Storytellers have not imagined that Sleeping Beauty would have awoken covered by a thick layer of dust; neither have they thought of the sinister spiders' webs torn by her red hair as soon as she stirred. Yet sad blankets of dust endlessly invade earthly dwellings and soil them uniformly: as if attics and old rooms were being arranged for the imminent entrance of obsessions, of ghosts, of larvae fed and inebriated by the worm-eaten smell of old dust.
When the big servant girls arm themselves, each morning, with big feather dusters, or even with vacuum cleaners, they are perhaps not entirely unaware that they are contributing as much as the most positive scientists to keeping off the evil ghosts who are sickened by cleanliness and logic. One day or another, it is true, dust, if it persists, will probably begin to gain ground over the servants, overrunning with vast quantities of rubble abandoned buildings, deserted docks: and in this distant epoch there will be nothing more to save us from nocturnal terrors.
Georges Bataille, ‘Poussière,’ Documents, 1, no. 5, 1929, p. 278.
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