Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Surrealists' Obsession With the Eye
Buñuel, An Andalusian Dog, 1929
"Upon my asking what the word urinate reminded her of, she replied: terminate, the eyes, with a razor, something red, the sun. And egg? A calf’s eye, because of the colour of the head (the calf’s head) and also because the white of the egg was the white of the eye, and the yolk the eyeball. The eye, she said, was egg-shaped."
Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye, 1928
I am amazed at this strict resemblance of the images and the text (which had not been directly pointed out by many). As for who was having an influence on who, I am not sure. But the surrealists all influence each other (and of course they all inherited a lot from Sir Freud...)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Thanks for reminding me of the wonderful lectures of Dr. Jeremy Tambling...THANKS! ;-)
Arrr, apparently I wasn't in the lecture, or else I would not have found that out until now! My bf gave me Bataille's book out of the recommendation from a colleague WITHOUT knowing what it is about at all, and hence made himself quite a bit of a joke when he himself started reading and figured it all out and told everyone...^_*
Thanks again for sharing!
Just my crazy thought: Your bf's friend recommended the book probably because of the name Simone...which sounds very sexy...
Dr. Tambling introduced the story in his course of "Histories of Sexuality". He is the best comp lit professor in HKU, miss him so much. One would never get bored in his lectures...:-)
Do you happen to be called Simone, then?
Well the truth is, he consulted his colleague's opinion by telling her what i usually read. I guess it was meant to be a breakthrough from my reading habit. He said that if he knew what it was about, he wouldn't have given it to me, ha.
And it so happened that one of Marcel's lover, the one that tortured him most, in In Search of Lost Time, is named Albertine SIMONET.
I regret that I haven't taken any Tambling course during my 3 years of study. I was a very lazy student, and am still very lazy, just no longer a student.
Post a Comment