Georges Bataille (1897-1962): Life & Letters
Above: Bataille in his 1940 government-issued ID photo.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Image license: Public domain.
Georges Bataille was a thinker of unusual range and force who developed a highly provocative vision of human experience and exerted an indelible influence among the writers who have had the most decisive impact on the academic study of literature and culture in Europe and America over the last fifty years: Baudrillard, Blanchot, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard, among others. A librarian by training, Bataille was steeped in the early discoveries made by modern cultural anthropology and sociology on economics, religion, sexuality, morality, art, language, and the human mind; he was further emboldened by the artistic and psychological revolutions promised by Dada, Surrealism, and early psychoanalysis as well as entangled in the political debacles of Marxism and fascism in the interwar years. Above all, he was deeply marked by his childhood experiences: his father's syphilitic paralysis, blindness, and insanity, his mother's emotional instability, and his own obsessive sexuality - a web of guilt and terror culminating in his and his mother's abandonment of his helpless father in flight from the German advance on their village during the First World War. This early experience of complicity in an act he perceived as unpardonable darkened and steeled Bataille's moral vision, which was forever after centered on the experience of anguish: the state in which the moral agent is caught between the inexorable force of a prohibition and the equally inexorable necessity of desire. In a career of several decades, Bataille consistently uncovers and affirms the unmistakable signature of violence, sacrifice, transgression, abjection, sensuality, excess, passion, waste, and horror at the heart of our erotic desires, religious fevers, artistic creations, and political disasters, and renders this discovery in a ruthlessly self-deconstructing language bent on lacerating its own certainties. As Foucault once wrote, Bataille is simply "one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century" - possibly one of the most lucid, certainly one of the most provocative and influential.
This research guide is designed both to make Bataille's texts and ideas as accessible as possible for readers new to his work, and to provide an exhaustive collection of resources for the seasoned student and scholar of Bataille. On this page, you can find the best resources in French and English for studying Bataille's life and correspondence. Resources in English are on the left, resources in French on the right. Each book listed below is linked to WorldCat, where you can discover library holdings for that item in your region.
Life & Letters in English
Correspondence (2008) by In the autumn of 1924, just before André Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme, two young men met in Paris for the first time. Georges Bataille, 27, starting work at the Bibliothèque Nationale; Michel Leiris, 23, beginning his studies in ethnology. Within a few months they were both members of the Surrealist group, although their adherence to Surrealism (unlike their affinities with it) would not last long: in 1930 they were among the signatories of 'Un cadavre,' the famous tract against Breton, the 'Machiavelli of Montmartre,' as Leiris put it. But their friendship would endure for more than 30 years, and their correspondence, assembled here for the first time in English, would continue until the death of Bataille in 1962. Including a number of short essays by each of them on aspects of the other's work, and excerpts on Bataille from Leiris' diaries, this collection of their correspondence throws new light on two of Surrealism's most radical dissidents.
Georges Bataille (2007) by Georges Bataille was arguably the greatest influence on the poststructuralist revolution in twentieth-century thought and literature, yet few truly understand his work and legacy. Stuart Kendall now translates the work and life of this renowned French writer, anthropologist, and philosopher into a concise yet informative biography that reveals fascinating facets of this intellectual giant. Until his death in 1962, Bataille was an instrumental force in philosophical debate, acting as a foil for both Surrealism and Existentialism and advocating radical views that spanned the entire spectrum of political thought. Georges Bataille chronicles these aspects of his intellectual development, as well as tracing out his pivotal role in the creation of the College of Sociology and how his writings in aesthetics and art history laid the groundwork for visual culture studies.
Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography (2002) by In this acclaimed intellectual biography, Michel Surya gives a detailed and insightful account of Bataille’s work against the backdrop of his life – his troubled childhood, his difficult relationship with André Breton and the surrealists and his curious position as a thinker of excess, ‘potlatch’, sexual extremes and religious sacrifice, one who nonetheless remains at the heart of twentieth century French thought—all of it drawn here in rich and allusive prose. While exploring the source of the violent eroticism that laces Bataille’s novels, the book is also an acute guide to the development of Bataille’s philosophical thought. Enriched by testimonies from Bataille’s closest acquaintances and revealing the context in which he worked, Surya sheds light on a figure Foucault described as ‘one of the most important writers of the century’.
