A Note On George Bataille

The work of French writer, poet, philosopher and mystic, George Bataille (1897-1962) intertwines mysticism and pornography, philosophy and poetry, anthropology and religion, aiming at almost every instance to transcend the limits of experience and existence. Bataille’s writing is wild, inspired in the fire of excess, spontaneous and autobiographical. (“I use the language in a classical way. Language is an organ of will (of action). I express myself as a mode of will, which pursues its path to the end.” Bataille, Guilty, trans. Kendal, p. 99) To read Bataille requires patience and intuition. The meaning of Bataille’s stories is difficult to grasp. He writes in images; violent, subversive, sometimes even disgusting and always sacrilegious. Yet Bataille's are heavy insights into the depths of the abysses of human freedom and desire for the divine. For Bataille, reality is a matter of inner experience, of the self in the flesh that precedes its naming; the language of the interior being that precedes the speech. Thinking for Bataille is equal to stripping off clothes....