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paul_viaf's review against another edition
4.0
Definite 4.75
Which modern artists has not been grazed by the breadth of this beacon of pure & wild voltage. Lautreamont’s intelligence cuts to the bone of previous geniuses. He wears their epidermis like a morbid costume sniffing about the insides of their fatty & decaying residuals. He transposes the projection of earth’s rotation & builds his own orbit into the future. He purposely attempts difficult structures of syntax which can lead the reader astray or turn the casual reader off. He spins the looms of bold new abstractions. He has constructed a literary Frankenstein, so morbid, so strong, so beautiful, so monstrous, so deadly. A discombobulated assembly of the torsos & limbs & dead gray matter of so many authors before him, the references become dizzying. His humor is quite caustic. His words waft with the scent of a morgue. He is powerfully demonic. His satire is a blade which you do not see slit your throat until you are left gasping through rich blood for frightened air. Lucid in absolute madness. Divine clarity in the demonic. So just in amorality. So sinister in a holy wake. So lewd in his cleanliness. Vicious in calm calculated terror. Obscene but only as a mirror to nether regions that possess us all. The era in which he wrote this could no doubt have been shocked & this is why I find some elements of the book even shocking still. One must realize it is a role. A role masterfully portrayed. Thumbing his nose at convention. Truly challenging the norms of society. Which, to me, begs the question, if we are baseless in some instances, why not be baseless in all. What are these hypocritical standards we cherish & propagate so. For if we were to rise, why not rise truly. If we were to be debauched, why not sink into the most decrepit state. Why must we half succeed. Why must we settle in either pursuit. There is no subject too taboo. In fact he revels in shocking or perhaps he is confident enough in his perverse mindset that it irks the prudence of this modern human conditioning. His flesh withers. His flesh gleans in brilliance. His flesh strips the cornerstones of rigid institutions & defiles them lewdly, sexually, grotesquely, though with the class of a bourgeois surgeon mutilating the pristine anatomy of a model. The pond of his mind is a dreary place, but when one comes to gaze as Narcissus, we find the reflection mesmerizing enough to seep into its tenebrous glory. To drown in the bleak yet luxurious fluid which baptizes the consciousness in forces of almost unbearable awareness. He tills the dirt of firmly implanted notions &, in destroying them, cultivates something altogether new, nourishing with a superior crop. He self-deprecates & self-edits throughout Maldoror which seems unique & quite modern for the time of its construction. It is quite a modern mind this man possesses. It is no wonder it has taken this long to catch up. He is the prime saint of heretics. He is the antichrist in drag pirouetting down pews lit ablaze with the halo of Lucifer touting with swollen breast to the heavens how unsorry he is for remaining this faulty sack of flesh which corrodes & yet he realizes he is taunting a higher power a power which will never be subdued. He takes on more humanistic tones in his Poesies which are less blasphemous to an enlightened being which can still reserve spirituality without conceding to obvious erosion of organized religions. He breathes this paranormal air as if he had stolen the eyes of a malicious poltergeist. And yet his poetry defines varying elements at the very essence of man. Because so little is known of him, his flesh dissolves leaving only the literary entity. Mystery shrouds his personal character. There is much speculation into the details of this man’s life. His mysterious life only adds to the legend. Ducasse, who died at the ripe age of 24 of unknown causes, dwells until this day in the mists of mystery but this book shares some personal letters & recollections of those who vaguely remember the lad which adds insight into the personality of the mind who created such a feat. The letters in the back of the book give a slender glance into his character outside of literature. I learned of him from many different artistic influences. All of whom hold him in the highest regard. It is ridiculous how many great minds hold him in the pantheon of untouchables. Rightfully so, within context. Here we have a man with whose alienation I soundly identify with. He cleared a path in the dark wood. A bond ferments within this reader. The oddity which he wishes to reflect resonates well with me. We, two odd balls like peas in a pod. I wish he had lived to create more but, alas, we are left with a masterpiece & that is all one can ask from such an incendiary being.
