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Georges BATAILLE

Lettre autographe signée à Denise Rollin : « je songe à toi dans cette chambre et à tout ce qui arrivera là quand nous serons de nouveau ensemble. »

Paris s.d. [3 ou 4 juin 1940], 20,9x26,9 cm, 2 pages sur un feuillet.

Handwritten signed letter to Denise Rollin: “I think of you in this room and all that will happen there when we are together again.” “ je songe à toi dans cette chambre et à tout ce qui arrivera là quand nous serons de nouveau ensemble.”
Paris s.d[3 or 4 June 1940], 20.9 x 26.9 cm, 2 pages on one leaf
Touching handwritten letter signed by Georges Bataille to Denise Rollin, 37 lines in pencil, small water stain in the top right not affecting the text.
Georges Bataille tries to reassure his companion Denise Rollin: “Je t'en supplie. Il ne faut pas t'inquiéter, mais pas du tout.” “I beg you. You must not worry, not at all.” She moved to Vézelay where Bataille would soon join her. He stayed in Paris where the bombings did not disrupt Parisian lives at all: “Tu n'imagines point à quel point les petits dégâts qu'on voit paraissent insignifiants à côté de la place intacte qu'il y a de tous les côtés. Pendant toute l'alerte, j'ai déjeuné bien tranquille avec mon chef de service de passage à Paris (il vit au front)” “You have no idea how insignificant the little damage you see seems next to the square untouched on all sides. Throughout the alert, I had a very quiet lunch with my head of service passing through Paris (he lives on the front)” Bataille did not give up his job as librarian at the National Library. Suffering from tuberculosis, he was not sent to the front, and he took the opportunity to write several texts at that time, such as Madame Edwarda and Le Coupable.
Further on, he mentions a visit: “Un peu après, Henri Michaux est venu me voir” “A little after, Henri Michaux came to see me” The two men had participated in the magazine Mesures and both had in common being separate from the surrealist nebula. In both of their respective works there is a violent independence and the same tension towards spirituality, a form of mysticism. Bataille had attended the seminary in his youth, and Michaux pleasantly said of him: “Il donne l'impression d'un séminariste sortant furtivement d'une pissotière.” “He gives the impression of a seminarian surreptitiously coming out of a public urinal.”
After this almost trivial news, Bataille embarks on an analysis of his feelings: “Ce que tu me dis dans ta lettre, c'est pour moi ce qui délivre, c'est comme la nudité, tout ce qui se déchire entre toi et moi. Mais, encore une fois, je ne me suis jamais senti aussi près de toi.” “What you tell me in your letter is for me what delivers, it is like nudity, everything that is torn apart between you and me. But, once again, I have never felt so close to you.” He asks his correspondent: “il faut me dire tout. C'est très doux que j'aie vu où tu es, que je connaisse les chemins que tu prendras, les ponts par où tu passeras.” “you must tell me everything. It is very sweet that I have seen you where you are, that I know the roads you will take, the bridges over which you will pass.” Sensuality is never far from the author's feelings: “Dis-moi aussi quelle chambre tu as: pour que je songe à toi dans cette chambre et à tout ce qui arrivera là quand nous serons de nouveau ensemble.” “Also tell me which room you have: so that I may think of you in that room and all that will happen there when we are together again.”
From this and past sensualities, there remain the fruits that are the children. Denise Rollin left for Vézelay in the company of her son Jean, nicknamed Bepsy: “Tu ne me dis rien de ta vie avec Bepsy [...] Bepsy est-il plus calme: moi aussi je l'ai entendu crier dans tes bras.” “You don't tell me anything of your life with Bepsy [...] Is Bepsy calmer: I too heard him screaming in your arms.” Bataille thanks Rollin: “Pour Sylvia je t'ai une immense reconnaissance de m'avoir aidé à changer.” “For Sylvia I am immensely grateful to you for helping me change.” Sylvia Bataille was the first wife of Georges Bataille. They were separated in 1934 but did not divorce until 1946. From this relationship, for the author: “Il ne reste que Laurence et la nécessité d'envisager les choses sans heurt” “This only thing that remains is Laurence and the need to consider things smoothly” Laurence was the daughter born of this marriage in 1930. She joined Bataille, Rollin and Bepsy in 1943 when her father moved to Vézelay.
 

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