Comte de Lautréamont
Encyclopedia
Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym
of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), an Uruguay
an-born French poet.
His only works, Les Chants de Maldoror
and Poésies, had a major influence on modern literature, particularly on the Surrealists
and the Situationists. He died at age 24.
, Uruguay
, to François Ducasse, a French consul
ar officer and his wife, Jacquette-Célestine Davezac. Very little is known about Isidore's childhood, except that he was baptized on 16 November 1847, in the cathedral of Montevideo and that his mother died soon afterwards, probably due to an epidemic. In 1851, as a five-year-old, he experienced the end of the eight-year siege of Montevideo in the Argentine
-Uruguayan
war. Ducasse was brought up to speak three languages: French, Spanish and English.
In October 1859, at the age of thirteen, Isidore was sent to high school in France by his father. He was trained in French education and technology at the Imperial Lycée in Tarbes
. In 1863 he enrolled in the Lycée Louis Barthou in Pau, where he attended classes in rhetoric and philosophy (under and uppergreat). He excelled at arithmetic and drawing and showed extravagance in his thinking and style. Isidore was a reader of Edgar Allan Poe
and particularly favored Percy Bysshe Shelley
and Byron, as well as Adam Mickiewicz
, Milton
, Robert Southey
, Alfred de Musset
, and Baudelaire. During school he was fascinated by Racine
and Corneille
, and by the scene of the blinding in Sophocles
' Oedipus the King
. According to his schoolmate, Paul Lespès, he displayed obvious folly "by self-indulgent use of adjectives and an accumulation of terrible death images" in an essay. After graduation he lived in Tarbes, where he started a friendship with Georges Dazet, the son of his guardian, and decided to become a writer.
, only to abandon them one year later. Continuous allowances from his father made it possible for Ducasse to dedicate himself completely to his writing. He lived in the "Intellectual Quarter", in a hotel in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, where he worked intensely on the first canto
of Les Chants de Maldoror. It is possible that he started this work before his passage to Montevideo, and also continued the work during his ocean journey.
Ducasse was a frequent visitor to nearby libraries, where he read Romantic
literature, as well as scientific works and encyclopaedias. The publisher Léon Genonceaux described him as a "large, dark, young man, beardless, mercurial, neat and industrious" and reported that Ducasse wrote "only at night, sitting at his piano, declaiming wildly while striking the keys, and hammering out ever new verses to the sounds".
In late 1868 Ducasse published—anonymously and at his own expense—the first canto of Les Chants de Maldoror (Chant premier, par ***), a booklet of thirty-two pages which is considered by many to be a bold, taboo-defying poem concerning pain and cruelty.
On 10 November 1868, Isidore sent a letter to writer Victor Hugo
, in which he included two copies of the first canto, and asked for a recommendation for further publication. A new edition of the first canto appeared at the end of January, 1869, in the anthology Parfums de l'Ame in Bordeaux. Here Ducasse used his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont for the first time. His chosen name was based on the character of Latréaumont from a popular 1837 French gothic novel by Eugène Sue
, which featured a haughty and blasphemous anti-hero similar in some ways to Isidore's Maldoror. The title was probably paraphrased as l'autre Amon (the other Amon), although it can also be interpreted as representing "l'autre Amont" (the other side of the river).
A total of six cantos were to be published during late 1869, by Albert Lacroix
in Brussels, who had also published Eugène Sue. The book was already printed when Lacroix refused to distribute it to the booksellers as he feared prosecution for blasphemy
or obscenity
. Ducasse considered that this was because "life in it is painted in too harsh colors" (letter to the banker Darasse from 12 March 1870).
Ducasse urgently asked Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had published Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal
(The Flowers of Evil) in 1857, to send copies of his book to the critics. They alone could judge "the commence of a publication which will see its end only later, and after I will have seen mine." He tried to explain his position, and even offered to change some "too strong" points for coming editions:
Poulet Malassis announced the forthcoming publication of the book the same month in his literary magazine Quarterly Review of Publications Banned in France and Printed Abroad. Otherwise few people took heed of the book. Only the Bulletin du Bibliophile et du Bibliothécaire noticed it in May, 1870; "the book will probably find a place under the bibliographic curiosities".
