Maldoror and Poems

by Comte de Lautreamont

  Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil. In a word, in all its arguments, it glorifies the human backside. Let me speak! You are becoming evil I say, and your eyes are taking on the colour of men sentenced to death. I will not retract what I have just said. I want to write poetry that can safely be read by fourteen-year-old girls.

  True sorrow is incompatible with hope. However great this sorrow may be, hope rises a hundred cubits higher. But spare me these seekers, leave me in peace. Down with them, down, paws off, droll bitches, troublemakers, poseurs. That which suffers, that which dissects the mysteries which surround us, does not hope. Poetry which discusses necessary truths is less beautiful than that which does not discuss it. Extreme vacillations, talent misused, waste of time: nothing could be easier to demonstrate.

  It is puerile to praise Adamastor, Jocelyn, Rocambole. It is only because the author takes it for granted that the reader will forgive his villainous heroes that he gives himself away, relying on the good to justify his description of the bad. It is in the name of those same virtues which Frank disdained that we wish to uphold it, oh mountebanks of incurable diseases!

  Do not imitate those shameless explorers of melancholy, magnificent in their own eyes, who find hidden 'treasures' in their minds and in their bodies.

  Melancholy and sadness are the beginning of doubt; doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the different degrees of evil. To confirm this you need only read the Confession of a Contemporary. The slope is fatal, once you begin to go down it. You are bound to end with evil. Beware of that slope. Destroy the evil at its roots. Reject the cult of adjectives such as indescribable, unspeakable, brilliant, incomparable, colossal, which shamelessly lie to the nouns which they disfigure: for they are followed by lubricity.

  Second-rate intellects such as Alfred de Musset may doggedly push one or two of their faculties further than the corresponding faculties of first-rate intellects, Lamartine, Hugo. We are witnessing the derailment of an old and worn-out locomotive. A nightmare is holding the pen. But the soul has twenty faculties. So don't talk to me of the beggars who have magnificent hats, and nothing else but sordid rags!

  Here is a means of proving Musset's inferiority to the other two poets. Read Rolla, Night Thoughts, Cobb's Madmen, or, failing that, the descriptions of Gwynplaine and Dea, or the Tale of Theramene from Euripides, translated into French verse by Racine the Elder, to a young girl. She trembles, frowns, raises and lowers her hands with no apparent object, like a man drowning; her eyes glow with a greenish light. Read her the Prayer For Us All, by Victor Hugo. The effect is the diametrical opposite. The kind of electricity is no longer the same. She bursts into laughter, she asks you to read more.

  Of Hugo's work, the only poems about children will survive, and they are not all good.

  Paul and Virginie offends against our deepest aspirations to happiness. In the past, this episode which is riddled with gloom from beginning to end, especially the final shipwreck, used to set my teeth on edge. I would roll on the carpet and kick my wooden horse. The description of sorrow is an error. We should see the beauty in everything. Had this incident been recounted in a simple biography, I would not attack it. That would change its character altogether. Misfortune is ennobled by the inscrutable will of Him who created it. But man should not create misfortune in his books. That is only to see one side of things. Oh maniacal howlers that you are!

  Do not deny the immortality of the soul, God's wisdom, the value of life, the order of the universe, physical beauty, the love of the family, marriage, social institutions. Ignore the following baneful pen-pushers: Sand, Balzac, Alexander Dumas, Musset, Du Terrail, Feval, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Leconte and the Greve des Forgerons!

  Communicate to your readers only the experience of sorrow, which is not the same as sorrow itself. Do not cry in public.

  One must be able to grasp the literary beauty even in the midst of death; but these beauties are not part of death. Death here is only the occasional cause. It is not the means, but the end, which is not death.

  The immutable and necessary truths which are the glory of nations and which doubt vainly strives to shake have existed since the beginning of time. They should not be touched. Those who wish to create anarchy in literature on the pretext of change are making a serious error. They do not dare to attack God; they attack the immortality of the soul. But the immortality of the soul is itself as old as the crust of the earth. What other belief will replace it, if it is to be replaced? It will not always be a negation.

