Ebook: Maldoror = Les Chants de Maldoror Together with a translation of Lautréamont's Poésies

This 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 thatwhich others hadmerelygiven a passing glance."
Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse, selfstyled 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 1868-9, Maldoror went
almost unnoticed. But in the nineties 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 still, Lautréamont was to be canonized as one of their
principal "ancestors" by the Paris Surrealists.
This new paperback edition, translated by Guyé, includes also a long introduction to a never-written, or now lost,
volume of poetry. Thus, except for a few letters, it gives all the
surviving literary work of Lautréamont.
Cover: from a bronze Dancer by Marino Marini, courtesy of Pierre Matisse
Gallery, New York; design by David Ford.