What about Maldoror by Lautréamont

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What about Maldoror by Lautréamont

Simply called Maldoror, Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) (written and published between 1868 and 1869), is a unclassifiable artistic work of the 19^th century French literature that was done by Comte de Lautréamont which tells the story of the eventual anti-hero (Rodker 24). Maldoror is depicted as a callous, cruel, Byronic magnificent bastard living his whole life for the evils.  Written is a violently and riotous extravagant lifestyle, the work is a largely plot-free merriment of pure evil. Maldoror is among the most horrifically and exciting wonderful literary work in French literature, and possibly, globally. The work is a bright weird image and dreamlike image of a great murder and philosopher simultaneously. Maldoror is the principal player in the Maldoror novel and at the same its narrator. He addresses the reader, to his victims, as well as any other person who could accidently come across the novel and read this story. Maldoror is a sadist, pitiless murder, who does all that is possible to hide behind the mask of his great philosophical understanding. He is depicted as an outcast who does not want to obey and follow the general principles that are set by the society. Nonetheless, all these traits do not make Maldoror a really negative hero. It is against this background that this paper aims at answering the questions:  (1)What is the author saying? And (2) How is the author saying it? Note that these questions will be answered simultaneously by discussing the themes as well as language use in the literary work.

Maldoror work concerns the misotheistic, misanthropic character Maldoror, an evil figure who has infamous and renounced conventional morals; he is depicted as a fighter who has strong viewpoints and is prepared to prove the views at any one time. Maldoror knows a lot of philosophy and ethics, and truly believes that his society is culpable since it cannot accept him as he was created. He says: “Mother, I can hardly breathe: my head aches…/See, he slumps against the back of chair, exhausted…/I hear in the distance prolonged screams of the most poignant anguish/My son!/Mother, I’m scared!” (Lykiard 45). At the start of the tale, Maldoror even asks those who would read his book to forgive his ideas and intentions. This is because he very well knows that whatever he is saying is weird, yet there is nothing he can do to stop all these. He offers to show the reader of how he kidnaps a child and torture the same to enjoy their blood as well as tears.

The introductory lines present a new player to the readers by revealing Maldoror as a powerful being with his own desires, intentions, and ambitions.  Regarding the blood, he says that the attractive thing about blood to him is that blood is tasteless. He seems to have a burning interest to taste everything that not all may permit and encourage other people to follow his example. Another idea that ought to be noted is Malodor’s impiety. God created all that is in the universe, and thus has the right to create all according to his own desire and taste. However, Maldoror cannot buy the idea to divest him of being a ordinary component of the world. His ugliness along with dissimilitude with other beings makes him feel bitter with God as well as despise individual Creator.  Such anti-theism viewpoint of the novel’s principal player contradicts all moral and religious facets of the 19^th century and makes Maldoror an interesting and unique character to the novel’s reader. Maldoror blames God for all the pains, sufferings, and his poor understanding from the side of the society (Rodker 35). Clearly, the work depicts Maldoror as an evil human being who is opposed to humanity and God. The iconoclastic one and imagery is characteristically macabre and violent, and superficially nihilistic.

It is hard to summarize the work since it does not have a defined plot in the conventional sense, and the tale style is non-linear as well as often surrealistic. The novel is divided into six cantos which are subsequently divided into 60 stanzas of distinct length. The verses were initially unnumbered, but separated by lines. The novel often employs very long, confusing, and unconventional sentences which, together with the scarcity of paragraph breaks, may insinuate automatic writing or stream of consciousness. Over the narrative’s course, there is usually a first-person narrator, despite some portions of the work employing a third-person narrative technique. Depending upon the narrative voice context within a particular setting, the first-person narrator may be considered to be of Malodor’s, or not so in some cases.

Several parts of the novel start with opening chapters wherein the narrator addresses the novel’s reader directly, taunts them, or simply recounts the work thus far (Dent 47). For instance, an initial paragraph warns the novel’s reader not to continue:

“It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands" (Knight, 1978, p. 29).

In addition to the opening segments, each and every chapter is characteristically an isolated, usually surreal episode, which does not seem to be directly related to the previous and next material directly (Lykiard 47). For instance, in the novel’s first chapter, a funeral procession of a boy being taken to the grave is depicted, with the officiating minister condemning Maldoror. In the subsequent chapter, a different story is told of a sleeping man who is repeatedly bitten by a tarantula which comes from his room’s corner, every single night.

Nonetheless, as the work the work unfolds, certain usual themes arise. Specifically, there is constant imagery of several kinds of animals, which are sometimes used in similes. In one instance, for instance, Maldoror is depicted as copulating with a shark, with each admiring the other’s aggressive and fierce nature, whereas in another case, the narrator has an enjoyable dream of him being a hog. The narrator says:

“I dreamt I had entered the body of a hog, that I could not easily get out again, and that I was wallowing in the filthiest slime. Was it a kind of reward? My dearest wish had been granted, I no longer belonged to mankind … I am filthy. Lice gnaws me. Swine, when they gaze upon me, vomit. Scabs and scars of leprosy have scaled off my skin, which exudes a yellowish pus … Yet how could it beat if the rottenness and the reek of my cadaver (I dare not say my body) did not abundantly nourish it?” (Knight, 1978, p. 167-168, 176-177).

O'Keefe reasons that the choosing of animals was really unique; Maldoror does not focus on animals like polecats and rabbits, which are often afraid and cannot prove their place in this life (111). Instead, Maldoror chooses animals like eagles, turkeys, sharks, and tigers to underline their rights and power. In fact, Maldoror prefers to a shark’s or tiger’s son, through which he can explain cruelty and hunger, which are so commonplace to the two animals (O'Keefe 113).

Another theme that is reoccurring in the chapters of the novel is a rural-urban dichotomy. Some of the novel’s episodes occur in a city or town, whereas others happen in a deserted shore, with just a few players. Juxtaposition of rural shorelines and urban city scenes may have been motivated by Ducasse's time in Montevideo and Paris, respectively. Other pervasive themes that are included in the novel are blasphemy, homosexuality, and violent crime, often directed toward or against children.

While maintaining the afore-developed themes, Maldoror’s sixth as well as final parts employ definiote change in the language style. The final episode, which parodies the forms used during the 19^th century novel, brings into view a linear tale using simple language. So pervasive was the imagery and language used in the work that a reader would momentarily be compelled to laugh themselves out. For instance, Maldoror says:

“If the earth were covered with lice like grains of sand on the sea shore the human race would be annihilated in the midst of terrible suffering. What a spectacle! And I, with the wings of an angel, motionless in the air, contemplating it! … however it is permitted to us all to kill flies and even rhinoceroses in order to rest from time to time from too much tedious labor” (Dent 56).

To conclude, Lautréamont’s novel  took literature to a totally ‘personal level, and while some people have found him feckless, insolent, and childish, it ought to be noted that he was deliberately incendiary. The Maldoror novel was written to bring out the actual reality and truth to the novel’s reader, to make life’s cruelties in his work; a stark difference to the usual delineation of cruelty depicted by bad guys or a protagonist’s.  By taking controversial positions regarding issue along with examining terrifying absurd scenes, the novel’s author does succeed in compelling the novel’s readers to understand that, whereas the novel’s author may be regarded politically wrong, still…wrong exists.