THE RELEVANCE OF LAUTREAMONT
533
whole episode. The implication of Maldoror's non-humanity is con–
tinued in each of the following apostrophes to the sea, which is
always compared favorably with the derisory and feeble race of
man. These progressively extended and rhetorical apostrophes cul–
minate in the climactic question to which they have been tending:
U
Reponds-moi, ocean, veux-tu etre mon frere?"
As
though in answer,
the sea surges up in a magnificent series of waves, before which
Maldoror, in a burst of terror and awe, prostrates himself, thus
losing ironically his vaunted frigidity.
Oh! quand tu t'avances, la crete haute et terrible, entoure de tes
replis tortueux comme d'une cour, magnetiseur et farouche, T10ulant tes
ondes les unes sur les autres, avec la conscience de ce que tu es, pendant
que tu pousses, des profondeurs de ta poitrine, comme accabU d'un
remords intense que je ne puis pas decouvrir, ce sourd mugissement
perpetuel que les hommes redoutent tant, meme quand ils te con–
templent, en surete, tremblants sur Ie rivage, alors, je vois qu'il ne
m'appartient pas, Ie dr-oit insigne de me dire ton egal!
The recognition of his inferiority to the sea, and the resulting im–
plication of his human condition, produces a spasm of rage in
Maldoror which yields in its tum to resignation, resignation to a life
in human society even though that life must be ridiculous.
uFaisons un
grand effort, et accomplissons, avec le sentiment du devoir, notre des–
tinee sur cette terre. Ie te salue, vieil ocean!"
This, the conclusion of
the episode, reveals a sudden humility which renders the preceding
comedy more warm and more significant.
If
MaIdoror is repeatedly faced with the fact of his own hu–
manity, he is also faced with his difference from most of
his
fellow
men. The divergent sensibility which sets off the Romantic hero from
an unfeeling society is parodied by the cumbersome inflexibility of
Maldoror's mental processes. At moments he is actually pedantic and
toward the end of the book he lapses into stretches of unreadable
2 Oh, when you advance, your crest high and terrible, surrounded by your
tortuous coils as by a royal court, magnetic and wild, rolling your waves one
upon the other, full of the consciousness of what you are; and when you give
utterance from the depths of your bosom as if you were suffering the pangs of
some intense remorse which I have been unable to discover, to that perpetual
heavy roar so greatly feared by men even when, trembling on the shore, they
contemplate you in safety: then I perceive that I do not possess that signal
right to name myself your equal.
