Maldoror: (Les Chants de Maldoror), Paperback

Maldoror is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religions fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautreamont: ``He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance.`` When first published in 1868-69, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the 1890s the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Leon Block, Maeterlinck, and Remy de Gourmont. Later still, Lautreamont was to be canonized as one of their principal ``ancestors`` by the Paris surrealists. This edition, translated by Guy Wernham, includes also a long introduction to a never-written, or now lost, volume of poetry. Thus, except for a few letters, it gives all the surviving literary work of Lautreamont.