  If one recalls the one truth from which all others follow, God's greatness and His absolute ignorance of evil, sophisms break down of themselves. So too, and just as quickly, does the literature which is based on them. All literature which disputes external axioms is condemned to live by itself alone. It is unjust. It devours its own liver. The novissima Verba bring haughty smiles to the faces of the snot-nosed filth-formers. We have no right to interrogate the Creator on any subject whatsoever.

  If you are unhappy, you must not tell the reader. Keep it to yourself.

  If these sophisms were corrected by their corresponding truths, only the corrections would be true; while the work which had been thus revised would no longer have the right to be called false. The rest would be outside the realm of the true, tainted with falsehood, and would thus necessarily be considered null and void.

  Personal poetry has had its day, with its relative sleights of hand and its contingent contortions. Let us gather up again the thread of impersonal poetry, rudely interrupted since the birth of the manqué philosopher of Ferney, since that great abortion Voltaire.

  It appears beautiful and sublime, on the pretext of humility or pride, to discuss final causes, and to falsify their known and lasting consequences. Do not believe it, because nothing could be more stupid! Let us link up again the great chain which connects us with the past; poetry is geometry par excellence. It has lost ground. Thanks to whom? To the Great Soft-heads of our age. Thanks to the sissies, Chateaubriand, the Melancholy Mohican; Senancourt, the Man in Petticoats; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Surly Socialist; Anne Radcliffe, the Spectre-Crazed; Edgar Poe, the Mameluke of Alcoholic Dreams; Mathurin, the Crony of Darkness; George Sand, the Circumcised Hermaphrodite; Theophile Gautier, the Incomparable Grocer; Leconte, the Devil's Captive; Goethe, the Suicide who makes you weep; Sainte-Beuve, the Suicide who makes you laugh; Lamartine, the Tearful Stork; Lermontov, the Roaring Tiger; Victor Hugo, the Gloomy Green Echalas; Misckiewicz, the Imitator of Satan; Musset, the Fop who didn't wear an intellectual's shirt; and Byron, the Hippopotamus of Infernal Jungles.

  From the beginning of time doubt has been in the minority. In this century it is in the majority. Through our pores we breathe in the dereliction of duty. This has only ever happened once; it will never happen again.

  So clouded are the simplest notions of reason nowadays that the first thing third-form teachers do when they are teaching their pupils Latin verse--these young poets whose lips are still wet from mother's milk--is to reveal to them in practice the name of Alfred de Musset. Well, I ask you! Fourth-form teachers set two bloody episodes for their pupils to translate into Greek verse. The first is the repulsive comparison of the pelican. And the second will be the dreadful catastrophe which happened to a ploughman. What is the use of looking at evil? Is it not in the minority? Why turn these schoolboys' heads towards subjects which, unable to understand them, men such as Pascal and Byron were driven mad by?

  A schoolboy told me that his sixth-form teacher had set his class, day after day, these two carcasses to translate into Hebrew verse. These two blots on human and animal nature made him so ill for a month that he had to go to the hospital. As we were friends, he asked his mother to ask me to come and see him. He told me, though somewhat naively, that his nights were troubled by recurring dreams. He thought he saw an army
of pelicans swooping down on him and tearing his breast to pieces. Then they would fly off to a burning cottage. They ate the ploughman's wife and children. His body blackened with burns, the ploughman came out of the cottage and joined dreadful combat with the pelicans. Then they all rushed into the cottage which fell to pieces. And from the pile of ruins--without fail--he would see his teacher emerging, holding his heart in one hand and in the other a piece of paper on which could be made out the sulphurous lines of the comparison of the pelican and the ploughman as Musset had himself composed them. It was not at first easy to diagnose what kind of illness this was. I urged him to be meticulously silent, and not speak to anyone, least of all his teacher. I shall advise his mother to keep him at home for a few days and will make sure she does so. In fact, I made a point of going there for several hours every day, and the illness passed.

  Criticism must attack the form but never the content of your ideas, your sentences. Act accordingly.

  All the water in the sea would not be enough to wash away one intellectual bloodstain.