In April and June, 1870, Ducasse published the first two installments of what was obviously meant to be the preface to the planned "chants of the good" in two small brochures, Poésies I and II. This time he published by his real name, discarding his pseudonym. He differentiated the two parts of his work with the terms philosophy
and poetry
, announced that the beginning of a struggle against evil was the reversal of his other work:
At the same time Ducasse took texts by famous authors and cleverly inverted, corrected and openly plagiarized for Poésies:
Among the works plagiarized were Blaise Pascal
's Pensées
and La Rochefoucauld
's Maximes, as well as the work of Jean de La Bruyère
, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Dante
, Kant
and La Fontaine. It even included an improvement of his own Les Chants de Maldoror. The brochures of aphoristic prose did not have a price; each customer could decide which sum they wanted to pay for it.
On 19 July 1870, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, and after his capture, Paris was besieged
on 17 September a situation with which Ducasse was already familiar, from his early childhood in Montevideo. The living conditions worsened rapidly during the siege, and according to the owner of the hotel he lodged at, Ducasse became sick with a "bad fever".
Lautréamont died at the age of 24, on 24 November 1870, at 8:00 am in his hotel. On his death certificate "no further information" was given. Since many were afraid of epidemics while Paris was besieged, Ducasse was buried the next day after a service in Notre Dame de Lorette in a provisional grave at the Cimetière du Nord
. In January 1871, his body was put into another grave elsewhere.
In his Poésies Lautréamont announced: "I will leave no memoirs", and as such, the life of the creator of the "Les Chants de Maldoror" remains for the most part unknown.
, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken God
and mankind.
The book combines a violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery.
The critic Alex De Jonge writes, '"Lautreamont forces his readers to stop taking their world for granted. He shatters the complacent acceptance of the reality proposed by their cultural traditions and make them see that reality for what it is: an unreal nightmare all the more hair-raising because the sleeper believes he is awake."' (De Jonge, p. 1)
There is a wealth of Lautréamont criticism, interpretation and analysis in French
(including an esteemed biography by Jean-Jacques Lefrère), but little in English.
Lautréamont's writing has many bizarre scenes, vivid imagery and drastic shifts in tone and style. There is much "black humor"; De Jonge argues that Maldoror reads like "a sustained sick joke." (De Jonge, p. 55)
discovered a copy of Les Chants de Maldoror in the mathematics section of a small Parisian bookshop, near the military hospital to which he had been admitted. In his memoirs Soupault wrote:
Due to this find, Lautréamont was introduced to the Surrealists
. Soon they called him their prophet. As one of the poètes maudits
(accursed poets), he was elevated to the Surrealist Panthéon
beside Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and acknowledged as a direct precursor to Surrealism. André Gide
regarded him—even more than Rimbaud—as the most significant figure, as the "gate-master of tomorrow's literature," meriting Breton and Soupault "to have recognized and announced the literary and ultra-literary importance of the amazing Lautréamont."
Louis Aragon
and Breton discovered the only copies of the Poésies in the National Library of France
and published the text in April and May 1919 in two sequential editions of their magazine Literature. In 1925 a special edition of the Surrealist magazine Le Disque Vert was dedicated to Lautréamont, under the title "Le cas Lautréamont" (The Lautréamont case). It was the 1927 publication by Soupault and Breton that assured him a permanent place in French literature
and the status of patron saint in the Surrealist movement. In 1940 Breton incorporated him into his Anthology of Black Humour.
The title of an object by American artist Man Ray
, called L'énigme d'Isidore Ducasse (The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse) created in 1920, contains a reference to a famous line in the 6th canto. Lautréamont describes a young boy as "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!". Similarly, Breton often used this line as an example of Surrealist dislocation.
