'I set my genius to portray the pleasures of cruelty!' - Lautréamont
Equal parts dark, destructive and brilliant, Maldoror blazed the way for the 20th century's boldest adventures in art, music and literature
André 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).
The macabre but beautiful work Les Chants de Maldoror has achieved a considerable reputation as one of the earliest and most extraordinary examples of Surrealist writing. It is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religious fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautréamont: "He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance."
Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse, self-styled Comte de Lautréamont, except that he was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1846 and died in Paris at the age of twenty-four. When first published in 1868-69, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the 1890s the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Léon Bloy, Maeterlinck, and Rémy de Gourmont. Later, Lautréamont was to be canonized by the Paris Surrealists as one of their principal "ancestors."
'I like Lautreamont a lot. He taught me how important and how possible it was to write a sentence that is just gorgeous. Actually, I’m about overdue for a rereading of Maldoror. I’d like to pick up a few tricks from that book again.'— William T. Vollmann, The Paris Review
'Lautréamont's style is hallucinatory, visionary... this new fluent translation makes clear its poetic texture and what may be termed its subversive attraction.' - The New York Times
'His translation is passionate, involved, and bristling. He convinces.' - The Times
'Isidore Ducasse was neither madman nor visionary, but a genius who never ceased for as long as he lived to see with perfect lucidity.' - Antonin Artaud
'The poet who discovered the form in which to express psychic explosion.' - Octavio Paz
'If Lautréamont's erratic book has any lineage at all, or, rather, can be assigned one, it is that of insurrection.' - Walter Benjamin
