534
PARTISAN REVIEW
double talk which mimic the hyper-precision of scientific jargon. He
is, moreover, incapable of laughter.
U
M oi J je ne sais pas rire. Je n J ai
jamais pu rire J quoique plusieurs fois faie essaye de le faire. GJest
Ires difficile dJapprendre
a
rire."
Once, in a grotesque attempt to
imitate his fellows, Maldoror widens the corners of his mouth with his
penknife to force it into a laugh. For an instant he believes that he
has succeeded, but presently, through the falling blood, he recognizes
that he has failed. This terrible and brilliant image dramatizes in its
insane way the spiritual isolation of the Romantic hero and all his
clumsy maladjustment with a power which few Romantic poets
equaled. Maldoror's illogiCality, which is really an excess of mis–
placed logic, translates tnt: apparent illogicality of his hyper-con–
scious moral sensibility.
Thus the comedy of
M aldoror
dwells on the conflict between
the pro-human and anti-human motives of the Romantic hero-saint.
Ultimately of course the hero fails to be a saint, as he has to fail; the
pressures upon him are too confusing, his own behavior too am–
biguous, to permit him the purity either of the perfect martyr–
dom or the perfect crime. But his conflict leads him to repeated
essays, and the elements which I have called comic are interwoven
with elements of sickening violence. It is as though Maldoror had
taken upon himself to dramatize an epigram which his creator could
not possibly have read, this remark from the
Journaux Intimes
of
Baudelaire:
uQuand faurai inspire le degout et l'horreur universels J
faurai conquis la solitude."
III
The outrage of nature in
M aldoror
can be discussed first
of all in its most obvious sense: the natural laws which operate in
the "real" universe are twisted to conform ' to the laws of the myth
or the fairy tale. There are magic spells, enchantments and punish–
ments: there are animals who speak and act as humans; there is an
anthropomorphic God as well as other divinities and spirits who
interfere actively and visibly in human affairs; and there are fre–
quent metamorphoses of man into animal or monster, of God into
animal-once, as it happens, a church lamp becomes an angel. These
elements confer a primitive, folk-lorist quality to the book which is
