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Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
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Author: Comte de Lautréamont
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Our Price: $17.95
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Manufacturer: Exact Change
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Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 841.8
EAN: 9781878972125
ISBN: 187897212X
Label: Exact Change
Manufacturer: Exact Change
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 340
Publication Date: 1994-06-01
Publisher: Exact Change
Product Release Date: 2004-02-02
Studio: Exact Change
Dewey Decimal Number: 841.8
EAN: 9781878972125
ISBN: 187897212X
Label: Exact Change
Manufacturer: Exact Change
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 340
Publication Date: 1994-06-01
Publisher: Exact Change
Product Release Date: 2004-02-02
Studio: Exact Change
Editorial Review of Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
Andr Breton wrote that Maldoror is "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's writings bewildered his contemporaries, but the Surrealists modeled their efforts after his lawless black humor and poetic leaps of logic, exemplified by the oft-quoted slogan, "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!" Maldoror's shocked first publisher refused to bind the sheets of the original edition...and perhaps no better invitation exists to this book, which warns the reader, "Only the few may relish this bitter fruit without danger." This is the only complete annotated collection of Lautr amont's writings available in English, in a superior translation.
Customer Reviews of Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Tremendously Overrated (Both Book And Translation)
Review: This review is of *Maldoror*, alone.
Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is legendary for its bold and complex phrasing and imagery, for its reputation of embodying Surrealism *avant la lettre*, and for its remarkably extreme, savage imagery. Less frequently remarked is its obvious debt to the earlier literature of the *Frenetiques*, such as Petrus Borel. Given the very few English translations of the latter, one may pardon those who do not read French for overestimating the originality of *Maldoror*. Francophones such as the Surrealists and Lykiard, however, have no such excuse.
The descriptions of *Maldoror* in the various reviews here describe the content and style of the work perfectly well, so I shall neither repeat them nor try to outdo them. Instead, I shall offer a slightly less breathlessly adoring view of the work, in general, and of Lykiard's translation of it, in particular.
My view of *Maldoror* is that it is primarily a parody of the extreme tendencies of the "dark side" of Romanticism, in general, and of Byron, in particular. Although Lykiard dismisses Mario Praz's view of Lautreamont and *Maldoror* rather abruptly, Praz's observations seem quite germane, to me:
"[Lautreamont/Ducasse is] a macabre humorist in whom it is impossible to distinguish where sincerity ends and mystification begins".
Those who doubt this observation should have a look at Ducasse's extant letters, many of which bear witness to his desire merely to be a successful writer, and to be judged by the literary critics of the day. In a word, Ducasse/Lautreamont appears to have been precisely the sort of careerist *litterateur* whom the Surrealists excoriated and excommunicated from their ranks with tedious regularity!
As for Lykiard's translation, it is adequate, but far from inspired. Although, as he trumpets *ad nauseam*, his version of *Maldoror* may be in the main less error-riddled than those of his competitors, it is frequently leaden and awkward. Compare, for instance, the following tin-eared rendition to the original, and then to Paul Knight's rendering of the same passage:
The original: "[...] car, à moins qu'il n'apporte dans sa lecture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d'esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émanations mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme comme l'eau le sucre".
Lykiard: "For unless he bring to his reading a rigorous logic and mental application at least tough enough to balance his distrust, the deadly issues of this book will lap up his soul as water does sugar".
Knight: "[...] for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar".
Granted, such evaluations involve much subjectivity, but there's no doubt in my mind which version reads both more accurately and more elegantly in English. Lykiard does, however, deserve credit for demonstrating Knight's faults, as well.
Lykiard's notes are not necessarily much better than his translations. To take but one instance, Lykiard tells us that "God is here (and *passim*) ironically addressed as *tu* rather than the more formal *vous*". If Lykiard were as clever as he'd like to appear, then he'd know that the French *always* address God as *tu*, and not as *vous*. Therefore, there is nothing ironic on its face about Lautreamont's usage, at all.