Maldoror inspired many artists: Fray De Geetere, Salvador Dalí
, Man Ray
, Jacques Houplain, Jindřich Štyrský
, René Magritte
, and Georg Baselitz
. Individual works have been produced by Max Ernst
, Victor Brauner
, Óscar Domínguez
, Espinoza
, André Masson
, Joan Miró
, Aimé Césaire
, Roberto Matta
, Wolfgang Paalen
, Kurt Seligmann
, and Yves Tanguy
. The artist Amedeo Modigliani
always carried a copy of the book with him and used to walk around Montparnasse
quoting from it.
In direct reference to Lautréamont's "chance meeting on a dissection table," Ernst defined the structure of the surrealist painting: "Accouplement de deux réalités en apparence inaccouplables sur un plan qui en apparence ne leur convient pas."
Félix Vallotton
and Dalí made "imaginary" portraits of Lautréamont, since no photograph was available.
's 1967 film Week End.
Situationist
founder, film-maker, and author Guy Debord
developed a section from Poésies II as thesis 207 in The Society of the Spectacle
. The thesis covers plagiarism as a necessity and how it is implied by progress. It explains that plagiarism embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. His fellow Situationist Raoul Vaneigem
placed considerable importance on the insights of Latréaumont, stating in the Introduction to The Revolution of Everyday Life
that “For as long as there have been men — and men who read Lautréamont — everything has been said and few people have gained anything from it. ”
The writers Jean Paulhan
and Henri Michaux
have both counted Lautréamont as an influence on their work.
Kenneth Anger
claimed to have made a film based on Maldoror, under the same title.
In recent years, invoking an obscure clause in the French civil code
, modern performance artist Shishaldin
petitioned the government for permission to marry the author posthumously.
John Ashbery
, the American poet most influenced by Surrealism, entitled his collection of 1992 Hotel Lautréamont, and the English edition remarks that Lautréamont is "one of the forgotten presences alive" in the book.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), an Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
an-born French poet.
His only works, Les Chants de Maldoror
Les Chants de Maldoror
Les Chants de Maldoror is a poetic novel consisting of six cantos. It was written between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse...
and Poésies, had a major influence on modern literature, particularly on the Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and the Situationists. He died at age 24.
Youth
Ducasse was born in MontevideoMontevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
, Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, to François Ducasse, a French consul
Consul
Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...
ar officer and his wife, Jacquette-Célestine Davezac. Very little is known about Isidore's childhood, except that he was baptized on 16 November 1847, in the cathedral of Montevideo and that his mother died soon afterwards, probably due to an epidemic. In 1851, as a five-year-old, he experienced the end of the eight-year siege of Montevideo in the Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
-Uruguayan
History of Uruguay
This is about the history of Uruguay.-Pre-Columbian times and colonization:The only documented inhabitants of Uruguay before European colonization of the area were the Charrua, a small tribe driven south by the Guaraní of Paraguay...
war. Ducasse was brought up to speak three languages: French, Spanish and English.
In October 1859, at the age of thirteen, Isidore was sent to high school in France by his father. He was trained in French education and technology at the Imperial Lycée in Tarbes
Tarbes
Tarbes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in south-western France.It is part of the historical region of Gascony. It is the second largest metropolitan area of Midi-Pyrénées, with 110,000 inhabitants....
. In 1863 he enrolled in the Lycée Louis Barthou in Pau, where he attended classes in rhetoric and philosophy (under and uppergreat). He excelled at arithmetic and drawing and showed extravagance in his thinking and style. Isidore was a reader of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
and particularly favored Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
and Byron, as well as Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...
, Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, Alfred de Musset
Alfred de Musset
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.-Biography:Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris...
, and Baudelaire. During school he was fascinated by Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
and Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
, and by the scene of the blinding in Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King , also known by the Latin title Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 BCE. It was the second of Sophocles's three Theban plays to be produced, but it comes first in the internal chronology, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone...
. According to his schoolmate, Paul Lespès, he displayed obvious folly "by self-indulgent use of adjectives and an accumulation of terrible death images" in an essay. After graduation he lived in Tarbes, where he started a friendship with Georges Dazet, the son of his guardian, and decided to become a writer.
