Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers First and Second Canto, pg. 11 – 96


Heaven grant that the reader, at this moment as brave and ferocious as the words now being read, may, without being disorientated, find a savagely dangerous path that leads through the desolate swamps of these sullen, poison-soaked pages. For unless a rigorous logic and a concentration of the mind equal to defiance is brought to this reading, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve the soul as water does sugar. (First Canto)

True or false: Maldoror is the original "Joker," a la Batman comics. Evidence, he writes of trying to make himself smile by slashing his mouth with a sharp blade... and does so in the same year when Victor Hugo is writing "The Man Who Laughs," somewhere across Paris.

For other discussion: Generally, evaluating a book should be divorced from evaluating the author as a human being. But were you ever tempted to ask yourself how you might feel about this book if you were to discover the author was actually a murderer, molester, or other form of violent sadist? Did it make you start to feel worse about yourself for reading the book? (By the way, I have no reason to suggest the author actually was any of these things!)

Zadignose wrote: "True or false: Maldoror is the original "Joker," a la Batman comics. Evidence, he writes of trying to make himself smile by slashing his mouth with a sharp blade... and does so in the same year whe..."

Okay, what-evs...

What do you think about the text?

The voice of the first section resembles the first poem in Flowers of Evil slightly, yet this one is more dismissive of the reader wheras FOE is more about making the reader an accomplice in Baudelaire's depraved but truthful evocatins of humanity. This one also repulses and forbids the reader, yet nonethless intrigues her with its geometric swan metaphors and the weird incestous suggestions ("like the eyes of a son respectfully averted from his mother's face"). I also adore the idea of "the deadly emanations of this book dissolv[ing] his soul as water does sugar." Hints at the true power of literature.

Cphe wrote: "Jim wrote: "This discussion covers First and Second Canto, pg. 11 – 96


Heaven grant that the reader, at this moment as brave and ferocious as the words now being read, may, without being disorien..."

is it a dare or the emanations of a curse?

"What makes you think that you will not sniff--drenched in numberless pleasures, for as long as you wish, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, as you turn over on your belly like a shark, in the beautiful black air, as if you understood the importance of this act and the equal importance of your legitimate appetite, slowly and majestically--its red emanations"

Does anyone else feel projected into the appetites of a shark by this line? Such a strange and undulating(in meaning) work.

Cphe wrote: "Nicholaus wrote: "Cphe wrote: "Jim wrote: "This discussion covers First and Second Canto, pg. 11 – 96


Heaven grant that the reader, at this moment as brave and ferocious as the words now being re..."

Right. Is it a dare worth taking? Something scared me away from this book years ago. I'm determined to see it through this time, whether or not I be damned or attempted to be turned away by its meta-narrative

Nicholaus wrote: ""What makes you think that you will not sniff--drenched in numberless pleasures, for as long as you wish, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, as you turn over on your belly like a shark, in th..."

are you sure? have you reached the end with your mind intact, without guilt or suggestive premonitions?

Henry wrote: ".I separate the art from the artist. For example, many have an issue with reading Hamsun due to his war-time dealings. I look at his work, and judge his work on its own merits. "

The Introduction to the edition I am reading (and I think you are as well) has a quote from Octavio Paz which says it well:

the writer's morality does not lie in the subjects he deals with or the arguments he sets forth, but in his behaviour towards language.

I've really only JUST started, not very far in at all. But already I am impressed by the juxtaposition of the beauty of the language (it really is spectacular French) and the distastefulness of what is being described. I am assuming, for now, that this is deliberate, and part of the point.

Henry wrote: "...I separate the art from the artist. For example, many have an issue with reading Hamsun due to his war-time dealings. I look at his work, and judge his work on its own merits...."

Mkfs wrote: "...Octavio Paz which says it well:
the writer's morality does not lie in the subjects he deals with or the arguments he sets forth, but in his behaviour towards language."

