Book of a Lifetime: Les Chants de Maldoror by the Comte de Lautréamont

Richard Milward plunges into the forbidden realms of ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’ by the Comte de Lautréamont

The Comte de Lautreamont and his potty page-turner (Wiki Commons)

I’m absolutely mad on mad people. Some of my favourite artworks and novels appear to have been spewed from the hands and minds of mad folk, from Henry Darger to Alfred Jarry to Jean-Michel Basquiat, but none has made a more prominent dent on my brain than the Comte de Lautreamont’s potty page-turner, Les Chants de Maldoror. It’s like an old, twisted rulebook on how to break all literary rules.

It was only a handful of springtimes ago I discovered the book, daydreaming through my Surrealism lectures at the barmy Byam Shaw School of Art off Holloway Road. I’m sure André Breton would have approved. I was probably dreaming of lobsters or eyeballs getting sliced by razor blades, when we were given this hand-out with a quote from Maldoror: “He was… as beautiful as the chance encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella on the dissecting table!” Just like that, I’d found a literary soulmate.

You don’t have to be mad to read Maldoror, but it helps. First published between 1898 and 1869 – and devoured by the Surrealists – it is perhaps the most kaleidoscopic, stomach-churning piece of literature you’ll ever come across, where sleepy hermaphrodites rub shoulders with randy octopuses and lice “as big as elephants”. When Maldoror, the sadistic protagonist and master of disguises, isn’t giving himself a Chelsea Smile, he’s torturing people or having sex with a female shark (the only living creature with anything in common with him – a violent temperament).