Years in Paris
After a brief stay with his father in Montevideo, Ducasse settled in Paris at the end of 1867. He began studies at the École PolytechniqueÉcole Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
, only to abandon them one year later. Continuous allowances from his father made it possible for Ducasse to dedicate himself completely to his writing. He lived in the "Intellectual Quarter", in a hotel in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, where he worked intensely on the first canto
Canto
The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...
of Les Chants de Maldoror. It is possible that he started this work before his passage to Montevideo, and also continued the work during his ocean journey.
Ducasse was a frequent visitor to nearby libraries, where he read Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
literature, as well as scientific works and encyclopaedias. The publisher Léon Genonceaux described him as a "large, dark, young man, beardless, mercurial, neat and industrious" and reported that Ducasse wrote "only at night, sitting at his piano, declaiming wildly while striking the keys, and hammering out ever new verses to the sounds".
In late 1868 Ducasse published—anonymously and at his own expense—the first canto of Les Chants de Maldoror (Chant premier, par ***), a booklet of thirty-two pages which is considered by many to be a bold, taboo-defying poem concerning pain and cruelty.
On 10 November 1868, Isidore sent a letter to writer Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, in which he included two copies of the first canto, and asked for a recommendation for further publication. A new edition of the first canto appeared at the end of January, 1869, in the anthology Parfums de l'Ame in Bordeaux. Here Ducasse used his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont for the first time. His chosen name was based on the character of Latréaumont from a popular 1837 French gothic novel by Eugène Sue
Eugène Sue
Joseph Marie Eugène Sue was a French novelist.He was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino...
, which featured a haughty and blasphemous anti-hero similar in some ways to Isidore's Maldoror. The title was probably paraphrased as l'autre Amon (the other Amon), although it can also be interpreted as representing "l'autre Amont" (the other side of the river).
A total of six cantos were to be published during late 1869, by Albert Lacroix
Albert Lacroix
Albert Lacroix was a 19th century Belgian editor and printer who risked launching some seminal authors like the Goncourt brothers and Emile Zola. In 1869 he published Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont. However, fearing prosecution for blasphemy and obscenity, he ultimately refused to...
in Brussels, who had also published Eugène Sue. The book was already printed when Lacroix refused to distribute it to the booksellers as he feared prosecution for blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
or obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
. Ducasse considered that this was because "life in it is painted in too harsh colors" (letter to the banker Darasse from 12 March 1870).
Ducasse urgently asked Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had published Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
(The Flowers of Evil) in 1857, to send copies of his book to the critics. They alone could judge "the commence of a publication which will see its end only later, and after I will have seen mine." He tried to explain his position, and even offered to change some "too strong" points for coming editions:
Poulet Malassis announced the forthcoming publication of the book the same month in his literary magazine Quarterly Review of Publications Banned in France and Printed Abroad. Otherwise few people took heed of the book. Only the Bulletin du Bibliophile et du Bibliothécaire noticed it in May, 1870; "the book will probably find a place under the bibliographic curiosities".
Death
During spring 1869, Ducasse frequently changed his address, from Rue du Faubourg Montmartre 32 to Rue Vivienne 15, then back to Rue Faubourg Montmartre, where he lodged in a hotel at number 7. While still awaiting the distribution of his book, Ducasse worked on a new text, a follow-up to his "phenomenological description of evil", in which he wanted to sing of good. The two works would form a whole, a dichotomy of good and evil. The work, however, remained a fragment.In April and June, 1870, Ducasse published the first two installments of what was obviously meant to be the preface to the planned "chants of the good" in two small brochures, Poésies I and II. This time he published by his real name, discarding his pseudonym. He differentiated the two parts of his work with the terms philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, announced that the beginning of a struggle against evil was the reversal of his other work:
At the same time Ducasse took texts by famous authors and cleverly inverted, corrected and openly plagiarized for Poésies:
Among the works plagiarized were Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
's Pensées
Pensées
The Pensées represented a defense of the Christian religion by Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century philosopher and mathematician. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work. "Pascal's Wager" is found here...
and La Rochefoucauld
François de La Rochefoucauld
François de La Rochefoucauld may be:* François de La Rochefoucauld , French author* François de La Rochefoucauld , French cardinal of the Catholic Church...