I'm glad we're largely in agreement that art should be judged separately from the artist. I too am a fan of Hamsun, as well as Celine, two of the great novelists of their time. However, I think if we're going to discuss this book we have to--at least briefly--reengage the question. Because, whether facetiously or not, whether it's a hyperbolic parody of "frenetique" romanticism or not, the text itself advocates (insincerely?) brutal torture and sexual sadism directed at minors. It's provocative, and it's a pointed moral challenge to us as readers. And it's one of the few books to have forced me to ask myself are you really sure that an amoral assessment of literature and intentional disregard of the author as human being is the right approach? So, at least the question has to be asked. Not that we can actually find out much about the artist or his intention, but as a "thought experiment," how might it affect you if you were to discover Ducasse actually molested and murdered children, for instance?

Anyway, to try to remain unaffected by the book's provocative content, or to appreciate it mainly as words colorfully decorating a page, never mind what the words say, would not be the right approach. (Note: with specific references to "strong emotions" above, I know that no one here is specifically advocating that we try to remain unaffected... I just hope my point is clear as it stands).

Henry wrote: "Since I follow neither Hollywood nor comics, and since my interest does not concern itself with superheros but rather humanity and its failures, I cannot respond to the first part. Well, I could, but I chose not to...."

Fair enough. I don't care about Batman either. I don't have any special interest in Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer either, but even if the connection is remote and the reference somewhat superficial, it can't really be denied that Maldoror has some relationship to the tradition of vampire literature too.

It's at least tangentially interesting to me that a kind of cultural-mythical boogeyman, the person whose smile has been carved into his/her face, which has reemerged in such odd places as 21st century Korean schoolgirl terrors of a "Red Mask" woman, and Japanese schlock Ichi the Killer, as well as Batman's rival The Joker, had roots at least in the 19th century, and that it was of enough topical interest to inspire both Ducasse and Hugo to write about it at the same time... though Ducasse used it as a kind of throwaway detail while Hugo dwelled on it and made it the centerpiece of his work.

Meanwhile...

This book engaged me very quickly with its tone, its wit, and its enigmatic character. I knew it was something utterly fantastic by the time I met the house-sized glow worm and the alliance with Prostitution. I also picked up pretty quick that the book is going to challenge me a lot, and that clear-cut answers will never be entirely forthcoming.

Zadignose wrote: " However, I think if we're going to discuss this book we have to--at least briefly--reengage the question..."

Strongly disagree. The artist's personal life, especially since it's unknowable in this case, has little relevance to the existing text. Unless you want to take on the role of a 21st century church lady, what value does your thought experiment offer? A reason to put a warning on the cover? A reason for a bookbeque? In relation to other transgressive literature, as well as the endless parade of societal transgressions on the evening news, I haven't found anything in the First Canto to even merit a raised eyebrow.

I've only just begun the Second Canto, but structurally, the book is reminding me of Lispector's Água Viva, which I read a few weeks ago. The passages are longer, and the subject matter is different, but the reading experience feels the same. Interesting while I'm reading, but by the next day it's hard to recall much of what I've read. I suppose the text might be better thought of as prose poetry than anything with a clear plot.

Jim wrote: "Strongly disagree. The artist's personal life, especially since it's unknowable in this case, has little relevance to the existing text. Unless you want to take on the role of a 21st century church lady, what value does your thought experiment offer? A reason to put a warning on the cover? A reason for a bookbeque? In relation to other transgressive literature, as well as the endless parade of societal transgressions on the evening news, I haven't found anything in the First Canto to even merit a raised eyebrow..."

Since it's one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years, I probably won't call for it to be banned or burned. But at least I know where you stand on the question. Still, if, as it goes forward, it doesn't present some moral challenges or provoke some discomfort greater than a raised eyebrow, then it may fail to live up to its warning of poisonous emanations and jeopardy of the soul.

I've only just begun the Second Canto, but structurally, the book is reminding me of Lispector's Água Viva, which I read a few weeks ago. The passages are longer, and the subject matter is different, but the reading experience feels the same. Interesting while I'm reading, but by the next day it's hard to recall much of what I've read. I suppose the text might be better thought of as prose poetry than anything with a clear plot."

