Poetry and Desire

My readings this week on desire delved into the relationship of desire to language and poetry, which have been recent fascinations of mine due to my studies of Paul Ricoeur. In poetry, or metaphor, there is an inherent excess of meaning through which language develops or gains new meanings. In a metaphor, or poetry, one thing both is and is not the other thing which the predicate equates it with. Categories are broken when one says, “That red color is really loud,” or, “The homely tree dipped its head before the commanding sun.” No metaphor can be adequately paraphrased to capture 100% of the meaning that it contains, and in the creation of that new meaning, there is a violence or destruction that occurs within language. Thus, one can say that “Language is an opening, a space of sacrifice and excess, a space where a destructive fusion occurs—a theater or altar at which meaning and signification are made and become their own victims” (LaFountain 29).

LaFountain, in an essay on Bataille, makes a connection between the tendencies of language and desire, identifying the poetic point of desire in the erotic. Desire is excessive, wanting what is beyond use, something that pushes against limitations in revolt to reach ecstasy, reaching ultimately for death. Why death? It is only in death that “we rid ourselves of satisfaction and steep ourselves in the free accidental play of desire” (LaFountain 28). Desire does not seek satisfaction but wishes to prolong desiring, for that is what it is to be human. As far as I can understand it, it is only in death that can one cease to seek and find satisfactions. The fulfillment of desires, paradigmatically noted in the orgasm, are thus termed as “little deaths,” where satisfaction is momentarily past and one can return to seeking excess. LaFountain says, “To be whole, to experience existence, is to seek excess, to lose oneself in it, to be tortured by its rapturous overflow” (28).

The erotic fulfillment of desire in orgasm is a moment of total communication, where there is a “continuity” or unity between people is reached (30). Even as the metaphor bridges two worlds and destroys language in the new unity, so eroticism leads to a unity that destroys the social. That is, the unity between persons is an excess—it has no use and is a space outside of laws; it cannot be understood. As LaFountain quotes Bataille, “I approach poetry: but only to miss it” (33). It cannot be defined as it rages in linguistic convulsions that involves the whole. “And just as the body of writing is forced into a frenzy that disrupts its coherence, so too do the bodies of ‘I’ and ‘we’ disappear [...] into an abyss, united beyond any fusion they could ever say or use” (33). That is, both bodies disappear in the total unity or solidarity (36). The significance of each individual, as an individual, is destroyed or ruptured as new meaning is created in the excessive fusion.

Thus, one should not limit their conception of communication to the word. Communication extends beyond the textual or spoken word. Bodies, gestures, and the very existence of things is bound up in communication. Desire, as it is erotic and intentional, leads to communication, albeit communication in a nonverbal form. Emotions and feelings are thus intimately connected to the word or traditionally rational domain in the body. Recognizing Bataille’s understanding of desire presents a more holistic picture of humanity that does not subdivide emotions off from the rational mind.