu'elles regardent. II parait plus que
 391

On January 25 1939, Bataille roundly condemned these

disclaimers to "La hi£rarchie des etres." Where Caillois

stated "quand aux consequences pratiques que comporte

6ventuellement la solution envisag^e, ce sont les hommes

d'intrigues, non les hommes de principes qu'elles

regardent," Leiris and Bataille would have preferred the

phrase: 11 ce sont les politiques et non le sociologue

qu'elles regardent."113 Yet, Bataille does not merely seek

to restore the legitimacy of "les politiques," whom

Caillois1 rhetoric tends to cast as fallen creatures. Quite

the contrary is true, since Bataille decries Caillois'

reference to his own "totale incompetence politique" : "Vous

pouvez sans doute parfois mal mesurer mais que

signifierions-nous et pourquoi parlerions-nous si nous

n'avions pas au fond une competence plus reelle que celle

des politiciens?"114 What Bataille really resents, then, is

the insinuation that the College lacks a special and more

real (perhaps surreal) form of political significance: "Le

pire est que vous en arrivez a etendre 1'incompetence de

votre cas personnel au sociologue en general, ce qui

jamais indispensable de faire la distinction, et aussi plus

que jamais regrettable de devoir la faire, tant il est
assure que, pour la reussite des grandes entreprises, il
faut 1'union d'une grande habilitds et d'un grand dessein"
(123).
113GeorgesBataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 25
1939, #222, Georges Bataille: lettres k Roger Caillois 97.
114GeorgesBataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 25
1939, #222, Georges Bataille: lettres a Roger Caillois 97.
 392

implique le College de Sociologie. . . ."115 Bataille

suggests that Caillois has been intimidated by a recent

article branding the College a fascist "foyer" — "Je ne

peux tout de meme pas imaginer que les pattes de mouche de

Calamaris vous aient ebranl£ & ce point!"116

One might well conclude, that Bataille's "drame

sacrif iciel," as a theoretical (and almost realized)

construct, was more deeply emmeshed in the world of

violence, and hence of power, than were the constructs of

Caillois at the time of the College. Of course, this

"power" had little to do with Bataille's use of the terra in

the College, where it is identified with homogenous,

totalitarian statehood. Rather, as Hollier has suggested,

Bataille's power may be correlated with Kojeve's

master/slave dialectic predicated on the fight to the death

for recognition and, beyond that, with Dum6zil's definition

of the violent Warrior function, opposed to the dual magico-

juridical identity of the Sovereign function, responsible

for law and order. In other words, Bataille's power entails

an anti-sovereign sovereignty.117

Although Caillois may be less fearful of the term

115Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 25

1939, #222, Georges Bataille; lettres a Roger Caillois 97.
116Georges Bataille, letter to Roger Caillois, Jan. 25
1939, #222, Georges Bataille? lettres a Roger Caillois 97;
he is referring to an article by Nicolas Calas in C16 (Jan.1939).
117See Denis Hollier, "January 21st," Stanford French

Review 12 (Spring 1988): 31-48.

 393

"power," "Sociologie du clerc" does not suggest that the

sect's authority is any more "real" than that of the

politicians — even if it is relatively more concrete than

the latter's abstract and universal order. As for the idea,

which Bataille so vehemently opposed, that spiritual power

must be assumed by the sect "a longue ech^ance," and despite

its ignorance of "le cours des choses" — I would note that

such a phrase echoes the rigorous deductive logic of

Caillois' thought in general. That is to say, if the group

is founded, and raises the issue of spiritual power

("1'affirmation qu'un pouvoir spirituel est necessaire"),

then, logically, it is implicated in the very quest for such

power and orthodoxy. It is less a statement of the group's

desire for power than it is, I think, an expression of

Cailloisr self-conscious, axiomatic rigor; it is precisely

that self-conscious rigor which would have inspired the

members of his ideal collective to transcend their

individual will to power.

I suspect that Caillois may have experienced more fully

than Bataille the convulsive and communal experience of the

College, the insubstantial attempt to create true community.

His intellectual detachment, marked throughout the 30s, and

now proper to the activism of the Luciferian sociologist,

was a logic of participation that demanded an intensely

dialogic relation to his milieu. Bataille frenetically

evoked shared human experience and dynamic movements, but

 394

this rhetoric masked a form of violent, existential

individualism. Caillois' individualism always involved, on

the other hand, an inner and outwardly projected experience

of dedoublament. as we have seen, of curious correspondance

with the 'other.1 First instilled through his relation to

the High romanticism of Le Grand Jeu. this strategy was

played out with its greatest theoretical and theatrical

urgency in Caillois* fantastic status as spiritual advisor

to the anti-sovereign sovereign of the College.