Yeah, I guess I hadn't thought of that, but perhaps fragmentary nature and plotlessness explain why it's presented as "poetry"/"cantos" of a sort, as it may not have fit the expectations of "prose fiction" or "essay" at the time. I.e., it didn't really have a standard genre to contain it?

I don't think there's such a mystery about this work that the author's life needs to be examined to explain it.

Ducasse was, what, 24 what he wrote it? Certainly no older. This is exactly the sort of thing I was reading at 24, and writing for that matter.

If anything, I've found that reading the biography can lessen the impact of a work. I read Rimbaud a few years back, and while it made me more interested in Rimbaud and his work, it put his writing in context: the scrawlings of a sh!t-starter trying to make an impression on an uncaring city.

So, some thoughts, very confused, and at random.

1. the encounter with the "adolescent": the speaker seems interested in innocence, yet later passages make me think he doesn't believe it exists as constructed with respect to sex and violence and harming others. The passage that struck me was the idea that he wanted to teach the boy to hurt him, that this was somehow at least as important as hurting the boy. Somehow it leads to pardon and that to intimacy and that to happiness. It's a weird sequence, and I don't understand it:

Alors, tu me déchireras, sans jamais t'arrêter, avec les dents et les ongles à la fois. Je parerai mon corps de guirlandes embaumées, pour cet holocauste expiatoire ; et nous souffrirons tous les deux, moi d'être déchiré, toi, de me déchirer... ma bouche collée à ta bouche.
...Après avoir parlé ainsi, en même temps tu auras fait le mal à un être humain, et tu seras aimé de même être : c'est le bonheur le plus grand que l'on puisse concevoir.

That is a weird passage. Also, it gets weirder on the subject of innocence when

2. He talks of the innocence of animals who hunt and kill and eat and rip each other apart, the dogs, his desire to be a shark. No one thinks badly of them for it, it's just what they do. It's innocent. So maybe he's not destroying the boy's innocence above, maybe he's teaching it to him?

and then finally, for now anyway, 3. the weird anti-creation song sung by une jeune fille qui chante un air sublime, who is herself, I think, the last in a string of metaphors for the barking of the dogs. She sings against a string of wildly precise things in the world, is she un-creating them? is she an uncreator? Does the speaker love those things or hate them? Or is that not even a reasonable question to ask? And what does it have to do with the ripping and being ripped as perfect union and perfect happiness?

These are my questions.

Nicole wrote: "She sings against a string of wildly precise things in the world, is she un-creating them? is she an uncreator? Does the speaker love those things or hate them? Or is that not even a reasonable question to ask? And what does it have to do with the ripping and being ripped as perfect union and perfect happiness?.."

Seems a bit like the Eastern ideas of creation/destruction cycles found in India, China, etc.

Henry wrote: "Considering that Maldoror is the opposite of God, he could also be viewing his own deviancy as good, and God's innocence as evil..."

I don't have the book in the front of me, but somewhere in the first half of the Second Canto, he talks about good and evil being equally present in heaven and on earth, and suggests that god is just as evil and good as anyone else. I'll see if I can find the passage...

Henry wrote: "Yes, but they are opposing forces. Did he not used to fight with god before being condemned to remain on Earth?

I do not view this as discrediting my theory/interpretation, especially since both ..."

Could be. I'll look for the passage tomorrow. Either way, I wouldn't say it discredits your theory, but only serves as a kind of moral relativism that flips the meaning of good and evil back and forth.

I'm skeptical of the god-maldoror opposite theory. Granted, I am working my way very slowly through the text, but it seems to me an extra-textual import/assumption, and does not necessarily shed any light on what is going on. Certainly the speaker speaks often about cruelty, but the place I see him going most often is nature. I see so far one reference to priests (he doesn't want any at his death bed) and one and one only to l'Etre suprême, which could be anything. Meanwhile, there is an entire strophe dedicated to the ocean.

I guess, to put it another way, there are different ways of rejecting god. There's the way in which you can say you embrace evil, effectively staying within the framework of good and evil set up by this whole god concept. But there's also a way where you say, lookit, this whole god thing and all of its categories are irrelevant. I don't embrace god, but that doesn't make me evil, either. You're just wrong about the whole framework.

