Les Chants de Maldoror
 Cover of the first French edition | |
| Author | Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) |
|---|---|
| Original title | Les Chants de Maldoror |
| Translator |
|
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Poetic novel |
| Publisher | Gustave Balitout, Questroy et Cie. (original) |
Publication date |
1868–69 1874 (complete edition, with new cover) |
| Media type | |
| OCLC | 457272491 |
Original text | Les Chants de Maldoror at French Wikisource |
Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) is a poetic novel (or a long prose poem) consisting of six cantos. It was written and published between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of the Uruguayan-born French writer Isidore-Lucien Ducasse. Many of the surrealists (Salvador Dalí, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, etc.) during the early 20th century cited the novel as a major inspiration to their own works.
Theme and composition
Les Chants de Maldoror is a poem of six cantos which are subdivided into 60 verses of different length (I/14, II/16, III/5, IV/8, V/7, VI/10). The verses were originally not numbered, but rather separated by lines. The final eight stanzas of the last canto form a small novel, and were marked with Roman numerals. Each canto closes with a line to indicate its end.
It is difficult to summarize the work because it does not have specific plot in the traditional sense, and the narrative style is non-linear and often surrealistic. The work concerns the misanthropic character of Maldoror, a figure of absolute evil who is opposed to God and humanity, and has renounced conventional morality and decency. The iconoclastic imagery and tone is typically violent and macabre, and ostensibly nihilistic.[1] Much of the imagery was borrowed from the popular gothic literature of the period, in particular Lord Byron's Manfred, Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer and Goethe's Faust. Of these figures, the latter two are particularly significant in their description of a negative and Satanic antihero who is in hostile opposition to God.[2] The last eight stanzas of the final canto are in a way a small novel dealing with the seduction and murder of a youth.
At the beginning and end of the cantos, the text often refers to the work itself. Lautréamont also references himself in the capacity of the author of the work. Isidore is recognized as the "Montevidean". In order to enable the reader to realise that he is embarking on a "dangerous philosophical journey", Lautréamont uses stylistic means of identification with the reader, a procedure which author Baudelaire already used in his introduction of Les Fleurs du mal. He also comments on the work, providing instructions for reading. The first sentence contains a "warning" to the reader:
God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar.
Influence
Les Chants de Maldoror is considered to have been a major influence upon French Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism. Several editions of the book have included lithographs by the French symbolist painter Odilon Redon. Surrealist painters Salvador Dalí[3] and René Magritte[4] also illustrated each one edition of the book. The Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani used to carry a copy around in Montparnasse and quote from it.[5] The outsider artist Unica Zürn was also influenced by it in writing her The Man of Jasmine.[6] William T. Vollmann mentioned it as the work that most influenced his writing.[7]
English translations
- Rodker, John (translator). The Lay of Maldoror (1924).
- Wernham, Guy (translator). Maldoror (1943). ISBN 0-8112-0082-5
- Knight, Paul (translator). Maldoror and Poems (1988). ISBN 0-14-044342-8
- Lykiard, Alexis (translator). Maldoror and the Complete Works (1994). ISBN 1-878972-12-X
- Dent, R. J., (translator). The Songs of Maldoror (illustrated by Salvador Dalí) (2012). ISBN 978-0982046487
References
- ↑ Gascoyne, David (1935). A Short Survey of Surrealism. Psychology Press. p. 10. ISBN 9780714622620. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ↑ Lemaître, Georges (1986). "The Forerunners". Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. 12. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ↑ "MoMA - The Collection - Salvador Dalí. Les Chants de Maldoror. 1934". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ↑ Les Chants de Maldoror. With 77 illustrations by René Magritte; Éditions De "La Boétie“, Brussels 1948.
- ↑ Meyers, Jeffrey (2014). Modigliani: A Life. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 27. ISBN 9780544391215. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ↑ Hubert, Renäe Riese (1994). Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, & Partnership. University of Nebraska Press. p. 141. ISBN 9780803223707. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ↑ Bell, Madison Smartt (1993). "Where an Author Might Be Standing". Review of Contemporary Fiction. 13 (2): 39–45. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
External links
 |
French Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- Les Chants de Maldoror at Project Gutenberg (French)
-
Les Chants de Maldoror public domain audiobook at LibriVox (French)