The Impossible [Paperback]

Georges Bataille (Author), Robert Hurley (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0872862623 | ISBN-13: 978-0872862623

In a philosophical erotic narrative, an essay on poetry, and in poems Georges Bataille pursues his guiding concept, the impossible. The narrator engages in a journey, one reminiscent of the Grail quest; failing, he experiences truth. He describes a movement toward a disappearing object, the same elusive object that moved Theresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena to ecstasy.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872862623
• ISBN-13: 978-0872862623
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > French

More About the Author

Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. Bataille died in 1962.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The new Ulysses, November 15, 2009

By 

Soren (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Impossible (Paperback)

I believe that one day people will come back to this book and consider it to be as ground breaking for the novel as Ulysses was.

It is simply amazing.

There were parts that were so haunting and that drew me to such deep unconscious wells that I felt like screaming at the book with all my strength, eating it, and then crawling under my bed chuckling madly.

I have seen Her. I have seen Him. And it has all happenned over and over again across the ages.

If the future is capable of writing more gems like this, then we have something to look forward to after all.

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a 'better book' may be unimaginable..., November 16, 2003

By 

ge "helio-cd-books" (NY, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Impossible (Paperback)

...in terms of unpredictability, uniqueness,
confessional-poetic-mystic-debauchery and
edge-thriving elan
(some call it true amour)--
Bataille's work here as in
La Somme atheologique trilogy
(GUILTY, ON NIETZSCHE, INNER EXPERIENCE)
takes la frigging Cake!

the last coolest Frenchman, 'e wuz!

10 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond And Before The Erotic, April 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Impossible (Paperback)

Note from personal experience (the only way to comment): Passing through the seemingly simple sexual plays of The Father, The Son or Daughter, and The Stark Flesh, one may finally attain a sense of lost freedom in a short excursion into self-conscious poetry forced back on itself. However, dropping the issue and/or the book leaves one caught in the cliche of feeling that one understands. This may require a Quixotic reenactment in order to survive this forgetting --- necessarily not only in the world of one's imagination. This transcendence is then achieved again by that fold and feedback of sacrificing to oneself all that one holds dearly and holy --- reason, despair, and perhaps folly. Only in this way can a true confrontation be finally and for the first time attempted and accomplished.