The notes to the edition I have also show an engagement with ancient/classical texts and traditions like Lucretius, rather than with a tradition of religious writing. This engagement also provides us with some further evidence on the is this poetry front: strophe and antistrophe suggest yes poetry, but of a very specific kind, or at least evoking a very specific kind.

Also, on the issue of flesh ripping and children, and also of the man who smiles because he has to, there's this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprach...

Okay, yes, so, still confused but making some progress, looked at another source from the notes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Erlk...

The way I'm understanding this strophe, and possibly also the desire to reframe definitions of things like cruelty and innocence using nature is this. Your god is no good against the elf-king (or Maldoror in this case) NOT because there is an eternal war of evil and good and evil is winning, but rather because your god is irrelevant, and you don't understand how the world works.

If the elf-king (or Maldoror) wants your child, he's taking him. That's how the world works.

Somehow, then, this can get mapped back onto things like sharks being sharks and the ocean being the ocean, and wild roaming dog packs doing what wild roaming dog packs do. They are how the world works. They aren't evil, perversions of, deviations away from the order of the world, they are the order of the world, and, in this sense, innocent, at least if the idea of innocence is to mean anything at all.

I still don't know what to do with the child abuse things though.

Nicole wrote: "I still don't know what to do with the child abuse things though..."

Sharks are sharks. Sociopaths are sociopaths. 'Cause god is irrelevant.

Jim wrote: "Nicole wrote: "I still don't know what to do with the child abuse things though..."

Sharks are sharks. Sociopaths are sociopaths. 'Cause god is irrelevant."

This book is making my head hurt.

Nicole wrote: "This book is making my head hurt..."

That's why we call it "Brain Pain"...

What I like about Lautréamont's arguments is that by making god and his twin brother satan "irrelevant", is that it puts the responsibility for human behaviors and dark deeds back onto the perpetrators, rather than having mythical entities take the blame.

At the end of the section in the Second Canto that begins with "It is midnight; there is no longer a single horse-drawn omnibus to be seen..." - starts on page 51 in my edition - the narrator condemns the callous people who refuse to help a struggling young boy:

"Stupid and idiotic race! You will regret having acted thus. It is I who tell you this. You will regret it. Yes, you will. My poetry will use all possible means to exclusively attack man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who should never have created such vermin. Volume will follow volume, until the end of my life, and in them will always be this idea, which is constantly present in my consciousness!"

Very much the writing of an angry young man, disgusted by man's inhumanity to man, and the vignettes of abuse and the violation of the pure are the means he uses to drive this point home.

Cphe wrote: "I'm going yes, okay I understand and when I put it down and then pick it up the next day I've forgotten half of what I read previously..."

I'm also experiencing this (I had a similar experience with Agua Viva), although some of the passages are strong enough to burrow their way into long-term memory.

Cphe wrote: "Morning everyone, freely admit I'm struggling with this one.

I'm finding the imagery powerful/distasteful and the blasphemy towards God as we know him. Even though I'm not deeply religious (church..."

I like your description Cphe. When I read it I just had to let the imagery wash over me - it kinda bypassed my brain to a certain extent. I had to read it in small doses as well, but I find some books force a reading style on the reader.

Cphe wrote: "There is no "waxing and waning" the author isn't letting the reader "take a breather"......but then we were warned early on. "

he! he! 'shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands.' The effect is similar to reading de Sade; if you read too much at once you feel as if you're descending into madness.

Reading these messages and looking back at the quotes I noted down I really want to read this again...I'm intrigued by the Lykiard translation as well.

Maldoror will certainly prove to be a good companion to The Book of Disquiet.

Is anyone else reminded of Gilles de Rais?

Henry wrote: "Not because of the difficulty of the text, but because the imagery was too disturbing. "

So far (starting Canto III), I don't find the imagery all that disturbing. Perhaps my palate is too jaded.

