"Literature is not innocent. It is guilty and should admit itself so." What does Bataille mean by this, and is he justified?

        Bataille sees Evil and love to be closely related with each other.  He states “death seems to be the truth of love, just as love is the truth of death”.  It seems he believes that inside love there has to be a recognition of death, because if you love another life, you are aware it will end, as all human experiences do, and so you recognise that your love is finite – it is not unlimited.  So love is therefore Good, as it at least has this limit imposed upon it.  But perhaps it’s bad side can be said to be in its physical manifestation – eroticism – where the persons involved are living in that moment that it creates, and they are free of any limits; it is not done for any future benefit, but just for its own sake.  So this could be said to be an evil part of love; but as we will see later, there has to be Evil for good to exist, so this paradox is inevitable.

        As we know, the love of Catherine and Heathcliff is the focus of Wuthering Heights, so there is much to be explored here – the issue of the love presented in the novel, the status of the characters involved, and how this all relates to Bataille’s opinion on the guilt of literature in general.  

        The character Heathcliff lives life by his own rules, and he sees no limits on himself or his actions – he simply does what he wants simply because he can.  Is he, then, Evil?  It would seem so, as he does not comply with the rationality of the world we live in.  Bataille even goes so far as to call him a sadist – he hurts others because he knows he can, and he seems to take pleasure in this fact, or, at least, he is indifferent to the other characters plights.  He has no concern for any – excepting of course the object of his love.  Bataille believes we need to comply with “reasonable adult conventions” in order for society to survive, but Heathcliff doesn’t want to participate in this order of things.  He wants to keep his “infantile freedom”, where the laws of society and conventional politeness do not affect Catherine and himself.  Bataille believes this is his main reason for acting as he does, because he has been banished from the kingdom of childhood, but wants to return to it, so will “stop at nothing to regain it”, and the freedom he had in it.

But isn’t Bataille contradicting himself somewhat here?  He is saying now that Heathcliff does what he does as a means to an end, rather than just doing it out of pure sadism, so perhaps his deeds are not purely Evil?  However, despite this possibility of contradictions, Heathcliff must still be deemed as Evil, because for whatever reason he commits the sins against others, he is doing it because he can, and he disregards the consequences for his victims, which is in itself intrinsically Evil.

        So in the eyes of the world, Heathcliff represents Evil, and all it stands for.  But, as Bataille himself says, Heathcliff believes he “represents Good and reason”.  Heathcliff is questioning society and its limits, and this is where the theme of transgression becomes important.  Heathcliff is trying to transgress through society and its laws, and so he represents opposition to social restrictions.  Bataille describes this transgression as a tragic violation of the law, which leads the novel to have a certain affinity with Greek tragedy – atonement is connected with transgression.

        Bataille says that it is not the laws that Heathcliff is trying to transgress that are denounced, but the domain that these laws deny, the forbidden domain.  Humanity banishes this domain to us, but Bataille says this only serves to magnify it, and so in essence make us want it more – “the ban beautifies that to which it prevents access”.  In trying to reach this domain, the perpetrators suffer; Catherine dies due to her infidelity to the spirit, and Heathcliff has to endure the agony of life without her.

        Therefore, in the unlimited world of literature, it can be said that we are given lessons on what happens to those who try and transgress the laws of our society.  Over time, as Bataille points out, reason has replaced the primitive taboos, and we have learnt that certain things should be avoided if we do not want to suffer.  This can occur easily through literature, as no real beings suffer, but we can recognise what it would be like if there were no rules or limits to live by, or if we refused to live by those limits.  Literature can reveal a process of breaking these laws without trying to create another order, simply because it can do this.  It only needs to be what it is; it does not need to create anything else.  Perhaps literature provides the lesson we need to avoid trying to go beyond rationality in our lives?  So, if literature does perform this task, then can it still be called guilty?  Would not this make it more of a constraint on society rather than something that could be called a bad influence?

        So perhaps the instant of escape that literature provides can be seen as similar to the eternal escape that death provides?  The two can be similarly described – both are unlimited in certain senses.  In literature, we lose ourselves in something other than ourselves, and this is also true of death, and as Bataille says, what this “other thing” is is not important – it is still something that transcends the common limitations we are all subject to.  Both provide an escape of some kind, even if one is of more of a permanent nature.  Through literature, we are exploring the world of the moment that it presents, and by death we are exploring whatever (if there is anything at all) lies beyond this life.

        Bataille believes that, in writing Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte had “fathomed the very depths of Evil”.  From his study, it seems that perhaps you have to be Evil yourself to write literature at all, because you have to be unlimited – free of restraints – and as we know, to lack these constraints is seen as Evil.  Jacques Blondel believes Bronte emancipated herself from all prejudice of an ethical or social order, and he believes this liberation is necessary to every artist.  He also says this can be felt most intensely by those “in whom ethical values are most deeply rooted”, as they have a thorough knowledge of Good, so can easily present the opposite.  Due to these values, Bronte is able to resolve the problems in her novel – this manly being the purity of love being regained in its intimate truth, which as Bataille said, is that of death.  It seems true to say that only by knowing Good can you know Evil – to know the opposite of something is essential in defining it, for example, the states of hot and cold.

        Also, we could say that Bronte’s own views may have been reflected in Catherine; someone who is capable of total love (we know this when she says, “I am Heathcliff”) but also recognises the need to live by the restraints of life, even though in her case it seems to do her little good in the end (admittedly, had she not followed the constraints bound upon her in her patriarchal society, then her and Heathcliff may have married and ended up as beggars, but Heathcliff would probably have preferred this anyway, so this can be seen in two ways).  Bataille also says that Bronte “identified” herself with Catherine, and both were “absolutely moral”  – this is in fact what causes Catherine’s demise, as she cannot detach herself from loving the man she did as a child.  Also, she was unable to love without limits, as Heathcliff did, and so she died – paradoxically she achieved a love without limits through death which she could not achieve in life.  But to extend the paradox further, she now has this love that she needed in life, but has no use for it now in death.

        Bataille says that “Evil therefore, if we examine it closely, is not only the dream of the wicked; it is to some extent the dream of the Good”.  If we accept this, and accept Bataille’s use of the term Evil, then can literature be as guilty as we first thought?  We have seen that it is indeed guilty in a number of ways – it is outside our social constraints, and can do whatever it pleases, so much so that we can perhaps even call it dangerous, and Bataille even believes it can be compared to the severity of the “infringement of moral laws”.  As with the sexual act, literature allows us to turn inwardly to ourselves, and to forget the rules we normally live by when not in this mystical state.  It is an extension of the passion that we experience through eroticism – an extension of the moment of disregard for the future and its consequences.

        However, perhaps this Evil is necessary to us?  Bataille says this Evil may help us recognise that a sovereign part of ourselves is free from the limitations and necessities which we acknowledge in everyday life, and perhaps this sovereign part takes over when we die?  This could explain our inner attraction towards death, as the release from these constraints of mortal life.

        So, as Bataille says “Evil is always the object of an ambiguous condemnation”.  It is bad to have no concern for the future or rationality, so when literature causes this in us, then it must be found guilty.  So it seems Bataille is justified in pointing to the guilt of literature, as it culpable of the charges he brings to it, but the important question is whether or not this causes literature itself to be Evil?  I do not think it can, because as we have seen, it may do more good than harm to society, because we can learn from it the consequences of refraining from following rationality and order in life.  Bataille is, then, justified in saying literature is guilty, because he proves his case, but it cannot be said that it is guilty of anything bad, so the conclusion we must draw here seems to be that literature is guilty of something – but something other than being evil.