The Impossible: A Story of Rats followed by Dianus and by The Oresteia

Synopsis

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. "Humanity is faced with a double perspective: in one direction, violent pleasure, horror and death – precisely the perspective of poetry – and in the opposite direction, that of science or the real world of utility.