Maldoror and the Complete Works (Taschenbuch)

"A sole few will savour this bitter fruit without danger."

Maldoror is the narrator, and sometime character when the narrative shifts unexpectedly into third person, and the alter ego of the mysterious young Comte de Lautreamont--which was the pen name of Isidore Ducasse. Dead by 24, he left behind this time-bomb. Maldoror is a sadist, a murderer, a philosopher, an outcast from the normal order of life. He encourages readers to kidnap a child and torture it, to taste its tears and its blood--all within the first 30 pages. Right on! You are not dealing with a rational, predictable mind here.

One of the book's most fascinating aspects is its continuous imagery of animals, both everyday and exotic, majestic and absurd: sharks, turkeys, crabs, eagles, octopi, tigers, wovles, insects, serpents. These creatures are presented with the sharp eye of the biologist. By likening humanity to animals, Lautreamont achieves a double effect: man comes off as debased and at the same time, elevated: to be like an animal man must be rid of all his pretensions and vanities. It is this pretense to culture and civilized behavior that sicken Lautreamont/Maldoror.

Many passsages still shock and disgust--and yes, entertain with their feverish intensity, particularly the one in which Maldoror copulates with a man-eating shark. A church lantern turns into an angel, deteriorates into pus when Maldoror licks its face, and is soon only "an enormous loathsome wound."

Maldoror also despises God--ostensibly the creator of all this human stupidity and vice. "My poetry shall consist of attacks, by all means, upon that wild beast, man, and the Creator, who should never have begotten such vermin!" When Maldoror confronts God, Maldoror metamorphosizes into a giant octopus and clamps his monstrous new tentacles around His body...

This anti-theistic viewpoint is startling and refreshing compared to the religious aspects of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. This work is a must-read for those interested in avant-garde, bizarre literature; it is also the springboard for Surrealism (with the passage, "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing maching and an umbrella," Andre Breton saw the future of his imagination). This edition contains a good introduction about the work itself, its language, what "Lautreamont" means, earlier mistranslations, etc. Lykiard's translation is fantastic. Don't hesitate, get this book today!

of course if you dont like dragging your eyes through a ship wreck in a storm with maldoror standing on the cliffs screaming and laughing at the drowning sailors and then just as one young man has almost escaped certain death by swimming against the strength of the storm and sea to the rocks maldoror pulls out his gun and shoots him and then notices the sharks that are feasting on drowning sailors and the one huge shark attacking dead sailors dying sailors other sharks and good old maldoror swims out to the shark and copulates with it because he has finally found a heart as dark as his,then you might not like some of what this book has to offer. but if you like stuff thats even darker, more fantastic, eviler, then you will probably like it.