巴氏較為人熟悉的小說《眼睛的故事》（Histoire de l’Oeil，英譯Story of the Eye），發表於1927年，至1979年始被譯成英文。巴氏的小說，驚艷者眾，談不上「偉大」，其為了賺取稿費而書的短篇，起初也僅被當成二流色情小說去讀，到五、六十年代，評論界才「重新發現」它的僭越性質。其中羅倫．巴特1963年寫的短評〈The Metaphor of the Eye〉，為讀者對這部半自傳小說的賞析推展到一個新的層次。巴特提出，《眼睛的故事》中的色情想像乃非發自「陽物」（Phallic）想像的色情系統；而且，貫穿整部小說出現的各種意象物：眼球、鬥牛的睪丸、雞蛋，與尿液、牛奶、星光、太陽光暈等，成為了兩列對應的隱喻（Metaphor），而兩列隱喻互相交涉與挪用為一換喻（Metanomy）。在巴特而言，《眼睛的故事》並非幾位未成年主角的情慾勾當、涉瘋瀕死與出逃之旅的記事，而是上述換喻物在情節中的行進。小說的情慾主義亦與de Sade的百科全書式的周章繁瑣大異其趣，巴特認為《眼睛的故事》是傾向詩化的一種書寫，巴塔耶關注的是意義（Signification）發生的本質與條件多於意義的傳達，小說中的場景僅是為了上述「換喻鏈」之達成而設置：「如果我們在夜晚的郊野，那是因為月亮會從雲端冒出，照見Marcelle的窗後那床單拍揚、它上面的一處濕了的污漬；如果場景設於馬德里，那是因為那兒有鬥牛，就有活剝公牛睪丸和Granero的眼晴給挖出……」是以，「眼睛」的飛揚換諭、行進過渡而所指不穩，自己成為一個故事／歷史（Histoire）。
—— unmoving, exactly under the arch. She was entirely black, simply there, as distressing as emptiness, a hole. I realised she wasn’t frolicking, wasn’t joking, and indeed that, beneath the garment enfolding her, she was mindless: rapt, absent. Then all the drunken exhilaration drained out of me, then I knew that She had not lied, that she was GOD. Her presence had about it the unintelligible out-and-out simplicity of a stone – right in the middle of the city I had the feeling of being in the mountains at night time, lost in a lifeless, hollow solitude. (3)
Love was dead in those eyes, they contained a daybreak aureate chill, a transparence wherein I read death’s letter. And everything swam drowned in that dreaming stare…
「故事之於人生的意義」，巴塔耶認為在於它源自一種痛苦、一種狂暴，作者唯有接受著它所軀使，作品才能揭示經驗的限界、看見生命的其他面相。(4) 巴塔耶目睹西班牙內戰和兩次世界大戰，倖存於一個淪陷的歐洲，不就是一個焦慮失常、因及渴望自由以至於厭世自毁的人麼？完稿後擱陳多於廿載始於1957年出版的《正午的藍色》(Le Bleu du ciel，英譯The Blue of Noon)，講酗酒頹廢、戀屍癖的主角Henri Troppmann與病萎絕望的妻Dorothea在各自無法收拾的人生中奔趕著不能自拔，正是此種「災難後遺」的寫照，然而它卻是於災難以前所書。
Dying means: you are dead already, in an immemorial past, of a death which was not yours, which you have thus neither known nor lived, but under the threat of which you believe you are called upon to live; you await it henceforth in the future, constructing a future to make it possible at last––possible as something that will take place and will belong to the realm of experience.
—Maurice Blanchot. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. p 65.
To see our own face as it is would be madness, since we would no longer have any mystery for ourselves and would, therefore, be annihilated by transparency. Might it not be said that man has evolved into a form such that his face remains invisible to him and he becomes definitively unidentifiable, not only in the mystery of his face, but in any of his desires?
—Jean Baudrillard. The Perfect Crime. Trans. Chris Turner. London & New York: Verso, 2008. p 6-7.
