Tag Archives: Isidore Ducasse

August 5, 2015 · 11:18 pm

MALDOROR 6:4 AND 6:5

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

CANTO SIX: STANZA FOUR

Maldoror and Mervyn, drawn by Monsieur Le Six.

Maldoror and Mervyn, drawn by Monsieur Le Six.

I’ve decided the Stanzas of this final Canto don’t merit individual titles. Too little happens in each as the story of Maldoror preying on the 16 year old youth named Mervyn proceeds incrementally.

The previous episode ended with Maldoror tracking Mervyn to his home on the Rue Lafayette. The young man now flees inside, fearful of the unknown presence he felt following him through the gaslit streets of Paris (left deserted after dark by Maldoror’s ongoing reign of terror). Continue reading →

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August 1, 2015 · 3:58 pm

MALDOROR 6:2 AND 6:3

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

CANTO SIX: STANZA TWO

Did I mention that I think Death-Stalker would make a good Maldoror?

Did I mention that I think Death-Stalker would make a good Maldoror?

This 6th and final Canto of The Songs of Maldoror is entirely different from all the previous Cantos. Instead of being self-contained episodes that jump around to different periods in the long life of the supernatural main character these closing Stanzas form an extended narrative set entirely in late 1860s Paris.

The story details Maldoror’s efforts to seduce a 16 year old youth named Mervyn into abandoning his family and becoming his latest lover and traveling companion as well as the attempts by Mervyn’s family and the forces of God to save the young man. This sudden change of approach as well as the author Isidore Ducasse’s obsession with precise movements through the streets of Paris in this section has spawned a conspiracy theory of sorts among some circles of Maldoror readers.

For those readers Ducasse is using Maldoror as a fictional stand-in for himself as he relates a real-life seduction and murder of a young man at his own hands. In the eyes of those readers these final Stanzas even include coded directions to the location in Paris where Ducasse supposedly hid the body.  Continue reading →

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July 29, 2015 · 10:25 pm

MALDOROR 6:1 – THE FUTURE STRINGS OF FICTION

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.  

THE FUTURE STRINGS OF FICTION

Isidore Ducasse

Isidore Ducasse

We are beginning the 6th and final Canto of The Songs of Maldoror. This 1st Stanza is an address  to the reader from the author Isidore Ducasse. The self-titled Count de Lautreamont grandly warns the reader not to think that his attacks on humanity, God and even himself were the height of his plans. He boasts that the worst is yet to come in this final Canto. Continue reading →

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July 25, 2015 · 7:35 pm

MALDOROR 5:7 – BLACK TARANTULA

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror. 

BLACK TARANTULA

Maldoror 5 7 tarantulaWe are now on the 5th Canto, 7th Stanza of The Songs of Maldoror. The supernatural villain Maldoror gets more of what he deserves this time around. If you enjoyed his suffering in Four Centuries on a Shapeless Throne then you’ll like this Stanza, too. 

Maldoror tells us that every night for the past 10 years a macabre torment has been inflicted on him. In the small hours of the morning he lies in bed and feels himself paralyzed while an enormous black tarantula emerges from a hole in the wall of whatever room he happens to find himself in. 

He helplessly watches as the monstrous figure crawls over to his bed, then up on it until he is pinned beneath its massive, man-sized body. The huge black tarantula then proceeds to suck the purplish blood from his throat. Continue reading →

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July 22, 2015 · 11:26 pm

MALDOROR 5:6 – FUNERAL FOR THE LIVING

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

FUNERAL FOR THE LIVING

Maldoror 5 6 graveyardMaldoror is enjoying another visit through a random graveyard and, being the malevolent creature that he is, finds himself amused by the funeral procession for a 10 year old child. The priest performing the service enters first, holding a white flag in one hand and in the other a flag that bears a golden cross.

Maldoror sardonically describes the cross as “a symbol of the interaction of male and female sex organs.” Behind the priest comes the horse-drawn hearse followed by the chief mourner and behind him come the family and friends of the deceased. Our narrator pretends that the crickets and frogs that cling to the fringes of the funeral procession are also mourning the delicate little child in the coffin.     Continue reading →

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July 18, 2015 · 4:30 pm

MALDOROR 5:5 – PERFIDIOUS SNARE

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

PERFIDIOUS SNARE

KB2765_C63_02, 18-02-2005, 08:36, 8C, 3570x3884 (1455+2342), 100%, Hogtep_Literat, 1/100 s, R41.5, G24.5, B32.7

Maldoror, our supernatural protagonist, begins this stanza by expressing his support and admiration for gay men. Modern readers often hilariously misinterpret this as some sort of advanced and enlightened advocacy on the part of the author Isidore Ducasse. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Maldoror makes it clear that he considers what gay men do to be sinful and perverse, which is why he approves of it and participates in pederasty himself. He gives gay men his dark blessing and sings the praises of kissing various portions of his gay lovers’ anatomies. He proceeds with rapturous accounts of spreading the legs of other men and attaching his mouth to “the insignia of their modesty.”   Continue reading →

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July 15, 2015 · 11:06 pm

MALDOROR 5:4 – A PEDESTAL OF IDEAL PERVERSITY

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror. The forces of Hell once again attack Maldoror this time around.

A PEDESTAL OF IDEAL PERVERSITY

Maldoror 5 4 boaThe supernatural being Maldoror is wandering through a jungle region of South America. Readers may remember the author Isidore Ducasse was born and grew up in Uruguay so he was reasonably familiar with the area.

An enormous boa constrictor (or other boa sup-species) has wrapped itself around our narrator in an attempt to crush him. As the battle between them rages Maldoror eventually realizes this is no ordinary serpent he is grappling with. Rather, it is Lucifer himself, incarnate in snake form. As he fights to free himself from the seemingly infinite folds of his opponent Maldoror gives vent to his usual disdain for Lucifer, whom he views as a pathetic figure already defeated by God.   Continue reading →

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July 11, 2015 · 4:47 pm

MALDOROR 5:3 – INTERMITTENT ANNIHILATION OF HUMAN FACULTIES

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

INTERMITTENT ANNIHILATION OF HUMAN FACULTIES

Maldoror 5 3We are now on the 3rd Stanza of the 5th Canto. Our protagonist is railing against sleep, which he describes as “the intermittent annihilation of human faculties.”

He further pronounces that a person who sleeps is “less than a castrated animal” and makes it clear that sleeping is no different than binding ourselves on a sacrificial altar called a bed and leaving ourselves helpless at the hands of a malevolent God.

Maldodor claims he has gone 30 years now without sleeping, ever since he realized that those nightly rest periods are nothing but an opportunity for his archrival God to cement his hold on us. Through sleep God whispers his commands and his demented philosophies to his creations, according to Maldoror. Continue reading →

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July 8, 2015 · 9:14 pm

MALDOROR 5:2 – FOUR SOULS ERASED FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror.

FOUR SOULS ERASED FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE

dung beetleMaldoror, our supernatural protagonist, encounters four men whose lives were all ruined by the same seductive sorceress. The first man has been transformed into a horse-sized dung beetle and rolls along the mangled corpse of the sorceress the way such beetles usually roll clods of dung. 

Our narrator follows this oddity at a distance and eventually the huge dung-beetle encounters a man with the head of a pelican. (No, it’s not Jay Leno, who used to be described as “the pelican-headed comedian” early in his standup career.) The two bizarre creatures stand and converse in heated tones for a time and it slowly becomes clear to Maldoror what caused their mutual hostility and their current physical condition.   Continue reading →

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June 27, 2015 · 3:35 pm

MALDOROR 5:1 – BETWEEN YOUR LITERATURE AND MINE

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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