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direction . You have to take all that into account if you want to ex–
plain the creative process.
IS:
Who has given the best explanation of all this?
MVL:
I think Georges Bataille. I have come to the conclusion that
his explanation of the literary phenomenon is even more valid and
more lucid than Sartre's, because while Sartre remains at a histor–
ical and social level , Bataille penetrates to the individual roots of
the phenomenon . Bataille wrote lots of very complex things . One
aspect of his work is his obsession - it goes beyond a mere concern
- with religion, a kind of elevation of evil. I can't follow him there
very well and am left with only a kind of intellectual curiosity with
regard to evil. I read those texts only with great difficulty. On the
other hand, the other Bataille stimulates me a great deal. He has
allowed me to understand the phenomenon of creation - and hu–
man unhappiness- to a much greater degree. Bataille uses Freud
in a direct, dramatic way and makes him into literature, render–
ing him all the more accessible. Bataille is a very interesting author
who, unfortunately, has been deformed by structuralist frivolity,
by the linguistic formalism of structuralism which has attempted
to turn Bataille into its precursor, something Bataille never was.
H there was ever an antiformalist author, it was Bataille. In fact,
Bataille's purely creative writing is incredibly imperfect, precisely
because of his horror at formal concerns. He thought those con–
cerns killed the crudity of the experience literature should transmit.
To attempt to make Bataille the master of contemporary formal–
ists is one of the great falsifications of modern French criticism.
It
freezes something that in him was so vital , so dramatic, so ulti–
mately tragic.