 395

Conclusion

Caillois remained in Buenos Aires until 1945, editing

Lettres francaises under the patronage of Victoria Ocampo's

influential journal SUR which served as a cosmopolitan nexus

and brought to light countless Latin-American writers,

Borges probably the most renowned among them. Although the

transformation in Caillois1 outlook during these years and

its subsequent influence on the course of his career is a

subject which calls for a lengthy further study, I would

like to conclude by offering a brief overview which

highlights its relation to the 30s. In the 1970 interview

with Gilles Lapouge, Caillois remarked about both Bataille

and himself that by 1944,

[l]a guerre nous avait montre l1inanity de la

tentative du College de Sociologie. Ces forces
noires que nous avions reve de declencher
s'etaient liberees toutes seules, leurs
consequences n'etaient pas celles que nous avions
attendues.1

What pervades his writing throughout the war is both a

repudiation of the College de sociologie together with a

certain perpetuation of its project. The famous essay of

1940, "Seres del anochecer," later translated as "Etres du

crepuscule," refers to the group as failed and ineffectual,

^•Gilles Lapouge, "Entretien avec Roger Caillois,"

Ouinzaine litteraire 15-30 (June 1970): 8.
 396

unable to constitute itself as "rayonnant" and "contagieux,"

a counterpart to the 'gangrenous' growth of Nazism (thus

described in "Naturaleza del hitlerismo"):

Nos volontes encore mal affermies n'auraient pu

d6velopper des efforts encore sans mati^re dans
ces epaisseurs de sable si accueillantes qui les
absorbaient aussitot, les buvaient et savaient
n'en laisser subsister aucune trace par leur
defaut meme de resistance.2

If this passage reproaches the members' lack of will,

Caillois* imagery still recalls that of "L'aggressivite

comme valeur," depicting the dangerous absorption of an

aging and weakened society within which the College was all

too comfortable for real revolutionary action: "Dans ce

monde qui refroidit, nous somme deja glaces."3 However, the

remedy he envisions during the war and thereafter no longer

entails an activist use of the affective imagination or,

ultimately, of the sacred.

With such little-known works or collections of essays

as La roca de Sisifo (1942), La communion des forts (1943),

Fisiologla de Leviatan (1946), Sur 11eni eu d1une guerre

(1946), and Circonstancielles 1940-1945 (1946), Caillois

outlines the requisite role of elites for social cohesion

and a mode of power based on fascination, ritual, secrecy

and other principles echoing ideas from the College. Here,

2Roger Caillois, "Seres del anochecer," SUR 75 (Dec.

1940). Rpt. and trans. "Etres de crepuscule," Le rocher de
Sisvphe (Paris: Gallimard, 1946) 161.
3Caillois, "Etres" 166.
 397

these are transmuted into more distinctly political terms,

an aristocratic means of resolving what is presented as the

sterile dichotomy of fascism and democracy. An article by

Etiemble (well-acquainted with the Lettres francaises and

SUR during these years) rejected in 1944 the notion that

Caillois be branded a fascist, underscoring "il a

stigmatise, dans rLa communion des forts1 pr£cisement, 'la

logique passionnelle qui veut que tout ce qui n'est point

totalitaire soit democratique et inversement.1,4 If this

•alternative logic,' as it were, perpetuates Caillois'

stance prior to the war, the primary discernable difference

is his new emphasis upon, and defense of, the "effort"

inherent to "civilization," "humanism," and "aesthetics."

In 1946, Gaetan Picon characterized the underlying theme of

these works as follows:

Contre 1'idee envahissante d'une evolution

historique independante de la conscience humaine .
. . Caillois maintient l'idee d'une permanence qui
delivre I'homme de l'histoire, puisqu'elle lui
permet de se reconnaitre identique a lui-meme a
travers le temps.5

Picon registers this gesture as a protest against both

"l'absurde" and "l'histoire", one that reasserts "cette

intelligibilite de I'homme pour lui-meme tout le long de son

devenir que brisent egalement les schemes hegelien, marxiste

4Rene Etiemble, "Sur 'La communion des forts'," Arche 6

1944: 146.
5Gaetan Picon, "Les essais de Roger Caillois,"
Fontaine 54 (Summer, 1946): 277.
 398

ou spenglerien de 1'Histoire."6

I would describe Caillois' shift during the war, in a

very broad sense, as a movement from the totalizing "effort

de systdmatisation" of the 30s to an "effort de la

civilization." As we have seen, his systematizing

constructs presented new modes of correspondences, or

participatory logic, which accomodated and absorbed the

"obstacles," or residuals motivating theoretical osmosis;

these always involved an aspect of the affective imagination

which was irrational and contradicted utilitarian and

positivist belief, which was residual to the Enlightenment.