Life & Letters in French
Lettre à René Char sur les incompatibilités de l'écrivain (2005) by René Char pose, en mai 1950 dans la revue Empédocle, cette question infiniment ouverte : " Y a-t-il des incompatibilités ? ". Il la pose à la cantonade, mais s'adressant à des écrivains et à des intellectuels à qui il laisse le soin de l'orienter selon leur propre questionnement. La réponse de Georges Bataille, gage d'une estime et d'une amitié sincères, est des plus ambitieuses et aborde le problème de l'action opposée au langage, celui du langage comme mode de l'action et entraîne l'écrivain vers une remise en cause de sa position : " Y a-t-il des incompatibilités entre l'écriture et l'engagement ? ". Ce questionnement, à une époque où la position sartrienne pèse de tout son poids, entraîne Bataille dans la dissection appliquée d'un monde en mutation très profonde et des rapports de l'intellectuel au pouvoir, questions aussi brûlantes qu'intemporelles.
Échanges et correspondances (2004) by Échanges et correspondances restitue, à travers deux figures emblématiques, les enjeux, les défis, l'atmosphère spécifique d'une époque dominée par la passion et la lucidité la plus intransigeante.
Choix de lettres: 1917-1962 (1997) by Ce sont près de cinq cents lettres à une cinquantaine de destinataires que réunit cette correspondance de Georges Bataille. Les premières datent de 1917 (Bataille a vingt ans) ; les dernières de l'année de sa mort (1962). Des lettres adressées pour les unes à quelques-uns des amis auxquels il fut lié dès sa jeunesse : Michel Leiris, André Masson, Théodore Fraenkel, Raymond Queneau, etc. Pour les autres à des amis qu'il a rencontrés plus tard : Alexandre Kojève, Patrick Waldberg, Georges Ambrosino, Dionys Mascolo, etc. La plupart semblent obéir à une urgence : l'urgence de l'action (R. Caillois, P. Kaan), l'urgence du travail (P. Prévost, G. Lambrichs, J. -M. Lo Duca...). Le même mouvement les anime : un mouvement paradoxal de dévoilement et de dérobement. Quelque chose du secret de Bataille s'épaissit ici : à la fois plus proche, si ce n'est familier ; en même temps, fait pour n'être partagé par personne, même par les plus intimes des amis. C'est sans doute en cela que cette correspondance est exemplairement complémentaire de l'oeuvre, lui faisant à tout instant écho sans pourtant jamais chercher à la rendre moins inacceptable. Michel Surya.
Georges Bataille, la mort à l'oeuvre (1992) by "On le sait aujourd'hui : Bataille est l'un des écrivains les plus importants de ce siècle." Ainsi parlait Michel Foucault. Pourtant, plus souvent cité que réellement lu, cet auteur exigeant, peut-être même intimidant, semble de nos jours encore confiné dans une marge dont certains craignent de ne pas avoir la clé, quand d'autres pensent lui être fidèles en le réduisant à des provocations puériles. Il est vrai que Bataille est l'auteur d'ouvrages aussi différents qu'Histoire de l'oeil et La Part maudite, Madame Edwarda et L'Expérience intérieure, L'Impossible et La Souveraineté, une oeuvre véritablement philosophique et littéraire, indissociablement, car si elle appartient à des genres très divers, elle relève pour finir du genre unique que Bataille lui a donné. L'ouvrage de Michel Surya permet de lire Bataille dans sa totalité. Biographie (la place faite à la vie de cet auteur y est en effet considérable), Georges Bataille, la mort à l'oeuvre est également un essai de référence pour qui veut comprendre Bataille.
Lettres à Roger Caillois: 4 août 1935-4 févr. 1959 (1987) by [No description available.]