然後，牛津大學出版社「世界經典」系列的英譯本The Flowers of Evil (iv) 就是我花錢買的第一本英文書吧，扉頁上的墨跡指證，那是1993年10月19日，一本翻過又打開另一本，也就是這樣開始接觸英語世界建構的「世界文學」。十年以後，受著指導老師的影響，我的碩士論文中有一章是以波特萊爾幾首詩作為例子，討論到第二帝國（1852-1870）的巴黎重建大計，令巴黎的街道與社鄰空間由席捲歐洲的革命現場變成方便軍車與資本快速調動的馬路城市之同時，在拿破崙「子姪」與政商利益集團的高壓管治下，城市住民所經驗的各種社會意義上與精神上（psyche）的流離、斷裂，人身自由與政治權利的受壓，如何以一種厭煩、沉悶（ennui）的癥候方式呈現於波特萊爾的創作，換言之，厭煩、沉悶並不是個人偶然的心理狀態，而是歷史性的。
還有人要談波特萊爾嗎？
我知道的「波特萊爾」似乎更像個原地流放的的零餘者、前朝遺孤。回憶讓詩人無論身處那裡都被一種隔世感、錯置感所折磨，正因為回憶無所憑證，光亮的新城與廢墟無異。第二帝國大肆托建的時代之都，呼召歷史、標誌傳承（追宗認祖從拿破崙一直追溯至古羅馬戰神Minerva）,可是此光榮「歷史」所取消、取締的一切，不能做訪、不允憑弔。煤氣燈點亮的繁華巴黎，不過是管治者搭建的舞台布景，當「歷史」可以重複，現實不過一齣荒謬鬧劇。(v) 每一棟新蓋的建築，每一種新鮮事物都刺著詩人的心事，都變成失落（loss）與一切所失去的（all that is lost）的託寓（allégorie）(vi)，外間一切變得特別擾人，厭煩、納悶的取態乃是一種保存自我的防衛機制，這無疑與學院中人天天在說波特萊爾是「城市漫遊者」、是「Dandy」的說法大相逕違：
More Memories than if I’d lived a thousand years!
A giant chest of drawers, stuffed to the full
With balance sheets, love letters, lawsuits, verse
Romances, locks of hair rolled in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my sullen skull.
It is a pyramid, a giant vault
Holding more corpses than a common grave.
—I am a graveyard hated by the moon
Where like remorse the long worms crawl, and turn
Attention to the dearest of my dead.
[…]
Nothing is longer than the limping days
When under heavy snowflakes of the years,
Ennui, the fruit of dulling lassitude
Takes on the size of immortality.
—Henceforth, o living flesh, you are no more!
You are of granite, wrapped in a vague dread,
Slumbering in some Sahara’s hazy sands,
An ancient sphinx lost to a careless world,
Forgotten on the map, whose haughty mood
Sings only in the glow of the setting sun. (vii)
i) 文題取自波特萊爾（Charles Baudelaire），〈天鵝〉，《惡之華》（Les Fleurs du Mal）。莫渝譯，台北：志文，1985。頁280.
ii) 同上。頁278-279。
James McGowan的英譯：
A swan, who had escaped from his captivity, / And scuffing his splayed feet along the paving stones, / He trailed his white array of feathers in the dirt. / Close by a dried out ditch the bird opened in his beak, / Flapping excitedly, bathing his wings in dust, / And said, with heart possessed by lakes he once had loved: / ‘Water, when will you rain? Thunder, when will you roar?’ / I see this hapless creature, sad and fatal myth, / Stretching the hungry head on his convulsive neck, / Sometimes towards the sky, like the man in Ovid’s book — / Towards the ironic sky, the sky of the cruel blue, / As if he were a soul contesting with his God!
見：Charles Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil. Trans. James McGowan. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1993．
Our destiny (as contrasted with the hell of Swedenborg and the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. (i)
(*) Jorge Luis Borges. “A Refutation of Time.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Ed Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. London & New York: Penguin, 1970. p269.
