Maldoror: (Les Chants de Maldoror) (New Directions Paperbook)

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.

Maldororis a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religions fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautramont: He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance. When first published in 1868-69,Maldororwent almost unnoticed. But in the 1890s the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Lon Block, Maeterlinck, and Rmy de Gourmont. Later still, Lautramont was to be canonized as one of their principal ancestors by the Paris surrealists. This edition, translated by Guy Wernham, 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 Lautramont.