Full Description
Presents a new window into the literary, philosophical, and theological concerns of this enigmatic thinker and writer.
Despite its relative rarity, and the condensed brevity of the poems themselves, poetry occupies a striking place in the literary and philosophical oeuvre of Georges Bataille. For Bataille, poetry had no meaning "except in the violence of revolt," which it could attain "only by evoking the impossible." Toward this end, he wrote poetry, as he says in Inner Experience, "with necessity-in accordance with my life." Although poems appear in four of his major works, and others were published independently in a small collection and in magazines, much of Bataille's poetry remained unpublished at the time of his death. This volume presents a nearly complete edition of the poems in chronological order. Stuart Kendall provides an extensive introduction and notes highlighting the literary, philosophical, and theological significance of Bataille's poetry. He also explores the influence of Nietzsche, St. John of the Cross, Blake, Baudelaire, and other poètes maudits and situates the poems in relation to Bataille's other writings and the period in which he wrote.
Contents
Translator's Introduction: The Hatred of Poetry
The Poetry of Georges Bataille
Acéphale
Poems from Inner Experience
Pain and Four Poems
Poem from The Little One
Poems from Guilty
Archangelic
Eleven Poems Withdrawn from Archangelic
Two Poems from the Manuscripts for Archangelic
Poems from On Nietzsche
Disparate Poems
Poems from The Tomb of Louis XXX
Eliminated Poems and Other Unpublished Poems
Undifferentiated Being Is Nothing
Erotic Poems
Coryphea
Five Poems from 1957
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines
