THE RELEVANCE OF LAUTREAMONT
539
tympan, il reduisit le mouvement de ses membres palmes, de maniere
Ii
soutenir son buste, couvert de goemons, au-dessus des flots mugissants.
J
e Ie vis incliner son front, comme pour invoquer, par un ordre solennel,
La
meute errante des souvenirs. Je n'osais pas l'interrompre dans ceUe
occupation, saintement archeologique: plonge dans Ie passe, il res–
semblait
Ii
un ecueiU
What does this last image mean:
r<plonge dans le passe, il ressem–
blait
a
un ecueil?"
I suppose that first of
all
it means this: that the
intensity of the amphibian's revery upon his past fixes him in the
water with the immobility of a reef. Of course the amphibian is
plunged physically not in the past but in the sea, and the preceding
description of his bust protruding out of the water and hung with
sea weed suggests that his resemblance to a reef is even more literal.
But in the equivalence between past and sea there is still another
suggestion: history is a kind of sea in which the amphibian, having
escaped from its restless variety, remains stationary like a reef. On
the other hand there may be the contrary sense that his sudden en–
gulfment in the past beats upon him with the violence of waves upon
a reef.
What I should like to be evident, in all the preceding dis–
cussion of style, is the relevance of Lautreamont's peculiar rhetoric
to his morality and comedy. The effect of language which is con–
stantly off balance is to dramatize and to mock a structureless moral
world. Ultimately the bewilderment and terror of the world of
Maldoror
render it a kind of hell, and its language can be regarded
as a kind of diabolic teasing. As such, Lautreamont's hell must neces–
sarily remain less valuable to us than the hell of his near-contem–
porary, Rimbaud; in comparison with
Une Saison en Enter, Mal–
doror
appears uneven, bookish and self-conscious. But its brilliant
and destructive outrage contains nevertheless an equal richness of
moral perception, perception which, given Lautreamont's practical
jokes with language, remains ticklishly inconclusive, and is all the
more relevant for that.
5 The amphibian dared not approach the beach too closely; but as soon
as he was assured that his voice carried with sufficient clarity to my ear-drum,
he reduced the motion of his webbed hands in such a manner as to maintain
his torso, hung with sea-wrack, above the moaning waves. I saw him bow his
head as if to invoke by solemn command the wayward pack of memories. I dared
not interrupt him in this sacredly archeological occupation: plunged in the past,
he resembled a reef.
