George Bataille

(Billom, 1901 – Paris, 1962)

French intellectual, he was a member of the surrealist movement, later distancing himself from Breton for political reasons. Later he would found, together with Roger Callois and Michel Leiris, the College of Sacred Sociology. In 1946, he founded the magazine Critique, from whose pages he opposed the figure of the committed writer who defended Sartre in Modern Times. His novel The Story of the Eye, published under the pseudonym Lord Auch, was initially read as pure pornography, but interpretation of the work matured over time to reveal its considerable emotional and philosophical depth. The images in the novel are built on a series of metaphors that in turn refer to philosophical concepts developed in his work: the eye, the egg, the sun, the earth, the testicle. His Complete Works, in whose 1970 presentation Michel Foucault exalted Bataille as one of the most important writers of the century, consist of twelve volumes where novels, philosophy, criticism, intimate diaries, projects, controversies and poetry. Main works: Essay: The inner experience, On Nietzche, Eroticism, Literature and evil, The tears of Eros, The cursed part; Narrative: Story of the Eye, My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Little One.