  2

  Genius guarantees the faculties of the heart.

  Man is no less immortal than his soul.

  Reason is the source of all great thoughts!

  Fraternity is not a myth.

  Children, when born, know nothing of life, not even its greatness.

  In misfortune, the number of our friends increases.

  Abandon despair, all ye who enter here.

  Goodness, your name is man.

  Here dwells the wisdom of nations.

  Every time I read Shakespeare, it seemed I was cutting in pieces the brain of a jaguar.

  I shall write my thoughts methodically, according to a clear plan. If they are exact, each one will be the consequence of the others. This is the only true order. It indicates my object despite the untidiness of my handwriting. I would be debasing my subject, if I did not treat it methodically.

  I reject evil. Man is perfect. Our soul never fell from a state of grace. Progress exists. Good is irreducible. Anti-christs, accusing angels, eternal torment, religions, are the product of doubt.

  Dante and Milton, hypothetically describing the infernal regions, proved that they were hyenas of the first order. The proof is excellent. The result is poor. Their works do not sell.

  Man is an oak. There is nothing more robust in all of nature. The universe does not have to take up arms to defend him. A drop of water is not enough to save him. Even if the universe were to defend him, he would no more be dishonoured than that which does not save him. Man knows that his reign is without end, and that the universe has a beginning. The universe knows nothing: it is, at the very most, a thinking reed.

  I think Elohim as being cold rather than sentimental.

  Love of a woman is incompatible with love of mankind. Imperfection must be rejected. There is nothing more imperfect than egotism a deux. In life, mistrust, recriminations, and oaths are written in a powder pullulate. We no longer hear of the lover of Chimene; now it is the lover of Graziella. No longer of Petrarch; not it is Alfred du Musset. At the moment of death, a rocky region near the sea, a lake somewhere, the forest of Fontainebleau, the isle of Ischia, a raven in a study, a Chambre Ardente with a crucifix, a cemetery where in the predictable and tedious moonlight, the beloved rises from her grave, stanzas in which a group of young girls whose names we do not know, take turns to make an appearance, giving the measure of the author, uttering their regrets. In both cases, all dignity is lost.

  Error is the sorrowful legend.

  By singing hymns to Elohin, poets, in their vanity, get into the habit of not bothering with the things of this earth. That is the great danger with these hymns. Mankind grows out of the habit of counting on the writer. It abandons him. It calls him a mystic, an eagle, a traitor to his mission. You are not the dove they seek.

  A student could acquire a considerable amount of literary knowledge by saying the opposite of what the poets of this century have said. He would replace their affirmations with negations. If it is ridiculous to attack first principles it is even more ridiculous to defend them against the same attacks. I will not defend them.

  Sleep is a reward for some, a torture for others. It is, for everyone, a sanction.

  If Cleopatra's morality had been less free, the face of the earth would have changed. But her nose wouldn't have become any longer.

  Hidden actions are the most admirable. When I see so many of them in history I like them a lot. They have not been completely hidden. They have become known. And this little by which they have become known increases their merit. It is the finest quality of all that they wouldn't be kept hidden.

  The charm of death exists only for the brave.

  Man is so great that his greatness shows above all else in his refusal to admit that he is miserable. A tree does not know its own greatness. To be great is to know that one is great. To be great is to refuse to admit one's misery. His greatness rejects his miseries. The greatness of a king.

  When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action reminds me of my strength which at every moment I forget. I learn as I link my thoughts together. But I am only moving towards the realization of one thing: the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

  The heart of man is a book which I have learnt to esteem.

  Not imperfect, unfallen, man is no longer the greatest mystery.

  I allow no one, not even Elohim, to doubut my sincerity.

  We are free to do good.

  Man's judgment is infallible.

  We are not free to do evil.

  Man is the conqueror of chimeras, the novelty of tomorrow, the regularity which makes chaos groan, the subject of conciliation. He judges all things. He is not an imbecile. He is not a maggot. He is the depository of truth, the epitome of certitude, the glory and not the scum of the universe. If he humbles himself, I praise him. If he praises himself, I praise him more. I win him over. He is beginning to realize that he is the sister of the angel.