Although Caillois1 scope was always interdisciplinary, the

residuals he focused upon each pertained to a particular

domain which may be outlined in chronological order: first

psychology, then biology, sociology, and finally, one might

say, metaphysics. During the war and thereafter, however,

Caillois developed a new appreciation of man, civilization,

and aesthetics as precarious and precious residuals when

perceived at present against the holocaust of World War Two

and the uninhabited regions of Argentina (la pampa and

Patagonia). In other words, the Enlightenment and "la citd"

had themselves become residual with respect to a new and

vaster conception of an overarching system or whole.

I will briefly illustrate Caillois* theoretical shift

by evoking his public reconciliation with Breton in June

6Picon, "Essais" 277.

 399

1942. My discussion concerns two emblematic moments: the

incident of the "haricots sauteurs" (or his break with

Surrealism in 1934) and the publication of "Les secrets

tresors" in VW. Breton's New York and war-time journal.7

The first well-known case, we might recall, involved

Breton's rejection of Caillois' request to dissect a Mexican

jumping-bean; "Les secrets tresors" then evoked a procedure

which appeared to reverse and comment upon Caillois' prior

intent. The essay describes a child, carefully hiding a

small and meaningless object in the wall:

Comme les objets mystiques, le tr^sor tient sa

valeur de n'etre pas connu. L'enfant prend des
precautions infinies pour soulever le papier
peint, creuser le pl&tre du mur, y installer le
depot prodigieux et recoller du mieux qu'il peut
la tapisserie savamment dechir^e de la faq:on
apparemment la plus fortuite, ou soigneusement
d^coupee suivant le contour des dessins. On
dirait, ce faisant, qu'il assure sa propre
existence et la met a l'abri. Dans la possession
de ce secret chimerique, il fonde sa personnalit6
meme.8

It might seem that the curious correspondance of these

two 'incidents' hinges on the following reversal: from the

7In the Archives interview, Caillois recalls writing to

Breton in 1940 from Buenos Aires, asking him to collaborate

in Lettres Francaises; he cites the final paragraph of a
letter Breton wrote back from New York which mentions his
great respect for Caillois' authenticity, refers rather
ironically to the "haricots sauteurs," and regrets the
extreme divisiveness of their final encounter (Roger
Caillois, interview with Jean-Jos6 Marchand, videotape,
dir. Michel Latouche for the Archives du XXeme sifecle. 7
reels [Paris: Society Frangaise de Production, 1971]: V).

®Roger Caillois, La communion des forts (Mexico:

Quetzal, 1943) 68.
 400

desired destruction of mystery (via an act of revelation) to

the current creation of mystery (via an act of

dissimulation). The essay implies that Caillois has

currently developed a more adult view of Surrealism, an

attitude both more tolerant and more condescending than that

of late 1934 when he abandoned Breton for more 'rigorous'

scientific pursuits. "Les secrets tr6sors" appears to

acknowledge and accept, in other words, that Surrealism is

predicated on the childlike creation of mystery and "le

merveilleux." Indeed, I would suggest that hiding this

secret treasure involves the deliberate creation or

construction of a new and subiective residual. The child is

conscious of the object's objective insignificance; only

when it is deliberately hidden does it become perceptible

or, in a sense, revealed to be a vehicle of mystery and

signification. This necessarily entails a degree of self-

deception, one that seems proper to the imagination of a

child; the objective, scientific dimension in "Les secrets

tresors" is located within the narrator's adult perspective.

Caillois' "Le surrealisme comme univers de signes"(1975)

would similarly rebuke the idiosyncratic dimension of

Surrealism's "sorcellerie evocatoire" which invests a

meaningless object—or "metaphore vacante"—with subjective

meaning, thus rendering it the source of a new web or system

 401

of signification.9
Yet, "Les secrets tr£sors" can thus be read as a

commentary not only on Surrealism but on Caillois1 own past

and his youthful affiliation with Surrealism. And here, I

would return to the incident of the "haricots sauteurs."

Given Caillois1 biological interests at the time, I have

suggested that opening the bean would not have destroyed but

would have created, in the very act of unveiling, another

mystery: a new, objective residual. What is this creature

living, quite literally, in "le cote nocturne de la nature"?

And what makes it jump—a rather satanic emblem, one could

almost suggest—of "l'elan vital"...? Like the fascinating

praying-mantis systematized into an ideoaramme obi ectif by

La necessity d1esprit, the scientific cognition of such a

creature would only have rendered science itself more

mysterious.

