Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont

by Comte de Lautréamont

Equal parts dark, destructive and brilliant, Maldoror blazed the way for the 20th century's boldest adventures in art, music and literature

Andr Breton described Maldoror as "the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential." Little is known about its pseudonymous author, aside from his real name (Isidore Ducasse), birth in Uruguay (1846) and early death in Paris (1870). Lautr amont...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 187897212X
• ISBN13: 9781878972125
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Exact Change
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 8.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

THIS IS THE TRANSLATION YOU WANT

Alexis Lykiard captures the rabid bite, godlike arrogance, swooning eroticism, obnoxiously erudite vocabulary, genius humor, and vortex of profound madness that is Lautreamont's Maldoror. Don't waste your time with a translation that will mar this masterpiese with even a streak of drabness.

a disturbing, twisted work of absolute genius

"maldoror" is one of the most intriguing, weird little books i've ever read. every surrealism fiend (like myself) should buy numerous copies of this book. lautreamont advances on every form of authority and convention with an aggressiveness and deadly seriousness that would have made jim morrison shudder, and we find ourselves shivering during parts of this dark but beautiful pearl of a book. maldoror, the outcast monster, is perhaps every alienated person we have scorned and ostracized because of their individuality or uniqueness. he is a furious and vicious being of total revolt, and by the end of this strangely dreamlike, automatic text, we have seen every barrier of civilization and every moral that lays the foundation of society trampled and spat upon. look especially for the scene where maldoror guns down some swimmers in the ocean and then proceeds to have sex with a whale. (i wonder if he wrapped it up!) when andre breton said this book seemed to exceed the limits of human capacity, he wasn't joking. if you're a misanthrope and a disaffected weirdo like myself, you simply cannot miss this. a sometimes startling yet essential celebration of ultimate freedom and absolute rebellion.

My Bible

This book is a must-read for all misanthropes! With a nightmarish pre-surrealist quality the author paints various macabre poems in prose around the central figure, Maldoror, a being who rejects the human society to which he cannot belong, and who blames its Creator for all suffering. It is a love/hate poem/novel with the world and with the burden of existence. Very stong and surprising dark imagination! Wild exotic phenomena of science, the naive and crude intensity of adolescence, the savagery of nature and its animals, the juxtaposition of conflicting logic and anti-logic and mind-bending sensory imagery. This book is my bible. The author's work greatly influenced the Dadaists and surrealists who later wrote after WWI. I am presently translating the Entire book in Esperanto: ............................."A sole few will savour this bitter fruit without danger."

The best translated edition of this amazing work!

"The Songs of Maldoror" is not a book--it is a searing, rambling, poisonous "derangement of all the senses" in masquerade. After more than a century it still has the power to shock, startle and repulse. Precisely imagined, "Maldoror" is a fairly obscure classic of late 19th century French literature, and is on par with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc. You must read this if you love those writers!Maldoror is the narrator, and sometime character when the narrative shifts unexpectedly into third person, and the alter ego of the mysterious young Comte de Lautreamont--which was the pen name of Isidore Ducasse. Dead by 24, he left behind this time-bomb. Maldoror is a sadist, a murderer, a philosopher, an outcast from the normal order of life. He encourages readers to kidnap a child and torture it, to taste its tears and its blood--all within the first 30 pages. Right on! You are not dealing with a rational, predictable mind here.One of the book's most fascinating aspects is its continuous imagery of animals, both everyday and exotic, majestic and absurd: sharks, turkeys, crabs, eagles, octopi, tigers, wovles, insects, serpents. These creatures are presented with the sharp eye of the biologist. By likening humanity to animals, Lautreamont achieves a double effect: man comes off as debased and at the same time, elevated: to be like an animal man must be rid of all his pretensions and vanities. It is this pretense to culture and civilized behavior that sicken Lautreamont/Maldoror.Many passsages still shock and disgust--and yes, entertain with their feverish intensity, particularly the one in which Maldoror copulates with a man-eating shark. A church lantern turns into an angel, deteriorates into pus when Maldoror licks its face, and is soon only "an enormous loathsome wound."Maldoror also despises God--ostensibly the creator of all this human stupidity and vice. "My poetry shall consist of attacks, by all means, upon that wild beast, man, and the Creator, who should never have begotten such vermin!" When Maldoror confronts God, Maldoror metamorphosizes into a giant octopus and clamps his monstrous new tentacles around His body...This anti-theistic viewpoint is startling and refreshing compared to the religious aspects of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. This work is a must-read for those interested in avant-garde, bizarre literature; it is also the springboard for Surrealism (with the passage, "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing maching and an umbrella," Andre Breton saw the future of his imagination). This edition contains a good introduction about the work itself, its language, what "Lautreamont" means, earlier mistranslations, etc. Lykiard's translation is fantastic. Don't hesitate, get this book today!

A masterwork of dark literature.

As savage as it is beautiful, as challenging as it is rewarding, Les Chants de Maldoror is an inspired and disquieting exploration of the evil humans are capable of. I have read several translations, and this one is by far the best.