Which modern artists has not been grazed by the breadth of this beacon of pure & wild voltage. Lautreamont’s intelligence cuts to the bone of previous geniuses. He wears their epidermis like a morbid costume sniffing about the insides of their fatty & decaying residuals. He transposes the projection of earth’s rotation & builds his own orbit into the future. He purposely attempts difficult structures of syntax which can lead the reader astray or turn the casual reader off. He spins the looms of bold new abstractions. He has constructed a literary Frankenstein, so morbid, so strong, so beautiful, so monstrous, so deadly. A discombobulated assembly of the torsos & limbs & dead gray matter of so many authors before him, the references become dizzying. His humor is quite caustic. His words waft with the scent of a morgue. He is powerfully demonic. His satire is a blade which you do not see slit your throat until you are left gasping through rich blood for frightened air. Lucid in absolute madness. Divine clarity in the demonic. So just in amorality. So sinister in a holy wake. So lewd in his cleanliness. Vicious in calm calculated terror. Obscene but only as a mirror to nether regions that possess us all. The era in which he wrote this could no doubt have been shocked & this is why I find some elements of the book even shocking still. One must realize it is a role. A role masterfully portrayed. Thumbing his nose at convention. Truly challenging the norms of society. Which, to me, begs the question, if we are baseless in some instances, why not be baseless in all. What are these hypocritical standards we cherish & propagate so. For if we were to rise, why not rise truly. If we were to be debauched, why not sink into the most decrepit state. Why must we half succeed. Why must we settle in either pursuit. There is no subject too taboo. In fact he revels in shocking or perhaps he is confident enough in his perverse mindset that it irks the prudence of this modern human conditioning. His flesh withers. His flesh gleans in brilliance. His flesh strips the cornerstones of rigid institutions & defiles them lewdly, sexually, grotesquely, though with the class of a bourgeois surgeon mutilating the pristine anatomy of a model. The pond of his mind is a dreary place, but when one comes to gaze as Narcissus, we find the reflection mesmerizing enough to seep into its tenebrous glory. To drown in the bleak yet luxurious fluid which baptizes the consciousness in forces of almost unbearable awareness. He tills the dirt of firmly implanted notions &, in destroying them, cultivates something altogether new, nourishing with a superior crop. He self-deprecates & self-edits throughout Maldoror which seems unique & quite modern for the time of its construction. It is quite a modern mind this man possesses. It is no wonder it has taken this long to catch up. He is the prime saint of heretics. He is the antichrist in drag pirouetting down pews lit ablaze with the halo of Lucifer touting with swollen breast to the heavens how unsorry he is for remaining this faulty sack of flesh which corrodes & yet he realizes he is taunting a higher power a power which will never be subdued. He takes on more humanistic tones in his Poesies which are less blasphemous to an enlightened being which can still reserve spirituality without conceding to obvious erosion of organized religions. He breathes this paranormal air as if he had stolen the eyes of a malicious poltergeist. And yet his poetry defines varying elements at the very essence of man. Because so little is known of him, his flesh dissolves leaving only the literary entity. Mystery shrouds his personal character. There is much speculation into the details of this man’s life. His mysterious life only adds to the legend. Ducasse, who died at the ripe age of 24 of unknown causes, dwells until this day in the mists of mystery but this book shares some personal letters & recollections of those who vaguely remember the lad which adds insight into the personality of the mind who created such a feat. The letters in the back of the book give a slender glance into his character outside of literature. I learned of him from many different artistic influences. All of whom hold him in the highest regard. It is ridiculous how many great minds hold him in the pantheon of untouchables. Rightfully so, within context. Here we have a man with whose alienation I soundly identify with. He cleared a path in the dark wood. A bond ferments within this reader. The oddity which he wishes to reflect resonates well with me. We, two odd balls like peas in a pod. I wish he had lived to create more but, alas, we are left with a masterpiece & that is all one can ask from such an incendiary being.
aikolactaotao's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
neuromanti's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Murder, Sexual assault, Child death, Suicide, Sexual content, Blood, Child abuse, Death, Gore, and Stalking
Moderate: Child abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, War, Toxic relationship, and Sexism
Minor: Pedophilia
This book contains some messed up stuff. Caveat Lector. It’s an exploration and examination of Evil.variouslilies's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
5.0
It will not be original on my part to assert that reading Maldoror in an attempt to understand what is happening is an exercise in futility, and a disservice to a text which, undoubtedly, stood at the vanguard of a moment of rupture in literature. It is in how Lautréamont uses language that lies the true pleasure of engagement with this work. Multiplicity and evasion (and I mean this in the best sense) pervades Les Chants de Maldoror. The text is a living, breathing, pulsating tentacled monster, consisting of discrete patches of cladistically nonconforming tissue: slime, skin, fur, scales. It grows in size and changes in form, as volatile as the fabled creatures it describes, in constant metamorphosis; as if the dynamic flux and flow of the natural life that inhabits many pages of the book bleed into its very binding. In the second canto, Lautréamont describes the 'carnal embrace' of Maldoror (the character) with a female shark amidst a bloody shipwreck in third-person, and as the union between human and shark becomes literal, transforming into an oozing mass in the water, so dissolves the boundary between author and protagonist, the narration mutating to first-person. These utterly gothic crumblings of human subjectivity and corporeality, the shattering of fixed identities, as well as transfiguration into different animals with rebellious abandon and passionate longing abound in the book. Nothing is safe from such liquidating assaults: Neither the reader, writer, narrator or hero. Every form is fluid. Maldoror blends prose poem, roman noir and confession at the same time as it breaks through their conventions. It takes up narrative stability in one section and throws it out of the window in the next. It pulls on the —rather fashionable— revolting romanticism of Baudelaire and Musset to the point of tearing it apart and birthing something new. The language is so anarchic, so liberated, so constantly blurring the line between metaphor and reality as to become infinite. There is no closure, there is only the chase, among the forests in one moment, among the stars the next, of the tentacled monster. There is only surrendering your subjectivity, your corporeality, your very truth and identity, becoming one with the monster as tenderly as does Maldoror with a female shark.
elleye's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
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