's Maximes, as well as the work of Jean de La Bruyère
Jean de La Bruyère
Jean de La Bruyère was a French essayist and moralist.-Ancestry:He was born in Paris, not, as was once thought, at Dourdan in 1645...
, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
, Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
and La Fontaine. It even included an improvement of his own Les Chants de Maldoror. The brochures of aphoristic prose did not have a price; each customer could decide which sum they wanted to pay for it.
On 19 July 1870, Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, and after his capture, Paris was besieged
Siege of Paris
The Siege of Paris, lasting from September 19, 1870 – January 28, 1871, and the consequent capture of the city by Prussian forces led to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the German Empire as well as the Paris Commune....
on 17 September a situation with which Ducasse was already familiar, from his early childhood in Montevideo. The living conditions worsened rapidly during the siege, and according to the owner of the hotel he lodged at, Ducasse became sick with a "bad fever".
Lautréamont died at the age of 24, on 24 November 1870, at 8:00 am in his hotel. On his death certificate "no further information" was given. Since many were afraid of epidemics while Paris was besieged, Ducasse was buried the next day after a service in Notre Dame de Lorette in a provisional grave at the Cimetière du Nord
Montmartre Cemetery
Montmartre Cemetery is a cemetery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France.-History:Cemeteries had been banned from Paris since the shutting down of the Cimetière des Innocents in 1786, as they presented health hazards...
. In January 1871, his body was put into another grave elsewhere.
In his Poésies Lautréamont announced: "I will leave no memoirs", and as such, the life of the creator of the "Les Chants de Maldoror" remains for the most part unknown.
Les Chants de Maldoror
Les Chants de Maldoror is based on a character called MaldororMaldoror
Maldoror is a music project consisting of Mike Patton and Masami Akita, also known as Merzbow. The name is derived from a nineteenth century novel entitled Les Chants de Maldoror by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of the writer Isidore Lucien Ducasse.The project formed when Patton was on...
, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
and mankind.
The book combines a violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery.
The critic Alex De Jonge writes, '"Lautreamont forces his readers to stop taking their world for granted. He shatters the complacent acceptance of the reality proposed by their cultural traditions and make them see that reality for what it is: an unreal nightmare all the more hair-raising because the sleeper believes he is awake."' (De Jonge, p. 1)
There is a wealth of Lautréamont criticism, interpretation and analysis in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(including an esteemed biography by Jean-Jacques Lefrère), but little in English.
Lautréamont's writing has many bizarre scenes, vivid imagery and drastic shifts in tone and style. There is much "black humor"; De Jonge argues that Maldoror reads like "a sustained sick joke." (De Jonge, p. 55)
Surrealism
In 1917, French writer Philippe SoupaultPhilippe Soupault
Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...
discovered a copy of Les Chants de Maldoror in the mathematics section of a small Parisian bookshop, near the military hospital to which he had been admitted. In his memoirs Soupault wrote:
To the light of a candle which was permitted to me, I began the reading. It was like an enlightenment. In the morning I read the Chants again, convinced that I had dreamed... The day after André Breton came to visit me. I gave him the book and asked him to read it. The following day he brought it back, equally enthusiastic as I had been.
Due to this find, Lautréamont was introduced to the Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Soon they called him their prophet. As one of the poètes maudits
Poète maudit
A poète maudit is a poet living a life outside or against society. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, violence, and in general any societal sin, often resulting in an early death are typical elements of the biography of a poète maudit....
(accursed poets), he was elevated to the Surrealist Panthéon
Panthéon, Paris
The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens...
beside Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and acknowledged as a direct precursor to Surrealism. André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
regarded him—even more than Rimbaud—as the most significant figure, as the "gate-master of tomorrow's literature," meriting Breton and Soupault "to have recognized and announced the literary and ultra-literary importance of the amazing Lautréamont."
