BATAILLE Georges. - Lot 55

BATAILLE Georges. 5 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED to Cher Camarade [René MICHAUD]. Paris, rue de Rennes [1935], 4 pages in-4 and 2 pages in-8 in ink. At the time of Contre-Attaque, a fighting union of revolutionary intellectuals, a project to combat the rise of nationalism, Bataille drew closer to the Surrealists and signed the movement's inaugural declaration with André Breton. ... the text you have received was intended to lay down a certain number of principles for action that is urgently needed, principles that cannot yet be fully formulated in the circles of socialist youth and the socialist revolutionary left, and to which we consider it our duty to give the most consistent formulation. Our main concern is obviously action, which is urgently needed after the refusal of the old party leaderships. In our view, in the present circumstances, action must take the most committed, the most violent turn... we insist most urgently on the fight against war. In particular, we protest against a new democratic crusade, which directed against fascism would be no less odious and hypocritical than that which in 1914 was directed against militarism. ... An autograph letter from Bataille is written on the typed invitation of December 8, 1935 to attend Breton and Bataille's talk "L'exaltation affective et les mouvements politiques". Attached are two counter-attack leaflets ("Manifeste", 2 pages in-4 on green paper and the second written by Bataille alone: "Travailleurs vous êtes trahis!" (1 page in-4), which led to the dissolution of the movement. René Michaud, a militant syndicalist, anarchist and then socialist, was close to Souvarine. He is the author of "J'avais vingt ans, un jeune ouvrier au début du siècle" ("I was twenty, a young worker at the turn of the century").