Maldoror and Poems

by Comte de Lautreamont

  No thinking man believes what contradicts his reason.

  Faith is a natural virtue by which we accept the truths which Elohim has revealed to us through conscience.

  I know no other grace than that of being born. An impartial mind finds this adequate.

  Good is the victory over evil, the negation of evil. If one writes of the good, evil is eliminated by this fitting act. I do not write of what must not be done. I write of what must be done. The former does not include the latter. The latter includes the former.

  Youth listens to the advice of its elders. It has unlimited confidence in itself.

  I know of nothing which is beyond the reach of the human mind, except truth.

  The maxim does not need to be proved. One point in an argument requires another. The maxim is a law which contains a number of arguments. The closer the argument comes to the maxim, the more perfect it becomes. Once it has become a maxim, its perfection rejects the evidence of a transformation.

  Doubt is a homage to hope. It is not a voluntary homage. Hope would never consent to be a mere homage.

  Evil revolts against the good. It can do no less.

  It is a proof of friendship not to notice the increase in our friends' friendship.

  Love is not happiness.

  If we had no faults we would not take so much pleasure in curing ourselves of them and in praising in others what we ourselves lack.

  Those men who have resolved to detest their fellow-beings have forgotten that one must start by detesting oneself.

  Those who never take part in duels believe that those who fight duels to the death are brave.

  How the turpitudes of the novel crouch in the bookshop windows! Just as some men would kill for a hundred sous, it sometimes seems to a man who is lot that a book should be killed.

  Lamartine believed that the fall of an angel would mean the Elevation of Man. He was wrong to believe so.

  A banal truth contains more genius than the works of Dickens, Gustave Aymard, Victor Hugo, Landelle. With the aid of the latter a child who had survived the destruction of the universe would not be able to reconstruct the human soul. With the former it could. I suppose it would not discover the definition of sophism sooner or later.

  Words expressing evil are destined to take on a more positive meaning. Ideas improve. The sense of words takes part in this process.

  Plagiarism is necessary. It is implied in the idea of progress. It clasps an author's sentence tight, uses his expressions, eliminates a false idea, replaces it with the right idea.

  To be well wrought, a maxim does not need to be corrected. It needs to be developed.

  As soon as dawn comes, young girls go picking roses. A breath of innocence crosses the valleys, the capital cities, inspiring the most enthusiastic poets, bringing peace and protection to cradles, crowns to youth, belief in immortality to old men.

  I have seen men wearing out the moralists who attempted to discover their heart, and bringing upon themselves blessings from above. They were uttering meditations as vast as possible, bringing joy to the author of our felicity. They showed respect to childhood and to age, to all that breathes and all that does not breathe, they paid homage to woman and consecrated to modesty the parts of the body which we refrain from naming. The firmament, whose beauty I acknowledge, the earth, image of my heart, were invoked by me, in order to represent myself as a man who did not believe himself good. The sight of this monster, had it ever proved to be real, would not have killed me with shock: it takes more than that to kill a man. All this needs no comment.

  Reason and feeling counsel and supplement each other. Whoever knows only one of thse, renouncing the other, id depriving himself all of the aid which has been granted us to guide our actions. Vauvenargues said: ‘is depriving himself of a part of the aid.’

  Though his sentence and mine are based on the personification of the soul in feeling and reason, the one I chose at random would be no better than the other, if I had written both. The one cannot be rejected by me. The other could be accepted by Vauvenargues.

  When a predecessor uses a word from the domain of evil to describe the good, it is dangerous for this sentence to subsist alongside the other. It is better to leave the word’s evil meaning unchanged. Before one can use a word from the domain of evil for the good, one must first have the right. He who uses for evil words from the domain of good does not have this right. He is not believed. no one would wish to use Gerard de Nerval’s tie.

  The soul being one, sensibility, intelligence, will, reason imagination and memory can be introduced into our discourse.

  I spent a great deal of time studying abstract sciences. Because one only has to communicate with a small number of people in such studies, I did not tire of them. When I began the study of man, I saw that these sciences were particular to him, that by flinging myself into these studies I was less able to change my condition than others who knew nothing of them. I forgave them their lack of interest! I did not believe I would find many fellow-students of this subject of man. I was wrong. There are more students of man than of geometry.

  We die joyfully, provided no one talks about it.

  The passions become weaker with age. Love, which should not be classified among the passions, becomes weaker, too. What is loses on one hand, it gains on the other. It is no longer so demanding towards the object of its desires, it does justice to itself: a certain expansion is accepted. The senses no longer excite the organs of the flesh. The love of mankind begins. On days when man feels he is an altar adorned with his own virtues, and recollects all the sorrows he has ever felt, the soul, in a recess of the heart where everything seems to be born, feels something which is no longer beating. I have just described memory.

  The writer can, without separating one from the other, indicate the laws which govern each one of his poems.