In short, "Les secrets tresors" points to the childlike

and subjective dimension of Caillois' quest for residuals in

the 30s; when read in such a fashion, it implies a

renunciation of that objective, scientific systematization

he sought to develop in the Surrealist orbit. As an

autobiographical essay, then, it harbors a dedoublement

9Roger Caillois, Obliques (Paris: Gallimard, 1987) 241.

He writes: "[L]a donnee privilegi§e n'est pas signe parce

qu'elle vehicule un message. Elle fut promue signe parce
que, privee naturellement ou accidentellement ou essor6e
deliberement de toute signification concevable, elle semble
continuer d'en exiger une et par consequent se trouve apte a
procurer le support d'une reverie infinie"(240).
 402

whereby the narrator emulates the child and creates a secret

treasure. Caillois* gesture of reconciliation with

Surrealism is also one that buries his youth, transforming

it into a private treasure or residual; in large part, I

suspect, this residual was the process of systematization

itself. And perhaps, like the useless object here

described, this intellectual project of his youth was quite

insignificant in any objective or scientific sense; yet, it

was the secret source, one might, of Caillois* thought

throughout the post-war. The very process of

systematization, or theoretical absorption, was the treasure

to which he repeatedly returned in terms which were

increasingly self-conscious, open-ended, and poetic.

Jean Starobinski has proposed that while Roger Caillois

initially sought to achieve a "logique de 11imaginaire," he

would ultimately create "11 imagination d'une loaioue."10 I

would merely add that such a shift could be further defined

as the movement from a view of poetry as residual in the 30s

to a "poetique du residu" in the post-war. As noted at the

outset, Le fleuve Alphde (1978) remarks upon one important

and lingering influence of Surrealism, a persistent faith in

the "le caractere unitaire du monde."11 Yet, during and

after the war, Caillois* writing conveys an increasing

10Jean Starobinski, "Saturne au ciel de pierres,"

Nouvelle revue francaise 320 (1979): 190.
i:LRoger Caillois, Le fleuve Alphee (Paris: Gallimard,
1978) 163.
 403

resistance to theoretical or systematic absorption which

would culminate in the total repudiation of the "parenthese"

described by his lyrical autobiography in 1978. In the 40s,

the neo-classical aesthetics of Babel proposed a highly

self-conscious use of the social imagination. Throughout

the 50s and 60s — his years of Diogfene. 1'UNESCO, and the

comitd de lecture at Gallimard — Caillois would express his

hostility to the sciences humaines through his construct of

the "sciences diagonales"12 charting unusual and often

interdisciplinary correspondances in a manner which quietly

challenged structuralist tenets, and those of Marxism and

psychoanalysis as well. If the "sciences diagonales"

presupposed the unity of the universe, still, this diagonal

approach sought to produce an open series of

correspondances, a variety of cross-sections, with none

claiming full, that is 'total,' systematic value: "L'univers

est rayonnant. II supporte toute secante, mediane, corde et

bissectrice.1,13 Thus, Caillois loosely correlates

comparative categories disgarded by scientific progress:

"Les caracteres residuels legitimement disqualifies donnent

sflrement lieu a des relations remarquables qu'il y a sans

12See Roger Caillois, "Nouveau plaidoyer pour les

sciences diagonales," Cases d'un 6chiauier (Paris:
Gallimard, 1970): 53-59.
13Caillois, "Plaidoyer" 55.
 404

aucun doute avantage a d£celer et h 6tablir."14

The resonance of his specific hostility to

structuralism was rendered most explicit in Caillois'

debates with L6vi-Strauss. I have elsewhere mentioned how

the initial essays of 1954-55, "Illusions a rebours,

situate Levi-Strauss* 'inverse ethno-centrism• in terms of

Caillois* own experience at the hands of the leader of Lg

Grand Jeu. Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, who convinced him at an

early age that non-logical 'logic of participation' was

superior to that of Western civilization. "Je ne savais pas

alors," writes Caillois,

que la logique ne sert nullement a inventer,
qu'elle est au contraire une sorte de garantie ou
d'assurance que le raisonneur prend contre la
facilite du raisonnement. Je ne me rendais pas
compte que la logique de la participation,
precisement pour etre immensement souple, n'est
pas du tout une logique et qu'a cause de cela la
mentalite primitive n'est & aucun degre une pensee
capable de rigueur. Mais 1'illusion de Gilbert-
Lecomte est issue de la meme tentation que
1'illusion de Saurat. et que la dialectique de
Levi-Strauss.16

14Caillois, "Plaidoyer" 55; thus for example, he

remarks: "II n'empeche que d'avoir quatre pattes est aussi
un caractere interessant. . ."(55). In particular, he
highlights affective motivations which contradict rational
and utilitarian norms, such as "la profusion, le jeu,
l'ivresse, l'esthetique meme, du moins le besoin d'ornement
et de parure"(57).
15Roger Caillois, "Illusions a rebours," Nouvelle revue

francaise 24 (Dec. 1954): 1010-1024; 25 (Jan. 1955): 58-70.