In sum, *Maldoror* is a sometimes powerful, but often puerile, *reductio ad absurdum* of *Frenetique*-era late Romanticism. Enjoy it for its over-the-top style and its infrequent passages of genuine and sincere poetic power. Do not, however, take it too seriously, because, although we shall never know for certain, my bet is that Ducasse/Lautreamont was little more than a prodigiously gifted adolescent who sought, as most adolescents do, simultaneously to shock and to impress the grown-ups.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A 5-star constellation of evil and negation...
Review: Lushly, sensuously, decadently overwritten, a fatal literary intersection where Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Poe, and Sade collide and out of the spectacular wreckage something lopes off into the surrounding woods declaiming like Nietzsche's Zarathustra with head trauma--Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is one of those ten or twelve books that aren't like any other. Part hallucination, part philosophy, part prose-poem, part prophecy, it's a bizarre stitched-together Frankenstein's monster of a text, a virtuoso improvisation animated by an electrifying genius who appears--and disappears--on the literary stage like a bolt out of the blue.
Here is a work where the first-person protagonist is an arrogant, cruel, disdainful superhuman egoist--sometimes seeming to be Satan; other times, something considerably less, but at all times evil incarnate. Dramatic and arbitrary shifts of narrative perspective and authorial points-of-view, a fractured, nonlinear plot-line, similes and metaphors of Homeric proportion that bring together the most disparate items in absurd conjunctions virtually without meaning. Was it all a joke? A parody of Romantic literature and the self-indulgent, self-pitying, overheated imagination of those who struck the Romantic stance of poetic revolt and existential defiance? What must the French public have thought of this black mass "celebrating" vice, blasphemy, pederasty, and murder--a work that held nothing--including itself--above disgust?
Predictably enough, *Maldoror* caused barely a ripple in the bourgeoisie calm when it was first published--by Ducasse himself incidentally--and remained unread by the general public who continues to not read it today. It remains a text ahead of its time--or perhaps more accurately--outside of time altogether. And yet it's had a huge influence on the writers, artists, and intellectuals of our time, from the Surrealists to the Situationists to literature in theory and practice to this day. *Maldoror* is a quintessentially postmodern text--a pastiche of genres with its penchant for self-parody and its direct address of the reader, breaking the illusion of "fictive reality" and authorial authority.
The translator argues forcefully that this is the edition of *Maldoror* to read--that other editions, most egregiously the Penguin--are rife with errors that stumble along the borderline of sheer incompetence. I've got no good reason to doubt this is the truth--and why not read this edition? It's attractively formatted, fully annotated, and contains all the known works of Lautreamont ((Ducasse)) including a few apocryphal tidbits, a chronology, biographical notes, and even a reminiscence by an old dude who once went to school with the Dark Prince of Letters. If there's a better edition, I'm unaware of it.
As for the heavily annotated *Poesies* that round out the main bulk of this volume--I had far less enthusiasm for them than for *Maldoror.* A series of gnomic axioms and aphorisms ala Pascal, indeed, many apparently in direct reply to Pascal, I didn't find them very interesting, often barely intelligible, even with the help of the comprehensive annotations--much of it in French which was unfortunately of no use to someone monolingual like me. What I did understand of the *Poesies,* the opinion of enthusiasts to the contrary, I found, for the most part, bombastic or banal, and very often both. A young man's ((Ducasse died in his early twenties)) bold, world-shattering, and consequently somewhat naïve proclamations on life and literature, any and all of which were likely to change if he'd lived to see even five more years of either. At twenty-three, you can be a genius and produce a literary masterpiece, but you still don't know much--certainly not even most--about life.
