Synopsis of The Blue Sky:
After the publication of three titles by Georges Bataille in The Vertical Smile, it is now time for another classic of erotic literature. Bataille wrote The Blue Sky in 1935, but, as he confesses in the preface, he ignored it for a long time. The war in Spain and the catastrophes humanity had to endure for thirty years, he believed, had emptied the work of content. Only in 1957, thanks to the advice of some friends, did the great French writer decide to release it to the public through J.J. Pauvert, his publisher in France.
Despite the luminous title, this work is inspired by the transgression of prudent morality, a dangerous quest: the learning of death, the "impossible" depth of that blue sky that attracts and repels us at the same time. London, Paris, and Barcelona paint a topography of perdition, a picture in which Troppman, through drunkenness, empty nights, and strange celebrations, approaches that new form of purity, a communion with death thanks to the illuminating discovery of the sordid.
One could say that in The Blue Sky, all of Bataille is present, all the themes that preoccupied him throughout his life: ideologies, death, states of ecstasy, sex... It's been thirteen years since we began publishing Georges Bataille. To date, six works have seen the light of day in different collections: The Real Bluebeard (Infimos 35), Eroticism (Marginales 61), History of the Eye, My Mother, Madame Edwarda followed by The Dead Man (The Smile verticals 10, 19 and 25) and The Tears of Eros (The Five Senses 12).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF AZUL DO CÉU
Georges Bataille was born in Billon, France, in 1897 and died in Malmaison in 1962. A man who enjoyed working in the shadows, he nevertheless became one of the most innovative and important European thinkers of the interwar period. He founded several journals, including two that made history: Documents and Critique. He wrote essays such as *Literature and Evil*, *Eroticism* (Marginales 61), *L'Expérience Intérieure*, and *La Part Maudite*, and, in the field of erotic narrative, extraordinary texts such as *History of the Eye*, *My Mother*, followed by *The Dead Men*, *Madame Edwarda*, and *The Blue of the Sky* (The Vertical Smile 10, 19, 25, and 44). For him, all creation is a process by which man transcends himself by transgressing all taboos, especially those related to eroticism and death.