16RogerCaillois, "Illusions h rebours" 25 (Jan. 1955):
68. Saurat was 19th century mathematician, whose "illusion"
was that Mayan Indians had achieved greater breakthroughs
than Western mathematicians.
 405

In other words, Caillois implies that L6vi-Strauss's

structuralism emerged in conjunction with his inverse ethno-

centrism: The radical desire for non-Western purity and

plenitude originating with Surrealism, as Caillois defines

it, helped to engender the facile and accomodating pseudo-

logic of structuralist sciences humaines. ultimately a form

of 'bricolage' rather than genuine scientific research or

•engineering' — to use L6vi-Straussian distinctions.

This argument had evolved by 1974, when Caillois'

welcoming address for Levi-Strauss at the Academie Fran?aise

assailed the deductive "perspicacity combinatoire" of the

structuralist "Ecole," aloof from empirical verification,

and informed by the category of "isomorphisme" at the

expense of any "hdteromorphisme."17 Brandishing heavy

artillery, Caillois cites Karl Popper's likening of Marxism

and psychoanalysis to astrology rather than to astronomy:

Pareilles constructions, en effet, assimilent

tout: evenements et observations. Ce n'est
affaire que d*ingeniosite. La capacite
d'absorption dont elles font preuve est infinie et
irremediable. En quoi, elles ne seront jamais que
para-scientifiques.18

17Caillois remarks: "il devient clair que l'epithete

["isomorphisme"] ne saurait avoir de contraire. C'est grave

dans pareille economie. Peut-etre inexpiable" ("Rdponse de
M. Roger Caillois au discours de M. Claude L6vi-Strauss,"
Publications divers de l'annee [Paris: Institut de France,
1974] 34).
18Caillois, 'Reponse' 35. Caillois cites Popper's
famous phrase: "Une theorie qui se pr6sente comme science
l'affirme en vain a partir du moment ou la structure meme du
systeme le rend irrefutable"( qtd. 35).
 406

As before, Caillois criticizes the excessively supple

'osmotic1 theory of Levi-Strauss from within, from the 30s,

this time evoking not only Surrealism but a philosophy

teacher, Andr6 Cresson, who taught them both (in different

years). He suggests that L6vi-Strauss•s explicit hostility

to such training could easily be turned against

structuralism itself:

De 1'enseignement universitaire, vous retenez

surtout le caractere technique et quasi passe­
partout d'argumentations ou s1ebroue votre
ing^niosite: 'Une forme unique, 6crivez-vous,
toujours semblable, a condition d'y apporter
quelque correctif elementaire, un peu comme la
musique qui se reduirait a une seule m^lodie, des
qu'on a compris que celle-ci se lit tantot en cle
de sol et tantot en cle de fa.1 Je suis frappe par
la critique comme par la comparaison.19

The implications of this brief passage are extremely

interesting, for they refine upon Caillois* prior genealogy

of structuralism and Surrealism to hint that — 'anti-

Western' or not — Levi-Strauss • s 'bricolage' does not

escape the broader intellectual confines of the 30s: namely,

those fluid philosophical systems informing Surrealism

itself. By 1974, Caillois deeply distrusted any such

"logique ductile."20 In these later years, he had abandoned

systeme le rend irrefutable"( qtd. 35).

19Caillois, 'Reponse' 22. Of course, structuralism was
often compared to music, a favorite predilection of Levi-Strauss.
20He writes in Le fleuve Alphde: "Chaque systdme
implique deja par nature un imperatif de coherence. Celui-
ci pousse tout element nouveau a occuper sa place dans la
case qui lui revient plus ou moins visiblement. . . . [I]l
n • est pas etonnant qu'une theorie y chasse 1'autre avec une
 407

even his open "sciences diagonales,"21 favoring an 'osmotic1

relation to the universe which was tenuous and poetic rather

than, in any sense of the word, scientific. Referring to

the act of writing his prose-poems of the Pierres series, Le

fleuve Alph6e explains that such private reverie upon the

markings of stones meant being "dupe et partie prenante

d'une osmose ou la fragilite de l'imaginaire rejoignait

l'inertie la plus rebelle, s'en nourrissait, avait commerce

avec elle."22 I would also suggest that Caillois' 'osmosis'