Indeed, even in the *Poesies,* Ducasse radically reverses field, mercilessly ridiculing Romanticism and its heroes, mocking the Satanic defiance that inspired such works as...*Maldoror!*
So was *Maldoror* all a goof then--a black spoof, a devastating satire? Had Ducasse turned a new leaf as he claimed in the *Poesies* and now dedicated himself to composing uplifting works of classical order and clarity? Was he pulling our leg then...or again? Was it all a joke--on us, on him? Was he simply insane, or just young, or both? Are we reading too much into all this--and is *that* the point?
These are some of the very potent post-contemporary questions that Ducasse has left us to contemplate in the wake of his great literary disappearing act--questions that remain in addition to, and beyond, those raised by the actual content of his enigmatic, and abbreviated, corpus of work.
An author--and a book--as important for being important as for the substance and merit of what he wrote, Ducasse and *Maldoror* is essential reading for the serious student of post-19th century literature. Ducasse/Lautreamont/Maldoror is a major signpost on the way to a new kind of writing, some of which we see today, more of which we'll see tomorrow.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: best book ive ever read
Review: this is the best book i've ever read and by far the best translation of it. i can't really say anything more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Step Into Darkness
Review: I like my writers drunk, blasphemous, decadent and French. If any of that list sounds even vaguely familiar then this is the book for you. Set the absinthe fountain to a slow drip, light some candles and prepare to tour an alchemical end-of-the-century underworld.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The book that keeps on giving
Review: What to say about Maldoror that hasn't been said yet? What to say about the mysterious son of a diplomat who appeared in France, wrote this book and died, vanishing from the world, yet leaving his mark for decades and centuries yet to come?
The first time I had the pleasure of reading this exceptional work, I was taken aback. Barely seventeen, I hungrily swallowed the disturbing images leaping at me from the pages, not to fully comprehend them until years later. This work, over a century old, is believed to be the first work, the foundation stone of the surrealist movement, a movement that penetrated into every aspect of art, life, being; whether we are willing to admit it or not, this work is as important today as it was when originally published in 1868 (well, at least a part of it was). The world was not ready to receive the complete self-awarness of evil Maldoror so fully comprehends, and the world is still not ready. This work is certainly not to be read by a "closed" mind. It is said that to be creative, one must borderline insanity, yet, Lautreamont was playing with genius; a genius of a caliber capable of scaring away even the most immodest of us. But get deeper into his work, walk past the disturbed images, surpass your fears and you shall see the light. This work cannot be ignored, cannot be left to collect dust. I have owned several copies over the past 14 years, and I am still finding new meanings, new passages and new understanding in this wonderful work. This trully is the one book that will never get old, that will always keep on giving, as long as one is ready to listen.
Review Summary: Tremendously Overrated (Both Book And Translation)
Review: This review is of *Maldoror*, alone.
Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is legendary for its bold and complex phrasing and imagery, for its reputation of embodying Surrealism *avant la lettre*, and for its remarkably extreme, savage imagery. Less frequently remarked is its obvious debt to the earlier literature of the *Frenetiques*, such as Petrus Borel. Given the very few English translations of the latter, one may pardon those who do not read French for overestimating the originality of *Maldoror*. Francophones such as the Surrealists and Lykiard, however, have no such excuse.
The descriptions of *Maldoror* in the various reviews here describe the content and style of the work perfectly well, so I shall neither repeat them nor try to outdo them. Instead, I shall offer a slightly less breathlessly adoring view of the work, in general, and of Lykiard's translation of it, in particular.
My view of *Maldoror* is that it is primarily a parody of the extreme tendencies of the "dark side" of Romanticism, in general, and of Byron, in particular. Although Lykiard dismisses Mario Praz's view of Lautreamont and *Maldoror* rather abruptly, Praz's observations seem quite germane, to me:
"[Lautreamont/Ducasse is] a macabre humorist in whom it is impossible to distinguish where sincerity ends and mystification begins".
