« en tout cas imposer une pareille souffrance à un homme exactement pour rien, cela devient comme une maladie, comme un délire. »

Autograph letter from Georges Bataille to Denise Rollin, 14 lines in black ink and pencil.
This letter, from the amorous correspondence that Bataille addressed to Denise Rollin during the war and Occupation, contains in embryo the feelings that explode throughout Bataille's entire work. Incessant ebb and flow of love and suffering, of ecstasy and disappointment, of calm and energy, mixing familiar and formal address, compliments and reproaches, this letter resembles its author and the era: « Comment pouvez-vous être assez aveugle pour ne pas voir le mal que vous me faîtes en vous laissant aller au premier caprice venu ? Que je le veuille ou non, une vie ne peut pas dépendre de caprices vides de sens. » ["How can you be blind enough not to see the harm you do me by giving in to the first whim that comes along? Whether I want it or not, a life cannot depend on meaningless caprices."]
The relationship was turbulent, both protagonists passionate. In his work Le Coupable, he summarizes the throes of amorous passion: "Love has this requirement: either its object escapes you or you escape it. If it did not flee from you, you would flee love. Lovers find themselves on condition that they tear each other apart. Both thirst to suffer. Desire must in them desire the impossible. Otherwise, desire would be satisfied, desire would die." Thus Bataille, in love, suffers: « Je n'ai même plus le courage de vous dire ce que je souffre : en tout cas imposer une pareille souf­france à un homme exactement pour rien, cela devient comme une maladie, comme un délire. » ["I no longer even have the courage to tell you what I suffer: in any case, to impose such suffering on a man for exactly nothing, it becomes like an illness, like delirium."] Was Denise Rollin showing herself cruel or was Bataille needlessly anguished? The fact remains that he shows himself weary of these agitations: « Je ne sais pas comment j'ai trouvé moyen d'espérer malgré tout, jusqu'ici. » ["I don't know how I found the means to hope despite everything, until now."]