Product Description

Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52358 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

the beginning of surrealism?
this book is demented-it's a halucinatory trip through the deranged mind of Maldoror - who is by turns the hero, villian, and narrator of the book. Maldoror describes attrocities, blasphemies, and bestial-ecstacies in a poetic style that is beautiful, even while the subject matter is sickening. It's kind of plotless and dreamlike, but it sucks you in from the first page. I think this book is incredible, but it does contain some of the most graphic violence I have ever read......... so be warned!

A long long nightmare!
This 'poem' must be the best exponent of surrealism although it was written well befor the surrealist movement. It has the power of nightmares that suck its reader in. It goes beyond that, it would change you for life.

The 'poem' is extremely violent but extremely beautiful at the same time. This is one of those strange books that, once read, would beckon you again and again and you will find yourself reading it again or at least thinking about it frequently. No wonder the surrealists idealised Lautreamont (real name Isidore Ducasse), a Frenchman born and brought up in Montevideo and died in Paris. He died young and left behind some scattered works, Maldoror being his major achievement. Not much of his life is known and Maldoror must be the piece that kept him alive, a work steeped in death, violence and destruction! Lautreamont himself became his best critic (he frequently elaborates his own work from within) when he said:

'I want the mourning reader atleast to be able to say to himself: "One must give hime his due. He has considerably cretinised me. What wouldn't he have done had he lived longer? He is the best professor of hypnotism I ever knew!"'
Alexis Lykiard's translation, Pg. 214-215