Those who doubt this observation should have a look at Ducasse's extant letters, many of which bear witness to his desire merely to be a successful writer, and to be judged by the literary critics of the day. In a word, Ducasse/Lautreamont appears to have been precisely the sort of careerist *litterateur* whom the Surrealists excoriated and excommunicated from their ranks with tedious regularity!
As for Lykiard's translation, it is adequate, but far from inspired. Although, as he trumpets *ad nauseam*, his version of *Maldoror* may be in the main less error-riddled than those of his competitors, it is frequently leaden and awkward. Compare, for instance, the following tin-eared rendition to the original, and then to Paul Knight's rendering of the same passage:
The original: "[...] car, à moins qu'il n'apporte dans sa lecture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d'esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émanations mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme comme l'eau le sucre".
Lykiard: "For unless he bring to his reading a rigorous logic and mental application at least tough enough to balance his distrust, the deadly issues of this book will lap up his soul as water does sugar".
Knight: "[...] for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar".
Granted, such evaluations involve much subjectivity, but there's no doubt in my mind which version reads both more accurately and more elegantly in English. Lykiard does, however, deserve credit for demonstrating Knight's faults, as well.
Lykiard's notes are not necessarily much better than his translations. To take but one instance, Lykiard tells us that "God is here (and *passim*) ironically addressed as *tu* rather than the more formal *vous*". If Lykiard were as clever as he'd like to appear, then he'd know that the French *always* address God as *tu*, and not as *vous*. Therefore, there is nothing ironic on its face about Lautreamont's usage, at all.
In sum, *Maldoror* is a sometimes powerful, but often puerile, *reductio ad absurdum* of *Frenetique*-era late Romanticism. Enjoy it for its over-the-top style and its infrequent passages of genuine and sincere poetic power. Do not, however, take it too seriously, because, although we shall never know for certain, my bet is that Ducasse/Lautreamont was little more than a prodigiously gifted adolescent who sought, as most adolescents do, simultaneously to shock and to impress the grown-ups.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A 5-star constellation of evil and negation...
Review: Lushly, sensuously, decadently overwritten, a fatal literary intersection where Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Poe, and Sade collide and out of the spectacular wreckage something lopes off into the surrounding woods declaiming like Nietzsche's Zarathustra with head trauma--Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is one of those ten or twelve books that aren't like any other. Part hallucination, part philosophy, part prose-poem, part prophecy, it's a bizarre stitched-together Frankenstein's monster of a text, a virtuoso improvisation animated by an electrifying genius who appears--and disappears--on the literary stage like a bolt out of the blue.
Here is a work where the first-person protagonist is an arrogant, cruel, disdainful superhuman egoist--sometimes seeming to be Satan; other times, something considerably less, but at all times evil incarnate. Dramatic and arbitrary shifts of narrative perspective and authorial points-of-view, a fractured, nonlinear plot-line, similes and metaphors of Homeric proportion that bring together the most disparate items in absurd conjunctions virtually without meaning. Was it all a joke? A parody of Romantic literature and the self-indulgent, self-pitying, overheated imagination of those who struck the Romantic stance of poetic revolt and existential defiance? What must the French public have thought of this black mass "celebrating" vice, blasphemy, pederasty, and murder--a work that held nothing--including itself--above disgust?
Predictably enough, *Maldoror* caused barely a ripple in the bourgeoisie calm when it was first published--by Ducasse himself incidentally--and remained unread by the general public who continues to not read it today. It remains a text ahead of its time--or perhaps more accurately--outside of time altogether. And yet it's had a huge influence on the writers, artists, and intellectuals of our time, from the Surrealists to the Situationists to literature in theory and practice to this day. *Maldoror* is a quintessentially postmodern text--a pastiche of genres with its penchant for self-parody and its direct address of the reader, breaking the illusion of "fictive reality" and authorial authority.