It definitely falls into the "things I've never seen before" category, though. That whole oceanic second canto with Maldoror sniping at shipwreck survivors and the shark sequence ... quite unprecedented.

Cphe wrote: "I had someone comment to me the other day that he hadn't come across any women who had attempted to read Maldoror before - so I'm not too sure what he was saying about me."

I think the question is actually, what does that say about him? Feel free to relay that question to him from me, the other woman "attempting" to read Maldoror with the group.

Cphe wrote: "I've completed the 3 canto and have started on the 4th.

Although it continues to be graphic e.g the rape and evisceration of the child, I was nearly overwhelmed with the almost (to me) clinical w..."

If you could, please discuss Canto 3 & 4 in the next discussion, thanks!

Nicole wrote: "I think the question is actually, what does that say about him? Feel free to relay that question to him from me, the other woman "attempting" to read Maldoror with the group..."

I think this is one of those mirror books - one's response has a lot to do with who you are and/or how you think about this kind of transgressive subject matter.

For me, I have no trouble seeing these scenes as fictions used to illustrate social commentary/critique - and basically nothing more than that. Here in the 21st century, and after endless reports of human horror stories - fictional and real world - I feel fairly jaded towards a lot of this surrealistic violence. The exception for me, recently, was in Vollmann's The Royal Family, where the violence against women and the pedophile sex was just too far over the top for me.

I can't tell if it's a critique or not. Though it doesn't appear to me to be any kind of endorsement. I suppose there is the possibility that it is description, and that attempts to go beyond description are misdirected?

Unlike others, I'm moving very slowly, and have only finished chanson 1. My last thought about the first chanson is that the layering up of voices is part of what I am having a hard time sorting out. For example, strophe 13 has a quoted critique of Maldoror by someone speaking to him and wanting to save him, which explicitly denies that Maldoror is in any way "natural" with his words and thoughts (Ton esprit est tellement malade que tu ne t'en aperçois pas, et que tu crois être dans ton naturel, chaque fois quil sort de ta bouche des paroles insensées, quoique pleines d'une infernale grandeur.)

Then he more or less threatens him with expulsion from...somewhere, creation? the kingdom of heaven? unclear...telling him to go back where he came from. So in this speech Maldoror becomes some kind of perversely glamorous, black-caped horse-riding harbinger of evil, or whatever, and yet the one delivering this speech is a toad. And that toad is described as being much like a human being before he begins speaking. Plus he is quoted within a series of speeches which already have so many speakers that it's often hard to tell who's saying what. So it's sort of destabilized.

So, in this strophe, on the one hand, Maldoror is some kind of Lucifer figure, glamorous and yet evil, cast out forever from the order and rule of creation into the abyss. On the other, he's a guy sitting down with a rotting corpse, with the leeches and the maggots, getting a lecture about morality from a toad, so it's hard to take this first picture seriously with respect either to its claims of morality or its images of glamor.

Then there's a quick bid for poetic fame and we're done.

Nicole wrote: "On the other, he's a guy sitting down with a rotting corpse, with the leeches and the maggots, getting a lecture about morality from a toad, so it's hard to take this first picture seriously with respect either to its claims of morality or its images of glamor..."

I think this is why the surrealists were so enamored of this book!

Sidebar: (view spoiler)[Among the visual arts of the Surrealist group, my favorite painter is Max Ernst. His paintings and collages seem to come from the same dark abysses that Lautréamont draws from. (hide spoiler)]

How often do you find yourself laughing while reading Maldoror. For me, the answer is: often.

How facetious do you think the book is, overall. For me, the answer is: quite.

On second reading, it seemed the facetious nature of the work, though it makes its appearance early in the use of over-extended metaphors (the migrating cranes), becomes most overt in the praise of Old Ocean.

Meanwhile, I also think that the author has engaged in a kind of interesting play, where he may have written sentences that would have made logical sense, and then intentionally inverted them, sometimes just by adding a "no," or "not," or using the opposite word of what would have fit. Several times, in the midst of praising someone, or something, he inserts a surprising "I hate you," or expresses loathing, spite, or some such thing.

man hypocritically says 'yes' and thinks 'no'.