has by now fully reversed the relative positioning of its

original terms — "la pensee et son obstacle." At present,

the writer and his thoughts have become residual or

"obstacle" to a vaster theoretical system or "pensee": "Les

pierres ... me reconcilient momentanement avec une syntaxe

qui me d^passe de toute part."23

One of the more secretive aspects of Caillois' buried

residual described in "Les secrets tresors," and one which I

have explored throughout this study, is its intertextuality

" cadence de plus en plus rapide. II est bien clair que peu
de limites restreignent le choix des intuitions initiales et
qu'une logique ductile en permet un d&veloppement a peu pres
inevitablement captieux et toujours illimite"(78).
21AS he describes this phase of the "parenthese" in Le

fleuve Alphee; "J'etais plus prudent, ou simplement plus

cauteleux, dans la conduite de mes raisonnements; en tout
cas, plus prompt a surprendre la faille dans ceux des
autres. Mais je n'en appartenais pas moins au monde clos de
1'organisation semi-arbitraire des donn£es variables"(79).
22Caillois, Fleuve 216.
23Caillois, Fleuve 219.
 408

or "dialogisme." His early work, as we have seen, engaged

in a subtle form of communication, a logic of participation

which, despite its intransigeant rigor, was more guarded

than it was truly polemical or combative. Such a posture

would be generally transmuted after the war into one of

profound irony; the discreet dialogical nature of "Les

secrets tresors" is already a case in point. If it does not

explicitly acknowledge its relation to the Surrealists and

the context of VW. the essay also proposes a muted

commentary upon Bataille's category of "expenditure," with

interesing implications for the category of "residual" as

well. Although the treasure is neither spent nor destroyed,

it contradicts the laws of economics in its absolute lack of

objective value: "On aper?oit combien la notion de tresor

s'eloigne de l'economie. Elle en parait au contraire la

negation exacte. Elle est d'ordre magique. . . . Elle

evoque une opulence inalienable, non un signe d'echange

conventionnel.1,24 Within the charged intellectual arena of

the post-war, the "opulence inalienable" of Caillois' youth

is perhaps what gave him the strength to maintain a quietly

polemical, that is to say, quietly residual, status with

respect to many prevalent systems of the day: Marxism,

psychoanalysis, structuralism, and even post-structuralism,

I suspect... May we not find a culminating image in Le

fleuve Alphee — which both pursues while reversing the

24Caillois, "Secrets" 69.

 409

participatory logic of his youth — where Caillois

identifies with the fresh-water river miraculously resisting

its (osmotic) absorption by saturated salt-water, the sea of

Parisian discourse?
 410

R.Caillois: Chronological Primary Bibliography 1927-1940.

1927/28
Libre critique. Roger Caillois "Cahiers pour un temps."

Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou and Pandora, 1981: 147-

154.

1932

Dumont, Louis [Caillois, Roger]. nLa •symphonie

industrielle'." Critique independante 2 (12 Feb.

1932): 9.

"Texte de Breton ecrit pour la Literaturnava Gazeta a la

demande de Romoff." Signed by Breton, Caillois,

Crevel, Char, Eluard, Monnerot, Peret, Gui Rosey, Yves

Tanguy, Andre Thirion, Pierre Yoyotte. (July 19 1932).

In "Les surrealistes et l'U.R.S.S.: histoire d'une

declaration." Jean-Charles Gateau et Georges Nivat."

Cahiers du XXeme sifecle 4 (1975): 149-157.

1933

"Le second epithalame; paroles du delire

de la fievre de Roger Caillois." Cahiers du Sud Apr.

1933.

"Specification de la poesie.11

Surrealisme Au Service De La Revolution 5-6 (May 1933):

30-31.
 411

. "Sur la connaissance irrationelle de

l'objet: Boule de cristal, un morceau de velours rose;

Sur les possibilities irrationelles de penetration et

d1 orientation dans un tableau; Sur les possibilites

irrationelles de vie a une date quelconque."

Surrealisme Au Service De La Revolution 5-6 (May 1933):

10-24.

. "Lettre-reponse.11 In 111 Pouvez-vous dire

quelle a ete la rencontre capitale de votre vie?1

Enquete." Minotaure 3-4 (1933): 105.

1934
"La mante religieuse.11 Minotaure 5

(1934): 23-26.
Rev. of Les deux poles de 1'esprit, by G.

Mannoury. Documents 34 (June 1934): 94.

. "Systematisation et determination."

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1935

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Minotaure 7 (1935): 5-10.

. Rev. of La mvtholoqie primitive, le monde

mvthicrue des australiens et des papous. by Lucien L6vy-

Bruhl. Cahiers du Sud Apr. 1935: 332-334.