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
and Breton discovered the only copies of the Poésies in the National Library of France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
and published the text in April and May 1919 in two sequential editions of their magazine Literature. In 1925 a special edition of the Surrealist magazine Le Disque Vert was dedicated to Lautréamont, under the title "Le cas Lautréamont" (The Lautréamont case). It was the 1927 publication by Soupault and Breton that assured him a permanent place in French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
and the status of patron saint in the Surrealist movement. In 1940 Breton incorporated him into his Anthology of Black Humour.
The title of an object by American artist Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, called L'énigme d'Isidore Ducasse (The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse) created in 1920, contains a reference to a famous line in the 6th canto. Lautréamont describes a young boy as "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!". Similarly, Breton often used this line as an example of Surrealist dislocation.
Maldoror inspired many artists: Fray De Geetere, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Jacques Houplain, Jindřich Štyrský
Jindrich Štyrský
Jindřich Štyrský was a Czech Surrealist painter, poet, editor, photographer, and graphic artist....
, René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, and Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...
. Individual works have been produced by Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
, Óscar Domínguez
Óscar Domínguez
Oscar M. Domínguez was a Spanish surrealist painter.Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother in Tacoronte and devoted himself to painting at a young age after suffering a serious illness which affected his growth and caused a...
, Espinoza
Espinoza
Espinoza or Espinosa may refer to:*Espinosa, Minas Gerais, a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil*Espinoza , people with the surname Espinoza or Espinosa*Espinosa de los Monteros, a city in Spain, Burgos...
, André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
, Roberto Matta
Roberto Matta
Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren , better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art....
, Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
, Kurt Seligmann
Kurt Seligmann
Kurt Seligmann was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights engaged in macabre rituals and inspired partially by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.He was born Kurt Leopold Seligmann in...
, and Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
. The artist Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
always carried a copy of the book with him and used to walk around Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
quoting from it.
In direct reference to Lautréamont's "chance meeting on a dissection table," Ernst defined the structure of the surrealist painting: "Accouplement de deux réalités en apparence inaccouplables sur un plan qui en apparence ne leur convient pas."
Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.-Life and work:...
and Dalí made "imaginary" portraits of Lautréamont, since no photograph was available.
Influence on others
A portion of Maldoror is recited toward the end of Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's 1967 film Week End.
Situationist
Situationist
The Situationist International was an internationalist European revolutionary group founded in 1957, and which reached its peak of influence in the general strike of May 1968 in France....
founder, film-maker, and author Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
developed a section from Poésies II as thesis 207 in The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
. The thesis covers plagiarism as a necessity and how it is implied by progress. It explains that plagiarism embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. His fellow Situationist Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines . After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970...
placed considerable importance on the insights of Latréaumont, stating in the Introduction to The Revolution of Everyday Life
The Revolution of Everyday Life
The Revolution of Everyday Life is a 1967 book by Raoul Vaneigem, Belgian author, philosopher and former member of the Situationist International . In French the title of the work was more elaborate: Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, or Treatise on Living for the Younger...
that “For as long as there have been men — and men who read Lautréamont — everything has been said and few people have gained anything from it. ”
The writers Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member of the Académie Française...
and Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...
have both counted Lautréamont as an influence on their work.
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
claimed to have made a film based on Maldoror, under the same title.
In recent years, invoking an obscure clause in the French civil code
Napoleonic code
The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
, modern performance artist Shishaldin
Shishaldin
Shishaldin is a New York based artist best known for her provocative endurance and performance pieces.-External links:*...
petitioned the government for permission to marry the author posthumously.
John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
, the American poet most influenced by Surrealism, entitled his collection of 1992 Hotel Lautréamont, and the English edition remarks that Lautréamont is "one of the forgotten presences alive" in the book.
