The Poetry of Georges Bataille

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and others were published independently in a small collection and in magazines, much of Bataille’s poetry remained unpublished at the time of his death.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 poetes maudits and situates the poems in relation to Bataille’s other writings and the period in which he wrote.