 412

. "Notices sur l'Impuret6 dans l'Art."

Cahiers du Sud May 1935: 390-403.

. Rev. of Ouranos-Varuna. by Georges

Dumezil. Cahiers du Sud June 1935: 499-501.

. Rev. of Essai sur la formation de la

pens6e grecaue. by Pierre Maxime Schuhl. Cahiers du

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. Rev. of Le tabou de 11 inceste. by Lord

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. "Determinations inconscientes en

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. Rev. of Survivances paiennes dans la

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Cahiers du Sud Dec. 1935: 870-872.

"Le mythe et 11homme." Recherches

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. Proces intellectuel de l'art. Marseille:

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1936

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Rev. of L1homme. cet inconnu. by Alexis

Carrel. Nouvelle revue francaise Mar. 1936: 438-439.

 413

. Rev. of Propos de Georges Sorel. by Jean

Variot. Nouvelle revue francaise Apr. 1936: 600-602.

. Rev. of Mvtholoaie universelle. by

Alexandre Haggerty Krappe; La vie apres la mort dans

les crovances de l'humanite. by J.T. Addison. Cahiers

du Sud Apr. 1936: 329-331.

"L'ordre et 1'empire." Europe 41 (May-

Aug. 1936): 59-70.

Rev. of Platon. by Leon Robin. Cahiers du

Sud June 1936: 500-501.

npour une orthodoxie militante: les taches

immediates de la pensee moderne." Inquisitions 1 (June

1936): 6-14.

"Compte-Rendu pour la phenomenologie

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Janvier 1936): Expos6 de Roger Caillois Sur les taches

immediates de la pensee moderne. Discussion."

Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 66-68.

Rev. of La poesie et le principe de

transcendance sur la creation poetique. by Maurice

Duval. Inquisitions 1 (June 1936): 54.

. Rev. of La volonte de puissance, by F.

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. Rev. of Nietzsche, by Thierry Maulnier.

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Rev. of Le travestissement. Essai de

 414

psvchopatholoaie sexuelle. by Dr. Agnes Masson.

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. Rev. of Sanctuaire. Tandis que i1 agonise.

Lumiere d1 Aotit.11 by William Faulkner. Inquisitions 1

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Rev. of Service inutile. by H. de

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Rev. of Le Tarot. by J. Maxwell. Cahiers

du Sud July 1936: 582-583.

Rev. of Les tentations de Saint-Antoine.

by Claude Roger-Marx. Cahiers du Sud Aug.-Sept. 1936:

676-77.
. Rev. of La guerre dans les societes

primitives by Maurice Davie. Nouvelle revue francaise

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. Rev. of Le bouc dmissaire. by J.G.Frazer.

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. Rev. of L'esth6tique de Baudelaire, by

Andr6 Ferran. Nouvelle revue francaise Nov. 1936: 900-

904.

. Rev. of Les hittites. by Louis Delaporte.

Nouvelle revue francaise Dec. 1936: 1091.

. Rev. of Les etrusaues et leur

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francaise Dec. 1936: 1091.

 415

1937

"Les spectres de midi dans la demonologie

slave: interpretation des faits.11 Revue des dtudes

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vie d'une tribu sud-africaine. by Henri Junod.

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Rev. of Les paradis artificiels. by Louis

Lewin. Cahiers du Sud Jan. 1937: 57-59.

. Rev. of La comedie humaine. by H. de

Balzac, ed. Marcel Bouteron. Nouvelle revue francaise

Mar. 1937: 452-455.

"Les demons de midi." Revue de l'histoire

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. Rev. of Poisons sacres. ivresses divines.

by Ph. de Felice. Cahiers du Sud Apr. 1937: 304-306.

"Paris, mythe moderne." Nouvelle revue

francaise May 1937: 682-699.

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111-121.

"L'agressivite comme valeur." Ordre

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 416

sociologie." Acephale July 1937: 26.

Rev. of Oriaine des instruments de

musicfue. by Andr6 Schaeffer. Cahiers du Sud July 1937:

381-383.

. "La mante religieuse.11 Mesures Aug. 1937:

89-119.

. "Les demons de midi." Revue de l'histoire

des religions 116 (July-Aug. 1937): 54-83.

. Rev. of Moeurs et coutumes des indiens

sauvaaes de l'ameriaue du sud. by the Marquis de

Wavrin. Cahiers du Sud Aug. 1937: 444-446.

. Rev. of Les echecs artistioues. by Andre

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reconciliees. by Marcel Duchamp et Halberstadt."

Nouvelle revue francaise Sept. 1937: 511-514.

