La littérature et le mal
La littérature et le mal is one of Georges Bataille’s most penetrating books on the moral and metaphysical stakes of literature. In these essays he examines how major writers approach the boundary between law and transgression, guilt and sovereignty, eroticism and destruction. The volume brings together Emily Brontë, Baudelaire, Michelet, Blake, Sade, Proust, Kafka and Genet in a radical reading of literature as an experience of the forbidden. For Bataille, the literary work is not a polite mirror of morality, but a place where human beings encounter their most dangerous freedom. This copy is remarkable for its paper issue: one of only 25 on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue.
Quantity
Bataille, Georges
La littérature et le mal
1957 | Paris | Gallimard
A key Bataille text in the most exclusive form of the original edition. As a hors-commerce copy on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, it possesses both intellectual and material intensity.
La littérature et le mal is one of Georges Bataille’s most penetrating books on the moral and metaphysical stakes of literature. In these essays he examines how major writers approach the boundary between law and transgression, guilt and sovereignty, eroticism and destruction. The volume brings together Emily Brontë, Baudelaire, Michelet, Blake, Sade, Proust, Kafka and Genet in a radical reading of literature as an experience of the forbidden. For Bataille, the literary work is not a polite mirror of morality, but a place where human beings encounter their most dangerous freedom. This copy is remarkable for its paper issue: one of only 25 on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue.
€1,600
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 25 copies on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue; presumably one of 5 hors-commerce copies, lettered with the five letters A-B-C-D-E.
Print Run
25
Copy Number
A-B-C-D-E
Paper
vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
La littérature et le mal consists of a series of essays in which Georges Bataille reads each writer through the question of how literature relates to evil, transgression and inner freedom. Emily Brontë is approached through the violent intensity of Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire through guilt, sin and poetic self-knowledge, and Sade through the extreme consequences of absolute liberty. Michelet, Blake, Proust, Kafka and Genet are also read as authors who put the reassuring moral order under pressure.
Michaux, Henri
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First volume in the Préférence series: a focused encounter between Dominique Fourcade and Pierre Buraglio. The Imprimerie nationale produced an exemplary typographic edition on Rives wove, limited to 100 copies signed by both. Buraglio “illuminates” the book with spare, hand-made interventions—strokes, contours, accents—that let the page breathe. The plain wrappers in a sturdy case stress the workshop feel. This copy bears a presentation to Jacques Dauchez, adding a vivid bibliophilic provenance. A scarce, exact book where typography, gesture, and poetry hold each other in balance.
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