The meetings of the college  [i.e., the Socratic College] took place after dinner every Tuesday (or Wednesday) in the rue de Lille, where Bataille was living. Their theme: Nietzsche. As well as Bataille, there were the five persons mentioned and, not seated like the others, studiously round the table, but sunk deep in an armchair, a seventh and for me mysterious individual whose voice was not heard in the banal exchange of greetings as people gradually arrived. I knew nothing about him. I did not ask him any questions. I did not seem him at Paulhan's, and encountered him only here, scarcely visible in the depths of the armchair. I had no difficulty persuading myself that he must never go out, so pale was his complexion, so white even his wrists. We were all quite thin, our waistlines under the control of a war-time diet. But even compared to us, Maurice Blanchot looked thin.

Bataille began with a brilliant presentation. After a while, you sensed that even the reader himself was perplexed. At first, this added a sort of anxious gravity to our attention. As it persisted, we began to exchange puzzled looks. your neighbours brow began to display a sort of shadow, a blur of doubt. Illumination was a long time coming. Bataille could feel it. Did he lose heart? His delivery became slower. He suddenly stopped.

In principle, the presentation was supposed to be followed by a discussion. But nobody knew how to begin. We stayed silent. Then, from deep in the armchair where he had virtually been forgotten about, Blanchot quiet uttered a few sentences of dazzling brilliance. They restored us to the joy of understanding. We breathed again. So marvellous was the moment that, in order not to spoilt it, we left it hanging by getting up and leaving.

Jean Lescure, cited by Michael Holland