Les Chants de Maldoror

The 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.

Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse, self-styled 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 1868-69, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the 1890s 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, Lautréamont was to be canonized by the Paris Surrealists as one of their principal "ancestors."

Endorsements

"He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance." — Georges Hugnet