Maldoror

By: Comte de LautrŽamont

Published January 17th 1965 by New Directions (first published 1869)

Category: Business

Pages: 342 pages

ISBN: 9780811200820

Description:
Maldoror is 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 LautrŽamont: "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, 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, LŽon Block, Maeterlinck, and RŽmy de Gourmont. Later still, LautrŽamont 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 LautrŽamont.