  Some philosophers are more intelligent than some poets. Spinoza, Malebranche, Aristotle, Plato are not Hegesippe Moreau, Malfilatre, Gilbert, Andre Chenier.

  Faust, Manfred, Konrad are archetypes. They are not yet reasoning types. They are the archetypes of the agitator.

  A meadow, three rhinoceroses, half a catafalque, these are descriptions. They may be memory or prophecy. They are not the paragraph which I am about to complete.

  The regulator of the soul is not the regulator of a soul. The regulator of a soul is the regulator of the soul when these two kinds of souls are so commingled that it is possible to state that a regulator is only a regulatress in the imagination of a joking madman.

  The phenomenon passes. I seek the laws.

  There are men who are not archetypes. Archetypes are not men. One must not be dominated by the accidental.

  Judgments on poetry are worth more than poetry itself. They are the philosophy of poetry. Philosophy, in this sense, includes poetry. Poetry cannot do without philosophy. Philosophy can do without poetry.

  Racine is not capable of condensing his tragedies into precepts. A tragedy is not a precept. To one and the same mind, a precept is a more intelligent act than a tragedy.

  Put a goose-quill pen in the hands of a moralist who is a first-class writer. he will be superior to poets.

  Hide, war.

  Feelings express happiness, make us smile. The analysis of feelings expresses happiness, all personality apart; makes us smile. The former elevates the soul, dependently of space and time, to the conception of mankind considered in itself and in it illustrious members. The latter elevates the soul independently of time and space to the conception of mankind in its highest expression, the will! The feelings are concerned with vice and virtue; the latter is concerned only with virtue. The feelings are not aware of the course they follow. The analysis of feelings makes this known, and increases the strength of our feelings. With the former, all is uncertainty. They are the expression of happiness and sorrow, two extremes. With the latter, all is certainty. It is the expression of the happiness derived, at a given moment, from being able to restrain oneself ami
dst good and bad passions. In its composure it blends the description of the passions into a principle which informs its pages: the non-existence of evil. Feelings overflow when necessary, and also when it is not necessary. The analysis of feelings does not weep. It possesses a latent sensibility which takes us by surprise, helps us transcend our woes, teaches us to do without a guide, provides us with a weapon. Feelings, the sign of weakness, are not Feeling! The analysis of feeling, sign of strength, engenders the most magnificent feelings I know. The writer who is deceived by his feelings cannot be put on a par with the writer who is deceived neither by his feelings, nor by himself. Youth indulges in sentimental lucubrations. Maturity begins to reason clearly. Whereas once we only felt, now we think. We allowed our sensations to roam freely; now we give them a guide. If I consider mankind as a woman, I will merely say that her youth is on the ebb, that her maturity is approaching. Her mind is changing for the better. The ideal of poetry will change. Tragedies, poems elegies will no longer take first place. The coldness of the maxim will dominate! In the time of Quinault, they would have been capable of understanding what I have just said. Thanks to certain faint glimmerings in reviews and folios in the last few years, I can understand it in myself. My genre is as different from that of the moralists who merely state the evil without suggesting the remedy than theirs is from the melodramas, the funeral orations, the ode and the religious stanza. The sense of struggle is lacking.

  Elohim is made in man’s image.

  Several certainties have been contradicted. Several falsehoods remain uncontradicted. Contradiction is the sign of falsehood. Non-contradiction is the sign of certainty.

  A philosophy for the sciences exists. But not for poetry. I know of no moralist who is a first-rate poet. It is strange, someone will say.

  It is a horrible thing to feel what is yours falling to pieces. One even only hangs on to it in the wish to find out if there is anything permanent.

  Man is a subject devoid of errors. Everything shows him the truth. Nothing deceives him. The two principles of truth, reason and sense, apart form being reliable each for itself, enlighten each other. The senses enlighten reason by true appearances. And this same service which they perform for her, they also receive it from her. Each one takes it in turn. The phenomena of the soul pacify the senses, making impressions on the which I cannot assert to be unpleasant. They do not lie. They do not vie with each other in deception.

  Poetry must be made by everyone. Not by one. Poor Hugo! Poor Racine! Poor Coppee! Poor Corneille! Poor Boileau! Poor Scarron! Tics, tics, and tics.

  The sciences have extremities which touch. The first is the state of ignorance all men are in when born. The second is the ignorance attained by great souls. They have surveyed all that men can know, find that they know everything, and are yet in the same state of ignorance as when they set out. Theirs is a knowing ignorance, self-aware. Those who, having left the first ignorance behind, have some smattering of this sufficient knowledge, act as if they know all the answers. The former do not trouble the world, their judgment is no worse than all the others’. The people and the clever determine the course of a nation. The others, who respect it, are no less respected by it.

  To know things, it is not necessary to know the details. As they are limited, our knowledge is solid.

  Love is not to be confused with poetry.

  Woman is at my feet!

