Die Literatur und das Böse

For Bataille, literature is one of the paths to achieving an impossible experience. The transgression of boundaries, the breaking of laws deemed "evil" by society, is the law of a free literature, a literature that is more than mere entertainment and consumption. Baudelaire, Sade, Blake, and Kafka are the guiding figures for Bataille. In their work, he sees realized what he expects from literature: "Authentic literature is Promethean. The true writer dares to do what resists the fundamental laws of active society." In the transgression of laws, the lightning of insight ignites. Yet it is precisely in this that literature becomes guilty, evil.