Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.
BETWEEN YOUR LITERATURE AND MINE
“Hey, Maldoror! You da MAN!”
We are now on the 5th Canto, 1st Stanza. Maldoror goes meta on us and addresses the readers directly, dismissing any moral indignation they may be feeling about his actions by pointing out the obvious: if any of us were all that disgusted with his sadistic reign of terror we could have just stopped reading long ago.
Continuing along those lines our main character takes credit for erasing the boundaries between the usual literary fare of his readers and his own daring and envelope-pushing brand of writing. This would have been especially true back in the late 1860’s. The Songs of Maldoror makes anything by Poe or Hoffmann or any of the other alleged masters of horror back then look pretty wimpy by comparison. Continue reading
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