The translator argues forcefully that this is the edition of *Maldoror* to read--that other editions, most egregiously the Penguin--are rife with errors that stumble along the borderline of sheer incompetence. I've got no good reason to doubt this is the truth--and why not read this edition? It's attractively formatted, fully annotated, and contains all the known works of Lautreamont ((Ducasse)) including a few apocryphal tidbits, a chronology, biographical notes, and even a reminiscence by an old dude who once went to school with the Dark Prince of Letters. If there's a better edition, I'm unaware of it.
As for the heavily annotated *Poesies* that round out the main bulk of this volume--I had far less enthusiasm for them than for *Maldoror.* A series of gnomic axioms and aphorisms ala Pascal, indeed, many apparently in direct reply to Pascal, I didn't find them very interesting, often barely intelligible, even with the help of the comprehensive annotations--much of it in French which was unfortunately of no use to someone monolingual like me. What I did understand of the *Poesies,* the opinion of enthusiasts to the contrary, I found, for the most part, bombastic or banal, and very often both. A young man's ((Ducasse died in his early twenties)) bold, world-shattering, and consequently somewhat naïve proclamations on life and literature, any and all of which were likely to change if he'd lived to see even five more years of either. At twenty-three, you can be a genius and produce a literary masterpiece, but you still don't know much--certainly not even most--about life.
Indeed, even in the *Poesies,* Ducasse radically reverses field, mercilessly ridiculing Romanticism and its heroes, mocking the Satanic defiance that inspired such works as...*Maldoror!*
So was *Maldoror* all a goof then--a black spoof, a devastating satire? Had Ducasse turned a new leaf as he claimed in the *Poesies* and now dedicated himself to composing uplifting works of classical order and clarity? Was he pulling our leg then...or again? Was it all a joke--on us, on him? Was he simply insane, or just young, or both? Are we reading too much into all this--and is *that* the point?
These are some of the very potent post-contemporary questions that Ducasse has left us to contemplate in the wake of his great literary disappearing act--questions that remain in addition to, and beyond, those raised by the actual content of his enigmatic, and abbreviated, corpus of work.
An author--and a book--as important for being important as for the substance and merit of what he wrote, Ducasse and *Maldoror* is essential reading for the serious student of post-19th century literature. Ducasse/Lautreamont/Maldoror is a major signpost on the way to a new kind of writing, some of which we see today, more of which we'll see tomorrow.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: best book ive ever read
Review: this is the best book i've ever read and by far the best translation of it. i can't really say anything more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Step Into Darkness
Review: I like my writers drunk, blasphemous, decadent and French. If any of that list sounds even vaguely familiar then this is the book for you. Set the absinthe fountain to a slow drip, light some candles and prepare to tour an alchemical end-of-the-century underworld.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The book that keeps on giving
Review: What to say about Maldoror that hasn't been said yet? What to say about the mysterious son of a diplomat who appeared in France, wrote this book and died, vanishing from the world, yet leaving his mark for decades and centuries yet to come?
The first time I had the pleasure of reading this exceptional work, I was taken aback. Barely seventeen, I hungrily swallowed the disturbing images leaping at me from the pages, not to fully comprehend them until years later. This work, over a century old, is believed to be the first work, the foundation stone of the surrealist movement, a movement that penetrated into every aspect of art, life, being; whether we are willing to admit it or not, this work is as important today as it was when originally published in 1868 (well, at least a part of it was). The world was not ready to receive the complete self-awarness of evil Maldoror so fully comprehends, and the world is still not ready. This work is certainly not to be read by a "closed" mind. It is said that to be creative, one must borderline insanity, yet, Lautreamont was playing with genius; a genius of a caliber capable of scaring away even the most immodest of us. But get deeper into his work, walk past the disturbed images, surpass your fears and you shall see the light. This work cannot be ignored, cannot be left to collect dust. I have owned several copies over the past 14 years, and I am still finding new meanings, new passages and new understanding in this wonderful work. This trully is the one book that will never get old, that will always keep on giving, as long as one is ready to listen.