Works by Lautréamont
- Les Chants de Maldoror - Chant premier, par ***, Imprimerie Balitout, Questroy et Cie, Paris, August 1868 (1st canto, published anonymously)
- Les Chants de Maldoror - Chant premier, par Comte de Lautréamont, in: "Parfums de l'Ame" (Anthology, edited by Evariste Carrance), Bordeaux 1869 (1st canto, published under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont)
- Les Chants de Maldoror, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, Brussels 1869 (first complete edition, not delivered to the booksellers)
- Poésies I, Librairie Gabrie, Balitout, Questroy et Cie, Paris 1870
- Poésies II, Librairie Gabrie, Balitout, Questroy et Cie, Paris 1870
- Les Chants de Maldoror, Typ. de E. Wittmann, Paris and Brussels 1874 (1869's complete edition, with new cover)
- Les Chants de Maldoror, preface by Léon Genonceaux, with a letter by Lautréamont, Éditions Léon Genonceaux, 1890 (new edition)
- Les Chants de Maldoror. with 65 illustrations by Frans De Geetere, Éditions Henri Blanchetière, Paris 1927
- Les Chants de Maldoror. with 42 illustrations by Salvador DalíSalvador DalíSalvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
; Albert Skira Éditeur, Paris 1934 - Œuvres Complètes. with a preface by André BretonAndré BretonAndré Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
und illustrations by Victor BraunerVictor BraunerVictor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
, Óscar DomínguezÓscar DomínguezOscar M. Domínguez was a Spanish surrealist painter.Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother in Tacoronte and devoted himself to painting at a young age after suffering a serious illness which affected his growth and caused a...
, Max ErnstMax ErnstMax Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, EspinozaEspinozaEspinoza or Espinosa may refer to:*Espinosa, Minas Gerais, a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil*Espinoza , people with the surname Espinoza or Espinosa*Espinosa de los Monteros, a city in Spain, Burgos...
, René MagritteRené MagritteRené François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, André MassonAndré MassonAndré-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
, Joan MiróJoan MiróJoan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Roberto MattaRoberto MattaRoberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren , better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art....
, Wolfgang PaalenWolfgang PaalenWolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
, Man RayMan RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Kurt SeligmannKurt SeligmannKurt Seligmann was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights engaged in macabre rituals and inspired partially by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.He was born Kurt Leopold Seligmann in...
and Yves TanguyYves TanguyRaymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, G.L.M. (Guy Levis Mano), Paris 1938 - Maldoror, with 27 illustrations by Jacques Houplain, Société de francs-bibliophiles, Paris 1947
- Les Chants de Maldoror. with 77 illustrations by René MagritteRené MagritteRené François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
; Éditions de "La Boetie", Brussels 1948 - Œuvres complètes. Fac-similés des éditions originales. La Table Ronde, Paris 1970 (facsimiles of the original editions)
- Œuvres complètes, based on the edition of 1938, with all historical prefaces by Léon Genonceaux (Édition Genouceaux, Paris 1890), Rémy de GourmontRemy de GourmontRemy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
(Édition de la Sirène, Paris 1921), Edmond JalouxEdmond JalouxEdmond Jaloux was a French novelist, essayist, and critic. His works tended to be set in Paris or his native Provence. He was interested in German Romanticism and English writers. In 1936 he joined the Académie française...
(Éditions Librairie José Corti, Paris, April 1938), Philippe SoupaultPhilippe SoupaultPhilippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...
(Éditions Charlot, Paris, 1946) Julien GracqJulien GracqJulien Gracq , born Louis Poirier in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French département of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their Surrealism.Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his...
(La Jeune Parque, Paris 1947), Roger CailloisRoger CailloisRoger Caillois was a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as games, play and the sacred...
(Éditions Librairie José Corti 1947), Maurice BlanchotMaurice BlanchotMaurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...
(Éditions du Club français du livre, Paris 1949), Éditions Librairie José Corti, Paris 1984
Translations
- Maldoror. Translated by Guy Wernham ; New Directions Publishing Corporation ; 1943 ; 0-8112-0082-5
- Lautreamont's Maldoror ; Translated by Lykiard (Alexis) ; London ; Allison & Busby ; 1983 ; VI, 218 p.
