Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) is a poetic novel consisting of six cantos. It was written between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse. Many of the surrealists (Salvador Dalí, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, etc.) during the early 1900s cited the novel as a major inspiration to their own works and Les Chants de Maldoror, and its protagonist Maldoror, have continued to fascinate people since its publication. One of the earliest and most extraordinary examples of Surrealist writing, 'Les Chants de Maldoror' unveils a world, half vision, half nightmare, of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and homosexuals, madmen and strange children. As a sublime misfit wandering through a dream universe, Maldoror observes human evil and kindness, and through Lautreaumont's metaphysical anguish, the outrage and violence of our own age is expressed in many ways. 'Maldoror' has now won acceptance as a classic of French literature, but because of the lack of good translation has remained virtually unknown to the American reader. Poet and novelist Alexis Lykiard has captured all the macabre beauty of the original without any sacrifice of meaning or accuracy.

Lautréamont's Maldoror

Literature & Fiction

Comte de Lautréamont

Contemporary

Thomas Y. Crowell

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.
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. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautréamont: "He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance."
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 1868-9, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the nineties 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 still, Lautréamont 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 Lautréamont.

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

Poetry

New Directions

Equal parts dark, destructive and brilliant, Maldoror blazed the way for the 20th century's boldest adventures in art, music and literature
André Breton described Maldoror as "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). Lautréamont bewildered his contemporaries, but the Surrealists modeled their efforts after his black humor and poetic leaps of logic, exemplified by the oft-quoted line, "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 Lautréamont's writings available in English, in Alexis Lykiard's superior translation. For this latest edition, Lykiard updates his introduction to include recent scholarship.

Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont

Exact Change

Les chants de maldoror 010397

Classics

H.d.O.S. G.d.

Changer la vie par les moyens de la poésie : telle fut l'ambition de Rimbaud. Ce volume rassemble les oeuvres d'un poète devenu mythe, depuis son premier récit, composé à l'âge de dix ans, jusqu'aux poèmes en prose des Illuminations, qui -précèdent son renoncement à la littérature, la vingtaine venue. On y découvrira, aux côtés de ses textes les plus célèbres - les lettres du Voyant, les poésies, ou encore Une saison en enfer, seul recueil publié par Rimbaud de son vivant -, des écrits moins connus, tels que Famille maudite" et Le Rêve de Bismarck", récemment retrouvés. Et l'on mesurera le chemin parcouru par ce génie "ravagé violemment par la littérature", acteur d'"une aventure unique dans l'histoire de l'art" (Mallarmé)

Oeuvres Completes (Bibliotheque de la Pleiade) (French Edition)

Essays & Correspondence

French and European Publications Inc

Les Chants de Maldoror (French Edition)

Ligaran

LIGARAN

Les Chants de Maldoror (World Classics) (French Edition)

Distribooks

Poète français né en Uruguay en 1846, Isidore Ducasse est plus connu sous son pseudonyme Comte de Lautréamont. Il décède mystérieusement à Paris le 24 novembre 1870, peut-être de tuberculose. Il est considéré comme un des plus éminents précurseurs du surréalisme (Alfred Jarry). En 1925, André Gide « estime que le plus beau titre de gloire du groupe qu'ont formé Breton, Aragon et Soupault, est d'avoir reconnu et proclamé l'importance littéraire et ultra-littéraire de l'admirable Lautréamont. » Récit hallucinant empli de férocité, d’idées morbides et de délires inouïs, Maldoror est un texte riche, sulfureux et difficile et incarne la révolte d’une jeunesse découvrant le conflit entre l’imaginaire et le réel. Plus grand qu’un livre de poche, le format de ce livre est plus agréable et invite à la lecture de cette œuvre magistrale et fascinante. Texte intégral.

Les Chants de Maldoror: Lettres et poesies (French Edition)

Ducasse, Isidore

UltraLetters

Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) [Japanese Edition]

KADOKAWA

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