[Bataille's] variety of literary and intellectual activities are in obvious tension with his contentions in his introduction to Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom. There he argued that language, owing as much as it does to social transactions and conventions, is normally incapable of doing justice to violence which, like eroticism and mysticism, is an essentially private purpose. If this proposition isn't in itself, too surprising, to perfidious Albion, it asserted an obstinate resistance to the French drive towards omniconsciousness. And even the English begin to feel uneasy as Bataille's corollary unfolds; any society founded on communication is founded on a network of lies, which man cannot, however, cease to attempt to weave. The struggle between the silent and the articulate truths is a tragic struggle, not between right and wrong, but between two incompatible necessities.

It is obvious what difficulties this put Bataille in, as a writer. But...