Un tan funesto deseo

by Pierre Klossowski

Heterogéneo y deslumbrante como toda su obra, Un tan funesto deseo construye una trama en la que se superponen profundos análisis sobre Nietzsche, Gide, Claudel, barbery d´Aurevilly, George Bataille y Maurice Blanchot. El libro es menos un comentario de estos autores que una disimulada excusa para que Pierre Klossowski haga circular su metafísica del devenir y del eterno retorno concebida en el arco de tensiones abierto por la muerte de dios; su pensamiento no dialéctico que rompe la unidad del yo, de la razón, del lenguaje; su parodia incesante de simulacros y fantasmas.

Genres: Philosophy

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.

Reviews

[Alyosha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perversely delightful little collection of essays - it is a shame that it is so expensive. Klossowski is always a difficult figure to pin down and speak of, for (as these essays evince) even when he is writing of others, he is writing about himself, and when he is writing about himself, he is writing about another. A parody, by necessity.

The first and last essays of the collection, both on Nietzsche, are essential additions to anyone looking to struggle through the madness of Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle.
The two essays on Gide and his demoniacal obsessions (here perverted in themselves through the darkened mirror of Christianity) are intriguing, especially given that they relate little, if at all, to his literary works, and focus rather on his life and epistolary relations.
The preface to Barbey D'Aurevilly's novel, which looked to be of the least interest, turns out to be a fascinating reflection on the relations between science and faith, atheism and religious morality.
The short review of Bataille's L'Abbé C is rather forgettable. Klossowski's continual argument that Bataille remains an inverted Christian has always seemed a bit facile to me, though his ruminations concerning language and the flesh (which run throughout the next couple essays as well) are intriguing.
Klossowski's chapter on Brice Parain is perhaps the most fascinating of the book, weaving the thread between language, death, existence, communism, and silence in the knowledge of the unknown, faith in the hopeless hope, all while twisting and diverting the Catholic tones of Parain's thought.
Finally, while Klossowski's reading of Blanchot's Le Très-Haut is a bit misguided (granted Klossowski's inveterate, idiosyncratic readings of everything, and his confession to the literality of the reading he gives here), while still exposing intriguing potentials within the text in question. This ever remains Klossowski's perverse power, his solicitous strength. One must learn to read him (accomplishable only through reading him, of course), in order to benefit from the singularity of his readings.