(As does Maldoror).

'Mother, I feel no pain... I am not telling the truth.'

Meanwhile, and address to himself, or to those he parodies, or both? (Since he both despises humanity's viciousness and embodies it): What right do you have to come to this earth and pour scorn on those who live on it, rotten wreck buoyed up by scepticism?

Contrariness: Maldoror wishes for a companion, one comes, he says 'Go away. I did not call you; I do not need your friendship.'

Repetition: 'The ship in distress fires the cannon to give the alarm; but it sinks slowly... majestically.'

Reversal (Something that I became obsessed with when reading Kafka): Unfortunately, on the night of that tempest, one of those fits had come upon me, my reason had abondoned me (for normally I was just as cruel, but more cautious); everything which fell into my hands that night would have to die; I am not claiming that this excuses my misdeeds.

And then, a mere two sentences later: My reason never abandons me, as I have just claimed in order to deceive you. (And then, why defeat yourself by undeceiving us?)

Reversal within one clause: It was a good way of not saving their lives. (For a flash, when reading just "It was a good way..." one could expect this to be the main idea, their method was good... NOT.

Oh yeah, and then of course there's shark fucking.

Conclusion: there's a lot of play in this book, and the reader gets buffeted this way and that.

"Alas! What is good and what is evil? Are they just one thing by which we testify with rage to our powerlesness, and our passion to reach for infinity by the most foolish things? Yes...I would rather they be one thing...for if not what will become of me on the day of judgement?"

(I'm reading an ebook, so this is at location 80, at 2%, on my Kindle)

I knew a man who appeared to me to be the real walking version of the author's writings. My mother was his friend. This book is opening up his mind to me. On that basis, I can vouch for the narrator's realism of his surreal waking nightmare thoughts, ideas and scenes. He was both evil and haunted.

I'm feeling pretty buffeted. I'm somewhere in the middle of Chanson 2 now, behind everyone, and now it's like god isn't irrelevant, he's actually bad. Also so are people.

So one question is, do humans have a special status, or are they like sharks, just doing what nature would have them do, which seems cruel to us because we're....uh, humans?

Also, ode to lice followed by an ode to math, which is then described as a weapon Maldoror can use against human kind? What's up with that?

People are like sharks, only more complicated..

Maldoror cannot be counted on for either consistency or transparency. Think "mercurial."

Nicole wrote: "now it's like god isn't irrelevant, he's actually bad. Also so are people..."

If god created man in his own image, then this is to be expected, no?

Ok, finished chanson 2 last night and can I just say, shark-fucking? SHARKFUCKING?

It was strangely un-disgusting while I was reading it, but trying to explain it to anyone else is an impossibility.

Jim wrote: "Nicole wrote: "now it's like god isn't irrelevant, he's actually bad. Also so are people..."

If god created man in his own image, then this is to be expected, no?"

I think there is something in that, yes.

I get that there are multiple underminings happening, but I do think there are repeated images and concerns that can be traced, and I haven't given up on the possibility of some kind of framework that places god, people, and nature in some sort nexus of complicated relationships and analogies.

Of course I'm also miles behind everyone else who is already finished. This is the kind of book that sucks away years of your life.

Nicole wrote: "I get that there are multiple underminings happening, but I do think there are repeated images and concerns that can be traced, and I haven't given up on the possibility of some kind of framework that places god, people, and nature in some sort nexus of complicated relationships and analogies...."

Mkfs has identified a passage in the Fifth Canto that he believes is a framework for the book. So the secret will be revealed in just three more Cantos!!

I am finding this material hilarious. It's like an over-the-top satire.

I'm reminded of something between Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, except Elvira was really quite nice, nicer than the movies she hosted, and the XXX rated version of Johnny Depp finally letting it all out after hinting this is the part he's REALLY been wanting to do.

"O louse with the shrivelled eyes, as long as rivers pour their waters into the depths of the sea.....your reign over the universe will be assured, and your dynasty will extend its influence from century to century."

Any mom delousing her kid's hair with that special shampoo could only agree.