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Comte Lautremont : Songs of Malador
PAINTING BY RENE MAGRITTE 1927
" PLEASURE"
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PAINTING BY MARCEL DUCHAMP " APOLLINAIRE
ENAMELED"
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About a dozen years ago when I began writing Café Apollinaire I was doing research
on the arts of the early part of the twentieth century i.e. Surrealism, Dada, Cubism, Expressionism & Social Realism etc.
I found that in order to better understand these artistic movements there were earlier writings with which I needed to become
more familiar. These included the writings of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud , the Marquis De Sade, Edgar Allan Poe &
Comte Lautreamont & others such as Francois Villion, William Blake, Dante, Voltaire, Cervantes, & others. Some of these
writers I was already familiar with but others I knew nothing of their writing & ideas or I only had the same old commonly
held biased views & prejudices about a particular writer such as the Marquis De Sade.
Much of what most people ,even many intellectuals, think they know for instance about De Sade is more often than not based
upon misinformation & prejudice & Urban Legends. Most people do not have the time or inclination to explore the actual
works of DeSade & the more accurate & thoughtful biographies of the true story of the life of DeSade. He was not the complete
monster that most people believe him to have been. I refer to such a need for a more accurate & truthful view of someone like
DeSade as "a Corrective " between what is the commonly held view as opposed to what is a more realistic view on a particular
writer or artist or artistic movement etc. Anyway more of De Sade at another time.
In this post I would like to introduce the work of one of the precursors of the Surrealist the writer the Comte de Lautreamont.
So here a few facts about Lautreamont & samples of his writing.
"Ducasse, Isidore , 1846–1870, French poet who wrote under the name Comte de Lautréamont, or simply Lautréamont. Born
in Montevideo, Uruguay, he moved to Paris in 1867, where he lived like a hermit until his death at the age of 24. In 1870
he published a volume of poetry, Poésies. He is best known for his only other work, Les
Chants de Maldoror (1868, tr. 1943), a nightmarish epic poem replete with grotesque, often erotic, imagery. Because
of his hallucinatory, nonrepresentational style, Lautréamont was viewed by the surrealists as a progenitor."
(Comte de Lautréamont: Information From Answers.com )
And further:
"Lautreamont used his 'genius to depict the delights of cruelty' in telling the tale of Maladoror whose exploits encompass
murder, eroticism, sadomasochism, violence, blasphemy, obscenity, putrefaction and dehumanization. "
And:
“ One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, Lautréamont's fantasy unveils a world - half-vision,
half-nightmare - of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and pederasts, lunatics and strange children. The writing is drenched
with an unrestrained savagery and menace, and the grandiose by turns - possesses a remarkable hallucinatory quality.”
/www.insite.com.br/rodrigo/people/lautreamont/
Comte de lautreamont-complete works
Some writers create what are known as 'prose poems' Comte de Lautreamont was possibly the first example possibly the originator
of this style of writing. Though the style is poetic the themes in Lautreamont's case are of our darkest thoughts or dreams
brought out into the light.
Here is an excerpt from MALDOROR to give a glimpse of what the work is like
to those unfamiliar with it:
Selected Poems from
MALDOROR
by Lautréamont (1868)
Translated by Sonja Elen Kisa (1998)
Illustrated by François Aubéron
FIRST CANTO
Stanza 1: The Reader Forewarned
" God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of
bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for,
unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the
lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar. It is not right that everyone read the pages that follow:
a sole few will savour this bitter fruit without danger. As a result, wavering soul, before penetrating further into such
uncharted barrens, draw back, step no deeper.
Mark my words: draw back, step no deeper, like the eyes of a son respectfully flinching away from his mother's august contemplation,
or rather, like an acute angle formation of cold-sensitive cranes stretching beyond the eye can reach, soaring through the
winter silence in deep meditation, under tight sail towards a focal point on the horizon, from where there suddenly rises
a peculiar gust of wind, omen of a storm. "
Also see:
Little blue light-COMTE DE LAUTREAMONT
www.littlebluelight.com/
AND:
Surrealist Documents @ www.surrealcoconut.com
Anyway here is a poem which is part of a series of poems I wrote about a dozen years ago during some cold disturbing endless
Dark-Nights of the Soul entitled EARTHBOUND ANGELS -
EARTHBOUND ANGELS # 8
WOUNDED BIRD
Another fallen angel
a wounded bird
mistakenly fallen
at my door
I have no healing powers
no words of comfort
my caresses & kisses
only burn your flesh my love
leaving more scars
upon your skin
I carry a satchel
stuffed with bits & pieces
of sad stories & tales
some of them second-hand
after leaving my care
your wounds will be deeper still
& you my love may never recover
as my pen spews bile
& contempt
my desire/ my love
can be fatal
to a wounded bird
your tough outer shell
does not stop me
I will wait patiently
my love for you to stick your
soft vulnerable head out
& with my sharpened quill & claws
slash through your jugular
gleefully watching
your body writhing & twitching
upon the floor
& I wonder if you
my love will come back
for more
I am a saboteur
who has been
hiding in the shadows
waiting for the right moment
to pounce upon your flesh my love
& greedily suckle at your breasts
feeding upon your heart & soul
as the milky & bloodied
fluids which held you together
run down the back of my throat
I set my sites upon you my love
taking you into my confidence
wanting you / desiring you
as you begin to enjoy my caresses
I throw a grenade
destroying the illusion I created
as you my love drag your mangled
body out the door
I wonder what possesses me
feel a twinge of guilt
as I begin another
search & destroy mission -
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