  There is nothing incomprehensible.

  Thought is no less clear than crystal. A religion whose lies are based on it can trouble it for a few minutes, to speak of long-term effects. To speak of short term effects, the murder of eight people at the gates of a capital city will trouble it--certainly--to the point where the evil is destroyed. Thought soon regains its limpidity.

  Poetry must have for its object practical truth. It expresses the relation between the first principles and the secondary truths of life. Everything remains in place. The mission of poetry is difficult. It is not concerned with political events, with the way a people is governed, makes no allusion to historical periods, coups d'etat, regicides, court intrigues. It does not speak of those struggles which, exceptionally, man has with himself and his passions. It discovers the laws by which political theory exists, universal peace, the refutations of Machiavelli, the cornets of which the work of Proudhon consists, the psychology of mankind. A poet must be more useful than any other citizen of his tribe. His work is the code of diplomats, legislators, and teachers of youth. We are far from the Homers, the Virgils, the Klopstocks, the Camoens, the liberated imaginations, the ode-producers, the merchants of epigrams against the deity. Let us return to Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ, those moralists who went hungry through the villages. From now on we have to reckon with reason which operates only on those faculties which watch over the category of the phenomena of pure goodness.

  Nothing is more natural than to read the Discourse on Method after reading Berenice. Nothing is less natural than to read Biechy's Treatise on Induction or Navill's Problem of Evil after reading Autumn Leaves or the Contemplations. There is no continuity. The mind rebels against rubbish, mystagogy. The heart is appalled at those pages some puppet has scrawled. This violence suddenly makes everything clear. He closes the book. He sheds a tear in memory of the barbaric authors. Contemporary poets have abused their intelligence. Philosophers have not abuse theirs. The memory of the former will fad
e. The latter are classics.

  Racine, Corneille would have been capable of writing the works of Descartes, Malebranche, Bacon. The spirit of the former is one with that of the latter. Lamartine, Hugo would not have been capable of writing the Treatise on the Intellect. The mind of its author is not equal to that of the former. Fatuity has made them lose the central qualities. Lamartine, Hugo although superior to Taine, possess, like him--it is painful to admit this--only secondary faculties.

  Tragedies excite the obligatory qualities of pity and terror. That is something. It is bad. It is not as bad as modern lyric poetry. Legouve's Medea is preferable to a collection of the works of Byron, Capendu, Zaccone, Feliz, Gagne, Gaboriau, Lacordaire, Sardou, Goethe, Ravignana, Charles Diguet. Which one of you writers can produce works to compare with--what is it? What are these snorts of disagreement?--the Monologue of Augustus! Hugo's barbaric vaudevilles do not proclaim duty. The melodramas of Racine and Corneille, the melodramas of La Calprenede do not proclaim it. Lamartine is not capable of producing Pradon's Phedre; nor Hugo the Venceslas of Rotrou; nor Sainte-Beuve the tragedies of Laharpe or Marmontel. Musset is capable of producing proverbs. Tragedy is an involuntary error, it accepts the idea of struggle, it is the first step towards the good, it will not appear in this work. It maintains its prestige. The same cannot be said of the sophistries--the belated metaphysical gongorism of the self-parodists of my heroico-burlesque age.

  The principle of all forms of worship is pride. It is ridiculous to address Elohim, as the Jobs, the Jeremiahs, the Davids, the Solomons, the Turquetys have done. Prayer is a false act. The best way of pleasing him is indirect, more consistent with our own powers. It consists in making our race happy. There are no two ways of pleasing Elohim. The idea of the good is one. That which is good in smaller things being also good in greater, I cite the example of the mother. To please his mother, a sone will nto tell her that she is wise, radiant, that he will behave in such a way as to deserve most of her praise. He acts otherwise. He convinces by his actions, not by protestations, he abandons the sadness which swells up the eyes of the Newfoundland dog. The goodness of Elohim must not be confused with triviality. Everyone is plausible. Familiarity breeds contempt; reverence breeds the contrary. Hard work prevents us from indulging our feelings and passions.