Thomas Greene
THE RELEVANCE OF LAUTREAMONT
Lautreamont has been read and discussed spasmodically
in America for some years now, but despite his continental reputation
he has not as yet a "public" here. One has to remember, however,
I
that the Lautreamont cult in France, fervent and extreme as it has
been, developed only after a near-total blackout of appreciation which
lasted almost forty years.
M aldoror
is a hard book to evaluate; de–
pending on the quality of the light the reader's mind sheds upon
it, it can appear very good or very bad. French enthusiasm moreover
may have been due partly to the enigmatic figure of the writer him–
self, as well as to the sensational elements in his book.
"Le Comte de Lautreamont" was the pseudonym of a young
man named Isidore Ducasse, born in Uruguay of French parents,
who lived in Paris for a few years, totally unknown, before his death
at twenty-four in 1870. The first canto of
M aldoror,
which might
be described as an epic prose-poem divided into brief discontinuous
episodes, had appeared in print two years before, and at his death
Lautreamont was at work upon a book of poems, only the prose
preface of which survives. This preface is now called, illogically,
Polsies. M aldoror
and
Polsies,
together with six letters, constitute
the
Oeuvres Completes
of Isidore Ducasse, "Comte de Lautreamont."
One of the central enigmas in the over-all biographical mystery
lies in the fact of Lautreamont's youth. This is enigmatic because his
book is as good as it is. On the other hand, it explains a great deal,
not only of
Maldorors
sophomorism and bad taste, but also of its
brilliance. Eliot's remark on Toumeur is entirely a propos.
[The R evenger's Tragedy]
does express-and this, chiefly, is what
gives it its amazing unity-an intense and unique and horrible vision
of Me; but it is such a vision as might come, as the result of few or
slender experiences, to a highly sensitive adolescent with a gift for words.
