Anyone familiar with French or the works of Georges Bataille?

[kestrell]

This is the epigraph to _The Encyclopedia of the Dead_ by Danilo Kis; I am including the translation given by Google, but it doesn't entirely make sense to me, so I wanted to make sure the translation was correct before I banged my head against it some more.

Ma rage d'aimer donne sur la mort comme une fenetre sur la cour.

["love my rage faces death as a window onto the courtyard"]

Comments

[kestrell]

I was hoping to hear from your troubador perspective. I'm saving this translation also. Bataille tends to be multi-layered in himself, and Kis is writing in the fabulous style of Borges, so I'm guessing that all of these interpretations could be possible.

[siderea]

Oh! Well, then, what my brain did confronted with that sentence was basically: "My rage of love gives over death, like a window on the heart. *nods* Everybody sees you're blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow, I'm going to Graceland, etc."

[kestrell]

That is even more intriguing, because it makes me think of rage as a tempest, or even a hurricane, equating the unbridled force of irrepressible human emotions to a natural event which is capable of being simultaneously both destructive and renewing, in that it sweeps away old structures and creates a space for something new, even as it churns up what was previously hidden beneath the surface.

[kestrell]

I meant to add, I had been thinking of rage in terms of human anger, something violent and destructive.