"Les demons de midi." Revue de l'histoire

des religions 116 (Sept.-Dec. 1937): 143-186.

. Rev. of Abraham, decouvertes recentes sur

les origines des h6breux. by Sir L. Woolley; Les

fouilles de Tell et Amarna et I'epoaue amarnienne. by

J.D.S. Pendlebury. Cahiers du Sud Oct. 1937: 586-588.

. Rev. of Nouvelles conversation de Goethe

avec Eckermann; L'exercice du pouvoir; Du mariage. by

Leon Blum; En lisant M. Leon Blum, by Marcel Thiebaut.

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Rev. of L'economie primitive, by Richard

 417
Thurnwald. Cahiers du Sud Nov. 1937: 673-674.

. Rev. of Essai sur le titanisme dans la

poesie romantioue occidentale entre 1815 et 1850. by

Vaclav Cerny. Nouvelle revue francaise Nov. 1937: 847-

849.

. Rev. of Manuel d1anthropoloaie culturelle

and Traite de socioloaie primitive, by Robert H. Lowie.

Cahiers du Sud Dec. 1937: 743-46.

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. La mante reliaieuse. Paris: Amis des

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1938

. Rev. of La comedie humaine. by Balzac, ed.

Marcel Bouteron. Nouvelle revue francaise Jan. 1938:

136-138.

. "Un roman cornelien." Nouvelle revue

francaise March 1938: 477-482.

. "L'aridite." Mesures Apr. 1938: 7-12.

Rev. of Ur en Chaldee. by Leonard Woolley.

Cahiers du Sud May 1938: 471-472.

. Rev. of Les Prophet ies a travers les

siecles. by Henry James Forman. Cahiers du Sud May

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 418

124.

Rev. of La aenese des mvthes. by A.H.

Krappe. Nouvelle revue francaise May 1938: 848-851.

"Pour un College de Sociologie." Nouvelle

revue francaise July 1938: 5-7.

"Le vent d'hiver." Nouvelle revue

francaise July 1938: 39-54.

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svmboles chez les primitifs: Pages choisies. by Lucien

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324.

Rev. of Histoire de la philosophie

chinoise, by E.V. Zenker; Naissance de la Chine, by

N.G. Creel. Cahiers du Sud Aug. 1938: 644-646.

, Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris.

"Declaration du College de Sociologie sur la crise

internationale." Volontes 9 (Sept. 1938): 60-62.

. Reponse to "Enquete sur la poesie

indispensable." Cahiers G.L.M. Oct. 1938: 56-57.

"Resurrection de Corneille." Nouvelle

revue francaise Oct. 1938: 659-665.

"Nemrod." Verve 3 (Oct.-Dec. 1938): 111.

Rev. of Du reone de la mere au

patriarcat. by J.J.Bachofen. Nouvelle revue francaise

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"Declaration du College de Sociologie sur la Crise

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"En toute s6verite." Volont6s 12 (Dec.

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1939
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Samos." Cahiers d'art 1.4 (1939): 51-55.

Rev. of L'^ouinoxe de septembre. by Henry

de Montherlant. Nouvelle revue francaise Jan. 1939:

150-154.
"Fetes ou la vertu de la license." Verve

4 (Jan.-Mar. 1939): 133-134.

"L'ambiguite du sacre." Mesures Apr.

1939: 35-64.
Rev. of Les theories socioloaicmes

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francaise Apr. 1939: 705-707.

11 Lettre a la Revue," Nouvelle revue

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 420

, [Collfege de Sociologie]. Response to

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"Le sacr6 de respect." Revue d'histoire

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"Sociologie du clerc." Nouvelle revue

francaise Aug. 1939: 291-301.

Rev. of M&moires du Cardinal de Retz:

Anne-Genevieve de Bourbon. Duchesse de Loncmeville. by

Jacques Debu-Bridel; Defile entre La Bruyere et

Berason. by Jacques Paoli. Nouvelle revue francaise

Sept. 1939: 489-491.

. Rev. of Ends and means, by Aldous Huxley.

Sur. Sept. 1939: 54-57.

"La pampa." Sur Sept. 1939: 16-19.

"Testimonio frances." Sur Oct. 1939: 51-

52.

"Naturaleza del hitlerismo." Sur Oct.

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. Rev. of Nietzsche, by Henri Lefebvre.

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1940
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Rev. of La fin et les movens. by Aldous

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. "Defensa de la republica." Sur June

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 422

"Arte y propaganda." Sur Sept. 1940: 72-

74.

"Seres del anochecer." Sur Dec. 1940:

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R.Caillois: Selected Bibliography 1941-1989

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