- Maldoror (and the Complete works of the Comte de Lautréamont); Exact Change; Cambridge, MA ; 1994 ; Translation into English by Alexis Lykiard with updated notes and bibliography by Lykiard, as well ; ISBN 1-878972-12-X
- Maldoror (Les Chants de Maldoror) ; Thomas Y. Crowell Company ; New York ; 1970 ; English translation by Alexis Lykiard
- Maldoror ; Allison and Busby ; London ; 1983 ; Translation by Alexis Lykiard ; ISBN 0-85031-084-9
- Maldoror ; Penguin Books ; "Penguin Classics" series ; Great Britain ; 1977 ; Fourth English translation (after Rodker, Wernham and Lykiard, respectively) by Paul Knight. Also contains "Poesies" and several "lettres". Extensive introduction by translator
- Maldoror and Poems ; Penguin Books ; New York ; 1988 ; Translated by Paul Knight ; Introduction by Paul Knight. Cover illustration is a color reproduction of Antoine Wiertz' "Buried Alive" (detail) ; 288 p. ; 0-14-044342-8
Secondary literature
There is a wealth of Lautréamont criticism, interpretation and analysis in French, including an esteemed biography by Jean-Jacques Lefrère, but little in English.- Le Cas Lautréamont, special edition of "Le Disque Vert", with an introduction by André GideAndré GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, and texts by Philippe SoupaultPhilippe SoupaultPhilippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...
, René CrevelRené CrevelRené Crevel was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement.-Life:Crevel was born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie. He had a traumatic religious upbringing. At the age of fourteen, during a difficult stage of his life, his father committed suicide by hanging himself. Crevel...
, Giuseppe UngarettiGiuseppe UngarettiGiuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo , he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned...
, Herbert ReadHerbert ReadSir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
, Albert ThibaudetAlbert ThibaudetAlbert Thibaudet was a French essayist and literary critic. A former student of Henri Bergson, he was a professor of Jean Rousset...
, André BretonAndré BretonAndré Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, Marcel ArlandMarcel ArlandMarcel Arland , was a French novelist, literary critic, and journalist.-Life:...
, Maurice MaeterlinckMaurice MaeterlinckMaurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, Paul ValéryPaul ValéryAmbroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
, Paul ÉluardPaul ÉluardPaul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
, Henri MichauxHenri MichauxHenri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...
, Jean CocteauJean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Léon BloyLéon BloyLéon Bloy , was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet.-Biography:Bloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau,...
, Rémy de GourmontRemy de GourmontRemy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
, André MalrauxAndré MalrauxAndré Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
a.o., and a portrait by Odilon-Jean Périer; René van den Berg, Paris/Brussels 1925 - The Lay of Maldoror ; The Casanova Society ; London ; 1924 ; First English translation is by John Rodker ; Illustrated with 3 plates by Odilon Redon
- Paul Zweig, Lautréamont: The Violent Narcissus, Kennikat, 1972
- Gaston Bachelard, Lautréamont, Dallas Institute, 1986
- Jeremy Reed: Isidore: A Novel about the Comte de Lautreamont, Peter Owen Limited 1991 (fictional biography)
- Alex de Jonge. Nightmare Culture: Lautréamont and Les Chants de Maldoror, Secker and Warburg, 1973: Creation Books 2007 1840681268
- Maurice Blanchot: Lautreamont and Sade. Meridian, Stanford University Press
- Peter W. Nesselroth: "Lautréamont's Imagery: a stylistic approach" Geneva: Droz, 1969
- Daniel Eisenberg, "Lautréamont", Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, New York: Garland, 1990, pp. 681–682, http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/encyclopedia/Lautreamont.pdf.
External links
http://www.cavi.univ-paris3.fr/phalese/Maldororhtml/documents/Biographie.htm Lautréamont on french wikisource Comte de Lautréamont — Les Chants de Maldoror Maldoror: Le Site http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/sable/recherche/catalogues/lautreamont/index.htm- English translation of three stanzas by Sonja Elen Kisa with visual art by François Aubéron
- "Lautréamont's poison-drenched pages", Roger Cardinal, Times Literary Supplement, July 21, 2010