  We must not in describing heaven, use the materials of the earth. We must leave the earth and its materials where they are, in order to embellish life by its ideal. To speak in familiar tones to Elohim, to address him at all, is seemly buffoonery. The best means of showing our gratitude towards him is not to trumpet into his ears that he is mighty, that he created the world, that we are worms in comparison with his greatness. He knows all that better than we. Men can refrain from telling him these things. The best means of showing our gratitude to him is to console mankind, to relate everything we do to mankind; to take it by the hand and treat is as a brother. It is more honest.

  To study order, one must not study disorder. Scientific experiments, like tragedies, stanzas to my sister, gibberish about misfortune, have got nothing to do with life on earth.

  It is not good for all laws to be known.

  To study evil in order to extract the good from it is not the same as to study the good. Given an instance of good, I will seek its cause.

  Up to now, misfortune has been described in order to inspire terror and pity. I will describe happiness, to inspire the opposite.

  A logic for poetry exists. It is not the same as the logic of philosophy. Philosophers are not on a par with poets. Poets have the right to consider themselves above philosophers.

  I do not need to bother about what I will do later. What i am doing now I had to do. I do not need to discover the things that I will discover later. In the new science, everything comes in its place—that is its excellence.

  There are the makings of the poet in moralists an philosophers. The poet contains the thinker. Each caste suspects the other, developing its own qualities at the expense of those which bring it closer to the other caste. The pride of the latter proves incompetent to do justice to tenderer minds. Whatever a man’s intelligence may be, the process of thinking must be the same for all. The existence of tics having been established, we are not surprised to see the same words recurring more often than their due: in Lamartine, the tears which fall from his horse’s nostrils, the colour of his mother’s hair; in Hugo, the shadow and the madman are part of the binding.

  The science I am establishing is a science distinct from poetry. I am not writing the latter. I am trying to discover its source. Across the helm which directs all poetic thought, billiards and teachers will distinguish the development of sentimental theses.

  The theorem is in its nature a form of mockery. It is not indecent. The theorem does not insist on being applied. The application we make of it debases it, becomes indecent. Call the struggle of matter against the ravages of the mind application.

  To struggle against evil is to pay it too great a compliment. If I allow men to despise it, I hope they do not forget to say that that is all I can do for them.

  Man is certain that he is not wrong.

  We are not content with the life within us. We wish to lead an imaginary life in other people’s minds. We strive to appear to be what we are. We make every effort to preserve this imaginary being, which is simply the real one. If we are generous, faithful, we are eager not to let it be known, we wish to attribute these virtues to this being. We do not get rid of them and then attach them to this being. We are brave in order to avoid the reputation of being cowards. A sign of our being’s incapacity to be satisfied with the one without the other, to renounce either. That man who did not live to defend his virtue would be a scoundrel.

  Despite the sight of our greatness, which has caught us by the throat, we have an instinct which corrects us, which we cannot repress, which exalts us!

  Nature has perfections to show that it is the image of Elohim, faults to show that it is nonetheless only an image.

  It is right that laws should be obeyed. The people understand what makes it just. It does not break the laws. Were we to make their justice depend on anything else, it is easy to cast doubt on it. Peoples are not subject to revolt.

  Those who are out of order tell those who are in order that they are straying from nature. They believe they are right. One must have a fixed standpoint in order to judge. And where else is this standpoint to be found but in morality?

  Nothing is less surprising than the contradictions in man. he is made to know truth. He seeks it. When he tries to grasp it, he is so dazzled an confused that no one would envy him the possession of it. Some wish to deny man’s knowledge of truth, others to assert it. Each side uses such dissimilar arguments that they dispel his confusion. There is no other guiding-light than that which is to be found in nature.

  We are born just. Everyone seeks his own good. It is the wrong way
round. We must aim for the general good. The descent towards self if the end of all disorder, in war, in economics.

  Men, having conquered death, misery and ignorance, have, in order to be happy, taken it into their heads not think of these things. It is the only method they have devised to console themselves for so few ills. Most rich consolation. It does not cure the ill. It hides it for a short while. In hiding it, it gives the impression that it is being cured. By a legitimate reversal of man’s nature, it is not the case that ennui, which is man’s most deeply felt evil, is his greatest good. It can contribute more than anything else to help him seek his redemption. That is all. Amusement, which he regards as his greatest good, is his least ill. More than anything else, he seeks in this the remedy to all his ills. Both are a counter-proof of the misery, the corruption of man, apart from his greatness. Man in his boredom seeks this multitude of activities. He has a notion of the happiness he has gained; finding it within himself, he seeks it in external things. He is content. Unhappiness is not in us, nor is in other creatures. It is in Elohim.

  Nature makes us happy in all states. Our desires represent to us an unhappy state. They add to our present state the afflictions of the imaginary one. Yet if we ever experience these sorrows, we still would not be unhappy, we would have other desires corresponding to our new state.

  The strength of reason appears greater in those who know it than in those who do not know it.