« Cela me déchire toujours de me séparer de vous.»

BATAILLE Georges. Autograph letter, signed, to Denise Rollin: “Cela me déchire toujours de me séparer de vous.” “It always tears me up to part from you.”
N. d. (1943), 13,5 x 20,8 cm, 2 pages on a single leaf
Autograph letter signed from Georges Bataille to Denise Rollin, 46 lines in black ink to one leaf, dampstain to upper right, not touching text.
The majority of the letter is given over to the search for a house in Vézelay: “I've already seen a house and an apartment.” In 1943, Georges Bataille had the idea of renting a house in Vézelay where the couple could move in with Laurence, the daughter of Georges and Sylvia, and Jean (alias

Bepsy), Denise Rollin's son. The lovers had just parted: “It always tears me up to part from you. Yesterday I felt a terrible malaise. I'd hardly managed to come out of it when I realized that I had surely not come for nothing and that we would be able to settle here.”
To help Denise in his choice, he describes to her the various advantages and inconveniences of the two places: “The house is really good, but sadly has one serious downside: the garden ends in a low wall onto which Jean could climb and fall down the other side, which is lower. We look out over the countryside from high up and far off into the distance. The garden is pretty, the interior a little sad and dilapidated. The apartment isn't bad but it doesn't have a garden and no view of the countryside either.” The couple took great pains in choosing the ideal place to bring together their patched-up family. There was even a suggestion of bringing Sylvia Bataille and Jacques Lacan to live in Vézelay as well.
Bataille is unsure about the apartment: “[…] there's nothing else to rent other than what I've already seen”; this was perhaps intended for Jacques Lacan and Sylvia Bataille. Bataille and his ex-wife Sylvia separated in 1934 and she had found love with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whom she went on to marry in 1953.
After these questions of real estate, Bataille goes on worrying about another problem, food: “As for provisions, it's certainly hard, but all in all, one has to get by one way or another.” The Second World War was, in essence, at its turning point, and the Nazis – feeling their gains threatened, became even harsher. This, coupled with a rise in agricultural taxes, resulted in a shortage of food: “I say that we would surely find a way around the provisions problem in the sense that there is as much meat as you want. It's vegetables that are hard to find. You can get milk, but not butter. People say that here, if the Zervoses wanted to, they could help us get along nicely” Christian and Yvonne Zervos were important figures in the town of Vézelay, where they had bought a second home in 1937. He was the publisher of Cahiers d'art, in which Bataille had published, and she was the director of the gallery of the same name. At the start of the war, they decided to move there permanently and used the isolation of the property to hide their friends Paul Éluard and Nusch. The Zervoses were thus well established by the time of this letter and Bataille had been told by people in the area: “[…] they think that knowing the Zervoses will be a great advantage over people who come to settle here knowing no one.” But he doesn't seem to have taken advantage of this advice, no doubt dominated by his feelings and the editing of his work Le Coupable [Guilty]. Diane Kotchoubey's – Bataille's future lover – settling in Vézelay shortly after this letter sealed the fate of the Bataille-Rollin relationship. By the end of 1943, Bataille had left Denise Rollin for his new flame.