In the context of his ‚Arcades Project‘ Walter Benjamin notices the disappearance of the stars
in Charles Baudelaire’s ‚Fleurs du Mal‘. Baudelaire’s sonnet ‚Obsession‘, for example, speaks
of the search for void, darkness and nudity in view of the familiar starlight. This attraction
of the unknown characterizes also the nihilistic mysticism of Georges Bataille’s poetry in
which one encounters the idea of a fall in infinite dark space. At the same time the stars
gain a new meaning according to what Bataille calls his “anthropomorphisme déchiré” (‚Le
Coupable‘ ). A number of Bataille’s poems link the universe and its stars with distinctive
notions of his thinking like ‘sacrifice’, ‘wound’, ‘eroticism’, ‘disgust’, ‘death’ and ‘decay’ and try to express the experience of decomposition.