Trial of Gilles De Rais

Rating:
Summary: A lucid, intelligent book about a true monster
Review: Georges Bataille's work varies wildly in quantity. His early essays, collected in "Visions of Excess", are interesting but by now rather amusing blood-and-thunder manifestoes, swirling with Nietzschean rhetoric, the kind of thing that makes certain young male academics feel the blood rising in their nads so that they'll write anguished tomes on postmodernism that no-one but their students will ever read. His slightly later "Literature and Evil" is one of the silliest and shallowest books of litcrit ever inflicted on an undeserving public. His novel "Story of the Eye" is insubstantial as literature and uninvolving as pornography. This late work consists of a sober essay on the French nobleman Gilles de Rais and the documents from Gilles' trial in 1440. I think it's the best book Bataille ever wrote.

Gilles de Rais was a genuine nutcase. Born into great wealth, he was raised by his brutal and amoral great-grandfather and was a natural knight - i.e., he was violent, addicted to luxury and spectacle, and appeared not to give a toss about anyone. He distinguished himself in battle alongside Joan of Arc, but when the wars were over, Gilles appears to found life a bit lacking in savour. So, with the help of some of his entourage, he found a new way of spicing things up. He would typically ride to the nearest village, select a handsome young person between the age of 8 and 20 (usually male, but female where no boys were available) and bring the child back to his castle to be tortured, raped and murdered. He particularly liked to cut the body open and gaze on the insides. Then he'd go to sleep and his associates would dispose of the body.

Nobody is quite sure how many children he killed this way, but the estimates run into hundreds. The locals were scared because Gilles was a rich and powerful nobleman, Marshal of France, and the nobility tolerated the rumours for exactly the same reason. The Bluebeard legend became attached to his name (in spite of the fact that it was much older than him) and he certainly lived up to it.

Bataille's analysis of Gilles' character is hard to argue with. The Marshal of France was a vain, reckless, gullible, almost incredibly stupid young man - and yet the delirious extravagance of his crimes lends him a horrible grandeur. Gilles very quickly got completely out of control. The stories of his giggling at the dying bodies of his victims make him almost pathetic, as well as disgusting. He was finally arrested when he gratuitously insulted the men of the last person willing to protect him. He was tried for the murder of several children, found guilty and hanged. His body was to be burned, but it was pulled out of the flames and buried not without honour. He seems to have inspired a weird pity in people.

On the evidence of the trial documents, it's hard to doubt that Gilles was either mad or evil. Yet he lacked the true psychopaths' instinct for self-preservation, and his repentance seems to have been as tearfully sincere as his crimes were remorseless. Maybe he just had absolutely no imagination. Either way, this is a rigorously truthful and forensic book about one of the most frightening people who ever lived, far above the level of the average true crime potboiler. My only objection is Tom Dolan's cover design (at least in the Amok Books edition) - apparently a close-up photo of a bare torso with a nasty case of chickenpox, pointless and icky compared to the Grand Guignol within. Richard Robinson's translation is admirable in style; not having read the original French, I can't vouch for its accuracy, but I see no reason to doubt it.

Rating:
Summary: A lucid, intelligent book about a true monster
Review: Georges Bataille's work varies wildly in quantity. His early essays, collected in "Visions of Excess", are interesting but by now rather amusing blood-and-thunder manifestoes, swirling with Nietzschean rhetoric, the kind of thing that makes certain young male academics feel the blood rising in their nads so that they'll write anguished tomes on postmodernism that no-one but their students will ever read. His slightly later "Literature and Evil" is one of the silliest and shallowest books of litcrit ever inflicted on an undeserving public. His novel "Story of the Eye" is insubstantial as literature and uninvolving as pornography. This late work consists of a sober essay on the French nobleman Gilles de Rais and the documents from Gilles' trial in 1440. I think it's the best book Bataille ever wrote.

Gilles de Rais was a genuine nutcase. Born into great wealth, he was raised by his brutal and amoral great-grandfather and was a natural knight - i.e., he was violent, addicted to luxury and spectacle, and appeared not to give a toss about anyone. He distinguished himself in battle alongside Joan of Arc, but when the wars were over, Gilles appears to found life a bit lacking in savour. So, with the help of some of his entourage, he found a new way of spicing things up. He would typically ride to the nearest village, select a handsome young person between the age of 8 and 20 (usually male, but female where no boys were available) and bring the child back to his castle to be tortured, raped and murdered. He particularly liked to cut the body open and gaze on the insides. Then he'd go to sleep and his associates would dispose of the body.

Nobody is quite sure how many children he killed this way, but the estimates run into hundreds. The locals were scared because Gilles was a rich and powerful nobleman, Marshal of France, and the nobility tolerated the rumours for exactly the same reason. The Bluebeard legend became attached to his name (in spite of the fact that it was much older than him) and he certainly lived up to it.

Bataille's analysis of Gilles' character is hard to argue with. The Marshal of France was a vain, reckless, gullible, almost incredibly stupid young man - and yet the delirious extravagance of his crimes lends him a horrible grandeur. Gilles very quickly got completely out of control. The stories of his giggling at the dying bodies of his victims make him almost pathetic, as well as disgusting. He was finally arrested when he gratuitously insulted the men of the last person willing to protect him. He was tried for the murder of several children, found guilty and hanged. His body was to be burned, but it was pulled out of the flames and buried not without honour. He seems to have inspired a weird pity in people.

On the evidence of the trial documents, it's hard to doubt that Gilles was either mad or evil. Yet he lacked the true psychopaths' instinct for self-preservation, and his repentance seems to have been as tearfully sincere as his crimes were remorseless. Maybe he just had absolutely no imagination. Either way, this is a rigorously truthful and forensic book about one of the most frightening people who ever lived, far above the level of the average true crime potboiler. My only objection is Tom Dolan's cover design (at least in the Amok Books edition) - apparently a close-up photo of a bare torso with a nasty case of chickenpox, pointless and icky compared to the Grand Guignol within. Richard Robinson's translation is admirable in style; not having read the original French, I can't vouch for its accuracy, but I see no reason to doubt it.